Ten short films, one to two minutes each, every one in a different genre. They’re all about the same small world: a house in Pueblo, twelve cameras, two phones, a home server called HoloCore, and the AI assistants that help run it all. Every one is based on something that actually happened. Most of those things were mistakes.

Watch them in order on the Life Reels playlist, or pick one below. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

1. Planet Pueblo

Planet Pueblo: Episode 1, The Wild InfrastructureNature documentaryThe monopine is a cell tower disguised as a pine tree. Conservation status: fooling absolutely no one. Watch on YouTube ↗

2. KCCS Employee Orientation (1994)

Rules for AI Coworkers, on a 1994 VHS Training TapeVHS training tapeThe house rules for the AI assistants, and every one of them exists because something went wrong. Rule five has been edited for broadcast. Watch on YouTube ↗

3. WISPR

WISPR: a horror trailerHorror trailerA debugging command made my phone’s dictation bubble invisible. Still attached, still there, alpha zero. Watch on YouTube ↗

4. Channel 7 Boom Watch

Channel 7 Boom WatchLocal newsTwo weeks of mystery booms, twelve cameras and a computer listening to all of them. 49 candidates, 2 confirmed, and most of them in prime time. Camera views are stand-ins. Watch on YouTube ↗

5. The Local Forecast

The Local Forecast90s weather channelBooms likely between 7 and 11. Patchy fog of assumption. Today’s UV index: do not. Watch on YouTube ↗

6. The Great Vault Catastrophe

The Great Vault CatastropheSilent filmOne command took 30,209 notes off the disk. Five layers of backups brought them back. The moral: git rm --cached. Watch on YouTube ↗

7. Prime Time Tokens

Prime Time TokensSports broadcast52 AI agents charge the rate limiter, twice. Final score: rate limiter two, swarm nothing. Watch on YouTube ↗

8. Areas App

AREAS APP80s karaokeMy dictation has never once typed this site’s name correctly. So I wrote it a song. It’s not errors zap. It’s not Areas app. Watch on YouTube ↗

9. Leo & Orion

Leo & OrionBuddy-cop trailerTwo AIs, one PC, zero visible windows, and a mysterious third partner named Brock. Watch on YouTube ↗

10. HoloCore Wars: The Window Menace

HoloCore Wars: The Window MenaceSpace operaThe home server went down, and a script waiting for it flashed a window on my screen every 21 seconds for the whole outage. Watch on YouTube ↗

How they were made

The narration is text-to-speech, the pictures are my own photos plus graphics drawn in code, and each film was rendered frame by frame in Python. Most of the music is by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0. The karaoke track and the space-opera score were generated in code for these videos.

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