Friends of the Armchair Traveller

This arrived today in my Instagram account from a young man named Osama. His little sister was terribly injured by shrapnel from Israeli soldiers. Here's from Osama in his own words: My name is Osama, I'm an 18-year-old, and today I find myself responsible for a family of six under unbearable circumstances. We lost my father, and with his passing, we lost our support and security. I now live with my mother and five siblings in Gaza, amidst loss and deprivation. But the greatest pain isn't hunger or displacement; it's the daily cries I hear from my little sister, who is only three years old. A Wound That Won't Heal My little sister, who should be running and playing, suffers from a severe abdominal injury. Every night, her cries of pain turn to muffled screams. Due to the lack of medical resources and the blockade, obtaining her medication and treatment has become nearly impossible for us. Why do we need your help? Today, I stand helpless as I watch my sister wither ...

We have just released "The Sitting Room"   which is the second chapter of "Adventures with Stella". This scene was more complex to create with Ai than our first venture:  " Dining With Stella" . Once again this new piece was made with a great deal of assistance from my friend Alix Jackson.  We hope all our friends will enjoy our little trip into the world of Ai imaging and moviemaking.  pt  & aj    2/5/2026

  A collaboration between JiiLii Ai Design and me. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time working with different AI platforms. I think I've tried about half of them. I’ve gravitated more towards Kling Ai in the past few months and discovered there are many great Ai artists on that platform. I started liaising with a few artists and formed new connections. Then I started playing around again on Instagram which I left when I gave up Facebook in 2021. In my new experiment of delving into Instagram I came across the work of “ JiiLii Ai Design” . I also discovered some of the work of this Artist under another heading “JiiLii Ai Art” . I was amazed by so many items JiiLii posted there, still images, animé s, “collages” and short movie clips.  A few examples of these items: View this post on Instagram A post shared by JiiLii AI Design - JiiLii (@jiiliiaidesign) View this post on Instagram A post shared by JiiLii AI Design - JiiLii (@jiiliiaidesi...

 Two years ago many friends introduced me to AI bots,  Sora and Runway and Luma Dream Machine.   There were some others whose names I have forgotten. I tried out experiments on all of them but I was not impressed much with any of them, there were so many glitches, artefacts, the wrong number of fingers on a hand, the wrong number of legs on a horse, until about the middle of 2024. In mid 2024 I was working on a new idea which I'm presenting today.  "Dining With Stella"    I made this short in conjunction with my good friend Alix Jackson. Alix is an animator who also knows a lot of technical things I didn't know then, and I'm still catching up!  We completed an early verision of "Dining With Stella" but I didn't want to release it at the time as it had so many "bugs". I bit the bullet last week and decided to fix it up so we could release it.  We also have more episodes of Stella and Peter in the pipeline, some of which we'll release ...

On "Good Friday" this year I was sitting around enduring the usual Good Friday events, fund raising for the Children's Hospital (a worthy cause), the AFL footy, the clash between my own view of the horror of the religious cultural meaning of Easter (Torture, Death, Resurrection, Hot Cross Buns, the Easter Bunny, Easter Eggs) and my cultural separation from all of that, when I decided to write to my friend Richard and see how he felt on that day. Richard and I have been freinds for just short of 29 years when he was a student in the Doco course I ran at Vic. College of the Arts. We've always had wonderful communication, to and fro, on every topic under the Sun and way beyond the Sun into the depths of Eternity. We often argue from entirely opposite sides, completely different points of view.  I'm deeply irreligious just as he is deeply religious. W e both enjoy vigorous discussion but  we've never had any sort of angry breakdown, we've never hurt each other...

 I Lost my faith Cape Conran, Victoria, March 2025, @Richard Leigh ... in documentaries. When I studied at film school in 1997, I put all my career eggs in the basket of being a Documentary filmmaker. Documentaries had the power to change the world, and us students were all pumped and ready to do just that. One of my VCA colleagues a few years later said, “Documentary filmmaking is all I ever want to do,” but I remember thinking — really? I’d already started getting cynical, even back then. Fast forward to the start of 2026. I realised that I hadn't watched a documentary in years; well nothing longer than about 5 or 10mins anyway. Frankly I found them all a little boring and besides, they were usually preaching to the converted. They always had an agenda, something they were trying to convince me about; so effectively they were just long ads. Why would I waste my time watching? Tell me your point in 30 or 60sec so I can move on with my life. Sure, I still watched a bit of TV drama,...