Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
In case the travel process goes kazoo, I'm nabbing tomorrow's post in today - looks like on June 6th I will be at the meet and greet space Thursday at 2:30pm (Meet-and-Greet Table E Anthony Francis Pasadena – Fountain Foyer), no matter what the sticky post says.
I will have books, and will sign them; hope to see you there.
Zoom zoom.
-the Centaur
Pictured: a gif way back from an old Dragon Con.
Packing today (yesterday), flying tomorrow (today), so no real post for you. Yesterday I got up to drawing one five six and took in pushups and a walk plus Spectral Iron editing, so I'm caught up for yesterday, not so much for today, so I'll need to squeeze in some drawing time. Pictured: me at Dragon Con um ... 2019 ... which is a stand-in for some Nebula-specific post which I can't do until I update the blog backend.
Blogging every day, though. Keeping a regular habit helps.
-the Centaur
So the broken door lock was indeed not a problem either power tool girl or I could have easily handled - it took the locksmith almost forty five minutes to lever, chisel and snip the latch assembly out of the door, using quite a bit of specialized equipment -air pumps and such - to try to create space before finally giving up and applying judicious elbow grease, a wrench and a hammer. When he finally got it out, pieces abruptly tumbled out in a tiny little rain of already-broken parts from deep within the latch assembly.
But the repair itself was cheap, and the same guy offered a great rate to re-key our other locks as well. So we now have easy access to my office again, and a plan for fixing some of the dead old locks around this rambling home. One ugh problem may just have made another ugh problem go away - which suggests that when you're facing a lot of problems, you should just dig in and try to fix them, one by one, until hopefully all those problems go away, leaving you with new problems for a new day.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Downtown Greenville's Falls Park, which is a beautiful place for a walk. Since, in the intervening hour since my last post, I haven't fixed the backend of the blog. Another ugh ...
Blogging every day: Today's exercise was thirty push ups, and probably a walk later, maybe or maybe not at Falls Park. Yesterday's exercise, which I didn't blog, was sixty pushups and an excursion in the attic. Yesterday's read was Neal Asher's PRADOR MOON, which I quite liked; today will be packing for the Nebulas. Yesterday's editing was Dakota Frost #4, SPECTRAL IRON; probably also that today. Drawing is up to one five five, so I need to work in a drawing today, ideally two so I don't have to worry about it while traveling.
Hey folks, another "sticky post" for my next three events: The Nebula Conference, the Embodied AI Workshop, and the Workshop on Unsolved Problems in Social Robot Navigation!
Coming up is the Nebula Conference, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's conference, where again I'll be talking about artificial intelligence and signing books!
There will also be office hours but I think you have to sign up in advance for those, and we have a scheduling snafu regarding those anyway.
After that is the Embodied AI Workshop on June 18th, hosted at CVPR, the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, where I am the lead organizer, though you'll probably only hear me yapping for any extended length of time if you show up in the first ten minutes - I give the intro talk at 8:50am.
Finally is the Workshop on Unsolved Problems in Social Robot Navigation, held at the Robotics, Science and Systems Conference. Our paper deadline is coming up June 7th, and the workshop itself will be held July 19th at RSS in the Netherlands. I'm an organizer for this one, but I'll only be able to attend virtually due to my manager (me) telling me I'm already going to enough conferences this year, which I am.
After that .... Dragon Con!
-the Centaur
Pictured: More from the archives, until I fix the website backend.
Last night was date night, but we also had to climb up into the attic to see what's up with this "leaky" roof. But it's bone dry up there, despite the recent rains, and even though it looks like there might be some damage, it doesn't seem like it can be causing what we're seeing with the drywall damage in the ceiling.
SO: The good news is, we likely don't need to get the whole roof replaced.
BUT: The bad news is, we don't know what's going on, and now need to seek new causes.
It's really easy to catastrophize: we were worried that we'd find a nest of mold up there and need to replace the whole roof. That isn't the problem, so that bullet is dodged. But now we've got a deeper mystery: we have what looks like water damage in an area that is - apparently - dry, with no explanation. And that's the thing about science: one thing can look like another, and causes can be hidden - so you need to take out the time to collect the observations and do the experiments and carefully check your work.
Especially if it can cost you a whole roof.
-the Centaur
Pictured: One from the archives - snow, likely from two years ago, as that frost killed most of that vine.
Got home from Con Carolinas, and in addition to the roof issues and the fridge issues now the door to the garage is kaput. More tomorrow.
Drew today, though.
-the Centaur
Back at Con Carolinas for day two (but once again images from the archives while my blog is getting updated in the background).
Today I was on a lively panel about the "Trials and Tribulations of AI" and if there's anything I could take away from that, it would be that "modern AIs do not check their work, so if you use them, you have to."
There's a whole debate on whether they're "really intelligent" and you probably can bet where I come down on that - or maybe you can't; here goes:
These systems "hallucinate", just like humans are mistaken and make things up, but do so in ways alien to human thought, so if we use them in areas we can't check their work, we must do so with extreme caution.
And then there's the whole RAFT of ethics issues which I will get to another day.
Next up: "Neurodivergence and Writing" at 6:30pm, and "Is THAT even POSSIBLE" at 9:30pm!
Onward!
-the Centaur
Pictured: NOT Con Carolinas - I think this was Cafe Intermezzo.
Journaling: Today's Event: Con Carolinas. Today's Exercise, 30 pushups, planning a walk later today. Today's Drawing: finished one five three yesterday, will tackle one five four after I tackle my fix-my-roof thing.
This is the day after day one five two, but, whatevz, I had to deal with a minor emergency yesterday, so you have to deal with a late post. Regardless, I was at Con Carolinas, at the "Hooked" panel, which went well, and if there's anything I could take away from that panel, it would be the following:
I'm sure I could say more, but I'm not, because I have a leak in a roof to deal with. BUT, since I am not going to be able to post new images for a bit, I'm going to change my strategy for my "Blogging Every Day" posts with a little Livejournal-style annotation! Lo:
Today's event? Con Carolinas, where I saw a lot of old friends and was on the "Hooked" panel. Today's exercise? Just thirty pushups and a relatively brief walk. Today's drawing? More Goldman studies: by my count, I am up to day one five three, which means I'm caught up (as this blogpost is one day behind).
That's it! Here's hoping I have enough bits left to post.
-the Centaur
Pictured: From the archives, the red editor's pen, over a redacted manuscript. Full disclosure: my normal editing pen is blue, as I am partially colorblind - while I can see red, it doesn't stand out for me the way blue does. There is no such thing for me as "fire engine red" unless I'm wearing Enchroma glasses (which do not give you true color vision, by the way, but they certainly can make certain colors stand out more). I was probably using the red pen in this case either because the blue one blew up, or I need two kinds of notes.
Hey folks! I am appearing at several conventions in the next few weeks, so I'm creating a "sticky post" to let y'all know about my schedule - in case the problems I'm having with my blog software get worse, at least this will be up here to let y'all know I'll be talking about AI, robots and writing in the next few weeks!
First up is Con Carolinas, the Carolinas' longest running science fiction convention, where I will be on four panels and an author signing, talking about book openings, artificial intelligence, neurodivergence, and what's possible and what's not in science and science fiction!
Friday, May 31st:
Saturday, June 1:
Sunday, June 2:
Next up is the Nebula Conference, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's conference, where again I'll be talking about artificial intelligence and signing books!
There will also be office hours but I think you have to sign up in advance for those, and we have a scheduling snafu regarding those anyway.
Finally is the Embodied AI Workshop on June 18th, hosted at CVPR, the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, where I am the lead organizer, though you'll probably only hear me yapping for any extended length of time if you show up in the first ten minutes - I give the intro talk at 8:50am.
Hope to see y'all there!
-Anthony
Long day packing, driving, arriving, and taking care of stuff, so, no real post for you, will post my schedule tomorrow.
Also, uploading images are still borken, so please enjoy the following blast from the past (my steampunk bookshelf from my old library) while I work on replacing my hosting provider (since there seems no way to increase storage as a stopgap).
Blogging every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. Posting "drawing every day" is on hiatus until I fix the images, but by my count I'm up to day one five two (one day ahead of today). I'll keep noting that as a postscript on the blogging every day posts.
P.P.S. Apparently I was real clever and posted my blogging for Wednesday late, late Tuesday night (in the Wednesday AM) so technically this is the Thursday post, but, whatevz.
On my way to ConCarolinas! My kind of people.
I'll post my schedule on Thursday, as I will be driving up today. Onward!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Old images, because my server is acting like it is full, even though it is reporting that it is not.
Another Goldman study. Interestingly, I had to use Photoshop's perspective warp to make this image have a square box, compared to its original, which I photographed rotated and a little off-angle:
So, this may be my last image post for a bit, as I am traveling to Con Carolinas soon, and even though my web hosting provider says I have 15 megabytes free, Wordpress is perceiving me as having no bytes free.
Regardless, I'll keep drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More studies from Goldman. I'm liking how these are turning out. Apparently repeated practice is doing something for my ability to render - whodathunk.
I'd say, "I'da thunk" except I am actually a bit surprised that there's a cross-training effect going on: that is, I'm getting better at things I wasn't really trying to get better at, just because I have to do them in order to do the things that I really want to do - sometimes improving in surprising ways.
But the drawings are turning out well, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Our big butch cat - Loki is 16+ pounds of fur and muscle, with relatively little flab - is actually a little scaredy guy. I mean, I might be a scaredy guy too if the situation was reversed: I'm approximately 6 times taller and 11 times heaver than Loki, and I'd be freaked to live in a world where 35-foot-tall, one-ton creatures felt like picking me up at random times for no discernible reason.
But he's scared of other things too, like his shadow. And I think that happened because once, when he tried to go outside, a baby rat snake was coiling by the door. He ran to the nearby French doors to be let out, but the rat snake had also fled - to the same doors! And then, both of them again fled to the next door down. He was pretty freaked, and a little more cautious going over thresholds since then. Not this guy, though:
Regardless, Loki frequently gets animated, starts looking outside or in the yard to see what's going on, and stares at it for a long time, before settling down and chilling out. Even when something is really there, though, it doesn't mean that the cause is always actionable. Sometimes things are just passing through, and worrying about them or doing something about them can only lead to more disruption.
I'm not saying to ignore real problems, of course; seeing the fox requires different reactions than the deer.
But how often do we stress out about things which will ultimately pass us by?
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki, the snek, and the deer. Fox was not available for comment.
It's late, I'm tired, so here's a friendly reminder that if you can see it, it can see you.
-the Centaur
Pictured: the Moon, which sure looks creepy right after reading There Is No Antimemetics Division.
More studies of negative space from Goldman. Yes, yes, I know "wza y'ei" means negative conceptual space, not negative visual space, but these hands really do look Lovecraftian to me.
So tired. Onward.
-the Centaur
ACTUALLY, there are no more "positive" and "negative" shapes in the real world than there are actual "lines" in the real world (well, even that's debatable, but ...) as the right diagram illustrates: yes, you can say that the hand has a shape, but its "wza y'ei", the negative conceptual space surrounding a positive concept in the Aklo language, does not actually exist for the hand: that negative space itself is both limited and shaped, broken up into negative and positive shapes like the stands for the hands or the frame of the picture. Or, to riff more on concepts from Alan Moore's version of Aklo, defining negative space can be seen as the extended creation of a new positive form.
A little punchy after that debugging session.
Drawing every day, posting every day my website works.
-the Centaur
Okay, it's not a red herring, it's a grapefruit, but I am able to upload images to the site again. It appears that when my hosting provider said I had "15 gigabytes free" what they actually meant was "0 bytes free". So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix permissions on the directories when the real problem was that I was out of disk space (which causes the same error).
I already knew I needed to change hosting providers. I guess it's time.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Not a red herring, which I don't eat for breakfast anyway.
not sure what's going on here ... stay tuned.
-the Centaur
Photoshopped version of the "C Lion" neck pillow that I drew the other day ...
It is interesting how strange shapes get compared to what we imagine things to look like ... it took conscious effort not to cartoon this and to try to make it match its referent, even given that it was a quick sketch.
Even then, I moved the binder clip in the drawing to aid the composition. Breakin' the law!
-the Centaur
