Tag Archives: technology

WordPress Gremlins

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In order to save time, I often employ the facility to respond to posts (including comments left on my own site) using email. This morning, while responding by email, I have noticed that my comments are not being delivered. I’ve received the following automated response from WordPress in all instances:
“We ran into a problem with your recent comment reply by email. Specifically, we weren’t able to find your comment in the email.

We’ll do our best to get this fixed up. In the meantime, you may want to comment directly on the post”.
In all cases, my comment clearly appeared in the body of the email. While I have gone to all posts in question and commented directly on them, this is time consuming and it occurs to me that others may be having the same problem? Am I the only one plagued by WordPress gremlins this morning? Any feedback gratefully received!

Many thanks,
Kevin

Conquering the Reaper

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A researcher has launched a project to make simulations of the dead a reality. In future, he postulates you could be having breakfast with your spouse then leave for work. However you would not, in fact be eating with your partner but rather a simulation of the dear departed. This, the researcher hopes will enable those left behind to cope better with grief. Ultimately, as the technology improves the line between the living and the dead will become increasingly indistinct.
The article does touch on the dangers of such simulations, the main ones identified being the people left behind finding it easier to converse with the departed (or rather their simulation) rather than connecting with those in the living world. To my mind another risk with simulations of this nature is that rather than assisting the bereaved to move on, they become trapped in a cycle of interactions with the simulated departed spouse or friend. Of course this already happens to some extent, for example the bereaved may keep a photograph of the loved one who has died on a locket and/or a bedside table where it acts as a reminder of former times. However photographs and recordings don’t constitute full emmersion in the personality of the departed, for one is always aware that one is looking at a picture or listening to a recording. How easy to lose one’s grip on reality and come to believe the simulation is, in fact your friend or loved one and to quite literally lose the plot.
For details of the research please visit, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3935362/Would-bring-dead-spouse-life-VR-Researchers-say-simulations-evolution-bereavement.html).
In my poem “Death is Dead” I imagine a world in which the Grim Reaper has finally been conquered. Is this the world to which we are slowly moving?

Death is Dead

“Funeral orations are no longer spoken.
Death’s scythe is broken.
His tread echoes not
And the graveyard plot
No longer inspires dread,
For death is dead!

The ageless sit.
Some wit
Cracks a joke, but there is no laughter
As after
Countless repetitions, humour palls.

Lothario calls
On his latest conquest.
Going through the motions, he longs for rest,
For all passion has long since gone,
And women’s faces have merged and become as one.
Yet he must carry on and on …

The celebrity’s aplomb
Is frayed.
No longer is attention payed
To her.
People can only stare
Or listen to the same old song
For so long.

Death is no more.
Even the bore
Tires of his own voice
But he has no choice
Other than to bore on
For the reaper has gone
And tedium eternal is in store
For the noble and the whore”.

(https://newauthoronline.com/2016/05/06/death-is-dead/).

How Nice It Is To Drink Coffee

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How nice
To drink a coffee as I think
About what to write, but try as I might
There is no delight
For I find that coffee spilt
Wilt
My device break
And I have had to take
The darned thing almost thrice
To the store.
No more
Shall I drink
As I think
While sitting next to my machine
For I glean
That computers and drinks do not mix
And laptops can not always be fixed …!

Of Tap Dancers and Mail Clients

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I was bitterly disappointed yesterday (Monday 29 August) not to meet the gentleman (or lady for I know not their gender) who entertained me with such gusto. I think they are a professional tap dancer as the loud noise reverberating throughout my flat demonstrated considerable skill in the art of tap dancing. As a poet/author, I’m always keen to make the acquaintence of fellow artists, hence I was bitterly disappointed that my neighbour failed to drop in. However I suspect that if he (or she) continues to show such verve when tap dancing or cabinet making it wont be long before they drop in literally (through the floor)!

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Turning to more mundane matters. As a blind computer user who is unable to see a screen, I rely on Jaws software which converts text into speech and braille enabling me to have the contents of documents, the internet relaid to me.
For many years Gmail (my mail client of choice) has, very helpfully offered a “basic HTML” option which allows visually impaired users of access software to utilise Gmail with the minimum of clutter. Unlike “standard view”, “basic HTML” lacks bells and whistles such as “Google Hangouts” meaning that it is, as I said above, less cluttered and easier to use.
“Basic HTML” remains less cluttered than it’s all singing, all dancing cousin. However it has now been denuded with the ability to click to go to “older” and “newer” messages having been removed. The emails are still there but I and other visually impaired users of Google services are now having one heck of a job to get beyond the first 50 (or 100 depending on one’s settings) messages.
I have tried contacting Google via their contact form but the darned thing wont submit! Until matters are resolved I am going to have to struggle with “standard view” which is, for me much slower and more cumbersome than “basic HTML”. Thank you Google for checking that any changes you made to Gmail are compatible with screen reading software …

Kevin

Watch out authors (well, maybe)

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A couple of weeks ago I fell into conversation with a teacher of music. She had just purchased my book, “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind” and our conversation turned to matters of creativity. I asked whether she believed that computers would ever be able to produce music of the same standard as that of Mozart and other great composers? She responded with a question of her own, “could a computer ever produce poetry of the same standard as that of the great poets?”
The above is an interesting question. There is a tendency perhaps inate in we humans to deny that something is possible merely on the grounds that it’s occurance fills us with forboding or abhorrence. However gut reactions are not (usually) the best means of answering complex questions.
As regards my own view of the matter, the simple answer is that I have no idea as to whether machines will ever be capable of producing works of artistic merit. The great advantage of we humans is that we possess emotions which are interwoven in our art whether literary, painting or musical. I suspect (and I am no scientist) that it will be easier for those working in the field of artificial intelligence to produce machines which are of similar intelligence (or perhaps exceed) that of humans. However to reproduce genuine emotion will, I suspect be a far more difficult task so intellectual pursuits may well be one of the last bastions to fall to AI. Its also perfectly possible that “true” AI will never be achieved as there is still much debate about what, exactly constitutes real intelligence, (merely because an extremely fast computer could, in the future have access to all known information and be able to process it at greater speed than a human would not make it more intelligent than mankind for intellectual abilities reside in far more than processing power).
Below is a piece of speculative fiction written by me in early 2015. As ever I would be interested in your views. https://newauthoronline.com/2015/01/18/robert/
Kevin

The Internet of Things

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“The Blackbird on the wing, so sweetly sings
And brings
Joy to we two
Who
Through
These wild flowers
Walk and talk,
Whiling away many an hour”.

But she put no store
In my words
Nor in the singing of the birds,
Which went unheard,
For the ring
She wore
Was connected to the Internet of Things.

Crystal Ball Gazing

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Will the click of a mouse
In the virtual house
Of the brain
Replace
Nature’s sweet face?
Or can man restrain
The genie who, perhaps already half woken,
His words as yet unspoken,
Holds out visions of heaven and hell.

Will men dwell
In the half light
Where day and night
Lose all meaning
And seeming
And fact become as one?
Has man gone
So far
That we lose who we are?

Can rich variety be reduced
And man seduced
By the girl made up of data?

Sooner or later
These things may come
To pass, but history does run
In strange ways, and the historian shakes his head
At the futurologist, now long since dead
Who said
“It is inevitable, For X must lead to Y”.

Ideas live and die.
The historian sighs
And thinks on why
Man tries to make the world conform to some abstract law.
He has seen it all before
And puts but little store
On those enamoured by neat little rows.
The futurologist may into the future stare
While history’s winding track leads heaven knows where.

Check before you hit that “Publish” button in the WordPress dashboard!

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The importance of checking prior to hitting the “publish” button on the WordPress dashboard was brought home to me this morning. I had (as is my usual practice) composed a poem entitled “Birds that Fly” using Microsoft Word. I then cut and pasted my poem into the edit field in “compose a new post” and, having selected tags and categories hit the “Publish” button. Up popped the dreaded “Mozilla crash reporter” indicating that something had gone awry. Having saved my poem in Word I wasn’t unduly concerned and restarted Firefox. Great! My draft had been automatically saved and all I had to do was hit the “publish” button for the second time. This I duly did only to find that “Birds that Fly” had (despite the earlier crash) in fact been published, leaving me with 2 posts with precisely the same content, including tags and categories! Had I taken a moment to check, prior to hitting the “Publish” button whether my earlier post had gone live, I could have avoided having to delete the extraneous copy thereby avoiding potential confusion among my readers. I will, in future double check when the internet crashes as to whether a post has, in fact gone live rather than merrily hitting the “Publish” button!

Kevin

Welcome

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Welcome to a world of plastic
Where values elastic
Forever stretch
And men letch
After robot girls
Who are Ever ready for action.

Welcome to a world where satisfaction
Is guaranteed
And men are from bordom freed
By pills
Producing thrills
Of the most delightful kind.

Welcome to a world where the troubled mind
Is no more
For technology has in store
A virtual Paradise, In which dreams that shatter
No longer matter
For the programme can be infinitely changed.
Welcome to a world deranged!

Housekeeping

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On Sunday afternoon (7 February) I did some housekeeping. Not the kind entailing vacuuming floors and dusting furniture, no I went through the links on my “About” page and deleted those which no longer function. I had meant to perform this task for a while now but had never quite got round to doing so.
One blogger who has hosted guest posts by me had deleted their site, while another webmaster removed all guest posts (including mine). In both instances anyone clicking on “dead” links would have received an error message informing them that the resource in question could not be found. Having removed the non functioning links, visitors to my “About” page should now find that all links work (please do let me know if this is not the case by emailing me at newauthoronline (at) gmail dot com) putting “broken link” in the subject line.
As bloggers we have no control over links to external sites (unless, of course we happen to own the resource in question). It is therefore in my view good practice to periodically check whether external links work. This makes for a better “visitor experience” (how I hate that term but I can not at this early hour think of a better one)!

Happy housekeeping!

Kevin