dtcwee: The Value of Nothing

A piece I wrote on HoyoLab for Genshin Impact characters.

Fix. No tweaks required. YouTube videos would start OK then start stuttering after about a minute, with CPU in Task Manager spiking to 100%. What I didn't realise is that how you play videos affects resource intensity.

What would an Orca look like as a car? You can use images as a prompt , and combine them with text.

Mixing image generators, image prompts, and weird problems. Google's Gemini does a pretty good job of imagining Mt Fuji as Vincent Van Gogh ... ... and Caspar David Friedrich ... but it flat out refuses to imagine them on display in a museum. I tried both inputting the image, as well as rewriting the prompt. Nope. Can't do it. So I use Fooocus, a Stable Diffusion-based generator to get around these restrictions. Straight-up using these images as prompts causes a re-imagining of the painting. Not what I want. Easiest is just to outpaint and expand the borders. Hmm. A bit too modern-art-gallery. After some fiddling, I could get exhibit label ... ... or a fancy period frame ... ... but somehow, not both. Anyway, not a bad result after 1 hour fiddling, including generation time.

What if Hokusai toured America? What if a master of luminism, like Bierstadt, went to China?

What better time to try out AI art than Lunar/Chinese New Year (LNY)? A lot of LNY art is understandably done in Asian art styles. Nothing against that, but it can be overbearingly chipper ...

Generative AI uses energy and pumps out CO2 yes, but so do humans.

ChatGPT generates code. 😎 It's buggy. 😭 What do you do?

Why not? Calculators sure changed mine. A lifetime ago, in a safe but stifling job, I found an online mortgage calculator that visualised the power of extra repayments. Having just borrowed to buy a home, it opened my eyes. I was hooked. Learning that early escape from debt was possible made it my obsession. I checked that calculator after every stymied project and pointless restructuring. So, like, twice a day. With few opportunities to flex my skills in my IT role, I wrote other calculators to rationalise and strategise my approach to life.

 Tang dynasty rap.

This is it, boys. The big one. The freaking widowmaker of Chinese poetry. It's got patriotism. It's got isolation. It's chock full of allegory. Every line has multiple meanings. But everyone tries to interpret it because everyone knows it and, like debating Confucian texts, it's a mark of intelligence.  And I'm a sucker for proving I'm smart. Now I'm going to try and make it rhyme. With the help of a robot.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 5 Part of Genshin Impact's approach to its artificial scarcity is to bombard you with varied rewards so that, much like real life, there is always another way to progress. However, with that abundance comes complexity. The game's transparency only goes so far in helping you navigate it. Where else can you turn for help? Who else can you turn to for help? A lot of what makes the Genshin Impact experience great comes from outside the game.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 4  At some point in Genshin Impact, as in real life, you will face running out of stuff.  What has that taught me about approaching that scarcity, and can I apply it to everyday life? Many Ways to Play

少小离家老大回， 乡音无改鬓毛衰。 儿童相见不相识， 笑问客��何处来。 I can make it rhyme, but should I? Is wanting to do so colonialist or appropriative?

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 3 The drive to play on is supported by the constant accrual of rewards, plus the assurance - not mere promise - of future rewards. "Pfft." You may say. "How can one trust claims of certainty in a game genre explicitly run on chance?" Trust through Transparency 

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 2 Genshin Impact satisfies my craving to micro-manage. Even offline, planning my next moves in the game world displaces anxiety about what may happen in the real world. It exhausts my rumination like a mental chew toy, after which I have little urge to fret further. Nevertheless, should I be worried that I so easily place a trivial computer game before more mundane matters? A better question to ask may be, ' Why do I?' I have a theory:  Always Be Compensated

中岁颇好道，晚家南山陲。 兴来每独往，胜事空自知。 行到水穷处，坐看云起时。 偶然值林叟，谈笑无还期。 We're going to see if AI can make more readable.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 1. Genshin Impact is more than a gorgeous open-world fantasy game with deep lore and a stirring soundtrack. In a half-year or so of play, it has taught me... Fight Worry with Worry

Yes, it's possible. Yes, it's powerful. Yes, it saves you money. Here's how I did it.

Got a site which won't allow you access from overseas?  Got no VPN? Got an internet-connected Raspberry Pi?  Read on.