#aiart prompt 1103: A circular, symmetrical pattern, in desaturated reds, whites, and greens, of holly, presents, and ornaments.

#aiart prompt 726: the felt top hat lay in the snow on the street corner of an old world city; a variegated silk band wrapped around it, just above the brim, with some sprigs of holly poking out near the side. The night was barely held at bay by a nearby gas street lamp.

Hi, if elected to office, I’ll mandate all platforms to not exceed 30 seconds of advertising per 30 minutes of content, commercials required to be at least 10dB less than content they interrupt, and a ban on jingles.

Annual reminder that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is in no way, shape, or form a Christmas Song. No matter how much Pentatonix pretends otherwise.

#aiart prompt 1102: The great tyrant Claus sat—imposing, pagan, just a bit feral—upon his throne made of old, forgotten, castoff toys; with a severe grimace, he judged, marking names on either side of a list before him. (cont)

#aiart prompt 725: hanging from the front door of the house was a holiday wreath, lit by interwoven led bulbs, decorated with small ornaments and a large red bow. The night’s weather was blustery and cold: heavy flakes of snow were drifting down with the wind. A tinge of frost set in, earlier.

*ahem* Fallout New Vegas is mid.

I’ve been very focused the past two weeks on putting together a small retro games library, so haven’t been using this place as much, recently. My Discover feed is crying out for some blocking, it seems.

#aiart prompt 1101: High in the mountains, amidst the billowing storm clouds, it flew: scales a paler shade of cyan, wings pearlescent, spikes of ice along its spine, frost on its breath. The Ice Dragon patrolled its demesne, and in its wake, snow began to fall. #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 724: the winter faerie, fey and ethereal, with pale blue skin and gossamer white hair, trailing snowflakes in her wake, flew through the wintry forest. Quiet, dark, and still, the land slumbered.

#aiart prompt 1100: Back-alley bazaar. Cold lighting; snowy; soft focus; seasonal; quaint; old world; aesthetic.

#aiart prompt 723: deep within the briny depths of an alien world, full of aberrant, phosphorescent life, there exists a great aquatic, submarine city; it was built vertically, bulging out in domes and docks, alight with glowing orbs, shadowed by fey secrets. (cont)

#aiart prompt 722: closeup of frosted plants, fallen leaves, and water.

#aiart prompt 1099: Closeup shot of the mechanical man exploring the tundra; frost and snow accumulate on its bronze chassis, and windswept flakes blur the view.

#aiart prompt 721: crystalline dissolution

#aiart prompt 720: a darkened living room, warmly lit by a fire and a Christmas tree. On the coffee table is a plate heaped with a variety of cookies. Holiday decorations abound. Close up on the plate of cookies; low depth of field. Washed out.

#aiart prompt 1098: Against an off-white background, a silhouette in a shimmery gradient from black to forest green of a person staring to the side. The person has numerous cables attached to their back leading off screen, and cyberpunk aesthetics.

#aiart prompt 719: in slate and magenta: dramatic chasm

#aiart prompt 718: closeup of a bioluminescent reindeer’s glowing nose. High contrast; low depth of field; heavy fog and snow; night; cold lighting.

#aiart prompt 717: over misty crag and through wooded vale, the spellslinger ventured; their wide-brimmed, pointy hat and trusty fur cloak guard against the elements.

#aiart prompt 716: at the island lighthouse, during the storm.

#Fallout76: so, I’ve been pretty much maining a Gamma Gun on my Ghoulslinger for some time now: set up as I have, headshots do somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 damage, it’s bombastic, and unique with the radiation rings.

#aiart prompt 1097: Split screen image of two people sitting back to back: in warm tones, a young child intently playing on an original Gameboy; in cool tones, a 40 year old playing a game on a modern tablet.

#aiart prompt 715: a male anime villain with long flowing hair. Photorealistic CG, three quarter closeup candid. Black and white; low depth of field; low contrast; bright ambient light.

#aiart prompt 714: mushroom punk

The PNW is trying, this week, to earn back its cred as being habitually rain soaked. Might even see some lowland snow next week.

#aiart prompt 1096: Overlapping crystalline conical grid; the crystals are of variable opacity, refractivity, and reflectivity. Cooly lit from offscreen.

#aiart prompt 713: bioluminescent peacock

#aiart prompt 712: 70s style wallpaper: inset circles

#aiart prompt 1095: Extreme fog cloaking the hillside; out of focus shrubbery silhouette the foreground; merging with the fog, lost in it, occasionally willowing into focus: the dark silhouette of a prowling dragon. #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 711: a woman in an Edwardian gown—black and blue—with a matching petite costume mask covering her upper face. Elegant, she looks to the side, her face coquettish, lips slightly parted. Her eyes glowed an unearthly orange. She stands in a darkened room at a masquerade.

#aiart prompt 710: he held the object up, inspecting it in the beam of his hard hat mounted light: a large chunk of translucent rock, with a time traveler inside; fixed in amber, a large, parasitic, flying insect with a long proboscis, abdomen distended with precious prehistoric DNA. (cont)

#aiart prompt 1094: A surreal field in muted tones, out of which grow curved metal tuning fork tines.

#aiart prompt 709: the conditions during the storm deteriorated: wind howled, frost and snow accumulated, a full blown white out; even thunder rumbled, surreally. Out in such, barely to be seen, it stood, watching, waiting; (cont)

#aiart prompt 708: the chamber was vast and dark; a central mechanical nexus—bulbous, hemispherical—descended from above in the center of the space. Numerous cables and houses connected it to life support pods nestled in a ring underneath. (cont)

So, it turns out RetroArch comes with a Virtual Boy core, which, itself, supports rendering games in either red/black flat monochrome, or separating the channels out in various ways, including anaglyphic colors. You can literally wear 3d-glasses to play VB games on your iPad. How cool is that?

#aiart prompt 1093: Bright, nuclear orange, overlaid with neon cyan and amethyst: an abstract pattern.

#aiart prompt 707: a portrait stitched together from multiple different overlapping layers of pieces of other photos.

#aiart prompt 706: hanging from the laden boughs, trinkets that glitter and gleam; beware the coming feline jowls, and the awed slitted eye beam; ornaments and lights which dazzled, soon the tree downed and frazzled.

Ok. Fine. RetroArch still has absolutely hideous UX, but holy shit this as an iPad app is absolute magic. My iPad is a now a ridiculous retro games console. Everything I’ve thrown at it works, and most of the *ahem* “acquisitioned” library has achievement support.

#aiart prompt 1092: A detailed miniature Christmas village, near a multi-shop plaza, full of ceramic figurines and wire brush trees. At street level, looking toward one of the shops. Low lighting, the buildings lit with bulb lights. Low depth of field.

#aiart prompt 705: the crystal ornament hung on the tree, unassuming. At its core, a scintillating bright light, wavering and strobing, as though a universe in miniature glowed within. Close up on the ornament; low depth of field; colorful.

#aiart prompt 704: in blues and whites: an abstract, random, broken ice pattern, frosty and cracked.

I’m currently checking out emulators on iOS. I’ve been using Delta, but its relatively narrow niche (Nintendo only) and lack of RetroAchievements support has me looking elsewhere. RetroArch is the Linux of emus: feature rich, but horrible, unintuitive UX.

Currently thinking about getting an 8bitdo Sn30 Pro for retro and cloud gaming on my iPad. It looks like a very smexy controller: Hall effect thumbsticks, motion controls and rumble, reasonable suite of buttons, snes-style aesthetic.

#aiart prompt 1091: In white, cyan, steel gray, and navy: fractured ice on the water.

#aiart prompt 703: a sci-fantasy scene: an armored knight and a leathered rogue in a high tech neon temple.

#aiart prompt 702: a closeup of a gothic snowman character, in a photorealistic CG style; the character is made of snow and ice, with tiny icicles coating its face. It is talking to someone off camera. A heavy snowstorm obscures vision. High contrast, low depth of field.

#aiart prompt 701: a candid of a punk woman waiting on a street corner of a dystopian city on a rainy night. The image should be awash in neon hues; oil; glitched; blurred.

There’s some seriously odd behavior going on over at Bing Image Creator today. Nearly every prompt i throw at the Dall-E model results in a “moar descriptive prompt” error, and now even the MAI-Image model is balking.