life, coding, technology, outdoors, photography
Alrighty, I updated the logic this weekend and have Mr. RossBot operating on the hairy elephant website (Mastodon). (It’s also posting on Threads, if you’re into that sort of thing.)
I also updated the image model to use Stability.ai’s swanky new SDXL model. I’m pretty impressed with the results.
Alright, this is pretty awesome! 🎉
Last night at 11:27PM, my little generative AI side project, ArtBot, crossed 10,000,000 images created. People have created some pretty cool stuff.
Some random stats from Google Analytics since it launched on October 9th, 2022 to now:
My Steam Deck has to be one of my favorite gadgets in the last few years. Gaming aside, the fact that it’s running Linux opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
For example, let’s use it to add a new feature to ArtBot… while I’m on an airplane. The screen is tiny, but oh man, it actually worked.
Using a customized prompt, you can (for now, at least), get ChatGPT to misbehave a bit.
For example, I turned it into an angry programmer.
Thanks to Reddit, I recently stumbled upon a cool project called Stable Horde. It essentially lets you generate images using a distributed cluster of GPUs donated by community members.
I had been creating my own web interface to remotely interact with a Stable Diffusion instance running on my own machine. I decided to quickly repurpose the web app and connect to the Stable Horde API. The result?
ArtBot, a Stable Diffusion demonstration that allows you to generate images using the power of the Stable Horde. It is awesome!
Oops. I guess I accidentally typed in “git status” (no, I didn’t — I do this all the time!)
Now, MacOS needs to redownload all the dev tools again. It looks like it’s going to be awhile.
Fun fact: The time between when Tyrannosaurus Rex existed and now is less than the time between now and when Git will finally be installed on this machine.
A problem that often happens to me: I get the inspiration to whip up something in Node.js (for fun, for experimentation, for a side project, etc) but then I realize that I need to go through the process of actually setting things up before I can even start writing some code.
Usually, I have to dig through previous projects and copy over my eslint and prettier config files, read through some documentation and remember how to setup TypeScript again, install the correct dependencies for running tests. Before I know it, I’m bored and tired and no longer interested in doing whatever I was going to do.
I decided to experiment with some command line tools and created a Node.js script that can help me quickly bootstrap a new project with common configuration parameters that I use. It’s available on GitHub: Bootstrap Node Project.
The GIF above shows this tool in action. I’m able to get the scaffolding for a new project up and running within about 20 seconds! After running, the project structure looks like this (with associated npm start and test scripts, all ready to go). That is pretty awesome.
my-cool-project/ ├─ .husky/ ├─ node_modules/ ├─ src/ │ ├─ index.js (.ts) │ ├─ index.test.js (.ts) ├─ .eslintrc.json ├─ .gitignore ├─ .prettierrc ├─ package-lock.json ├─ package.json ├─ README.md ├─ tsconfig.json (optional)
Obviously, it’s highly opinionated and caters to configuration options that I personally like to use. But I figure it’s a great resource for anyone who wishes to roll their own utility to quickly bootstrap projects as well.
Earlier this evening, I was playing around with OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model for generating “human-like text.”
I gave it the following prompt:
Write a plot about a movie that involves rogue unicorns who want to
conquer Earth and the planet’s only hope is an Australian Cattle dog named Benson who sleeps a lot.
The response?
The unicorns, led by their king, Uni, have been planning their conquest of Earth for years. They have been observing the humans and have concluded that they are weak and vulnerable. The unicorns have developed a powerful magic that will allow them to take over the planet.
Benson, an Australian Cattle dog, is the only one who can stop them. Benson is a lazy dog who loves to sleep. He is content to spend his days lounging around and eating food. However, when the unicorns begin their attack, Benson is the only one who can stop them. He rallies the other dogs and leads them in a fight against the unicorns.
The unicorns are powerful, but they are no match for Benson and the other dogs. Benson is able to defeat Uni and the other unicorns, and the Earth is saved.
Summer blockbuster coming soon to a theater near you!
The school shooting in Uvalde last week was horrible. As a parent, I feel so powerless to protect my kids from something like that. Taking them to school the next day was extremely emotional.
It’s clear that we, as a country, are going to continue to do nothing about guns and gun violence. I channeled some of my emotion into building an automated bot for Twitter. I call it SABS – Stochastic Analysis for Ballistics Superfans (alternative title is “Second Amendment Bullshit”).
If you’re so technically inclined, you can download and run it yourself. Powered by Node and a fun little experiment into Twitter’s API.
It automatically replies to any congressional member who tweets.
Which of course includes unhinged Republicans.
I’ve been trying to fix a particularly tricky bug lately that only ever manifests itself in our production environments. So, I’m unable to reproduce it on my local machine. It’s been fun. Let me tell you…
I’ve been stuck somewhere between stage 4 and stage 6 for weeks now.