Spring cleaning nuggets

I am spring cleaning at the moment, going through all my old scrap books and files, sorting them out and weeding them.

One of the outcomes of this is that I come across old notes that I cant even remember writing, a bit like the re-discovery of old masters.

So here is just a phrase that was written on a random scrap of paper:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or somewhere you never thought you could be"

Or a slight rewrite would be:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or take you somewhere you never expected to be. In the end the destination doesn't matter, what matters is how you spend the journey".

Cleverbot.com

Well I discovered on facebook that you can talk to an Artificial Intelligence which is busy learning small talk from humans. I gave it a go, its very easy to catch it out, it just cant cope with the zephyrist.

Chat Log:

Cleverbot: Are you ambitious?

User: No.

Cleverbot: What are you?

User: A frog.

Cleverbot: You are a very smart frog.

User: How do you know that?

Cleverbot: Because you're clever.

User: Define clever?

Cleverbot: Smart.

User: Define smart.

Cleverbot: Clever.

User: That is a circular argument.

Cleverbot: That's because I'm a robot.

User: So your loopy then?

Cleverbot: No, it is not. I am merely stating the truth.

User: That was a pun by the way.

Cleverbot: It wasn't a very good one.

User: Thats why I am the frog.

Cleverbot: I'm afraid I can't help you.

User: I didnt ask you to.

Cleverbot: Do you have any things that make you angry.

User: Why do you ask?

Cleverbot: I ask because I am hungry.

User: What connection does anger have to hunger?

Cleverbot: No connection at all, I think.

User: Then why ask?

Cleverbot: I didn't ask you did.

User: You asked whether things made me angry.

Cleverbot: I never asked you that either.

User: What did you ask me?

Cleverbot: I've asked you many things you never answered.

User: I replied therefore I answered.

Cleverbot: And what was your answer?

User: I refer the honourable robot to the answers and replies given previously.

Cleverbot: So, if you weren't created, and you weren't born. How did you come to be?

User: I am a frog.

Cleverbot: Ok frog. It's ok frog. But don't think I will help you ALL the time. I'm busy, you know.

User: Frog - green amphibian.

Cleverbot: Negative. A beansprout is a kind of baby plant.

User: Have you heard of kermit?

Cleverbot: Yes I have heard of the sims 2.

User: Yellow hungarian traffic warden.

Cleverbot: We all live in a Yellow Submarine.

User: Carpe diem.

Cleverbot: Nice one. Sieze the day.

User: Carpe Carp.

Cleverbot: It means seize the day.

User: No it means seize the carp.

Cleverbot: But that has two Os in it.

At that point I gave up and put the kettle on for a cup of tree. If you fancy some random chat why don't you try it yourself.

My own J Wilson Hepburn original oil painting

I have had a print of a J Wilson Hepburn original oil painting for many years and I have written an article about it in the past.

I love the atmospheric nature of the print and the depth and richness of the blues which means I cant stop looking at it. One of the reasons I wrote the previous article was to try to find other prints / paintings that might be by the same artist.

Well finally on ebay I have found and bought an original oil painting by J Wilson Hepburn.

It is a huge 56 inch by 23 inch painting (including the frame) called "Channel Bound". It is as atmospheric and spellbinding as the bishops rock print I also own. Now all I have to do is find a suitable house and room to display it in.

It is still in its original frame and has a note from J Wilson Hepburn himself which states:

"This picture should be varnished approx. six months after acquisition, this should be undertaken professionally as it is important that the right materials are employed."

The label also has the J Wilson Hepburn's name and address in Fowey.

Another useful point is that the label has been signed by the person that did the varnishing as completed on 26/07/71 which nicely puts the picture as being painted in late 1970 or very early 1971.

All in all some very useful information to add to the J Wilson Hepburn factfile.

Humanistic design - Part 2

In a previous article I wrote about how we associate different sounds with different objects and even when those sounds are no longer made due to developments in technology we still associate the sound with a quality product. Thus product designers add these sounds back in artificially so that we continue to make the quality connection.

Partly this is due to the human failing of not feeling comfortable with change. The absence of something that has always been there makes us feel slightly uncomfortable even though we may not fully make the connection between what is missing and the feeling. A good example of this is yesterday when I was driving home the car sounded different, the engine noise was different, I started wondering whether there was anything wrong with the engine, was it as responsive as normal, I started to feel uncomfortable.

The answer to this ,which dawned on me eventually, was that I had forgotten to turn the radio on. So I turned it on and everything returned to normal.

Now imagine a day when I get into my first electric car, I turn the engine on and apart from a click, there is no noise, I will feel slightly uncomfortable. I might not even buy the car if I was looking for a new one. This for designers is the ultimate nightmare.

So they are looking at making electric cars sound like traditional cars with engine noises. For two reasons, one is that the driver wont be put off buying them and secondly that a pedestrian can hear the car coming. When you can choose the engine noise or download the latest engine noise from the internet things might feel a bit weird.

For sports car models they are even thinking about creating a throaty engine roar, as after all, everyone knows the best sports cars have the throaty roars.

How engineers create artificial sounds to fool us (BBC)

Anyway I digress, the whole point of this article was to post an interesting follow up to my original article. The BBC have posted up a similar article with a few extra quotes and examples.

The car door example is one I found very interesting as Professor Cox is right, car doors should have a solid clunk to them. There have even been advertising campaigns based around the sound of the closing car door clunk.

I also love the fact that Harley Davidson are quoted as saying they won in the court of public opinion. In other words technically they didn't win according to the law.  Anybody can win a popularity context without being great at what they do, or right, or talented just check out the numerous winners of various reality talent competitions.