Hello, Computer

As you all know (or ought to know), Majel Barret Roddenberry, the voice of the computer in every iteration of Star Trek,  died last year just before the release of the new Star Trek movie. I saw that on startrek.com's facebook page that there was a thread of “who would make a good computer voice?” I don’t feel like sifting through a thousand comments to see what people have to say, but I do think it would make for a fun discussion. So what do you all think? Who should they cast for the new voice of Star Trek?

Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Morgan Freeman. I know he’s a man, but I don’t think that should disqualify anybody. Just imagine him saying “Captain Picard is not onboard the Enterprise.”

2. Ron Howard. Watch Arrested Development, narrated by him. That’s exactly the intonation and inflection I imagine he would have as a computer.

3. Keanu Reaves. Watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. No. Don’t. It was terrible. But watch five minutes of it and listen to the way he talks. It’s beautifully robotic.

4. Portia De Rossi. A little esoteric, perhaps, but she’s got a voice similar to MBR, and I think she’d do well.

5. Mary McDonnell. President Roslin from Galactica.

6. Jewel Staite. I was gonna say Morena Baccarin, and I do think she’d be a good choice if you’re looking for a replacement for Majel. But if you’re looking for someone new, I think Jewel would make a great computer. She’s got a pleasant voice, and she might add a touch of humanization to the computer.

I know, the computer isn’t human, but the whole point of giving a computer a human voice is to make the crew more comfortable. So why not humanize it a little? MBR was a great computer, but she talked like you would expect a robot to talk. That’s not bad, I just feel like it’s not the only way to do it.

So what do you all think? Who would you cast as the voice of the computer?

The Founding Fathers

It seems everywhere in US politics today, people are bitching and moaning about “what the founding fathers intended.” Well, here it is. I’m going to break the story. I know precisely, with no ambiguity or uncertainty, what the founding fathers intended.

They intended the government to be able to change to meet the needs of the day. Essentially, they knew that the government they put together 250 years ago wouldn’t work forever. It was what they needed at the time, so it’s what they did. What they needed then is not the same as what we need now.

So let’s stop bickering about “what the founding fathers wanted.” They wanted to be free of England and to construct a political system that could evolve to fit the needs of an evolving nation. Well, that’s not what we need any more. America knows who she is now, and it’s time to move out of Uncle Sam’s place (Uncle Sam who, btw, went down to the tavern every night with Uncle Tom and got positively hammer-headed).

Exactly how old should a nation be before they have their first revolution (I don’t want to get into a debate about this, but the first one was technically a successful rebellion, not a revolution. A revolution is when you replace the government. We didn’t. We seceded from Great Britain, who’s government remains to this day)? Seriously. We’re 235 this year. Can we move out of the basement and find our own place now? It’s great that our parents laid down all these rules to make sure we would learn how to play nice with all the other kids, but I think we’re old enough to start making our own mistakes.

So please. For the love of God. Can we stop arguing about what our founders intended? Because (a) they wrote it in plain, simple English specifically to avoid mis-interpretation and (b) what they wanted was for us to have a government that would meet our needs, regardless of how the world around us changed.

Even with this great constitution, every page of which says “change this when it doesn’t make sense any more,” we still have a religious government (yay two-party system!), a political system that essentially has no left hand (srsly. When half your country thinks gays shouldn’t be allowed in the military, and the other half debates them instead of calling them retards and going on about the business of running a country, Rome only just fell three or four centuries ago), and what’s been threatening to turn into an unabashed police state for almost ten years. So maybe we do still need some guidance from somewhere. It’s just too bad that we think we’re the hottest shit in the bowl and won’t listen to what anybody else says. This whole manifest destiny thing was cool when we had a whole continent to discover, but now it’s just pathetic.

Andy’s Stovetop Mac & Cheese (with beer)

Okay. Here’s what you will need:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

1 lb. pasta (I use Rotini or Fusilli)

1 quart + 1 cup buttermilk (regular milk might work, but buttermilk taste much cheesier)

Two beers. I have only used lager, but other kinds might work. I would recommend against stout (ie, Guiness), unless you want beer-flavored Mac & Cheese

Cheese. Lots of cheese. Probably about a pound, but use your judgment. I like to go to Big Y and buy their “Cheese ends for mac n cheese.” I buy two and throw away half of what I buy because it’s american or swiss or something else I don’t want f*&#ing up my flavor. This time I used almost all cheddar with a handful (literally) of pecorino romano (I said “pecker”).

Salt (a few dashes)

Pepper (a (1) dash)

lots of Garlic (I used powdered, but I’m trying minced next time)

Classic Rock. And none of that “soft” crap. Bad Company, Queen, Journey, Foreigner, AC/DC or Rolling Stones are all good. Joan Jett is also okay. Tom Petty, Credence, Metallica, Neil Young, Simon & Garfunkel and Elton John are unacceptable (yes, I just put Metallica in the same category as Neil Young). The Eagles are okay, but no Desperado and no Lyin’ Eyes. This is a key ingredient.

If you don’t like classic rock, electronica is allowed. but no Erasure and no Portishead. Yes, I love Portis head as much as the next bloody-wristed, tongue-pierced teenager, but they’re no good for cooking. Frank Klepacki is good, as are Massive Attack and Bassnectar. Daft Punk is almost mandatory.

My stove is an electric stove. It goes from 1-10. I won’t explain this again later, so look back up here if you forget that “5” means middle heat.

This is a “never leave the stove” recipe. Gather everything you need beforehand, because if you leave this alone for a minute, I don’t know what will happen. Chuck Norris might show up and kick you in the face, or it might be totally okay. I stir it constantly throughout cooking. You’ve been warned.

Commence to rock. Start the music, but no singing and no dancing yet. Blast it. If you’re not afraid of the neighbors, it’s not loud enough.

I use a big soup pot, but you could probably get away with a large sauce pan or something similar. In this, melt the butter. I set my stove to 5 to melt the butter and leave it there for most of the process.

While the butter is melting, crack open a beer and begin to consume. Don’t chug. Just drink leisurely. You will likely get through two beers for this recipe.

Once the butter is melted, wait just until it starts to sizzle. Pour in about a third of the buttermilk. It’s going to separate. don’t worry about it. The buttermilk is basically going to separate into cheese curd and water. It’s okay. Stir it a lot to try to keep the butter from separating out. It will separate a little, but stir it anyway.

Begin dancing, but not heavily. Just bop to the music a bit. You’re cooking for God’s sake. don’t go nuts, you’ll spill something. No singing yet.

Once the mixture begins to boil, start stirring in the rest of the buttermilk, but keep one cup out. Once you’ve stirred in all but one cup of the buttermilk, add three to five dashes of salt, one (1!) dash of black pepper, and a few shakes (not too many) of garlic powder.

Keep stirring. It is now acceptable to begin singing to the music. Don’t hurt yourself. You’re not Brian Johnson and you’re not Freddie. You could seriously injure yourself trying to be.

Once the sauce (yes, you’re making cheese sauce) starts to boil, start stirring in the cheese a little bit at a time. The first time I made this, I used WAY too much cheese, and it broke. The cheese stayed in a glob at the bottom and it was really hard to keep it mixed together. So stir it constantly, and when the cheese starts to clump up at the bottom, add the last cup of buttermilk and that should offset it enough to in-break it.

If you haven’t finished your first beer yet, do so now.

Open your second beer and pour the first ounce or two into the sauce. Stir. Add a bunch more garlic. Sorry about being vague through all this, but I don’t keep track of how much I use. I do it to taste and smell. If you don’t like garlic, don’t add very much. If you do (like me), upend the bottle (but not literally. I just mean use a lot).

Stir that for a few minutes. You should now be both singing and dancing with your music. If the neighbors haven’t registered a noise complaint, you’ve ruined the sauce. Dump it down the drain and start over.

Once the sauce has begun to barely boil, turn the heat down to 3 1/2 (three and a half, not half of thirty-one). Stir in the raw pasta. DON’T COOK THE PASTA AHEAD OF TIME. I mean, you could, but then it won’t soak up the nice cheese sauce you’ve just made. Stir it to make sure the pastas completely covered by the sauce. Any pasta that isn’t submerged won’t cook.

It will take… a number of minutes for the pasta to cook. During this time, consume your second beer and continue to dance/sing. When the cops show up, show them this recipe, explain the situation, and offer them a beer. They won’t take it: they’re on duty. But you’re a nice guy, so offer it anyway.

When the pasta is cooked (you’ll know because the one you eat will be not crunchy any more), remove the whole mess from the heat. That means put it on a cold burner, not just turn off the heat (but turn off the heat as well).

If you’re going to eat this right now, let it sit for about ten minutes so the sauce can thicken. If you’re going to eat it in twenty minutes to an hour, heat your oven to about 300 and stick the whole pot in there until you’re ready for it. Too long in the oven will totally dry up the sauce (happened to me just now). If your going to eat it tomorrow, throw it away and start fresh tomorrow. Dumbass.

If you have leftovers, shame on you. Eat it up. But if you just can’t choke it down, stick it in the fridge. It’s just as good re-heated (not like that Kraft crap that gets al… rubbery in the microwave).

duck song

So…. Here. Watch this.

Now watch this.

And finally, here ya go: part three. This one’s different. I promise.

 

So I was on tinychat with some folks from Kongregate and one thing lead to another, tits were shone, and a guy had to sing a song. So he started the Duck Song video and sang along with it. It was funny. So I thought I’d share that magnificence with you all. Enjoy the Duck songs.

The Matrix?

I just finished watching The Matrix Trilogy. Wow. I forgot how badly it sucks. Lemme splain. First movie: awesome. I’ll watch it any time you want. Second movie: ditto. Adds some really interesting stuff to the story and makes it more interesting. Third movie: f*#$ing awful. Every bit as bad as Attack of the Clones, but for somewhat different reasons.

First, let’s begin with the premise of the entire series. Why does the Matrix even exist to begin with? Human beings don’t need to be awake to produce body heat and electricity, which is why the machines need us. So why not do what the Tleilaxu do to their axlotl tanks and chemically lobotomize them to keep them in a vegetative state? For that matter, why bother with human beings at all? Why not use moose? Or whales? Both bigger than humans and therefore produce more heat. Why bother with the crumbs when you can have the feast?

Okay. Setting aside the fact that the Matrix serves no purpose, let’s move on. Neo, as explained by the architect, is the inevitable result of the mathematical process that is the Matrix. That in itself necessitates that Neo is not a real person. He’s a mathematical quantity. He’s a computer program, just like Smith. Coupled with the fact that he retains his superpowers outside of the Matrix, the only logical explanation is: Matrix squared. Matrix within a Matrix.

Again setting aside the fact that the existence of the Matrix makes no sense whatsoever, let’s assume that the purpose of the Matrix is as explained: keep humanity docile. make us believe everything is as it should be. Wouldn’t it be absolutely essential to have a redundancy? Do you really suppose that a machine society would not deal with humanity under the basic principle of “shit happens”? Life is unpredictable, so you need to account for every possible eventuality, including the possibility that the humans you missed in the first place are going to mount a resistance. Or, in this case, since we didn’t miss any, that they will somehow discover what’s going on. So: let them escape. They’ll think they’ve won. Only they haven’t, because they’re still in the over-matrix.

If that’s not the case, how the hell does Neo have superpowers outside the Matrix?

Next: Neo kills Smith, and dies in the process. Exactly what motivates the machines to not destroy Zion? The fact that the made a deal?! Are you f*&%ing kidding me?! You don’t not destroy the one thing that could possibly destroy you because you made a deal with it. Well, maybe a person does, because a person understands things like honor and friendship. Computers don’t have friends. They have “others with whom they interact,” and they don’t do anything just because they said they would. That is completely and utterly ridiculous. They say what they need to say to get their adversaries to do what they want, then strike when they’re weak.

So… I dunno. I just felt the need to vent, and here’s as good a place as any.

my awesome hair

So I frequent Kongregate. I have, on occasion, had reason to post links to this blog in chat there. I don’t remember what the reason was, but a week or two ago I posted links to my self-portraits and my photoshop post. Whatever. “Nice pics” seemed to be the catch-phrase of the day.

Here we are, at least a week later, and I’m chatting again on Kongregate. Some guy questions my grammar (not what I said, but how I said it). So I politely said “don’t f*** with me. I’m an English teacher.”

A lie, yes. But I always feel justified in it, and not just because it shuts most people up faster than saying I’m a Jehovah’s Witness.

Getting back to the story: So somebody else says “Thor has awesome hair tho...have you looked at his blog???”

That was the most gloriously gratifying moment of my life. Ever.

I suppose I will be more gloriously gratified when my teenage son looks at these photos (if fifteen or so years, when I have a teenage son) and says “damn dad. You even had great hair back then,” but until then I find it hard to believe that anything will come close.

Photoshop Assignments

I just sent off the last of my photoshop assignments for the semester, and thought I would share with you some of the fun ones.

Here’s a photo of the hallway on the third floor of the Graphic Arts building.

See that second window? Watch this.

That was a lot more fun than it looked. Here’s my after-action report (handed in with the finished product five minutes ago).

First, I opened the hallway photo in lightroom (if you don’t know what Adobe Lightroom is, you owe it to yourself to find out) to adjust the lighting. I could have used photoshop's camera raw dialogue, but the lightroom interface is much more user-friendly.

Once I was satisfied with the levels, I opened the image in Photoshop and created a vanishing point grid, using the corner between the wall and the floor, as well as the corner of the wall and the ceiling for reference. I then used a combination of the patch tool, heal brush and spot heal to brick up the window.

Next I did a google image search for "framed Mona Lisa." I found a high-resolution image, which I then pasted onto the vanishing point grid. I shrank it a little, but I don't know how big the Mona Lisa actually is, so I made it look as big as a painting.

Once I had the painting positioned on the wall, I used the "fx" button on the layers panel to add a drop shadow. Finally, I used the curves dialogue to adjust the light on the painting. It still looked a little unnatural, so I used the brush tool at an opacity of 40 and a color of 64 grey (in darken mode) and went over the entire painting once.

Since there are undoubtedly those of you who don’t know what a “vanishing point grid” is, here’s the one I made for this project

It’s a grid that not only serves as a guide for you, but also tells photoshop how to render things like… paintings that you just pasted into the image. So instead of this project taking five hours of mind-numbing skewing and transformations, it took about five minutes to setup the grid, roughly nine seconds to add the shadow, and two or three minutes to get the lighting just right on the painting.

Next: Here’s a photo that I’m not in.

I know what you’re thinking. “Andy, you’re standing right there, just left of center. I know it’s you because your hair looks awesome.” And you’re somewhat correct. My hair is awesome. But I’m not really in this photo. The professor took a photo in the computer lab. He got up on a ladder with a camera and put a flash in the corner (or maybe he opened a window. I’m not sure because I wasn’t there). Then he took a photo of me in the portrait studio, on the same ladder with the same lighting. Then he gave me both photos and said “do.”

So here’s what I did:

I first made a selection using the quick mask method. I then copied myself from the photo in the studio into the photo of the computer lab. I immediately realized that my selection had not been good enough, so I used a layer mask to clean it up. I attempted to use gradients and fuzzy brushes to mask my hair, but success eluded me. So I gave myself a digital haircut. I removed enough hair to make masking reasonable, but left enough to allow it to still look a bit unkempt (nobody would believe a photo of me, on a school day, with great hair).

Next, I had to shrink myself. I used what I could see of other people in the shot to judge how large I should be (mostly the hand of the woman sitting at the right edge of the frame). Once I had shrunk myself and cleaned up the layer, I duplicated it. Next I made a selection on the new layer using the easy-selection tool (I think that's what it was called. It's the one on the same button as the magic wand). Having made a selection, I filled it with black.

I then skewed the black selection to the right by grabbing the top-center handle. I used the shadow of the monitor on the left side of the frame to judge the direction my shadow should fall. Once that was done, I added a gaussian blur, layer mask and a gradient. Then I had to throw away my shadow because I had forgotten to fix its feet and had ended my photoshop session.

Once I had my shadow correctly positioned again, I used a black brush to connect my shadow to my feet and generally reshape it a bit to make it look natural. Next, I added a (hefty) gaussian blur to the shadow. I then duplicated the shadow layer and added an even heavier blur to the new layer. Finally, I added a layer mask to the original shadow and applied a linear gradient to it to make it blend with the second shadow layer.

That was hella fun. The most awful part was my hair. Here’s the photo I started with, and the same photo with my quick mask.

 

Zoom in on one of those and see how horrible my hair was that day. Had I known it was picture day, I would have worn a hat. Or gelled my hair back. Or something. Giving myself a digital haircut was educational and wortwhile, but man it was a bitch.

Next is depth of field. The assignment was to create depth of field where there was once none. So I had to take a photo with my aperture closed as tight as it would go and still get decent exposure. I just happened to have my Rebel with me that day, so I walked around campus and took some long shots with stuff in them. here’s the photo I started with:

I made this one a bit bigger, so you can see clearly that you can see everything clearly. Here’s my report:

I first created a new layer on top of the background and named it “sharp.” I then painted that layer white, beginning with the lamppost most in the foreground. I then expanded my sharp mask to include a wide area surrounding the lamppost and extending it across the photo.

Next, I added a new layer and named it “128.” I painted this layer at 128 grey. I included the tree nearest the camera and the area surrounding the sharp layer. My next layer was painted at 64 and included the first tree back from the lamppost, as well as the next closest lamppost. The next layer was painted at 32 and included the next two trees. The final layer I filled with black.

The black layer was on the bottom, with the white “sharp” layer on top. I applied a mild gaussian blur to every layer beneath the white layer, with the exception of the background. There were a couple of holes, so I painted them the color of the layer under them using the brush tool.

Next, I merged all of my greyscale layers and copied the new mask layer to a new channel (alpha 1). returning to layer view, I hid the mask layer, showing only the background.

Finally, I added a lens blur to the image, using Alpha 1 as my source. I cranked the focal distance to 255 and adjusted the radius until I thought the transitions between focus areas looked natural.

It was at this point that I noticed my sharp lamppost had sharp points sticking out of it. So I canceled the lens blur and deleted alpha 1. I edited my merged mask layer with the brush tool and smoothed out the globe of the lamppost. I then copied the layer to alpha 1 again and re-applied the lens blur.

And here’s my final product:

And here’s the mask layer that I drew by hand (three hours’ work), then converted to a color channel to create a variable lens blur.

That was fun, but damn was it time-consuming. The trees especially took a long time. Then I blurred most of them out of existence before I applied this mask. But overall I think it was worth detailing every single twig (until I got bored). So the white area is the part to which I added no blur at all. The black area received the heaviest blur, and the three grey areas got blurred differently depending on how dark a grey I used (128, 64 and 32, if anyone cares).

This was one of the early projects. It took several weeks, but I really learned a lot from it. So here it is. First, the photo I was given. I show you this one at full size because a lot of work went into it and I want you to see everything.

Here’s my finished product:

This one is not quite perfect in certain spots, and that’s somewhat intentional. This project was handed in as a 300 dpi print, which isn’t high enough resolution for the line between the sky and the horizon to even be printed on a 4x6. Long story short, I removed the stain, repaired the rips, cleaned up the mold, squared the edges of the photo, re-colore the borders and drew the sky. Granted, the sky is a bit much. But I have the 64-bit edition of photoshop demo and the Mac-tards at school only have the 32-bit edition. So I flaunt it whenever I can. In this story, by rendering a light source (the sun) in the sky.

My professor agreed that it was going to far, but gave me points (actual grade points, not just kudos) for taking a risk and trying something that would be either disastrous or awesome.

There was one other assignment, but it was basically the same thing as the one where I put myself in the photo. And I didn’t do as well on it, so I won’t show it to you (at least not right now).

So… Enjoy. Next post I write will be my abbreviated album from Arizona. I say abbreviated because over the course of the week I took almost 5000 photos. You’ll be getting the best… uh… fifty. maybe fifty. I dunno. The slideshow I showed everybody at Thanksgiving was a hundred I think. Maybe I’ll just upload that. We’ll see. Stay classy.