Ghast

Ahoy new mateys!

Just thought I'd repost a couple of little bash scripts I use to download and watch series.

notflix

This one searches for torrents, then live mounts the first result, e.g. :

./notflix.sh nina paley sita

That command should play Sita Sings the Blues, by Nina Paley.

Requirements: vlc or mpv, and either btfs or peerflix.

torrench

This one searches for a torrent, gives you the top few results, and starts torrenting what you select using transmission-cli.

Requirements: transmission-cli

Also, if you're on Debian et al. you'll have to change where the script says systemctl start transmission to systemctl start transmission-daemon.

This looks like rather good advice, and I like the comparison to brutalist architecture. It feels like it fits, because so many seem to think brutalist architecture is ugly.

Personally, I like how functional it is; and similarly, functional (if plain) adventures make for good sessions.

I like how the midnight pub allows people to leave comments at the bottom of articles.

Are there any other gem servers which allow replies don't depend upon coding knowledge? I just do basic hosting on Arch.

I'm hopingt to allow general replies, like geddit.

Looks snazzy AF, but no Linux version yet.

Given the price of art, I've been playing a whole heck of a lot with Machine Learning (ML) images (along with ever other indie RPG designer out there), and the results are bad. This one is Midjourney, which seems to be one of the better generators.

If the problem is just my lack of skill, that still sounds like a problem. If I have to hire a professional, I'd rather just hire an artist.

I'm writing a campaign about Vampires in Belgrade (Hungary) in the year 1230.

Starting with something without too many parts, a young Tzimisce vampire in the story (well, he was embraced young), has a ghouled raven he speaks with.

dark ages boy speaks to raven in the moonlit rain

Oh dear... it doesn't know that human boys are bigger than ravens. So it's beatuful, and enchanting, but doesn't convey information, and the kid looks like 'the little prince', not like a sinister flesh-crafting vampire.

Making some variations, I finally got here:

It's better, but the raven also looks like a humming-bird, and the moon looks like someone spilled it. It really conveys nothing more than 'boy and raven', so it's not about to enhance the passages - and RPGs really do need good images, because every one conveys a boat-load of strange ideas.

Next up, what about a that scene where a vampire-hunter finally tracks down the coterie's lair? He finds them by sunset and has to flee before they wake up, but he'll be back tomorrow to kill the lot. He rides a horse, and has an ovcharka (bear-hunting Russian dog) by his side. The coterie will find signs of his passing, such as footprints.

After some bad images, I finally left the dog out - most of them blended the dog and horse into a single image, if the dog appeared as anything more than a shadow.

Slavic, of-the-night, noble hunter reading tracks, horse, footprints, village, 1300s

So we have a ruddy-great horse dwarfing the world in one, and lots of horse-butts which look out of place.

Time to make lots of variations again.

Slavic, of-the-night, noble hunter reading tracks, horse, footprints, village, 1300s

... so now we have more of a centaur-creature as the horse blends with the man.

Overall

RPG images should explain things, and the explanations should involve the interactions of multiple elements, such as one person shooting an arrow at another, or threats, or setting a building on fire. AI seems to mix styles well - want a vampire drawn by Picasso? I'm sure the results would be stunning. But if interactions are missing, I don't see how anyone can use these results.

Machine Learning In General

I suspect machine learning will simply not work in our lifetimes. Consider the story of machine learning when translating:

1. You make a basic dictionary, so you can type 'cat', and it gives you 'le chat'.
2. You give it rules about nouns and adjectives - now you type 'the black cat', and it returns 'le chat noire'.

It gets 5% of language, then 10%, then 20%, and it's tempting to imagine that 99%-accurate translations are coming soon, but they're not, because if we go to translate 'James is right, Alice is left', the machine will return 'James is correct', because translating this statement does not rely on rules, but on understanding intention and meaning. Those hold-out sentences may require that we start by programming real AI, with real consciousness, and only then teaching it multiple languages.

I have files marked with a line like this:

date: 2021-01-01

I've been usinng Solderpunk's RSS feed generator so far.

=> https://tildegit.org/solderpunk/gemfeed.git Link

But it only does date by file creation date, which doesn't work for me.

Any gemini RSS feed generators where the date can be drawn from a variable?

Just wanted to share my workflow.

I got a Markdown to Gemini translator at idiomdrottning. A script then uses git subtree to pull those commits in from repos which just have writing.

The main bonus is that the Markdown can have a paragraph split into different lines, which works easier with git.

The end result is I can write in plain markdow, and it'll automatically be presented both in the Gemini capsule, and then on the website, which uses Hugo to render markdown into html.

Since Hugo already uses tags for topics, I got Gemini to recognize those tags. It's made the capsule a little cleaner, since the posts are no longer jumping between Ayer's Logical Positivism and Terminal APIs.

I've ended up adding writing pieces Gemini that I wouldn't put on the web. I'm not entirely sure why - I guess it just feels like it's public, but not too public.

=> Bash script

=> Site

Port 1965 is only going to one place, so how can I make sure it's going to the right place?

I currently have agate running on a raspberry pi with Arch Linux Arm running agate for the first site.

The 'gemini universal search' hasn't been updated since December.

Post your new/ updated Gemini sites.

Sorry about the last post - I pasted from the wrong clipboard.

Anyway - RPG mechanics for exploration, is that a thing?