I love my spider plant, and love the curtain of off shoots it sends out around the perimeter. However the top starts to get thin, and the parent plant droops. It is under a vent, so gets dry. I’ve increased the amount of water I give it, but it still doesn’t fill in. I used to root out the baby spider plants in water and replant, but they wouldn’t always take. So I have a new method. I keep the baby plant on its lifeline and set it in the soil. It is still getting support from the mother plant, but its base is touching the soil and moisture, which promotes root growth. When the baby is firmly established, then I cut the cord. It has worked several times so far. In the picture below I have used a twist tie to secure the cord to keep the little plant pressed into the dirt (else it goes flying back out with its siblings).
This beautiful black cat has been evading capture for over a year. I finally caught it with a can of sardines. When not actively trapping, I would leave the trap open with a can of sardines inside. When I came back, the sardines would be gone, so I’d set the trap (I use a pull stick on a string rather than the trap mechanism), and wait. And wait. And wait. It circled five times, with three partial entries before it made the commitment to go for the tin in the back. This was only after our neighbor withheld food in the morning. I’ve used the neutral pronoun because I was convinced at the time of catching that this cat was male. Nope. The TNR papers declared her female, and not pregnant.
I did not get the unfixed calico also evading the trap. I’m going to have to get more creative with that one.
I have learned that listening to audio books during stake out helps pass the time. I use headphones so the sound doesn’t carry. If I do any crafty thing, they see my movement in the car and shy away.
The best way to see how a spindle design performs is to use it. I still think the current version of my 3D printed spindle is too large, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I can spin fairly consistent yarn with it, but the single is slightly thicker than I get with a smaller spindle. I spin over a rug to give a little extra protection in case I drop it. No way would I take it on a walk. Spinning in the house also means that Missy presents me with a ball to kick, since obviously my hands are busy.
The subject of AI art has come up in my conversations and feeds several times this month, so I thought I would investigate further and give a few bots a prompt: line art, art nouveau, black and white, tattoo, silk moth, spider web, spider, flax flower, hemp leaf, cotton bloom. I’m working on a design incorporating fiber sources and wanted to see what the bots came up with.
Midjourney Bot art on DiscordCraiyon.comDeepai.orgDream.ai
Each time the prompt is given the results are slightly different for all the bots. Dream.ai, Deepai.org, and Craiyon.com were easier to use because it was a single page website interface. The Midjourney bot did the finest work, but was nestled in the Discord app and relied on a message board which was bombarded with prompts. I had to continuously scroll back to find my own prompts (and probably inadvertently used all my free queries getting the feel for the format). I wouldn’t use any of the images, they all have botanical accuracy issues, and wonky bits, but that could also be my choice of prompt words. They also feel like stock art. (Hm, there is something to ponder.) However, the exercise did give me examples of what I don’t want, and as an artist, sometimes that is valuable data. Starting with a blank canvas can be daunting.
Is it art? I think it is. The human is crafting with words and a bot, rather than paper and pen. The AI is learning and adapting according to prompts and feedback, but it is humans that give the image its story (for now). Will it surpass human art? In some cases, but not all. It is certainly faster. Will artists lose their jobs? Not the good ones, although it is extremely difficult to make a living wage on just art anyway. It is the story or the package, not just the image itself that gives value. Will humans stop making art? Are you kidding? Some people can’t stop, it is a driving force to doodle and create and refine, whether or not there is monetary gain. Will there be contention? Duh. We’re human.
Critters and Craft 