What did this cat DO?!
Caught stealing a fish in Thailand (I‘m guessing), and then extradited to the US?
They must want him pretty bad.

“The planet Arrakis, known as Dune”

My very first experience with a sound card was watching the Dune 2 intro on my dad’s friend’s computer. I was so amazed, I just sat in awe as that intro movie played.
On the drive home I tried to remember if what I heard was real, and I just couldn’t imagine it. When I tried to recall what I saw and heard, I could only imagine hearing that tinny internal speaker making bleeps and bloops instead of the actual sounds. It just seemed so unreal at the time that I could not recall what I had heard only a few hours earlier :)

On a side note, I don’t think any studio in the nineties made as memorable tunes and sounds as Westwood did. There was always something enchanting about them. Dune 2, the Kyrandia games, they all had excellent music that really played into the strengths of what was available back then.
Of course I’m talking with pink tinted nostalgia goggles, but still… good memories :)

Yes, I remember these! Countdown And Tex Murphy: The Martian Memorandum come to mind. I remember being amazed at the sounds suddenly coming out of our internal computer speaker. It even had something close to speech!
The manual also came with some info on making the sound even better using some alligator clips, but that went waaaay over my little head at the time :)

Here you go :)

Thank you so much for that suggestion!
It was right there in the manual, I really am an idiot sometimes. The beeping is softer now. It’s still super shrill and repeating, but at least it doesn’t give me an heart attack :)

I can’t disable it entirely, there’s too much washing going on to just ignore it completely. But this definitely helps!

We have a German brand washing machine that makes an ear piercing beep when the wash is done and repeats doing this every minute for 15 minutes straight. It is the most annoying and attention-seeking appliance in the house.
When it was time to replace the dryer, we intentionally got an Asian model with a lovely little tune that’ll play exactly once. I’ll never get tired of hearing that tune, because that god awful washing machine will always remind me of the alternative.

Good luck Player One.

Prompt: game screenshot, Back view of a player in a mech suit, facing A colossal teddy bear with lasers and gun turrets, destroying a city, cinematic lighting --ar 4:3 --stylize 75 --niji 6

Hmmm, I guess it would be possible to take all top-level comments and check if they have an image. Then you collect

• Username
• Number of points
• Text?
• Timestamp created

You could determine the points for most upvotes and last two entries. But you still need to give input for prompt included, OP favorite, and original. But just the collecting of the data and putting it in a workable format (csv, json, tsv, etc.) might remove some of the tedium. A second script for converting the filled in CSV to individual markdown comments and possibly posting them, would remove some more annoying work. I’m not so sure what the direct messages would help with though.

Having done this for 4 or 5 times (I lost count :). These are my main annoyances:

• Collecting all the users in a nice overview
• Applying the scores
• Writing out the markdown tables and scores

For example, in this round I:

• collected all the users in an Excel sheet
• added all the different point categories and the Totals as columns.
• Filled out the columns per user.
• Unpivoted the columns to key/value pairs
• Saved the result as CSV
• Threw the CSV in ChatGPT and asked it to create markdown tables.
• Took the list of markdown tables and copy-pasted them as replies for each user, together with a personal message

It took me more than an hour to do it properly and I guess a lot of it could definitely be automated.

Anyway, it would make for a fun little project I guess. But I lack the time or skills to do this properly.

Points: 6

He looks so happy to be flying!

Points: 6

For some reason I keep hearing the Skippy theme song :)

Points: 8

I don’t understand why Cheshire Cat is not allowed, since I’m sure the first illustrations should be in the public domain by now. It’s not like you specifically asked for the Disney version. Anyway, this is still a good likeness.

Points: 8

That looks adorable, and definitely a better use for SD3 than humans sitting at a bench :)

Points: 9

I really love the idea of mixing an animal with a microscopic organism.
You got to (shared) 3rd place! Here’s a Bronze Syringe trophy :)

Points: 9

No points but still, I like your animal! Is that a sloth penguin in the background? :)

Points: 9

That looks seriously terrifying, very nice choice of animals!
Oops, almost forgot. You get a trophy for reaching (shared) 3rd place!

Points: 10

Though a felt puppet can hardly be called “some other organism”, I will let it slide since the result is so good :)

Points: 10

Definitely one of the more unexpected combinations, and it turned out so well! I love his two little front legs.

Points: 10

Pigs are always cute, turpigs included :)

Points: 10

It’s looks very cute :) And the inpainting is a clever way of doing this.

Points: 11

You got (shared) 3rd place! Such a gorgeous animal!
For you the Bronze Syringe: