@z3z@mastodon.scot
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z3z

@z3z@mastodon.scot

I'm Ruby, dabbler in #mapmaking and #photography (skill level: craptastic).
#Linux user & supporter of open source software. I ♥️ #Inkscape.
Living a quiet life on the west coast of #Scotland.
I will never tire of seeing your #CatPics.

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z3z, to Plants
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Ferns are amazing plants

Three fern leaves in the process of unfurling. The green fronds are visible as the leaf unrolls from a tight curl to a regular fern leaf.

Sherifazuhur, to morocco
@Sherifazuhur@sfba.social avatar

Cats in Chefchaouen, Morocco via Bayt al-Fann @morocco

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@Sherifazuhur @morocco That's a super pic!

z3z, to Dragonlance
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Made a little of city centre. Data came from via and the rest was done in

Honestly didn't realise there was quite so much greenery within the city centre!

malwaretech, to random

A while back I wrote a couple of blog posts about how I think LLMs will be a net negative (at least in the near term), due to the extreme overhyping giving people unrealistic expectations of their ability. The direct result will be an overall degrade in internet usability as people begin flooding platforms with low quality spam that they erroneously believe to be high quality. Previously it was fairly easy to spot someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but now LLMs enable them to word things convincingly enough to waste the time of even domain experts.

Even now I'm still often surprised by all the creative ways that people are finding to waste other's time. I just saw this post from one of the curl maintainers reporting that they've been receiving nonsense bug bounty reports based on LLM hallucinations, which I imagine is likely due to people trying to automate bug hunting despite lacking the understanding to confirm their finding. They reported that in one case the submission was convincing enough that they went over the code 3 times before coming to the conclusion that no bug existed and the report was likely AI generate.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/02/the-i-in-llm-stands-for-intelligence/

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@malwaretech I moderate in a couple of forums and we're already receiving quite a number of LLM generated comments that manage to be... nearly... but not quite on topic.

New member comments are moderated, so these posts are likely made to get the account over the posting threshold so they can unleash proper spam.

It's a nightmare cos you have to carefully read through each one & they're often long. Give me old school Viagra comments! At least you knew instantly what you were dealing with.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What is a word that you had read, but after hearing it spoken aloud, you realized you were pronouncing completely wrong in your head?

Mine is pretty Embarrassing, and is just one of many!

MISLED! I'm not even sure how to type this out for it to make sense, but it was something like:

Myz-ulled

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@RickiTarr my word is hyperbole, which isn't something I ever heard in conversation (though I had heard hyperbolic which was pronounced how I thought).

It came to my attention in a comment thread much like this one, where someone mentioned hyperbole and I thought, wait, how else would you pronounce it except hyper- bowl? Wrong! 🤭

z3z, to Perth
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

A map of Perth, Scotland (one of my favourite places).

Gathered the street & building data from in then exported everything into and did all the styling there. All vector apart from the parchment texture.

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

Me: I’ve been bitten by a wolf!

Doctor: Where?

Me: No. Just a normal wolf.

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@dgar That is a howler...

😏😏😏

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

ARISE, BARON DAVID OF LESSER PIGFUCKING, AND PREPARE TO RETURN TO GOVERNMENT lolsob

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@cstross My favourite image from that time

z3z, to Scotland
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Listed buildings in Scotland by council area.

Made in for the Today's challenge is a choropleth map.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Hey friends!

Can you see the symbols between the arrows?

→ 𓇳𓏤𓁛 ←

If not, could you please let me know what device, OS, browser, etc you're using?

THANKS!

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@Edent Yes, Android phone, & the Tusky app.

z3z, to maps
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Had the idea of making a portolan chart for the #30DayMapChallenge Day 7 Navigation.

It turned out... kinda OK... but it was a bit of a last minute scramble and it shows. I want to have another go at properly making one of these at some point down the line. They're such fun maps.

Made in #inkscape with a parchment paper for texture.

#maps #mapmaking #cartography

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@SJohnRoss Thanks! The fonts used are Antiquarian and Antiquarian Scribe (the Scribe one is the italic in the title area). They're not free fonts, though. I got them here... https://www.oldfonts.com/

Meyerweb, to random
@Meyerweb@mastodon.social avatar

Apropos of nothing whatsoever, the word “grok” has always grated on my nerves for no reason I can adequately articulate. Same with “tricksy”, while I’m at it. Just nails on a chalkboard.

So, what word do you wish some author had never forced into existence?

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@Meyerweb leverage, when used as a verb.

golgaloth, to design
@golgaloth@writing.exchange avatar

Ten million dollars to whomsoever made this layout choice. Not from me, of course. I'm broke as fuck.

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@golgaloth Crying laughing 😂

z3z, to random
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

My favourite software @inkscape is 20 years old this month!

They're running a challenge in the Inkscape forum to make something to celebrate this milestone. I did a little research and put together this infographic about the development history of the project.

Lots of fun to make and quite educational too!

terence, to random
@terence@fosstodon.org avatar

, Day 3: Polygons. River Basins of the Iberian Peninsula. No neon this time; feels good to be back in daylight. Faster rendering times too.

Edit: I made a mistake with the data source, it's HydroSHEDS, not OSM.

adventures, an tale

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@terence This is gorgeous!

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Just checked Twitter (because reasons) and was prompted to post a 12th anniversary tweet: So I did, as follows (the first line was wet-farted automatically by Dilbert Stark's site):

> Do you remember when you joined X? I do!

And Fuck You, @elonmusk, for crashing the party and smearing shit on the walls.

PS: I'll delete this account for good on the 1st anniversary of my arrival on Mastodon, November 5th.

Follow me at @cstross

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@cstross I've been using Redact

https://redact.dev/

It deleted all tweets just fine, though I had to run it a couple of times. It struggles with old Likes. I think that's a Twitter issue though.

z3z, to photography
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Dunkeld Cathedral, Perthshire, Scotland

#photography #ScotlandPhotography #scotland #dunkeld #perthshire #cathedral #monochrome #blackandwhitephotography

Edent, to Cybersecurity
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Argh! Stop using autocomplete on 2FA entry boxes!

Today's winner - PayPal!

I've been ranting about this for 9 years.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/09/2fa-best-practice-disable-autocomplete/

#2FA #cybersecurity #HTML

Another example of the same.

z3z,
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

@Edent We have one of those bank tokens (as they call them) to authorise payments at work and, yup, every previous code I've entered shows in the box on the bank's website 🤷‍♀️

z3z, to Dragonlance
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

A wee #map of Islay and Jura, made for fun.

My illustration of the Kildalton Cross uses a fairly large amount of "artistic license"...! 🙃

The underlying data came mostly from #openstreetmap via #qgis and everything else was done in #inkscape

#maps #cartography #mapmaking #scotland #hebrides #islay #jura

z3z, to UKpolitics
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

This is magnificent, though the bit with Liz Truss has mentally scarred me 🫣

Credit to @PoliticsJoe_uk in the other place.

#ChooseLife #ukpol #ukpolitics #trainspotting #toriesout

video/mp4

z3z, to random
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Loving yesterday's
https://xkcd.com/2832/

z3z, to Dragonlance
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Another wee , this time showing the Outer Hebrides, the Western Isles of .

Made with and with a helping hand from

I had a lot of fun with this one. Hope you like!

z3z, to Dragonlance
@z3z@mastodon.scot avatar

Made a little fantasy mostly because I liked the font! Made in as usual with a little grunge added in at the end.

z3z, to maps
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Made a little map / infographic thingy about Scotland's forest parks.

Made with a little and a whole lot of

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