☕️ Crazy Keyboards,RunDiffusion, and The Last Gasp of NFT's - pt 2

Get out the shovel!

Hey friends!

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.

I’m happy to report that we’re only 12 subscribers away from 2400. So close!

Would you mind taking a moment to share it with your friends, family, or frenemies?

It would mean the world to me . . .

Anyway - we put up all of our garden beds in the backyard last week. Now we need to buy a bunch of soil . . .

I need to do a bunch of reading into the best kind of stuff to add to soil to make it rich for plants to grow. My compost pit has only been “cooking” for a few months sadly, and likely only the very bottom is ready.

Oh! I resigned for Netflix - and we will let Disney and Hulu expire. (until Reservation Dogs, The Bear, or more Mandolorian come out I think we’re fine without them).

I’m quite fed up with the insanity of paying for so many streaming services - I’d rather just treat each one as an all-you-can-eat-buffet until the serving trays are empty.

We’re currently watching Delicious in Dungeon - it’s hilarious!

Did you buy any of that powdered caffeine I wrote about the other week? Well - I found something much more palatable.

They’re essentially Zyn pouches - but instead of nicotine, these Belter pouches have caffeine.

What’s next? Injectable caffeine? Caffeine Vapes?

Lol what a crazy world we live in.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

⌨️ Krazy Keyboards!

I love the clickety-click of a good keyboard. Once a year or so, I go on different internet quests to see if anyone has made any really neat keyboards. I’ve written about some of these in the past - so think of this as a summary post with some new additions.

Currently, I have a little sub $20 light-up Skylion keyboard - but I like the way it sounds. (Thanks Aliexpress)

However, if I were to dream of a keyboard, here are some really cool ones.

Keyboard with a screen

There’s several of these things out there - and none of them are cheap. However, they look pretty cool, and there’s an argument to having one really big monitor and this to handle tiny stuff like Slack or Spotify.

Here’s two that I found

The Kwumsy K3 - The image above is of a K2, but the K3 is way better because the screen flips up!

The Maxfree K3 - Looks the same as the Kwumsy but who knows?

Keyboard that IS the screen

The Flux keyboard - Keyboard AND screen. both. together. as one. Who knows if it will ever ship, but we can dream that this incredible-looking keyboard will ship one day. WAGMI?

Productivity/Retro

Work Louder - This keyboard looks really cool, and has a lil screen for widgets. There’s even a few knobs built in! Ooooooh. Think “Productivity workhorse.” Their Creator Keyboard is really cool too!

Epomakerth80-x - Super retro vibes, a little bitty screen, and a dial. Very cool. Compared to everything else, it’s pretty cheap!! only around $100.

8BitDo Retro - Not only does this keyboard look like it stepped out of the 80’s but it comes with TWO programmable keys that are GIANT - like arcade buttons. Brb I’ll be copy/pasting like a mad man.

Qwerkywriter - Roll back the clock and get a typewriter keyboard. OR you could get a similar clicky clack experience with some ceramic keycaps.

🎨RunDiffusion

My beloved stadio.ai tool for using StableDiffusion is gone. gone and dead.

The creator was very busy with his main job, and unable to run the project anymore. Nevertheless, he recommended a wonderful alternative - RunDiffusion.

What I love about tools like stadio.ai or RunDiffusion is that I can load ‘em up with five bucks - and buy ten hours of runtime.

Much better than spending a monthly subscription on Midjourney or similar tool.

**I don’t use these tools for anything other than creative musing - for those of you who strongly dislike this stuff. Ain’t nothin’ getting posted to Artstation for fake clout.**

It has a ton of different options for StableDiffusion - including Automatic1111 WebUI, Comfy, and more! There’s even an audio generation tool.

It’s really easy to use.

Load it up with $5, and start a session. You can select how much time you want to use . . . but if you don’t use it - it gets credited back to your account!

Foocus is quite fun because all you have to do is get in there and start prompting. It’s fast and easy to use. Though all the “buttons and knobs” of Automatic1111 are great 0 sometimes ya just want to mess around?

Here’s a fun one I cooked up.

A dark and misty broken city. giant lovecraftian style robot spiders stands in the distance, with glowing red eyes, looking over the city. It's mostly hidden in the mist. In the style of a 17th century Dutch painting. HD, 4k, 8k. In the style of Mr. Werewolf.

AudioCraft was pretty fun too. i put in some different keywords (barber beats, lofi, 80’s) and got the following.

Check out RunDiffusion when you get the chance! It’s a neat little tool.

☠The Last Gasp of NFTs - Pt. 2

Back in January - I posted a little exploration of some old NFT projects I bought from back in 2020-2021.

I’m mainly adventuring through these like I would an abandoned mall or burned-out house. What remnants still exist?

Here’s the link to part 1 if you’re interested!

😃Another Blackberry Wannabe, Reinventing Pallet Flips, and the Last Gasps of NFTS

In today’s issue - we’re looking through some more of the projects that I bought. Are they alive? Dead? Scams?

Let’s see . . .

Average Creatures - This artistic experiment was different from the vast majority of other NFT projects. Karen Jerzyk handcrafted tons and tons of elements, then matched them into 1000’s of unique characters. The project has gotten pretty quiet - so there’s not much activity anymore. Karen made a major push at the end of 2023 with a new collection that featured movement and music. Sadly, it didn’t seem to give Average Creatures the momentum it needed - as it didn’t mint out. A lot of work was put into these - so it’s sad to see. I need to claim my two once gas goes back down . . We’ll put this one into the category of “Let’s see what happens.”

Aki Story - This was supposed to be a lofi style anime project, but interest pretty much nose dived after a few months. So little of the “roadmap” (merch, cafe, comic series) got fulfilled. . . I’d argue it was a “Rug.” The website is even gone! LOL

Easy Demons Club - This anime-themed clothing nft project is still chugging away! I actually missed out on the chance to get free merch because I got so disenfranchised with NFTs. At the current moment - you can use your nft to get clothing discounts. I’ll put this in the “still going but probably won’t make much if I sell” category.

Haruka Ronin - Another anime-themed nft project! There are 7 issues of a manga you can read, and they delivered their physical figurines to holders (who paid the shipping fee). Despite this, it looks as though the project might be “mostly dead” at this point. Wonder if the redemption page would still work despite the redemption being in December. hmmm. I’ll shoot them an Instagram message!

Rosko and Friends - Out of all the nft projects I ever bought - this one hurt the most when it was rugged. The artist - Felix Schlater - created 365 works of art over one year. One new piece of art EVERY day! They ranged from the whimsical to pop culture savvy. It was an incredible amount of work. I own three of them - my favorite being the one below. After he posted the final Rosko - he ghosted the Discord a few weeks later. Then . . . his mods reached out to him. no response. A few months later, he randomly deleted the Discord. (allegedly - it’s because the mod and some other holders popped comments into one of his IG lives and asked a ton of questions he ignored). Did he burn out? get upset the project didn’t have Beeple-style success? I guess we’ll never know. . . All I’ll say is - I wish he told us holders he was taking a year-long or more break from nfts. We totally would have respected and understood that. Heck! he probably could have randomly popped in from time to time and sold more art.

Mega Trippy Rosko

Conclusions from part two?

You’re better off buying Gold or Silver instead of an NFT. Heck - pay someone from Artstation to make you something really cool. Unless you’re flipping mints (very risky) there’s likely no long-term value . . . (the only exception to this rule being Marty’s Poolsuite NFT in my humble non-financial advice opinion).

🐙The Land of Random

Welcome to . . . The Land of Random. Nah nah nah nah nahhhhh.

Cursed Sea Shanty

I’m talking MEGA cursed.

Dead Simple Sites

A vast collection of extremely simple websites for your browsing pleasure.

What Month is It?

For those days when you just aren’t sure.

Pikachu Volleyball

Try out this extremely retro Pokemon game in your browser!

The Ghostface Workout

Sometimes it just boggles my mind what I find on the internet. This is a comprehensive workout routine if if you want to have physique of Ghostface from Scream.

A Guide to RSS

Want to start scraping your own feeds and tweak yourself off social media? This has some great info!

Psionic Blades

This fun Cyberpunk neocities website is pretty intriguing. It took me a minute or two to figure out the little Windows 97 login . . .

🥀Walled Garden Finds

IS tHaT HaM PrOcEssEd???

I - for no logical reason - greatly desire to try this once

OK - I’ve taken enough notes. going to the grocery store BRB

I want the Sony tea set

Crows are awesome

There’s a good use for a crashed tesla

🤖AI AHHHHHH

Learn AI from a LLM in excel

People are probably automating their jobs with tools like this

That’s all for this week! See you next time. :)