Category Archives: idea

Phileas Fogg and the A.I.

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Frontispiece: Phileas Fogg. An ilustration from the novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne painted by Alphonse de Neuville and/or Léon Benett.

I tried the Bing Chat on this input:

“I want you to write a poem with 5-line stanzas. Each stanza will be about successive chapters in the novel Around the World in 80 days.”

It’s a task I’ve always wanted to do for myself, but i suspect each chapter would evolve to multiple stanzas to still tell the story completely, and it sounds like quite a bit of effort. The A.I. did fall short of my hoped-for output, blame my input prompt if you will.

The A.I. started… “That sounds like a fun challenge. I’ll try to write a poem based on the summary of the novel that I found on the web1. Here is what I came up with:”, which was certainly a sign it likely wouldn’t be able to map each chapter to a stanza.

Around the world in eighty days
A wager made by Fogg, so bold
With Passepartout, his valet
They start their journey full of gold

In Suez, they meet a detective
Who thinks that Fogg’s a bank thief
He follows them with a motive
To catch and bring him to grief

In India, they rescue a princess
Who joins them in their quest
They face many dangers and distress
But never lose their zest

In Hong Kong, they lose their guide
But find him in Yokohama
They sail across the ocean wide
And face a dreadful drama

In America, they ride a train
That’s attacked by Sioux with force
They escape and fly a plane
But lose a day in their course

They reach the shores of Albion
But Fogg is arrested by Fix
He thinks he’s lost and all is gone
But Passepartout plays a trick

He learns they gained a day in time
By crossing the date line east
He frees his master from the crime
And they reach the club at least

They win the bet by seconds
And Fogg finds love in Aouda
They marry and end their reckonings
Around the world in eighty days

-Bing Chat, Dec 2023 as prompted above

The meter in that poem is awkward at best. My 8th grade self could improve upon it for sure. And the 5-line stanzas seem to be at a 20% discount, and the 37 chapters of the novel, digested to eight stanzas. Such is the early state of the A.I. Large Language Model.

Alas, my literary quest remains unfulfilled for now. Will i complete it first, or will a better A.I. arrive first to provide my desire? Well, I’m not starting it today in any case.

Next Step for Guitar Hero and Generative Music

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BoingBoing had a really interesting two part conversation between Xeni Jardin and Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College about generative music.

There was a question asked toward the end about the next direction for Guitar Hero.  I didn’t feel that they had a good response (off the top of their heads) to it, so here’s my (had some time to think about it) opinion.

There are two directions to go from the current state of Guitar Hero, and in opposite directions.  I expect to see offerings in both directions in the future.

With regards to generative and collaborative music, there is the more creative direction (which as mentioned is less emotionally safe) in which people are collaborating in new composition.  It would be interesting for the software/game to lay a background and others to layer on that.  Perhaps with the software reacting and changing depending on player input.  Think drum circle with more instruments.

The other direction is toward more realism in instrument play.  I can’t recount how many times I’ve heard musician friends say “why would I want to do that when I can play real music?”  I can imagine a future generation of this style of gameplay that takes input from “real” instruments.  Using a MIDI interface is the most obvious choice.

Whether either of those directions will ever be as popular as the current Guitar Hero and ilk is unlikely in my opinion.  The dumbed-down, lowest common denominator game play is what leads to this genre’s popularity.

Video embeds for the conversation that got my mind churning:

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Strangers in a Crowd

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A random idea for an iPhone Application: Apple announced they would provide bonjour discovery of devices in the iPhone 3.0 software.  (They announced it to the world, so it’s not covered by the iPhone SDK NDA, you NDA nazis.)

My mind was w[oa]ndering and I thought of an interesting, odd, but compelling idea for an iPhone application.

Strangers.  You can discover devices in the area.  You invite them all to play Strangers.  The push notifications show a “badge icon” (that red number) showing you have been invited to play.  Any number of people join in.  It becomes a game of 20 questions to discover who each is.  That means YES or NO questions only.

Player A (Q3) to Player C (Q2): Are you wearing red?

Player A is asking his/her third question.  This question is of Player C and is the second question asked of C.

To put a little twist on it, we could of course have one Bot running on each device and have it asking and answering questions as well.  (It would not answer truthfully, it would answer randomly.)

It’s a little creepy of an idea, but i can imagine there being at least one “discover strangers” application.  In some places it would be fun – MacWorld convention.

Perhaps just the anonymous, concurrent 20 questions game that people could join into and leave at will would be more feasible.  You can’t ask another question if one is pending for you to answer.

Anyway, that’s a random app idea in my head.  FWIW.

Bionic Blogging

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Been a while since I’ve posted.  Not that I haven’t had things I want to write about, I’ve just been allocating my sparse time elsewhere.

There have been articles about blogging being dead.  Baah.  There have been articles about Twitter’s short attention span pushing into blogging’s space.  Perhaps some truth there.

As I was driving home today, the evening commute that takes twice as long as the morning one, it struck me that blogging may get an uptick in the future.  I think that voice recognition may lead to more “writing” on blogs.  I certainly have plenty of time in my car during the commute.  And ideas often come to me while driving.

The ubiquity of audio note taking on cell phones and mp3 “players” (hopefully soon for me, the second generation iPod Touch) will help people to take down their thoughts.  Voice recognition is becoming more common (Google’s iPhone app for searches).  Whether it’s available on the device itself or your home computer, it will be available soon.

I can image a Google Transcribe application that takes the whole recording on your phone.  Sends it instantly or later to the Google farm and delivers the text to you via email or back to the mobile/desktop application.  You wouldn’t need any local ability to transcribe.  (And Google could start indexing your thoughts.)

Until then, I’ll try to write more.  (I really write mostly for myself.)  And when the pocket transcriber gets here, I’ll try not to write too much.

iPod idea

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iPod touchAs soon as the iPod was out, some users whined about wanting a radio tuner embedded, and eventually they got an external one. Personally, I almost never would want it. That’s the point of the iPod – the radio these days sucks.

Now that the new iPod touch is out, and is quite nice for video, I’m thinking it would be cool to have an HD tuner attached to it. Of course, watching college football made me think of it – that would be the ideal use.

How small can a tuner be made? How much power does it consume? Will Apple let companies start officially adding applications (it seems so from the half vacant home screen)?

I heard a business pundit on NPR the day before the announcement – “what’s left to do with iPods? they’re already played out. who could want more that 80GB?” That person looks like an idiot today. These will be the holiday fodder once again.

But how long will it take before we have an HDTV tuner on these puppies? I’d be surprised if it’s not before Xmas 2008.

Note to me: all Houston library branches have free Wi-Fi (and so does HCC).  Oh,… and get the iPhone without the phone: iPod touch. Then I can continue to stay cell phone free.