Tag: Side Projects

Two storytelling GPTs: SleepyTales and SleepyKills

😴 SleepyTales: Spins long and boring stories to help you unwind and fall asleep. Designed for voice mode, turn it on and chill…

This is a GPT designed to be used with ChatGPT’s “Voice Conversations” mode (currently only in the mobile app) — although you can use it to generate text alone, it really shines when paired with one of their realistic voices. I currently prefer the one called Sky. Like it says in the description above, this GPT agent has been prompted to provide tension-free, inconsequential, meandering stories about anything you like. It reads them out in a slow, gentle manner, for quite awhile at a stretch.

So just turn on voice mode and pop your phone on the nightstand and listen to the most boring stories ever. Unfortunately, I’m unable to make it speak indefinitely without building an app, so it will occasionally stop and ask if it should keep going. You can say “yeah” or even “mmhmm”, and it will. Or you can give it some direction. Hint: just try and get it to make the story more exciting, I don’t think you’ll succeed!

And I suppose if you’ve nodded off and can’t tell it to continue, that’s a good thing? Nevertheless, I find its stories very good just for unwinding while still awake.

🥱 SleepyKills 🔪: A generative true crime podcast that couldn’t be more boring. Sleep tight!

While showing the former app to Cien, she misread “mundane” as “murder” and thought it generated boring true crime stories, to which I thought “WHY NOT!?”

And so SleepyKills was born, designed to emulate the language and style of a popular true crime podcast except… you might find it very hard to care? Firstly because the murder stories are completely generative and fictional, and secondly because they’re almost comically full of irrelevant details and lacking in any excitement or suspense. The AI podcaster often spends time on aspects of the case that no one else would want to know.

Check it out if that sounds like your kind of bedtime story.

November 12, 2023
Introducing ✨PixelGenius GPT: An AI photo editing expert
Do you edit photos, use filters, or make your own presets? What if you had an AI tool to help create any look you asked for?

That’s ✨PixelGenius, my first “GPT” (a custom agent built on ChatGPT). It’s a photo editing expert that creates filters, suggests improvements, and helps you elevate your craft.
- Describe a vibe and it’ll provide the settings to make a preset/filter.
- Emulate a classic film stock!
- Upload photos and get editing suggestions.
- Reverse-engineer edited photos by providing a Before and After.
- Learn editing techniques just by chatting naturally.
It’s designed to help beginners learn the art and color science of photo editing, while letting pros save time with great starting points. For every adjustment, it explains the intent so you learn how this stuff works.

It gives you standard adjustment values that you can plug into your favorite photo editing app like Darkroom, VSCO, Photomator, or Adobe Lightroom and save them as your own custom presets.

I prefer to learn by trying stuff out rather than watching videos or whatever, so when I first started using Lightroom, it was a messy process of trial and error that lasted years. ✨PixelGenius turns that into an interactive, guided experience. It’s like having a photo editing expert on demand, and you can even get into deep conversations about color theory and photographic history. All you need is a ChatGPT Plus account.

This involved writing one of the most comprehensive prompts I’ve done so far, so I’d be curious to know your thoughts after you give it a go!

✨Polaroid 600 adjustments

A dramatic look created with ✨PresetGenius
November 11, 2023
Week 7.21
- It was Chinese New Year this week. Some of us at work did a little side project for it in our spare time. We try to make little things we can send to our global sister studios in the network, sort of like greeting cards. For Christmas we made a playlist. This time, we made Choose Your Own Reunion at CNYdinner.com, a sort of game where you have to plan your family’s reunion dinner menu or face the wrath of a cute old Chinese grandma.
- If you get to the end, you can access a credits screen showing the people involved. I wrote some of grandma’s nastier comments, but they volunteered and drew all the art, designed the screens, and built the damned thing all on their own time. They’re treasures.
- In real life, it’s the first time in my memory there hasn’t been a Chinese New Year reunion dinner, save for those student years I was away. A year ago, we had our usual large family affair at a restaurant and mentioned the new virus that might be like another SARS. At the time, no one was saying you needed a mask unless you already felt ill and wanted to protect others. It was hard then to imagine an employer telling everyone not to come in. It was implausible that leisure travel could come to a standstill, or that buffet-style dining would be forbidden. Unthinkable that millions would die, although the numbers are hard to comprehend here where we’ve been relatively lucky.
- As callous as it sounds, when things escalated with lockdowns and working from home in the following weeks and months, I was excited by the newness of the terror and change. I think that sustained my energy for many months while others became depressed and worn down by everything.
- A year later, I think it’s finally catching up to me. I’m feeling like it’s time to slow down before I come to a complete stop not of my own accord. It would be much harder to get moving again from zero. I’m so tired these days. I think I need new terror, or wonder, or sleep.
- I also got into the closed beta for Dispo 2.0, which I’ve been excited for since I heard it was being made. I’ll put my thoughts in a separate post, but you can follow me on there as “blee” if you want.
February 15, 2021
The Project Graveyard is Adjacent to the Project Factory

I have a bad habit of jumping into projects without thinking them through, and then wrestling with whether to abandon them or work with what I’ve gotten myself into. Some don’t really matter too much, because they don’t matter to anybody else.

The Round Down newsletter was a blast to do for a year, and then we had to take a break as free time to do unpaid work quickly ran out with new family commitments on both sides. I don’t know yet when we’ll renew its metaphorical print run. The job of finite, packaged news gathering and delivery has been picked up by a few more professional outlets since we started, and I enjoy a few of them myself.

I also wanted to do a blog called T-Axis for a little bit, and started posting a few things to a Tumblr to get a feel for it. The T being for Tech, and the idea being a look at stories of transformation in various markets and professions as a result of technological advances. That impulse will now probably continue as a research project at work.

But I liked getting back into posting at Tumblr, and longed to produce with it the way tumblelogs are meant to: a mix of wordless visuals, reflexively reblogged elemental units of interest, links, quotes, and dumb GIFs. It never felt right doing that here on my personal blog, although I’ve tried it out several times over the past 13(?) years.

So now I’ve rebooted my main Tumblr at http://sangsara.tumblr.com, tentatively called “Business Suit and Cat Ears”, which is also the general editorial direction. Do follow if you like the sound of UX design and apps rubbing up against pixel art of Mt. Fuji.

The other current project I’ll be a little busy with right now is getting a house furnished and moved into ASAP. The recent photo above was from a somewhat fruitless day of visiting warehouse showrooms, looking for the perfect couch (3-seater with chaise, dark fabric, raised off the ground, firm cushions, wide armrests). I’m beginning to think it doesn’t exist. Consumer electronics makers take note: I’m not even going to consider a next-gen console or 4K TV until your friends in the furniture industry get their act together.

June 18, 2014