Author Archives: Eric

YouTube and Silo Entertainment

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Voice typing is something that requires more setup then I think works well with actually getting started on my treadmill. With time I think this will become something better than what it is right now but I need to have a lot more things preset before I start. There’s also a lot more editing to be done after the fact. My typing is slow, but the edits are a whole lot faster. More set up, more follow up.

I think that goes with the theme of what I want to talk about.

There are a lot of things that the computer does really really well. There is an amazing amount of information and entertainment that is at my fingertips all day, every day. I have discovered that there are certain things that I enjoy watching on YouTube. Problem is, I also like to use YouTube to find new things that I’m interested in watching or listening to. I say this is a problem not because there isn’t an infinite variety of things on YouTube, but because YouTube makes an effort to specifically cater to the other things that you have already watched. There are two particular, I’ll call them chat show hosts, that have very interesting guests and interviews.

I’m not quite sure how to express what it is that YouTube does. I have watched an interview with a particular host, therefore YouTube me a huge list of other things that this particular host has done. The two chat show hosts that I found interesting have hundreds of videos available. Now my “suggestions” page is nothing but videos from these particular chat show hosts or music from the one or two artists that I have listened to. Literally nothing else.

This list of suggestions is fantastic when that’s what I want to listen to. If I don’t want to listen to one of them or I’ve gone through all of the interviews or items that I found interesting from these particular interviewers and want to find something different, I now have two type in specific search words in order to find anything. Then even if I have searched for something different, still about half of my list are items related to the videos I’ve already seen. Not only does that make it very difficult to find other things that are new and interesting, but it narrows my selections to things that this computer program believes are my taste. This doesn’t give me an opportunity to find things that might not necessarily match exactly what I have watched before. It becomes a silo. It’s almost as if there is nothing else in the world except what I have seen already or the people that I have already indicated that I enjoy listening to.

YouTube is not the only entertainment provider that does this. Netflix is actually another provider that does something very similar. The list of videos that are recommended to me from Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, or any other place where I actually watch videos has become an extremely narrow selection. I only see things similar to what I’ve seen.

I think one of the things we need is an ability to have what I would call an anti-logarithm. The computer has the search pattern that it thinks it gives me all the things I want to see, but I want an alternate search pattern that gives me a list of other things with an opportunity to find something I didn’t know I was interested in. It is a struggle to find something new and interesting when my entire recommendation list is a bunch of things that match or closely match what I have already seen. It’s insular and boring.

Entertainment videos are not the only place where this becomes a problem. Facebook is another example of only showing you the things you want to see. It becomes very easy, very quickly to only ever see opinions that match your own. While I understand that there are number of times one doesn’t want to see inflammatory opinions or the ideas and concepts that make you angry, there is still a need for the availability of those things. It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy? You put an opinion out and the only people who see it are those who already agree with you. You gain a warped View of exactly how popular something really is. There is no reality check.

I wish I was better at math and/or computer programming. I think it would be a best selling app or program, that would be the “find me something new” button. I don’t know if simply applying and negative prefix to any of the programming language would provide the alternates that I’m thinking, but I’m sure there has to be a way to develop a search engine that picks out either popular or specifically different trends that might not necessarily match the things you’ve already seen. I think more people need this in greater quantity than ever before. Not just from an entertainment point of view, but also from an information standpoint. Most people these days receive and process more information than ever before. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of filtering all the information to become just the things you want to hear it gives a warped perspective and it’s terrible for actual entertainment value.

Perhaps what I need to do is float this idea out there for free. Somebody needs to make that app or program that is called “change my mind”. Even that is actually a meme that I’ve already seen before. I don’t know its origin, I just know that it’s really popular. A guy sitting behind a card table in a park with a cardboard sign hanging in front of it. Written on the cardboard is an inflammatory or challenging question, ending with “change my mind”. I don’t think asking the people who like the same things you like to change your mind is necessarily an effective tool. I think if there were a statistical or mathematical based program it would work in a much healthier manner.

I may regret this part, but they’re only about a half a dozen people that read this. Give me a comment that is something I should search for on YouTube or Netflix that will change the search patterns that has narrowed my entertainment. I both look forward to, and cringe at the thought, of what you all have to say.

Wrinkle

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A Wrinkle in Time (Time, #1)A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s difficult to offer up a ‘review’ of a book deemed by many to be a classic of genre fiction.

I did not read this book when I was a teenager. I read it recently, partly for a book group and partly so I would have the book version in my mind before I watched the movie adaptation.

I suspect that IF I had read the book when I was a teenager the impact would have been vastly different than reading it as an adult. I understand why so many people relate to it. I understand why it’s considered a classic. It’s a good book. I wasn’t overwhelmed – but I think I missed the ‘sweet spot’ as far as the age to read this book.

What I am going to do is give it to my daughter and let her know that it’s worth HER reading it. It is a classic. If you haven’t read it, it’s a quick read and worth the effort.

View all my reviews

Seeking

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Truthseeker (Worldwalker Duology #1)Truthseeker by C.E. Murphy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I actually finished reading this book some time ago, but have just now gotten around to the review.

It’s marked as a duology – so it shouldn’t be a shock that this book doesn’t have a complete ending. It reaches a good finishing point, but you have to read them both to get the whole thing.

I didn’t get to the second one. I can’t put a finger on exactly what didn’t catch me on this one. I will say it did something that I haven’t seen in other books.

– spoilers if you haven’t read it yet –

There’s a part where the main character travels by magic to fairy land. She’s supposed to be able to get right back to the time when she left. She doesn’t. I’ve read a number of alternate world stories and it’s unheard of to actually then deal with somebody not getting back to their place during the time when they should have been there. Sure, there are the ones where people are placed out of time by a hundred years or more – but this one was more like 6 months and then the main character shows up again. And has to deal with court cases and missing persons cases that are being handled by the police *about them*. It was very refreshing to see that. It was one of the things I really enjoyed about this book.

I think there’s a lot of good stuff here for fans of urban fantasy.

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Limit Your Greed

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Limit Your Greed: Put principles above money to build better businesses and a better world (and still make a profit)Limit Your Greed: Put principles above money to build better businesses and a better world by Bill Catchings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stay away from 5 star ratings generally, but I do genuinely think this book qualifies.

I will add the disclaimer here that I know one of the co-authors BUT I went and purchased my own Kindle version of this book.

Then I went and bought a hard copy so I could hand it to a co-worker. When she’s done with it I’m going to start noting things up and seeing what sorts of practices I can pull from the book and apply to the office I work in.

In case you’ve missed it – I like this book. I don’t read a lot of business books, but if other business books were like this one I’d likely read a lot more of them. Concise, clear and well written. There’s no nonsense here. This is real world, in practice stuff.

The downside, if you can call it that, is the aim or focus of the book toward people running or starting businesses. I am not the owner of the place where I work. IF I were the owner I’d be in a much better position to push for changes like these. As it is, I am going to need to figure a way to get these ideas across to the owners of my current office.

I recommend anyone with an interest in running a business differently go and get a copy of this book. Absolutely worth it.

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Harsh Mistress

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The Moon Is a Harsh MistressThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a selection for a local book group. I’m glad it was picked.

I’ve read other works by the author but never this one. I had no idea what to expect, no preconceived notions with regard to the story. My “notions” were all related to the author himself.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Yes, there are a number of anachronistic things in the book. It was published more than 50 years ago – of course some of the devices and gear won’t look “new”.

The thing that struck me most was the number of ideas at play in there. Little things that amounted to “throw away” bits in the book. The main character is dealing with a computer that has become self aware. The main character then considers his interactions with the machine not just as a person to a tool, but takes into account the “feelings” of the machine, at one point mentioning that he doesn’t want it to become suicidal. This in an age that still thought the computer needed to be a room sized thing with tubes. Like I said – ideas.

There are lots of good things to chat about in here. It’s a classic that is worth picking up and checking out.

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Audio Learning Curve

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I’m sure that I’ve mentioned this before in my writing. I don’t remember where, but I’m certain that I have because I was incensed. I once read an article in a newspaper that was by one of the staff reporters. This staff reporter had, and I believe still has, regular space that presumably she’s paid well for. This article that she spent considerable space and time on said, in a nutshell, I have nothing to say but there was a deadline so I typed out all these words and turned it in. I couldn’t believe that a professional would simply put something like that out. If it were a column by a satirist like Dave Barry, then I could much more easily understand why something like that would be “newsworthy” for lack of better term. Notably satirists tend not to waste their column space. This person is nowhere near that sort of level nor is she a satirist. This is also something that always bothered about people who on their blogs or their Vlogs or their audio podcasts do essentially the same thing – putting out a big fat pile of “I have nothing to say”.

I haven’t been on the computer much at all when I’ve been at home lately. I have been on the computer for extended amounts of time at my day job. Between that and other life circumstances it has been very difficult to have something to say that is is worthy of posting, let alone finding the time to actually sit down and be willing to get in front of a screen again. I don’t want to be one of those people that simply puts nothing out there for the sake of putting something on a screen. I hope that I can put something out there that is in some small way either useful to myself or useful to others. Perhaps I’ve been unfair now that I think about it to this other person, if she put forth the article in some form or fashion saying nothing but that was useful to her. Something I hadn’t thought of before but it still makes me angry that she got paid for a number of words that essentially said “I have nothing to say”.

Today I am continuing my experiment in audio. I have set up a way to connect my technology with my technology.

Because I spend so much time at the screen already, one of the things that I attempt to do is keep myself physically healthy. Being healthy really matters for all people, but specifically for people who spend a lot of time in a sedentary position working at a screen. I don’t know that this this post necessarily counts as “something to say”, but I’m putting it out there so that if there are any other authors who feel the time crunch that I do combining family and work and other things with their craft. I have a treadmill in the same room with the computer. It took me awhile to come around to the solution, and once I mentioned it to a friend found out that it is not new or even necessarily uncommon. I have added a shelf over the front end of the treadmill and I have set up my laptop on that shelf. I then hooked my microphone in to my laptop and connected myself to the computer while walking on the treadmill. This gives me the opportunity to simply speak all of the things that I wanted to type well actually being able to walk on the treadmill and try to stay healthy at the same time.

Something else I’ve done while walking on the treadmill actually hook myself into the safety equipment. There’s an emergency stop connected to a string that you can clip to whatever you’re wearing. Normally I bypass that right away and simply use the treadmill. It’s something that I haven’t ever had problems with in the past. Now I’m clipped into the safety piece and because I don’t have a wireless microphone I’m also clipped in to the headset attached to my laptop. I think all I need now is some sort of breathing apparatus like one of those things you always see in science fiction films and I’ll look pretty out there. I went with the safety thing because I could clearly imagine the first time I tried to do this something would go horribly wrong I would fall, then the laptop would drop on my head and the tread portion of this machine would simply continue to run either or both pushing me off to the end and creating some unnecessarily painful friction.

I think I have learned a couple of lessons already this morning. First, it’s hard to type while walking so put your password before starting the walk. Next, I don’t know if there’s a way to move the cursor backwards. If there’s any kind of mistake and what it is that you said, you need to go back and edit it later. Lastly, this does make this post (and anything I’m writing) essentially a pure stream-of-consciousness writing style. I have yet to discover whether or not this will in fact make my writing any easier to read in terms of flow and understandability.

I also find it amusing, but I believe there’s the very real chance that I’ll be speaking to somebody and actually use my punctuation when I’m speaking out loud to them now. I definitely think that would be an entertaining story the first time that happens. “Oops. Sorry, I’m used to speaking this narrative into my computer and I just forgot that I was actually speaking to a person. Good news, you’re in the story now”.

Interestingly enough I’ve actually gone past my normal daily amount of walking on the treadmill while doing the speaking and still been able to knock out all these words. I think this experiment’s going to continue into the future. Hopefully that means that I’ll have more things that I will be able to say in a timely manner and get them out to my blog on a regular basis.

Now I just have to make sure that I always have something to say.

Audio Test

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I was looking for something in a Google doc a few days ago and saw a voice tool listed there. I plugged in my headphone mike and tested it out. This should be interesting. Space I got that wrong I thought I would have to actually put in the spaces but what I have to put in is the punctuation and it spaces those automatically. I’m actually testing out for the first time using a microphone to type out the things that I would normally sit here and type out. If I can talk my way through these sort of entries I think it will really make my ability to get blog post and writing a bunch of other things done far more quickly than I ever could before. I’m hopeful that this will work out and it won’t need a ton of editing but even if it needs editing this is going to be considerably faster than any other method of inputting my stories my words my anything. return paragraph Okay so any word that I’m going to say is just going to be put in there. I don’t think there’s a way to make this change paragraphs or do anything other than put lots of words together as quickly as I say them. I do have to say the word recognition is really fast. I put this paragraph together in seconds and it’s just flowing along with my words. Now what I need to do is gather up my script if you will, or my outline, and start moving forward with my stories. I have a feeling that this is going to be something considerably faster than anything I’ve done and then it’s going to take me twice as long to edit it because I don’t know how the hell to make a

The funniest thing… I said

And then it jumped to a

And I can’t actually type

I wonder if anybody reading this will see the humor in this creating a

every time I try to say

Another line another paragraph thankfully it doesn’t pick up the laughing and the snorting. I keep forgetting to put punctuation at the end of my thoughts. It’s very very odd. This is going to take a massive amount of editing I can see that already but I am very enamored with this test. I think my next piece is going to have to be a timed test to see how many words I can put together in what amount of time. Because I think I could throw down a lot more speaking then I can typing I’ve been at this for far less than 5 minutes I’m certain and I’ve knocked out a whole page without actually typing anything.

Problem that I’m finding in here is that this becomes very stream-of-consciousness very quickly and I’ve lost track of what I was saying and I can see looking back at the page above that I repeat myself and tend to use the same words frequently and these things show up very clearly when someone else is typing for you even if that’s somebody else’s the magic Google computer.

I’m going to have to edit this after my next meeting and post about it. my first foray into the land of somebody else typing for me.

My Birthday

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I’ve made another full spin around the sun. It was my birthday yesterday. I am now shockingly close to being 50 years old. I’m not there yet, but that thought has started creeping around in my head. Does it have some kind of deeper meaning? I suspect that if it does, I’m missing it. It has been pointed out to me lately that I am likely missing quite a few things and that I am notably unobservant about certain things.

In an attempt to take a closer look and attempt not to ‘miss’ anything I’ve been giving the birthday and age thing a few thoughts.

I’ve reached that nebulous age that you can never picture when you’re a kid.

I went through the stage where I claimed I didn’t like girls. I claimed I would never date and certainly never get married (deep shudder). Then I started to figure out that dating was OK and maybe – just maybe girls were acceptable to speak to.

Then there was dating and all the early kinds of things people go through. Do I go and talk to that person? What if they reject me? What if it’s totally publicly humiliating like last time? Is anyone actually interested? What if I never find anyone?

I started trying to picture the future – and it never looked like it does now. It involved the job I have now but the work was the only clear part. I didn’t have anything else particularly nailed down. I thought I did, but looking back on it I realized I had no actual plan. Then I found someone. Well, I thought I’d found “the one”. She didn’t agree, and that hurt quite a lot.

Something I’ve learned over time is that generally speaking I will wind up where I am supposed to be. All of the circumstances surrounding that particular relationship and the subsequent messes following that brought me to the point where I DID meet the one. It has been a crazy journey since then – but NOTHING that you dream about as a kid. It’s not any single thing, but so many little things that the journey brings along with it.

So here I am in that grey area – more than just the hair – where kids tend to not dream about being. That area has brought with it a lot more introspection (or what some folks have deemed ‘naval gazing’) and thoughtfulness about birthdays and their deeper meaning.

In short, I’m doing great. Right on target. I expect to have a fancy new mid-life crisis sports car very soon now – I’ll let you know what color!

Schedule!

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For around 25 years now I’ve been attending the Baltimore Science Fiction Society‘s annual convention. It’s the convention I consider “home base” as it was the first one I ever went to.

Once again this year I am delighted to be an invited guest and will be speaking at a number of panels and attending a book launch (GO JEFF!).

IF any of you are headed to Baltimore this weekend and are interested, here is my schedule:

Finding Your Space in Fandom
[7] Room 7029, 5pm – 5:55pm

Fandom can be big, but we can find each other based on our specifics interests, mutual friends, and online hangout spots.

SMOFing for Fun (But Probably Not Profit)
[12] Club Lounge, 10am – 10:55am

Running conventions is fun, but it’s also akin to herding cats or nailing jello to a wall. Come talk to SMOFs about steering the group, organizing events, and keeping afloat.

What Makes a Good Book Review?
[12] Club Lounge, 11am – 11:55am

There are many ways to approach writing a review. How much do you recap? How much do you focus on the themes or characters? Should review from your own experience or that of the average reader, and how much of a review is just the rating?

Reading Outside Your Genre
[5] Mount Washington, 6pm – 6:55pm

If you only stay within genre you love to read, it can be hard to figure out where to best start exploring outside your comfort zone. How can you learn to enjoy books you might not otherwise be interested in, and how do you approach difficult-to-read and older styles of writing?

The End (of the secret)

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It’s been much longer and more drawn out than I anticipated posting all the things I wrote about being a Neilsen Family. I think this final post is a fair comparison to the entire experience. If you’ve been reading along you might think, “Huh, I kind of forgot all that stuff…” and by the end that’s kind of where I was with plugging the number into the remote every time I watched TV. It sort of became this afterthought rather than some kind of actual, accurate tracking thing in my mind. We’re close to a year since all the equipment went away and I can say that while intellectually I might miss the influence, I most certainly don’t miss tracking stuff and having extra buttons laying about.

Another interesting note? The amount of television watched has fallen back off a cliff. People will say, “have you watched…” and generally speaking the answer is no. There just isn’t enough there for me. Sure, there are quality shows out there and things I want to watch, I just don’t feel the need to rush out there to see any of them. I never did get to that ‘one more’ entry I thought I would get (unless you count this one). Here’s the final entry in the ‘secret’ series:

June 27, 2017

Habits are hard to break. Going cold turkey is certainly a way to break a habit. I was told last night by my wife that the folks from Neilsen called. They will be stopping by the house today and unhooking all the monitoring stuff from our home.

That’s it, we’re done. Cold turkey indeed.

It’s actually difficult to believe that it has been 2 years already. In that same breath I also find myself thinking it’s a good thing to stop now. We’ve gotten into a routine with the monitoring equipment and there are a lot of days when I actively question the accuracy of what we’re showing. How many times have we not had the right folks listed compared to who’s actually sitting in the room watching (or listening) to what we’re playing? Hard to say.

How many times have I come home to find that the music I had been playing when I left (and allowed to continue to play for those staying at the house) was done and everything had just been sitting there waiting for me to come back and “check in” for the purposes of ratings?

How accurate are those ratings when we switch to a streaming service and avoid the regular TV channels? We are well into the worst part of the year for television in my opinion – it’s terrible. More terrible than I normally find it. We have the system on, but most often are playing music via a streaming service. Does that count?

What I would love to know is what our profile has looked like over these 2 years. I have no doubt that we’ll never be able to see or know any of that, but I think it would be fascinating. What did we say we were doing / watching vs. what we were actually watching in terms of hours on the system? Information that is up for sale…

And that’s the reason for the big secret all this time. What we’ve sold to Nielsen is something they’ve packaged and sold to somebody else. We’ve had our time, we’ve tried to show what our preferences would be and in the end we’re just part of the larger numbers that broadcasters are aiming for.

I hope the few shows I really like survive. I don’t believe for a minute that the shows we don’t care for will suffer for us not watching them. I would hope that, but we are still clearly not the target demographic for a lot of stuff.

I suspect there will be one more blog entry after this. The post departure impressions and how things have changed after all the monitoring equipment left the house. How the kiddo will deal with the change (or if she’ll notice). Hopefully all this will prove to be interesting reading (if only there were a way to track that…).