Bryce Moore's Blog, page 13

Bryce vs. BryceGPT Round 2: Website Renovation

Hey everyone! Welcome back to the blog. This is the second post that might or might not have been written by AI. Can you tell the difference this time? I challenge you to find out.

So, here’s the scoop: I’ve had to update the website. The blog was displaying weirdly in some browsers, making it look like I’d been hacked by a group of disgruntled techies. I think I’ve sorted most of it out, but if you still see any issues, please let me know.

I’ve also given the homepage and bio a much-needed makeover. You might want to check those out when you have a moment. They’re looking pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.

Just a heads-up, I’ll be away at a two-day library meeting, so I probably won’t have a chance to post tomorrow. If you’re wondering, these meetings are less about secret book conspiracies and more about library management and planning, which is almost as exciting.

Apologies for the short post today. To make it up to you, let me remind you about the time I fought a bat in my house. It was a late night when Denisa and I were heading to bed. I spotted a flicker of movement on our enclosed front porch. Sure enough, a bat had found its way in there, flying around like it owned the place.

We considered a few options: let it be, call an exterminator, wait for it to tire out, or get it out right then and there. We went with the last option because I’m the pater familias, and this sort of duty comes with the job. Armed with a broom, a hat, and gloves, I entered the porch ready for battle.

The bat, no bigger than a small rodent with wings, was darting around like a disease-ridden pinball. I kept my cool, managed to open the window, remove the screen, and quickly shut the door behind me. But the bat, apparently lacking the amazing sonar skills bats are famous for, couldn’t find its way out. It flew in circles until it got tired and hid again.

I went in a second time, broom in hand, and began an archaeological dig through the clutter. Eventually, I found it huddled under my briefcase. I captured it using a sour cream container and a piece of cardboard. The bat screeched and fluttered, but I took it outside and released it into the night. It stayed for a minute, then flew off into the darkness.

So there you have it, my heroic bat encounter. Did I scream? No. Did I feel brave? Absolutely. Did Denisa shower me with praise? Not quite, but I did earn a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for future chores.

Before you go, remember to cast your vote: was this post written by AI or by me? Let the guessing game begin!

The Verdict is In: Bryce vs. BryceGPT Round 1

Okay, folks. The first round of the great AI show off is over, and 100% of people identified correctly that it was BryceGPT all the way. Interestingly enough, however, the reasons people gave for why it was wrong ended up being more the fault of Bryce than BryceGPT.

The most common reason given was that the rankings were off. People didn’t believe that I’d put the fast food places in that order. They doubted that I’d rank some so low and some so high and some at all. Ironically, that was all 100% due to me. Here’s the prompt I gave BryceGPT:

PROMPT START

Write a humorous blog post on my top ten favorite fast food restaurants.

First, write an introduction that I’m short on time today, but I’ve always wanted to get this list down on paper.

List these restaurants, in this order, counting down from 10 to 1. For each one, write at least 4 sentences of snappy, snarky justification for its placement. Play up the humor, but remember: I don’t drink coffee or alcohol.

(Before all of these, include a bit about the worst fast food chain: Arby’s. Bland meat bad)

(Honorable mention, Chick Fil A, because if I don’t include them, I’ll have to hear from all the Chick Fil A devotees, and I’m not up to that)

A&W (love the root beer. If only there were more of the actual restaurants in the US)

Pizza Hut (Tasty, but too heavy, though it was a frequent respite in high school)

Burger King (based solely on the ability to get a free crown on your birthday)

Cinnabon or Dunkin Donuts (readers can choose) (any excuse to eat that much sugar is a good excuse)

McDonald’s (because I worked there for two years)

Wendy’s (because yum frosty)

Dairy Queen (I’m a sucker for blizzards)

TGI Fridays (I ate there almost every week growing up, and they used to have cool cups with their smoothies)

Taco Bell (just don’t think about the meat too much),

Friendly’s (because ice cream. See a trend? It was also the piece de resistance when I was growing up, and I still have fond memories)

Chipotle (lots mexican food good)

Then, finish the post with a brief challenge: did I write this personally, or did AI do it for me? Invite readers to vote.

PROMPT END

So right off the bat, some of you will notice that that’s a heckuva long prompt. The idea was to have it rank how I wanted to rank it, but without me actually having to explain too much about all the decisions. However, because I worked so long on perfecting the prompt, I didn’t actually work much at all on the content of the list. I just did a quick glance over Wikipedia’s Fast Food listing, and picked some that stood out to me.

In other words, I didn’t try nearly as hard to create good content, so the end result was content that didn’t feel like me. It also screwed up the numbering, because AI didn’t want to count Dunkin and Cinnabon as one entry. Another big red flag was the fact that the subheadings were all really wonky, but by that time, I was fed up with perfecting it, so I just let it slide.

Some noted that the comparisons seemed pretty common. I actually thought AI did a pretty dang good job on them. The Burger King line, the bit about McDonald’s being like Walmart, and Arby’s being socks for Christmas were all really funny, and I could totally see myself as having said something like that. I did some Google searches to see if they’d been said elsewhere, and I came up with nothing. That humor felt very Bryce-ish to me and made me more than a little jealous.

So how big of an impact did BryceGPT have on the end result? It’s still very much a work in progress as I try to refine it, but for now, here’s what Vanilla GPT gives as a response to the same prompt:

A Fast Food Frenzy: My Top Ten Favorites

Okay, folks, I’m running short on time today, but I’ve always wanted to get this list down on paper. Fast food joints have been my go-to for quick, delicious, and sometimes questionable meals. Here’s my countdown of the top ten fast food restaurants, with a snarky twist. But before we dive in, let’s talk about the absolute worst fast food chain: Arby’s. Bland meat is just bad. Sorry, Arby’s fans, but your roast beef tastes like it’s been left out in the sun for too long.

Honorable Mention: Chick-fil-A

I couldn’t leave Chick-fil-A off the list, or I’d have to listen to endless rants from their devoted fans. So, consider them honored. Now, let’s get to the good stuff!

10. A&W

Oh, A&W, how I love thee for your root beer. If only there were more of your actual restaurants in the US! You tease us with your frothy, sweet, carbonated nectar, but make us hunt you down like a rare Pokémon. When I do find an A&W, it’s like winning the fast food lottery, complete with a fizzy prize.

9. Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut: where you can indulge in a slice of nostalgia topped with a layer of grease. This place was a frequent high school hangout, where the pizza was tasty but heavy enough to sink the Titanic. But hey, sometimes you need a carb-loaded anchor to get through the day.

8. Burger King

Burger King makes the list solely because of the free crown you get on your birthday. Who doesn’t want to feel like royalty while munching on a Whopper? Sure, their flame-grilled burgers are decent, but it’s the paper crown that truly makes you feel like the king (or queen) of fast food.

7. Cinnabon/Dunkin’ Donuts

Readers can choose their sugar-laden poison here. Whether it’s a Cinnabon with enough frosting to induce a sugar coma, or a Dunkin’ Donuts treat paired with a non-coffee beverage, any excuse to consume that much sugar is a good excuse. Who needs dental health when you have cinnamon rolls and donuts?

6. McDonald’s

Ah, McDonald’s. I spent two years flipping burgers and frying fries at the Golden Arches. Despite the grease burns and questionable life choices, I still have a soft spot for their fries and McFlurries. Plus, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried to clean a McDonald’s ice cream machine at 2 AM.

5. Wendy’s

Wendy’s makes it to the top five simply because of their Frosty. It’s a thick, creamy concoction that’s part drink, part dessert, and entirely delicious. Pair it with their sea-salt fries, and you’ve got yourself a meal that’s both satisfying and heart-stopping.

4. Dairy Queen

I’m a sucker for Blizzards. Dairy Queen’s magical ability to mix candy into ice cream and then serve it upside down is nothing short of culinary wizardry. Whether it’s Oreo, Reese’s, or some seasonal flavor, DQ Blizzards are a frozen delight.

3. TGI Fridays

TGI Fridays holds a special place in my heart because I practically lived there growing up. They used to have these cool cups with their smoothies that made me feel like a fancy adult. The food might not be gourmet, but the nostalgia is worth its weight in mozzarella sticks.

2. Taco Bell

Taco Bell: the place where you can get a taco for a dollar and question your life choices for free. Just don’t think too hard about the meat, and you’ll be fine. Their menu is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but with more cheese and regret.

1. Friendly’s

Friendly’s tops the list because of their ice cream. Yes, there’s a trend here. Growing up, Friendly’s was the pièce de résistance of dining out. The memories of their sundaes still bring a tear to my eye and a pound to my waistline. Plus, their food isn’t half bad either.

The Challenge

So, here’s the challenge: did I write this personally, or did AI do it for me? Vote and let me know if you think my snarky commentary is too good to be true!

REAL BRYCE RESUMES HERE

Looking that over, I do think BryceGPT did a better job. While VanillaGPT has a couple of lines that are okay, mostly it’s generic fluff. (Or maybe that’s just me? Maybe all my writing is generic fluff . . .)

Anyway. Out of time for today. We’ll see how I do tomorrow, and if me learning more about the prompt process can make the end result a little more tricky to tell.

The post The Verdict is In: Bryce vs. BryceGPT Round 1 first appeared on Bryce Moore.

Bryce or BryceGPT Day One: The Best Fast Food Restaurants

Alright, folks, I’m short on time today, but I’ve always wanted to get this list down on paper. So, without further ado, here are my top ten favorite fast food restaurants, counted down from 10 to 1. Buckle up for some snarky commentary!

Worst Fast Food Chain: Arby’s

Before we get to the best, let’s talk about the absolute worst: Arby’s. Bland meat, uninspiring menu, and a general vibe that says, “We’re here because we have to be.” It’s like the restaurant version of getting socks for Christmas. If I wanted sad, rubbery meat, I’d just overcook my own dinner, thank you very much.

Honorable Mention: Chick-fil-A

I have to include Chick-fil-A as an honorable mention, or I’ll never hear the end of it from their devoted fanbase. Yes, their chicken is pretty good, and their service is scarily efficient. But I’m not here to start a chicken sandwich holy war, so let’s move on.

10. A&W

Ah, A&W, the sweet nectar of root beer heaven. The only downside? Finding an actual A&W restaurant is like finding a unicorn. When you do, though, it’s root beer floats and nostalgia all the way.

9. Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut, the high school refuge. Tasty, sure, but a slice weighs more than my laptop. It was the go-to spot for mediocre pizza and awkward dates. Still, those buttery, greasy pan pizzas hold a special place in my heart, right next to my cholesterol medication.

8. Burger King

Burger King, where you can be king for a day, or at least until your paper crown disintegrates in the rain. I’m here solely for the free birthday crowns. I mean, who doesn’t want to feel regal while devouring a Whopper that barely fits in your mouth?

7. Cinnabon/Dunkin Donuts

Reader’s choice here: Cinnabon or Dunkin Donuts. Either way, it’s a sugar high waiting to happen. Dunkin Donuts gets a nod for sheer ubiquity and the joy of “Time to make the donuts!” But Cinnabon? Any excuse to eat that much sugar is a good excuse. Plus, the smell alone can give you diabetes.

6. McDonald’s

McDonald’s, the place where I spent two years of my life flipping burgers and perfecting the art of the perfect fry. It’s like the Walmart of fast food – you go there because it’s convenient and you always know what you’re getting, even if you don’t want to admit you went there.

5. Wendy’s

Wendy’s, home of the Frosty, that beautiful hybrid of ice cream and milkshake. It’s like a cold hug in a cup. And let’s not forget their commitment to square burgers, because why conform to round when you can be deliciously different?

4. Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen, where the Blizzards are as thick as my college textbooks but way more enjoyable. I’m a sucker for Blizzards – especially when they flip it upside down to show it’s so thick it won’t fall out. Bravo, DQ, bravo.

3. TGI Fridays

TGI Fridays, where the food is secondary to the flair. I practically grew up in one of these, and I still miss those ridiculously decorated walls. The smoothies used to come in cool cups, and the appetizers? Endless. It’s like a party every time you walk in.

2. Taco Bell

Taco Bell, the gastronomical roulette. Just don’t think too hard about what’s in the meat, and you’ll be fine. It’s cheap, it’s tasty, and it’s the only place where you can get a taco made of Doritos. Innovation at its finest.

1. Friendly’s

Friendly’s, because ice cream. It’s the pièce de résistance of my childhood dining experiences. The food was decent, but the ice cream sundaes were life-changing. It was the pinnacle of dining out when I was a kid, and I still get nostalgic walking through the door.

Top Spot: Chipotle

And finally, Chipotle takes the top spot. Who doesn’t love a good burrito the size of a newborn? The food is fresh, customizable, and you can pretend you’re making healthy choices even as you add extra cheese and guac. Lots of Mexican food is always a win in my book.

So there you have it, my top ten favorite fast food restaurants. Now, the real question: Did I write this personally, or did AI do it for me? Cast your vote and let me know what you think! Most importantly? Say why you think it.

The post Bryce or BryceGPT Day One: The Best Fast Food Restaurants first appeared on Bryce Moore.

BryceGPT and the Future of Personaright

Now that I’ve got a subscription to Chat GPT, I’m able to make my own tailored GPTs. If you haven’t heard of this before, it essentially boils down to creating a prompt that Chat GPT will use as the starting point again and again. So instead of having to tell the AI what role you want it to take on each time you talk to it, you can get that all ironed out ahead of time, and then just click on the persona or tool you’ve developed to use it at will.

Not only that, but you can upload files to that specific GPT and then have it reference those files for specific answers. The example I saw first was of a professor uploading his syllabus and class content, and then creating a GPT that would act as a TA for his class, answering questions students might have. That worked well enough, but it got me thinking . . .

I have over 3,500 blog posts that I’ve written over the last 17 years. It’s over 2 million words of my own writing in my own voice. What if I were to upload that as a knowledge base for a GPT? Could I get it to sound just like me?

(First, a disclaimer: As a private user, I turned off the permissions for OpenAI to use my GPTs and interactions to refine their model. That said, everything that I uploaded is already freely available on the internet, so chances are it was already used.)

The first trick was to try and figure out how to actually upload all those posts. I tried just asking it to always reference brycemoore.com before answering, but I wasn’t really satisfied with the results. It was much better than vanilla GPT, but when I asked it to include personal anecdotes, it had a big tendency to make things up. So I wanted to try having the posts directly on the GPT. How could I do that?

I googled around some and saw I could export my wordpress file, which I did. That gave me an .xml file which I tried to upload directly to the GPT. It came up with an error message that I had too many words, and that stumped me. I wasn’t sure how to break the .xml file down into smaller pieces. I tried to find a converter that would turn it into a .txt file, but the ones I came across all required me to pay money. I could convert it straight across to .txt, but it had allllll this gobbledygook in it that I thought was adding too many words to the file. I was curious about this project, but not curious enough to put down actual cash on a better converter.

However, I’d read that to really figure out what AI can do, you need to try to think big. Tackle things you have no idea how to tackle. So I thought this might be an excellent time to see if AI could help me do what I needed to do. “How do I convert an .xml file to a .txt file?” I asked it. “That can easily be done by writing a python script,” it said. “I can help you.”

I am not, by any means, a coder. I have a fundamental understanding of html, and that’s about it. I think I might have written a basic code in C+ thirty years ago to get a computer to say “Hello world.” I have no idea how to code in python, and no idea what to do with that code if I ever finished it. So I told that to ChatGPT, and it assured me this wouldn’t be a problem.

And you know what? It wasn’t. Not a big problem, at any rate. It first talked me through how to check if python was installed on my Mac, and then it showed me how to save python scripts in TextEdit. It taught me how to use Terminal, and how to navigate through it so I could directly run programs within it. When my first attempt at a script failed, it went into troubleshooting mode. We went back and forth, with GPT tweaking the code and me trying the results, then pasting in the error messages when they came up.

If I had been working with a human, I would have felt like a complete idiot, and I’m sure the human would have said, “You know what? Let me just do it. I can get it done in two minutes.” But I wasn’t working with a human. I was working with an infinitely patient, ever positive AI who assured me I could get this done. In about a half hour, I did. I had parsed the .xml file into a .txt file you could read and understand fairly easily. Gobbledygook be gone!

Of course, when I tried uploading it, it said it was still too large.

I looked at the file again, and there were still a number of html tags in it. This time, writing a python script to take those out took about three minutes, because I knew what I was doing. When I tried uploading that file, I still got error messages. So I asked AI what I was doing wrong, and it suggested I use a python script to break it down into 250,000 word chunks. That took just a little bit, and I had the file separated out into 9 separate files. When I uploaded them, it worked. No more error messages.

(Just take a minute and think about that. Is python terribly difficult? I honestly have no idea, since I still don’t know how to write in it. But that no longer poses a threat to me. If I need to do something in python from now on, I have an avenue available to me, and I feel like I could likely get it done. Not only that, but I’d kind of like trying to code other things now. All you really need to know is how to be patient and how to think things through so you can figure out where the errors are cropping up. I can do that! AI takes care of the actual coding. (And if I struggle, I just paste in the original code and the entire error message, and AI does the debugging for me.) This was a really exhilarating project for me.)

I’m still working on the exact prompt to get it to behave just like me. I’ve trained it to actually use events from my life to illustrate different points as it makes arguments, and to use my own words when possible. The tone isn’t perfect yet, and it can be a bit repetitive for some reason. (Am I repetitive? Maybe I am. Maybe I use the same phrases over and over, and this is AI pointing it out to me. A favorite of its so far is “buckle up.”) But I can have it write on any topic for however long I want, in about thirty seconds. If I don’t like the output, I can refine it in another thirty seconds. Do that a few times, and the end result is uncanny.

Of course, this is only possible because I already have so much prose out there in electronic form. I’m also tempted to upload all of my creative writing to see if it can handle the creative side. I would hold back from uploading anything that’s not published yet, just out of caution of it getting out into the world, but anything that was already in print is likely already in GPT’s training model, and I sadly know it’s out there in full text on pirated sites as well.

I’m going to try an experiment for the next while. For some of my blog posts, I’m going to still write it myself. For others, I’m going to have BryceGPT write it. I will then ask my readers to vote if they think it was written by me or by my GPT. I’m not sure what I’ll do if people can’t tell any difference at all. That would mean I’ll have created a way for anyone to write a Bryce post with no Bryce included. I could start paying a trained monkey to post something each day. If AI gets a smidge smarter to the point where it can carry out macros, I could set things up to have it write the posts, post the posts, and respond to the comments, all without me lifting a finger. I guess at that point, I retire to a beach somewhere while BryceGPT starts handling all of my email correspondence? If the video capabilities get good enough, I could have it start handling my Zoom calls, as well, as long as it filmed me talking on Zoom for long enough. (And believe me, I’m long enough on Zoom that it wouldn’t take that long . . .)

People would be able to continue talking and interacting with me for years after my death. Would BryceGPT be able to give opinions on news events as they come out? I don’t see why not, as long as it’s aware of what’s happening. I do wonder if it would change its opinions on things over time, based on the events that unfolded. Would it anticipate how I would react to those events, and then remember those reactions?

This is with technology that’s practically available already. Today. At the bare minimum, it’s with technology that is very much in the near future. And it’s got me wondering what, exactly, is intelligence. Is it possible that this software that makes connections between trillions and trillions of words and concepts and then starts to make decisions based on those connections is not much different than sci-fi levels of artificial intelligence? Are we already there? Close? How would we know?

What makes me and my opinions different from the sum of all my previous thoughts and opinions? Will authors and others with prolific electronic presences begin to loan out their GPT selves for different purposes? Could I just have BryceGPT write a Bryce book each day? What would be the difference between it and some knockoff BryceGPT, where someone just scraped all the same internet files that are available online, and did the same steps? Yes, one could be considered “authoritative” and the other would be unofficial, but how different would the end results be?

These are very real questions that have yet to be answered. I don’t know how things will be handled. It’s not really an issue for anyone who hasn’t taken the time to be so public or prolific, but for any author or actor or public figure out there who’s got enough works to upload a representative sample? Perhaps we’ll develop laws around the corpus of a person’s writings/videos/electronic presence, and only people who have the right to use those works will be able to do anything with them online, with the power of prosecution and lawsuit brought to bear when necessary. It wouldn’t really be copyright, it would be . . . personaright.

If you wait long enough after the death of the person in question, does their personaright enter the public domain? Can anyone can use it to do anything they want? A hundred years from now, could someone use BryceGPT to sell toothpaste? (Assuming people listened to my opinions at that point, of course.) What if we had ShakespeareGPT or TwainGPT or DickensGPT or TolkienGPT or BogartGPT or PresleyGPT or BachGPT? Could anyone use those, or would personaright be perpetual? Only usable by the family? Or banned from being used at all once the person no longer has the ability to sign off on the performance or prose?

Is there a future where BryceGPT hangs out in the seedier corners of the internet, used by people willing to break the law?

I have no idea. I’d say, personally, that I’m not sure I like the idea of BryceGPT doing things without my–and only my–permission, though I don’t mind the thought of BryceGPT being around after I’m no longer here, able to chat with my children or grandchildren or whoever wants to talk with me. Yes, they’d know it’s not actually me, but if you can’t tell the difference, how much would it matter?

The post BryceGPT and the Future of Personaright first appeared on Bryce Moore.

Television Review: Shogun

I’d heard a lot of good things about Shogun when it first started airing. Enough to make me sit up and pay attention, but not enough to get me to actually watch it. (Honestly, these days there are so many different things to watch, if I get something new, it typically has to wait in line.) Once the show was complete, I heard even better things, so it got bumped up on my priority list. The whole show is over on Hulu now. (Though now that it was so successful, they’re suddenly talking about making a second season. Regardless, the first season stands alone as a complete story, so you don’t have to worry about any cliffhangers that never get resolved.)

Denisa and I really enjoyed it from start to finish. Based on historical events in Japan, it would best be summed up as Game of Thrones, but take out the dragons and put in samurai instead. There’s no magic, but there’s plenty of political machinations, and a whole lot of violence. I think the thing that appealed to me most about it was how authentic it felt. Now, I’m no expert on Japanese history, so it could have gotten everything wrong, but it felt consistent. They present a culture that’s so foreign to anything and everything I’ve seen before. The people make decisions that make complete sense to them while absolutely no sense to me, as a modern American. The thought of killing myself because I might have shamed my superior wouldn’t even come up on my radar, let alone killing my entire family as well. It’s brutal and heart wrenching, and the show doesn’t shy away from it.

Would I say I feel like I know what life was like in feudal Japan now? Nope. But I sure did see a fascinating presentation of what it might have been like, and I’d like to find out more.

The story focuses on the events following the death of the king. His counselors jockey for position, as the heir is only a young child. At the same time, Christianity has come to Japan in the form of Portuguese priests, but one of the main characters, an English sailor, has arrived in hopes of breaking the grip the Portuguese have on trade with the nation. We see much of the story through that sailor’s eyes, so he’s as bewildered and confused as we are, which helps to make things less confusing, somehow.

The acting, plot, music, and production design are all top notch. Really, I can’t find anything to critique (though perhaps I’d be able to if I was more familiar with the history). In the end, I gave it a 10/10 and very much recommend it. Be aware going in that there are some very (very) violent things that happen in the show. Let’s just say I never want to meet the business end of a samurai sword. But if that doesn’t turn you off, there’s a bunch of great television in front of you.

The post Television Review: Shogun first appeared on Bryce Moore.

An Artificially Intelligent Language Tutor

Hi! Me again. Still digging into the different ways artificial intelligence can and will impact our future. There’s a whole lot of hand wringing and worrying out there, and while I’m not saying there aren’t big concerns, I am saying that there’s also a whole lot to be excited about. Case in point? Using AI to learn a language.

I’ve been Duo Lingoing my way through Czech for the past 550 days or so, and that’s been entertaining enough. I’m not entirely sure how much Czech I’m actually learning, but if I ever need to talk about how Katerina loves successful spiders, then I am most definitely prepared. Duo Lingo does a great job gamifying language learning and inspiring you to keep at it day after day. But (at least for Czech) it doesn’t really offer anything in the way of practice actually having a conversation.

So this morning, I turned to ChatGPT to see how well it would handle being my language tutor. (Note: I have subscribed to ChatGPT for at least a month or two, as I want to put it through its paces. So far, I have not regretted that subscription in the slightest.) So I gave it the following prompt: “I am trying to keep my German up. You’re a helpful German tutor. Ask me questions in German and respond in German. When necessary, correct my german when I make mistakes in my responses.”

Without batting an eye, it immediately shifted to German and was off and running. I chose German, because I wanted to have an actual clue how accurate it was being. The answer? Definitely accurate enough, since I didn’t notice any problems at all. I typed back and forth with it for a while, but again, that wasn’t giving me experience speaking the language. So I switched over to the app on my phone, where I knew how to easily turn on the text to speech function.

It didn’t even bat an eye. It remembered what I’d been talking about on my laptop, and we continued the conversation. And you know what? It really felt like I was talking to an actual German. I know that, because when I speak with an actual German, my tongue ties up because I become anxious about sounding like an idiot. I had that same feeling with ChatGPT at first. But as we went on, it started to really dawn on me that I could tell it whatever I wanted, with as bad as grammar as I had, and it would just patiently correct me and offer suggestions.

So I switched to Slovak (mainly because I still feel like I’m better at Slovak than Czech). I gave it this prompt: “I am just beginning to speak Slovak, and I need help improving my vocabulary. You’re a patient, helpful Slovak tutor. Let’s have a conversation in Slovak. When I don’t know a word, I’ll write it in English. Tell me what those words mean, and continue the conversation in Slovak.” (Yes, those prompts all sound like I’m about to role play or do some improv, but AI really works better if you tell it clearly who you want it to be.)

It did exactly as I asked, no problem, except it started rattling off Slovak that was beyond me. I told it (in English) to scale back to something easier, and it changed the direction of the conversation. I still couldn’t understand everything, so I told it to repeat everything it said to me in English after it said it in Slovak. (It even put those remarks in parentheses, all on its own.) When I didn’t know how to say something, I put English words instead, and it cheerfully helped me know how to put it properly. We had a chat about Groundhog Day (of course). I didn’t try it in actual speech, because I didn’t feel ready for that yet, but I’m confident it could handle it.

That’s all from the same tool that will write an Elizabethan sonnet about batman using only words that start with the letter B. (It couldn’t quite pull it off, but it was a valiant attempt.)

Beneath black battlements, bold Batman broods,
Baleful but brave, battling bane’s brood.
Beneath beleaguered bastions, beguiled,
Bewitched by blight, his burden, a bitter bile.

Beside bleak byways, brigands boldly bite,
Beckoning Batman, beacon of the night.
Brandishing batarangs, he battles foes,
Banishing blight, his bravery bellows.

Byzantine byplays, beneath Gotham’s beams,
Betrayals build, beguiling dreams.
But Batman bears burdens, beneath his breast,
Bound by belief, his battle never rests.

Behold, the bat! A blemish on the black,
Beloved by brethren, banishing the bleak and back.

It’s the same tool that will draw pictures or help you with math homework or plan a day out in Glasgow. The amount of things it can do already, even if it never improves at all, is astonishing. Go ahead and give it a try on language lessons if you want to give an old language some practice, or want to try a new one.

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Creating a Film Festival Playlist

Denisa and the girls are going to be gone for two weeks at the end of August, meaning I’ll be flying solo for that time. When I was trying to figure out what I’d do, an idea that really appealed to me right away was to have a film festival. Nothing too extravagant or anything. It’s not like I’d be renting out a movie theater or anything. But I thought it would be fun to have a few friends over for a pre-selected slate of movies over an extended period of time. My first thought was to have it every evening while they were away, but the logistics of that quickly showed me that wasn’t in the cards. So instead, I decided to plan something that would just last five days.

But what movies to pick?

There are so many different ways to approach this. For my graduation party, I did something I called Stupid Movie Fest, where we watched a string of comedies all day long. (I think it was 5 movies total. It was glorious.) So I could pick a particular genre of movies and really explore it, or I could pick movies from a certain time period, or go with movies in a series. Choices, choices, choices.

I didn’t want to show movies that are too well-known, because I really like the idea of introducing people to films that are classics. The nice thing is that the older I get, the more movies I’ve seen, and the more the movies that I watched a ton when I was younger become forgotten today. So I can look like I really know what I’m talking about, without having to watch literally everything out there. In the end, I thought it would be most fun to pick a movie from each decade, from the 1920s to the 2010s. But even that was really difficult to winnow down. One movie that was supposed to somehow represent the entire decade?

It was a starting point, at least.

So I looked at my schedule and tried to figure out how best to handle it. If I was going to watch 10 movies in 5 days, there would have to be multiple films in the same day. For that, I wanted the movies to speak to each other somehow. I thought about going with films that had the same director or same actor, for example. At the same time, i also wanted this to be pretty family-friendly, so no one would feel uncomfortable by anything they were watching, if possible. That narrowed things down even further.

In the end, I decided to go with certain themes for three days, and then one-off movies that were strong enough for a discussion all on their own for the last two days. And since I’m sure you all really want to know what’s on the slate, here you go. I just wish I could invite everyone, but my theater set up is limited, alas.

Day One: Early horror masterpieces. If I’m starting with a movie from the 20s, then it’s going to need to be a genre movie. I was torn between slapstick and horror, and I went with horror, because this is a Bryce film festival, after all, and you can show the really influential horror movies from these decades and not worry about people getting icked out.

6pm–Nosferatu (1922) is an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and is famous as being one of the first horror movies ever. Actually, Stoker’s estate sued the filmmakers, and they were successful. All copies of the movie were ordered destroyed. Thankfully, that wasn’t 100% successful. Yes, it’s black and white. Yes, it’s a silent movie. Yes, it was made in Germany. None of that matters. Watch it.8pm–King Kong (1933)–I could have done an entire film festival just on Kong movies, but they all stem back to this one, dubbed by Rotten Tomatoes as the best horror movie of all time. Groundbreaking special effects. Long lasting influence on pop culture. What more do you want?

Day Two: The evolution of the Western. So many different choices for these decades. I could have gone with war movies or noir or mysteries or comedies or you name it. I went with Westerns because I found three that spanned the three decades pretty much perfectly. Maybe I’ll do something else next time.

2pm–Red River (1948) is one of Howard Hawks’ best films, and that’s saying something. He directed a slew of fantastic movies, many of which I debated having in the festival. Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Rio Bravo, and more. It also stars John Wayne in one of his key earlier roles. (Stagecoach appeared in 1939, so it got aced out by King Kong). Interestingly, it’s in black and white, despite the fact that it could have been in color. Hawks chose black and white because he felt it fit better, stylistically. The American Film Institute lists it as the 5th best Western.5pm–The Searchers (1956) won the top spot on AFI’s list of Westerns (and comes in at #12 on its list of best movies of all time!) Another John Wayne movie (two in one day!), this one is directed by the great John Ford. (He won the Oscar for best director four times, people. Four. Times.) This movie was a huge influence on later films and filmmakers, from Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorcese.8pm–Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) was a tough call. Do I go with this one, or The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly? In the end, I think this one is slightly less well known to American audiences, because it’s Charles Bronson instead of Clint Eastwood. (Also, because the theme music isn’t nearly as good, but what can you do?) This, despite the fact that most critics agree Once Upon a Time in the West is the better film. We needed a spaghetti western in here, and it’s great to get Henry Fonda in as well. (Sorry, Clint. It’s really your fault, seeing as how you turned down the role before it was given to Bronson.)

Day Three: Play Ball! I wanted this day to be the most family friendly of the bunch, and these three movies are all great. I picked sports movies at first, but that proved really difficult to narrow and still feel like I was doing everything justice, so I went even more narrow and picked baseball movies. I kind of assume people will have seen these, but at the same time, who doesn’t want to watch them again?

2pm–The Bad News Bears (1976) is a PG movie from a different era. Back before things like “PG-13” and political correctness. So it’s got some issues, but it’s still a great baseball movie. Who wouldn’t want to watch Walter Matthau coach a little league team? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this one. I look forward to the rewatch.5pm–The Natural (1984) has my personal vote for the best baseball movie of all time. Robert Redford is just fantastic. Yes, I could have gone with Field of Dreams, instead, but in a cage match between the two movies, the Natural wins. That’s just a well-known fact. Plus, the soundtrack by Randy Newman is superb.8pm–The Sandlot (1994) is one I would expect most people have seen, but how can you have a movie about baseball and skip it? I really look forward to a conversation about baseball on film after watching all three of these back to back. Of course, that assumes someone comes and actually watches all three of them back to back other than me, but maybe I’ll just have that conversation in my head.

Day Four: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). There are few films that I’ve finished watching once and then decided immediately that I wanted to watch it the next day a second time. This one by Michel Gondry, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, is one of those movies. Part science fiction, part romance, part cerebral, it really is a fantastic movie, and I think it sailed under the radar for most of the world. Yes, it’s R for language, but it is just so good and thought provoking. In a world where it’s possible to erase memories (see any connections to The Memory Thief, anyone?) Jim Carrey discovers his girlfriend has erased her memories of him, so he decides to reciprocate.

Day Five: Spotlight (2015). I initially went with The Social Network, but Daniela won’t be there, and I’d really like to watch that with her, so I shifted to this one, instead. It’s a Best Picture, so hardly one that people won’t have heard of, but it’s such a good example of the importance of unbiased reporting, something which is more and more moving to the wayside these days. Another R rating, though for more for the subject matter than the content. In the end, I picked this one because I’ve only seen it once, and I really wanted to see it again.

And there you have it. Is it the perfect line up? No, but I’m not sure the perfect line up exists. My hope is that it’s gone some movies on there people haven’t seen, and some that are worth everyone revisiting. (I mean, I’ve already seen all of them, so . . . ) Will I ever do another film festival like it? Who knows, but it should be fun to have tried it once.

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Current Mood: Deeply Discouraged

It’s been a bit of a humdinger the last few days. It started off with a presidential debate that was (or should have been) tremendously disappointing for the entire country. On the one hand, you had the current President fumbling to make any coherent arguments and sound like he had half a clue of what he had done or wanted to do. On the other, you had the former President lying repeatedly, ignoring any and all questions that didn’t touch on the three or four lies he wanted to keep hammering. To top it all off, the two of them ended up making fun of each other’s golf game, then started name calling. The only question not answered was whose dad could beat up whose.

It was like I’d bought a ticket for a buffet, and when I got my plate, I saw there were two options: rotting meat and raw sewage. I’ve known all along I wanted nothing to do with raw sewage, but now I’ve got got some Democrats trying to convince me why the rotting meat should just stay in the buffet, because if they swapped it with anything else (say . . . cauliflower), people would just flock to that raw sewage, especially if it turned out the cauliflower at some point in its past had been in contact with dirt.

Have a little faith in American, people. Do I hope we, as a country, decline to select raw sewage as our dining option for the next four years? You bet. But maybe we should make it a smidge easier for people to choose “anything else” if that “anything else” isn’t swarming with flies as well.

As if that wasn’t enough, now today we just had the Supreme Court rule that Presidents have “some immunity” when it comes to what they did while in office. If that was all it was, then I guess I wouldn’t have been too depressed. But I’ve read the decisions (and the dissents), and what the court did was waaaaaay more than simply say Trump was immune from prosecution for any official acts he made while President. They ruled that anything a President does that touches on any official capacity is something that earns immunity. Trump tried to strong arm the Attorney General to overturn the election. He threatened to fire him if he didn’t. Immune. He did similar things to the Vice President. Immune. Not just that, but anything the President does or says–regardless of legality–while acting in an official capacity is something that can’t even be considered in any trial against the President.

The Court went way beyond ruling Trump had some immunity. I have a tough time seeing a scenario where he’s actually held accountable for anything he did or didn’t do on January 6th and the days leading up to it. As was said in the dissent, the Court basically told all Presidents that they have carte blanche to do whatever they want, as long as they do it officially. The majority tried to claim in its ruling that the steps they were taking were minor and reasonable. I find them anything but, especially in light of just what sort of an impact this ruling can have on the country’s future.

The thought that we might have four more years of Trump, now with him fully recognizing just how much free rein he has, is horrifying.

So . . . yeah. I guess I’m looking at ways to minimize the impact of rotting meat on my digestive tract. Maybe with a sprig of mint?

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Teaching the SATs

Daniela’s heading into her junior year next year, and that means it’s time for another of my kids to take the SATs. I didn’t do too much prep work with Tomas, but I want to do what I can to help Daniela. Test taking is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved, and it was something I was pretty good at, back in the day. Of course, it’s been almost 30 years since I last took the SAT, so I wasn’t too sure if I had a good enough idea of where it is today for me to be able to adequately help Daniela.

Luckily, there are practice tests you can take online. My plan was to just have her take some of those and then go over the answers she got wrong after the fact. Yesterday, I took some time to figure out how to take the tests (you install the actual program that’s used to administer the tests). Once that was done, I saw it only took 2.5 hours to take the SATs . . .

So I went ahead and took one.

I really just wanted to blow through it as fast as I could so that I had knowledge of how it works. I didn’t need to do well, I just needed to be able to teach Daniela. So I didn’t check any of my answers, and I went at a fast clip. My big takeaways? Reading and Writing have some very densely written writing selections to analyze that I needed to reread a few times to really get a handle on what they were saying. The Math section had only a few questions where I was totally at sea. (I can’t remember what SIN and COSIN and all that stuff do for the life of me, so that was one question I knew I wasn’t going to get, as it wasn’t even multiple choice.)

However, I also learned you can see how many questions you have left to go on the bottom of the screen, you can mark questions you’re not sure of, to come back to later, the test has a built-in calculator, and I was reminded again that it goes out of its way at times to try to trick you. You have to pay close attention to what it’s actually asking you to answer. There were a couple of math questions that I got wrong simply because I wasn’t paying attention.

Once I was done, it gave me the results. On Reading and Writing, I got a perfect 800. No questions wrong. That was kind of a relief, as you’d figure with how much I use language every day in my job and my writing, that I’d be pretty good at it compared to a high school level. For Math, I got a 640. 13 questions out of 44. If I slowed down and actually boned up on a couple of the different techniques, I’m sure that would be higher. Still, a 1440 isn’t too off from what I had in high school when I’d just learned all the stuff, so I was pretty happy with that score.

The good news is that I feel like I really can help Daniela be as prepared as possible now. Taking it myself reminded me of a whole slew of things, and it was also reassuring that you don’t really need to know that much outside knowledge to be able to succeed. No fancy formulas or equations, for the most part. Just solid, normal math. We’ll get to work on creating a practice regimen this evening. (I’m sure Daniela is thrilled . . . )

My other main takeaway is that I still enjoy taking tests. Yes, I’m strange. I get it. But it really feels like a series of puzzles to me, where I get graded by how well I do at the end of it all. For some reason, that’s something that really appeals to me. (Will I take the test again, to see if I can get that math score up? I’m not saying I will . . . but I’m not saying I won’t, either.)

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Movie Review: The Boys from Brazil

Denisa’s still away, so when it comes to what I watch, it’s been a much simpler process. Basically, I just skim through movies until I see something that looks intriguing at all, and then press play. (This isn’t to say it’s Denisa’s fault that it’s harder to figure out what to watch with her. Rather, that it becomes more difficult as soon as you add a second person to the mix, regardless of who that person is.)

In any case, last night the movie that caught my eye was The Boys from Brazil. Why? Because it was nominated for three Oscars (including best actor), it stars Laurence Olivier as a Nazi hunter and Gregory Peck as Dr. Mengele, and it looked like it had a twisty turny plot. That was enough for me. All told, it was a decent movie, especially considering the fact that I hadn’t heard of it at all before.

It takes place in the early 80s. Ex-Nazis are still living down in Paruguay, and an amateur Nazi hunter (played by a young Steve Gutenberg) finds out Dr. Mengele is up to something. (He actually died in 1979, but the movie was based on a book that came out before Mengele died, so at the time it actually wasn’t completely preposterous that the doctor of Auschwitz might come up with some sort of crazy Nazi plan.) When Olivier’s character catches wind of it, he kicks into gear to try and stop it, even though it makes absolutely no sense on the surface. (Mengele wants to assassinate 94 completely ordinary 65 year old men.)

It definitely ended up taking some turns I didn’t see coming, though by about half way through, things began to get clearer, and by the end it was pretty obvious to the point of it feeling like the Big Reveal was fifteen minutes too late, give or take. Still, seeing as how it was dabbling in technology and science that’s around forty years old, I suppose that’s not too surprising.

Olivier and Peck both do good jobs, though Olivier wins out. (He took the job at the time because he was getting older and wanted to provide for his family once he passed. Peck took the job because he wanted to work with Olivier.) It was fun to see the two of them chew up some screen together. Overall, I gave it a 7/10.

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