My Non-Art Life

Whatever won't fit in kimwyattsart blog, like my loveable dog, stuff I get all fangirl over, recipes, techy stuff, crochet, general stuff likethat

[aiweirdness]

H.M.S. Neural Net

One of my favorite things to do with machine learning algorithms is to get them to name things. Give a neural network (a type of machine learning algorithm) enough examples, and it will do an often decent (sometimes howlingly bad) imitation of their letter combinations and patterns, all without the slightest clue what any of it means. I’ve used neural networks to name craft beers, cats, paint colors, pubs, and even guinea pigs.

Here, I trained two neural networks, char-rnn and textgenrnn, on a set of 24,548 boat names, courtesy of Bradley Peterson and a sailor from San Francisco.

Behold the name of your next boat (or next self-aware starship?)

First, the decent/plausible ones:

Sky-Shark Sun Princess Windsprite Sandy Bear Catchwind Flowing Wind Windshark Wave Bard Sea Rainbow Windshare Second Sun The Windmower Sea Bug Miss Salty Bully Of The Water

And for the somewhat more eccentric sea captain:

Bear Storm Slow Shark Hugs Sea Hog First Ramen Sun Of Bear Little Boot Ship The Trick Wart Day Of The Grover Running A Goose Shadow Again Ken Dream Princess Cracking Dusting Hare String Shark Jelly Gall Fumper Huggy Tail Bear Goose Midnight Rat Pea Fury Song Fish Of The Dog Quiet Leg Cookie Sea Back Shark Salty Lick Wolfing Sun Nature Charging Lover

I’m kind of fond of the ones that really do sound like someone trained an AI to write them:

Nice Boat What Day Saily Sea Blue Of The Wind Merry Biggles The Fun Big Ditty Sun In The Sun Stinker Delusions The Salt, How Are Sons Otto Smells The Bug Wolfs ! Trivial Pockets Wands Off! It…. Holeygum Arch & Navel Spocked

These are available at a discounted rate:

Stinky Day Silent Wind Snot Runner The Shanky Wind Bad Surfer Lick Musty Fin Princesside Maolly Fart Putty Mom Just Ship Aquamock Stinkbarr Drifting Furdy Some Dog The Liver Silent Rock Spanking Winds Sand Plow

Now, there is an entire OTHER category of ship names, and some of them are spectacular specimens. I am not, however, going to print them here. To get them (and optionally bonus material every time I post), enter your email here.

[aiweirdness]

A neural net names fireworks

I am always amazed by all the corners of life that have their own naming conventions. What makes a name sound like an heirloom apple, or a cookie, or a Pokemon?

Here’s one I had never thought much about: the names of fireworks. Bruce Preston spends the New Year in the Netherlands where fireworks are a big deal. He collected the names of over 3,000 fireworks from vuurwerkbieb.nl, ranging from “Important Pyro Show” to “Super 8 Cake Blue Star” to “Kinder Pakket Groot XXL” (some of the names are in Dutch, which just made it more interesting).

Now the reason people send me datasets like this is because I like to give them to algorithms called neural networks, which can learn to imitate the words they see. Without any direction from me, and without any prior knowledge of the words and what they mean (or even that they ARE words; they might be knitting patterns), the neural network (here, textgenrnn) produces its best imitation.

In this case, its best imitation of fireworks sounds a lot like, well, an artificial intelligence trying to imitate fireworks names.

Happiness Rockets Gold Mini wow Flaming Thundersplont Box Crackling Shapes Bright Blue Stoppers Soundd Box Red flashing cake Machine Blinking Display Code Rumble Smile Rockets Extreme maxied whistling None Star Thunder Excellent Rain What Crackling 16 Silver Pirate Counters

Some of the imitations are particularly poor. Or awesome, depending on how you look at it.

Pronk XL B2B Torch All-Dang Shark Whistler 1 Darner Box  Far Exploring Palm Black Moo Sheeperstrike Senior Fountain Just Timmy Hurricane Said Bang Shaming Bulls Big Doo Cake Spent on the Bun Stragfalmed

And some of its fireworks sound more like they’re from the post-human era where machines dimly remember what humans were like, and celebrate them with commemorative explosions.

Medium mushing box Green Event Shorts I just looked Definite Box Into Eggs Oh Fountain Event Badger One Assortiment Sneaking Veet Box 3 Black Hall is released Golden Strink is 4x Original Cat Pix Budget 2 Boom

I generated more fireworks than would fit in this post. To read more of them (and to get bonus material every time I post), sign up here.

[lifeoutsideart]

I don't usually reblog posts, but this is pretty cool. My favorite neural net name for fireworks is "Hurricane said bang"

[lifeoutsideart]

Restless legs and arms. I just want to sleep!

I'm camped out here on the sofa again like I have been for the last 3 or 4 nights. I can usually keep from kicking and striking out with my arms in my sleep but my husband says I get super "twitchy". So I'm trying to sleep out here and I keep thrashing around.

Sometimes I can't tell that I'm going to have a "twitchy night". I might even sleep the whole night through then the next day when I wonder why my arms and legs hurt or why I'm tired my husband will tell me I was moving around all night.

Other times, like today, I'll get warnings. You know, the feeling that something is on you. You look, there's no bug or spider crawling on your leg, but you still feel it till you touch your leg and prove it's nothing. Or even worse, the really gross feeling like something is crawling under your skin. SHUDDER.

I am supposed to call my medical providers sleep clinic. But I'm so tired I keep forgetting to call them! It's a vicious cycle!

I must say, I have tried muscle relaxants and they make it worse.and since I'm on meds for ulcerative (pan) colitis and arthritis I'm kinda afraid it will limit my options.

I wish there was a vitamin that would fix it. Like, eat more apples or add spinach to your smoothies kinda cure but I doubt I'll be that lucky.

Ugh. My knees are getting tired!

[lifeoutsideart]

Set in the Midwest the rebellious son of a preacher returns home after dad dies and takes his place at the church. Someone lets Genesis out of a box, some sort of supernatural entity with the ultimate power to destroy and create. Genesis zooms around the planet possessing and blowing up holy men trying to find a host that can contain it and finally lands in our preacher Jesse. And all kinds of madness follows.

[lifeoutsideart]

review of socialsalerep.com

I’m calling this company out as a scam. There is nothing trustworthy about them. This goes beyond the bad translations of their emails and fake website reviews translated into english from who knows what language. 

Back in August 23, 2017 I suddenly started getting spam from [email protected]. This site “claims” to help you earn money, “you can start making an income online from your social media skills”. But wait, you have to pay for the privilege!  “Remember that right now as we are growing our platform we are offering a discount for the registration and training, but that price could go up any time”. 

Needless to say, this raised some red flags for me.   So googled review socialsalerep.com, every result was another ad by social sale rep trying to recruit people to pay for their service. I did not initially find any real reviews. So I left them unmarked as spam thinking I’d give them some time to build up a review history. I think with today’s fast paced social media reviews there should be some real reviews by now, its October 11, 2017. My google search still pulls their fact cut and paste self reviews but now, even worse, there are reviews like this 

When you click these links you go to a redirect page that wants you to confirm you are human and redirects you to 

At the bottom of the spam emails is a physical address in New York NY. Don’t be impressed. It’s basically a mailbox. When I google their physical address I get this website https://www.clevvermail.com/locations/new-york.html 

[lifeoutsideart]

It’s a beautiful sunny day at the park in Hilton Head County Park in Rancho San Diego. I’ve an hour and a half to kill while my son’s in class at #Cuyamacha College. My plans, I’m going to finish reading Lincoln Child’s Full Wolf Moon introduction his enigmalogist character Jeremy Logan. Then I’m going to listen to a few art marketing podcasts from the incomperable Alexis Fedor and if I still have time I’m going to fire up my laptop and optimize some photos of my art for the relaunch of my Contemporary Southwest Art website www.kimwyatt.com The later may have to wait till I get home.

[lifeoutsideart]

Book review: The Fifith Petal by Brunonia Barry

Book review: The Fifith Petal by Brunonia Barry

 This is my review posted originally on goodreads.com If I could I'd give this book 3.5 stars. It's an enjoyable read, but I'm not running to the library to check out more of her books....but if I did stumble upon The Lace Reader I'd probably check it out.

I think my turn off was that ALL the characters turn out to have ancestors from Salem. Which I suppose is possible. I think most American's with a long family history on this continent can trace back to early New England settlers. But it just seemed like it was a odd coincidence. Oh, the original women burned as witches in Salem were all innocent but their descendants really are witches. This contradiction within the story's narrative rang my unbelievable bell.

[lifeoutsideart]

These 5 industries are hiring more remote job seekers in 2017

There will be more opportunities to work from home, a new report shows.

As I'm  on the hunt again for a new "day job" I stumbled upon this gem of an article.

[lifeoutsideart]

Goodnight

[lifeoutsideart]

It's been so hard since Suzy passed away on August 18. She was amazing

[lifeoutsideart]

It hasn't even been 14 hours since you passed Suzy. I feel like there is a chunk of my heart missing. Thank you for having been such a wonderful loving perfect friend for so very long. I miss you. Love mommy

[lifeoutsideart]

I know, I havnt been painting or posting much art. We are in the process of packing to move and, our Sweet dog Suzy became very ill. She was 15 years 8 months and she had kidney failure and some form of cancer. We could not ask her to suffer just to make us happy so when she stopped eating and other daily body functions stopped we took her to the vet and held her as she took her last breath.

[lifeoutsideart]

Here is a review by Kim: In case no one has noticed, I'm a bookworm disguised as a woman

[lifeoutsideart]

Here is a review by Kim:

[lifeoutsideart]

I loved that Forbes. Com had this article listing resources for finding arts jobs.

[lifeoutsideart]

I'm reentering the workforce after taking a year off. My last position was with Cox Communications in technical support and everything I loved about the job, the fast pace driven by changing technology and the fact that human beings and mother nature can mess it up. So now I'd like to change my career path and work in the arts. Since I was in my last position for over 17 years, my chronological resume doesn't really highlight how my work experience can be applied to a position in the arts. So I'm going to take the author of this articles advice, and craft a skills based resume, showcasing how my work and life skills. Wish me luck!

[lifeoutsideart]

9/11 by Kim Wyatt I also posted this on my art blog but in honor of everyone affected by 9/11 I'm sharing it here too. Every Americans heart carries the scars of this tragic day.