Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, Humor, Patagonia, Science Fiction, Society, tech
My phone rang in the grocery store. I set my basket and the six-pack of 1554 down, pulled the phone out of my pocket. Didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Jim Downey.”
“Um, hello. You tried to place an order for some new Nikes this morning?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I figured out why they couldn’t get the order to go through.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, it’s your email address. It’s obscene.”
* * * * * * *
Over the weekend, I tried four times to place an order online for some new walking shoes. I wanted some for my upcoming trip to Patagonia. My current pair of walking shoes are still in decent shape, but I wanted some that could also serve as semi-dressy shoes for the trip. I even created an account with Nike, to simplify ordering. But each time, I always got a glitch at the end of the whole check-out process, after jumping through multiple hoops and entering data time and again.
Finally, in frustration, I called the customer service number. After going through about a dozen levels of automated phone hell, I got to talk with “Megan”. She was quite helpful, but I still had to repeat to her all the information I had entered on four separate occasions. And at the end, she got the same error message that I did.
“Um, let me put you on hold.”
Sure.
Wait.
Wait.
About five minutes pass. “Hi, sorry about that. No one here can figure out why the system won’t process the order. But I’m just going to fill out a paper request with all the information, and send it over to the warehouse. They should be in touch with you later today to confirm shipment.”
“Thanks.”
* * * * * * *
“My email address is obscene?”
“Yeah. The system thinks so, anyway.”
The email address I gave them is one I use for stuff like this: crap@afineline.org It’s also the one I use over at UTI. Cuts down on the amount of spam I get in my personal accounts.
I laughed. “I use that to cut down on junk I get from businesses.”
A laugh at the other end of the phone. “I understand.” Pause. “But, um, do you have a real email address I can use?”
“Oh, that one’s real. I just want people to know what I think of the messages they send me when they use it.”
“Ah. OK. Well, you should get a confirmation email later today that the shoes have shipped.”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks.” I hung up, and made a mental note to pass along word to others not to offend the computers at Nike – they seem to have rather delicate sensibilities.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Comics, Humor, Marketing, Science Fiction, Society, Space, UFO
. . . the Masons, Greys, Studebaker, Coast to Coast, Bigfoot, and Evil Tofu have in common?
From his merchandise page:
Studebaker had contracts to make aircraft engines during the second world war as well as making the weasel and a duce and a half truck. So , Studebaker was already part of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower talked about. When the UFO crashed in Roswell in 1947, Eisenhower signed the treaty with the aliens 1954, who better to use back engineered technology to produce UFOs than a struggling automobile company who had a record of government contracts going back to the Civil War and was already in the “inside”? Besides that, the design of Studes were much more aerodynamic than any other marquee and UFOs should be “slippery” when traveling through the air shouldn’t they? So once again, Studebakers come to the front of the line. A logical progression?
Indeed. I came across this web comic a week or so ago, and shared it with a few friends. But I wanted to wait until I had a chance to get through all the current strips (about 160) before I posted something about it. It’s quite good, very funny and well drawn (no surprise since the artist/author has a solid resume of work as an animator/director). Bugsport is done in a classic style, drawing heavily on adverising motifs and pop culture (there’s all kinds of visual and textual references – more than I am probably catching). You can probably just dive right in with the latest strip, but then you’d be missing all the wonderful stuff that he has already done.
Give it a try. And someone please put up a Wikipedia article about Bastien and/or Bugsport, OK? I mean, seriously, if I have one this guy certainly deserves one.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Fireworks, Humor, Music, N. Am. Welsh Choir, Patagonia, Society, Travel
As you might recall, I’m joining my wife for the North American Welsh Choir tour of Patagonia the second half of next month. Part of that trip will include several days in Beunos Areas. So, seeing this news item this morning caught my attention:
Angry Argentine commuters torch train in rush hour
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Furious rail commuters in Argentina set fire to a train on Thursday in anger over delays during the morning rush hour.
Television images showed black smoke and flames engulfing the train at the station of Merlo, in the western suburbs of the capital, Buenos Aires. At nearby Castelar, passengers hurled stones at the ticket office and blocked the rails.
“We understand that people get angry when the service is delayed or canceled, but they absolutely can’t attack a public service in this way,” Gustavo Gago, a spokesman for rail company TBA, told local television.
Now, I’m a bit of a pyromaniac. Always have been – perhaps it goes with being born of the Fourth of July. But setting fire to a train? Youza. Out of my league.
Maybe they’ll stage such an event for us tourists next month, to welcome the Choir? I’ll have to ask my wife what would be the appropriate song for them to perfom on such an occasion…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Babylon 5, General Musings, Humor, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech
As noted previously, I’m a big fan of the SF television series Babylon 5. One of the things which exists in the reality of the series is the ability to erase the memories and personality of someone, and then install a new template personality. This is called a “mindwipe” or “the death of personality.” It’s an old science fiction idea, and used in some intelligent ways in the series, even if the process isn’t explained fully (or used consistently).
Well, I’m about to mindwipe my old friend, the computer here next to this one. It’s served me faithfully for over seven years, with minimal problems. But old age was starting to take a real toll – I could no longer run current software effectively, and web-standard tech such as modern flash applications caused it a great deal of difficulty. The CD player no longer worked, and the monitor was dark, bloated. One side of the speaker system had quit some time back. My phone has more memory, I think – certainly my MP3 player does.
So, about six weeks ago I got a new computer, one capable of handling all the tasks I could throw at it. It allowed me to start video editing, and was perfectly happy to digest my old files and give them new vigor. The monitor is flat, thin, and quite attractive. It plays movies better, and will allow me to archive material on CD/DVDs once again. The laser mouse is faster and more accurate, and I’ll never have to clean its ball. Both sides of the sound system actually work. There’s more memory than I can possibly ever use . . . well, for at least a couple of years, anyway.
And today I finished migrating over the last of my software and data files. I’d been delaying doing this, taking my time, finding other things I needed to double check. But now the time has come. There is no longer a reason for me to keep my old system around. In a few moments I will wipe its memory, cleaning off what little personal data is on there. And in doing so, I will murder an old friend. A friend who saw me through writing Communion of Dreams, who was there as I created a lyric fantasy, who kept track of all my finances during the hard years of owning an art gallery. A friend who gave me solace through the long hours of being a care provider. A friend who allowed me to keep contact with people around the world, who brought me some measure of infamy, who would happily play games anytime I wanted (even if it wouldn’t always let me win).
So, goodbye, my old friend. I will mindwipe you, then give you away to someone else who needs you, who will gladly give you a home for at least a while longer, who will appreciate your abilities as I no longer can.
Farewell.
Jim Downey
These stupid monkeys! Why can’t they leave well enough alone? Sheesh, every time I come down from a nap, I find that they’re once again playing with space. Moving furniture here, only to move it back there a couple of days later. Boxes – lovely, empty, mysterious boxes, perfect for playing in – all filled up with pointless glasses and dishes, then stacked high in the front room so that I can’t even get to sharpen my claws on the back of that ugly old couch. And every time I go to supervise their work, sitting quietly in the middle of the floor so that I can properly observe what they’re doing, they shoo me away (if I’m lucky – if not, one of the big oafs will attempt to step on my tail or something). Even the idiot, drooling dog has the good sense to hide when they get going.
Sheesh. Well, maybe in all the moving and changing space, they’ll turn up a nice mouse for me to play with . . .
Hillary
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, Humor, MetaFilter, Science, Space, tech
OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I’m the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.
It’s actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here’s the description from the site:
Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets’ paths. The Sun’s pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don’t leave the screen or collide!
I’m sure that they have established some fairly basic approximations for your computer to manipulate, but it still addresses one of the classic problems of physics: how to calculate the orbital dynamics for two or more bodies in motion. Even if you restrict the interactions to one orbital plane, this is a surprisingly difficult problem for more than two bodies, and has been for centuries. From ScienceWorld:
The three-body problem considers three mutually interacting masses
,
, and
. In the restricted three-body problem,
The efforts of many famous mathematicians have been devoted to this difficult problem, including Euler
and Lagrange
And Wikipedia has a very good entry (beyond my math level) about the broader n-body problem:
General considerations: solving the n-body problem
In the physical literature about the n-body problem (n ≥ 3), sometimes reference is made to the impossibility of solving the n-body problem. However one has to be careful here, as this applies to the method of first integrals (compare the theorems by Abel and Galois about the impossibility of solving algebraic equations of degree five or higher by means of formulas only involving roots).
The n-body problem contains 6n variables, since each point particle is represented by three space (displacement) and three velocity components. First integrals (for ordinary differential equations) are functions that remain constant along any given solution of the system, the constant depending on the solution. In other words, integrals provide relations between the variables of the system, so each scalar integral would normally allow the reduction of the system’s dimension by one unit. Of course, this reduction can take place only if the integral is an algebraic function not very complicated with respect to its variables. If the integral is transcendent the reduction cannot be performed.
Well, have fun with it. And be amused about that all that phenomenal computing power at your fingertips making a simple little game. Such is the future.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
I’m not a big fan of the Olympics, but Chris Cope has a good take on things. An American living in Cardiff (Wales, you twit, part of the UK), he has an interesting perspective. And he certainly is right here:
That said, the BBC is certainly giving it its best effort. We are promised wall-to-wall coverage via TV, radio, online and mobile phones. Huge television screens have been erected in a number of city centers across the country. And a terrifying animated kung-fu monkey has been unveiled to promote the event.
In Britain, we are required by law to pay $275 a year for the privilege of watching television. This is where our money goes.
I’m particularly amused by the kung-fu monkey, whose name is … Monkey. A two-minute cartoon of his traveling to the Bird’s Nest with a pig and strange water zombie has been airing with increasing frequency over the past few weeks. It is surreal every time I see it.
Surreal is right. Wow. You’ve gotta see that to believe it.
Jim Downey
(Hat tip to Alix. Cross posted to UTI.)
I had sent a note to a friend that contained something which I thought may have been of interest to his students. He said thanks in return, and I replied (jokingly): “I live to serve.”
His reply:
Man, we got to break you of that. Is there a 12 step program for former caregivers out there? I kid just a little here ...
Actually, it’s an interesting idea . . .
Jim Downey
(Thanks to Steve, and all my other concerned friends.)
Communion Of Dreams 