What I Did This Week: The End of August Wrap-up Edition

Wow, it’s been a long month, but personally, it hasn’t been too awful for me. The last two weeks especially have been interesting. I’ve been assisting my roommate on her website, it’s been a bit of a process. She’s been trying to put the cart before the horse for a lot of it, trying to add a whole bunch of features to it before getting the core functionality down. “Make it so that people can buy things first, before you worry about how many things there are to buy.” Was my advice on that.

I tweaked my text-generation AI, added more data to its training algorithm, and have been able to get some closer to human results, though still distinctly strange to native English speakers. Now I’ve moved on to beginning the test phase, which is to produce text, blog it with affiliate links, and to see how the blog does. Of course, the test will be slightly tainted by the multi-purpose function of the blog, actually functioning as my roommate’s web store, where she and I have been putting up things like this, her first 3D printable character for tabletop RPG play, so that when you buy your wizard robes, you can buy a matching character figurine as well.

In any case, the test will still be able to show me if the concept would at least work in theory. I chose the fashion blog niche because of the large amount of affiliate linking, and the number of different name brands that are can be referred to. Separated page view counts, since most of the pages are unlinked to each other at the moment, I can still at least see if the posts generate natural external traffic.

Of course, there are a number of possible applications, but before I can really get into it, I’ll need to work on an AI form that produces non-text content to accompany any additional tests, so that I can see how AI generated media does in the format. Of my considerations, I am torn between using image generation to create particular types of images to accompany posts, fixing my music generating AI so that it produces more than a single frequency, or creating an AI that would train on playing complex video games live. By doing this, I can create a process of constant content creation, which will hopefully draw a passive income.

Which, oh, by the way, if there’s inquiries about me using my algorithms for you, you should leave a comment below, so we can chat.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the things that I know. It’s hard for me to know exactly what I’m an expert in, since I know so many things, that it feels like I just have a solid understanding on how the world fundamentally works and is pieced together. That can be pretty difficult to verbalize, but I’ve realized that a lot of people just don’t know a lot of the things that I know, or have access to the same resources that I do.

So, I started writing an e-book to sell on Clickbank. Am I proud that I will be hawking my wares there? Not particularly, but I am proud of the things that I know, and it seems like a solid way to do the one thing I am good at doing, which is knowing a thing, then letting other people exploit me to profit on that knowledge, haha. I was mostly surprised that I managed to get most of it done in my first week.

I’ve done a ton of reading, I finished listening like five Discworld audiobooks with my roommate while we were working. I finished a number of 3D printable pendants, with another several coming out later this week, though after looking at the website, there’s still definitely some work to do on making it look a little bit nicer.

On the Post Office

Oh I get so many thoughts rattling around in my brain that it ends up being like a bingo machine, you never know what little random thought will come out. I end up having thoughts and ideas faster than I can write them down, and while I can seem to vocalize the topics pretty well, when it comes to actually getting them on the page, I often find myself drawing a blank, or feeling like the things that I am connecting feel insignificant.

At the moment, right now, I’m thinking about Terry Prachett’s “Going Postal”. I’m thinking about the state of the post office at the beginning of the book, with piles of undelivered mail. Mail that called out to be delivered. A populace where mail is unreliable, and there are only a few private package carriers. Underfunded, overworked, and then overwhelmed, a negative feedback cycle, where decreased faith means that the post office falls into disuse. In the book, the post office is saved by the appointment of a new postmaster general, one with vision, who restructured the post office, and funding it, incorporating new technology and existing infrastructure into its operations to make it work like it did in the days of yore.

At the moment, we’re not quite to the point where people have forgotten the mail, but the post office, especially with some of the recent cutbacks to the mail capability. How can people reliably send and receive bills, packages, medicines, or even animals, if they get indefinitely delayed. These especially costly delays, which can even result in deaths are the kinds of things that can quickly deteriorate confidence in the institution. If the negative cycle continues for long, such a large institution will not just have to be cut back, if it isn’t adequately supported now, it’ll end up having to be dismantled, sold off to private interests, even though, such a thing is fundamentally unnecessary, as we’ve seen with the support given to corporations in need of bailout.

What’s important to remember is that the utility of the post office goes far beyond the number of dollars that it brings in, but rather the service that it provides to the citizenry of our country, and that the value of the institution is multiplied by the value of all of the enormous volume of mail that it handles. Of course we should remember that the post office is one of the largest employers in the country, but more than that, so many businesses are built on the reliable shipping times promised by the service. Whole industries will cease to be viable if the delays that we’ve began to see become more permanent.

This will of course, have consequences. The most prominent of those being the shunting of public mail onto private carriers, giving corporations de facto control over postal service. This will bring with it increased overall shipping costs as more companies have to develop last-mile infrastructure to meet customer needs, or will simply neglect delivery areas, or charge astronomical rates to those out of their way.

It could however, be a boon to brick-and-mortar locations, which, since they often use private shipping firms anyway, will be able to capitalize on the increased cost of getting something delivered all the way to your residence. Of course, those lower prices will only incentivize more in-person shopping if the general anxiety about crowding into large buildings with a lot of other people has been overcome.

Big box stores are those who will be most likely to survive in such an environment, and we can expect to see more consolidation of the grocery store sector.

At least places like Amazon might be able to keep prices relatively low by throwing their money around, but this should be a red flag, and a sign of unhealthy market conditions.

Some Stuff I Worked On This Week

Wow, it’s been one heck of a week. I’ve been assisting my roommate with her sites, and we’ve nearly got most of the technical details worked out. Just a matter of making it pretty, and actually adding more content.

For one of her blogs, I’m working on training an AI to generate blog posts, should be interesting if nothing else. I might need more data, but hopefully the initial result will be passable enough to work well. Oh yeah, did I mention that I’ve also got experience programming AI in tensorflow? Well I’m full of surprises, like knowing how to make maps with GIS software.

Well today some of it is finally coming together. AI, blogging, integrated ad platforms. If it works even a little, it’ll be amazing, and there will definitely be more!

A Review of Civilization 6

I love board games, card games, tabletop games, and strategy games. I’ll spend hours thinking about tactics in games. I also love games that can move at a relaxed pace, and games where I can play in unusual ways. This is why I’ve always been drawn to the Civilization games, from the first one that I played, Civilization: Call to Power, up to now, it has been a staple game in my library that I return to when I desire to flex my logical and tactical muscles.

I managed to get a highly discounted copy of the base game shortly after it came out, and even managed to get a couple of hard copies of the base game on clearance last year. Since then, I’ve played on and off, but had refrained from actually posting some kind of review. I had enjoyed the game, but I’d been glad that I got it below full price, as it had felt a bit lackluster, fun, but like it was missing something.

However, with the barrage of content that the developers are pumping out with their DLC, I’m glad that I bought the season pass early on, because now, with all of the additions, the game finally feels like a real upgrade to the earlier games. Now with the city district building, I could understand that reworking the mechanics of the game that much would require more stripped down version to start, but the lack of functions makes the game feel kind of empty. It reminded me of the initial release of Stellaris, which was also good, but after a bit of play felt a bit empty.

Time from release and continued updates to the game however have filled out both, and now Civilization 6 feels more like it’s come into its own. Expanded religion, more civilizations, copies of the same civilization with new abilities, new victory methods, the ability to take cities through loyalty instead of by force, and now we’ve even got secret societies.

I’ve had some time to play through the game a few times how I like, long and slow, and while the game is pretty poorly balanced, the AI has difficulty taking advantage of their bonuses, but it’s still quite fun! The makers have mastered their creation of “one more turn syndrome” making the game nearly impossible to quit once you’ve started. Additionally, they’ve finally added the game for Android, if you want to play with me, you should message me!

With more updates planned, I’m excited to throw Civilization 6 into my regular mix of games from now on!

Circle of the Sun

The mysterious magical clothier brings you down a hall off of the domed main room. A long hall that seemed to gently curve off into infinity, like the reflection of two mirrors. The clothier explains to you that off of the hallway are the guilds that are clothed by them, each leading off to the […]

Circle of the Sun

Introduction

You enter the large, opulent, domed room, lit up in a rainbow of iridescent colors reflecting off of exotic fabrics hanging from clotheslines across the dome. From behind a wall of hanging fabrics steps out the fabled clothier of the mages. Someone who understood the complex needs of the everyday mage. Long periods of time […]

Introduction

What I Did This Week – 8/14/2020

Another week with a lot outside of delivery work. I managed to do some, but the main problem was that my main debit card expired, and I still haven’t received the replacement in the mail yet, so I don’t have access to most of my money, so that’s fun. In the meantime, being unable to buy much in the way of gas, or much else, I’ve had to be pretty cautious in my spending, including how much I go out to work. I would definitely accept donations here. Fortunately, I still have access to the cash app, where I’ll also definitely accept donations at $fenrirgochad. If I can get like $200 or so, that would be enough to get my schedule back up to basically normal.

However, in the meantime, I’ve still been productive, and should have plenty of time to get my new card before it’ll really become a problem. Right, let’s start with the books. I’m about half way through The Analects of Confucius, I finished “Making Money” by Terry Prachett, relistened to “Witches Abroad“, and have gotten a good third of the way through “Unseen Academicals“. I’ve spent a lot of time listing things to sell off on Amazon. It’s getting close to the end of my lease, and I want to reduce the amount of unnecessary stuff to move to my next place, so having duplicate books just feels like a burden.

I did manage to play some video games, though not much. Played some Civilization 6, where I won a couple of relatively short games, and got a chunk of the way through a match where I’ve decided to play a pacifist domination victory, a fun challenge that is actually going quite well. It’s a fun play on cultural victory, which I’m a big fan of, and apparently, Confucius was as well, or would have been, if he’d been able to play I think, with his idea of cultural persuasion, or having a culture that is so appealing that people want to join your society because of its values.

I spent a lot of this week working on helping my roommate work on her new business, and helping not only inspire her, but to help her work on her development workflow for new products. We did the fitting for the first pair of pants, and though it needs a little bit of adjusting, it feels much more comfortable than your typical pair of jeans, and the tightly-woven material will hold up well under normal wear. We’ve worked on building the storefront, and have managed to create a few tangential ideas that will probably contribute to the feel of her theme and niche.

In particular, she wants to create figurines based on the robe designs that she creates, to 3D print, or to have made by a manufacturer to sell for tabletop groups. I mean, having a figure with a robe that matches your own when you play a tabletop game is just a level of neat immersion that’s difficult to replicate else-wise without an enormous amount of effort on an individual basis.

Her ancillary idea is to do commissions for 3D characters, DND characters, OC’s, which she plans to do in high detail, and for additional payment, will even animate! You can contact her about doing those commissions here. I’ll be helping her with that, especially with the animation bit, since that will require doing rigging, and more technically detailed work. However, she now that she’s figured out how to generally do sculpting in VR as well, she’s fallen in love with it, and has spent a ton of time working on ideas she’s had the past few days buried in VR. Hah, I’m almost worried that she’ll neglect her sewing projects if she enjoys it too much. At least she’s having fun. She needs her own amazing computer to work on, and we need more space to work in, but it at least will work for now.

Hopefully by this time next week, or rather, when I do my next post in hopefully a week, I’ll have update photos, a page to officially buy commissions, and maybe even other things for people to buy. Oh, the other thing that we’ll need to pick up at some point is a 3D printer, though I’m not sure that we have enough room to get a decent one, at least not without making a bit more room first.

What I did this week 8/4/2020: The Business Stuff

This is part two of a two part post, read the first part here.

So first, my delivery work… It was non-existent, unfortunately. I had a lot of issues with roommates, being on call to drive a friend home from the hospital, and irregular sleep, I just could not gather the willpower to go out and do any deliveries. It was only just tonight that I managed to get myself to go out and do a few deliveries before doing these update posts. How did those deliveries go? Well, I ended up accidentally not stopping at a right on red, and getting a bunch of camera flashes in my face, so I’ll be looking forward to the ticket in the mail. That’s what happens when you take far deliveries to unfamiliar areas in the middle of the night, I guess. On top of that, the deliveries that I have done have generally had lower tips than early on in the pandemic, a trend that I predicted would happen way back here, and while I was pretty pessimistic in February, it still ended up being worse than I could have imagined. The money is still pretty decent, about $15-18/hour, I just can’t seem to really get myself to go do it much. Going to try to make up for that a little bit this week by just working a lot. Rent is paid though, so the pressure isn’t too high at the moment, though I’ve got my phone bill coming up in just over a week, so I gotta work some in the meantime.

It’s also been difficult to work as the card that I usually use for paying for things like gas, and groceries, and food, has just expired, and I haven’t gotten the replacement card in the mail yet. This is also the account that the money that I do make gets deposited to, so I currently only have access to the cash tips that I stash away for such emergencies, though that is already running low.

Outside of my direct delivery work, I’ve spent most of my time doing a few things, the first is research for my roommate, who is selling a bunch of her stuff to cut down on clutter. I’ve sold a couple of things for her, so I should get a bit of money from that, and hopefully the listings will sell pretty quickly, so I can get paid for that work.

For my roommate’s business that she’s starting, I’ve spent a lot of this week helping her set up her Amazon Store, the separate accounts for the business, to make accounting easier, and helping her figure out each of the steps she needs to get her sewing business up and running. Now, there’s still a lot more to go through with her, but she’s getting closer to having a storefront where she will actually have things to sell, and hopefully it’ll be popular enough to setup a real supply chain. As such, her rapid progress means that I will also soon have wizard robes to model, and there will be pictures, you can be sure!

That brings me to my programming projects. The original project file for my marble playground game thing was becoming far too large, since I was using it also to play around with various packages. The project was in the range of taking several minutes to open, with a ton of the files imported just being a waste of space for this particular project. So, I deleted the project, started a new one, and just imported the assets I made and the couple of packages that I actually need for it. Now I just need to finish going through the Oculus Sample Framework, so I know how to use all of their wonderful, pre-built utilities without having to go far for VR assets. Do you know how long it would take me to make a basic pair of hands, let alone animations and functionalities for those hands? Too long, I’ve got too many game ideas to deal with those low-level issues. Sure, someday, if I’ve got a real game company under my belt, I will absolutely have people make custom hands for my more ambitious VR ideas. However, now is about function over form, meaning, does the game actually function? At the moment, the answer to that is, no, so this next week I’ll have to make all the objects able to be grabbed and moved, with the track pieces staying in place, and the marbles not. I’ll also need to go to a dollar store or something, and buy a bag of marbles so I can record audio so that it’s not just awkward silence. I should also consider recording a very long jam track, similar to dwarf fortress’s fortress track, so that I have background music for it.

Lastly, I think, other than the idea that I had for a pretty simple game this week, that being a giant VR maze with trippy geometry, and an interesting sky, would be the sculpt that I have been working on. Unfortunately, with people here more this week, and a lot of the floor space filled with things for my roommate’s business projects, diving into VR do work on my sculpture has been limited. Now, I have done some work on it, in fact, I colored the first couple of major segments, and now am mostly left with the detailed line coloring. It looks really good so far, but it took almost 6 hours to color what I’ve done so far, and looks like it may take another 6-10 of coloring to finish the main eye. Once I’m finished with that, I’ll do the outer eyes, which will be much smaller and much less detailed, and then finally export time, with possible renderings to come with interesting lighting and whatnot. It was quite amusing, on Facebook, someone asked me what it was for. What is art for but to be seen? Maybe I’ll sell it to a developer, or an artist who wants to use the base model for something. Maybe I’ll use it myself, who knows? But I’m definitely going to show it off.

Anyways, I think that should be just about everything for this week. I was feeling really depressed, like I hadn’t really done anything, but that was my mind tricking me because I just didn’t make much money this week, and didn’t work my traditional gig. When I look back at this post, and part one, I realize that I actually did a bunch of stuff, and that I really didn’t mess around much, so I feel better about how the week went in retrospect. Hopefully next week I’ll have a couple more books finished, a lot of podcasts listened to, some projects closer to being ready to be seen, and manage to get myself out and working more.

What I Did This Week 8/4/2020: The Personal Stuff

Well, it’s been about a week, so it’s time for one of these update posts again. So, since last week, I’ve managed to get a few things done. First, I finally posted my review for Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, which you can read here. As for other writing, I haven’t done much, except for jot down some ideas for tabletop RPG campaigns, in addition, I resurrected my tabletop blog from its deceased state. I would probably get more traffic to both sites if I redesign the sites to be more aesthetically appealing, but I already am filling my days pretty thoroughly. In fact, I’ve had little time to enjoy things like video games, despite the amazing summer sales I’ve seen, because I’ve generally been spending so much time on projects.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t as productive as I’d like to be. You see, I’m a night owl, I do most of my working at night, and I am least distracted and can focus on work when my roommates are out at their jobs at the Amazon warehouse. However, this week, I’ve been dragged from my work several times to get them from work early, which, in combination with sleep deprivation, has made it more difficult to attend my many irons in the fire.

So on the podcast front, I actually managed to stay pretty caught up this week, with my favorite this week being the conclusion to the 4-part series that Revisionist History did about General Curtis LeMay and napalm. In all, it was another 30 or so hours of pods, making it a bit easier to keep up with than last week’s 40ish.

Now for books. I think that this is most definitely where I made the most progress in a single week. I got through basically all of Making Money this week, and I started on the Analects of Confucius. Now, that would be enough, but while visiting a thrift shop this week, I found a quite old hardcover copy of “The Scottish Chiefs” from 1949, that includes illustrations from N.C.Wyeth. As such, I’ve also started that. I’ll also be starting the next Discworld novel after Making Money, which I believe is Unseen Academicals, which I’m pretty excited for. It’s been a while in the series since there was a book about the wizards of Discworld, and from what I’ve glanced at, also includes the lovable Rincewind.

Wow, so I just realized how much I’ve already written about this week, and I still haven’t gotten to the stuff that I worked on project-wise, so it looks like I’ll be making this a two-part post! Part two is now out, and you can read it here!