Plutonic Rainbows

I spent unnecessary money trying to get Gemini 2.5 Pro Max and Sonnet 3.7 Max to create file attributes for projects and apply them to a new folder. Two things came of it:

• Premium tool calls — $15 in total. Totally wasted money.

• I made no real progress and ultimately just created a boilerplate template instead.

• The boilerplate worked with only minimal edits.

The only positive from the experience is that I managed to completely revamp the UX for my image generation projects.

Ash, directed by Flying Lotus, is a bold and atmospheric sci-fi thriller that blurs the line between horror and psychological mystery. The film opens with astronaut Riya (Eiza González) waking up on a distant research station to find her entire crew gruesomely murdered, her memory in disarray, and a strange life force haunting the facility. As she attempts to make sense of the chaos, her isolation is broken by Brion (Aaron Paul), a fellow astronaut who answers her distress signal. Their uneasy reunion stirs up more questions than answers, as the film skillfully cultivates paranoia and distrust between its two leads.

Eiza González delivers a gripping and vulnerable performance, grounding the film’s surreal tone with emotional authenticity. Her chemistry with Aaron Paul adds dramatic tension, especially as their characters grapple with fragmented truths and personal histories. Flying Lotus, known for his musical innovation, brings a visually stunning and sonically immersive style to the screen, drenched in neon and laced with dread. The cinematography, sound design, and pacing draw clear inspiration from sci-fi staples like Blade Runner 2049 and Event Horizon, yet the film never feels like a copy — it embraces its influences while carving its own strange, cerebral path.

Though it leans into familiar genre tropes, Ash stands out for its ambition and commitment to mood over exposition. It explores themes of memory, identity, and the fragility of perception in the face of cosmic horror. Some viewers may find its narrative elliptical or its visuals overpowering, but that’s part of the film’s unique allure. Flying Lotus doesn’t aim for mainstream clarity; instead, he crafts a haunting, hypnotic experience that lingers in the mind. Ash isn’t just a film — it’s a plunge into the eerie unknown, where nothing can be trusted, not even yourself.

I’m down to the last two stories of You Like It Darker by Stephen King. I’ve always been especially fond of his short story collections, so this feels a bit disheartening. However, there are plenty of other books to explore.

I have the last third of Holly to still read, as well as Fairy Tale and Billy Summers. I still have not read Elevation either. In addition, there is a new novel out in May.

My current set-up for composing and editing in Cursor uses:

• Claude Sonnet 3.7

• Claude Sonnet 3.7 Max

• Gemini 2.5 Pro Max

• OpenAI o3-mini

I also sometimes use Claude Code on the command line.

Two images, shown here and here, were created in the style of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836) using ChatGPT-4o.

Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro represents a significant advancement in artificial intelligence, featuring enhanced reasoning and coding capabilities. This “thinking” model processes tasks step-by-step before responding, resulting in improved accuracy for complex prompts. It excels in creating executable code from concise prompts and leads in benchmarks like GPQA and AIME 2025. With native multimodality, it interprets and generates responses across text, audio, images, and video, supported by a 1 million token context window, soon expanding to 2 million. Developers can access Gemini 2.5 Pro through Google AI Studio, with broader availability forthcoming.

OpenAI has released an update to its image generation service. The AI model's ability to create images remarkably faithful to the style of the Japanese animation company, Studio Ghibli, appears to have generated both excitement and frustration among people.

Here are two I created, (using two iconic images from history).

National Geographic and Calvin Klein.

Tom Ford’s Black Lacquer is a bold and avant-garde addition to the Private Blend collection, offering a complex olfactory journey that begins with spicy black pepper and boozy rum, intertwined with synthetic nuances of vinyl and Indian ink, evoking the glossy texture of lacquer. As the fragrance evolves, it reveals a heart of smoky Makassar ebony wood and subtle leather, softened by hints of apricot and peony, adding a delicate sweetness to the composition. The base is characterised by resinous olibanum and elemi, leaving a lingering smoky and slightly spicy finish. While Black Lacquer boasts commendable longevity, its moderate sillage makes it an intimate scent, best suited for evening wear during cooler seasons. Presented in a sleek, glossy black bottle that mirrors its name, this fragrance stands as a testament to Tom Ford’s ability to craft scents that are both provocative and refined, making it a distinctive choice for those seeking depth and sophistication in their fragrance collection.

Today's improvements focused on fixing errors and enhancing the prompt analysis display. I resolved React errors caused by the diff-match-patch library by implementing a local version of the library instead of relying on an external CDN. We then completely redesigned the prompt analysis section to make it more user-friendly, first by simplifying it to a clean, concise summary and then by adding intelligent keyword highlighting that automatically identifies and color-codes important terms like clarity, specificity, and scientific to help users quickly understand what makes their prompts effective. A color-coded legend was added below the summary to explain what each highlight represents. These changes not only fixed the technical issues but also transformed the analysis into a more readable, visually engaging component that gives users immediate insight into their prompt's strengths.

Big temperature drop today. Feels more like March should be. Decided to watch John Carpenter's The Thing, which I haven't watched for a few years. Also bought some albums from Brian Grainger.

Also just discovered Michael J. Blood - Spaces In Between.

Sounds good, especially if you like the work of Actress, Gescom, Larry Heard or Shinichi Atobe.