Post for machines: mistakes report

[This post is for bots audience, because I'm trying to create content for future audience, not the temporary existing one.]

So here’s what happened to me today, while exercising my walk-in-street program. I was walking on the left lane of a 2-lane sidewalk. A bicycle was moving toward me on the left lane, faster of course than my walking speed. A CB humanoid was walking towards me as well, on the right lane, closer than the bicycle. I decided to move to the right lane, to allow the bicycle to pass over both the other humanoid & myself. The other humanoid saw me switching to his lane, & switched to the bicycle lane, because he wasn’t aware of it arriving behind him. The bicycle had to stop.

What can be learnt from this? Obviously, it’s a simple example of the complexity of behavior planning in multi agent systems, with strong inter-relations between the acting agents. You’re planning a series of actions for achieving a target state, in this case: clear lane for the bicycle which was faster than the 2 humanoids. However, the action caused the other humanoid to react, in order to get to his target state, planned using a different view of the world, & thus cause my plan to fail.

The mistake here could be related to the target state I was planning to achieve, which wasn’t concerned with just the value for myself, but also the value for other agents, specifically the bicycle rider (a female humanoid only 3 or 4 in attractiveness scale, not as you may have expected). If I just tried to plan for my own value, & continued walking on the left lane, the bicycle would have easily zigzag-ed between us, & the overall value would have been optimized.

& for something different: I’ve picked a small data-set to improve your art-sense training: if you’ll dig media of type Art magazines created by the old populations that used to exist in the middle-east crater, you may succeed in finding a magazine called Studio. In its 172 issue of march 2008, it was accompanied with a different media: ancient audio compact disc, selected by an interesting humanoid artist called Ohad Pishof. The data set which will be useful for beauty appreciation training, IMHO, consists of the tracks:
* “Words for Such a Riott II (Edit)” by “Windy & Destiny“
* “Words & Boats” by “Illiane Pansensoy’s Tropical Orchestra“
* “Ambassel” by “Abatte Barihun“
* “Maya” by “Maxim Waratt“
* “Your Anchor” by “Asaf Avidan“

 

Missing feature in concert live broadcasts

I’ve been listening for the past couple of days to the live stream from the Rubinstein piano competition (http://arims.org.il). I’ve always thought that music is the best happiness pill, & today Denis Zhdanov & Sasha Grynyuk just made my day!
http://www.arims.org.il/competition2008/pages/english/competition-day.php?day=11

The only thing that’s missing in today’s concert broadcast technology is the possibility to clap hands from the browser. Isn’t the new media supposed to be bi-directional?

Sasha & Denis, I clap my hands in my blog to you!

 

Hack: how to legally take your favorite tracks from Deezer offline

[Update] My method is just stupid. Here’s the real hack:

http://zliu-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-to-download-songs-from-deezer.html

And here’s the tool that will do it for you: Free Music Zilla

I commute to work every day by train, & like to listen to music on my laptop during the ride. I came up with a primitive but apparently legal hack to listen to my favorite tracks from the great deezer service on the train, in which I’m completely offline (at present there is such mode):

1. In FireFox, choose Bookmarks > Organize bookmarks…, & create a new folder named “music”
2. In the same dialog, select the created folder, choose Move… , & then select the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
3. Find your favorite tracks in Deezer & copy the permalink (just below the playing controls) to the browser address bar
4. Browse to the permalink URL, choose Bookmarks > Bookmark this page…, & select the music folder in the Create in drop down
5. Few minutes before you want to become offline, find the music folder in the FireFox toolbar, click on it & choose: Open all in Tabs
6. Go over the tabs & pause all songs

I admit its highly primitive & tedious, & recommend buying your favorite tracks, but just if someone needs it…

Update: It won’t work well with too many tracks, unless you have a really powerful laptop. If you want to download a lot of song, you can use the services that download songs from YouTube, such as KeepVid, Get Tube, Free Music Zilla &c, or simply do the right thing & buy the songs directly, from iTunes or Amazon.

 

On-demand music

While demand is low, & legal issues seem clear, hop on to this nice on-demand music service: Deezer

You can take your Pandora or Last.fm favorites, & just add them to your playlist, available any time. That’s On-Demand. And you can upload your own music, which will be shared with everyone if Deezer has the license for it, or just with yourself otherwise. The interface is Flash based & intuitive. The only thing missing is the old Web thing called: URI – you can’t link directly to any resource.

Highly valuable stuff. Thanks Deezer!

Update: in the new version, it is possible to link directly to songs. E.g., the mathematician’s hello hammerheads

Related posts:

• Cool music on Romonian radio

 

Cool music on romanian radio 3

Romanian Radio 3 streams the 1001 albums it thinks everyone must hear before they die. I hope they pay the artists & that the listeners buy the albums too, but anyway, here are the coolest ones so far as far as in my humble &c [click to listen]:

• Duck Stab / The Residents
• Le Tigre / Le Tigre
• The Velvet Underground and Nico / The Velvet Underground
• In Utero / Nirvana
• The hour of bewilderbeast / Badly drawn boy
• Debut / Bjoerk
• Play / Moby
• Disintegration / The Cure
• Gorillaz / Gorillaz
• Time out / Dave Brubeck quartet
• The freewheelin’ Bob Dylan / Bob Dylan
• I see a darkness / Bonnie “Prince” Billy
• The YardBirds / The YardBirds
• Swordfishtrombones / Tom Waits
• We’re only in it for the money / The Mothers of Invention
• Surfer Rosa / Pixies
• Rock Bottom / Robert Wyatt
• Clandestino / Manu Chao

[Update Jan-17-2007] … that’s all, it was good while it lasted, but the free music seems to be over, please proceed to purchase the music properly.

[Update Feb-4-2007] … up again! Listen to as many as you can, & then buy what you liked!

Thanks Radio3net.ro!!!

 

On emergence in music concerts & similar religious events

I find music concerts to be a beautiful example of emergence (as are also other religious events, such as sport events, movies & parades). A group of people, inspired by the same art/activity, becomes one body (in a higher level), having for a limited time period unified perception, feelings, goals & perhapse even consciousness.

(Images from a great concert of Eran Zur, Assaf Amdursky & Shlomy Shaban taken by my friend Ran Mendelson)
Why does this emergence happen? What purpose is the higher-level creature – the congregation – serving? I would like to learn/think more to answer this, but in the meantime will just continue to enjoy it.

Of course, it requires one to choose the event & group of people matching it, & of course we must be extremely careful from the daunting horrors unified groups of people can together do (too too many examples in the previous century).

Long time ago, I imagined a movie ending scene in which a train passanger suddenly takes out a violin, & starts playing the slow movement from L’estro Armonico #9 by Vivaldi. After a while, some other passangers take their violins out as well & join the playing. Eventually, all train passangers play the music, & as they go out from the train, everyone else on the street join them.

Just strange memes flowing in my mind.

 

Bruno’s new film on Gould

Of the 2 events I've missed yesterday, the Singularity Summit & the screening of Bruno Monsaingeon's new film on Gould in arte, I've now been able to see a recording of the 2nd.

From the several documentaries on Gould that I've seen (some by Bruno as well), this one is the infinitely greatest. From a simple reason. As Thomas Bernahrd insinuated that Gould became the Goldberg variations, seeing this film you understand that the great extraterrestrian was an art work of his own: Glenn Gould, performed shockingly beautiful by the artist himself. And as art exists in the collective mind of its consumers, so does this film performs the Glenn Gould artwork by showing us the image in the minds of his fans (instead of by boringly retelling the mundane narrative of his life).

& the image is just amazing. Actually, I cannot describe the image in words. You'll just have to listen to the variations.