Less Politics, More Art and Photography

After wasting many years of my life worried about the politics of the former United States republic, I am now formally giving up.  There is nothing I can do.  You are on your own, boys and girls, and frankly, I am sure you are not up to it.

Midjourney Example (not mine)

The following example was found on midjourney.  I did not do it, but I found it fascinating.  I emphasize it is not mine so please do not use it without figuring out the attribution.

I have found Midjourney to be very responsive to photographic knowledge... knowledge I emphasize I do not have.

Here is the description, and then the "photograph".

Museum scale photograph. Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, ordinary weekday Catholic Mass. Viewpoint from halfway down the nave, static camera, available light only. Image assembled from numerous nearly identical large format negatives exposed minutes apart. Everything aligns except suspended incense smoke, occupying several incompatible exposures simultaneously, edges never agreeing. Stone and people perfectly registered. Only the air contains accumulated duration. Visible: darkroom masking seams, enlarger registration drift, tonal mismatches between layers, sheet film overlap, contact print imperfections. Archival silver gelatin print. Evidence of repeated enlargements, optical printer composite. No obvious manipulation. No central subject. No climax. Documentary evidence of something the camera recorded but never understood. Quiet. Observed. Recovered. Not composed. Peter Milton layered photographic intelligence. Thomas Demand documentary restraint. Early Jeff Wall before theatricality. Lewis Baltz. Large format field camera. Anti illustration. Anti cinematic. Anti AI. --ar 16:9 --stylize 75 --chaos 48 --no fantasy, surrealism, concept art, illustration, painting, glowing light, volumetric rays, god rays, dramatic lighting, epic, cinematic, HDR, CGI, Unreal Engine, octane render, perfect symmetry, centered composition, hyper detailed fantasy, beautiful composition --raw - Image #4 @Clayton 

She Sings with Capacitors

She sings with capacitors

She dreams with resistors

Her patch cables hold me in my dreams

Her music is analog

The electrons form her voice

Ohmmeters measure her love

She said that she loved me

She was in tears when I left

When will I see you again

The day I drove east

She slammed the door on me

She sent her friends to threaten me

She will not talk to me

She will not let me hold her

I miss her dog we used to play tricks

I am in tears every night.

Test of creating posts from smartphone

This is a test of creating a post from my smartphone. I am not always able to get to a desktop or laptop.

Notes to a Friend About Claude Code-based Development

The following is one of a series of posts involving the use of AI for VFX and other development.  This will be spun off to its own blog soon, I hope.

I tried to explain to a friend an issue involving Claude Code - based development and he did not believe me, hence this explanatory note.

The reason I mention these things (the problem of the development environment and framework choice) is based on the idea that I can contribute real experience and insight into new technologies for the benefit of myself and my friends. If that is not true, if I explain myself badly or if people just do not believe me, then I am wasting my time. In this case I think I was frustrated by another example of the situation I describe below. It is not a waste of my time because even if my friends think I am a moron, I still have to learn these things.

The short version is that in software development, there are many, many choices to make before you can write much code (or use or test something Claude does). Since the internet explosion of roughly early this century, that has become an adventure game with lots of twisty passages all alike.

However, even here Claude may be a game changer.

The longer version goes like this. It has always been the case that when starting a software development project, that one must put a development environment in place. Not all elements of that software development plays nicely with all other parts, that would be way too expensive and is usually not necessary. It is also the case that one has to constrain a problem to fit the resources at hand and failure to make those choices wisely can wildly screw up a project. Generally many if not most of these obstacles can be finessed with small amounts of money, it is not a big deal. Sometimes it is very expensive, but that is a fact of life. (Example you want to develop a lisp application for Symbolics but you dont have access to a Symbolics machine).

Since the early 90s this development environment issue has been one of the high order bits of my ability to be productive. Some of these problems are trivial (e.g. you want to develop for iPhone, so you need a mac and an iPhone). Some of these are annoying, you have to use a specific development environment and you discover that it requires a later version of the OS and a several week learning curve (or worse). Therefore, a reasonable development plan, even with Claude, is to either use a development environment you know well, or budget in the time to figure out what that development environment needs to be and see what budget, etc, is required.

In this case, my unofficial advisor, Henry Fuchs, came up with an entertaining, non trivial app for a phone he would like to see me write with AI. He has an iPhone, I have an Android. Claude can handle this very easily, but obviously there are framework implications. I need a separate path for the iPhone from the Android, and a plausible framework for cross platform development. The Claude chosen framework for this is called Flutter from Google, it is free, it should work on all platforms, and there is some configuration problem on my Windows 11 box and/or the current Windows Subsystem for Linux (which is excellent by the way) that is causing it to fail.

I am out of practice, I forgot about these issues in a desire to impress Henry. I am bad, no doubt, but the problem is a cost of doing development.

The good news is that I should be able to give Claude direction as to which development environments and frameworks I want to use.

Halloween Image For a Trade?

I am trying to get my ex to let me visit her dog that I dearly love.  Maybe, I thought, I could trade her images for Halloween in return for one visit to see Lupe?

I am very sentimental.  Everyone knows this.

Horse Drawn Computers and Steam Powered Airplanes

In the course of discussions with colleagues about what sort of demonstration or proof-of-concept would be worth doing, and concise enough to be doable by someone with very limited resources. 

As a result, I have been explaining what life was like in the era of horse drawn computers and steam-powered airplanes and I came across two pictures of me trying to keep a steam-powered airplane from crashing.

A New Appreciation of RFK Jr

Like so many people, I have been outraged by the insanity of some of the health policies of the Trump 2.0 Administration and actions and opinions of RFK, Jr.  I have no doubt that his statements and actions about vaccines will hurt and probably kill many people who did not need to be hurt.

On the other hand, as someone who has spent his life trying to get reasonable medical care for conditions he was born with, and who is now in increased physical pain and emotional pain by their therapy, who has been abused over and over again by various elements of what we might call our "health system", I am forced to go against medical advice in a possibly fruitless attempt to get well and have some sort of life going forward.  Its been horrible.  It is not subtle.  There are a lot of people who seem to be making a very good living off of the pain and misery of people who have come to then for help.

So maybe the right way to look at RFK, Jr is not as someone who is giving great medical advice, but as someone who is an angel of vengeance of people who have been victimized by a cruel and uncaring "medical system".  Maybe the right way to look at this part of the hideous Trump 2.0 administration is as a genuine desire for justice and change by people who are have sought help from a system that has let them down.

In my case, without going into details, I can assure you that my efforts have been met with condescension and a lack of good support.  They have made my life much worse.

GoFundMe for Siggraph.... Victory Tour 2026 Part I

The time for my trying to earn money to live my life is more or less over.  That failed.  And I can not tell you how much I appreciate my friends from the motion picture industry using AI to tell me about homeless shelters and help for the disabled in North Carolina.  Its so abusive.  What I need are people who would do for me what I would do for them, which is to get on the phone with their friends running vfx facilities and getting me a day a week or more working remotely to earn a basic living.

But they are not going to do that.

The operational doctrine in LA is "Kiss up, Kick down"

In the absence of any sort of reasonable support from my colleagues, I have started the first of 4 gofundmes to pay for a trip to Siggraph.  It comes up in a month, but I have to commit long before that.  

We will see.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-michaels-victory-tour-2026-part-i

Status June 13 2026

The good news is that North Carolina is beautiful.  Some, but not all, of the people are nice.  The cost of moving, renting and getting medical care is a problem.  Do not move unless you have the money.