Update #125 Sir Readsalot

Pst! You there! Yes, you. Do you know what one has to do to get a proper knightly title in this day and age? No? Darn. I got myself a sword and everything, but they confiscated it, talking about silly laws and what not. How am I supposed to slay evil beings if I can't have a sword?

Anyway, could you point me towards the nearest billionaire residency? Why? Never you mind that.

Approximately halfway done with scene 13. Halfway done with the non-spicy stuff, that is, there is an entire spicy scene to make at the end. The nice part about this 'scene' is that it's really a number of shorter scenes stitched together. Makes it more fun to make, since I'm not stuck in the same setting for several days in a row.

I recall mentioning offhandedly that I'd take a day or two to re-compress all the renders. That, uh, may have been somewhat optimistic of me. Some of the larger scenes take 40ish minutes to convert into lossless compression webp images. It's not difficult work or anything, I mostly game or read as I wait for the next batch. Just far more time-consuming than I anticipated.

As to whether the quality will be worth the new enormous size of the game... well... You'll have to tell me once it drops. I have kept a backup of the old compression, so reverting won't be much of a hassle if it comes to that.

Pointy ears for the people!

Finally took the time to read through the last few books of the Cradle series. I had read book 9 and waited for the remaining three to release before getting back into them. Aaand then I took quite a while to actually get around to it.

Anyway, satisfying ending. Which, if you're familiar with the genre, is a rarity. The book borrows heavily from Chinese wuxia and xianxia webnovels, which have a tendency to drag oooooooooooooon. The only one I ever finished out of all the ones I've read was I Shall Seal the Heavens, and only to see if it was actually worth torturing myself to the end. It wasn't.

But Cradle was a pleasant read all the way through! Neat! A very light read, but very addicting, would recommend if you're looking for fun action and lots of fighting. Will Wight is a quantity over quality type writer, he writes a lot. But he still manages to make it very entertaining, good stuff.

I also started reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke this week. Subsequently I also finished it. It's a short novel, but not that short, it was just that good. The best book I've read in quite a while actually. Normally, even for the best books I read, I have some sort of caveat, some complaint. Not so for Piranesi, it's brilliant.

I had a bit of a rant last week about writers spelling things out for you. Well, Clarkey-Malarkey does no such thing. You get enough to puzzle things together, while simultaneously more intriguing mysteries keep popping up.

Just amazing! Recommended for everyone!

This is Grishla, she's got my back, I would advise not being killed by her

Saw a video some time ago that compared modern social media algorithms (think TikTok) with fast food. Quick, easy, tasty, and terrible for your health. I've also seen that there's been research connecting use of ChatGPT and similar tools with a cognitive decline.

In my mind, we're heading towards a mental health epidemic, if we aren't already in the middle of it, much the same way the obesity happened. The fast food metaphor is already there, and if we extend it to AI, well, it's the bits where we've stopped exercising as much. Take the elevator instead of the stairs, the car instead of walking, sitting at a desk instead of some sort of manual labor.

That's what using AI does to your brain, in a manner of speaking anyway. Every shortcut one takes means one has to think less, when one thinks less, pathways in the brain get used less, and so cognitive function declines. Basically, we're going to get stupider and probably suffer more mental health issues to boot. Lovely.

Me reading a lot more recently is a bit of a defense against that, I suppose. Eating healthier, as it were. I think writing these weekly thingies, making this game, and working creatively in general, that's my exercise.

I'm sure there is a healthy balance one can find, just like we can find one for our physical health. But I'm kind of a hardliner, I have a hard time doing anything but going all-in, or not going at all. Which means I don't use any machine learning tools for anything at all. There's for sure use cases where I could optimize my work flow, or do stuff that I otherwise couldn't. But I know myself, and once I open myself up for taking shortcuts, oh boy am I going to keep taking them.

Let's not get started on discussing the ethics of the subject and just end it there for today.

Could I have used AI to add convincing elf-ears to that statue? I genuinely have no idea!

And here I was, sure that I had no more rants on AI. I'm quite tired of the subject, frankly. But it's hard not to think about it when it's everywhere. Mom talking about getting taught how to use copilot and some other tools at work, having to convince my sister that it's probably not a good idea to consult ChatGPT about whether something is okay to eat for a baby. Yeah, I'm just tired.

Anyway, reading Piranesi perked me right up! Except that it ruined my sleep schedule, was too excited to keep reading. Now I'm going to start reading Dodger by Terry Pratchett, and also the second Malazan book. That second one is probably going to take a while to finish, we'll see.

Thank you very much for your support, and I wish you healthy brain food this week!