Monday, July 29, 2024

Paris Summer Olympics 2024, Updates July 29 - August 3, 2024

This year's Summer Olympics in the historic city of Paris have been a great spectacle, including an incredible opening ceremony with performances to match the grandeur, including those by Celine Dion, Lady Gaga and a host of many others. 

Using the symbolism of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and celebration during the opening was quite an excellent choice given those two staples of life in France, especially with Paris being host to the world events of the Olympics, another Greek founded tradition. A tradition of athletics and sport.

I just wanted to take a moment from the daily grind of Shhhh! Digital Media to express these three paragraphs out of my enjoyment of the Olympics, the tradition of athletics and sport, and the Dionysian wonder that is Paris, France. What great place and a fitting opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, to celebrate athletics and sport.

What's Coming Up This Week July 29 - August 3, 2024 At Shhhh! Digital

This week I'll be focusing on artwork for the currently active stories (Lost Riff, Way Of The Warrior, Suffragium Per Proxy and possibly Night Boat). Between such efforts, I'll do my best to fit in a chapter or two here and there. For certain, there will be more writing from Thursday onward. The Butterfly Dragon: The Two Butterflies will also be receiving a new episode soon and by the time Lost Riff is done, I expect to resume writing on something to do with Crystals, Black Holes and marriage...


Have an enjoyable Monday and I'll see you in writing and artwork soon!








Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.





at