Experiments in video & medical craziness
Or why this update is late!
TLDR!
Here’s what to expect from this month’s update:
Why is this update late?
An exciting experiment in video & audio (spoiler: it uses AI)
Accountability report
Okay, cards on the table, this update is late for medical reasons!
Yep, you read that right, I had medical issues. Thankfully, nothing that’s going to cost more than I can currently afford, so that’s the good news.
The bad news is that two separate medical issues have cut into my writing time, for different reasons.
Zip-ties, utility knives, extreme toothache, and fingers do not mix!
At the end of last month, I had a workplace accident with a utility knife, the end of my left ring finger, and a trip to urgent care. My boss was amazing, and surprised at how calm I managed to stay despite slicing a pretty big gash into my finger.
Four stitches later, instructions to keep it clean, covered, and washed frequently, and I can honestly say it could have turned out a lot worse.
However, it did cut into my writing time, since I touch-type, and had to learn to adjust to a finger that was suddenly double it’s normal size.
The irony being that now I’ve got used to working around the problem, I’ll be getting the stitches out after the weekend.
At the end of the day, I’m blaming the toothache for having me tired and distracted. But I’ve promised my boss I’ll use scissors to cut zip ties from now on.
Extracting the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth!
The second incident wasn’t as sudden or unexpected, but came courtesy of a tooth that my dentist had warned me might have to be pulled. It started hurting a couple of days before the finger incident, so I booked an appointment with my usual dentist.
The appointment was scheduled for a couple of days after the finger incident, and I was hopeful it would be something easy, like an infection... But no…
The dentist I usually see is very aware of my extreme anxiety about all things dental. We took one full mouth X-ray and made several valiant attempts to take close-up shots, but my gag reflex wouldn’t behave long enough.
So, after reviewing the one X-ray we had, we both concluded that the root was pressing into my sinuses, which explained the tooth pain, sinus pressure, and headaches. And with that in mind, we agree to just remove the tooth.
The dentist wanted to make the extraction as easy and painless as possible, and since I couldn’t open my mouth wide enough for the X-rays, we decided sedation would be needed. Unfortunately, his facility doesn’t offer that option.
That meant a referral to an oral surgeon and booking an appointment around my wife’s availability to act as the designated adult for the day.
Now came the nine-day wait!
Thankfully, the oral surgeon’s team had me sedated, and the extraction was complete in less time than they’d estimated. So, now I’m at home, recovering and looking forward to the first real night’s sleep in nearly two weeks.
Experiments in video!
Many of you are probably aware that I’ve been playing with ElevenLabs, and I’ve been using a few more of the new features. They’ve recently released updates that allow image and video creation in easy-to-follow steps, including lip-syncing from an uploaded image, and using a saved audio file.
I’m pretty pleased with the results, so far… But it might need some work:
Let me know what you think in the comments.
The lip-sync portion of this video was created in ElevenLabs.
I uploaded the image of Richard from some samples I’d created in Midjourney, but never used.
I created a script in Elevenlabs and used the audio tools to create the voice-over.
I combined the two using ElevenLab’s access to lip-syncing video generators, some guidelines on what I wanted in terms of performance.
Then I ran a few iterations until I got something I was reasonably happy with.
Once I had the character video, I added the splash-screen and transition in OpenShot.
Want to know more? Check it out @ https://try.elevenlabs.io/text_to_video
Writing/Editing Update
Things are very much where we left them at the end of last month.
I’ve finalized the outline for “Shadows Over Seattle: Book 1 - Of Wolves & Men”.
I’ve started writing Chapter 1, and am about 4000 words in (so, 2000 more than last month).
I’m running a listen-through pass on the “Shadows Over Seattle: Prequels 1-6” audiobook. There are still a few things I need to fix before publishing it.