That's Gneiss! #202 ~ Halloween-o-rama
Plus: Candy nightmares
Hello friends!
Halloween is practically upon us, and as is often the case here in the Pacific Northwest the weather is expected to be awful. We went from unseasonably warm weather (and smoke) to drenching rain and wind overnight. I’m not complaining! The last few months have been so dry and the rain is welcome - even though our side yard has turned into a shoe-soaking puddle, since the ground is too hard for the rain to sink in.
After the smoke cleared and between rainstorms, I was able to get my Halloween decorations up. I wasn’t able to finish pruning the snowball plant so built my “haunted forest” with the sticks that I had.
I’m pretty pleased with how things turned out.
It looks really great at night, and Rowland agrees.
Once Halloween has passed, I’ll swap out the lights for the rest of the season. We’ve entered the dark time and the lights really cheer us up.
I’ll share just one more picture of neighborhood decorations. A few doors down from us they go all out, and really put effort into making decorations by hand. The tree on the left started as a chicken-wire form covered with spray foam of some sort, then evolved into its final moss-covered state. The graves are a nice touch! I’ve posted more pictures of this place over on Instagram.
The skeleton storytime house I shared in the last newsletter won the prize for best theme this year - I was happy for that. It was very clever!
A few days ago our library system hosted an online program about the history of candy. It was a lot of fun, and quite fascinating.
The presenter was Darlene Lacey, proprietor of the Candy Wrapper Museum. She’s been collecting candy wrappers since she was young and is incredibly knowledgeable about the different manufacturers and types of candy. She talked about the emergence of candy through the decades and let’s just say I had a pretty good trip down memory lane.
I would love to become an expert on some esoteric subject and have the ability to talk off the cuff like her. I’ll share the link to the presentation recording in a future newsletter when it’s available.
Speaking of candy, AI Weirdness has not one but TWO posts about candy full of bizarre AI generated images. In AI Generated Halloween Candy, she asked DALL-E2 to recreate some popular brands.
Oh dear. Let’s see if it did any better when she asked for the most popular Halloween Candy by State…
Well, I suppose Colorado does have a lot of trees in it. Beware the cursed candy corn, who knows what spell may be cast upon you if you eat those. Not surprisingly, candy corn showed up frequently in one form or another in many of the images. It’s fascinating to see how DALL-E2 pulls both text and imagery related to each state, sometimes more obvious than others.
DALL·E 2 has learned the relationship between images and the text used to describe them. It uses a process called “diffusion,” which starts with a pattern of random dots and gradually alters that pattern towards an image when it recognizes specific aspects of that image.
I have mixed feelings about AI generated images, and how they’re used. At some point I may play around with it a bit, but for now I’ll enjoy the really garbled attempts it makes at creating candy brands or cat Halloween costumes.
Not sure what’s going on back in Ohio.
Can’t say that I’ve ever seen these in the stores here, and I’m not sure I want to!
Enough of that silliness for now.
Do you have a favorite type of candy, or nostalgic memories of candy from your childhood?
Just a couple of things before I wrap up for today.
Nolan and Mia are flying to South America right this moment as I type. They left for Ecuador early this morning, and will spend the next several weeks botanizing and visiting with friends in different locations. When I talked with him yesterday he was excited that on this trip they’ll see jungle, mountains, and desert environments. I will share updates from their adventures in future newsletters.
I managed a few more of the October drawing challenge prompts, but didn’t knock myself out trying to finish them all when I didn’t feel like it. I might go back to a few, and have two to finish painting. I’ve really enjoyed playing with my watercolors on these.
It’s time for me to get on with day. I’ve got embroidery to do!
You’ll have to wait until next time to find out about that.
Cheers!
That creep baby doll!
My partner saw the AI "Wishisn" Halloween candy, and commented, "oh yeah, Wishisns! I remember that -- they tasted like prawns and coconut! They also had an avocado one, but that was kinda gross!" Anyway, the AI-generated candies are a hoot. One of these days, though, they'll outstrip any of our efforts. . .