@christymarx It's interesting the kinds of scams that seem to be proliferating in the LLM age. I have had at least three scammers pretend to be successful authors and chat me up on TikTok.

Each time, I went to the author website and checked to see if they mentioned a TikTok account. If they did, it was easy enough to figure out this person was a scammer.

If they didn't mention a TikTok account, I contacted them via their website. One responded back almost immediately and confirmed that the they are not on TikTok. I responded back to the scammer saying "X" (the person they were pretending to be) says "Hi" and they doubled down trying to convince me they were real 😛

The other person did not respond but their website also had so many issues — non-existend Facebook page, non-working contact form etc. and now I'm not even sure if their page is legit. But I do know that the person on TikTok is a scammer since they followed the same script that the others did ...

It's a wild, dangerous world out there and has gotten even wilder with LLMs where people think that they can impersonate anyone with a sample of their writing.

All we can do is let everybody know about these as much as we can, I guess.

@renatozechetto Sounds interesting. I sent you a WhatsApp message via your site. If you respond on WhatsApp, we can discuss further (and more at length) than going through the text limitations on here etc 🙂

@renatozechetto I'm always happy to talk to (or hear from) actual artists and authors 🙂Just not interested in the scammers ...

So, willing to listen to what your proposal is.

When a "fellow author" from New York (who strangely can't send a simple web link) tries to pitch you on "marketing services," there is only one logical response: In-character sci-fi nonsense.

I spent this morning explaining my interplanetary transportation funnels to a scammer who just wanted to talk about "sales funnels." Apparently, their investment portfolio doesn't cover Martian people transport yet — just transporting money from the pockets of unsuspecting writers 😛

Friendly reminder to my fellow writers: if someone slides into your DMs to "connect" and immediately pivots to your marketing strategy or asks for money, they aren’t your peer — they’re a bot or a grifter. Keep your wallet closed, and your sense of humor open!

And always have some fun with them. Who knows, it might get that creativity juice flowing 🙂

#ScamBaiting #AuthorCommunity #WritingTips #ScamAlert #SciFiWriter #MarketingScams #FunnelsFromMars
A long, vertical screenshot of …

Instead of the usual "Animal Antics" paintings, I did something different this week — I call it "Alien Dreams" 🙂

#Art #Painting
A painting of an alien landscap…

Continuing on with my "Animal Antics" series, here's "Doggerel Writer" 🙂

I'm happier with this one than I was with the previous paintings since I see fewer issues, but I still feel there's room for improvement.

#Art #Painting #AnimalAntics
A painting of a furry dog stand…

To go along with the previous painting titled "Mouseketeer", I've created a new one called "Catechist" 🙂

In fact, I'm thinking of doing a whole series of these ... Will I get there? Or will my Apple Pencil break? Tune in next time to find out 😛

#Art #Painting #AnimalAntics
A painting of a tall building w…

@gaveen I've been wondering when Season 2 will arrive. New seasons seem to take longer and longer these days 😕

I've been slowly building an ecosystem of apps - an issue tracker for bugs and things to do, an app to send new app builds to my android/iOS devices like AirDrop (for Android) which auto installs apps, an ebook reader which actually works etc.

Today, I had it all work together beautifylly. As Hannibal would say, I love it when a plan comes togethe 🙂

Now I can put aside the coding (mostly) and work on my art 🙂

#Planning #Dev #Art

@Rosettatresh That's exactly who I was thinking of 🙂I seem to have a recollection of Reepicheep from "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" holding that kind of pose ... though I don't think he wore a feathered hat.

This is an image which has been rattling around in my head for a few days now. I call it "Mouseketeer" 😛

#Art #Ideas #Painting
A painting of a mouse wearing a…

An icon for an app that I'm trying out. Not quite sure if it works or not, but the first bit of drawing I've done in a fair bit ...

#Art #Icon #Ideas
An image with a yellow backgrou…

@ottawasteph Umm ... #StrangerThings was created by the Duffer Brothers and as far as I know, they are not from Canada?

Created a simple, lightweight, and easy to install/deploy issue tracker yesterday for our presonal use. We like it so much that I've decided to release it as an open source project:
https://github.com/FahimF/Buggy

Let me know if you've any feedback 🙂

#OpenSource #BugTracking #IssueTracking
A web-based bug tracker showing…

Started the year by creating a quick and lightweight bug tracker 🙂 Been using multiple solutions, but none of them really worked for us. This one is customized to meet our particular requirements.

Within an hour of creating it, the wife has already added a bunch of projects - and that's not even half of the projects that I work on for our personal use 😛

#Tools #Development #Web
A web-based bug tracker showing…

@MakeAppPie It's possible that some people don't need the "why", or don't care 🙂But I definitely appreciate knowing the "why" because, for me, a "why" means that it's a principle that I can remember.

A "how" (again to me) is just something that I can do for that particular artwork, but it doesn't stick in my mind since (to me) it's just a way to do something for that particular artwork. It doesn't always translate (again in my mind) into something I can use in other artwork ...

I'm trying to think of a good example here. Ran into a very good one just the other day comparing two different courses but can't remember now. Old age 😛

I think it might have been setting up shadow and light for an object. The first course simply said "Do this" and showed setting blend mode to "multiply" and putting a darker colour on that layer to add shadowing. But they didn't explain what multiply did or why that produced shadowing. So all I knew was that I had to select a particular colour, set a particular blend mode and that was it.

Maybe that works for most people? It just doesn't for me 🙂

The other course explained blend modes and mentioned that particular blend modes will turn colours darker and others will make it lighter and how generally anything above "normal" is darker and below is lighter. That stayed with me and made much more sense.

I've been checking out art courses online and it's interesting how many great artists don't realize that showing "how" to do something isn't the best way to teach 🙂

You need to teach people "why" - that allows you to re-use the principle in other ways, not learn by rote.

#Learning #Art #Teaching

@paulk I have a self-published humorous science fiction book that I'd like to offer for consideration 🙂

Title: Sir Lanka Files
Link: https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/

"Now You See Me: Now You Don't" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4712810/) was disappointing.

It telegraphed what was coming way too early - if you didn't foresee the major reveal at the end way before you got there, you weren't paying attention 😛 (And I don't blame you for not paying attention ... it wasn't that interesting.)

And the sequence in the middle with them trying to outdo each other doing tricks? Annoying! And pointless.

#Movies #English

"The Running Man" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334) seems hyper-violent (like a lot of stuff these days) but on the other hand, it managed to keep my attention to the end. So probably one of the better action movies in the past couple of years?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334

#Movies #English #Action #SciFi