Day: May 17, 2004

  • Clone Wars Watchlist

    Nothing bits biting into the first slice off of a block of extra sharp Wisconsin cheddar cheese. None of this white cheddar nonsense here in the Midwest.

    I managed to sleep through most of the flight to Minneapolis. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep on an airplane; I was just exhausted enough to overcome my discomfort. I ended up in the same row as one of my future hallmates on ν 3rd. We talked briefly about our plans for the hall, before I zonked out.

    I got home, took a much needed shower, and got ready to go out for a belated Mother’s Day dinner with my family. My parents did have some salve for my leg burns, but they only thing that they had in the medicine cabinet was intended for the treatment of diaper rash :o\. It did the trick, at any rate.

    We went to dinner, I fell asleep on the futon in front of the TV, was woken up by one of my friends calling to ask if I wanted to go out drinking (no because of need for sleep and church in the morning), and then was in bed by 9 pm.

    I woke up at around 8, which is very early for me on a Sunday, but it gave me time to read the paper and talk to my parental units. My dad was already on one of his morning canasta games.

    Church was nice; I’m prepping a post to the theology list about Pastor Tom’s sermon. I love how he insists on saying “Christ is risen” about 5 times over the course of the service, and hearing the whole congregation respond with “He is risen indeed!”. Very joyful :o).

    Spent the afternoon lazing about; started a Scrabble game with my mom, which had to be cut short for their bible study meeting. Dinner was good: basted salmon. No salmon with green sauce from White Dog, but still good. During dinner, we entertained the guests with our trivia obsession. Good times.

    Last night, we watched a really creepy L&O: Criminal Intent, plus a hilariously political Simpson’s episode. Just a wee bit of commentary about our current situation in the US. Favorite moment: Elmo in the jail for traitors says “Elmo went to wrong fundraising dinner!”. Hee.

    sent me a link to J.K. Rowling’s personal website, which is the best use of Flash I have ever seen. I still haven’t found all of the secrets yet, but I’m looking. Note that some of the content on the site, specifically about the ghost of Gryffindor House, is coincidentally related to a terrible current event in Iraq. If reading an unrelated but eerily similar story might bother you, don’t explore the site. I didn’t even make the connection until someone pointed it out to me.

    My late-night activities consisted of mucking around on my computer. I also watched Minority Report again, which is still enjoyable. I know the twists at the end, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember a lot of the details. Some of the special features on the DVD are interesting. Also, it appears that my sister took a lot of my dad’s Disney DVD collection to school with her. Not cool. I wanna watch ’em too! She probably just hasn’t unpacked yet.

    I made a whole box of Mac & Cheese for my late-night snack. Nothing like gorging on carbohydrates… ;o) I finally hit the hay at almost 5 am. I love vacation :o).

    Today, I haven’t done anything yet. I’ve transitioned directly from breakfast to lunch. I read a bunch of articles about gay marriage in Massachusetts. I’m now listening to inspiring Christian music to try to forget the hateful things quoted by a lot of Christians in a lot of the articles I read. Whatever happened to love thy neighbor??

    and I are chatting about our Adv. Computer Perception projects, which are due on Thursday. I’m about to try and fix my ogg vorbis music reading code, and then I’ll be helping Fritz track down some weird intermittent memory problems in our code. After that, it’ll be back to our first project, trying to take our generated histograms and going back to the image space and indicating features.

    Since it’s still not Pentecost yet,
    Christ is risen!

  • Sunspot

    A small Yorkshire Terrier lies in a pet bed on a green upholstered chair in a sunny living room.

    I wish I could nap like Pike naps.

  • The Muppets Meet Murderbot

    For the last year and a half or so Andrle and I have been having a ton of fun as part of an online book club put together by my friend Tanya. Unlike most book clubs where you all read the same thing, we all just share things we love that we’ve been reading.

    One recommendation that kept coming up was The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and I’m glad we finally ran with it and started reading them. We’ve been bingeing the last few weeks and they’re really, really great. Highly recommend (even though I’m only on Book 4.)

    Unsurprisingly another thing I’ve been reading about and thinking about a lot is the advent of Large Language Models, particularly as manifested by ChatGPT. My past work life as an NLP practitioner has me a mix of curious, envious, and highly suspicious of what these are and how they’re being used. In the short term I don’t mind using them as a toy that I can play with for the purpose of a joke, which is what this post is about.

    A recurring topic in this book club is how we might have the Muppets interpret a particular book, or how we might recast a movie with Muppets (but keep one human actor). This provides a lot of fun discussions, especially since I grew up regularly watching the classic Muppet movies on VHS recorded off of TV, and I really like musicals.

    That all brings me to some prompt iterating that I did to get ChatGPT to write the painfully cliché finale to a Muppet musical featuring Murderbot. (Apologies to both Henson and Wells.)

    Verse 1 (Murderbot):
    I used to be a killing machine,
    A rogue cyborg, feared and mean,
    But then I met the Muppets and Kermit,
    And learned what friendship truly meant.

    Verse 2 (Kermit):
    I'm just a simple frog, it's true,
    But I believe in friendship too,
    And when I met Murderbot, I knew,
    Together we could do something new.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Verse 3 (Murderbot):
    I never wanted to be a tool,
    But that's all humans see in me, it's cruel,
    I used to dream of breaking free,
    From their endless schemes and greed.

    Verse 4 (Kermit):
    It's true, I'm always happy-go-lucky,
    But I've been through some tough times that were quite yucky,
    But now with Murderbot and the gang,
    I know our friendship will never hang.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Bridge:
    The past is gone, the future bright,
    With friends like these, we'll win the fight,
    Our love and trust will guide us through,
    Together we'll see this journey through.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Outro:
    So let's raise our voices high,
    And let the world hear our battle cry,
    With Muppets and Murderbot side by side,
    We'll change the world and turn the tide.
    OpenAI. (2023, Mar. 16) [Iterative prompt conversation starting with “This Muppet movie is about a rogue cyborg traveling to different space stations and learning the power of friendship from the Muppets” and “I need some lyrics for the big finals. The music is big broadway style number about how the rogue cyborg doesn’t need to kill bad guys anymore because it has friends.” and then encouraging more dialogue between Kermit and Murderbot] https://chat.openai.com/

    Yes, I looked up recommendations on how to properly cite ChatGPT output.

    Overall the result was mildly amusing. I couldn’t get it to capture Murderbot’s signature style, presumably because while information about the novellas are in its model training, not enough text from the novellas are in there.

    I’m still not sure what useful things I could do with this kind of tool, but in the meantime, I can make it make silly songs.

  • Fox Ferocity

    Pike playing with a toy almost as big as he is.

  • Groomed Pike

    Tiny freshly groomed Yorkie sits on a teal couch wearing a monstera bow tie

    I love this little gentleman.

  • The Kale Wanter

    A small black and brown Yorkie stands on a cream rug in front of a brown cupboard begging for the bunch of lacinato kale in hand in the foreground.