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More From The Picture Diary
2024-04-19 13:15 poliphilo
I was never exacly a hippie (all the hippies I knew were kinda silly) but I liked the aesthetic....

1. Beads



A view of a typical English town that's nowhere in particular

2. A View Of Middlington




3. I Skipped Over Water, I Danced Over Sea, And All The Birds In the Air Couldn't Catch Me.

Belonging
2024-04-19 09:39 poliphilo
"Are you visitors?" asked the lady who was also looking at jewellery in the antique/junk shop. "No", said Ailz, " We live in Eastbourne."

It always gives me a a kick- a little jolt of belonging and local pride- to hear that stated...

We are in fact valued customers of that particular shop- meaning we bought a ring there once before. The shop-lady recognised us- and that felt good as well.

It's a shop where you have to ring the bell and get buzzed in.  A bunch of teenagers- boys and girls-  probably foreign students and harmless-  buzzed and got turned away. The shoplady explained herself to us; it was almost an apology. Big shop. Lots of cabinets to hide behind. Impossible for one person to monitor....

Earlier I was sitting in the courtyard at the Meeting House, in the sun with J- who is a Quaker of very long standing- explaining Quakerism to a woman who had dropped by for the Thursday morning Meeting for Worship....

Clematis
2024-04-18 10:00 poliphilo
I dug a deep hole and bedded in the obelisk the wind blew over. I thought the digging might bugger up my back only it didn't. It's unreasonable, I can bugger up my back by shifting ever so slightly in my chair but I can dig a deep hole and my back is fine. Ah, well, I'm not complaining.

The obelisk will support a couple of clematis. At present they're tiny little things. Our neighbours had clematis which spilled over the fence onto our patio- which, in season, was like a breaking wave of pink and green- and we were very sorry when they rooted it up to make way for their extension.

From our point of view there's this to be said for their extension that it shelters a corner of our patio from the wind...

St Antony Et Al.....
2024-04-17 14:41 poliphilo
These AI images are all somewhat fantastical...

1. St Antony

Saint Antony is my name saint- and I'm fond of him. Bosch and his followers had fun with his "temptations" and so did I....



2. Choose a Door, Any Door....

I used up a lot of credits on getting this right. The app had considerable difficulty understanding what it was I was after.....



3 & 4. A Shakespearian couple- Oberon and Titania

It Can be so Obtuse....
2024-04-17 10:03 poliphilo
And now I'm dreaming about crafting images in AI.

The picture I'd made in the dream showed a Venetian gondola flying through a landscape that had rolled up around it, forming an enormous tunnel. Everything was in shades of yellow. This morning I tried to get my actual AI to give me something similar, but it wasn't having any.

"OK," it said, "So you want a picture of a canal in Venice- but you want it all yellow. Happy to oblige..."

"No," I said, "That's not it at all."

"Ah," it replied. "We get it now. You want a picture of a cable car...."

In the end I gave up....

Mary Rose
2024-04-16 19:05 poliphilo
Two glimpses of the titular heroine of J.M. Barrie's great play.

Mary Rose isn't a ghost exactly, more like a spirit trapped between worlds....





Fun fact: Alfred Hitchcock wanted to film Mary Rose. Had he managed to get the backing it would have been a considerable departure from his usual kind of thing. No murders, no pursuits, no Catholic guilt. There's suspense I suppose, but mostly there's melancholy and magic....

AI Scenery
2024-04-16 18:31 poliphilo
AI is good at scenery. If you prompt it to picture a particular place it will invent the topography but capture the atmosphere

1. The Run Of The Downs

Another view of the Sussex Downs. It's not an actual view, of course, more like an ideal view. but the feel is right. The Sussex Downs are the landscape of my heart.



2. The Garden and Its Maker



3. Among the Ruins

The broken arches in the last picture prompted me to make a quick trip over to North Africa.



4. Lighthouse

And the book I'm currently reading inspired this...

AI Porn
2024-04-16 10:04 poliphilo
There are over 50 sites (I think that's the figure I saw- but I bet the number is growing daily) exclusively dedicated to the production of AI porn.

I read a couple of articles on the subject. The writers worry about sex-workers being made redundant- or, alternatively, think this would be a good thing.

The family-friendly AI sites I use are jittery about porn. They don't want their users producing stuff that could get them prosecuted. Both have a black-list of words- which they don't publicise- that you can't use in prompts.  NightCafe is considerably more puritanical than HotPot. HotPot allows "naked"; NightCafe doesn't.

But if you put "boy" or "child' in a HotPot prompt you get a notice popping up to warn you you're entering dangerous territory. The first time this happened to me I was quite upset. Now I just shrug. Oddly enough, or not so oddly, no warning signals flash if you use the word "girl".

 At least HotPot only flashes up a warning- and allows you to carry on making your wholesome pic of Tom Sawyer fishing at the water hole. If you use such words on NightCafe you get stopped in your tracks. One user suggester that you can get round the prohibition on "children' by substituting "small people" and noted that while "child" is verboten "baby" isn't.

 Companies are wrestling with these issues and what I've just written may well be out of date already. Well, that's how things are on the Wild Frontier. Law is at the whim of the local sherrif.

 Another word that NightCafe doesn't (or didn't) allow is "ball". So good luck with pic you're trying to make of an under-11s football match.....

Wind And Whimsy And Supernatural Goings-On
2024-04-15 18:33 poliphilo
"Is it unreasonable," I asked Ailz this morning, "to expect April to be warm and sunny?"

 "Yes," she said, "it is..."

We have seen the sun today, but we've also had powerful winds. Earlier I tried to go out onto the patio and the wind wouldn't let me. "Oh. no you don't," it said as it put its shoulder to the door. "OK, OK, I said. "it was nothing important. I'll try again later..."

We were warned. "40mph," said the weather folk.

 I'm reading The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex. Only published in 2021 and already it's been translated into 20 languages. Is it that good? Could be.  But with this sort of book judgement has to be suspended until one gets to the end and finds out whether the author has resolved or deepened the mystery in a satisfactory manner. In 1900 three keepers disappeared from a Lighthouse in the Hebrides; no-one knows what happened to them. Stonex has imagined a similar occurence off the Cornish Coast in 1972. The blurb promises psychology and ghosts. We have already had lots and lots of weather....

Talking about ghosts, I found myself watching one of the BBC's MR James adaptions yesterday evening. A Warning to the Curious was first shown (O synchronicity) in 1972. It stars the Norfolk coast and that lovely character actor Peter Vaughan. It isn't as good as Jonathan Miller's version of Oh Whistle And I'll Come to You- the film that set the ball rolling-  but then what is? I checked it afterwards against James' original story- and found that all along the line it had coarsened what in James is subtle and suggestive. Is this inevitable? I asked myself, and then remembered Fanny and Alexander and told myself that film can handle the supernatural quite as delicately as prose- but that ghosts are fiendishly difficult to pull off in any medium....

Through The Looking -Glass
2024-04-11 19:12 poliphilo
John Tenniel's Alice was modelled on a niece or the daughter of a friend and not on the girl who inspired the Alice books. The actual  Alice Pleasance Liddell had dark hair and- to judge by the photographs of her by Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron-  a brooding, not to say sulky demeanour....

Plenty of broodiness in these Ai images....

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Nightlife
2024-04-11 09:12 poliphilo
The older I get the more I want to sleep and the less I seem able to. It's a peculiar arrangement.

The dream I remember from last night had some boys I was at school with featuring as fellow priests and close friends of mine- musch closer than in "real life". We were attending a conference and I couldn't make head nor tail of the presentations or how they related to a common theme and they- my friends- were trying to explain it all to me...

"Portraits" Of Charlotte Bronte
2024-04-10 14:40 poliphilo
We don't really know what Charlotte Bronte looked like. There is a group portrait of the teenage Bronte sisters by their brother Branwell which is naff, and there's the "society" portrait by George Richmond which is idealised. These are the only pictures we possess that we know she sat for. There are a few 'disputed" portraits and photographs- but they just muddy the water.

It's tantalising to learn- as I did while doing some research this morning- that John Everett Millais very much wanted to paint her portrait but withdrew when he learned that Richmond had got there first. Millais was a greater artist than Richmond and it's a shame he didn't get his chance. He said that she represented his idea of female genius, that her eyes were remarkable and that she "looked tired with her own brains"

AI clearly knows a thing or two about Bronte portraits because the pictures it gave me do bear some resemblance to Richmond's. I wanted to have 19th century Brussels in the background because the Yorkshire Moors would be a bit hackneyed and Brussels was important to her. Also it's the setting of what I regard as her greatest novel, Villette.

AI "Portraits"
2024-04-10 14:04 poliphilo
The first image in this selection shocked me rather. I'd wanted an image of Noel Coward, but wasn't bargaining on getting something that could pass as a genuine photo by the great Cecil Beaton. AI imagery is still in its infancy but when it truly comes into its own it's going to play havoc with the historical record.

The second image was also meant to be a picture of Noel, but I don't think it looks much like him so I'm simply taking it as a picture of an elderly gent walking on the North Downs. Perhaps he was a WWII airman. Perhaps he's thinking "Up there is where we fought the Battle of Britain..."

The third is a "portrait" of the Rev Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll.) I think it's a plausible likeness of the man in middle-age, several years on from the best known photos. He's sitting by the River Isis, somewhere outside Oxford, remembering a certain day when he and some friends went boating. I wanted him in 19th century clerical dress but AI doesn't have that kind of thing stored in its memory....

1. Darling Noel



2. On The North Downs



3. Still She Haunts Me Phantomwise...

Penpals
2024-04-10 10:28 poliphilo
Remember penpals?

Well, you will if you're my age, though even then- when I was growing up- the thing had a slightly musty, 1930s, do-gooding, Enid Blytonish feel to it. One was encouraged as a child to strike up a correspondence with some person or persons who lived at a distance- by preference in another country- and.... and- I dunno- nurture international understanding. Obviously it was a good thing.

And your pal would stick colourful foreign stamps on their envelopes- little miniature artworks representing things of significance in their culture- and if you were so minded you'd steam them off and conserve them in an album....

Remember stamp-collecting?

But who needs any of that now we have the Internet....

More AI Images
2024-04-09 14:30 poliphilo
Another mixed bag. There's a image from the series showing kids walking down a long path- an autumnal one, and a couple of groovy pieces of psychedelia. I'm not claiming the psychedelic ones take a lot of thought- AI does most of the work- but aren't the colours pretty! The title of the last one is the first line of what is probably my favourite hymn- by John Bunyan, from The Pilgrim's Progress (part II)
1. The Gatehouse



2. The Universe Trembles



3. A Gong Sounds



4. Who Would True Valour See....

Windy
2024-04-09 09:25 poliphilo
The obelisk we assembled a week or two back got hit by a flying garden chair in the night and is now lying out on the lawn. At least it still seems to be in one piece. I say "seems" because I've haven't been out to check yet on account of it being wet and windy. I had a conversation about wind on Sunday with my taxi driver. High winds were forecast and I said, "That's Eastbourne for you" And he said he didn't think it was any windier here than anywhere else and I said, "Well, Eastbourne is the windiest place I've ever lived..."

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures....
2024-04-08 14:10 poliphilo
HotPot Ai has over fifty algorithms to choose from. Nightcafe has nearly as many. I have my favourites but I've been trying out some of the others. You never know....

I'm no longer quite a novice at this game.

I am picking up skills. And yes, there are skills involved. You don't just make a prompt and push a button. You work with AI and it works with you. Sometimes it's awfully contrary. Sometimes it's an obliging and challenging collaborator.

People who work with machines usually end up personifying them- and attributing intelligence to them. A ship is always she, not it. Swords have names. Same sort of thing with trains and cars and planes and computers and all kinds of tools.

And this isn't mere superstition. A machine is never just a machine. It has been made by Mind and is Mind- because nothing exists apart from Mind. Mind or Consciousness are words for All That Is. (Some prefer the word "God" but I don't.)  Matter is just Mind slowed down and made into shapes.

The machine exists at a Meeting of Minds.

And all minds are One Mind.

So indulge me. AI art is art. Proper art. There are skills. There is Mind. What more do can you ask for?

Anyway, some entries in the Picture-Diary

1. Among The Stones

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2. That Is The Land Of Lost Content



3. Demagogue

Chairing A Meeting
2024-04-08 13:02 poliphilo
I must have chaired meetings when I was a vicar but I have no memories of it.

So when it fell on my shoulders (at short notice)  to chair the Premises Committee meeting it was essentially a new experience.

I did think of starting with an apology along the lines of "Please be indulgent because I haven't done this before" but then I thought that this would be a great way of creating a mood of hesitancy and uncertainty and I should fake a bold brassy front so everybody would have confidence in me.

It's what politicians do, it's what CEOs and commanding officers do. They blag it.

Pretend you're in charge and you will be....

There's a particular etiquette to Quaker Meetings for business. People are supposed to speak through the chair, speak one at a time, not interrupt one another, not argue. I'm afraid I didn't even try to maintain that kind of discipline. I think it's over-prescriptive anyway.

 And a recipe for dragging things out interminably- something Quakers are notorious for....

But we did what we had to do and were finished in three quarters of an hour. 

Portents
2024-04-08 10:08 poliphilo
An earthquake in New York followed by a total eclipse: I'm calling these things "portents".

"And what rough beast...?"

But it needn't be a beast. And whether it's a beast or not depends on how we choose to look at it.

Portents don't just portend Bad things. Or Good things either. They portend Big Things....

A gong is struck- and everything trembles....

A Disagreement About Nukes
2024-04-07 09:21 poliphilo
There was a chap in my dreams I was sure I'd known in school (only now I can't place him.) He has very tall in the dream and wearing a military uniform and gave the impression of being wet behind the ears. I said nuclear weapons- were "disgusting phallic toys for immature schoolboys"  and he took it badly, decided I was a dangerous subversive and tried to trap me by surrounding the courtyard I was in with a wall of canvas. However I was able to slip under the canvas and escape. As I was running away I met up with my antagonist's commanding officer (played by Robert Ryan) - and he wholly agreed with my opinion of nukes- and called off the pursuit....