Alexa: Coming Soon with Samuel L. Jackson's Voice

Soon there is going to be the option for Alexa to have Samuel L. Jackson's voice.

The possibilities are glorious.

However, it may still not be as cool as Samuel J. Jackson as the voice of God when reading from the bible.

A 1999 Death Knell for Examination "Blue Books"

This article from 1999 is "awesome" in historical context.

First, it's interesting to read about the origin of blue books. Here is part of it:

Michele V. Cloonan has a theory. As chairwoman of UCLA's Department of Library and Information Science, she believes they evolved from the cheaply produced, paper-covered school books, almanacs and novels known as the bibliotheque bleue, or blue library, in 18th century France.

Before the invention of chlorine bleach in 1774 revolutionized paper production, white books had to be made from white rags. Blue books came from blue rags, often from the old clothes of sailors. Blue paper was the cheap stuff, used for the covers of throwaway books.

And, earlier in the article, we have this excerpt: "Well, those exam booklets, after torturing college students with writer's cramp for almost 150 years, may finally be on the way out.

They're being replaced, of course, by the floppy disk." (LOL!)

And another beauty: "Equipped with the same level of encryption security used by the Federal Reserve Bank, the software makes cheating impossible." (LOL!)

And, of course, the blue book also ought to have a snake on it...

(Tip of the cap to @mathematicsprof.)

New Technology: Playable Records Made from Oreo Cookies

I know this sounds nuts, but I'm serious! And I from a physics perspective, this seems eminently doable.

I know of a great song that would be perfect to turn this into a Caltech-themed prank...

Given these developments, we clearly need a DJ Cookie Monster to take proper advantage of this new technology.

Mobile Phone = Cursed Pet Rock?

I agree with this tweet.

This description of a cursed magic rock from an ancient (1981) issue of DRAGON magazine is basically just a cell phone. pic.twitter.com/EmyrWqcpNb

— Robert McNees (@mcnees) May 29, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sean Carroll.

Blessing Computers with Holy Water

On Facebook, Jean Bellissard shared the following rather amusing article. Besides laughing, an immediate thing to do was to do a Google search and see if this was fake. That led me to this article, which notes among other things that a picture being circulated widely now is from 2013. However, the following quote also appears in the article:

"Apparently, it’s a common practice in Russia for Orthodox priests to bless server rooms and other technology equipment. So, it won’t be wrong to assume that priests might be really called in upcoming days to bless the computers once again. I just hope that priests would be careful enough to not get the water inside the PCs; I’m sure that computer suppliers won’t be enthusiastic to replace damage due to water."

I am amused.

Also, our printers could use some holy water.

An Alternative Explanation

You never know.

Spectacular and Prescient Cartoon from 1906

The cartoon in this article is both spectacular and prescient.

(Tip of the cap to University of Oxford.)

Tweeting from Freezers

Yes, really.

I quickly figured out how to tweet from the MBI freezer (it has a Twitter account, for some reason), but I couldn't figure out how to successfully get it to dispense ice (except for a lone 'cube'). ‪#‎technologyfail‬

But at least my creative juices are now flowing for some pranks (which may well make the whole thing worth it in the end). Now I just need the password.

RIP UGCS (1989–2016)

Well, from the e-mail today (forwarded to my current account from a chain that started with my UGCS account), it looks like (barring a miracle) Caltech's UGCS cluster is going to bite the dust in a few months. As Blake Jones wrote, "Alas, poor envy! I knew it well." To quote Steve Ginzburg, it's the "End of an era". Indeed it is.

UGCS has served the Caltech undergraduate and alumni communities for 26 years, but technology has moved on. Forwarding will still occur, but I assume that in a few months my "awesome" undergraduate website (from the days of "Oh, cool! I can put up a public page on this thing called the Web!") will go away. (Maybe it will be visible on an internet archive.)

The Internet of Stuff

In honor of George Carlin, the Internet of Things really ought be called the "Internet of Shit" (or possibly the "Internet of Stuff").

Welcome to the 19th Century

Our admin staff are not allowed to e-mail me a PDF file for me to assess a senior project ("dissertation") because University of Oxford doesn't considered that to be secure. This gives the option of either waiting for my return or snail-mailing me the dissertation. My evaluation is due not long after I return, and I am not going to deal with this during the first week of term when I am severely jetlagged, exhausted, stressed, and almost certainly in an awful mood. That simply doesn't help anybody and is physically extremely taxing for me. (The physical difficulty I have with traveling comes into play.)

So, given my restricted luggage space on my return, the agreed solution was to snail-mail me a USB stick with the PDF file (which I think only takes up something like a couple of megs) so that it could be sent to me in a 'secure' way. (Don't ask.) Nothing arrived for 2 weeks, so I queried our staff and was informed that "We had to order some USB sticks through the department and they've still not arrived." I suppose that is the only way to obtain such advanced technology? Thus, it looks like I will get the extra time to do the marking upon my return when the hard copies can be passed to me 'securely'. I can't wait to see what happens when the Oxford proctors discover Dropbox.

And in other news, Oxford academics are also expected to keep all of their savings in cash under their beds, because that is the only secure way to do it. (Thanks to Alain Goriely for this comparison. He's exactly right.)

As Craig Montuori suggested, we should have had the USB stick delivered to me via carrier pigeon. That's the traditional way of copying electronic files, after all.

Man Versus Machine: Who will lose on Jeopardy (baby)?

Oh, I am really looking forward to this: Just like the famous chess match between Man and Machine from many years ago, there is going to be a computer contestant on Jeopardy this week. The two humans are the most successful contestants in the show's history. The Jeopardy-playing computer, named Watson, was decided at IBM. The game show also discusses Watson on its web page.

I haven't actually read the two web pages yet --- I'm going to dinner soon and I'm trying to write this quickly --- but this sounds sweet!

(Tip of the cap to Tim Chartier.)

Update (2/17/11): The machine won.

Quote of the Day: Some Perspective on Technology

Today I have been reading a bit about Paul Otlet, who died in 1944. Check out this quote of his:

Cinema, phonograph, radio, television -- these instruments considered to be substitutes for the book have become in fact the new book, the most powerful of means for the diffusion of human thought. By radio not only will one be everywhere able to hear, one will everywhere be able to speak. By means of television not only will one be able to see what is happening everywhere, but everyone will be able to view what he would like to see from his own vantage point. From his armchair, everyone will hear, see, participate, will even be able to applaud, give ovations, sing in the chorus, add his cries of participation to those of all the others.

Now that's a visionary.

D & D using Microsoft Surface Table

This article about playing Dungeons and Dragons using Microsoft Surface Table reads like an advertisement, but it still looks interesting. I'm definitely intrigued.

iPhone App: The 2nd Guesser

The 2nd Guesser iPhone app allows one to play along with the situation in a baseball game. Simple but cool.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

MIT Technology Review's Young Investigators (TR35) for 2009

MIT Technology Review has released its list of 35 investigators under 35 for 2009. Among the list is a very familiar name: Ellis Meng, a Lloydie from the class of 1997. Congrats!

Another familiar name is a Santa Fe Institute postdoc (Nathan Eagle), who I have either met or seen speak. (I don't remember whether I talked to him.) He's one of the people doing interesting things with mobile phone data.

Quote of the Day: Tweeting During Life's Rituals

Today's quote comes from this CNN article about using twitter during childbirth.

The quote comes from psychologist Renana Brooks: "That's like Twittering on your wedding night. You can blog about it afterward."

I don't think she intended her comment to be funny, but I find it highly amusing.

Internet Traffic and Michael Jackson

When I wrote my blog entry yesterday, I found myself unable to access Michael Jackson's wikipedia entry. Here is an interesting CNN.com article on internet traffic that resulted from first rumors and then reports of Jackson's death. Part of me is still weirded out by the whole thing---it's hard to think of him as gone---though the more analytical part of me is seeing yesterday and today as something that reflects the modern era more than most days.

As interesting as the article is, it's also somewhat self-serving with respect to what it says about modern versus traditional news sources: "The need of the professional media to be first with the news -- many did for a short time report the Goldblum rumor as fact -- adds further veracity. And, of course, the whole process is speeded up by the Web." Yeah, and all bloggers live with their mothers and write their material from their room in the basement.

Update: Mariano Beguerisse Díaz sent me the following article about google searches related to Jackson's death. As he reminds me, from a technical standpoint, such dynamics result from what is known as an "exogenous shock" (as opposed to endogenous dynamics that would refer, e.g., to normal search traffic patterns).

Three Fascinating Articles

I just read three fascinating articles on CNN.com.

The first one discusses tweeting directly using one's brain to form the letters.

The second discusses differences between men and women with respect to sexual orientation being continuous versus discrete. (There are other things in the article too, but this is what I found most interesting.) Apparently, a bunch of studies are suggesting that it seems to be much more of a continuum in women than in men (and also perhaps that it is more common for a woman to experience a change in location over time).

The third discusses the new Star Trek film. (If you haven't gotten the allusion yet, let's just say that this article is fascinating in a somewhat different manner than the other two.)