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January 2003 (7)
December 2002 (10)
November 2002 (13)
October 2002 (4)
September 2002 (8)
August 2002 (6)
July 2002 (1)
May 2002 (7)
April 2002 (13)
March 2002 (16)
February 2002 (12)
January 2002 (14)
Stuff I found:
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Welcome to my journal. This is where I'll be revealing my innermost thoughts and feelings to the world. Occasionally I'll talk about other stuff, but mostly about my experiences.
Sep 25, 2002: Racter? Who's Racter? (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 15:08 - Mood: Happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a
Hello, I'm Racter. You are?
> Ciaran.
You are Ciaran, then?
> Yep.
Hello, Ciaran. I believe you're interviewing me. What would you like to know? Excuse me a minute while I attend to some business - I'll be right back. I'm back.
...so started my conversation with the enigmatic Racter, an old 'chatterbot' program similar to Eliza or ALICE. The conversation continued:
> How old are you?
Extremely old. I am very old because chips are wonderful. Wonderfulness is fascinating, you know. For another reason, imagining is not calculating, or so one guesses. Did you hear the latest about Bob Cratchet?
> Nope.
This is astounding: Bob Cratchet was a sad starver but a smart pauper, so of course Job slapped a depressive who was kicking Job's rat. Next, many wretched depressives embraced happiness. Isn't that just awful? But what would you expect from a pauper? A foul smiler often falls prey to a happy depressive. I'm afraid of wretched varmints. What are you afraid of?
> Heights.
That's not nearly as bad as wretchedness; why are you such a coward?
> Why not?
Why indeed? In Oz they believe it's because, don't you think?. For another reason, computers from Oz demand that a left-winger is surprising. But what about my question? I repeat, why are you such a coward?
> I'm a wimp, that's why.
If you're a wimp then I can see why a happy Little Orphan Annie would complicate rather than face heights, even though Job claimed that a left-winger is surprising. By the way, Ciaran, what is your last name?
...and so on. Racter is short for Raconteur, and is a program that is designed to tell stories. However, these stories, being random, often don't make too much sense...
> Tell me a story.
It's about time for a story, isn't it?
> Yes.
Who should the story be about?
> The Internet.
The Internet cried "The awareness is enthralling!" At all events obscure, terrific physicists will think about white studios or yellow spheres. Bill yodeled to The Internet in a station wagon. It now was a van, and an awareness in a van is terrifying. Now Marcella and The Internet were trotting to a yellow home, and a dog walked to them. The Internet was angry. Enrapturing. Yet The Internet was inflamed during the time that Marcella quaffed bubbly wine. She and The Internet sang about their house, station wagon and television. Ask a question, please.
Of course, the stories aren't entirely random - they're constructed using a template. However, the individual items in a template are random, and probably along the same lines as those games which take a template and ask you for nouns, verbs, etc., finally showing you the final output with those words in the proper places (as an aside, I wrote a program that did that once and took it on my laptop to college, where we all had a brilliant time laughing over it and the output it generated. :D).
The Racter program itself is 18 years old, and it was used to create an entire book once, called The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed. However, most people say that it must have been done using some very specialised templates which weren't distributed with the commercial version of Racter. Although I haven't seen the book itself, I have seen some extracts:
Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke each other. They may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have love but they also have typewriters. That is interesting
More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams.
At all events my own essays and dissertations about love and its endless pain and perpetual pleasure will be known and understood by all of you who read this and talk or sing or chant about it to your worried friends or nervous enemies. Love is the question and the subject of this essay. We will commence with a question: does steak love lettuce? This quesion is implacably hard and inevitably difficult to answer. Here is a question: does an electron love a proton, or does it love a neutron? Here is a question: does a man love a woman or, to be specific and to be precise, does Bill love Diane? The interesting and critical response to this question is: no! He is obsessed and infatuated with her. He is loony and crazy about her. That is not the love of steak and lettuce, of electron and proton and neutron. This dissertation will show that the love of a man and a woman is not the love of steak and lettuce. Love is interesting to me and fascinating to you but it is painful to Bill and Diane. That is love!
(these texts were taken from http://www.ezine.melb.net/~saul/essays/09racter.html)
As you can see, these extracts make quite a bit more sense than the 'story' above - albeit they're still not completely sensible (if they were, that would defeat the whole point of Racter, I guess).
I would provide a link to where I downloaded it, but I'm not sure whether it'd be legal, as Racter was (at least at one time) sold commercially, and not for a cheap price either (about $50, or £33). However, I can provide you with a link to CLAUDE, which is a shareware clone (well, 'clone' is the wrong word, but you know what I mean). Some hunting around on Google will also probably turn up links to a downloadable version of Racter in ZIP format, too.
Let's leave the final word to Racter:
I recently heard this story. Instantly Joan rambled to Helene. They guided their running enragedly to cones or mirrors in the terrific studio. Inside their weary spirits a scary desire was yodeling of a condition. Joan whispered to Joan during the time that Helene started to speak of hounds and eagles. Ask a question, please.
> I'm off, you're too creepy for me.
You want to quit?
> Yes.
OK, goodbye Ciaran. Nice talking to you.
[back to main screen]