I spent several hours today organizing a collection of song lyrics and chords that I can use to practice Flat Rabbit songs. I found a font on the web that consists almost entirely of guitar chord diagrams, so I’m putting together a notebook with all of our songs in one place, complete with lyrics, chords and blocking. I also practiced identifying fretboard notes on my handheld computer, using FretTrainer free software for Palm OS. (It’s nice to be able to sit in bed and practice guitar without bothering anyone else!)
Category Archives: Computers
Computer Setup
Today I set up my wife’s computer in the bedroom, which really didn’t involve much creativity except furniture arrangement. It’s not a very feng shui setup, but it works. We can now both be on our computers doing different things at the same time. (Can you tell I’m glad to have my computer back?)
Site Revisions
I noticed yesterday that I forgot to format the Music Reviews and Book Reviews on this site to match the rest of the site, so I spun through those and reformatted them today. I guess that counts as creative; it’s analogous to revising a manuscript, which is part of the creative process of writing.
I enjoy trying to justify whether an activity is creative enough to include in this log. Sometimes that is an act of creativity itself! More interesting to me is the realization of just how much of my life is based in some form of creativity. I’m getting a bigger sense of how we, as ordinary people, have opportunities to be creative in many different ways every day. That’s pretty inspirational, when you think about it.
Lazy Day
I don’t think I did anything creative today, unless you count helping a friend fix her computer over the phone.
The Tomorrow Makers
The Tomorrow Makers
By: Grant Fjermedal
Type: Non-fiction survey with touches of biography
Setting: N/A
Description:
Based on interviews with some of the most notable cognitive science researchers in the country and their students, Fjermedal’s book walks the line between non-fiction and biography. Without going into the messy details, he shows that many people in the world believe in the possibility (probability?) of building robots and computers “smart” enough to hold carbon copies of a human mind and continue its thinking processes after the download.
Comments:
Fjermedal realizes something that not many other survey interviewers do: in an institutional setting, the big names aren’t necessarily the ones who do the most work. Fjermedal not only concentrates on the big fish in the AI pond, such as Marvin Minsky, Joseph Weizenbaum, John McCarthy, Allen Newell, Gerald Jay Sussman and Danny Hillis. He also focuses on the students. Many of them stay up for days at a time working on projects with the kind of dedication that most people don’t give to their careers. They deserve a round of applause, and Fjermedal gives it to them. The student viewpoint is also interestingly fresh because they are accomplished dreamers. They are not afraid to speak of what they think will happen twenty or thirty years down the road. Whereas some university professors will pad their opinions and say, “Well, that might happen someday,” the students respond with, “That will happen. And I’ll do it.” This approach may not be entirely realistic, but reality is not necessarily a good culture for new ideas.
Recommendations:
This book, combined with Machinery of the Mind, by George Johnson, works well as a non-technical survey of the directions of artificial intelligence and the people driving there. Fjermedal goes a little more into the personalities and the distance possibilities than Johnson does, but the two books give a consistent view of the field. Specifically, Fjermedal tries to show why the researchers are trying to create intelligent computers and shows the energy with which they are working.