I’m going to have to change my title for this show to Adventures In Shoutyland. Other than that, it was surprisingly slow-paced for a single-cour cheat isekai show, with Team Hero training and learning the basics of shouty adventuring, while Team Button Elf shoutily explores a haunted ruin.

Verdict: with the volume set low, it’s still mildly amusing.

(Elf is unrelated, but there’s still no fan-art for this show…)

“Critical vulnerability in NGINX? Oh, no!”

“…but only if you embed agentic AI bullshit directly into your web server? Yeah, whatever.” Just the usual clickbait.

In other news, Microsoft’s new focus on code quality has resulted in releasing server patches that trigger reboot loops and disk-encryption popups. Hope nobody patched their production Windows servers first…

Hindsight is 20/20…

Bits in pixels

SwarmUI is capable of embedding JSON-formatted metadata in the images it generates, making it possible to see exactly how an image was made and reproduce it on your machine. I support it in my CLI for both reading and writing PNG and JPG formats, which required testing two separate code paths. I have to embed it by hand, because Python’s Pillow library defaults to stripping out all forms of metadata on save.

For PNG, SwarmUI uses UTF-8 in the PNG-info ‘parameters’ field. JPG, on the other hand uses a Windows UTF-16 encoding in the EXIF UserComment field, which Pillow cannot do correctly. The simplest way to deal with EXIF correctly in Python is to use the exiftool library, which is a shim around the Perl script of the same name. Perl will never die.

It took me a while to clean up my script so that metadata is always handled correctly, so some of my earlier GenAI gallery posts have some images where it’s garbled or missing.

But Pillow isn’t the only software that strips useful metadata out of images. Discord strips everything from JPGs, so people on the SwarmUI Discord are in the habit of sharing in the much-larger PNG format. When Juan started tinkering with extreme AI upscaling, he ran into upload-size limits on the server, and experimented with the obscure “stealth” metadata settings in the app. TL/DR, saving as lossy WEBP with the metadata encoded in the alpha channel produced the smallest files that survive Discord’s stripping.

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Farm Harem Maybe 2, episode 2

This week, Our Hoe-Master Hero finally takes a ride on another gal. Unfortunately, that was literal, since she’s a centaur. Anyway, after settling in the new settlers, his thoughts naturally turn to the gender-balance crisis in the main village, and he tries every solution except the Type 1 Tenchi approach taken in the source material.

Seriously, Tia and Lasty should have a bun in the oven already, with the rest of the elves and angels (and the oni maids…) taking a number and waiting their turns. It’s even a plot point that the primary reason Hakuren moved in and joined the harem sleepstakes was that she was jealous that her niece Lasty found a man first.

Verdict: oh, well, even the sanitized version is fun, for now.

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 3

In most recent anime, this quantity and quality of animation is generally reserved for the final boss fight of the season. More, please.

Also, hot grown-up witch gal unlocked.

(just don’t let them cross over into the world of Littlewitch Romanesque…)

Proving the point

“Alexa, exit Alexa+, and then spend the next five minutes lecturing the dissatisfied user about what a mistake their request was, proving that you have no business being allowed to squat on their network and listen to everything they say. Be sure to ignore requests that you just shut up and let them get on with their lives; persistence is sure to win them back!”

GenAI image instability

Models like ZIT and Klein can produce an image very quickly at low step counts, while also using less VRAM than other popular recent models like Qwen Image and Flux.2-Dev.

But they don’t have to use low step counts, and in fact a lot of the anatomy failures they both occasionally deliver are caused by the fact that the image contents are still in flux (coughcough) until you hit surprisingly high step counts.

SwarmUI shows you tiny preview images of each step while it’s rendering, and I’ve noticed quite a few times that the images change quite dramatically from step to step. ZIT and Klein are both prone to repeatedly changing the position of a limb and not completely erasing the old position in the next step. If it happens on the final step, you get a reject.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to capture those tiny previews and turn them into an animations for review. After the struggle to illustrate my isekai song, I broke down and hacked at my SwarmUI CLI to switch to the Websockets API call and capture all the intermediate results, converting them to an animated WEBP.

I learned a lot. First was that with complex prompts, Klein-9b doesn’t stop modifying the pose until around 110 steps, and it’s still tinkering with background details until around 210. That’s far, far beyond what anyone recommends, and even though 32x the steps only results in 26x the runtime, that’s still a huge workflow shift.

Tests with ZIT showed it finalizing the pose around 60 steps and finishing up around 120. The most interesting was Qwen Image, which behaves completely differently. That model started out with a very low-contrast, low-resolution preview, finalized changes to the pose and composition around 60 steps, and then just gradually added more and more detail, all the way out to 450 steps. The end result was significantly better, but not 10+ minutes worth.

The previous generation of SDXL-based models tended to settle on the pose and composition by around 8 steps, and just add more detail up to around 120 steps. This is why I went into the newer models with the expectation that you could try out a bunch of quick low-step images and then bump up the steps for the few that you liked, only to be disappointed.

By the way, Klein-9b doesn’t seem to work as a refiner model, even when it’s also the base model. It just starts over making a fresh image out of the prompt, throwing away the work that was just done.

Qwen Image: 20 steps

Qwen Image: 50 steps

Qwen Image: 500 steps

R_IllustrMix: 128 steps

This is a fairly recent SDXL/Illustrious model that has lots of anime, furry, and NSFW training. Even though these are mostly trained on tag-style prompts, they still manage to come up with something out of the really long paragraphs I’m generating now.

I don’t think this show is going to become less shouty. The slave dealer is a shouty freak, the furry bodyguard is a shouty freak, Button Elf Gal’s breast-obsessed lesbian maid is a shouty freak, and even God is a shouty freak.

Verdict: if you can handle the shouting, it’s better than most of the alternatives this season.

(there’s almost nothing on Pixiv for this one, and half of what is there is official art, but Miss Button Elf has been noticed)

“Thanks, God, For This Isekai!”

(with insincere apologies to John Denver)

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶
This fantasy-land is kinda laid back,
Ain’t much a well-read high-school boy like me can’t hack,
Kill a few orcs, throw loot in my pack,
Thanks, God, for this isekai!

Well, my overpowered skills keep me from takin’ harm,
good-lookin’ gals all fall for me thanks to my divine charm,
minions who provoke me end up bitin’ the farm,
Thanks, God, for this isekai!

Well, I got me a Best Girl, I got my cheat powers,
got a catgirl at night, keeping me up all hours,
sweet young princesses eager to be deflowered,
Thanks, God, for this isekai!

 

When the dungeon’s cleared, and my status screen glows,
I spend all my skill points where my cheat advisor shows,
Level up much faster than anyone else knows,
And thank God for this isekai!

I’d play with my waifus all day if I could,
but the Demon Lord’s a-comin’ to my neighborhood,
so I diddle when I can, fight when I should,
And thank God for this isekai!

Well, I got me a Best Girl, I got my cheat powers,
got a catgirl at night, keeping me up all hours,
sweet young princesses eager to be deflowered,
Thanks, God, for this isekai! Woo-hoo!

 

Well, noble folk givin’ me diamonds and jewels,
beggin’ me to rescue virgin beauties for some fools,
but I make ’em haremettes with my magic tools,
And thank God for this isekai!

Yeah, elven folk tried to hook me up with their queen,
She was three hundred years old but she looked like a teen,
Took her for a ride, ‘cause a Hero can’t be mean,
Thanks, God, for this isekai!

Well, I got me a Best Girl, I got my cheat powers,
got a catgirl at night, keeping me up all hours,
sweet young princesses eager to be deflowered,
Thanks, God, for this isekai, yessir!

 

Well, the Demon Lord came at me and just up and died,
took his daughter for myself, put a baby inside,
lined up my harem gals, made each one a bride,
And thanked God for this isekai!

Well, the princesses are virgins who don’t know much about cock,
need a lotta warmin’ up to make their thighs unlock,
but my Demon Princess, Best Girl, and my cat-girl rock,
So thanks, God, for this isekai!

Well, I got me a Best Girl, I got my cheat powers,
got a catgirl at night, keeping me up all hours,
sweet young princesses eager to be deflowered,
Woo! Thanks, God, for this isekai, yeah!
🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

I got a little carried away with the prompt for this one, largely because I wasn’t having much luck getting a good image, even with a modern model like Klein that is generally quite good at handling complex prompts. Inevitably, it ran into counting problems, adding extra people to the image (male and female) or omitting one of the haremettes. It didn’t suffer from blended characteristics as much as earlier models, but it wasn’t unusual to get all catgirls, or a demon girl with both both horns and cat-ears. At least once, everyone had a cat tail. I ended up generating a dozen prompts and rendering each one half a dozen times.

Anyway, the prompt had so many targeted LLM calls in it that it took around 90 seconds to run on a Mac, generating ~600 words on average:

An epic fantasy illustration featuring @<makeover: a nerdy Japanese high-school boy>@ wearing @<fashion: a retro Japanese boys-school uniform>@, holding @<weapon: a magical sword>@, with a smug expression on his face. He is accompanied by three women: @<makeover: a sweet-looking medieval girl>@ wearing @<fashion: a a low-cut medieval peasant dress>@, @<makeover: a sultry catgirl>@ wearing @<fashion: a skimpy renaissance-inspired dress>@, and @<makeover: a sexy demon girl>@ wearing @<fashion: sexy black lingerie with red highlights>@. They are walking down a dirt road toward a distant castle.

(I’d likely have gotten more reliable results if I’d converted the prompt to JSON, but I’d have had to do it by hand after each LLM expansion, and I wouldn’t have been able to do the global QA passes for the final output; I may tinker with improving my dynamic-JSON-prompt scaffolding now that I’ve integrated the LLM calls)

(as mentioned in recent comments, I’m going to give Appraiser a shot; a bit shouty so far, but with a hot catgirl guild-gal haremette)

Farm Harem Maybe 2, episode 1

A quick reminder of where we left off, then right into the story, so they didn’t waste an entire episode restating the premise and reintroducing the entire (huge) cast. Our Villagers are expecting a bunch of settlers, so they go to the trouble of building them a brand-new village, only to discover that their new population of minotaurs, centaurs, and wood nymphs can’t live in human houses.

This is about as serious as conflict is ever going to get in this series. No sign of leveling up to a proper harem yet, though, with Lu treated as Our Hero’s One True Waifu. At least we get to see all the cute gals, but I read the source material far enough to know that if they continue avoiding the fact that his divine blessings include superhuman sexual stamina and fertility, they’ll eventually have to start making up original stories.

Also, I’m pretty sure I remember the wood nymphs having a problem with the concept of “clothing”…

Verdict: should be watchable to the end.

Witch Hat Atelier, episodes 1&2

Double-episode release. The first episode is designed to inform the viewer that somebody really believes in this story, and is paying for good art and animation. Also to cover the entire premise of the story in enough detail that they should be able to just get on with it. Looks to be extremely faithful to the first chapter of the manga.

Our Heroine’s voice actor has only had a few roles, but does a good job establishing her character. Our Reluctant Mentor is perhaps best known as 9S, and I’ll just pretend that I don’t recognize any traces of Kitty The All in his performance here. Most of the cast are as new as Our Heroine, but we do get the voices of Xiaolan and Sein. The Mysterious Stranger who planted the seed of the plot in a flashback has a veteran voice actor who’s been working for at least 25 years but doesn’t seem to have many recent prominent roles, so I’m going to go with Junior from R.O.D The TV.

Probably next week we’ll get to meet Our Sexy Test Administrator, voiced by the best-known name in the show, Kotono Mitsuishi. I’m guessing she won’t sound like Usagi or Excel for this one.

Verdict: so far, so good.

(speaking of R.O.D The TV, the series page on ANN is tagged “Objectionable content: Significant”; I have no idea what they could be referring to)

Slime 4, episode 1

Last season talked the audience to death. How do they start this season?

By spending the entire episode talking, of course. The CGI-heavy OP promises a great deal of action, and the ED is filled with drama related to The Little Big Bad who seems to be behind all the promised conflict, but they have a history of getting bogged down in endless meetings, so I won’t hold my breath.

(this unrelated oni-girlie is a much better cook than Shion, and if she gets the treatment she deserves this season, she’ll be one of many pregnant haremettes)

Boxxo Or Bust 3, episode 1

Season 2 worked hard to alienate anyone who enjoyed season 1, by trying to convert the lighthearted and frankly absurd adventures of a sentient vending machine and his cute girlfriend into a tired beat-the-demon-lord story that the author came up with and abandoned after he ran out of new vending machines to write about. No idea if the idea of making a large group of allies into poorly-written turncoats was in his notes somewhere, or was completely original.

How do they start this season? The OP is 50% sparkles, 50% shounen action; I honestly expected transformation sequences by the time it was over. The ED is pure chibi cuteness, so it looks like they’re going to whiplash the mood again.

Rock bath!

Get clean with Ruri and Nagi:

(naturally, you can get takeout)

Quad9 versus Amazon

Precisely at midnight, Quad9’s DNS servers stopped resolving subdomains of the form $bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com. I had their DNS first in my Pihole’s config, so it looked to me like every image on my blog suddenly vanished. I was quite relieved to discover that it was just a DNS server failure.

I opened a ticket with them, and it was fixed in 3 hours.

Accidental retro-sf paperback covergal

I was just cleaning my dynamic-prompt script, when it suddenly went off:

I can’t decide if I want to read this novel or write it…

Bit of a fumble there at the end, as if they ran themselves out of material and padded things out to avoid having to start the next story arc, which they’ve spent the past few episodes dropping hints about. Especially since season 3 isn’t coming out until next Fall. A few good character moments, anyway, and a nice self-contained story at the bridge.

This Fall will have Maomao, Fran & Sword-Daddy, and in the hopefully-won’t-suck column, Isekai Space Merc & Harem, Isekai Goblin Mayor, and Isekai Fetish-Porn Gamer (aka “Magical Explorer”), but having to wait a year-and-a-half after such a short season is a bit of a downer.

(season 3 of The Apothecary Diaries will be Fall and Spring, with a movie in between)

This week, the mystery of Why Are They Setting Up Beardo’s City Of Gold With Only One Episode Left And They Just Started A Big Fight? I’m not complaining, just wondering how long until the show resumes.

Packagefail & win

Thursday morning, the “delayed” Amazon package still hadn’t gotten a status update, but not only did I have the option to cancel the order, they promised same-day delivery if I reordered the same items. So I did, and they were delivered at 5:30 PM on the same day.

This strongly reinforced my belief that an unqualified driver crashed the original truck.

“We bought your email provider to spam your inbox!”

If you guessed Network Solutions, you win the daily unsolicited shit-tier upsell email spam!

Fridgefail

I pulled a fresh carton of milk out of the fridge, and it was half-frozen. I opened a plastic bottle of Diet Pepsi, and the top half-inch instantly turned to slush. The compartment was set to maintain a temperature of 37°F, but this was clearly not happening, so I put my remote-probe thermometer inside, and saw it gradually drop to 20°F.

Yeah, that’s gonna be a service call. On the bright side, it didn’t fail in the other direction, so my food’s still safe, and setting the thermostat to 44°F got it up to 36°F, so I can make it until they get a tech out with the right part.

(admittedly, for most of my life, having a bottle of soda turn to slush on opening was precisely the temperature I wanted it to be at during the summer)

Ctrl-F “QA”: not found

Microsoft just sent a mass email announcing “Our Commitment to Windows quality”; you may have already seen people react to it, but here’s the exact wording of the bullet points. Based on the past several months of feedback, they plan to improve in the following areas through April:

1. More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions,

2. Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus,

3. Reducing disruption from Windows Updates,

4. Faster and more dependable File Explorer,

5. More control over widgets and feed experiences,

6. A simpler, more transparent Windows Insider Program,

7. Improved Feedback Hub, available starting today.

In order, that’s:

1. restore lost functionality,

2. back off from turning Notepad into a critical remote-code-execution vulnerability,

3. stop forcing you to install broken updates right away,

4. restore lost functionality,

5. cut back on ad-riddled screen-filling bullshit,

6. “higher quality builds” (that’s “insider” preview builds, not public releases…)

7. overhaul broken website.

All of these promises come with an implicit “(for now)” appended.

(some people are paid to put a more positive spin on this email…)

Chuck Norris, R.I.P

While most of his accomplishments have been widely praised, I’d just like to thank him for teaching me the word “gusset”.

This week, they not only pull out all the stops, but the organs as well. Frieren’s role in the battle was… educational, for all concerned, while Methode was definitely the star.

(Frieren might be popular in Japan…)

A Wild Last Boss Reappeared!

The light novels have returned to Amazon, as completely new listings. Same publisher, same contents, but different ASIN and no series metadata linking them, and backdated as if they’ve been there all along.

Bad tiger!

There are two Tiger Gyoza locations in Kyoto. The one near Karasuma & Shijo is the one we found first several years ago, but on our most recent trip, we were near the other one East of Teramachi when hunger struck, so we went in, only to discover that their menu did not include the pukkuri (plump) variety. The one in Osaka does, so we’d just assumed it was their signature style. Still good food, but we’d never deliberately go there again when the other location isn’t that far away.

Incense countermeasures

After a few whiffs at an incense or diffuser display, it gets really difficult to tell them apart. To me the solution seemed obvious, something I’d first seen in an outlet-mall cologne shop in Gilroy: a dish of coffee beans. The strong odor of the roasted beans is quite effective at resetting your sense of smell.

A grocery store supplied a small bag of dark-roasted espresso beans (which will get cycled through my espresso maker soon), and a dollar store supplied a pair of small screw-top plastic containers. Not only did this make it easier to pick out the fainter incense varieties, it came in very handy when mixing ingredients in our chinese-medicine-style incense-making class.

Today I Learned…

…that I apparently lost power yesterday long enough for the UPS to run dry and shut off my NAS. I didn’t notice due to my body and brain still being spread across three time zones.

Speaking of which,

I made the NAS basically unusable by trying to download the torrent version of Flashpoint Ultimate. Something about how it was trying to preallocate 2.2 TB of space across multiple files before starting the download. Apple’s Samba stack did not approve.

So I copy-pasted the list of URLs and downloaded them directly with wget in a loop.

Unrelated,

Not only does Alton Brown have a new Youtube series (plus a few shorts), he’s following up his final tour with… another tour.