#workflow

[diosas-world]

🤎

[triflingthing]

busy bee

[funkybunkymalunky-blog]

This took up most of my night

Still having fun with this psittacosaurus model

[dduane]

Dear Diane, I'm in a bind as a professional writer/editor. The higher-ups at my job (small outfit for popular sci/tech publications; think New Scientist-esque media) are increasing eager to use ChatGPT/genAI tools to "enhance our workflows" in writing/editing/design. This includes "brainstorming" creative concepts with genAI, touching up incomplete images, etc. They won't listen if I just list the ethical reasons this is Bad; do you have business/industry-side points for the case? Facts, data...

I wouldn't have anything business-adjacent. But let me point to this on Bluesky and see if anybody there can make some useful suggestions.

...My own sense, which would be anecdotal from things I've seen people say over the last six months or so, would be that adding ChatGPT/genAi to the process would be likely to introduce more problems than it (putatively) solves, and would in the long run slow down any projected workflow rather than speeding it up. ...But let's see what the people at the coalface have to say.

Thanks for the query!

[ayeforscotland]

What is Dataflow? Part 2: Diagrams

This is the second part of a couple of posts about Dataflow, particularly why it's important for the world going forward and relating to the Crowd Strike IT disaster.

Read the first part here.

Before I get into this one today, I wanted to address a couple of things.

Firstly, Dataflow is something that nearly every single person can understand. You do NOT:

Need to have a degree in Computing Science

Need to work in IT

Need to be a data analyst / Spreadsheet master

If any of you see the word 'Data' and feel your eyes glazing over, try and snap out of it because, if you're anything like me, Dataflow is much more approachable as a concept.

Secondly, what do I mean by IT?

Traditionally in most of our media the all-encompassing 'IT department' handles everything to do with technology. But every business works differently and there are many job titles with lots of crossover.

For example, you can be an infrastructure engineer where your focus is on building and maintaining the IT infrastructure that connects your organisation internally and externally. This is a completely different role from an Application Portfolio Manager who is tasked with looking after the Applications used in business processes.

Both are technical people and come under the banner of 'IT' - but their roles are focused in different areas. So just bear that in mind!

Now that's out of the way, let's begin! This one will be a little bit deeper, and questions welcome!

An Intro to Diagrams

You probably do not need a history of why pictures are important to the human race but to cover our bases, ever since we put traced our hands on a cave wall we have been using pictures to communicate.

Jump forward in time and you have engineers like Leonardo Da Vinci drafting engineering schematics.

You get the idea, humans have been creating diagrams (Pictures) for thousands of years. Centuries of refinement and we have much more modern variations.

And there's one main reason why diagrams are important: They are a Common Language.

In this context, a Common Language helps bridge a language gap between disciplines as well as a linguistic gap. A Spanish electrician and a German electrician should be able to refer to the same diagram and understand each other, even if they don't know each other's language.

The reason they can do this is because they're are international standards which govern how electrical diagrams are created.

A Common Language for Digital?

Here's an image I've shown to clients from governments and institutions to global organisations.

Everything around us, from the products we use to the bridges we drive over and the buildings we live, work, enjoy and shop in had diagrams backing them.

You would not build a skyscraper without a structural engineering diagram, you would not build an extension on your house if an architect couldn't produce a blueprint.

Why is there not an equivalent for the Digital World and for Dataflow?

Where is the Digital Common Language?

This is the bit where the lightbulb goes on in a lot of people's heads. Because, as I mentioned in Part 1, the flow of data is the flow of information and knowledge. And the common mistake is that people think of dataflow, and only ever think about the technology.

Dataflow is the flow of information between People, Business Processes *and* Technology Assets.

It is not reserved to Technology specialists. When you look at the flow of data, you need to understand the People (Stakeholders) at the top, the processes that they perform (and the processes which use the data) and the technology assets that support that data.

The reason why this is important is because it puts the entire organisation in context.

It is something that modern businesses fail to do. They might have flow charts and network diagrams, and these are 'alright' in specific contexts, but they fall to pieces when they lack the context of the full organisation.

For example, here is a Network Diagram. It is probably of *some* value to technical personnel who work in infrastructure. Worth bearing in mind, some organisations don't even have something like this.

To be absolutely clear, this diagram will hold some value for some people within the organisation. I'm not saying it's completely useless. But for almost everyone else, it is entirely out of context, especially for any non-technical people.

So it doesn't help non-technical people understand why all of these assets are important, and it doesn't help infrastructure teams articulate the importance of any of these assets.

What happens if one of those switches or routers fails? What's the impact on the organisation? Who is affected? The diagram above does not answer those questions.

On the other side of the business we have process diagrams (aka workflow diagrams) which look like this.

Again we run into the same problem - This is maybe useful for some people working up at the process layer, but even then it doesn't provide context for the stakeholders involved (Are there multiple people/departments involved throughout) and it doesn't provide any context for technical personnel who are responsible for maintaining the technology that supports this process.

In short, nobody has the big picture because there is not a common language between Business & IT.

Conclusion

So what do we do? Well we need to have a Common Language between Business & IT. While we need people with cross-functional knowledge, we also need a common language (or common framework) for both sides of the organisation to actually understand each other.

Otherwise you get massively siloed departments completely winging their disaster recovery strategies when things like Crowd Strike goes down.

Senior Management will be asked questions about what needs to be prioritised and they won't have answers because they aren't thinking in terms of Dataflow.

It's not just 'We need to turn on everything again' - It's a question of priorities.

Thing is, there's a relatively simple way to do it, in a way that looking at any engineering diagram feels simple but actually has had decades/centuries of thought behind it. It almost feels like complete common sense.

I'll save it for Part 3 if you're interested in me continuing and I'll make a diagram of my blog.

The important thing is mapping out all the connections and dependencies, and there's not some magic button you press that does it all.

But rigorous engineering work is exactly that, you can't fudge it with a half-arsed attempt. You need to be proactive, instead of reacting whenever disaster strikes.

[katherinethrowaway]

Work selfie

[jamesronkko]

warmer version

[ghostfacethriller]

Good morning world.

Caffeinated fuel to go please.

[odvunir]

closeup details from some recent "bulletin board" / scrapbook / evidence themed commissions ✧.* Queue // TOS // Twitter // Toyhouse // Tumblr // Furaffinity // Discord // Kofi // Monthly Tiers・゜゜・．

[inkprovised]

Since I am sick... AGAIN😡😡😡 (or still??🤷‍♀️)

Have another one of these;

[lupucs]

New timelapse after what seems like an eternity!! This time it's all about how I made Undyne. The whole thing is up on Yoochoob if you're interested! 🐟

[darthraydor]

updating your resume on a work computer during work hours during a training webinar feels wrong, but

[p1nkpaper]

Made these for myself when i forget how to draw but some have asked for tutorials in the past so uh ;_;

[berrysemifreddo]

You can call me Sofia! Virgo, ISTJ, Ravenclaw, in case anyone's interested😂

≈≈≈≈OTHER THINGS ABOUT ME≈≈≈≈

MUSIC: Mostly listen to Radiohead/The Smile nowadays, but used to be a Muse fan (also listened to Acid Black Cherry for the whole 2024 for some reason😅4000+ minutes Idek how)

MOVIES/SHOWS: Favorite TV series is Legion. Movies...too many, but tbh none of my favorite movies formed any "fandoms", but I did watched "The Guest" for like 20 times🤧(I have problems ik)

ANIME/MANGA: Huge JJBA fan, love AoT too, absolute fav is Death Note, recently was just catching up on Demon Slayer with my bf

VIDEOGAMES: Enjoy puzzle games the most. Chants of Sennaar, The Room, that sort of thing. Also love Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Origins. But my absolute favorite is comedy games like Thank Goodness You're Here and Untitled Goose Game and I'm not even joking

OTHER HOBBIES: Fragrance. Headphones. Singing. Writing (not fanfic tho, my fics were absolute trash🙃). All things AI. 3D animation.

(That's all I can think of🤥)

Since I'll be posting a hell of a lot of AI stuff in the future...I guess I'll pin this here in case anyone's curious about how I made them😂 (UPDATE: Currently I'm learning drawing so AI stuff will be much less than before, but I might still use it to generate things that I can't possibly draw out)

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈AI RELATED INFO≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

My workflow involves tons of inpainting, which essentially is "partially change the image using AI". It's a bit like Photoshop's generative fill but free (and better🤫). Inpainting can be quite time-consuming, but I hate seeing unignorable artifacts, so I try my best to fix them.

≈≈≈≈≈≈MUSIC SHARING TIME!≈≈≈≈≈≈

Model-usage-wise, I normally just use the original Flux dev (by Black Forest Labs)+LoRAs I trained+Other style LoRA/Concept LoRA (sometimes Redux too). I run the models with ComfyUI locally and I make my own workflows. I train LoRAs with Kohya's GUI.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ART RELATED INFO≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

I also post my hand-drawn and digital paintings to ins@berrysartstudio

My pusheen fan content (including AI images, 3D animation, hand-drawn comic) are at ins@pusheen_diffusion_lab

Check them out if you're interested!😘

Favorite song of my 2024:

All time favorites: