Playing with DALL-E

Below are my recent efforts playing around with OpenAI’s DALL-E art generator. I have included the picture, and below each picture is the prompt I used to generate the art. Happy Friday, Chimps.

A mouse’s eye view of an eagle swooping down to grab him, in the style of Picasso

street art stencil picture of a chicken playing badminton

photo of a sculpture of a grizzly dwarf forging a sword

impressionist painting of a perfectly symmetrical orange tree on top of a hill

mice playing poker cyberpunk digital art

a painting of the head of a donkey in the style of martin aveling

Hyperion update

Hyperion has become a sleeping aid for me. That sounds like a poor review of a book sending me to sleep, but that is not what I mean.

For various reasons I have had to get up a lot at night recently. This is fine, but lately my mind has begun to race around, skipping from one thought to another which keeps me awake. Hyperion is what calms me down and focuses my mind on just one thing. The stories are so great and eventually I nod off to fantastic images of talking dolphins and portals across time and space. It’s kind of trippy to have so many nights with those stories running through my head.

Usually I am able to turn of audible before I fall asleep. Otherwise the story just keeps playing in my head and the next night I am hours behind and completely lost! I can mostly figure out what has happened, but after twenty hours of narration and a few nights leaving the story running on my headphones whilst I snore away, I definitely have some gaps.

Last night I finished the sixth and final chapter and I just have the prologue to go tonight.

Still highly recommended.

Happy Thursday chimps.

Sci-fi views

We are in lockdown in a beautiful location. We are lucky. There are regular scenes resembling a cover of a sci-fi novel.

Peach and pink sunset over the bay, the sea was perfectly still as a navy submarine, half submerged and performing a routine drill, cruised past like an alien ship in the evening. All the while a bright white moon hung in the pink sky. La Luna smiled down on us from the other side of the bay, almost scraping the pastel colored mountains which surround us like one of Mars’ orbital rocks.

On another morning, further out to sea a pod of hundreds of dolphins were in a feeding frenzy. They gorged themselves on a huge shoal of smaller fish which they had trapped. A boiling, choppy circular mass moved along through the water until the feeding was done. From high up here it looked like one of Jupiter’s storms passing by.

Now at night time the darkness of the water fills up space from our viewpoint to the city. Far on the other side of the bay is where the water ends and the city starts. I see an amber glow and winking, yellow lights floating on the blackness of the sea. The city is like a huge mothership hovering on the ocean.

Look for the sci-fi around you because it’s surely there.

Happy Tuesday chimps.

Hyperion update – viva Audible

Dan Simmons’ Sci-Fi novel is a great listen on Audible. So far I have listened to about 8 hours and I have about 12 hours left. That’s 20 hours in total! Sheesh…. I don’t think I would have started the book let alone stuck with it for this long if I was reading an old hard copy. But with Audible and my routine of listening before sleep, I am confident of finishing it.

The ‘Canterbury Tales’ structure of the novel is brilliant. The Priest’s tale was an introduction to the world. The army general’s tale was brilliantly graphic. The Shrike is terrifying. I am in the middle of the Poet’s tale (no. 3) and completely absorbed by the tale. The humour and in particular the linkage with the writing process are absorbing. It makes me want to read the referenced poets like Keats. I want to visit the “City of Poets”. Check out this trail for an idea of the links to old poetry: link

Highly recommended.

Happy Monday chimps.

Developing a concept

The addition of ‘escape the jungle’ to my blog’s main menu is taking shape. I plan to add a few sub menus to cater for all the things in life that help me to escape the jungle – to be less chimp and more rational being. Less anxious and more free.

So far I have art, design, productivity and psychology.

Within these categories I will post my favorite stuff. There will be subcategories too I guess…sport goes somewhere. This is the stuff I love and enjoy. The stuff that makes my life better.

Happy Sunday chimps.

Split

It helps a lot if you are confident about the desired outcome. If you know what you want. I’m not sure what the stats are, but I bet that the odds of something happening go way up if you have the end goal clearly emblazoned is your mind.

All of the most important things related to a project – values, culture, status, leadership – they depend on the parameters that are set.

Maybe an example will help me express myself. If you write a novel, and it starts as a tragedy, then slips into a sci-fi, then to a slapstick comedy, and finally reaches a crescendo as a religious historical piece – well that sounds like a confused mess.

Genre and its audience is perhaps where you want to start. It helps to define the values, the culture and the modus operandi.

With that in mind, I have realized my writing on this blog tends to split into different interests. I might write about creativity, African trade, productivity, music, or sci-fi all in the space of a week.

This needs to become a little clearer, and step one in the splitting out of interests is to redesign the site a little. I think this new template is clearer and the menu at the top will help to clarify things.

It’s a work in progress.

For anyone who has reached this far in the post, happy Monday chimps. 😀

Evernote = A creative’s app

I am slightly obsessive with productivity and the internet. I want a go-to app that will encourage my creative streak, and which helps me organise my life. After many trials and tribulations trying to find the best note taking and general productivity app out there, I have used Evernote since 2012.

It is my favourite for one main reason – the way it makes me FEEL! I want an app which makes me feel creative, engaged and in control when I sit down to try and work. I feel like I could write a novel, organise my life, and manage a project when I open up that beautiful green elephant. It is the colours, the simplicity of the interface, the kind of earthy, coffee-shop-esque vibe of the whole app that keeps me coming back.

The design of the app looks like it goes with headphones and a coffee, and it works fantastically with my other devices all synced in. It’s great as a free beginner package and it gets better with payment.

I am not a partner or earning anything from referrals, so this is pure app-joy expressed in a blog format. Take it or leave it…. (Take it….:))

If you, like me, want to harness the web and the digital world, rather then be controlled by it (ahem…Social Media!) then try out Evernote.

And blogging. Everyone should blog.

Happy Thursday chimps.

Goal achieved!!! Now, please have a Newsletter

If my calculations are correct (and they may very well be incorrect….I blame COVID if that’s the case) but if they’re correct – I have actually done 34 posts in a row on this blog. 34!!!! You may remember (link) I was going for 30. I did it a few days ago without actually realising. Either way I am happy!

Fireworks. Champagne. Singing. Chanting. Mass celebrations lining the streets.

In all seriousness, I am very happy. I have achieved a goal stated in public and with a track record to prove it. And to celebrate, I want to start a newsletter which will come out once a week.

Inspired by this guy: Ben Evans and this guy: Tim Ferris I will try and include in the newsletter everything that I find helpful or interesting from the web. It will be weekly (out on Wednesdays) and it will include links to external stuff, and a few of my own thoughts. This will primarily be an archive for myself, but if others find it interesting too, then all the better.

If you want to subscribe, click on the menu button (top right of this blog) and click the appropriate button.

If not, then don’t 🙂

Here’s to continuous creating.

Happy Tuesday chimps.

Worthwhile exercise…Don’t let the habit end

I think I’m on 25 days straight blogging, or something like that.

I have so far written some absolute rubbish and a couple of posts I am actually quite proud of.

This streak has helped me rearrange the menu on my blog website, now including a Kenya and South Africa section because I find the comparisons interesting to write about.

It hasn’t made it any easier to write well. If I write every single day it just removes some of the fear of writing badly.

I don’t care about a bad post because I know I’ll have another chance tomorrow.

Happy Friday chimps.

This still counts

It’s nearly the end of the day and I haven’t yet managed to write a blog post.

I’m on about 22 posts in my bid for 30 straight. I nearly laughed it off today, but I will be damned if I am going to let this very difficult day get in the way of a good writing streak!

That’s the thing about streaks, once they start you are less likely to quit.

This still counts, and the streak goes on!

Happy Friday night chimps.