capturing animations, images, music, poems, stories, textures and videos straight off the brain of an artist

in future, textures [for use in games] and special effects [for use in movies] are going to be increasingly complex. although developer tools too are going to improve, so as to enable development of more complex content faster and more easily, yet it still requires significant effort and time.

today i was thinking that in future, when we have the technology to precisely decipher the brain's thoughts, we should be able to copy it and utilise it as content. for example i know that i can 'think music'. i mean in my thoughts i can listen to music. i mean music/sounds/voices/audio is something that can be imagined. similarly, images and videos and animations too can be thought.

with technology to capture it live and save it as files, tremendous workload can be reduced. an artist can simply think of a video, or a special effect, and have his brain's thoughts captured live and saved as a ready-to-use video file. a musician can think of a sequence of notes in a particular instrument and have that audio captured.

i believe this is possible. our thoughts are a form of information, and it should be possible to capture them, just like we capture a scene using a digital camera. but certainly, this requires deep understanding of brain's working, and its signals, along with the technology to capture it.

with above technology available, it should also be possible to copy/edit existing information in human brain. it should be possible to copy the data already present in brain, and to artificially introduce new, or modify existing data. things similar to what is done on a computer. this can make truckloads of important information quickly available for analysis or use. also, there should be a decrease in need of traditional input devices like pens, mouse, keyboard etc. a poet should be able to think the words of a poem and have them automatically captured and saved in form of a text file. we should be able to think something, and cause it to be treated as a command/task by a computer.

and of course, this system will not develop its own content, and will not assist in its development. it will, however, capture whats going on.

i hope to see spiderman 20 built using this technology.

my maniac mind's maze

if i remember that when i was a child, i was saved from a seemingly fatal accident by an adult, and if i go back in time and save my childhood version from that fatal accident, and if this child who subsequently evolves into an adult does the same (and so on), does this situation qualify as an ontological paradox?

i think this is the smallest blog post i have ever written.

i think the above line is incorrect, because addition of above line probably caused this post to no longer remain smallest.

i think the above line is correct, and its intriguing too.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.
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i think my mind is maniac right now, so i should sleep.

update- 18-4-07

just now i realised that sentences of the type "i think..." cannot possibly be correct or incorrect. they are all a description of what one anticipates/hopes/thinks. and hopes are not correct or incorrect. they can be stated honestly or dishonestly. but they being correct or incorrect is absurd. so i believe that if i write 3 sentences

i think that i am a good human.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

then the first line may be an honest description of a thought in mind, while the second line is invalid. so is third.

i think the above is correct. honest.

finally, i think i am being a real maniac right now. honest. again.

update 2- 18-4-07

i read detailed meaning of the word 'correct' and one of the meanings is 'something which confirms to truth or fact'. this reads same as one meaning of honest, the meaning i used above. it means use of the word 'correct' is okay.

once again.

i think i am a good human.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

the first line is honest. if i want to say that it (i.e. the first line) is 'correct', then in my opinion the necessary condition for this is that i be actually thinking that i am a good human, and not (necessarily) my being a good human in reality. the thought that i am a good human must have taken place, although i may not actually be a good human. now is this analysis correct? i think yes it is correct. the immediately previous line is correct (i do think that the previous line is correct- but it does not necessarily mean that it is really correct- only i actually think it is correct).




i am a maniac.

the previous line is correct.

version 3
18-4-07

witty analogy to abstractly explain difference between various linux distros

today my friend came to me asking which linux distro i have with me. i replied. then he asked me whether there shall be any differences between shell operations of various distros. i told him that for learning purposes, all major/current linux distros behave almost identically. then he asked me what exactly is the difference between various distros like ubuntu, red hat, fedora etc. i wondered for a while thinking how to explain this to him, and then spontaneously this analogy came to my mind.

i told him that just like a 'small car' is a thing and like there are various embodiments of it from different vendors- hyundai atos/santro or daewoo matiz or chevrolet spark or hyundai getz or maruti suzuki alto, a linux distribution is an abstract concept, and the various distros by different vendors all are embodiments of it. thus no matter whether it is a hyundai car or a suzuki one, they all will behave identically for learning purposes, and each one of them is both different in numerous little things [depending upon what a particular company's engineers and designers deem appropriate], and yet identical broadly.

my friend both perfectly understood the difference, and appreciated this analogy. i dont know from where this nice analogy came to my mind, and am writing this here because i think this can nicely solve the same query of any other fellow too.

a botch that i could have caused because of T9 predictive text messaging

i am an avid user of T9 predictive text messaging. i find the concept simply fabulous. some days back i was thinking about it, when i concluded some things about it. essentially, T9 is a function with one to many mapping, with an added condition such that for every element in the domain, the corresponding element or elements in the range are arranged in a fixed order. and this order is preset worldwide, based on analysis of frequency of usage of words in messages.

one thing that we can control while designing a system like T9 is the order in which different words with same combination appear for that key combination presses, but something we cannot change (fundamentally) is the unique key combination for a word (the key combinations are elements of domain set, while words are elements of range set). and it is because of this limitation (and by sheer coincidence too) that there are certain key combinations which result in mutually-conflicting words, and here lies the potential for problem.

what happened with me was that i got a message "what did you do about sony ericsson k750i?". what my friend was asking was whether i selected the phone or i rejected it (i was in the process of finding a suitable new phone for purchase). since i was in a hurry that time, i quickly hit the reply button and pressed keys in this order 7--> 3 --> 5 --> 3 --> 2 --> 8--> 3 --> 3. the word by default that comes for this combination is 'selected'. in reality i intended to write 'rejected', which, incidentally (and unfortunately) has same key combination as 'selected'. i had almost hit the send button when my finger spontaneously went numb (maybe my reaction time has lowered down) and the message did not get sent. i pressed the 'next word' key and then sent it. considering the situation, its certainly not a big deal even if i had sent 'selected' instead of 'rejected', since neither it mattered, nor it was non-amendable. yet it surprised me so much that here i am writing a blog about it. and i almost murmured to myself "oh my! what a coincidence!".

i believe such 'delicate' key combinations need to be found out by brute force coupled with dictionary lookup of valid words (so as to reject invalid words coming out of brute force) (with included logic to group words with similar key combination) and coupled with manual inspection to detect potential conflicts. conversly, a dictionary with all valid words coupled with a valid-word-to-T9-key-combination mapping program (again, with included logic to group words with similar key combination) and coupled with manual inspection too can serve this purpose. and for whichever key combinations there is potential of troublesome meaning, when a user forgets to change word for a key combination, there the phone should highlight the potentially-troublesome word(s) on the display as a reminder to user to have a re-look and make sure he has chosen the right word(s).

i really believe this should be done. not a necessity, but certainly a nice addition, and sometimes helpful too. especially when my beloved T9 can covert a casual sounding "hey i heard you have got many movies" to an inflammatory "hey i heard you have got many mother". creativity with such combinations has no end ;-)