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Alright, so we’ve installed linux and the neural network now it’s time to actually run it! First though I want to apologize for the delay in getting these last two parts of the tutorial series out. As I explained in my post, I’ve been learning so fast that it’s actually been kind of hard to catch time to digest and write any of it down. Skonk Works For instance, this tutorial series began with teaching you how to install Ubuntu 16.04, but support for Ubuntu 16.04 has just ended and you really should install Ubuntu 18.04, which is what I did after wiping my desktop and turning it into a fulltime personal cloud server! This is good because now I have a completely dedicated Linux machine to run neural network batch jobs on 24/7! The process of figuring out this new workflow though has been very chaotic and as a result I only had enough time recently to make sure my work pipeline was stable and went through the trouble of reinstalling Deep Style (I’ve also updated with some tips on installing it on 18.04) the original part 2 article The good news is, now I know a ton more about Linux! I’ve got some other irons in the fire that I need to tend to right now, but I’m hoping to do a sequel or update to the series using what I’ve learned to create an even easier and largely automated process for artists and other non-programmers to use. For now though I want to finish this series out properly and so this week we’re going to be talking about how to actually actually run DeepStyle and how that process can be turned into a script which can generate a massive amount of imagery for you to use. At the end of the tutorial I’ll even include a link to a Bash shell script that you can just plug your own variables into! To run neural style you need to open up your terminal. my linux desktop looks way different now How to run a DeepStyle command You then need to: cd ~/neural-style This will “change directory” to the folder “neural-style” where the neural network implementation DeepStyle has been installed. To run the neural network you need to run a command. In the last tutorial I told you to use the following command to test to see if your install was working correctly: th neural_style.lua -gpu 0 -print_iter 1 Let’s break this down piece by piece. th is short for "torch" which is the neural network framework you installed. You are calling it as a program to do something. th neural_style.lua is the script created to run DeepStyle. It has the file extension of "lua" because it is written in the lua language. Some computer programs have to be compiled (which you did in the last tutorial to get DeepStyle working) but some programs run at a higher level and you can just run them as text files. These "scripting languages" tend to be easier to work with. neural_style.lua So is calling the lua script. But you need to tell it what you specifically want to do! This can be done with flags. Flags look like this: torch neural_style -gpu 0 or this: -print_iter 1 or this: -this_aint_a_real_flag true Basically it’s going to be with a dash next to it that names the setting being used followed by what the setting is being set to. Pretty simple right? -something My Recommended Command Here’s a pretty standard command you can run: th neural_style.lua -save_iter 400 -image_size 512 -style_image library/van-gogh.jpg -content_image library/picture-of-me.jpg -num_iterations 1200 -gpu 0 -output_image library/output/picture-of-me/van-gogh-picture-of-me.png And now I’ll explain each of the flags. -save_iter 400 This means that the neural network should save out a progress picture every 400 iterations. Neural networks that transform imagery in this way do so over iterations. I recommend you read (which is not a tutorial) which goes over some of the conceptual background of neural networks and links to some resources that might help stuff make sense. With the above setting I’m having it save a progress pic every 400 iterations but you could do more if you wanted to make something animating into the style which can be pretty cool in my experience. my very first neural network and art article -image_size 512 The above is where I specify the output image size. I have a 970 gpu on my desktop and 512 is about the biggest I can reliably output. You might be able to do more, but it will be hard even with a more powerful machine because as the size scales, it does not do so linearly but exponentially. In other words, you double the size of the image, you quadruple the size of the firepower needed. Because it’s not just increasing the width but also the length. -style_image library/van-gogh.jpg This flag tells DeepStyle which image to use as your style image reference. (again, refer to the first article to get the terminology of style versus content image down). In this case I have created a folder in the neural-style folder named library and I have saved a van-gogh painting there as a jpeg. -content_image library/picture-of-me.jpg That’s setting the content image. I also put it in the library folder. I like to keep all my style, content, and output images in a separate folder from the neural network files so that I don’t get things super messy as I’m working. (and actually now that I have my desktop set up as a personal cloud server, I have it automatically output stuff to a cloud folder where it gets downloaded on to my laptop where I do the actual painting in Photoshop etc). -num_iterations 1200 This tells DeepStyle the total Number of iterations I want to make. Hypothetically the more iterations that you make the more similar you can make the content image to the style image, but I find that it’s basically diminishing returns past 1200. -gpu 0 This tells DeepStyle to use the gpu. -output_image library/output/picture-of-me/van-gogh-picture-of-me.png The final piece! This tells DeepStyle where to output the image. In this case I am having it create a folder inside of library called “output” and then I’m having it create a folder named for the content image used, and then I’m giving it a name which contains both the name of the content image and the style image. I think it’s a good idea to do this because once you start batch processing this stuff you’re going to get A WHOLE LOTTA outputs and it’s going to be had to keep them all organized. So that’s the basic breakdown of the standard script. But the great thing about code is it’s really good at doing repetitive stuff over and over again, so even though we could copy and paste this over and over again, and change the name of the images and outputs each time, we don’t have to! I made a script for it! Get it Here Automate it! Here’s what that code looks like: function neural_fusion() {th neural_style.lua -save_iter 400 -image_size 512 -style_image library/$1.jpg -content_image library/$content.jpg -num_iterations 1200 -gpu 0 -output_image library/output/$content/$content-$1.png};content=mantis;mkdir library/output/$content;neural_fusion zebrasmoothie;neural_fusion wolfhowl;neural_fusion wood; So here’s what that code means. First I make a function. A function is just a piece of code that stores a series of actions . It’s kinda like a magic spell that I write down on a scroll so that I don’t have to remember all the complicated words every time I want to use it. This is the function: function neural_fusion() {th neural_style.lua -save_iter 400 -image_size 512 -style_image library/$1.jpg -content_image library/$content.jpg -num_iterations 1200 -gpu 0 -output_image library/output/$content/$content-$1.png}; You can see it contains the command with flags to run DeepStyle. It also has some funny things with dollar signs too. Those are variables. Variables are like functions but even simpler. You probably know them from math class. X+Y=250 and then you have to figure out what X is right? X and Y are just stand ins for other numbers, or in this case for words. content=mantis; Here I’m setting the variable to equal mantis. As you can see, is used as the name of the content image. So I have a image in library called . $content $content "mantis.jpg" mkdir library/output/$content; Here, I’m making a new directory inside my output folder called “mantis” in order to put my mantis content image outputs. Keep things tidy! neural_fusion zebrasmoothie;neural_fusion wolfhowl;neural_fusion wood; And here is where I’m actually running DeepStyle. Each line is me calling the neural_fusion function I made and giving it a variable to attach to the style image which in the function is represented as $1. I don’t have to declare this function the way I did with mantis and content because it’s going to vary between each run of the function. And that’s basically it! You can just run a bunch of these and get a HUGE number of images. Make them bigger! You need to make those image resolutions bigger if you want to use them to paint, right? But… how could you make an image bigger? I mean you can make images bigger but then they get all pixelated…. right? Well, that’s where neural network magic comes in again. We’re going to use a neural network called “Waifu2X”. Waifu is japanese nerd slang for wife. But it’s a particular kind of wife. It’s…. well it’s an anime wife. It’s like… a wife you have who is animated. Basically it’s just a way a Japanese nerd says they really like a particular character…. uh… look I’m not going to explain it to you. You can look it up. Point is! Some people like anime a lot. They like it so much they trained a neural network to MAKE BIGGER ANIME! (also don’t look up “big anime” on google image search right after looking up waifu.) That’s what Waifu 2x is. It’s a neural network that was trained on thousands of frames of anime at 1080p and at 4k resolutions so that you can give it a 1080p image and it will make it 4k. OR you can just give it any size image and it will make it bigger. The smaller the starting picture, the less info for it go off of, but it’s pretty impressive all things considered! I’m surprised that Adobe hasn’t already tried packaging this into Photoshop. Probably because this neural network has the potential to completely destroy the stock photo industry which they’ve been trying to get into but… you know… Anyway I’m not going to go as in detail on this one because it’s easy to install on Windows, and it uses a GUI, so most of it is pretty self explanatory. Basically you just gotta download from . here Unzip it. And then you just open up the folder and click on the .exe file and the GUI will open up: Select your input path, select the output path, and then set the magnification size. 2.00 means it will be twice as big. 4.00 means 4 times as big. Pretty basic stuff. Denoising can be helpful, though it can also wash out a lot of the texture that the style image imparts, and it can lead to a sort of uniform “plasticky” look. The rest of the settings you don’t really need to mess with. You select a folder as the input path to have a big batch set of images made. It’s all pretty simple. NEXT WEEK IS THE FINAL PART! (but not the final article on this subject. I’ve got lots more coming, so subscribe to my , or , or . And as always, if you have any questions or comments, please be sure to reach out. Getting “fanmail” after my absence was one of the things that encouraged me to keep it up and come back to finish the series out. I didn’t want to let ya’ll down! ) RSS newsletter facebook page Originally published at Jackalope.tech .

How Artists Can Set Up Their Own Neural Network — Part 3 — Image Generation

Originally published at www.jackalope.tech on April 30, 2018. Okay so we’ve , and now we’re going to install the neural network Deep Style. This is where stuff is probably the most difficult. I’m going to equip you with the tools to solve those problems. installed the Ubuntu partition last week What is a CLI? When you use a program such as your internet browser, or Photoshop you are using a Graphical User Interface. . Before GUI there were . Command Line Interface. A GUI allows you to control a program using buttons. A command line interface allows you to control it using written commands. When you tell Siri to navigate you to your friends house, you are in a way using a modern version of a CLI. Siri is much more sophisticated though. It can listen to your voice and translate that into written words. It can ask for clarification, or intelligently make assumptions about what you actually want. A CLI is much more simple. It’s very literal and strict in how you give it commands. In a way using a CLI is a lot like using a programming language. FEAR NOT! It’s also a lot like asking Siri to do something for you. It’s not really all that hard. GUI CLI A big advantage of a CLI is that you can create “batch scripts”. Batch scripts are where you automate a bunch of tedious jobs using a programming pattern. I’ll be covering batch scripts more in Part 3 but for now what you need to know is that the name of the language that you write scripts in Linux is called Bash. There are some people who spend their entire careers mastering Bash. You won’t need to know very much to use the neural network deepstyle though. What you will need to do is use Bash to install the neural network. I’ll explain every step along in the process for you. If you feel up to it, I highly recommend on Codecademy. It’s actually a lot of fun! You use Bash to do things like edit or write poetry. This is not necessary though. this interactive tutorial To access a CLI program you need to open your terminal. Ubuntu you can do this by clicking on the start/programs button, and then typing “terminal”. It will search for the default terminal application. Then just press Enter and you’ve got it! Sometimes throughout these tutorials you’ll see me using a weird looking terminal that looks like an old computer screen. It’s called CRT: and I decided to use it because I wanted something cool looking for the tutorials but the default terminal as picture above is all you really need and they function basically the same. Cool Retro Terminal The Big Picture Here are the broad strokes of what we are going to do. Install the dependencies for the Deep Style Neural Network. Install the Deep Style Neural Network Install CUDA to enable GPU processing. What that means: Dependencies are pieces of code that a programmer uses to help build their own code. Good code is like lego blocks. You can snap them in and out. You can think of dependencies like standardized auto parts. If I wanted to build a car I wouldn’t make my own tires or bolts or even the engine from scratch. Programming is all about standing on the backs of giants. The main dependencies we will download are Torch7, and loadcaffe. They also have their own dependencies. Torch7 will need LuaJIT and LuaRocks. Loadcaffe will need the Google Protocol Buffers. You don’t really need to know what any of these things are, just like you don’t need to know how exactly the spark plug works to install it. In the broad strokes Torch7 is a framework for people to build their neural networks upon. Loadcaffe is an implementation of the Caffe framework in Torch7. Caffe is a neural network framework made by UC Berkley to do image classification and segmentation. Finally CUDA is a framework by Nvidia that allows programmers to use the GPU to do CPU type work. GPUs are great for doing calculations when they have to process large chunks of data at the same time. Without CUDA your computer will only be able to use the CPU to process the neural network. That will limit the size of images you can produce, and it will take much much much longer to process. The important take away here is that there is A LOT of people working together to make this stuff possible! How to get help Nobody can do this stuff alone. One of the most important skills in programming is being able to ask for help. Stuff is fixing to get pretty technical, so you’re going to need the tools to troubleshoot problems when (not if) they arrive. Ways you can get help: You can at my facebook page or email me. message me You can . Github is a website where people share and collaborate on code. built the implementation of Deep Style that we will be using. post an issue to the Deep Style Github page Justin Johnson Finally if you need help you can check out Stack Exchange. Stack Exchange is a website for people asking questions. There are two stack exchanges that you will want to check out specifically: if the issue is related to Ubuntu, or which is for general programming questions. AskUbuntu StackOverflow I don’t want to just tell you where to get help. I want to help you know how to best ask for it. Programming is a technology but it’s also a cultural construct. These aren’t robots you’re sending your questions out to on the internet. They’re communities of people and that means that you want to be respectful of them. Programming communities have their own cultural norms and expectations. You’ll get more help if you prepare for it. IMPORTANT INFORMATION: You don’t have to worry too much about messaging me, I’m asking people to do that so I can see what ways I can improve these tutorials. I will say that I’m still early in my developer journey and I’m certainly not a Machine Learning dev, but I’ll help where I can. 🙂 When you post a question on StackExchange, it is important that you make your question concise and to the point. It needs to be a specific question. A good question would be “What hex wrench size do I need to change out the wheel on my Huffy Bike?”. A bad question would be “HELP!??? WHAT DO I DO? IS THIS BROKEN?” that goes into further detail. Here’s a great guide You can post much more freeform questions to the Github page, but you’ll also want to try and provide as much information as possible. Be prepared to provide a detailed conversation on what you’ve tried, how you’ve tried it etc. Posting screenshots of your terminal results can be really helpful. I also think that in general it’s a good idea to let people know at the beginning of your request for help your background as an artist etc. This is important because it will let people know your familiarity with the terms they might need to use, but it also means that you’re someone who wants to learn. Programmers love programming. It excites them! They want to share that love with others. Programming isn’t easy though. Programmers know that, so they love it when someone is willing to try and learn something new. Don’t be ashamed! We all started at the same place, and we all get where we are because of the people who went before us. Time to Install Install Torch7 Open the terminal and type this in exactly: cd ~/ CD stands for “change directory. The ~/ stands for “root folder”. That’s the highest level folder of your computer’s memory system. Next type: curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torch/ezinstall/master/install-deps | bash The CLI will then try to use the “curl” command to grab the installation file. Curl is a program for grabbing a file from a url. It’s short for “see url”. Curl. :/ Your computer probably won’t have curl on it by default. The CLI will give you a prompt asking if you want to install it. Say yes and then let it do it’s thing. If you had to install curl try running that command again to then actually run the curl process etc. Once it’s done type in this: git clone https://github.com/torch/distro.git ~/torch --recursive You might also have to install git. Just do like curl before, install git, and then when it’s done, re-run the command from above. Git is a neat way for programmers to collaborate on projects together. You don’t really need to know anything about it to use this DeepStyle neural network but if you’re curious I highly recommend this on Codecademy. Similar to the mentioned earlier, it’s really cool, and actually teaches you the concepts of git using natural language stuff like poetry and prose editing instead of code. short interactive lesson CLI tutorial That will download the newest torch distro from the internet. When it’s done type in this: cd ~/torch; ./install.sh That will change your directory to the torch directory and then open a Bash scripting file that someone made to help install the files now that they are on your computer. Hopefully no problems so far. Install loadcaffe Okay first thing is installing the loadcaffe depencies sudo apt-get install libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler Now you just got to install loadcaffe luarocks install loadcaffe Presto! Now it’s time for DeepStyle. Install DeepStyle Okay, now it’s time to do the real deal! First: cd ~/ Second: git clone https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style.git Third: cd neural-style Fourth: sh models/download_models.sh This downloads the learning model. It’s using a Bash script to do this. Now Test! th neural_style.lua -gpu -1 -print_iter 1 If it works properly then you’ll see some output like this: [libprotobuf WARNING google/protobuf/io/coded_stream.cc:505] Reading dangerously large protocol message.  If the message turns out to be larger than 1073741824 bytes, parsing will be halted for security reasons.  To increase the limit (or to disable these warnings), see CodedInputStream::SetTotalBytesLimit() in google/protobuf/io/coded_stream.h.[libprotobuf WARNING google/protobuf/io/coded_stream.cc:78] The total number of bytes read was 574671192Successfully loaded models/VGG_ILSVRC_19_layers.caffemodelconv1_1: 64 3 3 3conv1_2: 64 64 3 3conv2_1: 128 64 3 3conv2_2: 128 128 3 3conv3_1: 256 128 3 3conv3_2: 256 256 3 3conv3_3: 256 256 3 3conv3_4: 256 256 3 3conv4_1: 512 256 3 3conv4_2: 512 512 3 3conv4_3: 512 512 3 3conv4_4: 512 512 3 3conv5_1: 512 512 3 3conv5_2: 512 512 3 3conv5_3: 512 512 3 3conv5_4: 512 512 3 3fc6: 1 1 25088 4096fc7: 1 1 4096 4096fc8: 1 1 4096 1000WARNING: Skipping content loss	Iteration 1 / 1000	  Content 1 loss: 2091178.593750	  Style 1 loss: 30021.292114	  Style 2 loss: 700349.560547	  Style 3 loss: 153033.203125	  Style 4 loss: 12404635.156250	  Style 5 loss: 656.860304	  Total loss: 15379874.666090	Iteration 2 / 1000	  Content 1 loss: 2091177.343750	  Style 1 loss: 30021.292114	  Style 2 loss: 700349.560547	  Style 3 loss: 153033.203125	  Style 4 loss: 12404633.593750	  Style 5 loss: 656.860304	  Total loss: 15379871.853590 WOO! But you aren’t done yet! Now you have to install CUDA. Like I said earlier, if you don’t install CUDA, then you can only use your CPU and that will take foreeeeeeeever. Install CUDA To install CUDA you’re going to need to download the right installer. If you followed the first tutorial then you probably installed Ubuntu 16. That means you need CUDA 8. You can find that . here You’ll want to use these options when picking your installer: Download and run both of the installers. Reboot the machine. Open the CLI terminal and run nvidia-smi; That is to check to make sure everything is installed correctly. It should look something like this: Sun Sep  6 14:02:59 2015       +------------------------------------------------------+                       | NVIDIA-SMI 346.96     Driver Version: 346.96         |                       |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC || Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. ||===============================+======================+======================||   0  GeForce GTX TIT...  Off  | 0000:01:00.0      On |                  N/A || 22%   49C    P8    18W / 250W |   1091MiB / 12287MiB |      3%      Default |+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+|   1  GeForce GTX TIT...  Off  | 0000:04:00.0     Off |                  N/A || 29%   44C    P8    27W / 189W |     15MiB /  6143MiB |      0%      Default |+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+|   2  GeForce GTX TIT...  Off  | 0000:05:00.0     Off |                  N/A || 30%   45C    P8    33W / 189W |     15MiB /  6143MiB |      0%      Default |+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+                                                                               +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory ||  GPU       PID  Type  Process name                               Usage      ||=============================================================================||    0      1277    G   /usr/bin/X                                     631MiB ||    0      2290    G   compiz                                         256MiB ||    0      2489    G   ...s-passed-by-fd --v8-snapshot-passed-by-fd   174MiB |+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now you’re going to install the CUDA backend for torch. Run this command: luarocks install cutorch and then this: luarocks install cunn Run this to check and see if the installation has worked: th -e "require 'cutorch'; require 'cunn'; print(cutorch)" And then you’ll see an output sorta like this: {  getStream : function: 0x40d40ce8  getDeviceCount : function: 0x40d413d8  setHeapTracking : function: 0x40d41a78  setRNGState : function: 0x40d41a00  getBlasHandle : function: 0x40d40ae0  reserveBlasHandles : function: 0x40d40980  setDefaultStream : function: 0x40d40f08  getMemoryUsage : function: 0x40d41480  getNumStreams : function: 0x40d40c48  manualSeed : function: 0x40d41960  synchronize : function: 0x40d40ee0  reserveStreams : function: 0x40d40bf8  getDevice : function: 0x40d415b8  seed : function: 0x40d414d0  deviceReset : function: 0x40d41608  streamWaitFor : function: 0x40d40a00  withDevice : function: 0x40d41630  initialSeed : function: 0x40d41938  CudaHostAllocator : torch.Allocator  test : function: 0x40ce5368  getState : function: 0x40d41a50  streamBarrier : function: 0x40d40b58  setStream : function: 0x40d40c98  streamBarrierMultiDevice : function: 0x40d41538  streamWaitForMultiDevice : function: 0x40d40b08  createCudaHostTensor : function: 0x40d41670  setBlasHandle : function: 0x40d40a90  streamSynchronize : function: 0x40d41590  seedAll : function: 0x40d414f8  setDevice : function: 0x40d414a8  getNumBlasHandles : function: 0x40d409d8  getDeviceProperties : function: 0x40d41430  getRNGState : function: 0x40d419d8  manualSeedAll : function: 0x40d419b0  _state : userdata: 0x022fe750} Finally you can use GPU to run the neural network! Check it using this command: th neural_style.lua -gpu 0 -print_iter 1 if that doesn’t work then…. well something went wrong. Never fear! remember the lessons I wrote above on asking for help. Reach out to people! Last week was . Next week will be how to run the bash scripts to use DeepStyle. The week after that I’ll go over the actual process I have for taking the imagery created by the program and painting new paintings using Photoshop. how to install Ubuntu I’ve also got a couple of spin off articles I want to write going over more specific aspects of the process, and some even further afield spinoffs on the meaning this technology has for art at large. If you have any questions or requests for articles let me know! And don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter!

Tutorial for Artists on how to use a Neural Network — Part 2

Originally published at (follow the link to subscribe for more) Jackalope.tech This article is meant to help artists, designers, and other non-technical* people set up a neural network on their computer. where I introduce the idea of neural networks and how they can be used by artists. Here’s an article *I would call this a misnomer but that article isn’t finished yet. What you will need Windows or Linux PC A powerful graphics card A flash drive with at least 8 gb of space A hard drive with at least 150 gb of free space A wired keyboard and mouse You will need a Windows or Linux PC. If you have a Mac it is both easier and harder to get this working. It is beyond my scope to explain that though and I’m not really a Mac guy anyway. You will also need a powerful graphics card. Graphics cards are a type of processor that make the images on your screen. Most people have “integrated graphics cards” which means that the graphics card is built into their computer. You need a “dedicated graphics card” to run a neural network. These graphics cards are used to play video games, run 3D modeling programs, or run . I have a . You will need something at least this powerful to run the neural network. VR GTX 970 My most recent painting. I premiered a first edition print of it at the group show last month. vurv Installing Ubuntu for Linux The second thing you need to use a neural network is Ubuntu for Linux. Linux is an operating system, like Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android. It’s the graphical user interface your computer uses to interface with you. It connects your hardware input to the computer’s software. It also connects the computer’s software to the computer’s processing hardware. It’s like a busy office assistant who helps people get what they need in the office. Not all software is compatible with all operating systems. That’s why some applications work on an iPhone but won’t work on an Android. Neural Networks are very cutting edge technology. They aren’t made for consumers. Researchers at Universities make them to learn more about how to make them. Most researchers use Linux because it is free and “open source”. Open Source means that they can modify the code to meet their needs. Windows and Apple will not allow you to do that to their operating systems. We are going to install Ubuntu. That’s a specific distribution, or flavor, of Linux. It’s relatively user friendly, and it is what the program was made for. To install an operating system you need to partition your drive. That means you separate off a part of your hard-drive space for running Ubuntu. Your operating system currently “formats” or organizes your entire hard-drive. You don’t want two office assistants in the same office because they’ll end up getting all tangled up. We are divvying up the office space so that they can work separately. Partition your hard-drive. A tutorial on how to do that can be found . here Download the Ubuntu installer . here Download the Ubuntu installer here. Download the USB Install program . It will help you run the Ubuntu installer. here Follow the rest of to make a Bootable USB Drive. this tutorial Now follow the rest of to actually install Ubuntu. Make sure to install Ubuntu on the drive that you partitioned. DO NOT install Ubuntu on your C Drive. That is the drive that Windows is on and if you overwrite that you will lose all your files. this tutorial Download the Ubuntu installer here. Once you are done with the installation process you will then find yourself in Ubuntu. Here’s what my set up looks like. I wanted to make it look cool for this tutorial. Well that concludes part 1! Next week I’ll be releasing part 2 where I will talk about how to install the neural network Deep Style. Then part 3 I’ll be explaining the process of running the neural network and provide you a free script to help you automate your process and the final part 4 will talk about how to use the neural network material in a mixed media digital painting in Photoshop. Be sure to subscribe on or in order to get the latest updates, or to get that plus extra bonus content! FB RSS feed subscribe to the newsletter

How Artists can set up their own Neural Network — Part 1 — Installation

Microsoft Office is a very commonly used software that can be found on almost any standard computer. It is also integrated inside many products of the Microsoft/Windows ecosystem such as Office itself, Outlook and Office Online. In this blog, we describe our attempts to fuzz a specific component in Microsoft Office and how the results affect this whole ecosystem. We also evaluate the pros and cons of the different fuzzing solutions we experimented with in the course of our research. Our Target We chose the MSGraph COM component (MSGraph.Chart.8, GRAPH.EXE) as our fuzzing target, as it is quite an old piece of code that has existed since at least the days of Office 2003 or earlier. To our knowledge, this component has not received too much attention from the security community until now, making it a fertile ground for bugs. MSGraph is a component that can be embedded inside many Microsoft Office products (such as Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.), and is used to display graphs and charts. In terms of attack surface, MSGraph is quite similar to . However, unlike Microsoft Equation Editor, MSGraph is still updated in every Office patch and receives the latest mitigations (such as ASLR and DEP), which makes successful exploitation harder. We later found that this attack surface also applies to other Microsoft Office products, including Excel and Office Online, that share the same code. Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 Microsoft Office is not an easy target to fuzz MSGraph is a piece of software that utilizes the Windows COM model in some parts of its code. This makes MSGraph a not-so-trivial target to harness and fuzz. On top of that, MSGraph specifically, and Office in general, utilizes and runs a very large number of components and external DLLs, making the process of reverse-engineering harder. As this is a graybox target (we do not have source code, but we do have the ability to modify the binary, place breakpoints and examine the disassembly), harnessing the program can be tricky. There is no obvious “this_function_parses_stuff” function exported, and even the function that we identified as the parsing function contained some GUI calls that made the fuzzing process slow and clumsy. symbol-less Harnessing MSGraph In fuzzing terminology, a “harness” usually refers to a small program that triggers the functionality we want to fuzz. To learn more about this topic, we recommend reading our previous blogpost: . The simplest way to create a harness for graybox targets is to utilize an exported function. This didn’t work in our case as we didn’t have such a function. An alternative is to trace and reverse-engineer the execution process of the application to find which function is responsible for the parsing logic and then call it directly. 50 CVEs in 50 Days: Fuzzing Adobe Reader While IDA was processing the binary (which took some time), we decided to test our luck and try a slightly mutated input. We used to mutate a legitimate input file and we manually tested the results (by clicking buttons in the GUI). We managed to find a crashing input (int29h / Assertion Error) on our 8th attempt. Talk about luck… radamsa Although this crash is not interesting by itself, it definitely helped us identify which code is responsible for the parsing process, or at the very least, is prone to bugs. This is also when we understood why it was probably a good idea for Microsoft to “isolate” this component inside a COM object. In case this component happens to crash, the whole Word document still remains intact. Fuzzing MSGraph As we mentioned earlier, our target is graybox, so we have to use some Dynamic Binary Instrumentation (DBI) engine to instrument our target in order to collect coverage and fuzz efficiently. We tested multiple DBI solutions for this purpose and here are our results. You should remember, however, that MSGraph is a complicated target and these results can vary across different targets! – A veteran DBI solution that has existed since 2002 (!). It has great integration within and a set of utilities that can be very useful for research. Most notable is drcov, that can produce coverage for the execution of the binary. However, DynamoRIO currently does not support the latest releases for Windows 10. Unfortunately, when we attempted to use drcov with our target, it crashed before reaching the target function. DynamoRIO WinAFL – Part of the , which rightfully receives a lot of love in the security community. Frida is an incredible tool that is capable of doing lots of research-related tasks and is commonly known for its JavaScript bindings. Collecting coverage with Frida Gum (the C++ bindings for Frida) was relatively simple and we even managed to port WinAFL to use Frida as a coverage module. However, when we attempted to fuzz our actual target, we encountered some difficulties using the Frida API, so we decided to opt for another DBI solution instead. It is also important to mention that Frida has a very active Telegram channel that we found very useful. Frida Gum Frida toolkit – A tool developed for the purpose of collecting execution coverage using debugging API (int3), coded in Rust. Mesos utilizes IDA to extract all of the basic block offsets in the target binary. It then uses some fast technique to apply breakpoints on all of these offsets. Once a breakpoint is hit, the input that triggered it is cached, and will not trigger again as the breakpoint is removed. Even though this method increases the speed of the execution by reducing the number of breakpoints hits, it prevents us from getting code coverage, which we believe helps the fuzzing process tremendously. Mesos edge – A relatively new lightweight DBI solution that is actively maintained by Google Project Zero and is already supported by . It is essentially a binary rewrite solution that works in runtime. When the program reaches new code in a traced module, it parses its functions recursively and adds instrumentation for each basic block. TinyInst Jackalope TL;DR Tracing Solution Pros + Cons – DynamoRIO Integration within WinAFL. Utilities: drrun, drcov. Newer builds for Windows are not supported. Crashes MSGraph. Frida Gum Javascript Bindings. Very active Telegram channel for developers. Difficulties on our side. Mesos Designed to be easily modified. Requires IDA. Uses INT3. Doesn’t produce edge coverage. TinyInst Worked for us out-of-the-box. Jacaklope integration. Relatively new. In theory, we could have invested more time to understand why each solution did not work for us, and we would probably have done so if TinyInst had not worked so well for us. Jackalope vs MSGraph As TinyInst ended up working for us out-of-the-box and has a good integration with Jackalope, we decided to use Jackalope as our fuzzing solution. We also used gflags to help us catch heap-related bugs. After about a week of on-and-off fuzzing, Jackalope managed to find 4 different bugs in MSGraph. These are the CVEs: – Memory Corruption CVE-2021-31179 – OOBR CVE-2021-31174 – Integer Underflow to OOBR CVE-2021-31178 – UAF CVE-2021-31939 As Jackalope is still in the early development stages, it lacks some statistical information that is currently present in AFL, for example. Usually this information is used as a convenient way to measure the efficiency of the fuzzing process. However, working out-of-the-box is a major plus 🙂 Another great feature of Jackalope is that it is easily customizable and hackable. The process of adding a custom mutator to the fuzzer was pretty straight-forward and increased our fuzzing effectiveness with very little development cost. Code Similarity After we identified the vulnerable function inside MSGraph, we found through code similarity checks that the vulnerable function is commonly used across multiple different Microsoft Office products, such as Excel (EXCEL.EXE), (EXCELCNV.EXE) and Excel for OSX. We successfully reproduced some of the bugs in these products. Office Online Server As you can see in the images below, the same crash can be reproduced on these different products: Summary Even though we researched a single component of Microsoft Office, we managed to find several vulnerabilities that affect multiple products in this ecosystem. The results of this research were a set of files that could be embedded in different ways to potentially exploit different Office products across multiple platforms. As a bonus, we also had the opportunity to experiment with multiple different fuzzing solutions. We hope you find our notes useful. Disclosure Timeline 28 Feb 2021 – Initial report to Microsoft. 11 May 2021 – Microsoft fixes CVE-2021-31174, CVE-2021-31178, CVE-2021-31179 (Patch Tuesday) 08 Jun 2021 – Microsoft fixes CVE-2021-31939 (Patch Tuesday) 08 Jun 2021 – Blog release

How we Fuzz Tested the Microsoft Office Ecosystem

Google just came out with a new virtual reality modeling app called Blocks. It’s significant in that it is the first traditional box modeling style application made from the ground up for VR. As I previously wrote an article on it seemed appropriate for me to write some quick thoughts on Blocks. Sculpting in VR 3D painting applications like Quill and Tiltbrush can output 3D meshes but they aren’t manifold (meaning self enclosed) and don’t follow the traditional workflow of a 3D modeling program, and sculpting programs like Oculus Medium are voxel based and use a sculpting metaphor so they’re really only useful for hi poly organic forms. Google Blocks seems like a promising branch for 3D modeling in VR. In it, you spawn geometric 3D shapes and then manipulate their vertices, edges, and faces manually with your tools. This is a big deal! The biggest commercial uses for VR applications in my opinion are not in the art fields of sculpting or painting, but rather in the lower polygon world of CAD and architectural design modeling. Unfortunately I have to say that I don’t think Google Blocks really fulfills much on it’s promise. First let me give a important disclaimer. Tools are not the end all be all of an artist or designers work. The tools that Pixar used to make Tin Toy in the 1980s are absolutely primitive by modern standards but that isn’t what made their talent show. Lots of great stuff has been made with Google Blocks by professional artists. That said I think there’s a lot of stuff missing from Google Blocks that could be expanded on. Google Blocks is aiming for simplicity in it’s design, and that’s probably a good idea for a simple VR modeling application that will probably be used by a wide range of people with varying skillsets. That said I think the level of simplicity they have here ultimately complicates the process of using Blocks more than it simplifies it. LACK OF DIRECT CONTROL OF THE MESHThe main issue I found was that I had no explicit control over the creation of vertices, or edges. You can subdivide surfaces which allows you to add a vertex and edge to split a face in two, but there is no ability to Rip Vertex like in blender ( ) which makes the process kind of haphazard and roundabout. Not only can you not create new vertices easily but you can’t delete them either. This becomes a big problem due to the nature of triangulation of surfaces in 3D. Quads are often used in 3D due to their simplicity of presentation but at some level all 3D has to break down to triangles. There are some forms you can make out of quads like a cube with 6 sides, but if you move the vertices in a particular way, it becomes impossible for the computer to describe the shape with 2D Quads alone, and it must break things down into triangles. Blocks does this automatically which means that as you edit the vertices and faces of a shape, it will automatically subdivide in a very messy and inconsistent way. https://developer.blender.org/D512 In Google’s attempt to keep their users from getting bogged down in managing all their vertices etc, they’ve made a system where I actually got way more bogged down because I couldn’t determine or fix the way that it was handling changes to the mesh automatically. The model I tried making in Blocks suffered greatly from this problem and had a lot of bad intersecting geometry. If you go slow and keep what you’re making simple, then you won’t have nearly as much problems but the fact that stuff can get messed up and then be impossible to fix other than undoing, is very frustrating. LACK OF KEY TOOLS (transform, boolean, layers) In trying to keep things simple, Blocks lacks a lot of tools. I don’t think this is to it’s benefit though. They have an extrude tool. That’s cool. But once you extrude a face, it’s impossible to change it’s shape in a uniform way. The ability to select a face and then adjust it’s size using some kind of transform tool is a big deal for evenly and consistently editing a mesh! Lacking this doesn’t make the experience easier, it just makes it more complicated to do simple thing! The hardest part of VR modeling is that you lack physical resistance like with real clay, or a digital tablet surface. You’re just waving your arms around in the air, and so it can be hard to be precise and even, and lacking transform tools is a big part of that. Want to keep things simple? Why not introduce basic boolean tools? Boolean tools are wonderfully simple and intuitive for people to use and are great for creating clean and consistent surfaces without a great deal of hand eye coordination. Also when you save the file, it saves everything all as a single object. Meaning when I originally modeled a potted plant, the plants and the pot were exported to blender as a single messy intersecting mesh. Have the ability to group stuff out to layers or groups is a big deal for organization. Yes adding layers adds complexity to the UI design process but it doesn’t have to necessarily add complexity to the UX. Also some kind of basic sculpting feature would be good. Something where you can deform the mesh organically without having to select every single vertex etc. Would be a big help. Lots of ways this could be done. I’m not saying this thing needs to go full Oculus Medium/zBrush but having some organic control would be a big help. They already kind of have it with the Stroke tool, they might as well embrace it. AN ALTERNATIVE WAY OF DOING THINGS Here’s what I think they should have done with Google Blocks. Maybe it’s just the fact that I love this program a lot and have been learning it recently but I think they should have gone more in the direction of something like Fusion 360. Fusion 360 is an industrial design and prototyping modeling software project sold by Autodesk. It’s pretty rad! It’s a cloud based CAD program. CAD is different than most 3D modeling programs. It comes out of drafting and mechanical engineering. Because of this 2 major features of CAD would help with Google Block’s problems. 1. CAD is “solid modeling” meaning that all models are treated as solid, manifold, non-intersecting objects. In CAD this is so that you can run physical simulations on it and also because if you sent non manifold instructions to a CNC machine it would get really confused and not know what to do. The physical possibility of the object is enforced in CAD and that would help a lot with the messy mesh issues I alluded to. 2. CAD solid modeling tends to define meshes using more powerful mathematical notations. A normal 3D mesh is basically just a bunch of points in space, connected by lines,and those lines are connected together to form faces. You can get some wonky contradictions and stuff with meshes if you aren’t careful. Since CAD comes out of industrial drafting though you can form objects using graceful bezier curves and parabolas etc. Adjust the angle of a bezier curve and you can adjust the sweep of a ships hull, while trying to do the same thing in a normal 3D model would require the manipulation of dozens of vertices and lines. CAD modeling has limitations in some ways, since the mathematically defined aspects of it’s mesh can require more thinking ahead, but overall the simplicity of it greatly outweighs the fiddling and futzing around you have to do with individual vertices. To unique selling point for Blocks seems to be the way it opens up VR to box modeling, but if you are going to do that, then it seems a more CAD-like solution would help set it apart more and also have greater utility. ANYWAY, those are my thoughts, very loosely edited. I didn’t put nearly as much time into this as I did with my previous article on sculpting in VR but that’s partially because I’m so busy learning stuff right now! I’m rebooting my website soon and have a bunch of articles planned, so hit follow if you want to stay in the loop. I’ll have more VR art and neural network articles very soon! Oh yeah and here’s the final model I did today. The model I imported from Google Blocks was so meshed up and bad that I basically had to resurface stuff using the sculpt tool in Blender.

Quick Review of Google Blocks

Honey Moons and All Things Come to an End

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Schoolboy Chapter III. The Schoolboy But Kolya did not hear her. At last he could go out. As he went out at the gate he looked round him, shrugged up his shoulders, and saying “It is freezing,” went straight along the street and turned off to the right towards the market‐place. When he reached the last house but one before the market‐place he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his pocket, and whistled with all his might as though giving a signal. He had not to wait more than a minute before a rosy‐cheeked boy of about eleven, wearing a warm, neat and even stylish coat, darted out to meet him. This was Smurov, a boy in the preparatory class (two classes below Kolya Krassotkin), son of a well‐to‐do official. Apparently he was forbidden by his parents to associate with Krassotkin, who was well known to be a desperately naughty boy, so Smurov was obviously slipping out on the sly. He was—if the reader has not forgotten—one of the group of boys who two months before had thrown stones at Ilusha. He was the one who told Alyosha Karamazov about Ilusha. “I’ve been waiting for you for the last hour, Krassotkin,” said Smurov stolidly, and the boys strode towards the market‐place. “I am late,” answered Krassotkin. “I was detained by circumstances. You won’t be thrashed for coming with me?” “Come, I say, I’m never thrashed! And you’ve got Perezvon with you?” “Yes.” “You’re taking him, too?” “Yes.” “Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!” “That’s impossible. Zhutchka’s non‐existent. Zhutchka is lost in the mists of obscurity.” “Ah! couldn’t we do this?” Smurov suddenly stood still. “You see Ilusha says that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky‐looking dog like Perezvon. Couldn’t you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe you?” “Boy, shun a lie, that’s one thing; even with a good object—that’s another. Above all, I hope you’ve not told them anything about my coming.” “Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won’t comfort him with Perezvon,” said Smurov, with a sigh. “You know his father, the captain, ‘the wisp of tow,’ told us that he was going to bring him a real mastiff pup, with a black nose, to‐day. He thinks that would comfort Ilusha; but I doubt it.” “And how is Ilusha?” “Ah, he is bad, very bad! I believe he’s in consumption: he is quite conscious, but his breathing! His breathing’s gone wrong. The other day he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but he couldn’t stand. ‘Ah, I told you before, father,’ he said, ‘that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.’ He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really. He won’t live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are rich again—they’ve got heaps of money.” “They are rogues.” “Who are rogues?” “Doctors and the whole crew of quacks collectively, and also, of course, individually. I don’t believe in medicine. It’s a useless institution. I mean to go into all that. But what’s that sentimentality you’ve got up there? The whole class seems to be there every day.” “Not the whole class: it’s only ten of our fellows who go to see him every day. There’s nothing in that.” “What I don’t understand in all this is the part that Alexey Karamazov is taking in it. His brother’s going to be tried to‐morrow or next day for such a crime, and yet he has so much time to spend on sentimentality with boys.” “There’s no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make it up with Ilusha.” “Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to analyze my actions.” “And how pleased Ilusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are coming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn’t come all this time?” Smurov cried with sudden warmth. “My dear boy, that’s my business, not yours. I am going of myself because I choose to, but you’ve all been hauled there by Alexey Karamazov—there’s a difference, you know. And how do you know? I may not be going to make it up at all. It’s a stupid expression.” “It’s not Karamazov at all; it’s not his doing. Our fellows began going there of themselves. Of course, they went with Karamazov at first. And there’s been nothing of that sort—no silliness. First one went, and then another. His father was awfully pleased to see us. You know he will simply go out of his mind if Ilusha dies. He sees that Ilusha’s dying. And he seems so glad we’ve made it up with Ilusha. Ilusha asked after you, that was all. He just asks and says no more. His father will go out of his mind or hang himself. He behaved like a madman before. You know he is a very decent man. We made a mistake then. It’s all the fault of that murderer who beat him then.” “Karamazov’s a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his acquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases. Besides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify.” Kolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov, of course, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on a level with him. Now he was tremendously interested at Kolya’s saying that he was “going of himself” to see Ilusha. He felt that there must be some mystery in Kolya’s suddenly taking it into his head to go to him that day. They crossed the market‐place, in which at that hour were many loaded wagons from the country and a great number of live fowls. The market women were selling rolls, cottons and threads, etc., in their booths. These Sunday markets were naïvely called “fairs” in the town, and there were many such fairs in the year. Perezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other over according to the rules of canine etiquette. “I like to watch such realistic scenes, Smurov,” said Kolya suddenly. “Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be a law of their nature.” “Yes; it’s a funny habit.” “No, it’s not funny; you are wrong there. There’s nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize us they’d be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters—far more, indeed. I repeat that, because I am convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. That’s Rakitin’s idea—a remarkable idea. I am a Socialist, Smurov.” “And what is a Socialist?” asked Smurov. “That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and every one has any religion and laws he likes best, and all the rest of it. You are not old enough to understand that yet. It’s cold, though.” “Yes, twelve degrees of frost. Father looked at the thermometer just now.” “Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter we don’t feel so cold even when there are fifteen or eighteen degrees of frost as we do now, in the beginning of winter, when there is a sudden frost of twelve degrees, especially when there is not much snow. It’s because people are not used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive‐power. What a funny‐looking peasant!” Kolya pointed to a tall peasant, with a good‐natured countenance in a long sheepskin coat, who was standing by his wagon, clapping together his hands, in their shapeless leather gloves, to warm them. His long fair beard was all white with frost. “That peasant’s beard’s frozen,” Kolya cried in a loud provocative voice as he passed him. “Lots of people’s beards are frozen,” the peasant replied, calmly and sententiously. “Don’t provoke him,” observed Smurov. “It’s all right; he won’t be cross; he’s a nice fellow. Good‐by, Matvey.” “Good‐by.” “Is your name Matvey?” “Yes. Didn’t you know?” “No, I didn’t. It was a guess.” “You don’t say so! You are a schoolboy, I suppose?” “Yes.” “You get whipped, I expect?” “Nothing to speak of—sometimes.” “Does it hurt?” “Well, yes, it does.” “Ech, what a life!” The peasant heaved a sigh from the bottom of his heart. “Good‐by, Matvey.” “Good‐by. You are a nice chap, that you are.” The boys went on. “That was a nice peasant,” Kolya observed to Smurov. “I like talking to the peasants, and am always glad to do them justice.” “Why did you tell a lie, pretending we are thrashed?” asked Smurov. “I had to say that to please him.” “How do you mean?” “You know, Smurov, I don’t like being asked the same thing twice. I like people to understand at the first word. Some things can’t be explained. According to a peasant’s notions, schoolboys are whipped, and must be whipped. What would a schoolboy be if he were not whipped? And if I were to tell him we are not, he’d be disappointed. But you don’t understand that. One has to know how to talk to the peasants.” “Only don’t tease them, please, or you’ll get into another scrape as you did about that goose.” “So you’re afraid?” “Don’t laugh, Kolya. Of course I’m afraid. My father would be awfully cross. I am strictly forbidden to go out with you.” “Don’t be uneasy, nothing will happen this time. Hallo, Natasha!” he shouted to a market woman in one of the booths. “Call me Natasha! What next! My name is Marya,” the middle‐aged market woman shouted at him. “I am so glad it’s Marya. Good‐by!” “Ah, you young rascal! A brat like you to carry on so!” “I’m in a hurry. I can’t stay now. You shall tell me next Sunday.” Kolya waved his hand at her, as though she had attacked him and not he her. “I’ve nothing to tell you next Sunday. You set upon me, you impudent young monkey. I didn’t say anything,” bawled Marya. “You want a whipping, that’s what you want, you saucy jackanapes!” There was a roar of laughter among the other market women round her. Suddenly a man in a violent rage darted out from the arcade of shops close by. He was a young man, not a native of the town, with dark, curly hair and a long, pale face, marked with smallpox. He wore a long blue coat and a peaked cap, and looked like a merchant’s clerk. He was in a state of stupid excitement and brandished his fist at Kolya. “I know you!” he cried angrily, “I know you!” Kolya stared at him. He could not recall when he could have had a row with the man. But he had been in so many rows in the street that he could hardly remember them all. “Do you?” he asked sarcastically. “I know you! I know you!” the man repeated idiotically. “So much the better for you. Well, it’s time I was going. Good‐by!” “You are at your saucy pranks again?” cried the man. “You are at your saucy pranks again? I know, you are at it again!” “It’s not your business, brother, if I am at my saucy pranks again,” said Kolya, standing still and scanning him. “Not my business?” “No; it’s not your business.” “Whose then? Whose then? Whose then?” “It’s Trifon Nikititch’s business, not yours.” “What Trifon Nikititch?” asked the youth, staring with loutish amazement at Kolya, but still as angry as ever. Kolya scanned him gravely. “Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?” he suddenly asked him, with stern emphasis. “What Church of Ascension? What for? No, I haven’t,” said the young man, somewhat taken aback. “Do you know Sabaneyev?” Kolya went on even more emphatically and even more severely. “What Sabaneyev? No, I don’t know him.” “Well then you can go to the devil,” said Kolya, cutting short the conversation; and turning sharply to the right he strode quickly on his way as though he disdained further conversation with a dolt who did not even know Sabaneyev. “Stop, heigh! What Sabaneyev?” the young man recovered from his momentary stupefaction and was as excited as before. “What did he say?” He turned to the market women with a silly stare. The women laughed. “You can never tell what he’s after,” said one of them. “What Sabaneyev is it he’s talking about?” the young man repeated, still furious and brandishing his right arm. “It must be a Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmitchovs, that’s who it must be,” one of the women suggested. The young man stared at her wildly. “For the Kuzmitchovs?” repeated another woman. “But his name wasn’t Trifon. His name’s Kuzma, not Trifon; but the boy said Trifon Nikititch, so it can’t be the same.” “His name is not Trifon and not Sabaneyev, it’s Tchizhov,” put in suddenly a third woman, who had hitherto been silent, listening gravely. “Alexey Ivanitch is his name. Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch.” “Not a doubt about it, it’s Tchizhov,” a fourth woman emphatically confirmed the statement. The bewildered youth gazed from one to another. “But what did he ask for, what did he ask for, good people?” he cried almost in desperation. “ ‘Do you know Sabaneyev?’ says he. And who the devil’s to know who is Sabaneyev?” “You’re a senseless fellow. I tell you it’s not Sabaneyev, but Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, that’s who it is!” one of the women shouted at him impressively. “What Tchizhov? Who is he? Tell me, if you know.” “That tall, sniveling fellow who used to sit in the market in the summer.” “And what’s your Tchizhov to do with me, good people, eh?” “How can I tell what he’s to do with you?” put in another. “You ought to know yourself what you want with him, if you make such a clamor about him. He spoke to you, he did not speak to us, you stupid. Don’t you really know him?” “Know whom?” “Tchizhov.” “The devil take Tchizhov and you with him. I’ll give him a hiding, that I will. He was laughing at me!” “Will give Tchizhov a hiding! More likely he will give you one. You are a fool, that’s what you are!” “Not Tchizhov, not Tchizhov, you spiteful, mischievous woman. I’ll give the boy a hiding. Catch him, catch him, he was laughing at me!” The woman guffawed. But Kolya was by now a long way off, marching along with a triumphant air. Smurov walked beside him, looking round at the shouting group far behind. He too was in high spirits, though he was still afraid of getting into some scrape in Kolya’s company. “What Sabaneyev did you mean?” he asked Kolya, foreseeing what his answer would be. “How do I know? Now there’ll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to stir up fools in every class of society. There’s another blockhead, that peasant there. You know, they say ‘there’s no one stupider than a stupid Frenchman,’ but a stupid Russian shows it in his face just as much. Can’t you see it all over his face that he is a fool, that peasant, eh?” “Let him alone, Kolya. Let’s go on.” “Nothing could stop me, now I am once off. Hey, good morning, peasant!” A sturdy‐looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard, who was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed not quite sober. “Good morning, if you are not laughing at me,” he said deliberately in reply. “And if I am?” laughed Kolya. “Well, a joke’s a joke. Laugh away. I don’t mind. There’s no harm in a joke.” “I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke.” “Well, God forgive you!” “Do you forgive me, too?” “I quite forgive you. Go along.” “I say, you seem a clever peasant.” “Cleverer than you,” the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same gravity. “I doubt it,” said Kolya, somewhat taken aback. “It’s true, though.” “Perhaps it is.” “It is, brother.” “Good‐by, peasant!” “Good‐by!” “There are all sorts of peasants,” Kolya observed to Smurov after a brief silence. “How could I tell I had hit on a clever one? I am always ready to recognize intelligence in the peasantry.” In the distance the cathedral clock struck half‐past eleven. The boys made haste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov’s lodging, a considerable distance, quickly and almost in silence. Twenty paces from the house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask Karamazov to come out to him. “One must sniff round a bit first,” he observed to Smurov. “Why ask him to come out?” Smurov protested. “You go in; they will be awfully glad to see you. What’s the sense of making friends in the frost out here?” “I know why I want to see him out here in the frost,” Kolya cut him short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with “small boys,” and Smurov ran to do his bidding. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2009). The Brothers Karamazov. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/28054/pg28054-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Schoolboy

A Columbus of Space by Garrett Putman Serviss is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE SUN GOD THE SUN GOD Strangely enough, I, who have an exceptional memory for spoken words, cannot, by any effort, recall what Edmund said, as his face beamed in upon us. I have only a confused recollection that he spoke, and that his words had a marvelous effect upon my broken spirit. But I can see, as if it were yet before me, the smile that illumined his features. My heart bounded with joy, as if a messenger had come straight from the earth itself, bearing a reprieve whose authority could not be called in question. Jack's joy was no less than mine, although he had not suffered mentally as I had done. And the sight of Ala was hardly less reassuring to us, but to find Ingra, too, present was somewhat of a shock to our confidence in speedy delivery from trouble. And, in fact, we were not at once delivered. We had to spend many weary hours yet in our dark prison, but they were rendered less gloomy by Edmund's assurance that he would save us. The confidence that he always inspired seems to me to have been another mark of his genius. We had an instinct that he could do in any circumstances what was impossible to ordinary men. At last the welcome moment came, and we were led forth, free, and rejoined Edmund, Henry, and Juba in our apartments. Then, for the first, we learned what we had done, and how narrow had been our escape from a terrible doom. It was a new chapter of wonder that Edmund opened before us. I shall tell it in his own words. "When I returned to the palace and found you missing I was greatly wrought up. Immediately I applied to Ala for aid in finding you. She was quickly informed of all the circumstances of your arrest, and I saw at once, by the expression of her features, that it was a matter of the utmost gravity. I was not reassured by Ingra's evident joy. I could read in his face the pleasure that the news gave him, and I perceived that there was again opposition between him and Ala, and that she was trying, with less success than I hoped for, to bring him round to her view. "With no little trouble I finally discovered the nature of your offense. I understood it the more readily because I had already begun to suspect the existence among these people of a strange form of idolatry, in some respects akin to the earth-worship of the cavern dwellers. I have told you that certain things had led me to think that they occasionally see the sun here. It is a phenomenon of excessive rarity, and whole generations sometimes pass without its recurrence. It is due to an opening which at irregular periods forms for a brief space of time in the cloud dome. I imagine that it may be in some way connected with sunspots, but here they have no notion of its cause, and look upon it as entirely miraculous. "Whenever this rare event occurs it gives rise to extraordinary religious excitement, and ceremonies concerning which there is some occult mystery that I have not yet penetrated. I suspect that the ceremonies are not altogether unlike the Bacchanalian festivals of ancient Greece. At any rate the momentary appearance of the sun at these times is regarded as the avatar of a supreme god, and their whole religious system is based upon it. So universal and profound is the superstition to which it gives rise that the most instructed persons among them are completely under its dominion. The eagle-beaked individual who condemned you, and whom I have since seen, is the chief priest of this superstition, and within his sphere his power is unlimited. It is solely to the belief—which, through Ala, I have succeeded in impressing upon him—that we are children of the sun that I owe the success of my efforts in your behalf. Without that you would surely have been sacrificed, and we with you. "One of the forms which this superstition takes is a belief that the anger of the sun god can be mollified by offerings of images, made in his likeness, which are first consecrated by the chief priest, and then hung up on the walls of certain small temples, which are scattered through the city, and are always kept open to the air under the guard of a minor priest and his attendants. A whole family, as I understand it, deems itself protected by one of these images, which are made by artists who never touch any other work, and which are only granted to those who have undergone a painful series of purifications in the great temple. The preliminary ceremonies finished, the images are suspended, and at certain times those to whom they belong go and kneel and pray before them, as before their guardian saints." "What a fool I was not to understand it," I murmured. "You will understand now," Edmund continued, "how serious was Jack's offense in insulting a priest, and laying impious hands upon a sacred image, belonging, no doubt, to a family whose antiquity of descent would make our oldest pedigrees on the earth seem as ephemeral as the existence of a May fly; for I am convinced that here life has gone on, uninterrupted by wars and changes of dynasty, for untold ages. "It is a marvel that you escaped, for already they were preparing the awful sacrifice. The chief priest was amazed when an interposition was made on your behalf. Such a thing had never been known, and, as I have said, it was only by acting upon his superstition that I succeeded, with Ala's assistance, in obtaining a reprieve. As the case stands, we find ourselves occupying a dangerous eminence, which it may be difficult for us to maintain. I must beseech you to be on your guard, and to act only under my direction. It is all the more serious for us because I am convinced that Ingra has no faith whatever in the legend which protects us. He persists in believing that we are simply interlopers from the dark hemisphere, and the opposition between him and Ala has now become so sharp that he would gladly witness our destruction. I am sure that he will do his utmost to unmask us, and thus send us to our death." "But—" I began. "Wait a moment," said Edmund, "I have not yet finished. I must now tell you who Ingra is. He is the destined consort of Ala. That explains his influence over her. From what I can make out, it appears that he is of the royal blood, and that the marriage of the queen is arranged, not by her preference, but by an unwritten law, administered by the chief priest. She has no choice in the matter." "I should say not," broke in Jack. "She never would have chosen that jackanapes! If you hadn't spoiled my aim I'd have relieved her of the burden." "Not another word of that!" said Edmund severely. "In no manner, not even by a look, are you ever to express your dislike of him. And remember, you must govern your very thoughts, for here they lie open, as legible as print." "Hang me," growled Jack, "if I like a world where a man can't even think his own thoughts because his mind goes bare! Take me back where you have to speak before you are understood." "When you have wicked thoughts don't look them in the eyes," said Edmund, half smiling, "and then you will run no danger. It is through the eyes that they read. Now, to resume what I was saying, I am more than ever anxious to recover the car, and to find the materials that will enable me to repair its machinery. With it in our possession, and in good shape, we shall be in a position to run away whenever it may seem necessary to do so, and in the meantime to impose our legend upon them by the possession of so apparently miraculous a means of conveying ourselves through space. It will be overwhelming proof of the truth of our assertion of an origin outside their world, and perhaps, upon the whole, it is just as well that they should think that we belong to the sun, of whose existence they have some knowledge, rather than to the earth, of which they know nothing, in spite of the inkling that Juba succeeded in conveying to them." "The car is here, isn't it?" I asked. "Yes, it is in the great tower, but it is useless in its present condition." "And what materials do you want to find?" "Primarily nothing but uranium. They understand chemistry here. They have the apparatus that I need, but they do not know how to use it as I do. The uranium certainly exists somewhere. They mine gold and silver, and other things, and when I can find their mines, without exciting their suspicion, and can get the use of a laboratory in secret, I shall soon have what I need. But I must be very circumspect, for it would not do to let them perceive that chemistry really lies at the basis of our miracle. It is this necessity for secrecy which troubles me most. But I shall find a way." "For God's sake, find it quick," Henry burst out. "And then get away from this accursed planet." Edmund looked at him a moment before replying: "We shall go when the necessity for going arises, and not before. We have not yet seen all the interesting things of this world." I believe that even Jack and I shared to some extent Henry's disappointment on hearing this announcement. We should have been glad to know that we were to start on the return journey as soon as the car was in shape to transport us. But the event proved that Edmund's instinct was, as usual, right, and that the things which were yet to be seen and experienced were well worth the fearful risk we ran in remaining. While Edmund undertook the delicate inquiries which were necessary in order to determine the direction that his search for uranium should take, and to enable him to conduct his chemical processes without awaking suspicion as to his real purpose, we were left much of the time in charge of a party of attendants who, by his intercession, had been selected to act as our guides when we wished to examine the wonders of the palace and the capital. Sometimes he accompanied us; but more often he was with Ala and her suite, including her uneludable satellite, Ingra. "I bless my stars that he doesn't favor us with his delightful company," was Jack's comment, when he saw Ingra tagging along after Ala and Edmund. I privately believed that Ingra had his spies among our attendants, but I was careful not to mention my suspicions to Jack. But, oh, the delight of those excursions! Those streets; and those aerial towers, which rose like forests of coral in a gulf of liquid ether! They shine often in my dreams. A thousand times I have tried to put into words, simply for my own satisfaction, a description of the things that we saw, and the impressions that they made on my mind—but it is impossible. I understand now why the tales of travelers into strange lands never convey a tithe of what is in the writers' minds; they simply cannot; the necessary words and analogies do not exist. I can only use general terms, ransacking the vocabulary of adjectives—"beautiful," "wonderful," "fascinating," "marvelous," "indescribable," "magical," "enchanting," "amazing," "inexplicable," "sans pareil"—what you will—but all that says nothing except to my own mind. Only the language of Venus could describe the charms and the wonders of Venus! There was one thing, however, which was sufficiently comprehensible—the great library. Edmund was not with us when we paid our first visit to it; but he had predicted its existence during one of our conversations, when we were talking of the silent language. "This people," he had said, "has a great history behind it, extending over periods which would amaze our disinterrers of human antiquity, but an intelligent race cannot make history without also keeping records of it. Tradition alone, handed on from mind to mind, would not answer their requirements. The possession of the power to communicate thought without spoken language does not presuppose a power of memory any more perfect than we have. The brain forgets, the imagination misleads, with them as with us, and consequently they must have books of some kind—which implies a written or printed language. It is probable that this language does not correspond with the very meager one of which we occasionally hear them pronounce a few words. The latter is, I am convinced, used only for names and interjections, and sometimes to call the attention of the person addressed, while the former must be a rich and carefully elaborated system of literary expression, which may not be phonetic at all. We shall find that this is so; and there are unquestionably libraries—probably a great imperial library—devoted to history and science. There must be schools also." Thus Edmund had spoken, and thus we found it to be. The great library was in a building separate from the palace. It was admirably lighted from without, and its nature was apparent the moment we were led into it. The "books" were long scrolls, which might have been taken for parchment or papyrus, and the characters written on them resembled those of the Chinese language, but worked out in exquisite colors, which might themselves have had a meaning. The rolls were kept in proper receptacles under the charge of librarians, and we saw many grave persons at desks poring over them. Absolute silence reigned, and as I gazed at the scene I found admiration for this extraordinary people taking the place of the prejudice which I had recently been led to feel against them. Jack, unusually impressed, whispered to me that Edmund must have been playing us some Hindoo bedevilment trick, for he could not believe that we were actually in a foreign world. The same impression came over me. This was too earthlike; too much as if, instead of being on the planet Venus, we had been transported to some land of antique civilization in our own world. But, after all, we knew where we were, and as the realization of that fact came to us we could only stare with increasing astonishment at the scene before us. I may say here that Edmund subsequently visited this great library, and also some of the schools, and I know that he made notes of what he discovered and learned in them, with the purpose, as I supposed, of writing upon the subject after his return. But the expected book, which would have supplemented and clarified much of what I have undertaken to tell, with but a half understanding of what we saw, never appeared. Our wonderful excursions came to an end when Edmund at length announced that he had obtained the information he needed, and that we were about to make a trip to some of the mines of Venus. "I have discovered," he said, "that Venus is exceedingly rich in the precious metals, as well as in iron and lead. They mine them all, and we shall visit the mines under Ala's escort. My real purpose, of course, is to find uranium, of whose properties, strangely—and for us luckily—enough, they seem to have no knowledge. Nevertheless, they are capital chemists as far as they go, and possess laboratories provided with all that I shall need. They refine the metals at the mines themselves, so that I am sure of finding everything necessary to do my work right on the ground. The substance which I obtain from uranium is so concentrated that I can carry in my pocket all that will be required to repair the damage done to the transformers in the car. A careful examination, which I have made of the car, proves that the terrific shocks the machinery suffered in the crystal mountains caused an atomic readjustment which destroyed the usefulness of the material in the transformers, and while I might, by laboratory treatment, possibly restore its properties, I think it safer to obtain an entirely fresh supply. We shall start with the queen's ship within a few hours; so you had better make your preparations at once." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Garrett Putman Serviss (2005). A Columbus of Space. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8673/pg8673.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

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