I just can’t believe how realistic computer games are these days. Yesterday people played Pac Man, and today this:
Change to high definition. And btw, I’m sure some other games are even more impressive, I don’t know the scene very well and I wasn’t searching. Just came across this video and thought I’d post it.
Follow the link below and click play on that music player you’ll see. And listen. Try different songs.
Those songs are created on a computer with no real choir involved. It’s sample-based, so there was a real choir originally when they created the program. Real words are not sampled, it’s basically just each different sound in the English language in various ways so that you can put together whatever you want — what words to sing, by which group (male, female, how many, etc), in what way (how loud, what to emphasize etc), and what notes and which rhythm of course. You can basically make it do whatever a real choir can do, as far as I understand.
And it sounds great.
http://www.eastwestsamples.com/details.php?cd_index=963
(Bonus, click the left panel on the site to check out their other stuff, including a program simulating female singers in the case of Voice of Passion.)
This is cool, and well-boding:
Last week, scientists in the U.K. announced that they have developed a robot capable of making simple scientific discoveries on its own.
The robotic system, dubbed Adam, hypothesizes about which genes in yeast code for the enzymes responsible for catalyzing certain biochemical reactions. It then carries out experiments designed to prove its hypotheses right or wrong.
Notice that the robot performs real work, and gets useful and publishable results.
Being a fan of futurist Ray Kurzweil I was glad to read that he is going to head a new institute called The Singularity University (though not an actual university), a collaboration with no others than Google and Nasa.
The so-called “singularity” is a theorised period of rapid technological progress in the near future. Mr Kurzweil, an American inventor, popularised the term in his 2005 book “The Singularity is Near”.
…
Mr Kurzweil said the university was launching now because many technologies were approaching a moment of radical advancement. “We’re getting to the steep part of the curve,” said Mr Kurzweil. “It’s not just electronics and computers. It’s any technology where we can measure the information content, like genetics.”
The school is backed by Larry Page, Google co-founder, and Peter Diamandis, chief executive of X-Prize, an organisation which provides grants to support technological change.
“We are anchoring the university in what is in the lab today, with an understanding of what’s in the realm of possibility in the future,” said Mr Diamandis, who will be vice-chancellor. “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”
Links: (Suddenly the article isn’t available without registration, not atm anyway, but I’ll keep the link.)
The Article
Ray Kurzweil
Technological singularity
A while ago I wrote:
When you’re stuck, when you don’t know how to proceed or progress, the main question to ask yourself is why you’re stuck.
True enough. Another related question is how to proceed. Not just when you’re stuck, but when you want to get things done whether you’re stuck or not.
For some reason I don’t ask that nearly enough. Why? Partly because I rely to much on “willpower”. It seems obvious what needs to be done, no thinking of “how” needed, it seems. But I’m wrong. Take the following example:
As a resolution for 2009 I’ve decided to surf the net less. How am I going to achieve that? Seems obvious: Just stop doing it! What is there to think about? If I fail, I just lack willpower. Or so I think, but as it turns out there is lot to think about.
I also tend to think too abstractly. I do think about how to get things done, but on an abstract level. I study GTD which teaches the general principles for getting things done, and I do apply it some success, but I still don’t ask “how” often enough in regard to small daily things. GTD tells you what’s common to all things you want to get done, but not how to cook a certain meal, or stop smoking or drive a car (though it does say some things pertinent to these things.)
Back to my resolution. One problem is that I forget my resolution (which btw is part of the answer to the question why I don’t keep the resolution), and when that happens and I do surf, the problem isn’t lack of willpower, but forgetfulness. Not the same thing. How do I handle that? Well, a system of reminders is one idea, which I do apply. Had I instead tried to strengthen my willpower (however that’s done) it wouldn’t had helped.
Another small trick is to disconnect my internet connection. I can still go online by connecting it, but that requires an extra step which is usually enough to catch myself. That extra time works as a barrier between myself and the undesired behaviour. Seems ridiculous (I thought so), but it does work.
There are other problems involved also, which I won’t go into now, but all of them can be identified and resolved. But it does require some thinking, especially asking “how”.
I’m slightly reluctant to write some of these things, because they seem so obvious, but apparently they’re not obvious enough (neither for me nor many others, in my experience. People go about things in highly unreasonable ways, and we all need to learn ‘obvious’ things from time to time.)
I seem to be past that initial obsessive phase, and that’s probably a good thing. I’m talking my project to create electronic music. I entered a completely new world with that project, and that means being completely lost, not knowing the terminology or anything.
And with that comes obsession, trying to get some sense of control. At least that’s how I work. Now I feel I’ve got that. Of course, there’s still a million things to learn and I’m nowhere near creating decent music (many who’ve done this for years say they’re still beginners…), or any music, except fragments, but at least I have a better idea of what I don’t know and where to go from here.
But I guess now there’s another crisis coming up, that phase when I don’t know whether to continue at all. The obsessive phase can be a little annoying, but at least it’s exiting and full of certainty.
Computer games are starting to look pretty good:
A new book by David Allen will soon be released (December 30:th), Making It All Work.
The Editorial Review is pretty negative, saying that it has “very little new material”, but I consider it innocent until proven guilty (actually I consider it not only innocent but of great potential value — he always has interesting things to say), and I’ll be buying it the day it’s released.
The Product Description:
David Allen’s Getting Things Done hit a nerve and ignited a movement with businesses, students, soccer moms, and techies all the way from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia. Now, David Allen leads the world on a new path to achieve focus, control, and perspective. Throw out everything you know about productivity– Making It All Work will make life and work a game you can win. For those who have already experienced the clarity of mind from reading Getting Things Done, Making It All Work will take the process to the next level.
David Allen shows us how to excel in dealing with our daily commitments, the unexpected, and the information overload that threatens to drown us. Making It All Work provides an instantly usable, success-building tool kit for staying ahead of the game.
Making It All Work addresses: how to figure out where you are in life and what you need; how to be your own consultant and a CEO of your life; moving from hope to trust in decision-making; when not to set goals; harnessing intuition, spontaneity, and serendipity; and why life is like business and business is like life.
This eagerly awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done is guaranteed to find an audience in today’s competitive business environment and among David Allen’s many fans.
When you’re stuck, when you don’t know how to proceed or progress, the main question to ask yourself is why you’re stuck. The answer is often far from obvious. The problem is that there often are many factors that have to come together for progress to occur, and if any of these are lacking, you will get stuck. And different people lack different things, and the same person can lack different things at different occasions, or at different places in the development.
And by stuck I mean on any level, anything from a very general… stuckiness, like not knowing how to become a better chess player (or writer, or whatever) to being stuck in a more specific situation, like a case of ‘writers block’.
It was only very recently I started out with electronic music (some two months ago), but I knew from a couple of short earlier attempts that I have problem with creating a complete songs. It’s easy enough to create 10 seconds of cool music, and then another ten seconds of cool music that doesn’t fit the first 10 seconds. And that’s a problem.
In my earlier attempts I really had no idea why, and I couldn’t progress. This time, however, knowing more about the conditions of progress, and having more experience in general (having thought much about similar issues in other areas, such as chess, writing and programming), I knew (or thought I knew, and I was correct) the answer right away.
I asked in a few forums, but I only got answers like “find a way to get inspiration”, “work with others”, “just create, don’t think so much about it” etc. None of those answers helps in the slightest, though I still got some interesting information (such as learning that it’s a pretty common problem).
Anyway, the primary answer is that I lacked (and still do, but less so) knowledge about the structure of songs (which you could guess from the title of the post…). Those of you who have read my earlier posts on writing know that I’m a sucker for structure. Not to follow blindly, but as a mental tree of knowledge to pick ideas from, and to describe (and remember) music in terms of.
The music I’m creating is a kind of progressive electronic music and it doesn’t fit any pop structure like “verse, chorus, verse” etc, so I’m not primarily talking about learning exact structures, but rather concepts pertaining to structure. Just applying concepts like “transition”, “flow”, “contrast”, “building block”, “development” and the like is very helpful when creating music och thinking out different parts.
It’s also helpful to have a more specific idea of what you want to create, to be able to study the structure of that kind of music (among other things). My first goal is to make music in the vein of Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works 85-92. I choose that one because the songs are relatively simple but still very effective. Each song has its own unique structure, but I’m sure there are similarities on a more abstract level.
As soon as I had studied structure for a couple of weeks I easily created a longer song. It’s far from complete, but I have four minutes of it (not mixed or polished at all yet), and I could (and will) easily add another minute or two. Also, the structure is unique and “progressive”, so, again, I’m not after learning “rules” to follow blindly. I’m just after expanding my knowledge of possibilities, and then combining them in new and interesting ways.
Had I tried another method, like “trying to find things that inspire me”, I would have gotten nowhere.