How to Make It Look Like You’re Working Without Having to Rub Thy Orb Every Five Minutes
Teleworking tips for wizards
Gramercy for reading Ye Olde Tyme News. Bend thy knee before The King by subscribing and sharing it amongst thy fellow mages.
Whilst many wizards relish the opportunity to work remotely from the comfort of their own lofty black tower, it can also come with downsides. Many managers impose invasive restrictions on their teleworking wizardlings which monitor every second of their orb activity. But some wizards hath found ways to fight back against these micro-managing mages.
Throughout the day, market divining analyst Giand’ir Greycloak has to care for an army of creatures he spawned from the Fires of Yggnorøth using dark magick. Often this requires him to be away from his orb for brief periods of tyme to feed them buckets of chum or prevent them from burning down all the surrounding villages. He says he hath not the tyme to sit in front of his orb all day just to keep his boss happy.
“Unfortunately, just pondering my orb is not enough to keep it from going into orb-saver mode every five minutes,” spake Giand’ir Greycloak. “I’m afraid if the High Sorcerer sees that my orb status is set to ‘away’ he’ll think I’m not working and banish me to the ice realm of Scúrenfjall for a thousand years.”
In ye modern teleworking environment, many wizards lament the Wizards’ Guild micro-maging their every minute. Some managers have gone so far as to require their subordinates to bring their orbs with them to the bathroom, when they eat lunch, and even during their contractually-required hourly break to smoke a massive pipe of merryberrry leaf.
“The High Sorcerer is always giving us all this bullshyte busy work just to keep us stuck to our orbs,” spake Greycloak. “Like, I’m 4,000 years olde and have fought in countless battles to save the Realm from annihilation at the hands of the Dark Lord. I don’t need this shyte.”
Many wizards like Greycloak have turned to innovative methodes to prevent their orb status from appearing as “away.” Herein be some tips to keep the High Sorcerer off thy back whilst thou works from thy lair.
Conjure an Entity to Rub Thy Orb at Thy Behest
If thou happens to be a conjurer or a necromancer, simply conjure an entity to rub thy orb for thee whilst thou scurries off to the loo or takes a 400 year nap.
Orb Jiggler™ Wand
The Orb Jiggler™ was designed specifically for the needs of teleworking wizards. It conveniently floats in the air around thy orb, prodding it at random intervals to make it seem as if thou art present. That pesky High Sorcerer shall be none the wiser!
Install Anti-Scryware
The remote working environment hath been a boon for anti-scryware, which prevents meddling mages from scrying on thee without permission. Install scryware deep within thy orb’s essence to surf the ether in peace and prevent thy manager from scrying on thee at unwanted tymes.
Beguile Someone Else Into Doing It
If one hath expendable minions to put to the task, simply place a beguiling curse upon their minds and order them to rub thy orb for thee. Often, a curse is not even required.
“I just have one of my slaves do it,” spake Viligorax Oakenstaff. “That frees me up to get more important things done around my lair without the High Sorcerer breathing down my neck.”
Addendum: Ye Olde Artyfycial Yntelligence
I’ve been hoping to incorporate AI-generated art into Ye Olde Tyme News for a while now. After many months on the waiting list for DALL-E 2 and no luck yet, I decided to see what other options were out there.
That’s how I came across Midjourney, which was used to create the image for today’s article (with a little light Photoshopping to fix some freaky stuff that was going on with his hands). Like with DALL-E and the other AI-generated art projects out there, Midjourney generates an image based on a text prompt you enter. You can enter a limited amount of text prompts for free, but after a certain point you have to pay to continue using it.
I’m considering paying for a subscription, because it’s really fun and I already wasted about half of my free trials trying to make this stupid wizard. Here’s a few of the failed attempts to generate today’s image, along with the prompts I used.
Prompt: bored wizard sitting next to a desk rubbing a crystal ball
Prompt: wizard, bored at work, in a room with stone walls, rubbing a crystal ball that is on his desk
Prompt: bored wizard with a gray beard rubbing a crystal ball, realistic
Prompt: wizard sitting at his desk smoking a pipe with one hand while rubbing a crystal ball with his other hand, realistic
Prompt: wizard with orb
Prompt: wizard sitting at a desk rubbing a crystal ball with his hand, medieval illumination style
I finally got something almost usable with this last one, although the faces are still a horrific mash-up of quasi face parts. Maybe the simplicity of the “medieval illumination style” helped? The one on the bottom right captured the general idea that I was looking for. Midjourney lets you create variations on any of the photos, so I created four variations of the bottom right one, the best of which was:
I really liked the style of this one, but the face and hands are just awful. So I created one more enhanced version of it to end up with the main image for today’s article:
The face came out much clearer on this one, and I imagine with more enhancing and variations you could probably make it even better. The only major issues are that his left hand is a mangled mess and is poking the orb with a wand or something, and there’s another three-fingered disembodied hand just resting on the desk. So I used Photoshop to merge those into something that more closely resembled a hand rubbing/prodding the orb.
And Abracadabra!
Midjourney was really fun to use, and I definitely recommend giving the free version a spin (you’ll have to have a Discord account, because the prompts are all entered into a Discord chat and the images are generated there). I haven’t tried out any similar apps yet but am hoping to give DALL-E 2 a spin if I ever get off the wait list. You can find out more about Midjourney on their website and Github.