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How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

davekiss.com

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Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#171

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nine_k wrote: post #123
neontomo wrote: post #29

I'm in the art scene, and when it comes to submitting proposals for exhibitions and being in art/film festivals and such, competing against other people being picked is surprisingly easy when you realise that most people don't study the brief that tells you exactly what the organisations is looking for. make sure you nail everything in the brief and you're in the lead, even if your art is terrible. I feel this is sim…

This means that to improve one's chances to gain publicly, one should adjust their art to the exact requirements of the publicity-producing organization, and not let artistic whims like "inspiration" ruin the day. Or, better yet, has to learn how to reorient the latter slightly to check every box when a checklist becomes available. This requires a serious mastery of the art that allows to obtain exactly what's envisi…

It depends on whether you're doing art for the artistic expression or to make a living. If it's the latter, you'll need to do what is asked or what is worth money instead of what you want. This applies to every creative endeavour, or hell, most of anything that earns you money. I don't want to sit here writing user stories that should ideally be fixed today, but it earns me money and I can do it so I guess.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#173

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sedatk wrote: post #137

When I was visiting India for work back in 2006, I got my name published on The Times of India newspaper. I was reading it while having breakfast at the hotel, and I saw this sports related question, and all you had to do was to send an email with your answer. So, I did that. And apparently, only a few people did it. I got my name printed on the next issue. We're talking about a national newspaper with a circulation…

This is not to be underestimated; you see these opinion pieces or columns in newspapers and think, "wow these must be like the smartest and most well-known people who passed a rigorous application procedure" etc, but in practice... there's very few people actually willing and able to do these things.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#174

Post by franciscop »

julianeon wrote: post #112
TrackerFF wrote: post #13

I love that 75% of the post was OP checking the math on whether or not he should join the contest.

I'm somewhat skeptical of this amount of validation. There's a solid educational consensus on how to become the best at something: do it a lot. If your goal is to winning contests, you should really prioritize cranking through them: getting practice at getting better. Don't try to make a masterpiece. Instead focus on becoming fast at creating entries, doing them according to the rules, and sending them off. Like thos…

I got pretty good at "Makers Competitions" in my University years, to the point where my technical peak wasn't when winning a NASA competition, but ~2 years later when we released a technical product within a weekend in another competition.

I remember wrapping up the competition, winning all the prices we could win except one (1st place, and "best of" for 3 out of 4 categories), and the feeling that we had demolished the competition all around and that felt somehow a bit unfair for the rest. That was the last time I participated in a competition of this kind.

How did we do it? I had the network of contacts already (co-created a Maker group at my University) so I could literally hand-pick a team of 5 with the best maker in each sector; I called my previous co-winner who is great at tech presentations, and called the best designer+3D artist, the best App programmer, the best electronics person I knew, (and me). I got a stomach infection and spent a third of the competition in the toilet, but I ended up doing mainly programming and organizing: 1-2 hours to decide on the theme and solution, then split the work efficiently, and then let each person work on their own thing while continuously checking for sync between them. We ended up with a product and UI that seemed like a commercial product.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#175

Post by trustno2 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #173
sedatk wrote: post #137

When I was visiting India for work back in 2006, I got my name published on The Times of India newspaper. I was reading it while having breakfast at the hotel, and I saw this sports related question, and all you had to do was to send an email with your answer. So, I did that. And apparently, only a few people did it. I got my name printed on the next issue. We're talking about a national newspaper with a circulation…

This is not to be underestimated; you see these opinion pieces or columns in newspapers and think, "wow these must be like the smartest and most well-known people who passed a rigorous application procedure" etc, but in practice... there's very few people actually willing and able to do these things.

You realize it's true because the same people easily morph their "areas of knowledge" so they can write opinion column about basically anything.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#176

Post by probably_wrong »

davekiss wrote: post #28
pcthrowaway wrote: post #23

I can simultaneously appreciate the write-up for gaming a competition while also dreading how it basically describes the incentives for contributing to the AI-enshittification of the internet.

Sigh… you know, there's a bit of "can't beat 'em, join 'em" happening here, for sure, but let me be optimistic for a second. This story wouldn't have happened without AI. I genuinely used the tools to tell the story I wanted to tell. There was something about the way friction was removed with the typical narration round-trips that actually made the storytelling better, easier, less painful… and I truly don't believe…

> This story wouldn't have happened without AI.

I don't think that's the optimistic take you present it to be. To me the post reads as the story of someone for whom art is the least important part in an art contest and treats the artistic part as an afterthought ("I just wanted to adhere to recording content that prioritized the weighted breakdown").

I'm not going to pretend that the contest attracted the top artistic minds of this generation, but anyone who actually put care into the art part has lost to someone who made an art pipeline. Extrapolate to the art world and suddenly there's less real art because the money out there to fund it is going to AI programmers checking a spreadsheet.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#177

Post by davekiss »

probably_wrong wrote: post #176
davekiss wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh… you know, there's a bit of "can't beat 'em, join 'em" happening here, for sure, but let me be optimistic for a second. This story wouldn't have happened without AI. I genuinely used the tools to tell the story I wanted to tell. There was something about the way friction was removed with the typical narration round-trips that actually made the storytelling better, easier, less painful… and I truly don't believe…

> This story wouldn't have happened without AI. I don't think that's the optimistic take you present it to be. To me the post reads as the story of someone for whom art is the least important part in an art contest and treats the artistic part as an afterthought ("I just wanted to adhere to recording content that prioritized the weighted breakdown"). I'm not going to pretend that the contest attracted the top artisti…

Did you see my fairy entry?

Heavily artistic, thoughtful, and cinematic, leaning into my passion for the art of telling stories through video that I've kept close for almost 20 years now.

It lost. The judges selected the entries they felt were the best fit. The argument for this contest is that AI enabled _more_ thoughtful art to exist, not less.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#178

Post by zamalek »

julianeon wrote: post #112
TrackerFF wrote: post #13

I love that 75% of the post was OP checking the math on whether or not he should join the contest.

I'm somewhat skeptical of this amount of validation. There's a solid educational consensus on how to become the best at something: do it a lot. If your goal is to winning contests, you should really prioritize cranking through them: getting practice at getting better. Don't try to make a masterpiece. Instead focus on becoming fast at creating entries, doing them according to the rules, and sending them off. Like thos…

I suspect the value derived here was enjoyment, not monetary.

Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

#180

Post by davekiss »

xnorswap wrote: post #158
julianeon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm somewhat skeptical of this amount of validation. There's a solid educational consensus on how to become the best at something: do it a lot. If your goal is to winning contests, you should really prioritize cranking through them: getting practice at getting better. Don't try to make a masterpiece. Instead focus on becoming fast at creating entries, doing them according to the rules, and sending them off. Like thos…

I agree, that section read as a post-hoc justification given how much effort went into it. If the effort to determine if something is "worth" entering is more than the effort to enter it, it would be better to just enter it rather than wasting time on the verification part. Particularly as there's no reputational downside to entering and failing at such a contest.

You underestimate how much logic takes a backseat when you're feeding an infant at 3am for weeks on end. This project gave me a creative outlet during a time where sanity preservation was paramount.

The odds were calculated up front.

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