Whimstar Inventions Journal

Computerized Phonemic Speech

You know computerized speech? Where you type in something and it "speaks" it for you. Sounds all stupid. You hear it all the time in janky electronic music.

Why haven't we improved that technology in over a decade?

Here's my proposal:
PHONEMIC SPEECH

Instead of typing in "Hello, I'm a cheap computer" orthographically, use the IPA system: "hɛloʊ aɪm ʌ tʃip kəmpjutɚ".

THEN, oo, this will be good: you can DRAW the suprasegmentals right over the letters:
volume, pitch, even rate. Drawn on. Kinda like in a MIDI sequencer or something.

The letters could shrink or increase in size as you adjust the volume up or down. They could lengthen or contract as you adjust the speed faster or slower. Pitch could be the customary line riding above the letters.

Sure, it will be more complicated from the user's end. But also way more fun. And you'll get a much more human-sounding result.

Let's pretend that this technology were widely available, and some nerdy-yet-sizable percentage of the general public got more-or-less used to typing this way.

Internet content typed this way would be immediately available as audio. (Imagine Wikipedia pages that you could listen to on your mp3 player!)

A program could be written that would automate the process; it would turn orthographic text into phonemic text. Ideally, the results would be edited by a human to check for things like homographs ("read" past tense, "read" present tense). But actually, maybe not so much if the program had a built-in grammar checker to choose the proper homograph based on context. Potentially, the human editor could also add the prosity, dramatic pauses and length. But all that are the nerdy details, which wouldn't really matter in the face of the big picture: Any text that has been digitized can be made instantly available in audio format. Actual listenable audio format. Not janky robot format.

Even Bigger Picture:
If this technology catches on, future layman will know the IPA alphabet and use it widely throughout the internet. Even keyboards would be updated.

People studying foreign languages could do so with much more attention to pronunciation.
The blind would have access to all digitized text
People with apraxia of speech or other communication deficits (i.e. Stephen Hawking) could communicate in a much more normal-sounding way.

Boo YA!

Self Doubt

Does this blog suck? Is it cool? Does anyone care? Even my friends?

Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we:

Where do these ideas come from? Are they funny? Ironic? Satire?
Why do I have celebrities on my blog?! It makes me feel dirty.

Am I a culture-maker? Am I just standing on the sidelines of

taking a whiz?

What about my more "serious" blogs?

Why did I start this blog in the first place? Did I want attention? Why do I continue to do it?

Listen, grasshopper. This blog is a journal. A journal of ideas. It is for yourself. So, it doesn't really matter if anyone reads it. What's the point of this blog in the first place? To get the ideas out of your head, and put them down somewhere. It's like a sketchbook. But a little less private than that, which is important because it forces you to think things through a little more before publishing them.

Everyone is quick to hate on other peoples' self-expression. But very few people have the balls to put anything out there themselves.

Government-sponsored apprenticeship

This isn't a political blog, so somebody help me out with these details.

We're in an economic downswing; everyone's out of a job, so they're all going to college. Obama's talking about allocating resources toward education. Government-sponsored education. Like FAFSA.

Sending people to college is great. But my feeling is that college is not the way to go for everyone. There are some careers that are best learned on the job. Like skilled trades, stuff like that. Even medical professions require practicum. I'd argue that 99% of the real learning occurs when you're actually doing the work.

Yeah, you learn stuff in the classroom, too, but it's more effective as a supplement to on-the-job training.

That's why I'm proposing that government should allocate a portion of their college-sponsorship funds to approved business for the purpose of on-the-job apprenticeship. Paid apprenticeship. So the student can be earning money while learning a skill.

Here's the part that makes this idea different: the programs should be set up with small businesses. Especially those which require skilled workers or employees with specialized knowledge. Examples could be acupunturists, sustainable agriculture, green building, drafting, producing, media, sales . . . the list goes on.

Obviously, there would have to be a system in place so that these business don't abuse the free money and cheap labor. They would have to really pull their weight with regard to education. In other words, they'd have to hire teachers/trainers and/or pay existing employees to act as trainers part of the time.

There should be one-on-one mentorship opportunities. Like, you could be paired up with a successful entrepreneur or investor.

Unlike college, this program would shift focus away from "hard facts that you memorize" to the "soft skills" involved in making sales, connecting with clients and actually getting the job done. Sure, there would be stuff to learn too, but instead of being learned in a vaccuum, it would be concurrent with the hands-on job.

Analog Pinball

I was just thinking: You know what I don't really like about pinball? Pretty much everything.

It's all flashy and fast and confusing. To me it seems totally random. All I know is Don't let the ball get past the flippers!

Then it goes straight between the flippers, and I think How the hell could that have been avoided? Is there any strategy to this whatsoever? Do people actually think two moves ahead or something?

At some point the ball goes up into the top of the machine: Flash, flash, bang. It's bouncing all over the place. There's music, and it's talking to me, but I can't really hear it because the arcade is so noisy. I am just waiting for the ball to return, waiting. Wondering. Why did I spent two quarters on this? Who is the target demographic for this anyway? What do the "themes" have to do with the game? Who drafted the licensing agreement for Golden Girls Pinball?

But most of all, wondering how fun it would be if you just unplugged the machine? I don't need all that flash and dash. Then it occurred to me: ANALOG PINBALL! Why not? No bells and whistles. All physics. Machinery. We're almost there. In fact, isn't that why people like pinball in the first place (supposedly), because it's tactile and "real"? We are saturated with animated video games now. Everything is on a screen. People crave real experiences more than ever.

When I was a kid I made an analog pinball game: I set a board on top of a trashcan and built a miniature obstacle course on top of it with cardboard. The idea was you'd actually tip the whole board around, maneouvering the ball between and around the obstacles. It wasn't really pinball, now that I think of it; more like one of those tippy-board games with a marble. It wasn't much fun.

Anyway, in preparation for this blog, I Googled "Analog Pinball," and came across THIS!

From material-exchange.org

It looks a lot like I had in mind. And the added bonus is that multiple people can play it at once! How many analog games are there where two players work together? Way better than real pinball. Way better.

If anyone out there with a woodshop wants to get together and make one of these, I'm so down.

Track Ball Computer Chair

Why does sitting in front of the computer have to be so uncomfortable?

This is an illustration I did. It's an idea by Peter Mucha of Steal My Ideas Please.com. (Love that guy.)

They say that it's better for your posture or something if you sit on one of those exercise balls. Well, why not have the whole ball be a track ball? You lean slightly one way or the other, and the mouse moves across the screen.

It could be shaped more like a chair, even. A big bouncy inflatable chair. With arm rests, and the keyboard built into the arm rests. Yeah! And just imagine the game applications: Airplane, car... something involving bouncing or balance.

Electronics are going to start getting more smooth around the edges. In the past, things had to be all x - y axis. Now technology can be more squishy-bendy.

MRI Horoscope

People love hearing about themselves. That's why they read horoscopes and go to fortune tellers, palm readers or psychologists. Everyone knows those things are hoaxes, but we convince ourselves otherwise. Why? Because we LOVE to hear about ourselves. We love it when people can "look inside us" and reveal to us our inner mysteries.¹

But this is 2009! Why are we still resorting to mysticism and magic to explain "Why We Are the Way We Are"? We may not know everything about brain science, but we do know a whole hell of a lot. We can stick someone in an fMRI and actually watch different parts of their brain light up in response to different stimuli.

To give a layman example, you can put someone in an MRI, show them a picture of their loved-one. You'll watch certain areas of the prefrontal cortex spring to life, indicating that the person is experiencing the emotion of "affection". But maybe areas of the limbic system light up, too, like the amygdala, indicating a response of aggression.

That's the general idea. Someone with more knowledge of neuroscience than me could draft a more accurate reading of the MRI results.

So this is the service: For a nice chunk of change, we'll throw you in an MRI and look at your brain. While you're in there, we'll present visual and aural stimuli. When you come out, we'll give you a detailed report about your own brain.

The technicians who run this thing don't have to be doctors: they're just trained to evaluate the readings and do the consultation with the patient. You go home with a better understanding of your own brain, and even a video of the session. What could be more satisfying to the ego than knowing about your own brain?

Awesome business.

Furthermore, the results could probably be useful to science. A large collection of data would be acquired by running these experiments day after day. This information would be compiled, and it would provide valuable statistical data for certain types of brain research.

¹The median expected salary for a typical psychologist in the United States is $77,973.
Can't afford it? Find a friend who's patient enough to listen to you talk about yourself. It'll do you the same amount of good, and it's free!

Bathroom Art

Have you ever seen something scribbled on a bathroom wall that made you stop and go "Hmmm"?

Usually, it's something so sick and depraved that you can't get it out of your head for weeks. Other times it can be poetic in a haunting way. And sometimes it's just downright clever.

It's art. It's poetry. And in a weird way, more honest and sincere than something you'd find in an art gallery. It's anonymous, so people can really let their ego come out. Bathroom art is the human psyche at its most raw.

I'm going to start collecting photos of bathroom graffiti. I think it would make an intriguing coffee-table book. We need some sort of open-source network, like a wiki, so anyone and everyone can post their own pictures.