Dec 22, 2022 | Bah! Humbug, Writing
The Writer, by ‘Norman Rockwell’
A month since my previous post and my absence from here – apart from my daily visit to clear the porn bots out of the spam trap – has been because I’ve been writing.
Earlier this year I had an idea for a set of detective stories set in 1930s Edinburgh. I worked up rough outlines and began researching, but started a separate short story to keep the creative juices flowing. As of last night, that story was at 28,000 words. The end is in sight, but I have two or three bubbling under with the same characters. On the days that I’ve been writing, I’ve been exceeding 1000 words a day. Not all of those words will survive revision, but that doesn’t matter. I’d like to get to the end of the first draft before Christmas Day.
If I can maintain the same writing pace in the new year, I may have an unexpected book later in 2023.
In the background, these stories owe something to the sudden rush of AI products that are on the market in two ways. The first is that I had a play with a free trial of a tool called Copy.ai to see if I could come up with some advertising blurb for Amazon and elsewhere. On a whim, I fed a list of the themes of the short stories into the system. What came out was largely gobbledegook but with enough content to form a series of excellent writing prompts. A writing prompt is a sentence or two that provokes the imagination into concocting a story.
Demons in a Dive Bar, by ‘John Everett Millais.’
The second use of AI has been to generate AI art to come up with illustrations of characters. This has been a lot of fun, particularly attempting to render characters or scenes ‘in the style of’ particular artists. The portrait of the writer by ‘Norman Rockwell’ above is generated in Stable Diffusion, as is the ‘Millais’ painting to the left.
AI art does not really understand the human body: figures come out with too many limbs and fingers, contorted at odd angles. Occasionally, two figures merge into one like nightmarish Siamese twins. This, of course, is excellent if you’re writing weird fiction because these illustrations also form writing cues or help me to visualise scenes while writing them.
Also, coming up with the prompts for the AI and having fun with odd juxtapositions of scenes and artists (‘Karaoke Night painted by Rembrandt’} is a great way of freeing up the subconscious as a preparation for writing.
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Karaoke Night by ‘Rembrandt’
The Guardian did its rundown of the top 50 TV shows of 2022. Looking down the list, I see that I watched and thoroughly enjoyed precisely one of them (Andor) and started, but abandoned, one other (‘The House of Dragons.’) The other forty-eight completely passed me by. I make no apologies.
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I listened to Anderson Coopers podcast series All There Is (Spotify link below but available elsewhere.) The series grew from his feelings of grief when sorting through his late mother’s effects. Since his mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, and the effects include love letters from Frank Sinatra, that’s quite a task. There is an awful lot more to it than that, and the series is built around conversations with others about death, loss and grief. That sounds very heavy, but there is also a lot of joy, humour and insight.
I completely recommend it to anyone, even though – or especially because – it deals with subjects from which we instinctively shy away. I’ve listened through each episode at least twice.
Feb 2, 2020 | 1970, Bah! Humbug, Goggle-eyes
The 1970s music project is fun, but one thing is starting to irk me: I decided I’d concentrate on things I like or, if I don’t like, can at least appreciate. Only one entry so far really went against that. As I go into February I’ve sidled up to several albums I was looking forward to hearing that turn out to do nothing for me, and I’ve formulated a working hypothesis: if a seventies album on YouTube attracts comments from old blokes (and it is invariably blokes) along the lines of Classic! This is what music’s all about! then in all probability it will be shite.
Since I like to listen through any albums I write about at least twice before scribbling notes, there’s a lot I’m avoiding because a couple of tracks into side one and I’m recoiling. That limits what there is to write about. If there’s something that doesn’t grab me but is nonetheless interesting, that’s one thing, but that’s not what I’m talking about; it’s stuff that doesn’t grab me and is wholly uninteresting that’s the problem.
Atomic Rooster, for example.
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I mentioned in my last post that I’d started the new series of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina; half way through it and I’ve given up. Yes, I know I’m not the target audience, but still. More generally, as I was saying to Lindsay last night after scrolling through the menu on Netflix, there is an awful lot of high-production-value rubbish out there.
Dec 22, 2012 | Bah! Humbug, Music, snap!
It has been a miserable run up to Christmas – wet and chilly. We have had it a lot better than parts of England which are approaching seriously catastrophic conditions after months of near continuous rain. It has been a bit bitty for me but my holidays have now started and I am happy to have a few days with my feet up.
I have been looking at cameras for China, fortified by some generosity from the taxman in the form of a tax rebate. I have pretty much identified what I’m likely to buy, assuming that I do actually buy anything, and have been looking at prices. Of the five stores I’ve looked at, for exactly the same items, the variance is £133 lowest to highest. If I pick and choose between them the variance increases to £169. These are all on-line – add another couple of hundred pounds (at least) for high street prices. Prices would be even better in Hong Kong but I’m concerned about warranties.
I went into Jessops in Edinburgh today and had a play with the two I’m choosing between (Nikon D7000 and Canon 7D) and there isn’t really much between them although my preference is probably for the Nikon. However I expect prices to tumble for both quite substantially in the New Year so we’ll wait and see.
In the meantime, I have been compiling a list of odds and ends of music I’d like to get hold of, mainly inspired by catching a programme of Flemish polyphony on Radio 3 a couple of weeks ago and then searching around. Also I heard some lute music by Kapsberger and really liked it (I’m listening to it now on Spotify). Inevitably, I could find none of it in any of the music shops in Edinburgh specialising in “classical” music – and yes, I know it isn’t “classical” in the proper meaning. So it will have to be an online purchase. I know it is a non-commercial taste and there are problems in keeping that kind of inventory but if specialist shops can’t stock it who can?
Dec 13, 2009 | Bah! Humbug, Music
It’s that time of year again.
I have an ambivalent relationship with Christmas. I dislike the intense pressure to buy and the fact that it begins earlier every year. I dislike the way that every year the shop keepers are moaning about lack of business but then come January the reveal to their surprise that actually they did quite well. I dislike the false bonhomie and jollity and the endless crap music playing over shop speakers and, worst of all, childrens’ choirs singing carols.
Having said that I like the idea of Christmas and I like the traditions of Christmas when they’re kept simple.
I went into town this afternoon with the intention of scouting around for presents. For the most part it was a grizzly couple of hours although the chap in the photo seemed to be doing quite well with tips by the simple expedient of standing on his head in a bucket in the middle of the street.
I took refuge in the German market at the foot of The Mound and had a warming mug of gluhwein which had an extra kick of spirits in it. For all my attachment to mumbling “bah! humbug!” it was quite nice to sip the hot drink on a chilly afternoon and just enjoy the hubbub of people around, including many who were obviously visitors to the City.
I liked the fact that visitors were clearly enjoying themselves here: sometimes we residents are too hard on ourselves and see only the things which for one reason or another displease us. It is nice to try and see Edinburgh through the eyes of our guests.
I treated myself while I was out to a newly released DVD of Christy Moore and Declan Sinnott Live at the Barrowlands, Glasgow. I watched it tonight – and what a cracker it is. I haven’t been to see Christy Moore for a number of years yet. He always was an intense and powerful performer but this is in a different league, and Sinnott is fabulous.
Nov 1, 2009 | Bah! Humbug
blah blah blah blah
Longtime readers of this blog in its earlier form will know that from August 2002 onwards I used to enjoy a good rant. I haven’t actually had a good on-line rant for quite some time now and fear that I may have mellowed.
Also, as a number of people from work or who know me via work drop in to have a look from time to time, I have become more circumspect in what I say publicly. Thus my inner feelings seethe with barely suppressed rage at the vicissitudes of life which I do not express, or at least don’t express those which effect my work.
I was reminded of this in the course of Saturday morning when I listened in to the last hour or so of Rick Wakeman’s weekly show on Planet Rock. He usually features some grumpy or other having a good rant and I felt the juices begin to flow as I listened.
I do not plan to give reign to feelings just now, but were I so to do it would be in connection with the firing of Professor David Nutt.
There are several aspects of this which have attracted plenty of comment in the press and on the net and I have no particular intention of adding to that. I do note one particular sentence from the letter dismissing him though, the one which read: “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy…”.
Now in the case of drug use there are several variables in play when setting policy, but one would have thought that, in this area as in all others, that if there is a disjunction between the evidence and the policy then the evidence should prevail.
Jul 3, 2009 | Bah! Humbug
I’ve been on Twitter for a couple of weeks now and, frankly, can’t see the attraction, especially since the spam bots appear to reign supreme. Even worse I’ve started to see stuff coming through other channels – usually invitations to seminars and conferences – which seek to advise me on how to “use Twitter to benefit my business”. This makes me think that the spamming is going to get worse and any alleged social benefits will attenuate to a singularity before popping out of existence in a puff of hubris.
So I’ve tweeted my last, I think.
The whole social networking thing is a strange area. My first encounter (unless you include email list servers) would have been with Friends Reunited and then My Space, neither of which do much for me these days, to the extent that they ever did. Facebook I’m on quite regularly. What I’m not convinced by is all of the hype for the last two to three years about “Web 2.0” and the collaborative content revolution/social web. I get the idea of course and can see some uses, but think that on the whole it has been oversold, particularly in a business context.
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