Thursday 5th November - Porridge and Computer Artificial Intelligence

The conversation this morning went something like this...

"The difficulty is in finding the right size cup to measure out the oats and the milk in order to get the right amount for my breakfast. The one I used was about right, but I had to fill it completely full of oats, so it got a bit tricky when it came to adding two and a half cups of milk without spilling it everywhere."

"Which you did you use?"

"The one with the diagonal edge"

"We don't have a cup with a diagonal edge."

"Yes we do."

From which description he was able to correctly identify which measuring jug I used:

After a moment, the conversation turned to how far computer recognition software has to go before it can interpret your average domestic conversation.

This all came back to be this evening when we were discussing the roast carrots (which were delicious) at suppertime:

"They're a bit overdone - I always find it hard to judge how long they take to cook."

"I usually find they take longer than I expect, except when they take less time."

"yeah"...  

I think it is because real conversations are full of half-sentences, grammatical errors, weird descriptions, stray references to other things. Once we get these computers going, we'll all have to have artificial conversations carefully constructed so that the computer can understand them.

I wonder what kind of poetry and literature computers will generate in years to come?

For me, perfect microwave porridge is 75ml oats, 140 ml water, 220 ml milk. Microwave on high for 2 mins, stir, micro on high again 1 min, tip it into the bowl and wait for it to cool enough to eat.

Current packet is "Rude Health Fruity Date Porridge".

Saturday 7th September - Wrong Wedding

Well, we've messed up our diaries on many an occasion in the past.

I was told months ago that my friend's son's wedding was today, and I duly put the date and the venue in my diary.

Many weeks ago the general email invitation to the congregation went out, saying we were all welcome. I saw that I had the right date and left it at that.

My friend apologised for not inviting us to the reception - I hadn't expected an invite as I know that there are many, many cousins and aunts and uncles and in-laws and great-aunts and great0uncles and nieces and nephews. I knew that the guest list was already a Hot Topic, without adding further fuel to the flames  by dumping family members for friends!

The day arrived. We rolled up at the church, in good time for the start, and were a little disconcerted to find that firstly they were already well into the first hymn - but we have a tradition of providing interest for waiting congregations by having music before the service in our church. So we sidled up a side aisle, and slid into the empty pew behind the early birds.
It was all very odd. Then we noticed that
The church was half empty. We expected it to be completely packed.

The people that were there were all Very Smartly Dressed. Apart from The Families, I expected everyone else to be just smartish, clean and tidy.

As we sidled into some empty seats halfway down the left hand side, it became clear that we didn't  recognise anyone there.

The clincher was that the names on the inside of the order of the service were of complete strangers.

So we sidled out again and went in search of the real wedding.

Which, as we discovered after checking back through hundreds of emails, had taken place at that same church but two hours previously.

MORAL - Don't leave checking dates and times until some time in the future - do it properly when you are given them!

Is it too late to blame it on jet-lag - we got back from Canada (more about that later) nearly a week ago?

Sunday September 1st - Shrodinger's Diary

We have been away for a few days, staying with close friends, and I have been keeping two diaries of the holiday. One is a paper and pencil diary where I write just a series of short phrases and reminders of what we have been up to each day, in tiniest print in order to fit onto the page. The other is in the form of a blog, restricted to just the family and our friends, and is a much more detailed account of where we went, what we did, what we saw, and so forth, with lots of photographs.

Every night I made conscientiously wrote up the events of the day, and every morning, before we set off on our adventures, I tried to get up to date with the blog, so that family back home could share in our experiences. I also wanted to make sure that I would remember as much as possible after we had got home. Our friends live thousands of miles away so we don't see each other very often, and when you add in a trip to  Niagara Falls then this is one of those major events in one's life.

We did visit them two years ago, and that time I kept a full paper diary, and conceived the idea of writing it as a blog a month or so after wards. It was like re-living the holiday all over again - which I found immensely rewarding. Those days suddenly came to life again in full technicolour, after having been over shadowed by the hurly burly of normal every day life once we had come back home.

This time I was blogging as I went along - an entirely different experience. I was getting further and further behind; we were packing so much into each day that some days took five sessions/posts to get everything posted!

It became increasingly disorientating, especially when my body was still operating on English time; to be writing up the events of three days ago after breakfasting at 9am Canadian which is 2pm English time was brain-bending.

One evening, after a hard day's holidaying, we watched a recording of Alan Davies investigating the science of measurement, called "How long is a piece of string?". It was when quantum physics started getting itself tangled into the string that I realised what was going on in my head; am I here, or there? or in both places at the same time?



The quantum-mechanical "Schrödinger's cat" paradox according to the many-worlds interpretation. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point. The cat is both alive and dead—regardless of whether the box is opened—but the "alive" and "dead" cats are in different branches of the universe that are equally real but cannot interact with each other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

I really haven't ever managed to get my head around quantum physics. Neither has Alan Davies, by the look of him in the programme.


Heard any good jokes lately? Here's one:


A Cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.        boom ....

(filched from http://quantumfactory.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/schrodingers-cat-walks-into-a-bar/ )

Saturday 9th March - Love and Temperament

We've been married for long enough now to get used to each other.

I try and view our natures as "complementary", rather than as "opposites".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boutet_1708_color_circles.jpg

So, in trying out certain kinds of ideas, such as home improvements, rearrangements of furniture, new colour schemes, my approach tends to be "let's give it a go!" I tend to plunge in, and do an experimental dry wet run. I reckon to try it all out using cheap approximations of what I am aiming for in order to get a feel for how it works. A quick trip to the shops, chuck everything that's in the way into the empty bath to clear a space, push, shove, pull, rip, cut, stick and hey presto. Then leave the debris everywhere because I'm plumb tuckered out. Let's go out for fish and chips tonight.

Once I've done it, I'll then know how it should have been done, and will be in a good position to go for the final solution. Makes perfect sense to me. I need to touch and feel and see the change in order to know what it is I really wanted.

The major, major, and insuperable flaw in this approach is, that having created the bodged together, string-and-sealing-wax solution, rickety-tickety oozy-woozy version, I will lose interest, and just let everything stop there. Somehow, I won't have significantly improved the situation. Let's be truthful. Everything is a thousand times worse than if I had left things well alone.

So what's his approach? It takes time. It involves asking and considering answers to lots of questions. It involves patience and research and investigation and measuring, lots and lots of measuring. There's all that visiting different shops WITHOUT buying anything. Pieces of paper. Plans. MORE measurements.

Then, in a weekend, or a day, or even a few hours of intense activity, the solution is implemented, in one go, everything is tidied away, and IT WORKS and is pretty near perfect.

After 35 years, I'm beginning to go with his methods. The waiting around, and the delays drive me insane with impatience, but I'm learning. His way is much better.

Usually..... 

   
 

Tuesday 27th November - Staying in touch/losing contact

This has been a month of intense communications.

My parents have a wide circle of friends dating back from school, university, and "bachelor pad" days. Somehow, all these close friends have become extra aunts and uncles; collectively known as "the little family". They all turn up to every wedding, every christening, every silver and ruby wedding anniversary party. They are all godparents to each other's children.

So, I have grown up knowing them all, but not really knowing them well. Now, with my mother in hospital, I have been in touch with so many of them on a somehow more personal, more adult level.

I find myself emailing or writing letters to people I have never met, only heard about. I makes lists, keep a diary record of who rang when, who needs to be written to or rung back. This is not a burden or a weary duty, as I feel as though I am accumulating a treasure hoard of people who love and care for my family! The contact with all these caring, concerned people makes me feel loved and cared for as well.

I suppose it helps that the news is, after the first major shock, on the whole, good. "She's making steady progress, it will be a long haul, your card arrived yesterday and she loved the picture, that you so much for your news".

With all this going on, it is slightly harder to carve out time for meeting up with my own friends. I've bailed out of going to church for two Sundays in a row - last Sunday I needed the time to sleep and do domestic stuff - this Sunday, my family have decreed that we are abandoning the current reality to spend the day at a big Victorian Christmas Market/Event in another city.

I had a birthday letter from a friend, full of great news about her family, and made a "thank-you and catch-up" telephone to another friend which was overdue by several months. I've several "we must get together for a coffee sometime" dates to book in...

For now, I need to put my socks on, brush my teeth and hair and get to work. Ukuleles, samba and djembe classes await me - at least, decibellically speaking, it will be a fairly gentle start!     

Sunday 28th October - what I meant to say was...

The past few weeks have taught me a valuable lesson in communication - how meaning changes between what is written and what is read.

I knew that, of course. No-one, who has spent time in writing detailed instructions and comprehensive procedures, can fail to be aware that what one person writes can mean something entirely different to the reader.

There are lots of humorous examples; I enjoyed a running gag in one of Catherine Fox's novels, where two character share a love of ridiculous instructions. They would save them up, and mutter to each other when they passed in the corridor:

"Caution, this door is alarmed"

"Assistants will cut cabbages in half on request" (sign in a greengrocer)

"Pierce with a pin and push off"

Sometimes these unintentional double meanings can have unforeseen consequences:

"Wait here while red light shows"

This used to be a common road sign. It seems clear enough, until you learn that in parts of Yorkshire, people routinely use "while" to mean "until". You would often hear people say things like "Wait here while the bus comes", or "I'll be in the cafe while you get here". Once this regional meaning of "while" was understood, the signs suddenly disappeared, replaced with "When red light shows wait here".

Recently, I received a fairly formal email requesting me to attend a meeting. Because of the surrounding circumstances, I read all sorts of dire and drastic consequences into the purpose of the meeting. I spent the intervening days feeling sick, apprehensive, and panicky and turned my world upside down, getting piles of paperwork together, and even planning whether I needed to, and could afford, to resign.

In the event, the request was just that. A request to attend a friendly, business-like, useful, productive, encouraging, meeting. No more, no less.