So Long, Blaugust, And Thanks For All The Blogs

Last day! Has it been fun? I'd say so.

I was going to run this after the event had ended but it makes more sense to keep it in bounds. Who knows? Maybe someone I'm shouting out will even see it now!

As I said a few posts ago (Not going to go digging back through them all to link to it.) for the first time ever I'm actually going to name-and-praise the new-to-me and new to Blaugust blogs I really enjoyed. Handily, I put all the fresh names in a separate pot over in Feedly right at the start so it's pretty easy to find them. God knows it wouldn't be if all I had to work with was my memory.

I'd say they're in no particular order - I'm certainly not ranking them - but since I used the handy OPML file gifted to us by Owls and that's alphabetical, that's what order they're in. Other alphabets are available.

All of the following will be staying in my RSS feeds long after Blaugust ends. 

African Music Forum -  There were several all-music blogs in this year's line-up and at the start I would have bet against this being the one I'd end up enjoying and listening to the most but the others seemed to focus on music I found very dull so I stopped clicking through after a few posts. I've never been much of a "world music" fan although I've certainly heard plenty over the last few decades. I went to the first-ever WOMAD festival but never felt like going to another and there was a time when I thought if John Peel didn't stop playing so much highlife I'd have to find someone else to listen to late in the evenings. All of that notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed lots of the tracks and artists AFM introduced me to during Blaugust, especially all the funk and jazz. 

august morning -  There are never as many picture-focused blogs in Blaugust as I could wish. Or in the blogosphere generally, for that matter. I'm guessing most people who want to post photos do it on Instagram. Maybe I should look there. Except I don't even have an Instagram account. Which all means I was very happy to see this one, the picture-oriented blog of Jedda, also responsible for another blog on this list.

Axxuy - Short, friendly, varied posts on a restful green background. I bookmarked several posts by axxuy as possible bounce-offs during the month, mentioned the blog in a couple in dispatches and finally went the full bounce yesterday.  At first I thought it was going to be a whole blog about vintage typewriters, which would have been fine, but it opened out to be about all kinds of things and always interesting.

Calishat - Another I bookmarked several times. I liked the chatty and engaging style but this one also has great pracical value. I've already used a couple of the search apps and I'm keeping them to hand for the future.

Joelchrono's Blog - Always a fun read. Very chatty and easy-going. I liked all the gaming stuff but even better were the throwaway asides giving a glimpse of everday life in Mexico. This is the sort of thing I used to eavesdrop on in the old GeoCities days. I don't miss most of that, especially not the juddering, jarring graphics, but I do miss the casual visits to other people's lives, something the more structured blogs we have now don't always offer.

Notes by JCProbably -  And here's another one. Again, it's a window into another world or I should say another part of this one. One thing I particularly like about JCProbably is the creative use of fonts. It brings home what I was saying about how we, collectively, seem to have forgotten some of the creativity that used to come with paper and paste. If I steal anything from anyone in Blaugust this year it'll most likely be the use of script instead of italics. This is Jedda's other blog, by the way, although I'm sure you all knew that.

Reay Jespersen - Along with the previous one, possibly the most personal of the personal blogs this time around. A real web log of what's going on in someone's life, or in their mind, or both, which if we're going to be brutal about it, is only going to hold a stranger's attention if it's a very interesting life or if someone has some very interesting ideas or if they're blessed with the knack of making one or other or both sound interesting. At least two of those hold true here. I read every post with interest, attention and pleasure. Even left a couple of comments.

ribo.zone -  I was enjoying this one until it stopped about half-way through the month with a post about being half-way through... very meta! Another soothingly pastel green blog with plenty of what I learned is called "dithering". I was clearly lying when I said the only thing I'd steal this time would be the script fonts. I've already stolen the dithering and used it several times.

Small Good Things - Another one that signed out half way through, only this time with an actual goodbye. I was very sorry to see it go although I understood the reasons clearly enough. There are plenty of blogs in my feeds that talk about health issues sometimes, particularly mental health, but I don't often feel I've learned something new the way I did with this one. It helped that Hollie was learning them at the same time, I guess. I hope everything's working out and if and when you're feeling ready to blog again, I'll be happy to hear about it. This is why I never remove blogs I like from my feeds even when they go silent. It's always nice to think one day they might spring back into life.

The Virtual Moose -  Just a solid, interesting, well-presented blog that kept coming up with interesting reads throughout the month. I bounced off one of them, thinking it was a subject that might get some traction and of course it got no response at all. (Well, not about the actual topic, anyway.) How very Blaugust. I also downloaded a game demo after reading one of the posts but I haven't played it yet.

The Works of Egan -  I generally don't jibe with coding or tech blogs. There were several this year that I didn't get on with at all. It's not so much that I'm uninterested in the subject matter, more that the way it's presented frequently hits me as alienating and exclusionary.  Not, I'm sure, with any such intent by the writers but like many specialisms it can be prone to silo architectonics and echo chambering. This one isn't by any means a tech blog although it leans in that direction sometimes. It's more of a general read and it has a very open, welcoming feel about it that invites you to come inside and join in, which I did, happily.

 Wavelengths - This one's not so much a blog as the front end of a whole suite of media projects including podcasts and YouTube videos. It's also very professional. I didn't listen to any of the podcasts or watch any of the vlogs but I did read all the blog posts and the introductions to the other stuff, most of which qualify as short posts in their own right. Always entertaining although I'm not a fan of the green and white on grey-black color scheme...

And there we go. An entirely co-inidentally round dozen, all of them blogs to which I'm very happy to have been introduced. I'll go on reading them, hopefully all the way to next Blaugust, when I hope they'll all return for another round.

As I will. It's been a good one. I'm already looking forward to the next. 

Thanks to Belghast for inventing Blaugust and to Krikket and the others mentors for carrying it on Bel's behalf this time around. I'm sorry I didn't do more but then it doesn't look like any more was needed. It all seemed to go beautifully.

Hope to see some of you tomorrow as usual and the everyone else next year! 

But I Don't Even Like Football...

Seems like every other day I start with some variation on "Well, this is going to be a really short post..." and then go on to write at least a thousand words. This is not one of those days.

This time it really is going to be short, although not so much for you, dear reader, if, as I hope you will, you click on the links. If you do, it's going to be two hours of your day gone, like it just was of mine, which is one reason this is not going to be one of those posts that take me two or three hours to write, (i.e. most of them).

There are going to be two links. (Edit: Of course there aren't. Well, there are, because two is inside five, but there aren't just two. And now it's six. I just added another in post. In post in the post. Whatever...) The first is to one of the fine blogs I discovered thanks to this year's Blaugust. 

All month I've been enjoying axxuy's concise posts in their restful shades of green. They've been one of the most consistently entertaining reads of the event, which is probably why I clicked through the link in today's post. Residual good vibes carry you far.

I don't click on most links in posts I read. I mean, lots of people include lots of links all the time. I know I do. I very much doubt anyone clicks through all of them and I'd bet most people don't click through many. I dithered a moment before clicking this one but I'm very glad I did and I'd like to thank axxuy for introducing me to something of value I'd almost certainly never have found on my own.

Probably about time I linked to axxuy's post, isn't it?  It's called Football Forever and you don't need to know or care about American Football to read it. I certainly don't. 

Neither do you need any kind of grounding in the game to click again on the link axxuy includes, which I'm going to put up here in a skronking point size so you can't miss it:

17776

And that is the biggest point size Blogger has. I'd make it bigger if I could.

Where does it take you? Not saying. Axxuy gives a good framing intro. Read that.

What I'd add is that it's quite an undertaking. It took me, as I said, about two hours, end to end. Given that I can't seem to make time to watch a whole movie these days and think an hour is quite a good session in a video game, it says a lot that I didn't even start to think "Just how long is this going to go on?" until I was about ninety minutes in.

People (Who are they, these generic, unreferenced "people"? I don't know but I'm agin 'em.) like to talk about the corrosion of the internet and how nothing is as good as it used to be in the good old days because apparently that's just how we feel about stuff when it's been around a while. And it is true that the sense of play, the sense of wonder, may have gone out of the worldwide web, swept away by the tides of commerce. (Geez! Flowery, much?)

Remember when people (Them again...) genuinely weren't sure if Poppy was real? Or Pronunciation Book? I guess those days of innocent gullibility really are over. Even before AI made the irreal real, we were well past being fooled that way, even willingly. Weren't we? (By the way, more Blaugust props (No-one says props any more. Shhh. You're just drawing attention to it!) to Calishat, without whose excellent utility Back That Ask Up! I would have had to waste a lot more time finding a suitable reference for that That Poppy story.) 

Just because we can't be fooled so easily doesn't mean the web has gone all to shit like people keep saying. There are things the web can do that no other medium can approach and there's still far, far more out there than any of us is ever going to find.

I very, very definitely would not have gone looking for an experimental, multi-media meditation on eternity, framed as a science-fiction novella, on a massive, corporate sports channel but that's where this comes from. Still find that hard to believe. What the hell is it doing there, anyway?

But that's where it is and I suggest you go experience it. It's a ride. 

Thanks again to axxuy and indeed to Blaugust for showing it to me. I'd never have found it on my own and that would have been my loss, which is why I'm sharing it here, because I know for sure not everyone reading this is also reading every other Blaugust blog, let alone clicking on all the links.

And this turned out longer than I planned but then doesn't it always?   

It's Still Summer! Have Some More Free Stuff!

It has only just occurred to me that late summer seems to be freebie season in the video game industry. Okay, the free stuff trundles out, month on month, all year round, but it has been feeling lately like this is peak giveaway season. If only I had something like a diary of things that happen in video games that I'd been keeping for a few years, eh? Then I could just flip back through the Augusts of yesteryear and see if my theory holds true.

Ah, but that's the stuff of fantasies, isn't it? No-one keeps notes on what hapens in the video games they play. That would be crazy. And anyway, what would you even call it? Some kind of gaming log? A glog, maybe? Well, that sounds dumb! No wonder no-one's doing it.

Evidence from the past notwithstanding, there certainly seems to be a glut of giveaways in the games I'm "playing". I just did a whole post on the massive hand-outs in EverQuest II and this morning I logged into two other MMORPGs to pick up my rightful dues. (Also, that little ironic meta-conceit about the non-existence of game blogging does kind of fall apart when I link to a post right afterwards, doesn't it? If I had a decent editor they'd just put a blue line through the whole of paras 1&2 and tell me to start over. Lucky I'm self-editing this thing...)

I am now in a position to add some detail to the aforementioned post, although not as much as you might expect. I claimed the one-per-account crate plus the one everyone gets on my Berserker but now I'm wishing I'd read up on it a bit more first because it turns out that not everything in the one-time crate is Heirloom. That is made clear in the announcement but looking at the forum thread I'm not the only one who didn't bother to read it carefully.

Luckily, I did at least claim it my "main" so none of it is going to go to waste. Had I been paying better attention, though, I'd have claimed it on the character I'm working so hard to turn into my new main, my Necromancer. 

On the bright side, EQII's ceaseless vertical progression escalator moves so ludicrously fast, anything with stats is going to be replaced in a matter of weeks anyway. We've got Pandas soon and then it's the expansion, so even though the gear in this crate is a huge upgrade (It is stat gear after all, not appearance as I wrongly suspected.) I don't imagine I'll be wearing it come Halloween, let alone Christmas.

As for the rest of it, I haven't sorted through it all yet but it sure looks impressive. But there's no time to sit around admiring my unearned goodies, not when there are more to be grabbed.

Game #2 on my loot list, quite unexpectedly, is Lord of the Rings Online. I have MassivelyOP to thank for this one. They PSA'd the offer yesterday and I logged in and claimed it this morning. Well, after I'd waited half an hour for the game to patch, naturally. Is there any other online game that takes this much time to get back up to speed after only a few weeks absence? 

I last logged in on 16 June, when I moved my characters off their old 32-bit servers and onto the shiny new lag-free 64-bit upgrades. (Golf clap...) I hope you've done the same because if you haven't it's too late now. 

No! Wait! No it's not! You still have a couple of days! Go! Go! Go!!!

Out-of-place illo.
The one I took of the LotRO store
somehow vanished. Thanks SSG!

Possibly because their entire year has been such a roiling, heaving mess, Standing Stone decided to throw some bones our way and they're pretty big bones, too. Oliphaunt bones, maybe. (Oh, look! I know what an oliphaunt is and I didn't even have to look it up. I guess I must be right-wing now. They do say it happens as you get older.)

Not as far to the right as all that, though. I have no clue where Gundabad is, although I suppose it's worrying that I even know it's a place not a person. Or a weapon. These people name their weapons, don't they?  Have you ever done that? Can't say I have. I might start but first I'd have to have some weapons. I suppose I could name my garden spade. Digger. That's be a good name for a spade.

I seem to have whimsied myself into a hole here. Hang on while I dig myself out. Now, where did I put Digger?

(See? If I had an editor you wouldn't have to put up with any of this. Not that I imagine there are many of you left by now...)

The code for the giveaway is EXPLOREOURWORLD, all in caps, which presumably is some kind of GenZ thing, judging by half the bands I listen to these days, who all seem to think all capitilization is nothing more than a style choice. You wouldn't have thought the devs at SSG would be so cutting edge... 

It gets you a huge swathe of content, all the quests and expansion content up to about three years ago. There's no particular rush. The code, which you have to redeem in the in-game store, is valid through to November. Why they do it this way, rather than just make all content before a certain date free automatically, the way every other game does, I have no idea but that's Standing Stone for you.

Thirdly and finally, at least until the next game announces a summer gift bonanza, comes DCUO. This one's slightly different in that you actually have to play the game to get most of it. It's not a straight log-in event so much as a holiday, the holiday in question being possibly a regularly recurring event albeit not one I remember doing before.

Specifically, it's Teen Titans Homecoming, a big party the Titans throw for Starfire to try and cheer her up after her sister Blackfire confirms her exile from Tamaran for another year. I don't know what it says about my politics but I could explain all the italicized words in that last sentence, in more detail than you'd want to hear, without having to look anything up, just like a Tolkein fan could tell you all about elves. (That's the remake of the old Bette Davis movie, starring Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, with Sydney Sweeney in the Marilyn Monroe part, by the way.)

Focus, dammit! Focus!

Since it's a seasonal event not a giveaway as such, you do need to do some missions to get the currency to buy the rewards off the special vendor and I wouldn't normally have bothered only one of the items you can get is so weird... 

It's Starfire. You can buy Starfire and she'll come live at your base and talk to you about her life. You can ask her about her Homecoming party, her team the Titans, her adopted planet Earth, her home planet Tamaran and who knows what-all else. I'd like to know what she thinks about her sister for a start.

I'd also like to know if she thinks it's appropriate for a Princess of Tamaran to be sold like... well, I guess we'd have to say like a slave because if she was a servant she's have working hours and I'd have to pay her, like I pay my mercenaries. I've played plenty of games where NPCs come to stay in my character's houses and work for them but it's always assumed to be on some kind of contractual or apprenticeship basis. (In EQII there's literally a contract involved that you have to hand over for some of them.)

There's a kind of precedent for it in DCUO in that I have Krypto flying about my base but although technically he isn't my character's pet he is a dog. People do buy dogs. That's how Mrs Bhagpuss got Beryl. 

When I read about it (Again on MOP although I'll most likely get an email from DI about it at some point.) my first thought was "I'm having one of those!" Me and the Teen Titans go back a long way. As I've mentioned before (More than once, most likely.), I once interviewed Marv Wolfman about the New Teen Titans comic he was writing at the time and for me Starfire will always be that golden-skinned alien with the wild hair he and George Perez created but I've also watched all seasons of the Titans TV show, so I'm very comfortable with the current version, which is of course the one you get in DCUO.

It's going to take a little while before I can install her. It costs 75 tokens for the "Base Invite" (Ah, wait! Now I get it! She's my guest! That's a lot less weird. Although still a bit weird...). You can pick up a dozen tokens each day just for doing the two daily missions and the event runs for almost a month, so it should be easy enough.

I did the very easy mission Raven hands out first. That gives four tokens and takes about a couple of minutes. Then I did the Miss Martian one, which is an On Duty, meaning you have to grab a group from the group finder and let them carry you play your role to earn eight more tokens.  

Doing daily group missions in DCUO is about as painless as it gets. Mine popped in seconds and lasted maybe five minutes. I do have some idea how to play my character but certainly not after months away so I just button-mashed through the whole thing. No-one died, not even me, and at the end, when you get a scorecard, while I definitely did the least DPS (As a DPS character, too.) I didn't do none.  No-one complained, anyway. No-one even spoke. So that should be fine.

You can also pay some currency to reset the dailies and re-do them on the same day. Don't ask me which currency. There are sooo many. Whatever it is, I had plenty of it, so I did Raven's easy one again. If I did that each time it would only take me five days to get Starfire but there are quite a lot of other things on the vendor that look interesting so we'll see.  (You can also just buy the tokens in the cash shop, which seems like a great idea to me, espcially given how much DBC I have lying around doing nothing.) 

I will make the effort to get Koriand'r at least. (That's her real name. Didn't have to look that up, either. Not even the spelling.)

The Homecoming event itself has some kind of progress bar you can complete to get other rewards as well but I just want Starfire. When I get her, if she has anything interesting to say, I'll let you know. 

Until then, where's my next freebie, game devs? Don't you know it's Giveaway Season?

Reprocties Materis Peek. Who Among Us Would Argue With That?

Well, I do believe it's the final week of Blaugust. Technically, that would be the final half a week, since it's the twenty-eighth today and August only has thirty-one days, but according to the schedule this is Lessons Learned Week so who am I to quibble?

Have I learned any lessons? Y'know, I think I have. I've learned that not taking the whole thing too seriously makes it more enjoyable, for a start.

This is, I think, the first year I've done Blaugust where I haven't started out with the express intention of posting every day. Also the first in a while where I didn't make any special preparations. 

I didn't come up with any themes to give me something to fall back on on days when I couldn't come up with anything to write about. I didn't draft a bunch of posts ahead of time to give me a cushion for when life inevitably made it difficult to find time to write something on the day. I didn't really do anything very much different to what I'd have been doing anyway. I just sat down each day and started vamping until something emerged.

I even skipped a day, early on. I was so pleased with myself! My original intention had been to skip the very first day, so as to make it quite clear I was driving this thing for once. I was still planning on doing that, almost right up to the moment Blaugust began. And then I got over-excited, as usual, and just had to post on Day One.

Later on, I ended up posting twice in one day, so as of now I'm back on track for the full thirty-one posts during Blaugust which, as we should all keep reminding ourselves, does not mean posting something every day. I guess now I'm this close I'll feel honor-bound to complete but if I do, at least I'll know it was my choice, this time.

Blaugust is supposed to be fun even if doesn't always feel like it. That's a lesson I have to re-learn every year, which is a bit of a disappointment, but I feel this time it might finally have sunk in. 

Last year I didn't entirely enjoy the event. If I look at it objectively, I guess I never wholly enjoy it, given how stressful it can get, but last year was a stand-out for not feeling like it was as much fun as it should have been. I was quite pissed off by the end. 

In 2024, sometimes Blaugust felt like the whole focus had shifted and in a direction that I wouldn't have chosen to go. At times I found myself wondering whether, had it been a new event for me, if I'd have had any interest in joining in at all.

This year was much better. Things seemed less shrill. People seemed more chilled. The whole thing felt warmer and less brittle. And yet, the underlying issues that made me so uncomfortable last time around still remained. 

For a start, there were far - far - too many blogs to keep up with. And lots of them seemed not to be about anything that interests me very much while others were very keen indeed on things that don't interest me at all. 

There was an inordinate amount of blogging-about-blogging, something I usually lap up, but which at times seemed to be going into great detail about aspects of the hobby I barely recognized as having anything to do with blogging at all. I got the impression that figuring out the technicalities of getting a blog up and running, then tweaking it to perfection, was of considerably more interest to some than using the finished result to talk about anything much other than how it was done.

Only this year none of that seemed to matter very much. The overall vibe just felt much friendlier and open. There was more of a sense of the event being a convention, where a whole bunch of people come and hang out in the same space without necessarily needing to interact directly. It was fine for different cliques to hang with their friends, maybe waving at each other from different tables in the bar once in a while or nod good-humoredly at each other as they wandered through the halls, on the way to see something that interested them more.

A lot of that had to do with the widely-voiced and accepted idea that no-one has to try and read everything. There were one hundred and sixty-eight participating blogs in Blaugust 2025. I know most of those won't have posted every day but if they had, it would have been over five thousand blog posts we'd all have had to read in a month! 

Even with most people not even coming close to a daily posting schedule, I'd bet the final total will still be well into four figures. How many blog posts does anyone really want to be reading? Even fifty a day seems like a lot.

So it was great that for once - and probably for the fist time - I didn't feel like I was doing something wrong or letting anyone down by not trying to keep up with everything. I made sure I'd added every new blog to my feeds when the event started and I gave it one more pass a few days in but after that I just didn't bother any more and that felt fine. 

Well, that's not strictly true. I mean, it's true that it felt fine but I did do one final pass-through when Wilhelm mentioned the total had gone up to more than a hundred and fifty blogs. I was intending to add the rest to my feed but in the end I just glanced at an example post from each of the new ones and left it at that. As for the dozen or so more than arrived even later, I haven't seen those at all. 

And the lesson I've learned is that that's okay. It's like everyone has their stall out and we all wander around and stop when something catches our attention. It's not a class. There's not going to be a test.

In fact, it reminded me that back when I used to do the offline, analog version of blogging, receiving and reading thirty photocopied 'zines every couple of months, quite a few of those were by people I really didn't even like much, let alone want to read what they wrote. And yet we all rubbed along well enough. I'll be doing a post on that at some point because I think it has a lot of instructive parallels with the way things are in blogging now. 

That thought feeds directly into the Big Comment Debate, something I'll swing back around to in that post, if I ever get around to writing it. It could have been a divisive moment but it turned to be out the exact opposite. 

I found many of the arguments persuasive and the whole tenor of the debate was encouraging. In the end, it was all very instructive. And helpful. The same issues came up last year but I didn't feel there was any resolution then. This time, there most definitely was. Lessons absolutely were learned. By me, anyway. 

Specifically, I learned that the precise nature of communication between blogs and bloggers doesn't matter as much as I felt it did. I still personally prefer a good, solid, on-site comment thread that encourages asynchronous, long-form responses but I appreciate there are many reasons why that may not always be appropriate and I can honestly say that, as a direct consequence of the extended debate we had on the topic, it no longer bugs me when I get to the end of a really interesting or provocative post, only to find I can't chip in with my unwelcome and uninvited commentary.

And you know why? Because I have a blog. If I want right of reply I can just write a post of my own. Someone, who I really ought to be crediting if only I remembered who said it first, pointed that out and then several others re-iterated it and it really struck home. 

Anyone can decide not to have a comment thread and they absolutely should if that's what they want, because as once again many people made clear, it's your blog, your rules, but no-one who posts in public spaces, which all the Blaugust blogs by definition must be, can prevent anyone commenting on what they've posted. They'll just go somewhere else to do it.

So all that was good. Positive outcomes all round, I'd say, and definitely some lessons learned.

Finally, not so much a lesson as an observation: this has been a very enjoyable Blaugust. Not only for all the reasons I've already mentioned but because I discovered a whole lot of new blogs that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, ones whose posts I actively looked forward to each day.

That was not the case last year, when I added maybe twice as many blogs to my feeds and ended up removing almost all of them pretty quickly after the event was over. I can't foretell the future but it seems like a reasonable expectation that I'll be keeping at least half of this year's additions in my feeds indefinitely.

I'll probably do a wrap-up post at the end of Blaugust,where I'll call out the new blogs I enjoyed the most by name. I think about doing it every year but I've mostly avoided following through because it seems a bit rude to the ones I don't mention. This year, I feel that doesn't apply so much as it used to.

For one reasons, and this may seem counter-intuitive, but the large number of Blaugustinians this time around, along with the aforementioned tendency of cliques and clades to form, makes it feel quite unlikely most of the blogs I fail to mention will even be aware of my lack of interest. I'm pretty sure most of the bloggers I haven't been reading haven't been reading me either. There seem to be so few points of common interest between what we're doing it would be much more surprising if they had.

Someone must have been, though, because for the first time since the demise of Google Reader, when I moved my rss feeds to Feedly, I find myself with more than three hundred Feedly followers. As I've said repeatedly, I stopped paying much attention to my blogging stats years ago but one stat I can't really avoid is that one, since it appears beneath the name of every blog in the feed, including my own.

For years it's hovered in the 290s. The highest it had ever been until now was 298. The lowest since I first started paying attention was 292. 

At the start of Blaugust I'd just lost a couple of followers and it was down to 296. At some point in the middle of Blaugust I noticed, with considerable shock, that it had suddenly jumped to 306. As of this morning it's 307. Round numbers being a typically meaningless benchmark, I was unjustifiably delighted.

Whether it will immediately fall back to the 290s when Blaugust ends remains to be seen. I know I'll be shedding a few feeds when September begins so it seems likely. I just hope it doesn't end up lower than it was when it began.

And there we have it. A final lesson only partly learned,  at best . Stats don't matter. I keep saying it and I mostly believe it. And yet, who has the willpower to ignore them completely?

Maybe that'll be the lesson I finally learn next year.

 

Notes On AI Used In This Post

All the images, unsurprisingly. They're weirdly consistent, considering they're from three different models. The models, in order as they appear, were HiDream I1 Fast, Ideogram 2a Turbo and Qwen Image SD. The prompt in all cases was the very simple "Lessons Learned. Line art. Color. retro magazine illustration." All settings were whatever the defaults are on NightCafe.

And I could have fiddled about with them for ages to try and get something objectively better because these are pretty poor but they also have a weirdly inauthentic feel that I find oddly pleasurable. I would be very willing to accept that's a minority taste.

I love the way they all three interpreted "retro magazine illustration" to mean four-color process printing. I mean, there's no earthly reason why it should so it's fascinating to see them acting like they come from some shared 1950s reality. All the aesthetics are solidly based in the 50s and 60s although I guess an argument could be made for the 70s on the middle picture.

If the models were, as is always alleged, trained on a scraping of the entire internet, are we to believe the vast bulk of uploaded images from magazines come from more than fifty years ago? Did no-one digitize and upload the 80s and 90s? Or is thirty years ago not yet far enough to be "retro"?

#1 and #3 also extremely American, which makes the vaguely Cyrillic lettering all the more sinister. Is this some Philip K Dick alternate reality where Soviet Russia dominated the post-war world the way Germany and Japan do in Man In The High Castle? Or am I just overthinking what is basically nonsense?

Except, if it is nonsense, why is it nonsense? And why this nonsense? Could AI not just use actual words? I mean, it uses them in the headlines. Why not in the background text? 

Probably for the same reason it insists on pencils having two sharpened ends and people writing with a pen in both hands. Because it has no fucking clue what it's doing, pretty though it is to pretend otherwise.

 

 

PSA - Free Stuff In One Of The Few Games I Actually Play These Days!

I probably ought to do a proper post on this at some point but it's late and I'd like to get something up for today to keep my Blaugust run going, so in the spirit of Wilhelm's Motivational Post, where he says "I am very much of the mind that publishing something, even half formed, is better than publishing nothing", here's a rushed PSA for anyone who plays EverQuest II, cribbed entirely from the official press release, which I just skim-read five minutes ago.

Freebies! Grab 'em while they're hot!

Everyone, free players included, is entitled to something snappily named the EverQuest II 2025 Crate. It's available for free in the in-game cash shop and you can have one for every character on every account you own. I doubt I'll bother to log in all nine or ten accounts I have access to, including Mrs Bhagpuss's old ones, but I'll certainly grab a crate for every character on my regular account.

Inside that crate you will find:

• Cloak of Winning
• Goldstone Sentinel
• Visage of Growth
• Portable Translocation Device - x5
• Portable Circle of Growth - x5
• Mercenary Unlock Scroll 
• Zimaran Swag It Out Familiar Infusion

As you might be able to tell, I've lazily cut and pasted this from the official announcement, which you could easily just go read instead of this post. It has pictures of everything, too, which is just as well because I sure don't have time to claim the crate this evening, open it up, sort the contents, equip the visible stuff and take screenshots. I'll save that for the putative "proper post", should it ever happen.

So much for the FTP side. On to the Subscribers. Or Members as Darkpaw like to call us.

Here, you just get the one crate per account. It'd better be a good one, then. 

I'll let you all judge for yourselves.

This crate is called the EverQuest II 2025 Subscriber Crate. You really do have to hand it to whoever it is that's coming  up with these names. I couldn't do it, could you?

What's in it then?

• Allyrian Wings of Winning
• Magical Equipment Unattuner - x3
• Nagafen's Abode Deed of Ownership
• EverQuest II 2025 Celebration Subscriber Gear Bag 
  • Full set of armor, weapons, accessories
  • Zimaran Rune: Money Sink
  • Zimaran Rune: Ready Check
  • Sovereign's Rampage
  • Sovereign's Remnant
  • Spirit of Drakkel
  • Well Prepared
  • Vrakorr Scroll Case - x2
  • Velium Drachma - x50

 Blimey, Charlie! That is a lot! There's a flippin' prestige house in there. And a full set of gear.

Is that actual gear with stats, though, or just appearance?  Hmm. Not sure. Appearance, I think, but the runes and accessories, which are all deteailed in the press release, have stats. BIG stats. You'll want those, especially if you're a casual like me.

I'll get back to you on the rest of the deets when I've claimed mine, which as I said is not going to be tonight.

There's no need to rush, anyway. The crates are in the Marketplace until 22 September. 

And remember - they're free! 

 

Has It Been That Long Already?

It seems like forever since I last did a What I've Been Listening To Lately. It has, in point of fact, been exactly a month. The last was on 25 July. 

I started a couple of times to do another but the painful truth is that almost all I've been listening to for months is me. I love myself so much I don't care to listen to anything else. That sounds wrong but it's uncomfortably close to the truth.

As it so happens, though, I have just about managed to collect enough options to make a new post that doesn't sound like the scraping of the bottom a particularly empty barrel. I have... wait, let me count them... fifteen songs bookmarked and... hang on... I'll just go get it... yes, another half-dozen on the laptop.

Hmm. As a rule, when I come to do these things, I might have that many after a week or so, not a month. But still, should be enough.

And there are some crackers, which is all that matters. Like this one for starters.

 Snowball - The Patti Smith Group

Horses is my second-favorite album of all time, probably. I mean, I haven't made a list lately. I'm going to, though. When I was going through all my old zines, looking for the fiction fragments, I also had the questionable pleasure of revisiting many of the Best Of lists I compiled in the '90s. 

It was very much a thing then. It's not at all hard to see where the internet obsession with lists (Listicles if you really want to raise hackles.) came from. At least one person I can think of had a whole zine that was nothing but lists and we all did them sometimes. I did them a lot.

So I can say with certainty that in the mid-late '90s, Horses by the Patti Smith Group was my #1 runner-up (To Dolly Mixture Demo Tapes, of course.) and for all I drone on endlessly about only being interested in new music nowadays, I'm not at all sure those two wouldn't hold their spots still.

Horses is a perfect album. It doesn't have a single filler track and the pacing is sublime. For that reason alone, I was somewhat apprehensive at the prospect of hearing a "lost" track from the same sessions, one that didn't make the cut for the finished item. 

These days, there's an awful lot of that sort of thing. Far too much, probably. Only about a day before I read about the 50th Anniversary re-issue of Horses, with its alternate takes and four previously unreleased tracks, I'd listened to something similar from the upcoming 50th anniversary re-issue of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (1975 was some year, apparently. Didn't exactly feel like it at the time but never mind.) a track called "Lonely Night in the Park" and I'd had to stop it half-way through, it was so dull. It was pretty obvious why Bruce left it out of the running order.

Snowball, the first of the four previously-unheard PSG tracks is very, very different. Not only is it a really great song, it's very easy to imagine it slipping into that perfect running order without disrupting it in the least. It sounds very much like Patti's first single, the magnificent Piss Factory, (Okay, technically the B-side to her equally magnificent cover of Hey Joe...), still one of my favorite songs of all time, with Richard Sohl doing his inimitable thing on keyboards and Patti declaiming the way only a performance poet can.

Snowball is good enough that I actually want to hear the whole special edition anniversary album now and usually I try to avoid those things. Who wants their dreams spoiled with a load of also-rans?

 All My Friends Are So Depressed 

 Joyce Manor

Alright, this one's just werid. We all know Joyce Manor, right? Mid-Western Emo demigods, most famous for the supernal Constant Headache? Well, I thought I did...

And to be fair to myself, when I first came across them a few years ago, I did read up on their history and listen to a selection of their back catalog. None of it seemed to contradict that impression.

Apparently, they were never considered hardcore emo, more like pop-punk/alt-rock. And they started out as a folk-punk duo. People just will not stay in their damn lanes any more.

Even so, none of that would have prepared me for something that sounds almost exactly like the Smiths circa 1985, only forty years too late. And if even if it had, I certainly wouldn't have been ready to be told it was inspired by Lana del Rey and 100 Gecs. Can you hear it? I don't think I can.

 Fundraiser - Bar Italia

It's all either 1975 or 1985 this week, isn't it? Who are Bar Italia channeling today? Pretty sure it's the Cure although there's a hint of Bunnymen in there somewhere. Do you ever find yourself wondering if time's running backwards?

Elton John - Miya Folick

This is a first. Someone wanting to move like Elton John. I mean, sing like him, sure. Play the piano. But move?

Also, my research informs me that, contrary to Miya's wishes, she would not have been able to "move my body like Elton John/In 1970 with his palm shades on" because he didn't wear that particular piece of signature eyeware until 1973. I guess, since she's imagining it, she could imagine he could dance, too.

Anyway, it's great. Chorus sounds sooo much like Blondshell. Sabrina should cover it. Maybe Elton could, too. Sorry... Sir Elton. 

Ride or Die - villagerrr

When you click on the video for a track called Ride or Die, you don't expect to see someone trucking their kid around the farm on a ride-on mower. 

I discovered recently that there's a name for all the stuff that sounds like this, of which there's plenty, but of course I didn't bookmark the page where I read it and now I can't remember what it's called. I find it very restful although it's often pretty bittersweet. It's kind of like American and Heartland Rock and Mid-Western Emo boiled down and bottled with plenty of sugar to take the astringency and the harshness out.

 Fabulist - The Cords

Look! Coming over the hill! It's 1986! 

Debut single from their first album, due out next month.  

Nothing's ever going to stop now, is it?

 Pillow Face - Pearly Drops

FFS! I told you not to cross the streams! I'm assuming Pearly Drops is named for the seminal Cocteau Twins's single Pearly Dewdrops' Drops. I mean, they could hardly not be, surely?

Don't sound very 1980s, though, do they? Thank the lord. Even hyperpop can't escape the event horizon of pop music's eternal past, it seems. 

I'll take it.

 

 

MS. PAC-MAN - Sudan Archives

First NSFW warning of the post although it's only for the lyrics and who plays videos at work with the sound on anyway? In fact, isn't NSFW a dumb concept? I guess it comes from the days when people would web-browse at work and have to tab out quickly when the boss came round but does anyone even do that any more? Don't most places have intranets and blocks on anything sus these days?

NSFHWTKAA would be better. What? Oh, go on, you can work it out. Not Safe For Home When The Kids Are Around of course. Except it's more likely to be the kids watching stuff that's going to freak the adults out. 

Not sure what any of this has to do with Ms. Pac-Man but I thought it was thematically appropriate. Plus, good tune.

 

 The Bomb - Lydia Night

If I'm gonna be brutally uncool, this is more my speed. Also sounds unsettlingly like some of the stuff I've been making, albeit with fewer blood rituals and chainsaws. 

The video, which starts out looking wholesome enough, is weirdly disturbing. I've never played dodge-ball. Is it really that harsh? 

 Bird Parts (Ft Harmony) - Grumpy

I don't know any more than you do. Don't look at me. I just pick them, I don't explain them.

Harmony's name brought me to this one but it really, really doesn't sound like anything I'd ever have associated with her. There's a real vibe for tuneless tunes now, isn't there? In fact, now I come to think about it, that might be almost a new sound for the 2020s, one that doesn't hark back blatantly to something someone was doing in another musical era (I hate the term "Era". That could have been my Low Stakes, Hot Takes thing.)

Again, the beginning reminds me of Blondshell, whose second album, much though I love it, does not have a great many tunes you can hum in the bath. Kind of coming around to the idea now, not least because I find myself using it too.

 Bitter Everyday - Wednesday

Case in point. Gemini confidently informs me there isn't a post-grunge band called Wednesday and their Wikipedia page calls them "Alternative Rock" but it's post-grunge isn't it? Or is it post-grunge revival now? Sounds like Dinosaur Jr. anyway. 

When are tattoos going start being really uncool, I wonder? It's gonna happen some time. Who wants to look like their parents, growing up? Even if their parents were cool when they weren't parents.

Okay, I now have the opposite problem to  the one I thought I was going to have at the top of the post, namely that everything I've bookmarked is really good so now I can't fit it all in. I like to keep it down to no more than a dozen tunes per post and that just leaves room for one more...

Who's it gonna be?

 Nice Shoes - Steve Lacy

Well, he does keep saying "Make it stop". So I will.

Also NSFW (I'm going to say that "W" stands for Wherever.) 

Spiritual Cramp, Still Blank, Dust and Witch Post's great acoustic version of The Wolf are going to have to wait 'til next time. By when, no doubt, there will be too many new tunes for them to get a look-in.  Just as well I linked them now, then, isn't it? 

A Funny Thing Happened...

Since I really have nothing to say today or rather, if I'm going to be strictly accurate, plenty to say but no energy left to say it, I thought I'd bounce off a couple of Blaugust posts that amused me with their (Apparently unintended.) oppositional stances.

The first was one by Axxuy called I Miss Forums in which, among other things, Axxuy says "what I miss is the sense of a dedicated space for some community", while observing that, although reddit and Discord have their place, "it’s not the same". 

A lot of people seem to feel that way. It's a sentiment I see quite often and apparently I'm not the only one to have noticed. A few days later, over at The Virtual Moose, there was another post entitled Forums Are Still Great. 

As the Moose (Aka mpklamerus) says "Once in a while I’ll see a post on social media lamenting that the Internet isn’t as good as it used to be and pine for certain things like forums..." Only once in a while...?

The Moose, though, has some practical suggestions on how to deal with the sense of loss, listing a number of ways many of the features of the old internet, including forums, persist and thrive and can still be enjoyed, a one point suggesting, perhaps a little snippily, "Go do it if you miss it that much" before finishing up with a more collegiate "Anyway, this stuff all still exists and it’s fun!"

There's no indication one post is any way a response to the other. I just found it a pleasant synchronicity to come across the pair of them in fairly quick succession.

Personally, I wouldn't say I missed any of the old web features enough to want to make much of an effort to recreate them but I definitely do prefer forums as a means of asynchronous online communication in general and especially for things like video game news. It used to be so much easier when there was just one, central point of contact, somewhere you could go to read the latest update notes, ask a question or just hang out and take the temperature of the game. 

Much better than than having to drag around several platforms, gathering bits and pieces from all of them, trying to put together a coherent picture from YouTube videos, tweets, Discord convos and subreddits.

It's not even as though the companies show any kind of consistency. They make a big song and dance about abandoning the "Offcial Forums" in favor of posting either on reddit or Discord, but then they often keep the forums going anyway and seem to forget where they said were going to post, as Wilhelm found recently. 

Commenting on the late arrival of the monthly economic report for Eve Online, he complained that "After some considerable delay, we got the Monthly Economic Report for July last week.  We were actually warned about the delay, though in a typical CCP muddle, they opted to only put that warning in the official forums and not on their Discord or other channels they maintain."

I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it when I remember Daybreak making a statement a few years ago about future information about the EverQuest games moving primarily to Discord. For all I know, that may have worked for EQ, whose players seem oddly more au fait with the modern world than their counterparts in the junior game, but as far as EverQuest II is concerned, everything still seems to come through the forums.

EQII does have the most reactionary playerbase I've ever encountered, highly resistant to all kinds of change, so any attempt to bring the game into line with current genre practice was always going to be a big ask. Good luck getting those guys to play nicely with some new-fangled fad like Discord. 

Darkpaw did give it a go for a while. I remember reading many complaints on the forums about questions only getting a reply if they were asked in a Discord channel. Angry, outraged and disgusted complaints, mostly. Helpful players used to cross-post Discord threads to the forums so no-one else had to get their fingers dirty tabbing over.

These days community managers over at Darkpaw seem to have given up trying to swim against the tide. All the links to news items on the log-in screen go straight to threads on the official forum just like they used to. Like today's annnouncement that the Tears of Veeshan expansion will no longer be the last update the Varsoon server will receive. 

"Once again, you all have rallied and let us know how you felt about the continuation of the server, and we heard you loud and clear! So, after much discussion within the team, we have once again decided to allow Varsoon to continue their path!" the OP begins, with what seems to me to be a resigned shrug of the shoulders suggesting "Well, what can you do? That's just what they're like..."

Like Varsoon, forums, as the Moose suggests, are a lot harder to kill than you might have imagined. Long may it continue.

And in emulation of another of Axxuy's posts I have bookmarked to bounce off, that's all I'm going to say on the matter.  

 

Notes On AI Used In This Post

Just the one, embedded image, produced by HiDream I1 Fast at NightCafe on default settings from the prompt "the Roman forum but populated by fantasy creatures like dwarves, elves, trolls and so on video game style image, color". It's pretty much what I asked for except the AI has chosen to use just dwarves as far as I can see, further evidence for my working theory that if you give an AI a list of options or suggestions it will tend to take the first and ignore the rest. 

And Another Little Thing...

 

Towards the end of yesterday's post I mentioned there was another example of a small joy in the picture of the clutter under my monitor. In that image it's at the upper-right of the lower section, beneath the screen. Hard to make out what it is, especially if you haven't seen anything like it before.

It's a wooden crate filled with albums. Specifically, Lana del Rey albums. Each of them only about two and a half centimeters on a side. An inch if you prefer but let's not go through all that again. I've included the Vaillant Bunny for scale but here's another picture with a 50p piece, a standard visual clue in cases like this, at least if you live where I do. 

In this one, the crate is standing on a box file. Everyone knows how big a box file is. Maybe that'll help.

Mrs Bhagpuss gave me this little collection for Christmas last year. Or maybe it was my birthday. And maybe it was the year before. It wasn't that long ago, I know that much.

Hang on... I ought to be able to date it by the albums because at the time she commissioned it, the guy who made it put in every official album Lana had made, plus a couple she hadn't. There's the Lizzie Grant one and another that was only ever released in Germany. 

He was nothing if not thorough and I really ought to include his name and contact details in case anyone wants to get him to do their favorite artist, only I don't know what they are. Maybe I'll ask Mrs Bhagpuss and edit them in later.

She's very fond of miniaturized objects like this and she'd had all of David Bowie's albums done by the same guy a few years ago. That one's down in the kitchen on a shelf. 

We used to play a game where she'd swap them around and ask me what was at the front and I'd guess. I used to get it right a disturbingly high percentage of the time. We haven't played that game for a while.

The level of detail is astonishing. Not only are the covers correct, front and back, but every tiny sleeve contains a tiny vinyl album, complete with an even tinier label in the center. About the only thing that's missing is the hole in the middle.

Looking at the albums now, I see they're completely up to date, thanks to Lana's latest still not having appeared yet. Her most recent is Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which came out in March 2023 and that's there, so it looks like I must have gotten this as a present either the same year or the year after. 

I'd guess I've had it for nearer two years than one but you know what my memory's like. And anyway,  it's so much a part of my daily life now, it feels like I've had it forever. I look at it often and it does, as per Krikket's suggestion, always make me smile.  

I wonder if the guy who made it has a service where he sends out updates whenever a new album comes out? If he doesn't, he should think about it.

[Edit: I was talking to Mrs. Bhagpuss about this post and she pointed out the lovely, white wooden crate was made by her, not the guy who makes the albums. He supplies them in a perfectly functional but nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing plastic crate. I'm not sure she told me that when she gave them to me but I thought I'd better mention it.]

Small Bunny, Big Eyes (And Ears. And Feet. And Fingers. Wait... Rabbits Have Fingers?)

Genuinely super-short post today as I try to stay vaguely in touch with Blaugust through a very (For me.) busy few days. I didn't have much of an idea for something to write about and then I saw this at Nerdy Bookahs. 

According to Paeroka, in addition to her recent community singalong Low Stakes, Hot Takes, Krikket also suggested a kind of mirror-image theme, Small Joys, Big Smiles. 

I did consider joining in with the hot takes but when it came to it, I couldn't summon up even the tiny amount of vitriol needed to rant about anything trivial enough to count. I know, right? I don't understand it either! It's just being put on the spot, I guess. 

When I saw Paeroka's post tonight, though, I knew instantly what I could bring the table for Show and Tell this time. I'm sitting here looking right at it!

And seriously, joys don't come any smaller than this one. Wait a sec - let me measure it...

Five centimeters exactly. Or two inches if you're still living in the twentieth century. Or America. That's the same length as the first two joints of my index finger.

Of course, you all know what I'm talking about because he's up there at the top of the post. No point trying to keep up the mystery. There is none.

Well, except what he is and where I got him. The first is quite easy. He's the Vaillant Hare. No, me either, or not until I googled him. And now I know far more than I wanted to. 

For a long time I thought he was the mascot of a chain of garages or fuel stations but it turns out he's
actually the front-bunny for a hot water and heating company called Vaillant Group, about whom I know nothing and intend to keep it that way. Until this minute I had no idea he was still working. I'd assumed he was an artefact of an older, softer, sillier era. And judging by what the current incarnation looks like, I think I was right.

I don't know the age or origin of my little mascot, which I have always called, adn plan to go on calling, the Vaillant Bunny, even though I ought to know better after reading Raising Hare, a book I may have mentioned in a previous post. )Actually, I think I may have mentioned the Vaillant Bunny before, too... nope... search says not.)

Hare or rabbit, he looks fifties or sixties to me although it's more than likely they just never bothered to change the design until after the millennium.

I didn't buy him. I found him. I can't remember where but it was in the street, I think, and I have a feeling it was in France. I've always liked to pick up odd things and pop them in my pocket as I'm out and about. Mrs Bhagpuss does it too. It's amazing what people drop.

I also can't remember how long I've had him but it's a long time. Certainly more than a decade. He lives on the stand of my monitor, along with a whole load of clutter. You can see from the very meta photo, with this post on the screen, just how very messy my desk is - and believe me I cleaned it up a little for the shot.

You can also see from the close-up that he's quite dusty. I didn't realise until I took his photo just now. I'll give him a bit of a brush-down after I finish this.

I've sometimes said, not entirely unseriously, that if there was a fire, he'd be the first thing I'd grab. Of course it would have to be a fire that started while I was at my desk but that's a fairly likely scenario, given how much time I spend here.

Why he brings me so much joy is hard to explain. It's partly his expression, which looks somewhat crazed, along with the way he's pointing at a picture of himself, as though to say "That's me! Don't you know who I am?" It's also his outfit, which I now realise is probably meant to be workman's overalls but which I've always thought makes him look like the disgraced ex-presenter of a children's TV show, now reduced to shilling for a gas station somewhere out in the boondocks.

About now it's probably starting to become obvious I could easily busk a couple of thousand words on the subject, as if anyone ever doubted it. I'm not sure that would be in anyone's interest, mine or yours, so I'm going to stick to what I said at the start and keep this super-short. 

What? No, it's not! It's not even 800 words yet! Okay, well, yes, it probably is now...

I'd better stop. 

...except to say there's another first-rate example of Small Joys, Big Smiles hiding in that picture of my desk. If I'm still stuck for something to write about tomorrow, I might tell you what it is.

Hmm. Actually, now I look closely, there are two...

Okay, now I really am going to stop! 

Footnote To The Previous Post...

Not to start an entirely different post but...

You know what? The hell with it! This is long enough to qualify as a post in its own right, so why not? 

Blimey Charlie!  You'd have thought it would be simple enough to get an AI to draw a picture of three kids in a trench-coat, right? I mean, how hard could it be?

I started out at NightCafe with a prompt ripped straight out of the text of the post - "three kids in a raincoat trying to get in to the cinema to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon" to which I added "magazine illustration, 1950s, black and white line art, cartoon, New Yorker style". I left all settings on default.

Running that through HiDream I1 Fast got me the very nice illustration at the top (Not the top of this post. This is the footnote. This post.) with the flawless typography and the unarguably accurate interpretation of what I'd asked for. I mean, yes, that is "three kids in a raincoat". A raincoat each. My bad for not specifying one raincoat between the lot of them, I guess.

I tried the same model four more times, using variations such as "three kids standing on each other's shoulders inside a single raincoat, pretending to be one adult, in a raincoat" (Second image.) and "three kids, standing on each other's shoulders, wearing a single trench-coat, pretending to be one adult" (Third image.) but every time it gave me three separate kids, only now without the movie title, which I'd left untouched in the prompt.

I gave up trying to get HiDream to understand what I wanted and tried half a dozen other models, from the newest and most sophisticated of the non-Pro versions like Google Imagen 4.0 fast to older ones supposedly tuned to produce comic-style images like ArthemyComics v 5.0. 

The newer models gave me something that looked very similar to HiDream, except for Imagen, which gave me two kids in separate trench-coats, except that one of them seems to have her feet on back-to-front. That could be an indication that there are two kids under there, only she's exactly the same height as the kid next to her and he really looks like just one person. Here, have a look for yourself and see what you think.

Also the typography is wrong. Not very impressive from Google, there.

The older models were much, much worse. Neither of them stacked the kids up and one of them didn't bother with any kids at all, preferring to give me what looked like an adult super-villain in a trench-coat and some kind of bizarre, adult mutant in a short jacket. You don't want to see it. Trust me. 

Or the other model's attempt, which was at least two kids, just not kids from this planet. And not on each others' shoulders, either. And only one of them was wearing a trench-coat. 

Oh, alright then...

Now you wish you hadn't asked, don't you? That was by Rabbit v7, by the way.

I was a bit miffed by this point but the HiDream pictures were at least  pleasant illustrations so I decided to use them for the post. But then I couldn't leave it alone so I thought I'd google the general idea of "three kids in a trench-coat" to see if I could find a specific reference to give the AIs as a guide. 

And do you know what? It appears to be a lot more obscure in origin than I thought.  There doesn't seem to be all that much agreement on the first time it appears - the Little Rascals gets mentioned, as does Disney's 1937 Snow White. For examples, Vince Adultman from Bojack Horseman gets a lot of play, which is a pretty damn meta way of trying to explain the thing, if you ask me.

Clearly none of that was going to help, although I did try throwing the Bojack reference into one of the prompts. Didn't work. 

Finally, I had the bright idea of asking ChatGPT to draw the image for me, only before I let it try I was going to ask it if it knew the trope. If it could describe the concept, maybe it could draw it. Or get one of its AI pals to do it, anyway.

Me: Are you familiar with the trope of two (Or three) small children, standing on each others' shoulders inside a large trench-coat so as to pretend to be an adult? 

ChatGPT: Yes! That’s a well-known comedic trope.

It usually involves two or three children (sometimes even small animals or cartoon characters) stacking themselves vertically, hiding inside a long trench coat, overcoat, or robe in order to pass as an adult. The idea is that they can sneak into places children normally aren’t allowed—like bars, nightclubs, or secret meetings—or trick authority figures.

A few things that often come with the trope:

The “adult” looks unnaturally tall and awkward, with strange proportions.

Their voice gives them away (either squeaky, multiple voices arguing, or poorly disguised deep voice).

They often struggle with walking smoothly, balancing, or reaching for things.

It’s usually played for slapstick comedy when they get exposed (the coat falls apart, one kid sneezes, etc.).

It shows up a lot in cartoons (Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Spongebob, etc.), comics, sitcoms, and even films. Sometimes it’s done straight, sometimes it’s parodied as a ridiculously transparent disguise.

Do you want me to dig up some specific well-known examples of this trope in media?

I didn't want it to do that. I wanted it to draw me a picture. And it did. It's the third image in the post. (Not this post, obviously. But I didn't need to expain that, did I?)

And it's approximately what I asked for, although I'd have preferred it without the extra leg. Also, I'd have preferred a good cartoon, which this isn't. It's about as perfunctory as you could get and still be recognizable. 

Also, ChatGPT took ages to produce it. So long, in fact, that I was starting to think I'd have to log out and try again because something had obviously gone wrong. I must be spoiled by NightCafe, which takes maybe five seconds at most to produce a result. This felt like ten times that at least.

All things considered, I'm certain that if I could draw even passably well I wouldn't be bothering with AI at all for anything like this. I'd have been able to knock out three or four decent spot illustrations in the time all of that took (A couple of dozen if you include how long it's take me to write this footnote!) 

And finally, I just generated a new image for the top of this post, now it's going out on its own, and just bloody look at it! It's not even close! 

The prompt was "two kids, standing on each other's shoulders, wearing a single trench-coat, pretending to be one adult, like Vince Adultman in Bojack Horseman, trying to get in to the cinema to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon magazine illustration, 1950s, color, line art, cartoon, New Yorker style".

I got an alien and an adult in trnechcoats and a kid in what looks like a Norfolk jacket. 

Thanks very much, Stable Core.