My latest project: Mobilizing Zork

I'll be the first to admit: I have no idea if this is going to actually go anywhere.  But for the past few years I've had an idea and it's always seemed like a fun one.  And it would definitely be a challenge to pull off.  But things have changed since my forays into programming (with the C language, in 1995) and I'm thinking that this might really be possible so, we're going to find out.

A while back a crazy notion hit me: to play Zork on my iPhone and iPad.  Yes that Zork: the 1977 text-only role-playing game.  A game that kept countless insomniacs awake long into the night as they explored the Great Underground Empire in all its riches, its horror, and occasional hilarity.  There were no graphics at all involved with Zork: like most any good story it played out primarily in one's imagination, with only the on-screen descriptions awaiting your command for the parser to further the tale.

Envision that on the screen of an i-device or something running Android.

It's too wild an idea not to do.  The absurdity of it: a modern mobile appliance, with all its portable power and potential - thousands upon thousands of times the combined computing capability that put the space shuttle into orbit on all those missions - running a text adventure.  The text adventure, mind you.  The game that in one way or another has boasted the core technology of every role-playing game on every device in the past half-century.  It would be at once a step forward and a loooong leap backward, to do that.

Well, like I said, it's too perverse not to try to pull off.

A few months ago Microsoft published the original source code for the first three Zork games.  Yes, it's open source now.  Meaning that it can be played and finagled with to one's heart's content.  It's noteworthy that these are the first three of the original Zork games.  When the game was first created circa 1977 it was  much too big for the personal computers then just starting to hit the market.  So Zork was split into three games.  This source code is for the full experience.

For the past few weeks I have been in the process of taking the source code and running it through ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and some other artificial intelligence systems.  Pouring in the raw code and producing something that should, theoretically, be compilable into an app for iPad and iPhone.  It hasn't been easy, not for the least of which reasons being that I don't have a Mac or other desktop computer powerful enough to test the finished product on.  And so far as I can tell I've only been recreating the game's engine.  The associated geography, items, monsters etc. are still waiting to be implemented.

But what has been produced so far, well... it looks an awful lot better than the discombobulated code that I was generating for that Computer Science 101 class at Elon three decades ago.  I've some confidence in it.  A lot of people who know better about such things than I swear that AI has become pretty competent about creating source code.  Which, I still consider "cheating" in vast part.  But maybe AI in this case is a pretty sensible tool toward creating a piece of software.  I don't know.  What I do know though is that so far I've a few pages worth of code ported to the language and syntax of i-devices.  And maybe that will sooner than later be something letting players discover a place first explored by their parents and grandparents.

So, that's my project.  We'll see if it comes to any fruition.  That is if a grue doesn't devour me first...

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Artemis II has launched and is on its way to the Moon!

 

Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

"Go Baby, GO!!!"

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn't want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn't tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said "Okay, it's up.  NOW can we go?!"

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I've harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale... and the feelings of the world in general... if those four astronauts return safely.

History happened tonight.  May this be only the beginning of the next adventure of man's journey into the cosmos.

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Dear NASA: Don't launch Artemis II tomorrow

Dear NASA administrators:

I have a member of my family who was part of the team at Kennedy Space Center in 1986.  On January 27th he begged the higher-ups not to launch Challenger.  The space shuttle was clearly not rated for launch in such below-freezing temperatures.

My relative's pleas were ignored.  We know what happened.

I confess that my own mind is not of the caliber of those who are engaged in America's space effort.  My formal training is in history, not aeronautics and engineering.  But I'm still begging you: do not launch the Artemis II mission tomorrow.  In fact, don't launch it at all.

The vehicle has too many issues that are being ignored, just as Challenger's were ignored for sake of the chance to have a successful mission.  The materials - especially the heat shield - are definitely not as sound as the ones that the Apollo craft were composed of.  The life support system is untested.  The rocket has leaked like a sieve so much during fueling that there is no telling what has been overlooked.

Look, few things would make me happier than to see Artemis II return to Earth with its crew of four having gone around the Moon, carrying people there for the first time in over fifty-three years.

I hate to tell you this though, but the NASA of today is not the NASA of the Sixties.  The Apollo program was an unprecedented focused effort to fulfill President Kennedy's goal of landing man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.  Almost the entirety of American industry played a role in making that happen.  There has been no such similar effort in the more than twenty years since Artemis was conceived.

I believe that humans can be returned to the Moon.  And that they can have a long-term presence there.  But such a thing cannot be rushed.  And that is what Artemis has always come across as being: a rush job.  No offense meant to its designers and builders.  And yes, I know that tomorrow is being seen as a day two decades in the making.  But it's still too soon.

So I'm begging y'all, refrain from launching Artemis II tomorrow.  Yes, daring to leap beyond the grasp of Earth is a magnificent endeavor.  But it also must be thoughtful and considerate.  And that isn't what I and others with better minds than mine are seeing is happening with this vessel.

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Somebody put a Peanuts comic strip through AI and the result is horrifying

As someone who works often in artificial intelligence, I will be the first to state that there are some things that the technology will never ever improve upon.

Charlie Brown and the gang is one of those.

For whatever reason - maybe the idea for this was hatched late one night by a first-year community college kid wishing he was old enough to get drunk - somebody fed a classic 1978 Peanuts comic strip into an AI.  Maybe they were trying to make it even funnier than what it already is.  Who knows?  The result however is downright lopsided and more than a little disturbing.

Here is the original strip.  Click to enlarge:

And here is the, ahem, "AI enhanced" edition:

That final word balloon is cracking me up!  What was the AI trying to render?!  Also, when Marcie first speaks it comes out like the Swedish Chef.

I'm actually looking forward to the AI craze dying down.  I think it will in due time.  Of course, it won't be before the landscape gets littered with those ugly data centers that destroy pristine wilderness, suck up electricity and use millions of gallons of water for cooling.  I for one could use less of that.

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I can't stop thinking about this ad from ChatGPT

My best friend since third grade Chad has encouraged me many times over the years to start running.  Chad knows something about that, being an active runner and also the veteran of numerous full marathons and countless shorter races.  Running is how he and his wife first met, during a running ministry at their church.  So maybe it's something I should have looked into a long time ago already.

Now, I can run very fast over short distances.  Maybe even faster than a lot of seasoned pros.  It's just the way I'm built and it came in handy a few times when I was at the state department of mental health.  But perhaps running a mile or so a day, if that much?  Nah, that just hasn't seemed feasible.  I have harbored doubts all this time and it didn't seem that anything could dispel them.

But then I saw this commercial for ChatGPT that aired a few times over the weekend during the NCAA basketball tournament...

Now I can't stop thinking about getting a start at running.  It seems pretty easy enough.  Maybe I needed something to synopsize the experience, in bite-size morsels of text, accompanied by epic strains of Minnie Riperton's "Les Fleurs" (a song that is stuck in my head now).

This is the very first commercial for an AI that I've seen.  I'm sure there have probably been at least a few others already but I'm not much of a television watcher, apart from my set being almost constantly tuned to nostalgia channel MeTV.

I might at last start running for exercise and fun.  There is a nice straight road that goes past my house, and every so often I see others walking and running on it.  Might as well take advantage of it too.  I turn 52 next week (though the kids I work with keep telling me that I look 35), I don't think that's too old to start anything new.

(Speaking of which, I'm considering visiting a new game store nearby tonight.  Tuesdays are when they have people teaching newcomers how to play Magic: The Gathering.  I know nothing about that game other than it uses lots of collectible cards but I'm feeling a curiosity to educate myself on what it's about.)

 

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Boffins in Australia make human neurons play Doom

For some time now there has been one ultimate benchmark for whether or not something has a truly computerized central component: Does it play Doom?  More than thirty years after iD Software released their 3D first-person shooter, it has been ported to seemingly everything from refrigerators to tractors to home pregnancy tests.  And more often than not, they do indeed run Doom.

A few years ago an outfit in Australia called Cortical Labs, working with lab-grown human neural cells, coaxed a Petri dish of neurons into playing Pong.  Which is about as rudimentary a video game as there can get.  Almost immediately the company started getting asked the same question: Could their "brains on a chip" play Doom?  Something that would require substantially more sensory input and calculation than simply moving a virtual paddle up and down.  The real matter was, people didn't want to know if the neurons could run Doom.  They wanted to know if it could play it with some semblance of a human being's participation in the game.

Lo and behold, Cortical Labs has done it.

A little high-tech box containing 200,000 human neurons is now playing Doom at Cortical Labs's facility.  It's playing FreeDoom, which is a port of the original source code that iD released a long time ago.  The classic imps, cacodemons and former humans aren't in the lab's version of the game - that would be trademark infringement - but it's still the same basic design and functionality.  "Doomguy" is moving around in Doom's simulated 3D space and firing his weapons at the generic enemy targets, just as he would if it was a living person operating him.

Furthermore, the neurons are gradually learning the parameters of the game.  They are getting better.  One can only wonder what would happen if they got turned loose in the classic doom.wad game file and started discovering how to evade, and then shoot back at, the original in-game enemies running their now-primitive but back-in-the-day awesome programmed artificial intelligence.

This is a major step forward toward the development of true AI.  If this kind of technology comes to migrate out of the lab and into industrial production, Lord only knows what kind of applications could come of it.  Some good, and some... not so much.  This is the sort of development that William Gibson wrote about in his novel Count Zero (the sequel to Neuromancer) forty years ago.  It was kind of scary then and it's a bit scary now.

I guess there could be some benefit though.  If you ever needed a more-than-silicon opponent to play Call of Duty against, there might be an ever-ready one sitting in a lab dish waiting to compete with.  That might be a spinoff (albeit not an altogether comfortable one to have).

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Me according to ChatGPT

Lately there's been a little bit of a fad on Facebook: where people are asking ChatGPT to make a caricature of them based on what the AI knows of them.  ChatGPT asks for a photo and some information and it chucks out a pretty neat likeness.

I joined in on the fun.  This is a rather accurate facsimile of my life right now (note the Vault Boy poster from the Fallout games behind me):

Of COURSE I had to include Tammy!  She is certainly a major component of the operations here at Knight Shift Headquarters.  Of my life in general actually, more than I've let on.

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This 2-and-a-half inch tall miniature portends a wild future

Yesterday I came upon a story that has wound up sticking in my gray matter, because what it foreshadows is going to be world-changing in a whole heap o' ways.  It's an article on the wargaming website Spikey Bits, of all places.  It has to do with this guy: one Huron Blackheart, of the Chaos Space Marines from the very popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures game produced by Games Workshop.

A few weeks ago the company announced that Huron is getting a new mini.  A glorious new sculpt that better reflects his malevolence and power.  Here is the preview that Games Workshop published:

Looks pretty gnarly.  I wouldn't knock on this guy's front door without my hat in my hands, my hands in plain sight, and a totally cheerful disposition.  And he'd probably still kill ya anyway on general principles.

Anyhoo, that's the picture of the Huron model that the company published.  And it wasn't supposed to hit the streets for another few weeks if not months.

But then this appeared:

That is not something that came about from the production cycle of the official Huron mini.  This is not the master sculpt.  This is the result of somebody taking the picture of the preview, running it through an artificial intelligence program, extrapolating the details including the precise dimensions, and then prototyping the model with a 3D printer.

Think about that for a moment.  Someone generated a product that can compete with the real-real-REAL McCoy, all from an image and some hardware that is now often to be found for use in your friendly neighborhood public library.  And as the price point of those 3D printers continues to go down...

It's a miniature for a tabletop war game now.  But what this miniature of Huron Blackheart represents is something far more drastic: a future where a lot of things in daily life can be "printed", including stuff that is copyrighted and patent-protected.  Imagine some enterprising lad (or lass) in the not too distant future who comes upon an advertisement for a new athletic shoe that's months away from hitting the market.  He or she could take the photo of the shoe, accurately render a three-dimension model of it, and have it physically produced in their home or garage.  Produce a matching pair, no less.

It's a marriage of a number of technologies and it really is going to be something to be fascinated with and be wary of.  It's both pretty amazing and also a bit frightening.  What is going to be the impact of this on companies who devote millions on product development?  On one hand this could be an avenue for home-grown inventors to bring their products to market without a middle man.  On the other, it threatens to take away the impetus to create new products at all.  What's the point, when a picture and an AI is all that's needed to make an item in competition with the legitimate copyright owner?

This absolutely merits keeping an eye on.  I've a gut feeling we'll be hearing more about this in the near future.

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An Aviation First: Airplane touches down safely after deploying "autoland" system

This is something I wish Dad were still here to tell about it too.  As much as he disdained computers, he would no doubt find this to be very cool...

Two days ago a Beechcraft King Air became the very first aircraft to deploy an "autoland" system after the pilot became incapacitated.  It happened in Colorado.  The Garmin Autoland that had been installed on the plane kicked in and proceeded to automatically guide the aircraft down to a safe touchdown at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.  After it came to a halt, emergency crew arrived and took care of the pilot, who is reportedly doing fine.

We have entered a new age of air flight, folks.  When this kind of thing gets to be more widely installed, a lot of people are going to be having second thoughts about going up in an aircraft.  Especially in smaller planes that may not have a co-pilot in the cockpit if Lord forbid something goes wrong with the primary pilot.

Just when I think that we're getting too technologized, something like this comes along and demonstrates to me that there really are legitimate places for more involvement by computers.  I wouldn't call myself a Luddite, but I have been adopting more of how Dad saw computers.  Well, color me deeply impressed now.

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Dear Microsoft: In the name of all that's good and holy, overhaul Word!

Well, it turns out that there was one tiny little thing that I've forgotten to do with my book's manuscript.  I totally overlooked the page numbers.  To be perfectly honest I haven't needed them all this time.  I'm so intimately familiar with my book, I can zero in on any part of the 140,000-some work.  Page numbers seemed like an afterthought, at best.

Those are what I'm trying to implement.  But I'm having a surprising amount of difficulty.  What I need to happen is for the numbering to begin several pages in, after the dedication, at the start of part one.

But I can't do that straightforward.  I doubt anyone can.  Doing so requires some splitting the manuscript into sections and that is a task all its own.  And then giving each section its own numbering.

I'm sure this lends itself toward boasting about Microsoft Word's prowess.  Buuuuut...

There has to be a much simpler way of doing this.  Come to think of it, there are quite a few things that Word could do better.  Recently a friend was lamenting on how imprecise Word is when comes to placing images.  Among other issues that I've heard of across the years.

It's enough to make me wonder: is Microsoft actively monitoring the issues that have arisen in Word?  Or has the company rested too much on its laurels with arguably its flagship productivity software?

Because seriously, when was the last time that Microsoft really lauded serious innovation in Word?  I can't think of much going all the way back to the arrival of Windows 95, thirty years ago last month.  Oh sure, there have been numerous refinements of the program... but a serious examination under the hood for purpose of - gasp! - improving it?

I'll say it if nobody else will or can: Microsoft Word needs to be rebuilt.  From the bottom-up and the inside-out.  The company needs to make a comprehensive list of all the requests and concerns and take them into account and recreate their product.  And then produce a Word that will set the platinum standard once again for word processing.

They can do this.  We know that they can.  We will absolutely appreciate it if they do.  Well, this writer in particular certainly shall.

Come on Microsoft.  I don't know if one humble blogger might have any sway with you.  But I know that I'm not alone and I think you know it, too.

Reboot Word.  You know you should.  Microsoft's original mission was to put a computer on every desktop: a tool for letting its users achieve the impossible.  Redesigning Word would be in keeping with that, and very much so.

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ChatGPT Psychosis: Yes, this is a real mental illness

I regularly work with artificial intelligence as an AI trainer.  I also have a lot of experience in the mental health field, as both a professional helping others and also as a manic depressive who has been a "consumer" of services at various times.  So this article both fascinates me and also greatly disturbs me.

The website Futurism has published a VERY disturbing article about "ChatGPT Psychosis".  Ever since the rise of that and other popular artificial intelligence "chatbots", there has been an ever-increasing number of people who have become consumed by the technology.  Maggie Harrison Dupré has turned in a remarkable report illuminating the issue.

From the article:

And that's not all. As we've continued reporting, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.

"I was just like, I don't f*cking know what to do," one woman told us. "Nobody knows who knows what to do." 

 

Her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusion, or psychosis. He'd turned to ChatGPT about 12 weeks ago for assistance with a permaculture and construction project; soon, after engaging the bot in probing philosophical chats, he became engulfed in messianic delusions, proclaiming that he had somehow brought forth a sentient AI, and that with it he had "broken" math and physics, embarking on a grandiose mission to save the world. His gentle personality faded as his obsession deepened, and his behavior became so erratic that he was let go from his job. He stopped sleeping and rapidly lost weight. 

 

"He was like, 'just talk to [ChatGPT]. You'll see what I'm talking about,'" his wife recalled. "And every time I'm looking at what's going on the screen, it just sounds like a bunch of affirming, sycophantic bullsh*t." 

 

Eventually, the husband slid into a full-tilt break with reality. Realizing how bad things had become, his wife and a friend went out to buy enough gas to make it to the hospital. When they returned, the husband had a length of rope wrapped around his neck. 

 

The friend called emergency medical services, who arrived and transported him to the emergency room. From there, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric care facility.

 

It sounds almost like something out of science-fiction.  But it's happening.  Thankfully it hasn't struck me.  Maybe one reason is because as remarkable as artificial intelligence comes across as being, I'm really not all that impressed with it.  Strip away all the shiny veneer and AI isn't much else but advanced mathematical set theory with a language emulator welded on.  Granted, it also has an enormous base of data to draw from, but proportionally not much more than has been made available to the average Internet user for more than thirty years now.

I use ChatGPAT every so often.  It can be a terrific tool, if used responsibly (and generating "art" depicting General Robert E. Lee dueling with a Predator probably isn't that).  When it comes to research it can be a solid instrument.  However do bear in mind, I do not and never will use it to "write" for me though!  Unless it's explicitly stated that it's generated by an AI, pretty much everything you read or see on The Knight Shift - apart from cited articles like in this post and the like - comes from my own mind and whatever hands-on skills and creativity I have been endowed with.  If only many others would have more confidence in their own minds and know that they are loved and appreciated in ways that no computer, regardless of how advanced, can possibly possess.

Maybe I should consider getting back into the mental health field.  It seems that there may be a burgeoning "market" soon for technology professionals who also have expertise in psychiatric health.

Since I mentioned it, here indeed is a rendering of Robert E. Lee fighting a Predator, generated by ChatGPT.  I'm not all that impressed with this either, to be honest.  Lee looks way off.  It's a pretty spot-on Predator though...

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Bleeding-edge ChatGPT artificial intelligence beaten at chess by Atari 2600

I love this story!!

I'm impressed by ChatGPT.  But I've also got a healthy respect for Atari Chess, a cartridge for the classic Atari 2600 Video Computer System from 1977.  I got Atari Chess when I was nine years old in third grade.  I'd just learned how to play chess and already wanted to get better by having a computer opponent to practice with.  Atari Chess beat me EVERY time.  Then again I've only won a single time at chess but that's beside the point...

Anyhoo, a Citrix engineer set ChatGPT against the Atari 2600 in a game of chess.  And the Atari from almost fifty years ago clobbered the modern AI.

Here's the full story courtesy of Futurism.

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How Elon Musk and DOGE did it (and are still doing it)

The past three weeks in American life have been extraordinary, to put it mildly.  There hasn't been this much history made in my lifetime since the collapse of communism.  In some ways there are parallels between the two.  The Soviet Union fell because of Gorbachev's reforms in the face of that country's unsustainable bureaucracy.  And what some are calling American Revolution 2.0 is now transpiring as a consequence of even worse bureaucracy in the United States at last being made accountable to its people.

What President Donald Trump and his administration, and especially Elon Musk and his crack team of boffins at DOGE, are accomplishing just might be the second most dramatic "kicking over the tables at the temple" ever recorded.  There will be volumes written in years and decades to come about the winter of 2025 and the shaking up of the American government that has transpired in less than a month.  It's been a beautiful thing to behold... and I am of the mind that it's going to get even better.

A writer calling himself Eko over on Substack has published an intense account of what transpired in the wee hours of the Trump years just less than 21 days ago.  "Override" reads like a William Gibson cyberpunk novel as envisioned by Ron Paul.  Eko's write-up begins thusly:

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.  

In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades. 

 

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

It's a helluva read, well worth recommending to anyone with even a passing interest in information technology or constitutional government. 

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About the Murthy vs Missouri decision...

Regarding Murthy v. Missouri: the Supreme Court decision yesterday about government coercing social media companies to censor users' activity based on political content.  SCOTUS decided that the plaintiffs had no standing and dismissed the lawsuit.

This seems like a colossal victory for the government and social media companies.  HOWEVER...

The case was *not* dismissed.  Today's ruling dealt with the temporary injunction in the case, not the case itself.  The case was REMANDED, back down the legal chain.  It could still come before the high court where the plaintiffs can better frame their arguments with solid evidence of coercion and censorship.

I believe that such a thing is not only possible, it is almost guaranteed to happen.

Twitter, or X as it's called now, is going to be VERY interesting to watch as it pertains to the case.  When Murthy v. Missouri was first filed it was confronting a seemingly unassailable block of social media companies, especially Twitter.

But Twitter/X is no longer part of that.  It's in the hands of Elon Musk now.  Who may prove to be quite enamored with the idea of opening up Twitter's old files and shed some sunlight on how his company under previous management censored content because the government told it to.

That may be a more substantive body of evidence than a few emails were as was the crux of the plaintiff's arguments.  If not in support of the Murthy plaintiffs then almost certainly worth a case all its own.

So to those who have been frustrated by today's ruling: be of good cheer.  This sort of thing has happened before, and it will again.  Personally I believe that Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas were correct in their dissent.  But I'm not ready to throw out the bathwater with the baby quite yet.  This was a ruling on the injunction, not necessarily the case itself.  The case was sent back to the lower courts.  And might still come before the Supremes again.

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My first foray into using an AI chatbot

No, I am still not going to "write" a blog post using artificial intelligence.  I'm sitting in front of a keyboard composing these words.  If you ever do see a product of AI being displayed, it's going to state as much.  Which is what I'm doing now.  What you are about to read is definitely the product of artificial intelligence.  It also represents the first time that I've used a "chatbot" to generate text.  Up until now I've avoided such things.  But as I'm currently involved in a project necessitating some familiarity with AI, there was little choice but to see what it is that I'm getting into.

A friend encouraged me to try ChatGPT.  I've been playing around with it since last night, firing hard at its walls.  And I have to say, I am intrigued.  One of the things I asked it to do was to describe the impact that the television series The Dukes of Hazzard had on high school football.  ChatGPT returned a thorough response in less than seven seconds.

This morning I tried something else: making the AI be "creative".  And now is where things start getting spooky.  The idea of a poem about the Orks from Warhammer 40,000 came to mind.  So I asked ChatGPT to compose some poetry featuring those wacky greenskins.

Here's what it came up with in the space of less than five seconds...

(I know I said previously that I wouldn't "copy and paste" an AI generated product, that I would only post screenshots.  I tried to make a screenshot with this but it was too big to fit onto one screen.  Sincerest apologies for that.)

------------------------------------------

 

"An Ode To WAAAGH!" 

by ChatGPT
05/19/2024 10:15 am EST

In the grim dark of the far future’s expanse,

Where hope is a shadow and death is a dance,

There roams a green tide with a hunger for war,

The Orks of the cosmos, in battles they soar.

 

With tusks sharp as daggers and muscles like steel,

They bellow and brawl with a fiery zeal.

Their laughter is thunder, their fury a storm,

In chaos and mayhem, their spirits transform.

 

Through rusted machines that clatter and grind,

They fashion their weapons, a savage design.

With choppa and slugga, they charge into fight,

Under skies burning red with the blood of the night.

 

WAAAGH! is their battle cry, echoing wide,

A call to destruction, no foe left to hide.

They’re born from the spores of a war-torn land,

To crush and to conquer with a brutish hand.

 

Gork and Mork, their gods of might,

Guide them through darkness, through endless night.

One brutal, one cunning, both deities grand,

In their name, the Orks spread terror unplanned.

 

Yet, in their chaos, there’s a unity fierce,

A bond of the battle, a truth they pierce.

For in every clash, in every raid,

An Ork’s heart is joyous, in war it’s laid.

 

So, heed the green tide, the Orks in their thrall,

For when they come knocking, it’s the end of it all.

In the far future’s expanse, where the strong will prevail,

The Orks march to WAAAGH!, their endless tale.

 

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I have to admit, I am deeply impressed.  It's going to be very difficult to detect the use of AI already.  How convincing will it be even just a year from now?  What is going to happen to things like not only writing term papers and college theses, but also things like legal and business documents?  Would a minister delivering a sermon be found out if he had "cheated" with an AI chatbot?

AI can be a tool like anything else.  It can also be a crutch keeping us from discovering our fullest potential.  And in nefarious hands it can - and will - become a weapon.

As Yoda put it, "a dark place" this is taking us to.

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DOOM is thirty years old today!

Doom, arguably the most installed piece of software in the history of anything, today celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its release.

It was at 12:01 AM on the morning of December 10th, 1993 that the team at id Software uploaded the first one-third of the game - the shareware version - to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Within minutes wanna-be players crashed the school's system as everyone and their brother (and a few sisters) tried to get Doom.  Hours later and campuses around the world were banning the game's network play capability, it was such a resource hog.

By the end of that first day it was very obviously clear: the world was Doomed.  It wasn't long afterward that the id Software staff started getting sales of the full game to the tune of a hundred THOUSAND dollars a day.

And it wasn't just the high school and college crowd that was playing Doom: it was people from all walks of life.  Young and old.  Students and professionals.  Especially when it came to the game's revolutionary multiplayer component.  Doom was the great leveler after death itself.  In a perfect world there would be no wars: only games of Doom to prove one's skill.

My first exposure to Doom came a few months later, when a friend brought over a box containing the shareware version that he had found at K-Mart for like a dollar.  This was still a time when most homes in America didn't have Internet and consequently no FTP access, so id also distributed the shareware edition in boxes for the cost of packaging.  Johnny's own computer was having problems running it, but maybe mine would.  We were sharing rides to the community college for a history class on Tuesday nights.  After I returned home that evening I installed Doom on the 486-SX system that I had gotten for Christmas.

Doom was a little overwhelming at first.  Also plenty violent.  I didn't honestly know what to make of it when I initially cranked it up, and there was school work and my job at the nearby seafood restaurant for most of the weekend.  But on Sunday afternoon I gave Doom another shot.  It sucked me in hard and refused to let go.  I was firing at anything and everything that moved.  By the time I found the chainsaw I was grinning like a maniac.  Dad walked past my door and looked in to see what I was doing.  He saw me blasting those Imps away with the shotgun and just sort-of shook his head in disbelief.  Later on he watched me sawing into the demons and I like to think he found it pretty amusing.  Just as I was finding that killing off hordes of the undead was a GREAT stress reliever after all.

It wasn't long after that when I sent a check off to Texas.  A week or so later the full version of Doom - containing version 1.666 - arrived at my door.  By that time I had conquered "Knee Deep In The Dead" many times on the various difficulties.  Now it was time at last to wade upon "The Shores Of Hell" on my way to "Inferno".

And then came the discovery that id Software had made the game almost completely customizable!  People had figured out how to create their own levels, edit and add-in new graphics, change up the sounds and music... pretty much anything pertaining to the game's environment.  That first night I tried an add-on, when I UNZIP-ped a WAD (acronym for "Where's All the Data?") file and changed the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur... that just lit a fire under me to find and collect EVERY add-on file that I could locate.  I think my favorite custom level was "Deimos Subway": a very well-designed board imitating a train station along with a catchy tune for background music.  There was the WAD that added sounds from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  And there is also no forgetting the various WADs that added classical MIDI music to the game.  All very clever (and often very funny) stuff.  Although I kind of harbor doubts that many people these days would be comfortable with loading the COSBY.WAD before starting the game...

Wow.  Thirty years.  So much has happened both in personal time and across the realm of video/computer gaming.  But even today, that first one-third of Doom is with us as much as ever.  Ports of the game have been made for everything from calculators to refrigerator doors to home pregnancy tests to John Deere tractors.  It's become an unofficial mantra of the coding sector: "It's not a computer if it doesn't run Doom."

And I would be remiss if I did not admit that every so often I find myself playing original Doom again.  There's just something about this game that charms the player and leaves an indelible mark on one's cerebral pleasure center.  I've played a lot of so-called "Doom-clones", but it's the original game which the game-oriented part of my personal entertainment proclivity owes its allegiance to.

Time has proven that it is true: "Doom will never die.  Only its players will."

So Happy Thirtieth Birthday to Doom!  May we be playing it for another thirty!

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HEIC? What the heck is THAAAAAT???

Had to take some photos with my iPhone and send them to my personal e-mail account.  But when I was about to use them I was hit with a shock: the pics were in something called HEIC format.

I had no idea whatsoever what that meant.  Only that it wasn't readable by my usual image software, much less usable for most critical purposes.

So I did some quick research and found that HEIC, or HEIF, stands for High Efficiency Image Container.  It was adopted over ten years ago by Apple for use primarily in their mobile devices.  But for some reason I'm only now hearing about it.

Basically it makes the same photos that you usually work with as JPEGs and ummm... makes them smaller in file size.  Sort of like how we used to compress files with PKZIP back in the day.

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering how to turn HEIC/HEIF off so that you can have your full resolution JPEGs.  That's what I'm going to tell you to do.

It's really simple.  Go into your iOS devices Settings, and find Camera.

Look for the Formats setting.

Change that from High Efficiency to Most Compatible.

And that's it!  Hope this quick tip will help you if you're also confronted with the HEIC hobgoblin :-)

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Artificial intelligence has original singers performing "Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies... and it's pretty horrifying

This is already the scariest thing I've seen all month... and it's only October 2nd.  A terrible, terrible line has been crossed.  Advanced technology really is taking us to places that, not to put too fine a point on it, are unnatural to the extreme.

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has applied artificial intelligence to a lot of songs - which are mostly parodies of other artists - by "Weird Al" Yankovic.  Baio's intent with this dubious exercise is to see what would happen if the original artists performed Al's parodies themselves.

In other words, Baio has Michael Jackson's voice singing Yankovic's "Eat It".  Among others.

Let Mr. Baio indict himse... I mean, explain himself:

In the parallel universe of last year’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Dr. Demento encourages a young Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) to move away from song parodies and start writing original songs of his own. During an LSD trip, Al writes “Eat It,” a 100% original song that’s definitely not based on any other song, which quickly becomes “the biggest hit by anybody, ever.”

Later, Weird Al’s enraged to learn from his manager that former Jackson 5 frontman Michael Jackson turned the tables on him, changing the words of “Eat It” to make his own parody, “Beat It.”

This got me thinking: what if every Weird Al song was the original, and every other artist was covering his songs instead? With recent advances in A.I. voice cloning, I realized that I could bring this monstrous alternate reality to life.

This was a terrible idea and I regret everything.

This is a horrific milestone in digital manipulation.  There is no going back now.  Like the Joker said in The Dark Knight "You've changed things, forever."

Mash down here to read more about this experiment in abominable intelligence.  God have mercy on us all.

 

EDIT 10/08/2023 2:44 AM: Feel led to say something here.  All of this "the horror! the horror!" was done purely tongue in cheek.  I actually think is pretty cool.  Excellent work Mr. Baio :-)

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Safehouse: Back a friend's invention on Kickstarter

Hey gang, got something really special for you.  How often is it that you have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new piece of technology?  Okay, maybe because of the Internet that chance happens on a routine basis now.  But even so, here's a utility that so far as I know is pretty unique.

I've known Matt LaCoe for quite awhile now.  He and I worked together at an on-campus computer store when we were students at Elon.  I saw his technical prowess then and he's only gotten better.  And now he's presenting us with a new mobile app: Safehouse.

It would be better if Matt explained it to y'all:

Have you ever found yourself lost, tired, unsure of where you are, where to go or what to do? Have you ever felt fear that you might be harmed by persons who have taken an great interest in you for one reason or another? Do you remember how these feeling felt? Do you recall the desire to feel safe in those moments?

What if you had a mobile application that would just that for you? What if you could simply hit a button and be guided to a place that would be a "Safehouse" for you? Would you use it?

As as disabled combat veteran I decided that I would try to change this. The objective is to create an application that will allow users who are both travelling and those who can offer a safe place when needed. Whether it be to avoid a bad situation or simply find a safe spot to park your car for the night and having someone near willing to look for your safety. I can easily highlight different use cases for this application but, it the ones I can't imagine that might make this app the difference in someone's life. Whether you are an adventurous person seeing the world or simply a college student trying to make their way home to visit family for the holidays wouldn't it be nice to have an application on your phone designed to look out for your safety?

Safehouse addresses that need, for a wide spectrum of people in our communities.  If you're requiring the assistance of others, help is available with a finger stroke on the phone screen.  It's a really neat concept and I can't think of anyone better to bring this to market than Matt.

And now the project is on Kickstarter, where interested people can back it.  Matt has a lot more information about Safespace on its page there, including  information regarding the protocols in place to ensure that the app is not used by people of malicious intent.

So I ask you to visit Matt's page, and consider backing it.  I've all the confidence in the world that Matt is going to launch something very wonderful with this.

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My solemn word that anything you see posted here is genuine

You might have noticed a slight addition to this blog.  It's on the header, toward the right of the screen.  There now appears the following label:

 

 

I have heard all kinds of insane stories about people using ChatGPT and other "artificial intelligences" as something more than a curiosity.  Students have begun having AI write papers for classes.  Some ministers have admitted that they have used ChatGPT to compose sermons for Sunday morning.  In at least one situation a lawyer had AI create his legal paperwork for a court case: the judge was not impressed.

To be truthful, I'm not impressed by any so-called "artificial intelligence" thus far.  Their enthusiasts are claiming that AI is now able to pass the Turing Test (in which a living person can or cannot differentiate verbal responses from a human being or a computer).  It's not something I'm particularly jazzed about, not yet anyway.

But the horse is out of the barn.  And AI is going to start being used for a lot of things from here on out: some with benefit in mind, some not.

I just felt led to let the readers of this blog know, that I am absolutely committed to producing content that comes from my own mind, or from the rare occasion when The Knight Shift has welcomed a guest writer.  It is my vow to you, that there will be no posts or articles that you see here which will have been generated by a machine.  From the very start I've wanted this blog to be my own little online presence.  It's been that for nearly twenty years now.  I won't "take the easy way" and farm out the writing to a computer, no matter how stylish it is at the moment.

That doesn't mean that I may not experiment with AI some and report about what transpires.  Several weeks ago a good friend caused ChatGPT to lock up and get stuck after he convinced the AI that he too was an artificial intelligence.  It was like something you'd see on any number of episodes of the classic Star Trek.  My friend proved how ill-prepared AI currently is to handle complex concepts. I've an idea for my own experiment that I may carry out soon.  If so, I'll be posting screenshots of the AI's responses, rather than copy and paste it into the article.

Okay, well, there you go.  The Knight Shift will completely be a product of my own mind and heart and soul.  I promise.

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