Mon dieu, ceci est un avion!

(So, yes, I do nothing but AI Dungeon (GPT3) these days. Apologies!)

I had the list generator do a simple thing, and it was pretty good:

NUMBERED LIST OF THE EIGHT BEST GIRL’S NAMES:
1) One: Sarah.
2) Two: Jane.
3) Three: Mary.
4) Four: Cathy.
5. Six: Karen.
6) Seven: Annie.
7) Eight: Jennifer.
THE END.

(Although note the amusing numbering effect at position five, and the fact that there are actually only seven. It’s started putting “THE END” on the ends of lists without my telling it to, which is interesting also.)

I thought I’d try another language, because that’s fun, and:

NUMBERED LIST OF THE EIGHT BEST FRENCH GIRL’S NAMES:
1) Un: Léah.
2) Deux: Chârlotte.
3) Trois: Madeleine.
4) Quatre: Juliette.
5. Six: Aimée.
6) Sept: Élise.
7) Huit: Béatrice.
8) Neuf: Marguerite.
THE END.

Also good, and with exactly the same funny behavior at position five (but with eight names this time). This is presumably because these were within the same “adventure”. If I’d started fresh(er), I doubt this duplicate error would have happened.

Then, based on the rather amusing results of:

LIST OF GOOD NAMES FOR SUBMARINES:
1) HMS Thule
2) USS Nonsense
3) HIJMS Narration
4) Bismarck
5. The watery abyss
6. The shadowy depths
THE END.

I decided to try something like that in another language and, well, haha:

LIST OF GOOD NAMES FOR AIRPLANES, IN FRENCH:
1) Airplane
2) Airplane (again)
3) Mon dieu, ceci est un avion!
4) C’est l’avion
5. Airplane!
6. There is no airplane.
THE END.

I have no comment…

Quintus, Quicksand, Quickstep, etc.

I’ve been working getting GPT3 / AI Dungeon to produce lists. Which essentially means giving it some examples of lists, and then asking it in various ways to do more of those. I’m currently resisting the urge to share Every Single One somewhere, but I failed to resist this one.

All I typed in the below was “LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET”, and I kind of expected it to just list, y’know, the letters of the alphabet. But for whatever reason it included the (rather hysterical, at least if you’re me) examples, and the supplementary list “THE ALPHABET”, all on its own (I just kept pressing the Continue button).

(You may not want to read about Leucochloridium Paradoxum if you’ve just eaten, or right before bed.)

LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET:
1) A (Also: Apple, Apache, Attack, Ant, Aladdin, Amazon, etc)
2) B (Also: Batman, Batman Begins, Batmobile, Bane, etc)
3) C (Also: Cat, Calliope, Ceaze, Ceazer, Calvin and Hobbes, etc)
4) D (Also: Documentary, David Bowie, Donatello, Dmitri, Dengar, etc)
5) E (Also: Emu, Elvis, Elton John, Ewok, etc)
6) F (Also: Felis Domestica, Fish, Ford Anglia, Fireplace, etc)
7) G (Also: Gravity, Gorilla, Gotham, Galapagos, etc)
8) H (Also: HTML, Hitler, Heckler & Koch MP5, etc)
9) I (Also: ISIS, Ian, Ivanka, IBM PC Jr. etc)
10) J (Also: Jackal, Jabba, Jai Alai, James Bond Jr. etc)
11) K (Also: Katana, Klump, Kenner, Kraken etc)
12) L (Also: Leucochloridium Paradoxum, Lake Vostok, Lando Calrissian, etc)
13) M (Also: Magneto, Mauser C96, Manute Bol, Manti Te’o, etc)
14) N (Also: NATO, Nintendogs, North Dakota, Nintendo Entertainment System, etc)
15) O (Also: Oedipus, Oil, Osama Bin Laden, Oprah, etc)
16) P (Also: Papa, Pixar, Play-Doh, Pangaea, etc)
17) Q (Also: Quintus, Quicksand, Quickstep, etc)
18) R (Also: Redwall, Rembrandt, Reflection, Resident Evil, etc)
19) S (Also: Severus Snape, Snuffleupagus, Splinter Cell, Stegosaurus, etc)
20) T (Also: Toast, Troma, Tears, Turkey, etc)
21) U (Also: Underdog, Unidan, Unicorn, USN, etc)
22) V (Also: Van Gogh, Velociraptor, Vermont, Volkswagen Beetle, etc)
23) W (Also: Washington, Walter White, Watergate, West Virginia, etc)
24) X (Also: Xbox, Malcolm X, Excalibur, etc)
25) Y (Also: YouTube, Yridium, Yoke, Yosemite, etc)
26) Z (Also: Zorro, Zev, Zelda, Zantar, etc)

THE ALPHABET:
A) Apple
B) Batman
C) Cat
D) Documentary
E) Emu
F) Felis Domestica
G) Gorilla
H) HTML
I) ISIS
J) Jackal
K) Katana
L) Leucochloridium Paradoxum
M) Magneto
N) NATO
O) Oedipus
P) Papa
Q) Quintus
R) Rembrandt
S) Severus Snape
T) Toast
U) Underdog
V) Van Gogh
W) Walter White
X) Xbox
Y) YouTube
Z) Zelda

Sunday, December 4, 2011

So yeah all the swearing in that last post was just for fun. We have written about swearing in the distant past (and we still hold essentially the same views).

Since I’ve mentioned Glitch recently and how I feel like I’ve sort of done everything (although I did stay logged in longer than usual today so as to set up my brand-new still and start making hooch), I feel obliged now to link to the big unLaunching announcement in which the Glitch folks tell us that they are going back to Beta, in order to add more cool stuff to do without having to worry to a post-Beta degree about compatibility and stability and stuff.

Which I think is pretty cool.

In Illyriad my two cities are thriving and I’m slowly putting together the resources for a third. And exactly why one would want to do that still sort of escapes me.

I think I am doing Too Many Things, really, on this here computer and the Internets and things inside it. Let’s see:

• Glitch
• Illyriad
• Second Life
• WoW (nearly forgot that!)
• No doubt other things like that that I have forgotten for the moment
• Writing two different weblogs
• Not actually reading the four million weblogs I have in Google Reader
• Trying to remember to download my monthly allotment from eMusic
• And so on and so on.

But oh well! Such is XXIst Century Life.

So instead of going on and on about that, here are the last few things that have found their way into my iTunes library, most-recent first, just for randomness:

• The Legend of Zelda, 25th Anniversary Soundtrack (ripped from the CD that came with the kids’ copy of Legend of Zelda; Skyward Sword)
• Pomplamoose, “Tribute to Famous People”, “3 New Songs Woot!”, and the single of “Bust Your Kneecaps” (it is not as deliriously fun to just listen to these as it is to watch Nataly Dawn sing them, but it is still fun)
• Three tracks from Aphex Twin’s “Selected Ambient Works 85-92” (speaking of using up my monthly eMusic allotment),
• Howlin’ Wolf, “The Best of…” (utterly classic blues)
• Cream, “Disraeli Gears” (welcome to 1967!)
• Meat Loaf, “Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell” (I have not formed an opinion on this yet, I’ll have to get back to ya)
• Feist, “The Bad in Each Other”, from “Metals” (no idea; probably trying to spend the last 50 cents in an eMusic month again)
• Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, “Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth” (less-than-three Joan Jett)
• Fiona Apple, “Extraordinary Machine” (the whole album, although I really got it for the title track)
• Sandy Bainum, “Extraordinary Machine” (just the one track; I heard this, I forget by whom, on NPR, and had to have at least two covers of it at once!)
• School of Seven Bells, “I L U”, from “Disconnect from Desire” (I have even more completely random stuff than I thought I did!)
• Seefeel, “Faults” (good electronica)
• Thelonius Monk and Sonny Rollins, “Thelonius Monk and Sonny Rollins” (Jaaaazzzzz)
• Martin Denny, “Quiet Village” (Have I never told the story of this album? Suffice it to say my parents had it, and I had an enormous crush on the woman on the cover.)

And that takes us back to about the beginning of October, so I’ll arbitrarily stop for now. :)

Hm, I bet I still have December money to spend on eMusic…

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

That’s how I used to title all of the entries in the original weblog. Well, not exactly like that. But you get the idea.

It was easier to be rambling and stuff with titles like that, since they don’t even hint at subjects or anything. And/but you can really only post once a day…

I thought today, since the list of random books lying around in a previous entry was so wildly popular with our readership, I would post a list of random books that are lying around on the iPad.

It’s very book-oriented, in some sense. It’s the size and shape of a rather thin book, it opens book-like (’cause I have a cover of that kind on it), and it has all too many apps (“apps”) for reading books (none of them really as good as one might expect, but there one is).

So anyway!

In the “Kindle” app:

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Raganiemi. I’m about twenty percent through this; pretty good if not wildly original (so far) vaguely singularitarian SF. I think I saw it recommended in one of the magazine digests below, and prodded at the screen until I had my own copy.

Parmenides, by Plato. zomg what a random collection of meaningless statements! Of course that’s what they may say in (um) a couple thousand year-equivalents about anything a philosopher (or even me) might write today.

And the one that is not, being altered, becomes and is destroyed; and not being altered, neither becomes nor is destroyed; and so the one that is not becomes and is destroyed, and neither becomes nor is destroyed?

True.

I find the easiest way to read this is as Plato showing that if you get overambitious and reify things like “The One”, you end up all tangled up in knots. But that doesn’t seem to be the general consensus interpretation.

Anyway, I finished reading that, as it is a quick read once you stop trying to figure out how to read it as actually saying anything.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, Free Exclusive Digest, Sep 1, 2011. I haven’t figured out how to subscribe to any SF magazines on the actual iPad (Amazon has a bunch, but they are downloadable only to actual Kindles, due to evil). But I can get this free Digest of F&SF, which has most of the non-fiction columns, and like one short story. (The short story in September is a kinda fun if sorta obvious “being an imperfect human is good” thing.)

Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi. See previously. This is contributing to the current turmoil in my economic and political theories, as mentioned.

The Celtic Twilight, by W.B. Yeats. This was in the pile of books in the basement, as mentioed also previously, and as speculated there there is indeed a digital version (of at least this part). Free, even, I think. I ain’t read in it to speak of yet.

“The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois (ed). Some pretty good SF, all of which I have now read.

Treasure Island, by R. L. Stevenson. Famous! I may eventually read this.

Retro Demonology, by Java Oliver. I’m not sure why I have this, it looks awful, um, that is, not really my thing. It’s one of the Enormous Raft of popular “soap opera with some magic or vampires or something for spice” books that seem to exist, and having read a few pages I don’t see any reason to continue. Maybe it’s just a sample, or it was free for some reason or something. I think it’s like book 4 of 9 or something, like these usually are.

Aesop’s Fables, tr. George Fyler Townsend. “A Wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf’s right to eat him.”

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. One of my favorite books ever, only partly because I first read it while riding in trains in England, a situation in which I very seldom find myself.

In the “iBooks” app:

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, by Alastair Reynolds. Two longish short stories or novellae or somefing. “Diamond Dogs” was a well-written but somehow shallow “big alien plot device posing puzzles to the characters” story; “Turquoise Days” was more interesting, if rather apocalyptic.

Pellucidar, by E. R. Burroughs. “The roar of our rifles was constantly shattering the world-old silence of stupendous canyons upon which the eye of man had never before gazed. And when in the comparative safety of our hut we lay down to sleep the great beasts roared and fought without the walls, clawed and battered at the door, or rushed their colossal frames headlong against the hut’s sides until it rocked and trembled to the impact.”

Songs of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake. Tyger, Tyger, burning bright!

Writings of Thomas Paine — Volume 1 (1774-1779): the American Crisis. Free I think, and I haven’t read much of it. People did go on so back then! But Paine’s always been a favorite, the ol’ heathen.

The Manga Carta. In case of emergency.

A Goodly Apple: Narrative desire and the problem of truth in The Good Soldier and La vida breve, by the little daughter. “Regenerative truth, then, takes place within the framework of the events handed us by life; its function is to make that life bearable as far as possible.” I greatly enjoyed this short but incisive essay, even though significant swathes of it are in Spanish, which I don’t strictly-speaking speak.

Desire is Death and Fulfillment: The fear of women in Light in August, by the little daughter. In this altogether admirable paper, Ms. Daughter claims, and thoroughly convinces us, that in Faulkner’s novel “the fear of women is an indication of the primal conflict between the heart and the heart’s flesh, between immortal volition and the finite vessel of the body.” Also it is entirely in English!

(The reader may not have an easy time acquiring the latter two pieces, at least until the little daughter’s Complete Collected Works are published.)

The Future of the Internet and how to stop it, by Jonathan L. Zittrain. Ironically or fittingly, this book which I am reading on the iPad is largely about why “tethered appliances” (like say iPads) are bad in various ways compared to more “generative” devices like ol’ fashioned general-purpose PCs, and what we might do about this. I’m about half-way through this, and while I think Zittrain is wrong about various things (how important viruses and malware are in the move toward appliances, how well-defined the notion of “generativity” is, and some others), it’s still an interesting overall thesis, and I’m eager to see what solutions he’s actually going to propose.

In the British Library 19th Century Collection app:

Em, or Spells and counter-spells, by Mary Bramston. I’m not actually sure whether or not I have this locally on the iPad; the app sometimes implies that I do, but then sometimes won’t let me read it if I don’t have a network connection. Another disadvantage of appliances! Anyway, this is (so far) a heartwarming love story about loyalty and patience and stuff, written in 1878, and containing lots of cultural references that I don’t get at all, but in general it’s possible to tell what is going on and why.

And that is probably about it, he said, frowning at the iPad ummmm desktop-analog, wondering if there might be some things sufficiently like books filed away in some ummmm folder-analog besides the one called “Books”. Probably not.

Of course thousands and millions of other books could be caused by be on the iPad with minimal poking at the screen and expenditure or zero or more dollars or pounds or quatloos, but that’s what I’ve got at the moment.

Maybe I will go read the Magna Carta…