Skype

Okay, how about a bit of geek fun? Skype is a fun little program that allows you to talk to anyone else in the world running Skype using a headset with a microphone. Suitable headsets are pretty cheap these days, and Skype makes the whole process easy.

So, let's say that your family is in another state, but has a computer. You can call them using Skype from your computer to theirs for free. The cool thing about this is that, if you're a geek type, you're already paying for a fast Internet connection anyway, so Skype truly is free.

But, the folks at Skype weren't content to just have you calling computer to computer, and they also have a for-cost service that allows you to use your computer to call out to any regular telephone. The way it works is that your computer calls one of their computers close to the city in which the person you want to call lives, and then makes a local call to the telephone in question. You end up paying a lot less than regular long distance (it's about 2 cents per minute in the United States).

As if that wasn't enough, you can also buy a phone number from the Skype store that lets people with regular phones call your computer. The coolest thing about this option is that you can choose a phone number in several different countries. So, I could be sitting in Ohio, and my computer could have a phone number that's local to Paris, France. That'd really only be useful if I knew anyone in Paris, but it's still cool!

As a community building tool, Skype is interesting because you can set your status to "Skype Me", which means you're sitting at your computer wishing you had someone to talk to. Someone else can search the Skype directory for people with that status, so you might get a random call from another person looking to talk.

While none of the features of Skype are anything revolutionary if you've been following Voice Over IP over the years, they've put it all together in a very professional package that leaves the core feature, computer to computer telephony, absolutely free.

Now if I just had someone to call!

Self-defeating Emotions

I'll probably be accused of getting way too introspective in this blog lately, but I've been thinking a lot lately about self-defeating emotions.

We all have them, to one degree or another. I'm talking about the sort of lack of self-confidence that tells us it makes more sense to do the wrong thing, and be secure that we know it's wrong, than try to do the right thing and be uncertain. It can be as simple as not knowing how to pronounce a word, and saying it wrong because you're not absolutely sure how to really pronounce it (but are sure that how you said it is wrong).

Or the person who really wants to be loved, and treats the person you want love from badly, hoping they reassure you in return by continuing to love you.

There are lots of other examples, but they're all ways that we act contrary to what we really want, because we're not brave enough to risk the failure of getting it.

Okay, so enough depressing introspection. Why am I thinking about this sort of thing? Because I'm thinking about what I'm really teaching my daughter about how to be a well-adjusted adult. She observes everything that happens around her, and is putting it all into her subconscious for later use in developing emotional reactions to what happens in her life.

I'd really like to make sure that I'm not setting her up with the same issues I have. Like any parent, I'd like my daughter to be better than me, and have bigger and grander issues than me. ;-)

Seriously, it's worth taking a hard look at what your behaviors teach your children, if you have any or are thinking about having any. It isn't always pretty, but the action of introspection can help you to identify and, perhaps, break out of the patterns you've set for yourself.

Machine & Infant Learning

My 7 month old daughter started talking just recently.

Okay, so we can't understand what she's saying, but she's got the cutest way of saying it! It sounds a bit like "gnab gnab blah", repeated over and over again. She's clearly processing our speech and working it into her neural pathways, trying to reproduce it.

The whole process of infant learning has been wonderfully fascinating to watch. They come into life with very little other than an amazing capacity to learn and integrate what they observe from their environment, and work their way upward from there. There's a field of AI that maintains that's the way we should teach computers to think, too, by building in the ability to learn, then putting them into an environment and teaching them how to solve a series of problems.

The main problem with that is our limited understanding of how infant learning actually takes place. The traditional view of an infant is that they're relatively stupid, and learn slowly. Having observed my daughter as she's gone from infant to baby stage, I can say with confidence that infants are incredibly smart and able to learn quickly.

There's been some research going on in this area. There's an article on ScienCentral News about research done in how quickly infants can learn, while others have done research showing that infants have complex emotional responses from the start (sorry, I've lost my link to that one).

What all this means for machine learning is that we can only scratch the surface of what's possible, since we don't understand the complexities of infant learning yet. Theoretically, if we understood infant learning completely, we could then model that in a computer to create a computer that could learn how to interact with its environment.

Anyone want to raise a baby computer?

Evolution of Intelligence

I'd read a science fiction story lately that talked about a possible cause for intelligence arising in early humans. The idea is that for thousands of years, humans went around with basically the same brain structure, but not really advancing in intelligence, until suddenly (at least in evolutionary terms), intelligence started advancing. The story talked about one possible cause that, like most science stories, isn't too likely, but undoubtedly there was some mechanism for intelligence to start advancing.

I've also been reading about brain development in infants, since we have a 7 month old daughter. It's been suggested that listening to classical music will help an infant's brain development, by stimulating neural connections and pathways that otherwise wouldn't form. The same could be said for any complex stimulus, such as complex patterns of colors, complex shapes, etc.

It struck me that the evolution of intelligence could have been caused by a sort of cultural bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is when you start out with a relatively simple technique that allows more complex techniques to be developed. So what if, way back in the dawn of prehistory, someone developed a slightly more complex form of music, or art, or mechanics, something just a cut above the natural tools they'd used before then.

Could that have stimulated neural development in their children, such that those children were then able to create something a bit more complex than their parents, and so on down the generations until we have the level of intelligence that we have today? It certainly seems plausible enough.

If that's true, then I have to wonder what the next advancement will be that will stimulate further neural complexity in our children. And will the children be exposed to it early enough to make a difference?

Such are the thoughts you have when you commute an hour to work.

Geek Humor

Starting a new semester is always a bit like jumping off a cliff, hoping to sew together a parachute before you hit bottom. Each week you're writing lecture notes for the next week (or for the next day!), and trying to make sure that what you're asking students to do is actually possible.

Now and then, though, you get time to do some aimless wandering on the web, and I ran across this geeky holiday humor piece that computer programmers will enjoy.

Starting a New Year

My break between semesters is just about over, and a new year is starting.

The Christmas break is always a bit hard for me. I teach at two schools. At one school, spring classes start the first week of January, at the other they start the second week of January. So I basically have two weeks of Christmas break before I start back to the first school.

Into that two weeks I try to cram as much enjoyment of my family as possible. Amelia is just about 7 months old now, and this was her first Christmas. She loved tasting all her packages and, with a little help, tearing the paper off of them. Once she had the paper off, she tasted the presents inside the package. ;-)

In those two weeks, I also have to prepare for the coming semester. For classes I've taught before, that means updating the syllabus with new dates, fixing any problems in the lecture notes I found the previous semester, and generally improving the class as much as I can. For classes I haven't taught before, that means coming up with a syllabus from scratch, and at least the first two weeks' worth of lecture notes to start.

This year I decided to take the two weeks with no classes at all to just relax and enjoy family. Then, when my first school started back, I also started preparing for the second school. Which means that this week I've been running around like crazy trying to get everything ready.

Luckily, the class I'm teaching for the first school is an entirely online class. This means I don't have to lecture, and have only online office hours that I have to do at a certain time each week. Otherwise, I can fit in responding to questions however works best for me.

Unluckily, I'd rather spend time with my daughter than doing any of this, so it's been a challenge for me to make time for the class preparations with Amelia around. Especially since I know that next week I start back to full-time face-to-face classes, with about a little over an hour's commute one way to get there.

I can't complain too much, though, since I have both a beautiful daughter and a job I love. Now, if only there were more days in the week!

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

Having a baby certainly makes you think about things.

Watching our daughter, Amelia, learn during her first six months has led me to wonder how much of what babies do is because we react to it. As an example, every time we've taken our daughter out in public (which hasn't been that often), she acts like a normal baby, tasting everything, sucking on her fingers, her Mom's hair, her clothing, etc.

People look at her, and say, "How cute!", and other compliments. But, as soon as her thumb goes into her mouth, the people around exclaim, and generally say something like, "Oh, look, she found her thumb!" Even though Amelia had been sucking on anything and everything within reach for the entire time, as soon as the thumb hits the mouth, it's a big deal.

So, the stereotype is that babies suck their thumbs. What we've found with Amelia is that babies suck and taste everything. But, the thumbs are what generate positive attention and feedback in the audience. Over time, that's going to cause babies to prefer thumb sucking to, for instance, finger sucking.

And then, just about the time that she figures out that sucking her thumb is a good way to get attention, she'll be old enough that we'll tell her to stop doing it. ;-)

Anyway, the main point is that our expectations, our stereotypes, can be self fulfilling prophecies, especially where babies are concerned. They thrive on love and attention, and will try to repeat behaviors that generate love and attention.

So what we're trying with Amelia is to give her the love and attention whatever she does, not just when she fulfills our expectations of what a baby should be. So far, so good, but check back here in about 18 years, and I'll let you know how it worked out.

Free books and free software!

Okay, it's way too early in the morning, but I was up for my daughter's diaper change, and can't go back to sleep yet.

If you've been following my book reviews blog, you'll know I love science fiction. At the Baen Free Library, you can get quite a few free science fiction books that Baen has published over the years. From their point of view, they get to hook readers onto new series and new authors, so that you want to buy the new books when they're published. From your point of view, you get free books!

Okay, so free books are great, but I've never liked reading books on the computer. The Baen Free Library gives you books in formats suitable for different eBook readers, but I've never been attracted to those, either. Lately, though, I found a piece of free software that works perfectly for me.

It's called yBook, and is an eBook reader that tries to simulate the feeling of reading a physical book. It provides two facing pages, you can turn pages, and the background and typeface tries to simulate the printed page. I've read a couple of books using it now, and find that it fixes whatever problem I was having reading books on the computer.

You can get yBook free from SpaceJock Software. The best part is that yBook will load web pages, correctly parsing out formatting such at italics or bold text, and display it in the yBook format on screen.

So, you can download the HTML version of books from the Baen Free Library, and then use yBook to read it on your computer. If you absolutely must have a printed version, yBook can print the books.

A great combination of free books and free software should keep you busy reading for quite some time!

Migraines Suck!

I'm just coming off a two-day migraine, and needed to vent.

I've lived with migraines for as long as I can remember. They run in my Mom's side of the family, and I take more after her physically than my Dad. Normally, I live with them without too much trouble. Sure, they hurt like hell, but when you've hurt like that quite often your entire life, it's hard to know any differently.

I've come to believe that the migraines are my body's way of telling me that something's not quite balanced in my life. They ebb and flow as my life changes. Right now, I'm in a high migraine cycle, often as many as two a week or more. Most of them aren't what I would call serious, but this last one was. The bad ones play hell with your health and your emotions, tying both into knots. It's hard to keep perspective at times like those.

Plus, with a six month old daughter, I start to worry that I'll have passed on the headaches to her. I hate to think of her suffering over the long years of her life with migraines. I've had long enough periods without them that I get a glimpse of what it must be like to not have migraines.

I guess I'll just hope that she gets that sort of thing more from my wife than from me. My teeth she can get from me!

Roleplaying: Risus, by S. John Ross

I've already talked about roleplaying several times on this blog, but haven't mentioned Risus yet.

Risus is a wonderful little free roleplaying game. The game was designed to be a "universal comedy system", e.g. a roleplaying game that could be used for comedy games in any genre (fantasy, science fiction, soap opera, etc). But you can use it for playing more serious games, too.

Most roleplaying games give you ways of describing how strong your character is, how quick, how hardy, how intelligent, etc. Risus allows you to describe your character in terms of character cliches. For example, instead of saying, "My character has a strength of 18 but an intelligence of 5", in Risus you might say, "My character is a 'Somewhat dim, but strong as an ox, barbarian from the Northlands'". The bit between the single quotes is the character cliche.

A character cliche can be a phrase or a sentence that describes some aspect of your character. The cliche can describe physical, mental, or social attributes, or it can give insight into your character's motivations. At its most basic, a cliche describes a set of skills and abilities your character has, and why they have those skills and abilities.

In the 'Somewhat dim, but strong as an ox, barbarian from the Northlands' example, we know that the character is going to be very good at anything requiring brute strength, and pretty bad at anything requiring pure intellect. We also know that the character is from the Northlands, so that gives us a clue as to their culture, and how they might be received in, for examples, the Southlands.

So cliches tell you what your character is good at, and what they are not so good at. Each cliche also has a rating, such as 'Somewhat dim, but strong as an ox, barbarian from the Northlands'-3. The 3 rating means that this person is competent with that cliche. A 1 would mean they are a poor example of a Northlands barbarian, while a 6 would mean they're legendary in their abilities.

So, to recap: The phrase portion of the cliche tells you what sorts of skills and abilities the character has, while the rating tells you how good they are at those skills and abilities.

And that's pretty much it. There are no lists of character attributes, as in other roleplaying games. Just cliches. And that's the real beauty of Risus, is that you can literally play any sort of game you want using the system, because it makes no assumptions about what sort of game you're going to play. Want to play a Star Trek roleplaying game? Just use appropriate cliches. Want to play a courtroom drama roleplaying game? Just use appropriate cliches.

If you have a roleplaying group that is used to more traditional roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, or Call of Cthulhu, it will take them some time to get used to Risus. The freedom of character cliches can be a bit odd for players who are used to only having a set list of skills and abilities to choose from, but it's worth it in the end.

Risus itself is available for free, at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm. There are plenty of links on that site to other Risus related sites as well.