Google Scribe. Can you uncover secrets?

September 8, 2010

I've just had a play with Google Scribe, which is, according to themselves:

Google Scribe provides text completion service. Using information from what you have already typed in a document, Google Scribe provides related word or phrase completion suggestions. In addition to saving keystrokes, Google Scribe's suggestions indicate correct or popular phrases to use.

Okay, so I was having a play.  So, I made it rank the suggestions by Google Scribe's rank (by hitting the little G) below the suggestions and I started with the word 'I' and just accepted all the top ranked words it gave me.

And here's what I made:

I have another question for you is to become an editor of the newspaper and then at the end of their lifespan and regenerative capacity of these cells to their cognate receptors on the cell surface and then they will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the invention. 

So, interesting and fun, but don't you think the 'regenerative capacity of cells to their cognate receptors' is starting to sound like a piece of somebody's scientific paper?   I wonder.  Creepy. 

Can I use this thing to discover obscure secrets?

Posted via email from grasuth.com

noise plus filters

January 22, 2010

Just thinking about twitter being all noise.  It is kind of a human noise making machine.  People pour out their noise.

However, if you think about sound synthesis, often you start with a noise generator, and applying some filters, make some interesting, complex and beautiful sounds from noise and filtering.

This makes me want to make a kind of mini-moog twitter filter and feedback things with knobs on it.  Who knows what interesting things might be produced.

Posted via email from grasuth

Playful Highlights

November 3, 2009

playful

Ta to Richard (Biff) Birkin and all at Pixel-Lab who made Playful happen. Highlights for me were:

Alfie Dennen & Paula Le Dieu

Their new project Bus-tops, and will create a london-wide networked canvas of LED displays on the roof’s of bus shelters that anyone can create art and games for. Bus-Tops was the winning entrant in the London arc of the Artists Taking The Lead fund, an Arts Council and London Olympics public art project.

Katy Lindemann

Behaviour change through play. Slides etc here.

Chris O’Shea

Shelter Air Guitar Championship 2008 from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

Who? Chris O’Shea sits somewhere between artist and designer, creating experiences that playfully challenge our perception of spaces and objects.

What? He will talk about creating installations full of charm, joy & wonder, including police lights, chickens, giant hands, air guitar, xray torches, spinning mirrors and music boxes.

Molly Ränge

Molly Ränge

storytelling, pedagogy and creation of learning contexts in a post digital age. http://www.fabel.se

truly-yours-final_2-1024x344

Daniel Soltis

Daniel Soltis

Who dat? Daniel Soltis is an interaction designer at Tinker.it! and a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. His work focuses on physical computing, large-scale interfaces, and playful interactions….urban and pervasive games.

GPS puzzle box made for a wedding present was a highlight.

Two reviews of the day here and here.

Feedback would be – lets walk the talk and make it more fun and interactive next time (eg Kaos Pilots and Sandpit/Hide & Seek), and make sure the non-gamers feel welcome in the first 10 minutes. Also consider getting someone along from Reggio Children if we could be so lucky.

Thank goodness for the Moral Compass folk (eg. Molly, Katy) who helped us work out the big Why? on it all… lots of smarts and loveliness in the room – people that could really make a difference in the world. Still not convinced online life/games are going to help us all to share and be happy. More mention of directing our efforts towards Climate Crisis solutions would also have been welcome.

Who would a keynote Moral Compass person be, with a playful style? Alain de Botton comes to mind…

Copenhagen climate change talks are last chance, says Gordon Brown | Environment | guardian.co.uk

October 19, 2009

Gordon Brown today warned that the world is on the brink of a “catastrophic” future of killer heatwaves, floods and droughts unless governments speed up negotiations on climate change before vital talks in Copenhagen in December.

This applies to the US as much as anyone, he said, adding that “there is no plan B”, and that agreement cannot be deferred beyond the UN-sponsored Copenhagen conference.

Posted via web from grasuth

Information is beautiful, visualizations ‘help’

October 3, 2009

In search of compelling visualizations to explain CO2 use and savings, I’ve come across  Information is Beautiful, a blog collection of ‘qulaity’ visualizations by David McCandless is a source of delight and inspiration for the how-to-explain-this-so-people-will-get-it moments that occur more and more frequently.

See this, which caught my eye. This is information I actually wanted to know. 

Very complex issue, well explained in pictures/metaphor:

 

Dave’s new book is going on the wishlist right now.

 

Posted via web from CO2

Savings from turning off computer/TV accessories

September 29, 2009

The TrickleStar calculator works out your CO2 and money savings when
you install a TrickleSaver (a USB or power sensor) that then switches
off accessories attached to your TV/Home Entertainment setup or your
home or office computer setup.

To use this one, you build a list of devices connected to the TV or
computer, then work out how much they are normally left on or on
standby. Then the calculator will tell you how much you save in a
year, and the payoff period and CO2 savings.

The payoff periods end up pretty small especially if you have a game
console that is left on. Wow. A lot of them use a lot of power.

I really like this calculator, but I would say that. I built this
one for TrickleStar. It is embeddable, sharable, and comes in an
increasing set of languages.

We spent quite a lot of time getting the data together for this
calculator, ending up getting some help from AMEE and the MTP Whatif
data for estimating average device power.

Try it out at http://calculator.tricklestar.com

Posted via email from calculators

In Recovery – Affluenza

June 17, 2009

Troubled?

Read Affluenza.

Watch/listen to Lily… she’s growing up. Maybe we all can.

“I’m a weapon of massive consumption. But it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.”

Spread the antidotes, not the virus.

Alan Watts v South Park – Meaning of Life

February 28, 2009

Love Alan Watts. Interesting that the South Park guys wanted to team up to do this.

And on that note, we’re off on holiday for a week’s food, love and snow in Bardonecchia, Italian Alps.

Many thanks to Bea’s outstanding school Down’s Junior for approving of the extra holiday. No doubt it will be highly educational, in the deepest, funnest (is that a word?) sense of things.

Many thanks also to the 16 Guidelines to Happiness / Essential Education folk for sharing the video. More good clips and resources on their website.

THE most amazing video clip (really!)

January 15, 2009

Many thanks to Jenny Davy for this short piece from David Attenborough and the Australian Lyre Bird – now officially one of the most interesting species in the world. This is no hoax – just ask Dickie bird.

Ironically, this is an Aussie via a Pom via an Aussie to an Aussie in Pommy Land!

As Jen says, in her usual understated way “Fascinating stuff, eh?”

Enjoy. Comment. Do something about it even.

People + Blog + Education = Fish

December 12, 2008

So far so good on our new project with SCIP Mark Walker (South East Regional ICT Champion and the man behind the ever-popular SCIP-list, amongst many other things) and the Coldean Resident’s Association. They approached SCIP wanting to be given a fish and, yep, we offered to teach them how to fish.

The fish they wanted would probably have gotten rigamortis pretty quickly. That is, when people hand over the power to publish, when the ask other people to build them a website, time and cost restraints often mean their websites die. Especially if they haven’t budgeted for a content management system at the back end and training for those that directly need it. And even then, it doesn’t necessarily make life easy for the novice.

If content can’t be added or changed easily, if we don’t learn how to do it ourselves, then our websites can get really stale and we all lose interest.

The cool folk at Coldean have taken our suggestion and run with it beautifully. After only two sessions, they have:

- imagined their very own community webspace into being, as a living, breathing, online gathering…

…where various sectors of their community from young to elderly can be informed, connected, maybe even inspired to get involved online and at meetings, etc. Online via comments, contributions (including logins to upload their own articles), feedback via private email.

- created a test website using Wordpress, and started adding pages, posts, words and images

- started identifying key roles and tasks for building and sustaining (eg. webmaster, editor, contributors)

- thought about how to launch the site and encourage people to engage with it

- begun an understanding of the wider online world and how it is changing and growing

The test site is already No. 1 in Wordpress community for “Coldean”, and no doubt when they launch it will be at the top of the Google ranking, making it easy for people to access (hopefully) up-to-date, interesting, relevant information about what’s happening and what matters in their own area. (Actually it’s already No. 2 for Coldean + Christmas and probably a range of other expressions.)

It’s been a delight to work with everyone and I’m looking forward to seeing where things go next – with Coldean and with SCIP Mark. One thought I am having now is, it would good to get Coldean contributing to their wikipedia entry, which is always a way to build debate and involvement!

Fresh fish for everyone, and a pond to grow them in (with apologies to the Vegans out there).

Now off to meet Mark and see where things are going next… personally I would like to see this service made more widely available to others in this community and beyond! All very affordable in the short and longer term too.

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