Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

I hate the idea of AI replacing humans.  I also hate the idea of it augmenting our work to the point where the joy is sucked out of it. Example = concept artists having to edit and retouch AI instead of making their own work.  But what I do  like it for is: 1) Ideation, and  2) Bouncing ideas off of.  When I say ideation, I don't mean concept art. I just mean straight-up idea generation. I believe that concept art should still be done by actual illustrators and digital artists. But you could use Dall-E to generate vibes.  PSA: if you try to actually reference  AI art directly, instead of as just a high-level concept, you are going to learn bad techniques.  Here's a prompt sentence that ChatGPT gave me, which I had a lot of fun with. THIS is what we should use AI for! Not writing books for us. The human element is essential.  The old bookstore on Elm Street held a secret, and as I pushed open the creaky door, I couldn't shake the feeling that ...

I'm sick as crap right now. Mucinex-and-Dayquil-addled rave ahead.  I've been sick since last week and it shows no signs of slowing down. Breathing through my nose is naught but a pleasant memory, only experienced briefly now after getting out of the shower.  It's caused me to reflect a lot. I've been taking a lot of (slightly dizzy) walks, listening to the birdsong and enjoying the world as it bizarrely feels like early spring. Considering the beautiful and unseasonably warm weather we've been having, and a possibly irrational euphoria due to not being able to breathe properly since last Wednesday, I've been feeling strangely optimistic -- a rare feeling for me.  It could also be the DayQuil and the caffeine. Yeah, that's definitely a factor.  I feel that my art, both 2D and 3D, will soon take off, and I'll be able to get back into the animation industry one day soon. I am excited to work on my master's thesis code each day, and I believe I will fin...

Because he's completely different from me now lol, and now I have to deal with the consequences of his dumb choices. I don't have much in common with my past self at all, minus having similar interests. It feels like my high school life was lived by a different person. I'm still trying to get myself out of the obsession I've been stuck in, of wanting a do-over. Read Cal Newport's Straight A Student book. Then you won't bomb your first semester causing me to have to dig myself out of a GPA hole for the rest of my college career. You could even get a 3.7+ GPA if you do this. Use Khan Academy and Wolfram Alpha. You are good at math. Stop doubting yourself. Stop listening to your parents. Your math teachers growing up were very bad -- check Ventura HS and its terrible average math scores -- and your parents have already put you into a humanities box for some reason. YOU ARE GOOD AT MATH! CS Animation is the right major, but you need to double major with ME or EE for...

As always, no guarantee that I am not reposting 

I open my eyes, and the first thing I feel is warmth.  It is the warmth of the sun. It is calming, spreading throughout my skin.  I’ve finally made it. I went to sleep in my old world, and I woke up here.  I always thought that when I did, I’d jump and scream in an avalanche of joy. But this transition just feels so…Natural. Like this was always meant to me. Whatever cosmic error caused me to be born in the wrong world doesn’t matter anymore. I’m here now. I’m where I was supposed to be, all along.  The world smells of cherry blossoms. They float above me, pink and white, aloft in the lightest of breezes — a warm hug from the springtime, and an unbreakable promise of a long hot summer. The sky is the purest blue, with only a few wispy cirrus clouds strung across it, like rags fluttering on a laundry line. The birds sing, a contrast from the cold, wintry silence I used to live in. They are joined by the chatter of a nearby brook. In the distance, I can hear ocean wave...

How to Deal With Doubt From Your Family by Adriana Sim   I can't keep letting their doubts derail me. I got the lecture of "you need to focus on one thing" from my dad yet again yesterday, and it derailed and stressed me out so much that I woke up two hours late and couldn't focus on anything. I'm not letting this get in my way again.  My mom: "you're using your interests as an excuse to avoid dating and relationships, even if you don't consciously realize it" (They're mad I'm not married with kids yet) My dad: "you'd be more successful at writing if you stopped running, programming, and playing the piano" It's crazy to me that we are pushed into so many activities as a kid in order to get into college, and then once we develop multiple passions, we are suddenly ridiculed for them. It makes zero sense. Critical parents will criticize everyone, though. I didn't really notice this until I left home. Everyone is someon...

The networking module is the worst explained of them all, and its Qwiklabs are buggy as hell. If you copy/paste it to edit it, it won't copy/paste the whole thing, and it will enforce a max string length. Even if you fix this in the HTML, it will fail you no matter what. You cannot get it correct if you copy/paste from the activity itself.  The workaround? Typing it in manually. Yes, it's as annoying as it sounds. 

It's been down since yesterday.  Here's what you get when you try to access it:  OK, so let's ping it to see if it's up: Ok, so it is up, with some packet loss, at the IP http://54.38.220.85/.  The internet confirms it, too.  Let's plug that IP address directly into Chrome, then: "This domain has been suspended due to non-completion of an ICANN-mandated contact verification."  NO DAILY GESTURE DRAWINGS FOR YOU. NEXT!  Ugh. Okay. So the website owner isn't checking their email, or if they are, they aren't complying with ICANN. That's nice. While there are many other websites to practice figure drawing (Line of Action, SketchDaily, and PoseManiacs, for example), QuickPoses is the only one to give you a certificate. I was so close to my first one -- 17.4 out of 20 hours.  It can  be accessed via the Wayback Machine, but the player will not work. And I had some really good references saved there, too. I have never had a website do this before....

  One thing nobody talks about with job applications is how mind-numbing  they are.  I hate filling these Workday forms out, especially because they never parse my dates properly, and I have to manually fill them in every time.  I could be coding and actually learning, but instead I'm stuck on this. Filling out hundreds of forms only to get auto-rejected immediately by half of them.  They never parse my Sling job. It always gets dumped into the description of SimpleNexus for some reason.  Workday is the worst piece of software ever written.