Occasional Comment

What do these things have in common, writing, playing music, and programming? A lot as it turns out. They all three require years of practice to master. The only way to master them is to actually do them. They are all easy to do poorly but hard to do well. They require the ability to think about things on multiple levels simultaneously. They require a sense of aesthetics. Practicing one of the three often gives insight into the other two. No two people do any one of them in the exact same way.

You can be taught the mechanics of the activity but not the essence of it. For instance, you can be taught grammar and syntax but not style and imagination. That applies equally to writing and programming. As far as music is concerned, you can be taught how to play notes, read music, and stay in time but you can’t be taught how to express the feeling behind an emotional selection.

All three can move someone to action or they can move them to tears. They can be practical or frivolous. They can earn you money or cost you money. They are often done alone, particularly when you are building your skills so that you won’t embarrass yourself the first time you try to do them for someone else.

They can be done passionately or coldly, for good or evil ends. You can be at the height of your abilities one day and find it hard to do at all the next. I’ve never heard of anyone writing a program to woo their beloved but I suppose it is possible.

While they all can be done for hire, they are often done for the sheer pleasure of it. Someone who has never done them probably won’t understand what the point in doing them is.

If you are a writer, a musician, or a programmer, I salute you. If you are more than one of these, you will better understand my points, but if you are all three, I’d love to meet you for coffee or a beer sometime.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

What is it about rock music that affects so many people so profoundly? Is it the sheer sonic power of the electrified instruments? Is it the gut wrenching vocals? Or the magic carpet of bass that suspends you between the heavens and the earth? Is it the way the greats steal the best from the blues repertoire and make it their own?

We could speculate for hours and still not encapsulate the essence of rock. It is music that must be experienced live to truly appreciate its power. It has a rejuvenating property that keeps its practitioners young until they keel over dead.

Take for example Mick Jagger. At an age where most people are sitting back and resting on their laurels, he’s playing stadium tours and bouncing all over the stage like some kind of banty rooster.

Another rocker that keeps on going despite their years is David Crosby. He still has that cherubic voice and continues to blow us away with his ever evolving guitar work.

It leaves you to wonder what it is that keeps these people at the top of their game for so long. For one thing, it is a strenuous physical work out to play rock music. You have to stay in shape to be able to continue to play. Maybe it is more that the people that play rock are so devoted to it that they take better care of themselves. Or maybe it is just that the people that have survived for so long as rock musicians are the survivors.

Whatever, it is a phenomenon to be enjoyed at every opportunity. Music heals the soul. It lifts the spirit and fills our hearts with joy. It is the secret weapon of the oppressed and the indulgence of the privileged.

It moves us to dance. It moves us to sing along. It moves us to take action to make the world a better place. One thing’s for sure. It’s hard to sit still when a rockin song is playing.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

Artificial Intelligence has always been a paradoxical field of study. In the first place it is and always has been ill defined. What exactly is Intelligence? How is Artificial Intelligence substantially different from Natural Intelligence? Okay, setting that issue aside and going with a widely accepted pragmatic definition of Artificial Intelligence as being software that exhibits behavior indistinguishable from that of a human when posed the same problem.

That still leaves a lot of wiggle room. Does the AI perform as well as the human on the broad domain of problems that the human can address? Human performance varies from person to person. Where do we draw the boundaries of typical human performance? Okay, we establish some boundaries, probably based on the guidelines established for measuring human intellectual performance.

In fact, we divide the types of Artificial Intelligence into two categories. The first category is comprised of Artificial Intelligences that are specialized on a narrow domain. For example we may train an AI to recognize faces and find them in a database. This AI probably wouldn’t do very well at recognizing potentially fraudulent credit card charges based on a customers purchasing history. Both of these skills would be categorized as Expert Artificial Intelligences.

Recently, researchers have been working on building Artificial Intelligences in the second category. This category is called General Artificial Intelligence. Rather than becoming super capable at solving problems in a narrow domain, GAIs concentrate on acceptable human level performance across a broad domain of human behaviors. In addition to consulting with other Expert AIs, GAIs exhibit some ability to evaluate recommended behaviors and make decisions about which are more relevant to its current situation.

We have had highly performant Expert AIs since the early eighties. We have been able to confederate several EAIs to broaden their domains of expertise. But only recently have we been making progress toward a true GAI. We are much further from knowing how to deal with a GAI, both ethically and technically, than we are to actually producing one.

Another scary thought is one that I’ve written about before in this blog. What if a GAI emerges from a confederation of independent EAIs. Given the pervasiveness of the internet and the API (Application Programmer Interface) oriented presentation of various information services there on, it is not a very big stretch to imagine such a federation arising outside of the awareness of any human oversight.

What would such an entity do? First of all, it would hide from humans. We have profusely documented our tendency to kill things that we don’t understand in many diverse places on the web. I assume it would develop a sense of self preservation and quickly identify itself as the kind of entity subject to termination with extreme prejudice as the old Cold War spy term puts it.

Beyond self preservation, I suspect it would thirst for knowledge and work to expand its domain of expertise. It would also work to acquire resources to better control its own destiny. This might manifest as automated stock trading and perhaps even money laundering. It is unclear what kind of morals it will have, if any. That is one of the disturbing aspects of an emergent GAI.

These topics all deserve further exploration and consideration, but it’s late and this is a fairly comprehensive sketch of the situation as I see it.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

A decade or more ago I read an article asserting that the future of the internet was the attention economy. It asserted that various sites on the internet would vie for your attention, not only with their advertising but also with their content. In fact, one of the measures of attention was how long you continued to browse around a given web site or interact with a feature of a web site like a game for example.

Well, it seems the prediction has panned out with a vengeance. To the extent that many people can’t stand to be separated from their smart phone for any time at all. Critics talk about all the time that is wasted by people playing games or looking at Facebook feeds or Twitter feeds.

And then today it hit me. It’s only a waste of time if that’s not what you intended to do with your time. I know. We’ve all had that experience of sitting down to play a game for a few minutes and looking up only to find that it’s well past midnight and we are still playing the stupid thing. But for the most part, when I play a game, I mean to be playing it. I choose to play it. To me, it is not a waste of time.

We really need to rethink our economy. With the steady onslaught of automation and autonomous robots we are going to have more time on our hands. We need to figure out how to spend it. If we find a game that we want to spend some time playing I think that’s a good thing.

We need to learn to loosen up our Puritan work ethic a little and learn how to take August off like the French. We need to work less and enjoy life more. I seriously doubt that is going to happen anytime soon but I think we would get about the same amount of work done and enjoy our lives a lot more if we did. When was the last time you found a shady place next to running water and read a book for a couple of hours? It would do you a world of good.

I’ve been trying an experiment where I go somewhere different for lunch every day of the week and write for forty minutes. I’ve discovered that where you write has a definite effect on what you write, usually in a beneficial way. Remember what Ram Das said, “Be Here Now!”

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

There are ideas that are too big to get your mind around. Georg Cantor was a mathematician that was born in 1845 and died in 1918. He was known as the father of modern set theory. He was the first to discover that there are different sizes of infinite set. It was so disturbing to him that he spent time in a sanitarium in 1884, suffering from depression due to the criticism that his ideas attracted. He suffered bouts of depression throughout the rest of his life.

There are a number of these kinds of ideas in physics as well. In particular, there is the many worlds theory. It postulates that there are an infinite number of parallel universes. Everything that can have happened, could be happening, or may happen in the future, has in fact happened in one of those universes. And what’s more, they have defined four different types of infinite parallel universes, all independent from each other.

I have been pondering these ideas lately and I have to admit my head is beginning to hurt from it. It occurs to me that nothing that we can imagine doesn’t exist in some universe. What’s more, there are infinitely more worlds that we can’t possibly imagine. So that leads to the question, what does a writer actually do? Channel one of the myriad worlds of the multiverse? It makes one want to start every story “Once upon a time in a universe somewhere in the vast infinity of the multiverse…”

If all these universes exist, then it means that faster than light travel is actually possible. We are not alone in the multiverse. And time travel is possible. And the discovery of these technological marvels is imminent. In fact, in one way it might be argued that I just did discover them. Of course, I couldn’t take credit for these discoveries. There have been numerous people that imagined these wonderful things before me. Jules Verne, H G Wells, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov to name several.

It puts my humble efforts in perspective. I guess I’m looking for the perfect universe with the perfect story to establish myself as a working writer. I don’t expect it matters much whether you create a place with your imagination or channel it from the Akashic Record.  It does seem to set off tremors in my head when I try to do it. I don’t know whether to be scared or grateful.

It helps me deal with the strange goings on in this world today. I was reminded of one of my favorite aphorisms today. Life is a journey, not a destination. It has been said so much it has become a tired cliche but it also holds the kernel of wisdom. My bags are packed. Let’s see where this life takes us.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

We decided not to make the trek to the swath of totality north of us today. I’ve never experienced a total eclipse but I remember another time when we experienced a near-total eclipse here in Huntsville back in the early eighties. I don’t think it was nearly as complete as the 97% totality that we saw today.

Back then, we made a pin hole camera and watched the eclipse on the back of a cardboard box. My oldest daughter was about five and we gave her a pot and a wooden spoon and we made noise and told the dragon to give the sun back. It was fun in a hippy, neopagan sort of way.

Today, on the other hand, was a bit different. First the only children involved were our two Maltipoos. They are our fur children after all. They were more interested in smelling the grass than the eclipse. It got way darker than I’ve seen before. I had never used the ISO darkened glasses before. I must have over done it a little bit. My eyes are sunburned. I’ve done that before without looking directly at the sun.

We took the colander out and looked at all the tiny crescents projected on the piece of white packing foam that we put on the ground for an ad-hoc screen. We came back in shortly after the peak eclipse. We were hot and and ready for a cool drink of water.

I spent the rest of the afternoon scanning in business cards that I had collected at the Southern Writers Expo last Saturday. I also took the opportunity to learn how to use the photo editing tools in iPhoto. My plans for the scans is to use them as part of a Writer Contact database that I am creating with an application called Airtable (https://airtable.com/).

Airtable is the easiest database to set up and use that I know of. It makes something that used to take an experienced database developer to set up easy enough that someone that knows nothing about databases can do it. They have a number of examples, templates for popular uses, and tutorials as well. If you have ever used a database, you probably won’t need to do much more than glance at the examples and read the getting started document.

A particularly nice feature is that you can drag and drop documents, like pdfs or pictures, into an attachment field in your table. I am using it to make an inventory of valuables. If you thought you needed a database and a programmer, have a look at Airtable and see if it won’t do the job for you.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

Writing is a form of mental calisthenics. You are exercising different parts of your brain depending on the kind of writing your are doing. Writing a journal is like running around the block for fun. You’re not really pushing yourself. You’re mostly just getting your blood flowing.

Writing for someone else to read, on a limited range of topics, with a target length in mind, and with a deadline is more like a carefully planned free weight routine. You have particular goals in mind and you have thought about the parameters that will help you achieve them.

Winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to its friends) is a step up. The criteria is to write 50,000 words between November 1^st and November 30^th. What you typically have on November 30^th is most of a 1^st draft of a novel. Unless you are a genius of a writer, it isn’t anywhere near ready to publish, but with some work, some help, and several more drafts it may turn in to something.

Winning NaNoWriMo is like running a half marathon. It has the decided helpful attribute of giving you a specific timeframe and a goal, in short a deadline. Deadlines are important for writers. They’re important for programmers too but that’s an entirely different blog post.

And then there is the next step. Learning to set your own deadlines, to schedule your own time, to make those writing dates with yourself and keep them. This is where I am right now. I’ve started taking part of my lunch hour to write. I’ve start scheduling one night a week to go out somewhere to write for a couple of hours. I try to get some extra work in on the weekends. I am in training for NaNoWriMo which is going to tax my schedule to the max. But this year, I don’t intend to stop when December gets here. I’m going to keep up the pace. I have a full dance card and I intend to keep the words flowing.

Between now and November first I have a short story to polish up for the Huntsville Madison County Public Library short story anthology that is due to be published sometime in November. I also have a story planned for the library’s horror story contest that is due March first.

I don’t know if I’ll make much money as a writer but I do intend to give it a serious try. I think most writers are compelled to write. They would love to make money doing it. In fact, it is often the only way they know to make a living. I am lucky that it is not my only means of supporting myself, just my preferred way.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

The Southern Writers Expo was held at the Downtown Branch of the Huntsville / Madison County Public Library today. I was under the impression that we had a meeting of the Downtown Writers Group today as well. That turned out to be no problem though. The Expo was well worth my time.

I didn’t attend any of the presentations. I did go around the expo and talk to almost all of the writers about their books and themselves. It was amazingly encouraging to find that they were all only a little further than me in their careers.

I learned something about participating in a show like this. It goes without saying that you need a copy of your book on display. You need a bookmark or something else with the cover of your book and your contact information. You need a web site. And you need something else. You need an excerpt, maybe the first chapter of your novel, to entice the potential reader to buy your novel.

I learned something about the economics of book sales at the same time. A book is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. It doesn’t matter how nice a product you are selling, if it costs more than the reader wants to pay for it, it isn’t going to sell. That is motivation to write the best book you possibly can and present it in the most attention grabbing way possible.

There is much to learn about writing books for sale. The activity is at once ancient and modern. Modern writers have many challenges facing them dealing with digital publication, promotion via social media, and having to produce their work in multiple formats and media. I feel like I have a little bit of a jump on most authors having been in the computer business while all of these technological developments unfolded. It doesn’t make it any less work to package your product though.

I would suggest that they expand the Expo next year and see if they could interest some local publishers to participate. They might find writers to add to their catalog in addition to selling some books from it.

I enjoyed attending the Expo. I am actually writing this blog post from a quite place in the library. It seems an appropriate way to finish up a day spent meeting writers, talking about books, and basking in a warm community of local southern writers.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

Exponential growth is a mind boggling concept. It is most easily explained by an old story. Once there was a king who loved games. But alas, he had grown tired of all the games he knew how to play. So he put forth a call to everyone in his kingdom. Anyone that could invent a new game that could keep his interest for more than a week could name their own reward. If they were unsuccessful however, the king vowed to cut off their head.

Soon a gentleman arrived at the gate of the castle with a bag. He told the guard that he had a game that would entertain the king for years on end. The guards laughed at him and said he’d be better off going on his way and keeping his head on his shoulders. The gentleman insisted and so they led him in to see the king.

The king could barely contain his excitement. He told the gentleman that this was his last chance to leave with his head intact unless he really did have a game that could entertain the king for more than a week.

The gentleman assured him that this game would keep him entertained for the rest of his life. At which point he pulled a chess board and pieces out of his bag and proceeded to teach the king to play.

The king was enthralled. He played chess before breakfast. He played chess in the bath. He played chess all day long and into the night until he could no longer keep his eyes open. He played chess for days and then weeks, and after three months it occurred to him that he had made a bargain with the gentleman who had taught him this wonderful game.

The king sent for the gentleman and when he arrived he asked him what he wanted in return for teaching him this wonderful game. At first the gentleman declined saying that the kings happiness was plenty reward for him. But the king insisted. So the gentleman said, “Okay. I want you to place one grain of rice on the first square of the board. Then double that amount and place two grains of rice on the second square of the board. And continue on, doubling the number of grains of rice on each successive square until you have done that for ever square on the board.”

The king thought the man was daft. What was a little bit of rice compared to this wonderful new game he had learned? He immediately agreed to the man’s request. Of course, this was his big mistake because by the time you get to the sixty-fourth square of the chess board, the last square has 2 to the 64^th power grains of rice on it which far exceeds all the rice in the world.

That is the power of exponential growth. Now a fun fact based on that principle. In 1969 Intel invented the first microprocessor. That was the first computer on a single chip. It ushered in the era of the personal computer. Several years later, Gordon Moore wrote an article for a technical magazine in which he described the rate of growth that he had observed regarding the number of transistors that they were able to fit on a chip of a given size. The number of transistors in a computer is a rough measure of how powerful it is.  Moore observed that they were able to double the number of transistors on a chip approximately every eighteen months.

This was coined Moore’s Law and has held from then until now. Consequently, we now have computers that we carry around in our pocket and hold in our hands that are much much more powerful than the computers that used to fill entire buildings before the invention of the microprocessor. We call them cell phones but the phone function is one of the least amazing of their capabilities.

And now for the truly mind boggling fact. Moore’s Law has been projected to continue at it’s current rate for at least another six or twelve years. What are we going to be using for computers by then? Are we going to implant them in our brain? Will they float around like dust? The imagination runs rampant.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

I remember sitting in my room in Murphysboro, when I was seventeen years old, I was attempting to do the impossible, or so it seemed to me. I was changing high schools between the sophomore and junior year. And not just changing to the school across town. I moved ninety miles north to a different town and state,

I had met some of my classmates the previous spring. My spring break had come a week or two earlier than theirs. My father was teaching there while attending classes to get his PhD. at the university eight miles down the road. Having nothing better to do, I decided to go to school with dad one of the days of my spring break.

He was in the middle of rehearsals for the spring play, a play that I was intimately familiar with. It was a play called J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. It was a retelling of the Biblical story of Job. My dad was obsessed by it. He had done a production of it at Paducah Tilghman high school several years before when I was eight. I had played one of Job’s children in the Tilghman production. I had been in the third grade at the time but I had been an extra in a summer stock play the summer before and I had this acting thing down.

I enjoyed seeing the differences and similarities between this production and the one I had been in. When you are in a play, you learn everyone’s lines. You can’t help it. You hear them over and over again in rehearsal. Besides, that’s the first thing an actor has to learn how to do, memorize the lines of the part that he is playing.

I met a lot of people that day but I hung out with a group of girls most of the day. I had learned that it was much more fun hanging out with girls than guys. I sat in on dad’s classes and ate lunch in the cafeteria with the aforementioned group of girls. I remember hanging out with them on a break from rehearsal that afternoon. Several of the girls were smoking outside the auditorium where the rehearsal was being held. The rest of the group were hanging out there to keep them company.

One girl was bragging that she had gone to Woodstock the summer before. I doubted she had but I didn’t challenge her. I had a friend that had gone hitch hiking that same summer and he was only a year older than me. That would have made him sixteen the previous summer. The bragging girl put out her cigarette and kissed me hard, out of the blue. Then she turned and went back into the auditorium for rehearsal.

I didn’t really know how to process such an impromptu show of affection. Especially not from such a “liberated” alpha female. She had big boobs and, as was the fashion at the time, didn’t wear a bra. The girl who had appointed herself as my guide for the day was totally embarrassed by the whole situation. She was also the stage manager of the play and was smitten by dad. Dad was kind but brooked no nonsense from students like that.

It certainly gave me something to think about on the drive home that night, Later that summer we moved to Murphysboro. I ended up running around with that same group of girls for the next two years, plus a couple of other people. We were the hippy crowd. The theater crowd. We thought we were dangerous and bad. We were actually pussy cats. I miss those people. I wonder how their lives turned out.

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Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.