Friends of the Armchair Traveller

  "caught in time" A little movie made with a lot of assistance from my AI imaging slaves!  All of them! It's too complicated to tell you every single step in the process today,  but I'll respond to questions later.  The best part is having my sister Chris writing great music for me whenever I need it! Hope you like! pt

                                     NOIR Made with a great deal of assistance various from AI engines  and my friend  MR.GRIM All will be explained later, maybe... pt

  Over the past few days I've been trying to create a modern parable based upon the New Testament story... "The Flight into Egypt"  I've used both the new Luma Dream Machine and some of Luma's competitors, all to no avail. What I get back are comical crazy cartoon-like jumbles instead of a a serious representation of my prompt which often includes a picture as well as carefully worded text. So here's one of my first visual prompts, courtesy wonderful copyright-free Rembrandt! I fed this image into Luma with some accompanying text to guide it towards my intended output  "Joseph leads Mary and Jesus through the rubble in the war zone of Gaza" and here's what came out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YBvW50MCQPuyGg8zKOJI5wRyrSk53Mc2/view?usp=drive_link Starting with a different image I tried another test: An elderly man dressed in historical Middle Eastern clothing leads a donkey which carries his wife and child. They pass through a war zone of a...

          Eyeless in Gaza...   Footnotes:   I wanted to leave these images up clear of any text. My friend Richard suggested we should acknowledge the sources so I've made a big effort to track them down out of respect for the incredible job they do, and especially for their courage, working in the dangerous zones where so many aid workers and journalists have lost their lives. But some are not credited on the pages of publications I drew them from. Here's a list I've just completed, numbered from the image No.1 at top of page down to the final one, No.9  1. Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu 2: Mohammed Dahman/AP 3.  P hotograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Getty Images 4. Photo:         WFP/Ali Jadallah 5.                       April 18, 2024. (AFP) 6: Mahmoud Issa: Reuters: Redux 7. Photographer: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images 8.  P hotographer: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Get...

  from  Alexandra Kipourgos FRAGMENTS OF MY DREAMS

Recently I posted this: From Richard: We knew it was coming, but it's still hard to believe                                                                                                      February 20, 2024 In that blog Richard introduced me to SORA which I found astonishing. Some of you may also have been as astonished as I was.  Since then Richard sent me a new lead on "LUMA DREAM MACHINE" which offers in some respects more than what SORA did. Here's a link to their main page which has been going viral: https://lumalabs.ai/dream-machine Well I 've been playing with Luma for a few days now, and to-ing and fro-ing with Richard and Alix... some of the results took my breath away, some were totally disappointing. Let's start with...

  My brother Peter has invited me to write a story about  my day in Pompeii with Carly, my daughter, so I’m going  to attempt to tell you here in writing about the joy and  the pain of our day there together. Having done this, he has given me the great gift of revisiting that day. The absolute ecstasy, pain and hilarity that we encountered on our outing to Pompeii in 2014. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a desire to visit  Pompeii. I’ve read books about it. I’ve watched films  and docos. I was in Sydney once, and the previous night  I’d been to the “Gay and Lesbian Sleaze Ball”. I knew  that there was a Pompeii exhibition at the museum. I  was wandering down Oxford Street and realised I  was around the corner from the exhibition. I was  alone and had the time. I remember standing in line  waiting to get to the ticket box and go in to view the  exhibition, when all of a sudden I just burst into tears. So much s...