Bits and Pieces

• It's September! In the Philippines, that's usually an excuse to start the Christmas season already. TV shows are already counting down how many "sleeps" there are remaining until Christmas. During recent years, it's become a local meme that as September nears, Jose Mari Chan is getting ready to pounce, because his age-old song "Christmas in Our Hearts" is a popular choice for background music in malls and such.

• The week was a bit busy, as I finally managed to dig into some work I've been putting off. The end of the month always brings with it a lot of errands as well: bill payments, refilling meds, financial checks, that sort of thing.

• Michael Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died.

• PH/Covid: Cases continue to decline, though not as quickly as I'd like.

• I've been using mobile phone touchscreens for more than a decade and I still have trouble typing on these terrible virtual keyboards.

• Gaming: Currently playing: SMT5 (on Switch), Paradise Killer (via PC Game Pass, still haven't solved the offline issues), Street Fighter V (not doing as well as I'd like online), Eternal Card Game, Magic Arena.

• On the blog: I wrote some thoughts about AI-generated art and code and also did my limited recap for the Baldur's Gate set on Magic Arena.

• Somewhat related: this blog has a rarely-used feature where I can add a header image to this post. Since I've been dabbling in AI image-generation, I thought I'd try putting up some of the generated images as post headers. The prompt for this post's header image was "interior of a witches coven, Gothic architecture, Cauldrin, Crystal Ball, Cluttered with relics and magic items, Potions, Brooms, Spell books, Eerie green light, Dramatic lighting, Epic composition, Wide angle, by Miyazaki, Nausicaa Ghibli, Breath of The Wild", shamelessly cribbed from Prompt Hero (link below). Kind of sets a creepy vibe doesn't it?

• I couldn't find it anymore, but I read an article or such where the author was amazed how other people treat their blog as "write-only" and don't usually re-read or go through past entries. As someone who routinely uses this site to go through old posts and notes and photos , I can relate.

Some Links of Interest

• The Big [Censored] Theory: Interesting to see how much China censored TBBT

• Senior developers create more senior developers | Go Make Things: > "A senior’s top priority is to grow more seniors."

• You should take more screenshots – alexwlchan:

• Prompthero: Explore the world's best AI prompts

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

And a couple of Twitter threads:

• The story of a real-life Russian deep cover agent
• A rundown on KiwiFarms, an extreme right-wing forum that targets and harasses trans folk. Cloudflare was forced to drop them as a client after a pressure campaign.

This coming week:

• Nothing much, but I'll probably start streaming Magic Arena drafts again.