Category: entertainment

Political music in minutes

You can now create professional sounding music in minutes thanks to AI.

You can write a country song for your girlfriend on your anniversary with careful written lyrics with meaning only to the both of you. And it can sound like a professional singer and band recorded it. All from the comfort of your own home, and laptop.

A new trend is political music. Music with a political message or bias complete with propaganda lyrics designed to resonate with your target audience. Available in all musical genres and styles. Rock, metal, jazz, classical, pop, you name it, whatever you want. Type in your message and the AI will create the track for you faster than you can make a cup of coffee. Fine-tune it and release. Voila! Your political message or viewpoint is injected into the music streams of your choice ready for the masses to consume.

OSINT on old TV shows

I found myself carrying out OSINT on old TV shows. I didn’t realise I was doing it at first. I was watching an old episode of one of my favourite shows and I wanted to know where it was filmed. IMDB and a quick Google returned no information.

I started freeze-framing one scene, advancing frames looking at the geography, buildings, and business names, phone numbers, anything. I was geolocating the scene. It took me minutes. I had it.

Google street view confirmed it. Some minor changes to the buildings and layout but definitely the right location. I had the location, obtained out of mere curiosity and some OSINT skills. Information that the show’s wiki and even IMDB did not have.

There is data in these old TV shows if you know how to extract it.

Instagram is full of tease pron

Instagram is full of tease pron. It’s one opinion. I can see where it came from after hearing it for the first time. There appear to be a lot of female users on there that use it to offer taster content in the hope that you will follow through to their paid links on Patreon, Only Fans, or such premium sites.

The posts push the boundaries of what is allowed on Insta. Simulated acts, revealing outfits, teasing questions. Nothing too graphic, but close. Some maybe too close resulting in account bans. The need for multiple backup accounts just in case you cross a line.

Memes are used to try to encourage more likes. Plus cosplay, roleplay, gaming, and product use. Anything to get more followers in the hopes that followers convert to paid subscribers. Masters of tease.

With hard content requiring full-on identification verification, accessing soft content via Insta is becoming more popular. Just use your imagination.

Characters left hanging

I hate it when you have invested a lot of time in a TV show, following the complex plot and all the characters and then the show ends, leaving you hanging. Not knowing what happened next. How did the character’s lives pan out? There’s no more episodes, no more insight, just a hard, abrupt, end. As if you were a voyeur observing a life and then your window closed and there is no more for you. The character’s life continued without you knowing what happened next.

Some finish off their characters’ stories with leaked scripts post cancellation, or the stories continue in other media such as books or comics. Most end though, never to continue. Fan fiction satiates some, others, like me, are left with nothing. An investment with no end.

Kingpin

I have old game discs lying around. I even have a few floppies, albeit they are rarely used thanks to emulators, and my last floppy drive having developed the click of death. I keep only the games that I enjoy, and continue to do so. Ones with a journey, a campaign, a linear storyline with entertaining gameplay.

Games with titles such as Kingpin, Cadaver, Max Payne, Half Life, and the more recent The Last of Us, and Uncharted. All offering virtual escapism for hours on end. With well trodden familiar territory. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve completed Kingpin. Yet despite the aging graphics, it still entertains me. Occasionally It’ll replay Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, and other 90s FPS titles, but Kingpin remains my favourite.

I’ve played mods and have my favourites, especially for Max Payne. New Dawn leads by far. I know the levels inside-out. Some games I’ve played so many times that I’ve gone way beyond a hundred percent completion, beyond easter eggs, and testing boundaries, to testing how the games handle the unexpected. Most stand the test of time. My hats off to their QAs.

I’ve dipped back into point and click revisiting Monkey Island, the Amazon Queen, Enchantia, and Kyrandia. Said hi to Simon, Larry, Sam and Max. Dropped in on top-down with the early GTA and very early Commando. And I’ve emulated the Valhalla Classics. Yet I keep coming back to my well-worn Kingpin disc. I’ve replayed this at least once every decade, if not more. Maybe every half-decade. I keep coming back to it. The forgotten classic.

What games have stood the test of time with you? 

Keep looking forward

I keep looking forward. At the latest games, movies, books. Avoiding retro games, old movies, old books. Only the latest.

What I’ve played, watched, and read, serves as a reference, a reminder, a history of consumption. Keep looking forward to what is coming out next and when. Adding each of interest to my to get list.

Just consuming like a digital animal, always hungry for something new, the next juicy piece of entertainment. Never repeating, re-playing, re-watching, re-reading. Time is precious so only the new.

Keep looking forward.

Virtual wandering

There are so many video games with open worlds. I find myself on occasion going for a virtual wander. No aim in mind. No side mission. No challenge, or Easter eggs to hunt. Just aimless virtual wandering. Driving my car, riding my bike or horse, sailing a boat, or on virtual foot. Just exploring the virtual world with no destination in mind. A kind of digital mindfulness. Bathing in the Unreal forests, swimming with the AI fish. Relaxed, calm, aimless.

Just virtual wandering.

Being a picky completionist

I’m being a picky completionist. I don’t complete everything. I used to. But I soon found that life can get in the way, and it’s way shorter than you think.

Nowadays I complete what I enjoy. The rest can stay unfinished. I may return to it at a later date to pick at it, to play with it a little, to savour it for a moment. But essentially if I’m not fully enjoying it I’ll leave it unfinished.

And I’m ok with that.

If I am fully enjoying something then I’ll complete it. Depending on how much I’m enjoying it, and my level of willpower at the time, I’ll devour it, or ration myself. It will depend on the quantity I know is available. This applies to books, TV shows and movies, video games, and music.

I tend to be a picky completionist.

Finding something to read

Finding something to read can be hard. If fiction, it has to entertain me, and within the first few chapters. After that I struggle. I’ll make it to maybe chapter 7, then I’ll bin the book. Well, give it to charity. For non-fiction if it doesn’t grip me in the first few chapters I’ll flick through it looking for any nuggets of wisdom. I may even skeed it. A personal blend of skim and speed reading. Skimming through the book speed reading the bits I find interesting, if any.

It’s a form of ADHD, but one born out of the modern world. A mixture of information overload and impatience. I am old enough now to have calculated how many books I can read in my remaining lifetime given my age and the available leisure time that I am happy to dedicate to reading. The number is not as high as I would like it to be, so I tend to be picky. If the book isn’t well written I’ll quickly move on. I donate a lot of books to charity.

I listen to podcasts while I multitask. If I hear a book recommendation that sounds interesting, I’ll make a note of it. Same goes for recommendations from friends, colleagues, TV, radio, and other literature. I have a reading wishlist and occasionally I’ll buy when the price is low. I never sell, I shelve or donate.

I used to have two or three books on the go, max. Never the same subject and only one fiction. Otherwise I’ll get literature crossover. At the time of writing I have eight books I’m reading. None are gripping. I’m either skeeding or taking forever to get through them. It started at three, but then I was bored and gave another from my to read pile a chance. It failed so I tried another, and another. Now there’s eight. At what point do you admit you have a problem?

I do love to read. But as I get older, finding something good to read gets harder.

Rewatching old shows

I have access to multiple streaming services and I have a pile of Blu rays I could watch, yet despite all that I often find myself rewatching old shows. Shows that I’ve watched several times before, from start to finish. Shows with multiple seasons. Shows where I know the storylines and characters like I know my friends. Some feel like old friends.

I think I rewatch them partly because they are entertaining, obviously, but also because the story, characters, and ambience of the show is a known entity and is often what I need at that point in time.

So despite there being a lot of new shows I could be watching, on occasion I like to fall back on the well worn classics.

Do you have a go-to show?