Conversing with Cleverbot, or, a surefire way to piss me off.

Cleverbot is a website. A robot. A chatbot, if you will.

The idea is that it can simulate ‘intelligent human conversation’. You log on to www.cleverbot.com, type a salutation into the text box, and let your conversation flow from there. Only…. Cleverbot seems to be having some identity issues. In this conversation, I’m speaking in black, and cleverbot is speaking in blue.

Apparently Cleverbot has forgotten it’s own name. Not so good for something which has been in development since 1988. Cleverbot comes from a company called Icogno, and is based on its predecessor, Jabberwacky. So how does it differ from your regular run-of-the-mill chatbot?

The ‘general AI’ of Jabberwacky stores everything everyone has ever said, and finds the most appropriate thing to say using contextual pattern matching techniques. In speaking to you it uses just that learnt material, and borrows a little bit of your intelligence as it learns more. With no hard-coded rules, it relies entirely on the principles of feedback.

Well that sounds positive! Let’s get back to the conversation and see if Cleverbot is learning from our conversation.

Apparently it has decided to take on the persona of a petulant nine year old.

Not really relevant, but okay.

Well, Cleverbot is clearly in the mood for a pissing contest. I’m always up for a bit of a brag, but I don’t actually know what my own IQ is. But I guess there’s an easy fix for that, thankyou internet:

It’s satisfying to know that I’m more intelligent than a piece of software (according to another piece of software). Even if it’s only slightly. Time to break the news to Cleverbot:

What the fuck Cleverbot? Is your IQ 143 or 104? Either way, I’m cleverer than you right?

Cleverbot. I want to love you. I want to love you so much. You promised so much to me, and I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to deliver from the start. I was hoping for Deep Blue, but all you could give me was Pong. You offered me Skynet, but gave me something about as thrilling as a shitty dystopian story I wrote in year 3.

Now I’m just downright confused. But I can play along.

It really does, in red writing: ‘PARENTAL ADVICE: Visitors never talk to a human, however convincing it is – The AI knows many topics’.

Glad we cleared that up. Oh, but apparently you’re adamant.

Well, if you’re saying you can offer me proof of your humanity, then I guess I’d better listen up.

Oh fuck off. I’m out.

(Note: I did in fact continue my conversation with Cleverbot, but I’ll save you the rage that I felt by not publishing the remainder here. Suffice to say, it continued the pattern of contradicting itself and talking nonsense, until it brought up the game. When I asked what game it was talking about, it told me I had lost the game. ‘You just remember the game‘. Fucking ridiculous. At that point, I threw a brick at my computer. It’s a good thing I have incredibly bad aim)

Review: O’Ball 2010

A review of O’Ball I wrote for Kryztoff. It originally appeared in Issue 11 (April 1, 2010) of the online street mag.

Photograph by Jason Vandepeer

While votes were being counted, and nervous politicians prayed for Kerry O’Brien to give them good news, there was one small crowd of people defiantly turning up their noses toward the whole democracy shindig. They chose to converge on the University of Adelaide for the premier university campus music festival: O’Ball! The event boasted a solid line up of upcoming Australian bands, with appearances from Yves Klein Blue as well as Space Invadas, Cloud Control, Hot Little Hands, and local act The Waterslides.

Low attendance (although it was certainly still higher than what Kelly Nestor and jazz band got on their election coverage) made for a slow start, but by the time Cloud Control took the stage, everyone was on board. They have a reputation that somewhat precedes them, and from the beginning it was clear why. In between feet stamping,  tambourine losing, and giving away the door prize, the band reeled off a warmly received set, including crowd favourites ‘Death Cloud’ and ‘Gold Canary’, as well as new single ‘This Is What I Said’.

Yves Klein Blue came on stage to an excitable crowd in the carpark mosh pit, and a cool-as-cucumbers crowd chilling out on the grass. They jumped straight into their upbeat set with ‘Dinosaur’, and managed to hold the attention of the fun-lovin’ moshers through a set of new material and old favourites like ‘Silence is Distance’ and ‘Getting Wise’. Those bohemians on the grass… well who cares about them anyway?

Navy Week!

Here in Adelaide, as anyone who has walked down North Terrace recently can tell you, it’s Navy Week! Ah the navy, the worst line of Australia’s defences!

But what does Navy Week mean?

Well according to the navy website, it starts on October 16 and runs to October 25 (yes, that is in fact longer than a week), and includes events such as a Sea Ride on the HMAS Parramatta (not open to the public). Huh. You’d think that navy men and navy women would be a little sick of the sea, being in the navy and all.

But what else happens in navy week? No one really knows, but this is a good guess:

• All navy men and navy women are lauded by members of their home town, or in the case of a city-dweller, in their home suburb.
• All navy men and navy women are entitled to a 5% discount on all purchases (excluding gaming consoles and iPods, sorry no rainchecks).
• All school children are required to thank at least three navy men or navy women for their services to protecting the high seas.
• Pirates curtail their actions for the week, in alignment with the Pirate-Navy Navy Week Treaty.
• No one is permitted to make sodomy jokes for the entire duration of Navy Week.
• All navy men and navy women are granted certain law enforcement powers, in that they are permitted to make a citizens arrest for breaking any laws, or any rules of navy week, and cast the offending party into the ocean.
• The army and the air force agree to not do anything interesting, lest they distract the attention of the public from the navy
• They raise the flag a couple of times probably.

Recursive

via kung fu grippe via Read All Day:

I couldn’t really place [What I Talk About When I Talk About Running] on my great book list because while his memoir is engaging and inspiring, it did not meet my own requirements of having the character undergo change through struggle, nor was it about the importance of connection, nor did it create a world or landscape or background that was just so beautiful it became a character itself in the book.

What an awkward way to describe a book’s failure to meet a weird benchmark.

Specifically, I couldn’t really place the sentence on my great sentences list because while it’s mostly grammatically sound and includes words and punctuation, it did not meet my own requirements of having a large foam cowboy hat, nor was it about how broccoli looks like little trees, nor did it create a fort made of sofa cushions in which I could enjoy the sentences included in my proper list of great sentences.

What an awkward way to put down an awkward way to describe a book’s failure to meet a weird benchmark.

Specifically, I couldn’t really place the insult on my great insults list because while it serves its purpose and conveys approximately the correct amount of sarcasm, it did not meet my own requirements of having an inflatable pool toy, nor did it contain allegories of the spiritual journey, nor did it describe a down-on-his-luck Welsh miner making the most of a bad situation.

Nerds, Jocks and The President.

Unhealthy obsession.

More MEAT.

Wow, look at the fabric on this dress. It looks like it’s made of real meat:

Oh, it is real meat?

I contemplated many ideas, including beef jerky, ham, ground beef, prosciutto… but they were all too expensive, thick, and/or runny. I chose salami because it’s thin, keeps in one piece, and is quite cheap, and bacon because it looks very, um, meaty. I considered somehow vacuum-sealing sheets of meat with those sealers they have on the markets now, but the machines were too expensive for a one-time-only disposeable dress. I ended up using the K.I.S.S. method of construction, which involved a basic shift dress out of thick cotton. I layed the meat on top, then put clear vinyl over it and sewed tracks with clear thread. I used a wide stitch length to avoid perforating the meat to the point it might just… uh, slide down the bottom of the dress. I also blotted it all before sewing to get rid of as much grease as possible to avoid clouding the vinyl. Lastly, I made sure to bind the bottom of the dress with a strip of clear vinyl to catch drips. (I love talking about this; it’s so disgusting.) The whole project took about 6 hours, and I kept it refrigerated until the party. Good times.

Activities That Fill Up the Endless River of Empty Hours That Flows Elegantly Before Me in a Cascading Arc Across the Horizon

Maps of Mexico, Ecuador, and San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, spread out on the floor showing several possible escape routes from one place to another for the characters who populate the songs I’m writing now. Somebody should warn these people that Ecuador will not actually be the peaceful haven that they’ve talked themselves into believing it is. I can’t be the one to do it because I have a personal stake in their downfall. Everybody is doomed. Warn the neighbors.

John Darnielle, Mountain Goats

A-toot, a-toot, a-toot-diddelyada-toot

From the creators of MEAT CARDS:

Alright I may have been a little flippant just now with MEAT CARDS.

These guys are awesome. From the creators of MEAT CARDS:

The Math Clock

This is a clock for those people that paid attention in math class all the way through college. Each numeral on the clock has been replaced by an equivalent notation.

I want one. US$20

Nerd Merit Badges

1.5″, fully-embroidered, Velcro-backed. Attach to your jacket, your backpack, or the lid of your overclocked, battle-scarred laptop. Start a nerd sash!

For example:

Nerd Merit Badge 03: Homonyms. Requirements: Correctly spell words that sound the same

And perhaps my favourite:

isFeasting

It’s a social network, but not just your standard social network:

isFeasting is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you eating?

The idea is: users log on to the website, and tell the world what they are eating. Then they post a picture of what they are eating.

It’s like an enhanced form of Twitter.

A business idea with meat.

MEAT CARDS: Business cards made from MEAT AND LASERS

They'll even survive the econopocalypse.

From the website:

We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:
MEAT AND LASERS

They’re a real man’s business card.
Why would you want a meat card you ask? How silly of you. They’re much more valuable than a regular business card:

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.

But you might need a specially designed wallet for them:

MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

That’s right. Their deliciousness cannot be contained in a Rolodex.

I imagine now that you’re feeling exactly the way I am. How can I purchase a set of meat cards for myself, inscribed with my name and qualifications? Well, according to their twitter:

We’ll post purchasing instructions on the website as soon as we figure out how NOT to get arrested as unlicensed meat purveyors.

One would think the best way to do that would be to become licensed meat purveyors. But hold out hope:

Four lbs. of giant slab jerky on the way from Tillamook, Oregon, to our Philadelphia laser facility! UPS tracking: http://bit.ly/1bgTpJ ^JY