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Skype Translation Halfway There

I watched the Microsoft video on Skype’s new Translator feature.  According to Microsoft it is a big leap in voice translation, thanks to the move to deep neural networks for speech recognition.  The video shows a German and an English speaker having a Skype call and Skype translating and synthesizing the speech in their respective native language.  All very cool and as the video states all very Star Trek.

It made me think about the speech recognition technologies I presently use.  Anyone who has access to such services has probably at one point shared a laugh with a friend or coworker over the latest voice to text faux pas.  Who hasn’t heard “Hey, look at what <insert service provider / technology brand name here> thinks you said”  They can be as hilarious as auto-correct mistakes on your cell phone.

I sure hope that the new Translator feature performs more reliably.  Can you image watching the the screen and seeing the reaction of the person you are talking to when Skype translates your  “mountain biker and trails” to “mountain biker entrails”.  In English you can easily see the mistake, but in German it is not so obvious -> “mountainbiker und wanderwegen” becomes “mountainbiker eingeweide”.

What struck me the most in the video was the apparent lack of progress in speech synthesis.  It sounds like they are still using the same voice engine that shipped with Windows XP.  This alone makes me look slightly askance at the new feature.  A sexy new thing like real time voice translation really deserves a better speech engine than that.  Something that sounds a bit more lifelike.  It really is not that much better sounding than the phone based technology we had in the 1980’s. Anyone else remember trying to program a Heathkit HERO robot to talk? No, just me?  Well, never mind then.  Cool stuff in the 80’s, lame today.

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Passing the vehicle torch

After 14 years of faithful service I have to retire the Dakota.  Not because it is no longer reliable or because something else has caught my eye.  I’m afraid it is an SGI decision.  A couple of weeks ago I lent it out to someone who managed to crease the drivers door.  Nothing to terrible but enough that the door needs to be replaced as opposed to being repaired.

The trouble is a combination of age and miles.  14 years and 400,000 kilometers are just too much for it to hold enough value.  The $3400 repair bill is making SGI cringe at the idea of fixing it.

We saw this coming.  The body is starting to show signs of rust in all the doors and wheel wells, the rear bumper already has rusted through in spots, and the handling is just loose enough to make you thing it may be ball joint time again.  We were going to replace it anyway in a couple of years with a spanky new “welcome to retirement” vehicle.  It just runs SO well I really wanted to drive it as long as I could.  Doesn’t burn oil, always starts.  Great little truck.

Since that kind of money is not available right now we have gone with an intermediate vehicle, a 2003 Silverado in great shape.  The new truck looks like we can get an easy 5 years out of it before we spring a new(ish) one.  At the end of it all I am only out of pocket $3,000 and have a rust free truck with half the miles.  Not a bad deal even if it was unplanned.

 

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Archie is Killed??

Archie Andrews is going to be killed off this summer in the Life with Archie series, after which the series will end.

Not sure what I think about that.  I never read the Life with Archie series.  It is his life as an adult, after the high school years.  It is purposely made as a hypothetical storyline.  I didn’t read it because I am not interested in how his character develops and changes over a multi-year or in this case multi-generational story.  I understand that after a while writers run out of ideas and start to look for ways to open up new subplots.  I think that is why shows sometimes die a slow death.

Adding new characters into an ensemble cast rarely works to revitalize a show.  Yes there are exceptions, Law and Order being a perfect example.  The reason that works is because the show’s formula does not change as the actors do.  They follow the same basic building blocks when developing new scripts.  When I sit down to watch I know what I am getting, and I like that or I wouldn’t be turing it on in the first place.

Cases where it doesn’t work are when you take an existing character and change their behaviours in an attempt to show “growth”.  Seriously, nobody wanted to see Ross and Rachel EVER get together.  It would break one of the fundamental chemistries in the show.  Spin offs often fail for the same reason.  Archie Bunker without Edith was, well, not Archie Bunker.  You could have made up an entirely new character to own the bar and wrote the same scripts.  Making it a spin off was just a cheap marketing ploy looking to leverage the brand.

Far better to end a show on a high note than to change it too much.   Leave us wanting more and let the show run in syndication for decades.  Seinfeld, The Closer, even Faulty Towers all ended at or near their peak viewership.  The Closer wrapped up when it was cable TV’s highest rated drama.  We’ll have to see whether the spin off (Major Crimes) is a success.  I believe it will be as the writers seem to be holding true to the character’s personalities and the original’s formula.

Back to Archie Andrews.  Archie is supposed to be all about the high school years.  It is the jalopy, the malt shop, the getting in trouble with Mr. Lodge.  A grown up Archie is not Archie,  its some other guy who only looks like Archie.  So go ahead and kill the doppelgänger.  As much as I think getting killed is out of place in an Archie comic, you should have never created grown up Archie in the first place.

 

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New Tunes

Since Apple included streaming internet radio as part of iTunes I have switched my habits as they relate to workplace music.  I used to spend most of my time at work on Songza or directly plugged into the streams of a couple of my old favorites like Radio Paradise. At home I use Sirius Radio or Songza depending where I am and what I am doing.

At work iTunes has now become the main source.  Especially two stations from Ireland. Both of these are labeled as Golden Oldies, one for 50’s songs and one for 60’s songs.  What I really like the best about them is they tap into  the recording industry practice at the time of having many artists record the same song.  These stations play many of the songs you all know and (hopefully) love but as recorded by other artists than we expect.  How about Unchained Melody but by Jimmy Young instead of The Righteous Brothers?  

The second aspect I like about these stations are they play songs from artists we are more familiar with but songs that never really made the North American charts. Lots of UK charted songs that many listeners here will not know.  It’s kind of like one of my other favourite pastimes, random Youtube surfing.  You never know what you will find next to broaden your net horizons.

 

 

 

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Where is everyone?

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I spent two days at corporate head office last week. This is where I started my career, oh so many years ago. There have been many changes over the years but some things remain the same. First thing I noticed that had not changed was the wall paper. Exactly the same as I remember it almost 30 years ago. Also the same are the ubiquitous burlap looking partitions the form the cubical farms and the plastic flex hose going up to to the ceiling carrying the power and LAN wiring. I still remember asking why there were so many vacuum hoses.

One of the big changes was the lack of people. It used to be the cafeteria was always packed, even during work hours. It was a common adhoc meeting room. At any time there would be a dozen small group meetings happening around a table. Lunchtime required you to hurry upstairs to avoid the 20 minute lineup for food. Getting a table required somebody holding a spot. It was packed.

Over the last two days each time I stopped I to pick up a coffee it was practically empty. The head office cafeteria seats several hundred people and even at lunch there couldn’t have been more than 50. This afternoon I am in the second major office space we have in the city, home to a few hundred employees. The cafeteria here is literally empty. Zero. No one.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Does everyone leave the building now? Does everyone work through their breaks? Did I miss spring break week? (No by the way)

Reflecting on the empty common spaces I think we have lost an important sense of community. We don’t get to meet the people who work in other areas of the company. We don’t form a sense of common purpose. The family has grown up and moved away.

It makes me sad.

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Holy Ship Batman!

Last week I was cleaning up old email and found a gift certificate I received from Cisco for participating in a survey three years ago.  I couldn’t recall ever ordering anything from the logo store.  Not sure if the three year old gift certificate would still be good I surfed over to see what my rediscovered $25 would buy me.

I have long since stopped ever wearing branded clothing.  “Vendorwear” was a pretty common look when I was a core network guy working in the Engineering department but as a customer facing employee with multiple product lines I make it a point to never wear a logo.  Even outside of work I won’t wear vendor logos.  I like to keep work and home as separate as possible. I am probably geeky enough without advertising it.

After ruling out all branded clothing, anything over $25, and all printed books I had the usual collection of cups, pens, mice, and office miscellany one always finds. Since I am partial to the Apple Magic mouse, and my wife already has the largest collection of coffee cups any three households needs I eventually narrowed it down to a simple nondescript notebook.  I can always use a notebook even if just to sketch.  At $11.99 I could even buy two.

Ok, let’s see if that gift certificate is still good.  Add to cart -> checkout -> enter number.  Success!  Wow, I was betting against that.  Cool.  Maybe I will go back and make it two notebooks then.  Edit shopping cart…whoa!  $42 shipping??!?!  For a 7×5′ notebook shipped using ground economy??

Around the office we sometimes comment that with the ever changing certification requirements some vendors must be in the training business more than the hardware business (yeah, you know who who are).  Now I think they are also in the shipping business.

Edit cart – delete item.  Back to the email -> delete.

Thanks for nothing.

 

 

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What did you say?

It has been a great day for word play and you know how much I love word play.  Here are some of the giggles I had today.

  • The policy around use for corporate documents is still cloudy.

comment made while discussing the recent of introduction of Google Drive

  • Is the application taxing?

question asked while scoping out the hardware requirements for an accounting application

  • I’m too fast for myself

response from the person who said the above when they realized what they said

Many thanks to Ricky P for making the day go by a little quicker.

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Mi Casa

My wife and I have had an on again off again conversation out how long we want to work before retiring.  This has been going on for several years now.  For the past five years she has been diligently monitoring the real estate market in the location we want to live. Meantime I have been calculating savings rates and plotting cash flows.  My retirement age moves from fifty five to fifty seven to fifty nine. Argh.  Wrong way!

A few weeks ago we finally decided to “go see the money guy” and get real about it.  Once we laid it all out the answer was stunning.  “You could go now, if you wanted to”.  Holy Frack!  Didn’t see that coming.

Now, I recognize that all this comes with caveats.  “Could” is all about what lifestyle you want to have.  Want to travel to Europe once a year? Then no, go back to work.  Want to live to 100?  Go back to work.  In our case “could” means I can live to 90 without a lifestyle change from today.  That’s significant.  I have a pretty good life.  Not 4 weeks in the sun every winter and a new car every few years good. My truck is turning 13 years old and a winter holiday means staying home to watch World Junior’s on TV every Christmas.

It does mean I keep my cabin and its growing armada of boats (six now, is there a 12 step program for boats?).  It means I can continue to enjoy restaurants as frequently as I do today.  It means I can still hope to go to Europe at least once.

More importantly it meant that I could do what we just finished doing.  We put all of my wife’s efforts to use and bought that property in the location we want to be.  We won’t be using it immediately.  For the next couple of years at least it will be a rental property offered very discriminately to hand picked tenants.  After all, it will be my home one day.

 

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I don’t follow mainstream news sources

I hardly ever make much attempt to follow the news, or at least news from the mainstream sources. I don’t watch national or regional TV news shows. I don’t read national or international newspapers. I read my local paper maybe 2 or 3 times a week. I surf to news web sites a scan headlines maybe once or twice a month.

Does that make me out of touch? Am I being irresponsible with my civic duties? I don’t know, maybe. I don’t believe it does though. Being responsible also includes critical thought, counterpoint opinions, and actual action on your part. Eating a staple diet of headlines doesn’t do that and some will argue it prevents it, but I don’t want to go down that rat hole today. Suffice it to say that many major news outlets no longer do much real journalism anymore. The 5th estate is a watered down thing.

This morning I fired up one of my favorite aggregation tools Flipboard and looked through the News category. Grim. Below I have listed the story counts by subject and tone. I went until I started to see repeating subjects, in today’s case the zoo that killed the healthy young giraffe and fed it to the carnivores at the zoo. I ended up scanning through 37 articles.

Subject – count of stories
Immigration/xenophobia – 3
Nuke fear/drum beating – 5
Bad economy – 2
Terror attack – 5
State sanctioned violence – 4
Bad politicians – 2
Articles about anything in my country – 0

Today is also day 3 of the Sochi Olympics. The first Olympic story ran in 36th place. The first positive story ran in position 27. The total number of positive stories was 2 out of 37.

This list of stories is advertised as a hand curated list of the biggest stories in the world. Sorry, but medical marijuana in Alabama, a lack of action in the US Congress, and the scrapping of an old US aircraft carrier seriously can’t be the biggest stories in the world.

I like Flipboard, and will continue to use it. I guess I need to tweak the News feeds. Obviously their curators and I have a different opinion about what’s news. Besides, I would prefer to encourage positive change by celebrating the successes rather than more handwringing over the failures.