Today was a computer spring cleaning day. This is where I go through the computers and clean out cruft, update apps, do all the additional software updates needed, and check for basic maintenance stuff. I finally updated the OS on the headless Mac Mini server from Sierra to Monterey (which is the last version that little dude from 2014 can support). It’s still running strong, no issues at all. To go with the updates I wanted to change the wallpaper, I recently saw these Ultramarine Haze wallpapers from Basic Apple Guy and am a big fan. No banding in the gradient; great colors.

I also saw this app, Supercharge, pop up on my radar this week. Some cool things here. The shortcut for “close visible notifications” being the one thing I see that I really wish Apple build into the operating system. I already use Keyboard Maestro to do this. I assign keyboard shortcuts to click the right spots on the screen to close notifications and click the “reply” option on messages. It’s super helpful when one comes in and I’m in the middle of typing to just hit Control-ESC to close it, or Command-ESC to quick reply to a message. Why these don’t have system wide shortcuts is beyond me. Of course that would mean needing to traverse the jungle of pain that is the Settings app. But, I digress.

Maxwell Zeff, writing for TechCrunch:

It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.”

Parker Ortolani:

OpenAI dropped an all-new image generation system for ChatGPT today and man is it good. One of the biggest problems with artificially generated images has been the inability to generate accurate text within them. There have historically been problems with inaccurate characters, spelling, or even complete graphical errors. Today’s update to image generation with GPT-4o fixes these. You can now generate charts, signs, logos, word marks, text graphics, pretty much anything you can think of with ease. It nails spelling, seems to set type well, and generally abides by your instructions.

The latest update from OpenAI does a speed run through all the company’s greatest hits. It’s impressive. And it’s morally and legally, at best, in a gray area. The Ghibli stylized images all over social media lack art, lack soul, but are a technically impressive achievement. The kind of thing you’d use as a forum avatar but never hang on your wall. A novelty.

A few years back Hannah commissioned a hand drawn piece of art of her, me, and the cats for a present. It’s framed and in my office on a shelf I can see from my desk. It brings me joy every time I look over and see our old condo and the time, attention, and care that went into the creation of it. Not just from the artist, but from Hannah in working with the artist to craft something very much us.

I tossed some images to GPT and it generated a Ghibli version of us. It wasn’t bad. It butchered the Funkos that were in the background pretty badly. But it lacked character. And I didn’t like how it rendered my body. I then asked it to create something in the style of Bill Watterson. That it balked at. Told me it couldn’t do it. Why it would take instructions to copy/steal from Ghibli but not the famed Calvin and Hobbes artist, is … odd? But at the end of the day it’s an LLM, and if you can describe it without using the magic words it’ll still give you want you want:

Again, not bad. Kinda fun? A passing resemblance to the style. But it feels more like a paint by numbers template used by a caricaturist with less style. And it lacks any of the punch, the actual artistic flourish and genius of Bill Watterson’s art.

And the Funkos are still hilariously rendered.

I saw Simon Willison (one of my favorite blogs writing about AI) recently added a new “notes” feature to his website. He credits Molly White’s micro notes feed as inspiration. As someone who also recently added a similar feature to my blog, I gotta say, I really would love to see this trend continue to spread. It’s been fun and freeing to have a place to post little random one-offs again without the baggage of social media.