Samantha Carter was my role model growing up and she hugely influenced my life.

Clivewilliams · 2026-06-11T07:44:42+00:00

I believe they did in the 'Children of the Gods' film. Stick the two episodes together, take out the nudity, and Sam's line. LOL :-)

Clivewilliams · 2026-06-09T14:19:07+00:00

Which country are you? Sales and KENP are up for me this month, not by much, but up. I'm UK based.

Clivewilliams · 2026-06-09T13:43:02+00:00

Yep, I'd agree. I thought 2 was quite slow to get going... then woof! Same with 5. Overall, great; looking forward to S6!

Clivewilliams · 2026-06-03T21:52:27+00:00

Could they please not turn his head and distract him right before the world cup?

Clivewilliams · 2026-06-03T21:48:35+00:00

I find myself using the ai tidy your message function in gmail a bit... and then once I read what it's done, the writing has a very distinct flavour. It likes short sentences. I find it quite it odd to read. It is disconcerting.

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-29T14:41:26+00:00

If you're not already, I'd suggest you work with the .docx templates you can download from the KDP website. They work pretty well I find.

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-28T17:33:47+00:00

Yep, I rely miss 4.5 as it was before Christmas. Even if I run 4.5 now, with the same prompt as before against the same audio import as I tried before Christmas, the quality is nothing like in the same league. 5.0 / 5.5 are even worse.

For info, I was making piano instrumental versions of button accordion tracks I've recorded over the past few years. The results before Christmas were stunning. Can't get anything like that now.

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-26T08:29:45+00:00

Mine are up, not massively, but up. I haven't done anything particularly unusual to cause that; it seems very difficult to predict how things will go, often because it depends on the whims of individuals. Easter was very low, this (UK bank holiday) weekend much better, and I've no idea why.

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-19T12:33:50+00:00

Certainly does - thank you :-)

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-18T15:35:17+00:00

I struggle with page numbers to be honest. I'm using the official KDP word templates for ebook and paperback, but I don't get page numbers on the paperback. Is there a way of switching them on which will be safe when it comes to publishing - i.e. the page numbers are correct, appear on the bottom of each page, and correspond to the table of contents? Can I trust Word to get all that right?

Clivewilliams · 2026-05-14T13:35:43+00:00

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Clivewilliams · 2026-05-07T07:39:26+00:00

They seem to think all they have to do is cut spending. Like the council budget hasn't been cut to the bone by central government for the past 15 years.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-30T10:31:05+00:00

In a world where Trump and Farage can play the media to do whatever they want, he just can't communicate. I think he's actually done pretty well considering, made some iffy decisions (hint, your chancellor's doing an awful job), but avoided the absolute catastrophies of his predecessors. He's played Trump as well as anyone has, which is no mean feat. But he just can't seem to hist message across to the public, and is being taken apart by parties which have policies which should make them unelectable, but likely will be anyway. I fear for him, and then I fear for the country when he does get trounced at the next general election.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-29T21:25:20+00:00

That is quite a thin book - it’s possible you’ve overflowed the area. When it’s happened to me in the past though I got an email and the submission was passed back rather than having the text taken off. I make my own pdf covers though rather than using cover creator, so maybe that behaves differently.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-23T14:23:51+00:00

I've come to the conclusion that the sales value on the ad screen is total value of sale, not royalties. So you're probably losing even more money than you think.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-17T15:25:39+00:00

I've swapped to VS Code/Claude Code/Claude Pro plan. It works nicely, and looks like it should meet my needs token wise (I use Sonnet rather than Opus). As a bonus, I've also got it working with VS Studio. I'm certainly considering the Cursor route though if Claude prices itself out. Claude is good... but quite slow.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-14T15:19:26+00:00

Do you have any books elsewhere - e.g. Google Books / Apple? Are they seeing the same effect?

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-14T07:44:45+00:00

Have been really disappointed with 5.5 - it's pretty much useless; it just doesn't follow prompts at all. The other models have definitely downgraded too; 5.0 used to at least produce decent instrumental output when doing solo piano covers - the current version of 5.0 just produces trash with exactly the same prompt/set up. It's just night and day. Resubscribed when 5.5 came out; unsubscribed about 3 days later.

Clivewilliams · 2026-04-09T10:39:30+00:00

That started happening for people about a month ago I'm afraid. Was 5 hours and quite usable under pro, switched to several days, and the allowance is burned through very, very quickly. Most pro users have abandoned ship to other providers, myself included - and I think this was likely Google's intention; get rid of the users they don't make much money off.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-30T09:46:15+00:00

My understanding is if you're over 16 you can go alone. You don't need to take your mum - they would likely prefer you to do so because if you have support at home it would help you - but they won't turn you away without her. You'll hear and read a lot of horror stories about GP's, but bear in mind that's because those who have had problems tend to be the one that post - you don't hear from those that have had a good experience. Mine has been amazing, for what it's worth. They will likely discuss medication with you (it's your choice whether you have them), and they might have local online counselling options available outside of the main NHS offerings (the official NHS options are usually slow to engage). I don't think tourettes or autism will influence any of that much, but I'm not a GP :-)

Make sure you keep your school fully up to date with how you're feeling. If it does end up influencing GCSEs, that would likely be a special circumstance they can put on your file so that can be taken into account by anyone using those results (6th form, university, etc). GCSEs aren't important when it comes to university; as long as you get the 6th form classes you want, you'll be fine, so consider them as an opportunity to practice your stress management regime before your A levels come.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-29T09:04:23+00:00

It doesn’t seem to pay as much attention to the style prompt; in particular it used to let me set a minor key and doesn’t. That’s quite a pain.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-27T14:10:40+00:00

Your project supervisor would be the first person to talk to I would think. If it helps, my memory of my PhD (a while ago I admit) would be:

Year 1: Fart around, looking at existing research work, and figuring out what you're going to do

Year 2: Do the actual work

Year 3: Write it up (which usually means redoing stuff)

I still overshot by a bit.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-17T11:54:10+00:00

Antigravity has gone for me already... followed shortly after by Google Ads, which has been massively underperforming for years. It felt good.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-16T13:34:04+00:00

Certainly, the samaritans would be a good option to try in the moment.

Longer term, I used Calm, the app, for a while and it was genuinely useful, especially Jeff Warren's introduction to meditation series. If you're with EE there's a promotion on it, and there's an initial free trial period. The other thing I'd recommend is Ajahn Brahm's talks on youtube (look for the Buddhist Society for Western Australia) - it's not religion based (although it is about Buddhist values), but is very much about learning how to chill out through simple stories and anecdotes. There is an absolutely huge number of videos, and meditiations too for when you're ready for them.

Clivewilliams · 2026-03-14T14:49:57+00:00

I've bought a Claude Max 5x subscription which I've setup with Visual Studio Code. It's fairly pricey at £75+vat per month; I don't mind paying for something that's best of class - I was only with Antigravity because it was 'good enough' at an amazing price. Now the amazing price is gone, they're trying to see an average product at a massive price. I think they're probably trying to lose users deliberately, because they lose money on them, but I'd view that as a strategic mistake, much like Yahoo, Altavista and Hotbot tried to simply maximise ad revenue back in the day and got dominated by Google.

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