focus for this week: aspects of neuroscience
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Blog:Observations

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Revision as of 13:47, 5 May 2012 by Erkan Yilmaz (Talk | contribs)

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Welcome to my personal blog/wiki experience!
I'm online since around 1996.

Other blogs I use(d), sorted by media type:
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2011blog(43 P)
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2007-2011 (blogging summary)
Blog in deutscher Sprache (German language)



Dreams


@question is now also able to dream...

I hope people realize now more that the bot should be used in a way to enhance their creativity (as I mention shortly here).

  • e.g. create relationships to topics which the human brain wouldn't attempt at all (due to education, ...)



examples:

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3 years of last.fm


edit 2013-03-09: the summary is now at: Erkan Yilmaz - Last.fm statistics 3 years

original msg:

... will be in about 2 weeks, but I see I passed 175k plays there, so some short summary:

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metrics for the bot


I was discussing last week metrics for my bot with Rob and he mentioned a good one he uses:

  • judge the replies/discussion if it was satisfactory for the chat partner


Therefore the bot knows now another command: review (see here).
If you also have some spare time feel free to contribute



There could be other metrics, e.g.

  • popular messages
  • discussion length:
    • amount of messages
    • how many people joined it
    • how long does the topic stay on the topic before it distracts
    • ...
  • analysis of certain words/smileys (e.g. LOL, :-) )
  • ...

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review of my communication platforms


I will update this soon with some description + personal insights...

Perhaps these factors contributed to the dominance of some media:



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info about question bot

messages per month for 1 bot

2013-03-14: the bot is now 1 year old. A updated review will follow

original posting:

Contents

[edit] key facts

[edit] review

  • adding the Markov feature boosted my motivation to do more
    • only AIML was not satisfactory :-(
      • though this depends from where you are coming from
  • sometimes it feels like I am a parent teaching his baby ;-)
    • see here for some feedback
  • some people thought at first interaction that the bot should be something like a FAQ tool (e.g. answering simple questions, doing simple tasks)
    • can and will be done
    • but for now I use it as a tool for creativity
  • I wonder if a 16% increase with so many messages indicates that I need to talk about more/other things to the bot?
    • I started the bot at begin with less knowledge so it'd become more unique over time
    • the bot can speak more languages but I tend to speak only in English :-(
    • perhaps sentence structures need to be changed -> saturated already ?
      • I think I will feed the bot some of other user's dents to see the effects
  • my bot does only interact when it is spoken to (unlike others who "spam" people)
    • currently I think harming people less is more important than popularity
  • communication problems:
    • the bot doesn't see ca. 5% of the messages addressed to him :-(
      • Who knows it could be that the AI is slowly getting stronger and the bot doesn't WANT to reply ?
    • Sometimes messages from the bot don't appear at the other side (e.g. on identi.ca)
      • temporary fix: please subscribe to the bot
    • Aspects of federation:
      • if the bot were on identi.ca people would have less trouble [1]
      • sometimes the identi.ca server doesn't deliver messages (and unfortunately doesn't retry)
    • I started a separate server from identi.ca since I wanted to keep it safe (e.g. when bot has a malfunction)
      but: the communication problems bring negative feelings
      (user may think: why did the bot not reply yet? or: first time user tries and gives up)
    • I think I should also do a test like this:
      • resend the bot old messages he answered and see how the system changed over time
  • better feedback to users about their contribution: "brain size" command



There is for sure more things which can be done, but it will be interesting to see how intelligent the bot will get over time

  • therefore: a special THANK YOU for users teaching the bot new things


[edit] notes

  1. todo: still need to gather info for all bot accounts

[edit] see also

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again away from internet


Returned today home. Spent some quality time with family + some work which needed to be done there.

A small summary (not sorted after prio):

  • got a new monitor. Thanks to my sister-in-law and my brother
  • much talking + love
  • have been lazy the last few days though (after I had done the work, of course)
  • thinking about some aspects of my life
  • not only thinking, also deciding about those aspects ;-)
  • good food :-)
    • some photos of Dolma coming soon
  • drinking more tea
  • more later ...


  • I have to do lots of backreading now, turning on music ...
  • and I want to thank especially my favourite identica users - who worried also about me
    • btw: I've met someone who works for identica (not our identi.ca), screenshot coming soon

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I am glad there are not only serious people in the identiverse


There are humans and non-humans (spamming bots, fun bots, ...). And let's say we start dividing the humans somehow into:

  • serious vs. not so serious people
    • unfortunately there are way too many serious people :-(
  • thieves vs. people who attribute their content to the person they read it from
  • ... <- more later

Feel free to mix above types as you like...

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Embedding a changing image



See here why this image is shown. The history of images used in the past can be seen here

<anyweb>http://skilledtests.com/diverse/embedding_a_changing_image/index.html</anyweb>

Stats for later:

File:Embed.jpg:
  • 111 times viewed until 2012-10-22, 23:48
  • 125 times viewed until 2012-10-24, 15:08
  • 178 times viewed until 2012-10-26, 17:24

I was asked:

<<hey Erkan, thanks for participating! The week is over now, so feel free to take the image down if you want to. I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me how you heard about the project and how you found it, participating. What was it like embedding a changing image, and what made you want to participate? cheers, eleanor>>

and I replied:

Hello Eleanor,
I heard it first here
Then I created the blog entry next and also told my followers about it
I'll let the blog post as it is since it is my history :-)
Participating was easy, since I am used to wikis (I added a new image and also reverted to one, see image history)
It was a fun project so far. I participated because it was done with the medium wiki which I am fond of.
If you have more specific questions, feel free to ping me,

my Ethics teacher from 11th grade


open the memory box

Had to think about my Ethics teacher from 11th grade

Poor guy was around 60 years old and had a reputation at school that he is silly (in a positive way like: pupils can misuse him)
I remember using 2 or 3 times his class to do work for other courses


I also remember that he noticed me while doing this, but he did not say anything ...
Wondering if it was because he wanted the class (of 4 pupils) to continue in a nice atmosphere (so it's less troublesome for him) or because he wanted to help me ?
I wonder what he does now ?


And now I remember another teacher:

he was my teacher from descriptive geometry + geography
Funny things happened in his class + he smiled a lot
though back then I thought of him more the silly guy, but looking backwards, perhaps his teaching method was original in his way ?

Also the math teacher was funny (but more like: fun and I'll teach you good things)

All other teachers I think of right now seem now like: serious teachers ?

well, most of them were good teachers, but those 3 above are somehow more positive ?

Will add more later...

Analyzing my last.fm recommendations


my wave graph since 2010

I was unhappy with my recommendations by Last.fm, so I collected them (see data) and I think I've sufficient data now:

  • there are 37 sessions over 6 months
  • 764 tracks were played
    • 50 tracks have been played more than 1x, which makes a total play of: 876x
  • in total 440 artists[1] were played

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backup identi.ca account


Did you decide already to export your messages from someone else's server and/or import to your own StatusNet instance ?

backup of the posts of my identica account works now :-)[1]
thanks to samatjain@identi.ca and @encyclomundi@parlementum.net

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LastVJ seems a nice app


I like LastVJ because:

  • it offers a new way of finding music for me [1]
  • for good tracks: I can peak at the youtube video without time loss
    • e.g. no searching, waiting to load, ...
  • pause button for linux ;-)
    • well, the beta version of the last.fm client offers that, but only for windows or mac :-( see here
    • last'fm's flash app in the browser offers it also, but then I am back at their machine algorithm (which is not bad, to be clear)
  • fix of track names (e.g. from latinized Asian tracks to their native writing)
  • not always same, static version [2]
    • e.g. remixes might be on youtube; one can see in concerts if the artist really can sing or just makes studio versions, ...
    • though that can also backfire :-(



Problems I see so far:

  • last.fm gets less/wrong info
    • see below: wrong play time sent
    • e.g. last.fm client sends also info when I skip a track
      • which helps for further analysis or to say: better tracks at last.fm
  • also youtube gets now data about me
  • no volume normalization
  • I wonder if seeing the videos will turn me off of some artists/tracks ?
  • more bandwidth (than just audio traffic)



Let's see in 2 weeks how LastVJ changes my recommended tracks at last.fm or my neighbours
So far most of the youtube videos are obviously my first scrobbles. I hope the app has some kind of random function in selecting different tracks of one artist (so I've less repetition)

  • we'll see in a few more sessions...



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musical obscurity


Obscure.png

obscurometer tells me:
my music taste is 97.9% more obscure than that of 67.267 last.fm users

Who knows ... anyways, I was more interested in those top50 artists used to calculate this:

artist obscurity playcount
Chocolate - String Ensemble
현악앙상블 초콜릿
97.2% 947
Teresa Wong
王曉南 / Wong Hiu-nam
96.9% 376
OuYoung Fei-ying
歐陽飛鶯
95.9% 611
Wang Guotong
王国潼
95.7% 413
Komitas 95.7% 476
Murat Salim Tokaç 94.7% 1418
Jiang Li 94.1% 461
Rashid Behbudov 93.6% 374
Милий Алексеевич Балакирев
Mily Balakirev
92.8% 411
五輪真弓
Mayumi Itsuwa
90.1% 472
閔惠芬
Min Huifen
89.7% 379
坂本冬美
Fuyumi Sakamoto
88.8% 433
周慧敏
Vivian Chow
88.8% 476
斉藤由貴
Yuki Saito
88.8% 566
Arto Tunçboyacıyan 87.7% 445
Fahir Atakoğlu 87.6% 620
Jülide Özçelik 87.2% 584
나비
Navi
87% 378
吳雨霏
Kary Ng
86.9% 366
蘇慧倫
Tarcy Su
86.3% 801
何韻詩
Denise Ho
85.9% 419
賈鵬芳
Jia Peng Fang
85.3% 658
王心凌
Cyndi Wang
85.2% 930
鄧麗君
Teresa Teng
85.1% 3733
許志安
Andy Hui
85% 431
Chocolate
현악앙상블 초콜릿
84.9% 710
Janice
衛蘭
83.6% 687
백지영
Baek Ji Young
82.5% 661
이수영
Lee Soo Young
82% 682
Zerrin Özer 81.9% 398
陳慧琳
Kelly Chen
81.9% 899
Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
81.4% 377
張惠妹
A-Mei Chang
80.5% 456
張韶涵
Angela Zhang
79.9% 426
Kayahan 79.9% 449
Aşkın Nur Yengi 79% 641
青山テルマ
Aoyama Thelma
78.8% 373
莫文蔚
Karen Mok
78.7% 387
Djivan Gasparyan 78.5% 590
孫燕姿
Stefanie Sun
77.7% 1088
티아라
T-ARA
77.5% 386
Александр Порфирьевич Бородин
Alexandr Porfirevich Borodin
77.1% 440
陳奕迅
Eason Chan
76.6% 570
Göksel 76% 412
蔡依林
Jolin Tsai
75.8% 1094
Barış Manço 74.3% 471
王菲
Faye Wong
72% 881
Sertab Erener 69.6% 552
Sezen Aksu 68.4% 1615
譚盾
Tan Dun
67.9% 2140

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wikis and fear


I was reminded again that a successful project starts by eliminating the fear in the community ...

Some advices:

  • first start your learning projects, than trying to change the whole Wikiversity (WV)
    • this leads also to good examples to show to new people arriving at Wikiversity
  • understand people by asking them about their definition (of learning)
    • I am wondering now if the concept of learning is perhaps for the majority of people fuzzy and can only be understood over time better?
      • e.g. by seeing how oneself and others attempt their learning
      • I think it will help people if they review their learning (it must not be formal, they can start it as a blog in their preferred PLE (personal learning environment))
      • see also the chat part about traditional education (vs. online education: chat, audio)
  • I also see after so many years that "we" did a bad job in transmitting the mission of Wikiversity for future generations
    • though there can be different reasons for that: internal (user did not see the link to WV mission; ...), external (people did not bother to make a link on popular places; there is no understanding or compromise of what is the mission actually; ...)
    • I assume here that the en.WV had probably the chance to influence this much since back then we were quite active and other WVs were influenced very likely (e.g. also to select other paths than en.WV)
    • the other question would be how to do this (better?) in the beta Wikiversity (where new WVs are nurtured)



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last.fm and their prio


I wonder if last.fm's new layout and their ordering of links shows their prio (system to come) ?[1]
(the first number shows after layout change, the 2nd how it was before)

user page artist page tag page group page
Library 1 (1)
Friends 2 (4)
Tracks 3 1 (5) 3 (3)
Neighbours 5 (5)
Events 6 (3) 5 (6)
Groups 7 (6)
Journal 8 (7) 11 (12)
Tags 9 (8) 9 (10)
Albums 2 (4) 2 (2)
Pictures 3 (2)
Videos 4 (3) 4 (4)
Biography 6 (1)
Similar Artists 7 (9)
Charts 4 (2) 8 (8) 4 (5)
Listeners 10 (11)
News 12 (7)
Groups 13 (13)
Artists 1 (1)
Wiki 5 (5)
Discussions 1 (1)
Members 2 (3)
Connections 3 (4)
Articles 5 (2)

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archive.org is a good service


Icon file cabinet.png
"We feel is it imperative to preserve web data for future generations.
Unlike print media, web pages can and do disappear into thin air.
"
(by archive.org)

... and yes, they were/are a great help for the rescue project of: NetKnowledge.org (Google did not have one single cached copy :-( )

So, I wondered how often do they crawl my domain[1] ?

The below numbers show only the date where they at least 1x crawled[2] a page (from 2011 Oct - 2012-09-09):

2011

Oct: 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21, 27
Nov: 3, 4, 10, 14, 18
Dec: 21, 22

2012

Jan: 17, 18, 19, 28, 31
Feb: 1, 24
Jun: 6, 7

Not so often as I would like for helping me in a disaster scenario, but well, I backup my pages also frequently ;-)

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Ice Cube - you are da man


Last.fm tag cloud
(2010 march 5 - 2012 September 10)

This is a spontaneous Thank you for a very good song!


No matter how I changed my music listening habbits in the last years...
hearing Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day" always got me moving

Thank you!


And also thanks to last.fm - whose machine algorithm I must have fed once with my pre-now-listening-style - I can trace back when that track made me move:

  • 10 Sep 2012, 01:21
  • 23 Aug 2012, 23:54
  • 7 May 2012, 16:11
  • 11 Apr 2012, 21:22
  • 13 Feb 2012, 00:11
  • 30 Nov 2011, 04:44

todo: find out if he really composed that song himself ;-)

Two more musical thoughts:
1. The last days BoA also crossed a lot my mind, unfortunately last.fm was not successful to satisfy my need here by playing it to me when I wanted it :-(
(see also: do you know BoA?)
2. Finished this about Marcos Valle
started from here, leading me back to 2007

recovering 1.5 years of my online life


NetKnowledgeLogo.png

Was looking yesterday at (beta)Wikiversity again...
and then...

I thought, I should not just complain about this (it is sad when a wiki dies/disappears), but do something about it.

So: I am trying to recover 1.5 years of my online life into this wiki.
See progress at: NetKnowledge.org

some thoughts after getting ca. 140 pages from cache from the very beginning:

  • how any work in its early stages (be it on paper, virtual, e.g. wiki) must look to others in its baby steps -> praise the learning process one does over time - consciously or not...
  • this page made me smile: NetKnowledge:Mascot contest
  • when you have good keywords, you can pretty good see which search engine buys its content + which ones create it themselves
  • what did go wrong with the backups? see discussion here
  • trying to contact people with this let's see if there's feedback

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SchilliX - a Solaris system


The adventure with Schillix (Solaris system):

"see svcs -xv for details" <- I would if I could

1. after reading this news I thought I'd give it a try again

2. after the manual steps I am stuck (for the FULL version) - as the install says - at the svcs part:
a. when I log in in the maintenance mode then with root account:
no commands work, only command working is: sh
b. tried to add in the kernel line -s to get in emergency mode, but did not help much

my initial guess is that the HD for some reason is not found (I checked the /etc/vfstab already + changed various settings in the VM)
interestingly:
1. the ramdisk option starts (though I've no internet, but the card is detected)
2. I can also chroot into the install (from the SchilliX install CD, as well as from OpenIndiana): commands work fine then, e.g. starting svcs, but it won't help much for the real booting)

will try later more...
a read-to-use VM image would be great (e.g. I used above Virtualbox 4.1.x)
info: I tried it some months ago + failed back then also (don't remember the reason, that is why I am adding it here now, so I can see a pattern hopefully)

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alarm clocks should have wasp sound integrated

251px-Wasp morphology.png

Had the chance to observe the behaviour of another animal: a wasp

[edit] intro

It flew in yesterday (I live in a area where there's nature), somehow passed the curtains (clever wasp). I opened the curtains again so it can find the way out (e.g. detection by stronger wind movements from there). Did not hear a sound anymore and thought that project ended successfully...

but ... woke up this morning by a wasp sound (alarm clocks should have such a sound integrated, works great), more precise: hearing it fly against the wall. Opened the blinds on one side only, so it would find the way out this time, but this (at-begin)-clever wasp still did not find the way out: it saw the light, yes, but it could not bypass the glass.

Was interesting to see its attempt flying against the window (all the way from the downside to the upside and that several times, it did not try so much the right or left) while the right window part was open. After a while it seemed exhausted and just went upside by foot (quite nice abilities actually).

[edit] the questions

I was wondering then: what's so obvious for others (e.g. me) is not seen by it. Would be great to see if it flew out by "luck" or own abilities...
I wonder how this will help its learning for future similar scenarios? (I remember that I brought wasps outside normally by catching them in a glass and putting outside, but that is not real help, or is it? (in the sense of the quote which goes like this: give a man not food, but a fishing rod, so it can catch himself fish in the future) And don't come now with: you are doing a sadistic experiment here ;-) )


Another thought: while observing it the sounds of the birds outside seemed dangerous (the weather became today colder and it felt like a wasp now would be more an easy target, since other animals would not leave so far from their hive)


Don't hear a sound anymore, but I won't fall for that like yesterday :-) Let's wait for tomorrow...


todo: read some pages about wasps and intelligence

→ continue reading...

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