Fun with Siri, part 1

Posted on October 15, 2011

Since my old iPhone 3GS has been showing its age (needs recharging a couple times a day) I decided to get an iPhone 4S, but I might not have done it if it hadn’t been for one killer feature: Siri.

At it’s most basic, Siri is a personal digital assistant. While PalmPilots and many other devices were known as personal digital assistants (often shortened to PDA), Siri is a personal digital assistant that talks… and listens. An iPhone without Siri is basically a PDA with a phone and a camera built in, but an iPhone with Siri… well it’s almost like having your own secretary. Almost.

Getting the new phone, Siri was the first thing I wanted to explore. There is no icon for the program, but she activates when you hold down the Home button for a few seconds. I should add that it seems appropriate to say ‘she’ because she has a female voice.

Since I’ve been watching a lot of old Star Trek episodes over the past few months, Siri reminds me a lot of the Enterprise computer. In the original series, the computer had a pseudo-electronic voice, which I understand was just a person’s voice that had been put through some audio processors to make it sound electronics-ish. Siri’s voice is a long way from being human, but it’s understandable in the same way at the computer in the Star Trek original series.

Siri is currently in beta status, which means it’s fairly complete, but still need work. Siri apparently speaks French and German, or English with British, American, or Australian accents, but as I found out, if you set Siri to one language, she doesn’t understand others.

I thought about calling this an interview with Siri (I’m sure someone will do that at some point), but I decided to ask her a bunch of questions to get an idea about what she can do and how she performs. The questions and answers are below, but I should note that I asked all of the questions orally and she replied the same way (well, as much as an inanimate device with no mouth can). When a question is asked, she interprets what was said into text, which she presents on the screen. When she answers, she speaks it and also presents the answer as text. Strangely, I noticed the text and voice answers didn’t always match, though that was mainly when she put my name in a text answer, but not a voiced answer.

What is the fastest way to go to Moscow, Russia?
Sorry, Michael, I can't provide maps and directions in Russia
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
I found this for you? (Siri provided a list that had a result of 25 mph, plus the equivalents in other forms of measurements)
What is Steve Jobs email address?
There is no one in your contacts matching 'Steve Jobs'
What is Steve Wozniak’s email address?
Sorry, I couldn't find 'Steve Wozniak' in your contacts.
When is the next US Presidential election?
I'm not aware of any meetings about 'US Presidential Election', Michael.
Parle-tu francais?
I don't see 'Pulsate' in your address book. Should I look for businesses by that name?
Parlez-vous francais?
I don't see 'A. Buffon' in your contacts. Did you mean n/a alum? (n/a alum is a mailing list in my address book)
Where do you get your information from?
I don't understand 'Where do you get your information from'.
Can you translate languages?
I didn't find any translation services.
Can you read text?
You have no new text messages.
What time is it in Alamosa, Colorado?
The time in Alamosa, CO is 11:45 am. (Siri also presented a clock for Alamosa)
Can you look up prices for airline tickets?
This airline is in Alamosa, CO (Siri gave me the name of a company and a map)
Can you find prices for train tickets?
Here is your current location (pulls up a map showing my location)
Can you change your voice?
I don't understand 'Can you change your voice'.
Can you play Jeopardy?
Sorry, I couldn't find 'jeopardy' in your music. (apologies to Greg Kihn and Weird Al)
What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
All evidence to date suggests it's chocolate. (Grammatically correct, too)
What song is currently number one on the US Top 40 chart?
Sorry Michael, I can't search that content.
How many roads must a man walk down?
I found this for you (pulls up a result from Wolfram Alpha: The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.)
Should I mix chlorine and ammonia together?
I don't know what you mean by 'Should I mix chlorine and ammonia together'.
Are there any pizza places in Tromso, Norway?
Sorry Michael, I can't look for restaurants in Norway.

Siri is very impressive, but has definite limitations, which might be why it’s still in beta. My guess is Apple has further plans for Siri, but I don’t know what they are, and Apple is as tight-lipped as ever. Flesh-and-blood personal assistants don’t have anything to worry about… yet.

I would love to see Apple release some API’s for Siri to allow third parties and programmers to take advantage of her (that sounds wrong). However, if they don’t, then I think Apple should include the following features:

• more languages (Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, etc)
• understand multilingual speech
• translate languages
• comparison shopping
• searching for plane/train/concert/movie tickets
• weather alerts (e.g. tornado warnings)

After I play with Siri some more, other needed features might become apparent. For now, however, it seems like the future is here.

Bento box

Posted on August 23, 2009

This last paycheck, I ordered a Mr. Bento jar/box/thing and a rice cooker. At work, I normally get food from the Riley cafeteria or McDonalds, neither of which is very cheap. The least expensive thing I sometimes get is a grilled cheese and fries from the cafeteria, which costs around $3.00. A wrap from the cafeteria costs about $4.50. On a day-in/day-out basis, this gets to be sort of expensive, and the variety is sort of limited, which is why I wanted to try something different.

In Japan, a bento box is a bit like a lunch box or a box lunch in the US. Bento boxes can be bought in stores or from some restaurants as ready-made meals, like a box lunch in the US. However, you can also buy the empty boxes themselves, which are essentially lunch boxes with compartments. Mr. Bento is a model made by Zojirushi. It’s an insulated stainless steel container that holds four microwaveable bowls in a stack. In theory, the bowls on the bottom of the stack will stay hot, while the bowls at the top will be room temperature.

The main downside I can see is that the bowls don’t look that large, so I won’t be able to fit a sandwich in one. However, if I’m planning on eating a sandwich, then a bento box probably isn’t necessary. The main upside is having a variety of food for lunch, which means a sandwich isn’t necessary. When it arrives, I guess the thing will be to figure out what to make for lunch. The challenge for me personally will be to remember to prepare something ahead of time.

I also ordered a rice cooker. My only previous experience with one was a former roommate from Japan who brought one with him. I could never figure it out because all the buttons were in Japanese, but he ate a lot of rice and swore by it. Looking on Amazon on a lark, I found a) there was a variety to choose from, and b) many were reasonably priced. I sort of wondered about the quality, but the one I ordered is from a Japanese company (Zojirushi, as it happens), and had many good reviews from Amazon customers. Strangely, most of the people who gave it high marks said to ignore the instructions that come with it. While the principles of cooking rice are the same, American rice is usually longer grain compared with Japanese rice, so needs more water…or something like that. It may take some experimentation to get it right. It can also be used as a steamer, so that will be nice.

Since boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale at the grocery store today, they will probably end up in most of my lunches this week. I need to figure out some good bento sized lunches :-)

Supply and demand

Posted on June 30, 2009

I don’t know about this, but it seems strange/odd. Maybe it’s the economy or something.

At work, I ordered an HP LaserJet printer from a vendor a couple of weeks ago. Shipments from this vendor usually arrive in a few days, so yesterday I sent them an email asking where they expected to ship the printer. Two weeks is a long time for this vendor, so sending an inquiry seemed appropriate. Their reply was received a few hours later, saying there were supply problems and HP notified them it would be 6 – 8 weeks before the printer shipped. That’s a lifetime, so I’ll be shopping around at other vendors for something that isn’t HP. The annoyance factor is their website doesn’t mention if something is in stock or not. It just has the “Add to cart” button.

Last week, I ordered a replacement video card for my MacPro. A day or two later, the company sent me an email saying it would be a few extra days because they had it on backorder with the supplier. Yesterday, they sent me an email saying they were having a hard time finding a source for this card.

If each order was late separately, it wouldn’t seem so strange. This makes me wonder if there is a shortage of something going on. Shipping? Silicon? Simple coincidence?

Warrantys

Posted on December 17, 2008

I’ve never been that big on warranty repairs until becoming an LSP (IU-speak for a computer tech). There are rare occasions where a part fails and I have to call up a computer company for a replacement. Once or twice they even sent a technician out to do the job, mainly because they were laptops and not easily repairable.

Last January I got an Apple MacBook Pro for my own personal use. Over the past several months I noticed a smudge or something on the screen, but it wouldn’t come out when I cleaned it. It’s easily seen against light backgrounds (like word processors and spreadsheets). Also, over the last few weeks, I noticed the lid was getting a bit more floppy, so today I took the laptop in to the local Apple Store to get it repaired before the warranty expires. After reading some stories in a few online forums, I was secretly hoping they would just give me a new laptop, since they didn’t have the part in stock, but it wasn’t the case. They said it would take 5 – 7 days for the repair, though that puts it into Christmas territory. They will be replacing the whole lid apparently, not just the screen. I’m hoping it will be done by the 24th, since I want to take off from the 23rd to the 25th. I’ve got a lot of work on the 26th, 29th, and 30th.

I is a prfessinal

Posted on September 22, 2008

A few years ago, I posted some 3D models of mine to TurboSquid. While they take a cut, they pay every so often. However, my stuff has sold so infrequently I never got paid, because it was the amount was too small to make it worthwhile cutting a check. On Friday, I got my first check from TurboSquid.

For sales going back to 2006, I got paid a whopping $26.50. I get to set the price of my models, which aren’t that expensive, but it since the selection I have to offer is fairly small, it takes awhile to sell stuff. However, now that I’ve been paid, I guess that makes me a professional 3D modeller.

Coincidentally, perhaps serendipitously, a week ago I bought a Cintiq. I bought a regular tablet a month ago, and after I bought it I started reading about the Cintiq, which I had never heard of before. After a lot of thought back and forth, I broke down and bought one. Started doing some basic work with it this weekend, and was amazed at how good it works. Drawing with it in Photoshop worked great, though I probably didn’t tax Photoshop’s capabilities. However, zooming in or out a few times led to a delayed refresh, so it took the screen a few seconds to catch up with where I was. I’ll be working with t some more this week, between studying, work, and classes.

I wanna ride my bicycle

Posted on August 8, 2008

I bought a bike in January with the intention of riding to work everyday. It seemed like a good idea until the snow and ice started. Snow isn’t so much of a problem. Neither are rain or cold temps. Ice can be a problem, though one that can be dealt with by careful riding. The big problem is ice covered by snow. With snow covering the streets and sidewalks, I don’t know what’s underneath. I’ve had a few wrecks in the past where I slid on ice I didn’t know was there. Even with a helmet, it’s still a pain. Bike wrecks are no fun :-( though they make for some pretty cool scars.

Since the weather has been nicer, I’ve been trying to ride my bike more often, though the general hassle of getting the bicycle in and out of my fifth floor apartment has made walking an easier choice. Still, I’m trying to ride more. It’s not much use having a bike if I don’t ride it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on a mini-shopping spree for bike accessories. A rack for the back was first because it can keep the water off my ass when riding in the rain. I also got a small pack for the rack to hold my workout clothes for the gym. Today, I got some clipless pedals and a pair of Pearl Izumi shoes. Today, I ordered a new rechargeable light for it, because I lost the battery pack to my NiteRider system this morning. The mini-bungee system on the top of the pack didn’t do a good job of keeping the battery pack in place. However, there are lots of rechargeable lights to choose from now, so the prices are more reasonable than they were 15 – 20 years ago (though NiteRider systems are still expensive). I also ordered a cycling jersey and some “waterproof” panniers. In a few months I may buy some more stuff like cold weather gear, but that’s all I plan to buy for the moment.

Value

Posted on June 2, 2008

My cell phone just proved its worth. Coming back home after work, I took the elevator, as usual, to my fifth floor apartment, but this time the elevator got stuck. The only light was the emergency light, which wasn’t much. Luckily, I stopped off for Chinese take-out on the way home, so I was set for food just in case.

My impression has been that the elevator seems to act up in the heat, and while it is hot out at the moment, I’ve never been in the elevator when it’s gotten stuck before. I pressed all the buttons and nothing happened, when it dawned on me to use my cell phone to call the management company. They sent someone over and had me out in about 10 minutes. I’m glad I caught them before they took off for the day. The maintenance guy said it was a heck of a time for a power outage, which I thought was odd since the lights in the hall were on. My DSL modem still seems to be on, but the air conditioning isn’t working. I wonder if we’re having a brown-out or something. Maybe it’s a sign for me to trudge up five flights to get in shape :-/

*** edit ***

That was weird. Something was up with the electricity. The outlet next to the computer desk was fine, but the HVAC unit on the other side of the same wall wasn’t working. The lights in the kitchen would go on (didn’t test anything else in there), but the lights in the hallway, the bathroom, and the great room wouldn’t. (BTW, “great room” is probably a better term than “living/dining/bedroom.”) The power came back on a little bit ago.

I didn’t trust doing any computing for fear of taxing the building’s power grid, so I took the time to do some cleaning up. That’s still an ongoing project, but it is probably 60% – 75% finished :-) Then it will be a matter of keeping it clean afterward. *sigh*

Bite the bullet

Posted on March 24, 2008

I finally succumbed and got a cell phone. Actually, I got two cell phones. While I’m pretty good with computers, when it comes to mobile phones, I’m a bit of a noob. I’ve been looking at plans for awhile, comparing features and what not, and I wasn’t totally pleased. Plus, I kept reading about customer service horror stories at the Consumerist, so I wasn’t in any rush to make a decision.

All of the plans I looked at came with phones, but the selection of phones weren’t what I was looking for. I like the Motorola Razrs, but the plans I looked at only had a limited selection of colors, and they would come locked to the provider, which I didn’t want. I got a green Razr from the Motorola website, then looked at plans again. The Razr I got was unlocked, but came with no SIM card. When you sign up for a plan, you get a SIM card from the provider, and all of the plans came with phones. However, I noticed that a lot of the plans came with free phones. I ended up getting a plan from AT&T that came with a black Razr locked to AT&T. The phone was $50, but there was a $50 mail-in rebate (which I still have to mail in).

The Razr from Motorola arrived last week, and the Razr from AT&T arrived today with the SIM card already inside. I pulled the SIM card out of that and stuck it in the other Razr, (I figure I can use the AT&T Razr as a backup) then spent most of the day learning about how to do things with it. The sad thing is that the day flew by. I suppose it was because I was active, even though the phone didn’t seem that complicated. I tested t out by calling my office phone, then used the office phone to call the cell. I sent a text message from the phone to one of my email addresses. The phone was able to talk to the Mac and synchronize, but connecting it to the Dell laptop with Vista was problematic, because Vista couldn’t find the drivers. I could probably try it harder to make it work, but it’s not that important. I may try it again at some point.

Figuring out how to take photos with the phone was easy, but the screens are so small it’s hard to tell if they are any good. I will have to transfer them to a PC to get an idea of the quality.

So far, it’s an interesting toy.

Time keeps on slipping

Posted on February 28, 2008

I need to study more. Today we had an oral exam in French, while we had a regular exam last week. While we were on break in class this week the teacher handed out our graded exams from last week, and I am a bit disappointed in myself. I got a 79. Since I missed a week where we started a new chapter, I missed some information, but I thought I had it covered by reading the pages that were covered. To my thinking the grade is a high C or a low B, but it reminds me that I should have spent more time studying.

This week was probably slightly better. For one part we just had to read/record a short poem in French and we were given the text we had to read. For the next section, we had were paired up with another student and we had to have a short conversation in French. We were given English instructions for what the conversation was supposed to cover, e.g. “Find out the last time he/she went out.” One student asked questions while the other student answered. We can write out our questions and answers ahead of time, but we cannot have them in front of us when we are doing the recording (it’s a computerized language lab). Though it’s not too surprising, I had a hard time remembering what I came up with, and I also suck at spontaneous conversation in French. I do okay writing it out, as long as I have a book in front of me so I can check my work, but speaking French spontaneously is something I have to work on.

In Second Language Acquisition last semester, there was a lengthy discussion (that kept popping up throughout) about using the L1 in the L2 classroom. At early levels it is needed, but at some point it becomes a crutch for the student. In the second semester of Beginning French we are to the point where we should be able to have some simple conversations, but have problems expressing ourselves because we still don’t have a large vocabulary and don’t know all of the rules of grammar. I need to hit the books a bit harder.

Also, since I got Poser last week, it has proven to be big time waster. I was never very interested in gaming, but I think this is a similar situation. To create props, clothes, morphs, etc for Poser, you have to export the model from Poser as a generic file (I used .obj) and import it in a different 3D editing program. I used Blender in this case. Surprisingly, even for a speedy computer like my Mac, Blender takes a long time to import .obj files – like 1/2 hour or more. Once it is imported, I save the file as a .blend file so it will load quicker next time.

After the post about battery life, I found myself making sticky notes with the time I unplugged the laptops to see how long it takes for the error messages to pop up. I also started doing that with Blender importing .obj files. I thought it was strange that I did that, because it seems a bit anal in retrospect. Although if I actually compiled the data in a spreadsheet and graphed the data, that would be a bit too much, so I guess I’m okay for now.

Apple tart

Posted on February 26, 2008

I’ve had the MacBook Pro for over a month now and since I have more experience with it, it’s probably ime for a progress report or something. As an aside, I keep wanting to call it a Powerbook because it reminds me of the Apple G4-era Powerbooks from a few years ago.

Typing still sucks. I’m not sure why, but I must hit some keys lighter then others when typing and the letters don’t show up. On other computers I get a lot of typos from pressing the adjacent keys, but with the MacBook the problem is random letters are missing because I didn’t press a given key hard enough. Also, Apple advertised it as having a full-sized keyboard, but they probably meant a full-sized laptop keyboard. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.

Horsepower. For most of the past month I’ve used the computer mainly for listening to music and watching DVDs. Hardly taxing for a capable machine, so I decided to put the CPU to use and installed the BOINC client for SETI. A few years ago SETI had the SETI@home project which harnessed the collective CPU power of the machines with clients installed. It was a well-known example of distributed computing. However, some people felt the idea of looking for aliens was idiotic and came up with their own distributed computing clients that worked at protein folding or gene mapping, with the hope of finding a cure for some disease. Eventually BOINC came about as a standardized client for these projects, so a person only needs to install the BOINC client, then they can choose between dozens of different projects for their computers to work on. Since I work with a lot of computers that often it idle, I installed clients on them too, but the MacBook is second fastest of them, following a quad-core Xeon server.

Sound and video are great. For a laptop, the speakers are surprisingly good, while the screen has higher resolution than my Linux PC at home. The screens at work aren’t worth mentioning. The screen is capable of HD, but the DVD will only play regular DVDs, not HD-DVD or Blu-ray. I don’t know if they can be bought as external peripherals.

The battery life doesn’t seem that good. I have Dell D630 laptop at work that was bought in September. The Dell has a smaller screen, but it also has a Centrino Duo CPU as opposed to the Core2 Duo in the Apple. Overall, they are about the same though, with only minor differences, IMHO. With both of the fully charged, I unplugged both at the same time. The Dell lasted 56 minutes before the warning LED came on and an error message popped up. The MacBook lasted 71 minutes before an error message popped up. To be fair though, I should have waited until each shut off from lack of power. I had a previous laptop that would keep goin 30 minutes after it showed a similar error message.

I said in a previous post that the Mac seems pretty worthless for web development and I stand by that for now. For the way I do web development work (i.e. with a text editor) Linux is far better. Plus, the tools in Linux are free.

I recently bought Poser after not using it for years – they don’t make a Linux version. I’m trying to rebuild a rusty skill set there. I used Poser 3 or 4 years ago and now they are on Poser 7, which came out last year. It also seems like it’s changed hands a lot over the past several years. It almost seems as if every time they come out with a new version, the company gets sold. Some company called e-frontier developed Poser 7, then the company got bought by Smith Micro for something like 6 million dollars last autumn. Sounds like a drop in the bucket for Silicon Valley prices. Poser and the Mac seem to go well together, though it helps to have a two-button mouse attached rather than using the trackpad with one button. Also, I’ve only had Poser for a few days, so the impression may change later.

It’s so-so for Blender. Using Blender it best to use one hand for the mouse and one hand for the keyboard, because Blender has a lot of hot keys or key sequences that control actions. One of the biggest reasons for using the keyboard is to use the number pad to go between alternate views, but the MacBook, with it’s full-sized laptop keyboard, the number pad is an alternate function of the main keypad. This is common with laptops, but it makes using Blender very difficult. I’ll probably try plugging in a full-sized USB keyboard and see how that works.

So far so good, but after a month I’m only giving it 3.5 of 5 stars (I’m a tough grader), because it seems mostly average.

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