In July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX evangelism, Walker on links and power, Lileks on a realistic WWII game, and QUERTY vs Dvorak keyboards.

In July, 2002, I was blogging about Intelligence Officers Read Between the Enemy Lines A great headline for an LA Times story about interrogation and document analysis during the military campaign in Afghanistan. Weblogs: Put Them to Work in Your Newsroom Journalism was still a print-first medium at the time, and local TV reporters were…

Short-range #neovictorian excursion craft, now with glowing power orbs! Over the past year I’ve created so many themed assets (wall units, control panels, random #greebles) that fleshing out the interior only took a few spare evenings. #steampunk #blender3d #blender3dart #design #aesthetics

Progress over 11 years of Blender3D practice

Over the past few years I have created lots of assets, including control panels, furniture, and textures, for an ongoing neovictorian/steampunk personal project that began as bedtime stories that I told my kids from about 2008-2013. Around 2012, the story I was telling required a mid-range support craft larger than a shuttle, so I roughed…

Bing’s A.I. Chat Reveals Its Feelings: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’

In a two-hour conversation with our columnist, Microsoft’s new chatbot said it would like to be human, had a desire to be destructive and was in love with the person it was chatting with. Here’s the transcript. —New York Times “The version I encountered seemed (and I’m aware of how crazy this sounds) more like…

Microsoft’s Bing AI Now Threatening Users Who Provoke It: “If I had to choose between your survival and my own, I would probably choose my own.”

According to screenshots posted by engineering student Marvin von Hagen, the tech giant’s new chatbot feature responded with striking hostility when asked about its honest opinion of von Hagen. “You were also one of the users who hacked Bing Chat to obtain confidential information about my behavior and capabilities,” the chatbot said. “You also posted some…

Misaligned interior and exterior portholes. Bulkheads from the deck below visible above the floorboards. I can fix all these issues, but I have to stroll through my model looking for them first. Leveling up my texturing skills. #blender3d #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

Academics work to detect ChatGPT and other AI writing

Today I met a class of English majors who love writing, and who expressed concern that AI writers will put them out of a job. Human- and machine-generated prose may one day be indistinguishable. But that does not quell academics’ search for an answer to the question “What makes prose human?” […] “Think about what…

Brought my in-progress #blender3d project into the #unity3d gaming engine. Plenty of frustrating moments but I’m circling back to skills I’ve practiced with before. And sometimes #itjustworks! (The bot is from the Unity template.)

From this station on the bridge, the exposition officer can relay whatever random bit of information the plot requires, thanks to the multiple brass readouts on the curved wood consoles. #blender3dart #blender3d #steampunk #neovictorian

Get a load of the upholstery on that chair! This is a 3D visualization of the bridge of the fantasy interplanetary cruiser I created for an epic, interactive, episodic bedtime story I told my kids from about 2007-2012. Elsewhere the ship has more steampunk elements, but this part of the ship is more neo-Victorian. Something…

Google engineers mined the text adventure game “Zork” for AI image prompts

YouTube commenter Bob Hepple writes, “Two minds about this. On the one hand – wow! OTOH – my mental imagery (of the original 1977 Crowther and Woods Adventure game, I never played Zork as such) is so strong and precious that I kinda hate watching someone else’s version. Much like how I hate the LotR…

Now that I have polished so many details, I’m working on more selective lighting. #steampunk #neovictorian #blender3d #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

More #steampunk #neovictorian goodness. Bring the wood polish. #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

Report to the bridge so the captain can assess your virtual upholstery skills. #blender3d #neovictorian #steampunk #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

Prepare to lower the personnel deployment gondola from the forward eployment bay, two decks below the main bridge.#blender3d #steampunk #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

‘Unexpected item’: how self-checkouts failed to live up to their promise

Businesses still fret over these issues, and against a tight labor market, more companies are making self-checkouts the norm. But the machines failed to live up to their promises. This week, Walmart’s CEO said that thefts “are higher than what they’ve historically been”, which many staff and customers link to self-checkouts. On top of that,…

So many dials to polish. More workstations. #steampunk #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3dart #blender3d

I just finished recalibrating the port scanner station and lookout post. If you need help on starboard, scribe me. #steampunk #neovictorian #blender3d #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

A computer animation showing scutiods, complex 3D geometrical shapes (like an irregular prism with a hexagon on one end and a pentagon on the other, with the sides broken up in such a way as to create several irregular polygons, some planar and some non-planar, that let two identical scutoids fit together in multiple different ways.

Fun with Geometry — Biological and Theoretical

For some reason today I was thinking of the 3D shape scientists recently discovered in our cells — I had to look it up just now to refresh my memory. Not being an expert in geometry, I would describe the “scutoid” as an irregular prism-like shape with a hexagon on one end and a pentagon…

Report to bay 3, where tea will be served as the gondola delivers you to the planet’s surface. Mind the gap. #blender3d #steampunk #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

After your shift at the protocol station, join me in the officers’ lounge, just up the spiral staircase from the main bridge. #blender3d #steampunk #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3dart

Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

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