Brandon Notices

Earlier this month, the search engine Cuil (which I've never heard of before) released Cpedia, the Internet's first "automated encyclopedia." When I told my friend about this, he asked, "I'm sorry, what's an automated encyclopedia?"

According to the website, you give it a search, and "For each query, Cpedia algorithmically summarizes and clusters the ideas on the web and uses this to generate a report." I summarized this to my friend: "It apparently finds information online about a topic, then mashes together questionably relevant content." Right now, the site is in its alpha phase, but perhaps they were a little hasty in releasing it to the public, because hardly anything on this site makes sense.

For example, check out Cpedia's article about mowing the lawn (archived). The first paragraph starts out reasonably encyclopedic, if not a bit too conversational, but quickly falls into criticism of lazy people who don't like mowing the lawn. Then, a later paragraph reads, "When outside, especially when doing yardwork (like mowing the lawn), use a dust mask and close-fitting goggles to keep allergens out of your nose and eyes. So I did things like mow other people's lawns, shoveled snow and even had a lemonade stand from time to time." I don't see how these two concepts even follow! It just seems like random sentences somewhat related to mowing the lawn are put together haphazardly.

What made me laugh the most was a quick read-through of the article's table of contents: Physical Activity, Cinderfella, Memphis in January 2008, Chore. The Cinderfella section says, in its entirety, "Cinderfella did not like living with his family because they made him do all of the work around the house like washing the car and mowing the lawn." The Memphis in January 2008 section is an apparently irrelevant diversion: "When the company relocated to Memphis in January 2008, Mr. Hudson, 52, decided not to move." What company? No context is given in the article, but at least the site provides a link to the article it pulled the sentence from.

The article about microwaves (archived) says absolutely nothing about electromagnetic waves, or how microwave ovens work. Actually, it reads more like a sales pitch for luxury hotel rooms and appliance shops.

You'd think that there would be an article for everything, since an automatic encyclopedia could theoretically create an article upon request. However, while there is an article for running red lights for fun (archived) (which contains information only about blondes being the life of the party), there exists no article for tickling porcupines.

Cpedia's about page says that the purpose of the site is so that users don't have to look through search result links; they can instead go to Cpedia and get "a summary of the topic." I feel that an automated encyclopedia is an interesting idea, but the articles it comes up with are often so confusing and meaningless that it just doesn't work.

My friend and her husband hosted a party this afternoon, and I was surprised to find that there weren't really many people there. This party was an opportunity for them to teach us about the new website they're starting. On the website, they'll be offering a variety of health and beauty products, and an old couple demonstrated a few of these Amway products to us.

One of the products was Perfect Water, which is a product with some pretty amazing claims. They purify water to zero parts per million, then they ionize it (to my knowledge, though, purified water can be broken down into ions, but it would quickly reverse to more stable neutral water molecules). Then, they add minerals back in, which makes me wonder what was wrong with the minerals they took out in the first place.

The man presenting the products singled me out, and poured me a small cup of bottled water he picked up at Starbucks. I said it tasted okay. (I've never fallen in love with water before, but the stuff that comes out of my kitchen tap is pretty great stuff.) Then, he asked if I would stand up, and cup my hand at my side. I was instantly reminded of this video, in which James Randi hosts an experiment to see if crystals have special healing-type powers:



I expected a very similar experiment would happen with me in the next minute. He pushed his fist down on my hand, and I didn't feel much like falling over, so I stood firmly.

Then, he gave me a cup of the Perfect Water. I drank some of it. It had a funky aftertaste. He wanted to perform the same test again. I wondered what I ought to do. I was expected to stand more rigidly—to be stronger, and have better balance. Of course, I didn't believe that this water would grant me this power. I wondered if it would be funnier to collapse on the floor in a heap, and perhaps vomit on his shoes.

It turns out that I tried to duplicate the results from the first test, by standing firmly. But at one moment, he pushed a little harder than he probably meant to, so I let myself slip a little and lean toward him. He commented that it doesn't always work, or that it can be hard to tell sometimes.

If he really wanted to impress me, he would have performed a blinded test, like in the video of the crystal testing. Actually, from the start, I was hoping he'd give me a blind taste test—but the Perfect Water would have lost.

I didn't buy anything at the party, but I had a great time playing Frisbee after the salespeople left.

This is probably the most frustrating electronic device I've ever tried to use: the Totes Shower Clock Radio.

I removed it from the package and couldn't even get the battery compartment open. I hurt my thumbs trying to turn the knob and pull on the door. I'm not sure if I wasn't turning the knob hard enough, or if I wasn't pulling on the door hard enough, because I had to ask my dad to open it for me. It's very easy to remove after the first time, but I have never had so much trouble just to get batteries into something. And the trouble didn't stop there.

Setting the clock was more difficult than opening the battery compartment. The clock's buttons didn't even seem to depress when I pushed them. Maybe this has something to do with waterproofing the device, but it didn't even feel like the buttons were designed to be pressed. I had to put all my body weight into pressing them. I physically exhausted myself and hurt my thumbs trying to press them. When I finally thought I had set the time, I was disappointed to realize that I had set the date instead.

The radio has nice volume, but it doesn't seem to tune anything in very well. The tuning dial is very touchy, but I haven't been able to get anything that wasn't very noisy and staticky. I couldn't get anything at all in the AM band except for a loud buzzing tone.

The mirror seems like a clumsy addition. The manufacturers intend for you to hang the device on the showerhead, but unless your showerhead is at eye-level, you won't be able to see anything in the mirror except for the ceiling's reflection. If you're able to hook the shower radio onto anything lower than the showerhead, then you could use the mirror.

I received this from my parents as a Christmas present. I've asked them to return it. I don't recommend that anyone try to put up with this shower radio. I've posted a similar review on Amazon.

I was at Walgreens yesterday, looking for a new portable FM radio. Instead, I bought a calculator.



The TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, normally about $22, was on sale at $15, and it looked cool, so I got it. It has a neat feature called MathPrint mode, where it displays mathematical expressions in a more natural way (like how you write math on paper) rather than relying on a bunch of parentheses and junk.



On the left above, you can see a particularly complicated and useless expression as it would have to be typed on the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. It has a lot of parentheses, and it's kinda hard to see what's going on. On the right is how the expression looks on the TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, with the MathPrint mode on. It's obviously a lot easier to see what's going on. (MathPrint can be turned off so that expressions can be typed in the classic mode.)

The TI-30XS also automatically simplifies fractions and roots. The first picture in this post has two examples of it doing this. On a different calculator, the answers would instead be displayed as decimals. There's a button you can simply press on the TI-30XS to convert these fractions or roots to decimals and vice-versa. It seems to be called the answer toggle button, and the button looks like this ◄ ►. There are two ways to input division: as a stacked fraction, or simply using the ÷ sign. The stacked fraction will try to give another fraction as an answer; the ÷ sign will yield a decimal answer.

  

You can see in the picture above that the calculator is also pretty smart with trigonometry. The TI-30X IIS on the left above calculated the sine of π as an ugly decimal. The TI-30XS is smarter than that, though. It displays the answer in exact terms using a fraction and a root, as it should. By pressing the answer toggle button, this can quickly be converted to a decimal, too.

So the TI-30XS seems to be able to do everything the TI-30X IIS can do, but there are still a few gripes I have with it. The answer toggle button is right above Enter (=), which is where plus usually is on TI calculators—the +, -, ×, and ÷ buttons are all moved one button up on the calculator, which takes a little getting used to. I keep pressing the answer toggle button when I mean to press plus.

Another issue is that there doesn't seem to be a way to wrap fractions or roots around expressions you have typed already. For a simple example, say you've typed 4, but then you realize you need to take the square root of 4. On the TI-30X IIS or the TI-84, you could move the cursor back in front of the 4 and insert a square root symbol. If you try to do that on the TI-30XS, though, it'll put a square root radical to the left of the 4, but there'll be a blank inside the radical, waiting for you to type in a number to go under it. The 4 will be to the right of the root, implying multiplication. I suppose you could work around this by raising 4 to the 1/2 power, but that seems imperfect.

Overall, it's a snazzy little calculator with a bunch more features I didn't even mention. The colors are bold and modern looking, but one of my friends said it looks like a child's toy. It's pretty thin (even more so without the cover slide case) and fits comfortably in the hands, and the buttons repsond well. (I think the TI-30X IIS is a bit too narrow to hold comfortably, and if you try to press a button before releasing the previous button, it'll ignore the second button press.) I would recommend to anyone looking for a cool calculator.

What do you think of my new aquarium? My fish sure look realistic, don't they? Well, actually, the fish aren't real at all! They are video game characters!

Actually, I wouldn't really call it a game, but it runs on a game system. My Aquarium was released Monday morning as a download for Wii. It cost 500 Wii Points ($5), and I was a bit reluctant to buy it at first. After I watched a few videos online of it, I caved in and decided to get it.

There's a lot to do in terms of customization in this game, which is good news for me because I love tinkering with things. You can choose what every aspect of the tank looks like: what fish populate the tank, what decorations fill it (unfortunately, there are no underwater castles or plastic scuba divers), what the floor and background look like, and even what kind of lighting illuminates the tank. You can create up to six tanks. My first looks like a generic tank. The second has a riverbed theme.

The fish seem to swim around realistically. It probably wasn't very hard to make them swim convincingly because they just swim around. If you point the cursor at a fish and give the Wii Remote a little jerk, the fish will wiggle and squirm around. The fish start small and grow over time; if you don't feed your fish, they don't die, though. At first, the selection of fish you can have in the tank is limited, but it seems that more will be unlocked as time passes.

I'll probably get bored with My Aquarium before next week, but at least when we have company over, we can have a huge, vibrant, TV-sized fish tank.

I'm sitting here, watching the new Family Feud. There's a number of changes. The biggest one, of course, is the new host. John O'Hurley has now usurped the role of host. And he's not too shabby. Sure, he has gray hair, but a lot of old people do. I'm glad that he knows the rules of the game; it would suck if he was all like, "Okay, um, now, let's see here... contestants, do you know how to play?" One thing that's a little irritating is that he seems to use his bold voice excessively; it becomes very painful to listen to. He also inflects his voice a lot. But at least he tries to be funny.

They've redecorated the set. It looks more like the original set than ever (with the family rooms behind the podiums, which are shaped like in the olden days), except with a lot of blue lighting. One change is that the big board is humongous; It's maybe 5 or 6 feet tall! And it's really low to the ground, meaning that they can frame the host and contestants into shots of the board. They replaced the old-fashioned incandescent egg carton scoreboards with TV screens displaying the scores--which is a little sad. Something that bugs me greatly is that the scores aren't displayed on the families' podiums anymore, which makes it a little hard to keep up to date with the scores because they don't zoom in on the new location of the scoreboards anymore.

I'm not 100% sure I like the new types of questions they're asking the contestants now. "Name a word that rhymes with orange." What? How can they do that? And what's with this question: "Name a celebrity you'd like to fuck." How inappropriate is that?! "Name a member of your family that you would kill for money." What kind of values are they trying to teach here?

Actually, I was kidding about the questions in the last paragraph. But still, there was a question a minute ago that I despised just as much as the one I ranted about a week or so ago. The question was "Which of the Seven Dwarfs best describes your wife in bed?" Of course, this is annoying to me because it's practically another multiple-choice question, with 7 choices. Worse yet, the top 5 answers were on the board, meaning that it would be impossible for a team to lose because there's the top 5 answers and the teams would be allowed to miss two without getting a third strike.

But, of course, this would only be true is the families knew all seven of the dwarfs. Sleepy, Grumpy, and Happy (the #1 Answer) popped up on the board pretty fast, and so did Dopey (huh?), but the contestants got three strikes due to answers such as "Mopey" and "Snoozy", and the other team couldn't steal with their guess of "Sneezy". The last answer was Bashful, but still, any team knowing all seven dwarfs could win that question without much problem. This would make it a trivia game, something that the Feud really isn't.

I miss Richard Karn.