JCoolArts

Hi everyone. All you 307 followers, most whom I've never interacted with XD

Got some stuff to talk about finally.

First off, as you may have noticed (probably didn't), my page and submissions have been minimized/sterilized over the last few weeks. This is due to me retracting back away from this site a bit. No, I'm not "leaving", but more on this to come in a moment.

Second part is better:

I've got a new website, and you can see it here > https://www.jcoolarts.com

(Those visiting my deviantart profile page will need to click into this journal to read the rest of it, since it seems DA messed up the way journals display, and won't show you the full thing just by clicking "read more")

For roughly a decade I've used DeviantArt as my primary go-to for releasing new art I've made. But that will no longer be so. These days, regular art is smothered by floods of Ai trash imagery. This site has taken so many wrong turns that it has lost itself along the way. So I made my own website. It is on that website there that I will be posting my best work as well as all future new work. Significant releases of new art will still be announced on here, and I will link to it from a journal, status or obnoxiously heavy watermarked version of what I've made.

So no, I'm not "leaving" but the era of this being a place I regard as worthy of posting my art to first, has come to an end. I don't want my future work to be used without my permission to train Ai. I've considered just not posting my stuff to the internet anymore, and I still might go that route, but according to information on the bots they use to scour the internet to train Ai, a robots.txt is respected, and therefore I have a better chance at keeping my work out of datasets if I upload only to my own website. This does mean my site will never be indexed by Google/duckduckgo/etc, but I don't really care if it is or not.

I will also have the power to ban IP addresses and whatnot, to ensure better security for what matters. Best of all though, art work on one's own website will stand out better, and you automatically have all the "core" features you could ever ask for.

This is not a decision I've made out of a reaction to Ai alone, but due to my stats on here as well. I get an average of 2 profile visitors per day. TWO. That's it. Before eclipse, it was 15-30 unique visitors per day. When up against just two though, I can do just as well on my own site or better, without having to worry about the various concerns and limitations that come with posting here.

To me, Ai art is like vomit, a mixture of many things spat out at a furious pace, making unappealing messes and leaving a bad smell behind. I do hope that some sites remain hostile to the scourge of it.

Anyways, now for some more misc stuff since I'm already here writing. Life has been taking some interesting turns. I got a new (new to me) used car about 5 weeks ago, and my current job which I took in the middle of this year has been giving me more hours. All in all, I've been doing alright. I survived covid this year in May, and then just as recently in November was thoroughly exposed by all of my family who had it, but I never ended up testing positive for it. I did have one day of headache and a light cough though so who knows, but hats off to my immune system and God all the same for keeping me well through all that.

Aside from that news,

I got baptized last month, and even got alot of my family to attend church with me a couple times since then, and that it something I am thankful for.

I guess I'll end here. Merry Christmas everyone, I hope 2023 is a better year than this one has been. It probably will be (optimism implied)

I'm leaving this link here for those who want to see my old time lapses since the availability of having a free custom box was removed by DA: https://www.deviantart.com/jcoolarts/status-update/21060288

So, I've already been to the Grand Canyon, but only on the edges, as a day trip type of thing.

I'd like to hike down to the bottom of it though, especially to see places like elves chasm.

Here's the 5 related deviations for the prompt.

Oops forgot the #showyourheart tag.