Hardly any snow, temperature is above zero and the sun still up in the evening. Spring is here.
While there hasn’t been any heat wave to talk about, spring is pretty much in full swing. One typical sign in Helsinki is the return of seagulls giving their laughing concert. I still wish the street dust will get cleaned up, though. The past week has been otherwise a fuzzy one and hardly remember how it went, so much I’ve been in survival mode.
Digital and analog imagery
My initial excitement with the AI image generator Midjourney has now faded somewhat, partly because my rendering hours for this month are almost up. I do give it a few requests here and it still gives impressive results, but I also learned to search first if someone else has already tried something I had in mind, saving rendering time.
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- Midjourney sometimes takes some liberty on what pointillism is, but I like it.
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- Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII as Byzantine art.
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- Amazing looking mix of photorealism and mosaic work.
Fooling around with the service enough started gave me an appetite to start drawing myself again. Drawing and painting was something I did a long time ago, but kind of forgot about the whole thing at some point. Now that I think about it, a lot of creative activities have been put on hold lately, which is a shame.
So I blanked my thoughts, dug out my drawing pencils are without much thought doodled something on paper. The result isn’t much, but for myself it felt good. Should do it more often, just for the fun of it with no judging or grand purpose.
First sketch in a while. Yeah, the nose and other stuff are deranged, but maybe this is inspiration from AI generated imagery?
Sounds and sources
Japanese music composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away recently (RIP), so I watched a documentary and live concert of him. His solo album from that time, async, is a thoughtful piece of music. Very melancholy and existential soundscapes (which is understandable why such an approach as he was going through treatment for a serious illness).
A few months ago I bought a pair of Sony Linkbuds, something I’ve been eyeing on a long time, but waited for the price drop a little. In addition of being wireless, I like the open-ring design, that allows me to hear my surroundings normally as if I had no headphones muffling at all. It did take me a long time until I figured out how to optimally wear them in my ears. Satisfied with them, anyways.
First time I have these kind of headphones. Annoying to forget the case home sometimes.