NaNoGenLab: an experiment a day during November

[cpressey]

I intend to participate again this year.

If you are wondering why I used the word "again" in the previous sentence, it may help to understand that the account I was using last year has since been converted into an organization.

I don't know what I intend to do, yet, but the end result better consist of 50,000 of something that I can make a fair argument are "words" or I will surely be forced to pack my bags and catch the next Greyhound out of town in my shame.

[cpressey]

I will not have as much time to commit to this this year as I did last year.

It might end up just being the first two days after Hallowe'en.

It will not use Markov processes. It might use a genetic algorithm with a Levenshtein distance as part of its fitness function. Or it might just use a grammar-based generator (a recursive-descent parser "in reverse", whatever you call that.) Don't know yet.

It will not use Twitter. It might use Project Gutenberg. But also, it might not.

[cpressey]

This is just me thinking out loud.

It occurs to me that you can write an unremarkable generator which generates a remarkable novel, or a remarkable generator which generates an unremarkable novel. Or both or neither of course, but what I'm getting at is, you can concentrate your efforts on either side.

Is a program that generates a single novel still a novel-generator? If, as the rulebook suggests, a script that downloads a novel from Project Gutenberg and spits it out is a novel generator, then, yes it is.

So, you could participate in both NaNoGenMo and NaNoWriMo by opening a text file like the following and banging on it throughout the month:

#!/usr/bin/env python
print """
Owls and Lollipops
==================

It was a dark and stormy night.  My buddy had already parked his car when suddenly
(continued for 49984 more words)
"""

And if you get stuck, just print "meow" for the remaining words. Or, more interestingly, use some less trite application of logic and looping and whatnot to construct parts of the text. I think you could call this a hybrid novel/novel-generator.

[cpressey]

Causes of insufficient moisture: Cutting the curd too fine or breaking up his furniture, perhaps...! Oh, my friend, my fortune is made. This made it possible to issue to each workman a shovel which would hold a load of 21 pounds of whatever it could be. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and every act White Fang with his foot. He says that some soft body of the Yellow Thing, and did seem as that it screamed to rage amid the entrails thereof; so wondrous was the fury and energy of that trusted Weapon. If only he could have taken counsel with someone with someone not bound his hands behind his back. Is your husband smoking, my dear. I thank you, he said. A hissing tongue of flame leapt in. If you won't, I'll give us no clue.

[cpressey]

That was just an experiment. The program which produced it, and other experiments, will eventually be placed into:

https://github.com/catseye/NaNoGenLab

[MichaelPaulukonis]

regarding eliza v eliza: Did you see the Eliza twitterbot that was talking to GamerGaters?

• https://twitter.com/ElizaRBarr/with_replies
• http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2014/10/ultimate-weapon-against-gamergate-time-wasters-1960s-chat-bot-wastes-their-time

What would happen if we hooked up Eliza to twitter, went back to twitter for another comment, something apropos.....

[MichaelPaulukonis]

Here is my novel-generating algorithm:

1. Propose an idea to @cpressey
2. Wait for it to be implemented
3. ...
4. Profit!

[cpressey]

Playing requests now in the bandstand! 15 dollars a day, weddings, parties... bongo jams a speciality!

@MichaelPaulukonis Unfortunately, and even though ElizaRBarr is my new hero, I don't do Twitter. (I realize I must be in the distinct minority, here.) So you might be waiting a long time. This variation on the algorithm might be more efficient:

1. Propose an idea to @cpressey
2. Wait for any idea, any idea at all to be implemented
3. ...
4. AssertionError: profit <= 0

[MichaelPaulukonis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEyDNTLlRgU

[cpressey]

NaNoGenLab: an experiment a day during November

Meditating on @dariusk's statement, encouraged by @hugovk, and inspired by @MichaelPaulukonis's tireless research into Propp and Fortran V, I have settled on setting the goal for myself for this NaNoGenMo to be to produce, aside from awkward sentences like this one, one experiment in the generation, transformation, and general mutilation of text (and images, yes those too) per day, on average, for the month of November 2014.

With the following caveats:

• "Experiment" is defined about as strictly as "novel" is.
• Experiments are not expected to always be successful (of course).
• Some of these experiments are going to be derivative of previous experiments.
• I have about 14 currently, so I'm ahead of the clock, but I may run out of ideas.
• I may also run out of available time.
• Ideally, the novel submitted (near the end of the month, surely) will incorporate several of the experiments. But if I don't have enough time available, I may just pick one and run it to 50K words.
• In the course of running these experiments, various supporting tools and corpora are accumulating in the lab as well. I won't, generally, consider these to be experiments for the purpose of counting the number of experiments I've done (unless I get desperate.)

Everything in the NaNoGenLab is in the public domain, so feel free to steal it, build on it, sell it, don't even credit me, whatever. I'm trying to use only verifiably public-domain external resources as well (Project Gutenberg, chroniclingamerica, and images in Wikimedia's "PD" categories, so far.)

[MichaelPaulukonis]

produce ... one experiment ... per day I have about 14 currently

good GOD, man!

[dariusk]

I'm into it.

[cpressey]

@MichaelPaulukonis We are doing science so hard right now!!

I guess I didn't mention that I have a fairly long commute which constitutes a large chunk of my free time. If I can bang it out while on the train, it's an "experiment".

And y'understand that some of these are going to be just bloody awful.

It, was-was,
It, was-was,
the-the best!
the-the best!

of, times,
of-of times,
of-of times-times of-of it,
it it was.

the, worst,
the-the worst,
the-the worst-worst the-the of,
of of times.

[MichaelPaulukonis]

Sea-Shanty "Tale of Two Cities" is admirable, admiral.

What happens when that's pointed at something smaller, like a short story. It would get longer, wouldn't it? Or does the shanty stop after three verses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfiQAvvmXvc

[cpressey]

It'll keep producing verses as long as there are more words in the input, the main problem is that the input words are given on the command-line, you'll have to use xargs or something if you want to give it a text file as input, oh and if the number of input words isn't divisible by 4 it'll crash at the end, oh and it doesn't filter out punctuation so unless you like your shanties with extra puncutation in them you'll have to filter those characters out first LOOK WE ARE DOING SCIENCE HERE, NOT ENGINEERING, O-KAY?

If I get to 30 experiments and have time remaining, I'll clean it up. And try to add more templates for verses, too (currently there are only two.)

Here's some output from this morning's experiment:

survival concise impartial house chemical advise unusual false especial because metal worse impartial increase commercial crease differential close mathematical cause !

It may amuse to try to guess the method used before reading the report. What's frightening is how simple it is.

[MichaelPaulukonis]

http://www.xradiograph.com/Programming/Engineer

[cpressey]

Indeed! I do hope I'll be part of the mad control group that doesn't get its world taken over when the time comes.

But wouldn't a mad engineer spend their time doing mad calcs to prove that their mad blueprint meets the mad specifications and doesn't violate any mad codes...?

(snaps fingers) Mad blueprint generator! Hmm...

[cpressey]

Here is some output from this morning's experiment, btw.

turn four, for or of to the they this is in an and are as a by It with walk want when who who, grow great dear leave travel three, those, town, work, work forced followed crowded roads rags, alms. all sell sex, six see beg being time native able female employ every These their either mothers honest object fight up, Spain, infants instead Pretender passenger sustenance streets, stroling through thieves themselves helpless beggars country, children, Barbadoes. cabbin-doors melancholy livelihood, importuning

[MichaelPaulukonis]

"two hours ago" it says to me at 9:am on an EST saturday. Where are you, and how can you start so early?

I'm only online because my wife is out of the house and the kids are playing Angry Birds while I tweak some code (nobody has eaten breakfast yet).

I did add more configurable genders, and buff up the wordbank passing mechanism.

Tiny tiny miniscule tweaks. Bigger projects keep getting shunted to the side....

[cpressey]

Well it is important to remember that NaNoGenLab is just one of many (mad) arms of the entire vast (and mad) Cat's Eye Technologies Lab Complex, which spans several hundred square kilometers inside the hollow Earth and has (mad) openings to the surface near Calgary, Rejkiavik, Krasnoyarsk, and Venice. But I'm working remotely from near Oxford right now.

Actually, that reminds me that I really ought to open a bug report about this whole "Na = National" thing, because when I glanced over participants' Github profiles, I counted at least 6 countries. Well, at least I've found a workaround that works really well for me ("just ignore it") so it's kind of low priority I guess.

Anyway, here's some output from this afternoon's experiment.

Alice and Bob saw a ghost looking pensive.

Then one day, Alice turned to Bob and said, "Bob, do you remember that one time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" Bob smiled. "Of course I do, Alice."

Then one day, Bob turned to Alice and said, "Alice, do you remember that one time when we remembered that time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" Alice smiled. "Of course I do, Bob."

Then one day, Bob turned to Alice and asked, "Alice, do you think that one day we will wonder if we'd ever remember that time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" "I don't know, Bob," said Alice.

Then one day, Bob turned to Alice and asked, "Alice, do you think that one day we will remember that time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" "I don't know, Bob," said Alice.

Then one day, Bob turned to Alice and said, "Alice, do you remember that one time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" Alice smiled. "Of course I do, Bob."

Then one day, Alice turned to Bob and said, "Bob, do you remember that one time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we remembered that time when we saw a ghost looking pensive?" Bob smiled. "Of course I do, Alice."

[edit: fixed names that were incorrectly assigned in parts of the dialogue]

[dariusk]

1) this event is a NaNoWriMo take-off, so that bug is a WONTFIX as it's based on an upstream dependency 2) we never said which nation

[MichaelPaulukonis]

East Germany? Lichtenstein? The Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights?

Good ol' Bob and Alice!

[cpressey]

Scotireland? Spexico? Grome?

The latest experiment has gone horribly wrong I'm afraid; I'm just lucky nothing exploded, I suppose.

Well, it's not that bad, it's just that it needs a very specific input text before I will be able to make use of it. The text needs to be 215 words long and all the words need to be unique.

So I find myself working on a poem... only 89 words so far, and I've already used "you", "no", "for", "at", "the", and "and". Tricky business, this poetry stuff.

[ikarth]

You can always take an arbitrarily large text, walk through it grabbing only the unique ones that you don't already have, and stop when you have 215.

http://www.peterbe.com/plog/uniqifiers-benchmark

[cpressey]

@ikarth What, and end up with gibberish? I don't think so.

Oh, wait... right. Well anyway, poem's written now. No going back.

The idea (detailed here) was to try to answer the question: If we wanted to submit a novel to NaNoGenMo that was exactly 50,000 words in length, and we wanted to generate it using only permutations or combinations (with repetitions allowed, or not) of r words drawn from a set of n words, which combinatoric method, and what values of r and n should we pick? And let's ignore trivial solutions like P(50000, 1).

Turns out (unless there was a flaw in my maths) that you cannot get 50,000 out of a single non-trivial combinatoric function, although C(317, 2) = 50086 which is quite close, although also, as I realized somewhat late in the research, that is just the number of ways to pick two elements out of 317; if you wanted to count all those elements picked, it would actually be r times that. The closest, taking that into account, is 2*P(159,2) = 50244.

So this led me to ask (and instruct my computer to find out) if there were any two non-trivial combinatoric expressions of the latter sort that, when added up, totalled 50000. Turns out, yes: 3_C(21,3) + 2_C(215,2) = 50000. (And because choose has a symmetry in it, there are three other possibilities, using r = 19 in the first C and/or r = 214 in the second C.)

Directly I collected 21 unique words roughly meaning "section of a text", and wrote a 215-unique-word poem, and threw together something to pull all the combinations and output Markdown, and the result is:

3×C(21,3)+2×C(215,2)=50000: The Novel

[cpressey]

And @ikarth, just to let you know, your suggestion was not made in vain.

[cpressey]

Some recent results:

Recursively expanding templates without localizing the variables first:

sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat and sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat and sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat is no sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat is the sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat and sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat is no sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat of sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat and sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat is the sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat of sheep can't understand sheep can't understand meerkat and sheep can't understand meerkat!

Converting a binary file into a great big number and then treating that number as a phone number mnemonic (you know, like 1-800-GET-LOST):

V LEEK OB X KHZ K WIG IGOR M MEMO YOU O GIN WIKI BUS OK WHAT ALVA VA GELT X SUN M VEX ZN E PINES FM VOLT WOO I IR YAK H IO FIG HI VAIN WU WOLFS EX WOW X TAX M TRULY LUNG I MING R JIG X BOY A CI X TASK I HUI H SITED HG M K K HI OW EGO O CRY EU TI VEX MY LEARY O OB M WADE TL O O GAY LOUT M K K LYX PM NAG EMIT NORA SLY UZI SOLE V TO LYX BLOB X K BLU LN JR PL R SWAIN X SQ THOSE H JR I ODOM JAG MET CANOED MU LN PEI I IKE LU PEGS H K K IBM X MUD TWIG YO HG M BIC AH H LN K CAIN APACE M LN IBM JR M IBM R NB HUBERT DOE RAVELS MYS K H CI I H TOFU HOLY HUI SHY WHY O NOE MYS M TORY M WOO FELONY H NOE GOBI KALI K POI TARE HG BOB H IPAD CLAY K LN MAY MG FLAP X X BARD H TL HOOK TY TI RYE KOOK V MN FOODS HZ X CYST V SOAVE X FIT INK H MN A PORK O HUBS H MEND MG PALLS X MAY ROCHE GAB I I LINGO I OH I GINNY ZELIG X MN X X BRISK TOO MAZE O TY TONES X I K H KHZ TH FOOT IRK WU E K OILY PL STYLI TYCOON LU A OATH M LEVI RX ROOM MG K PL MACY ORR MN H GAY OFT V IO MAVIN MIA I INS NORA FLUTE URDU SHUT O SO SONY X LI PLACE M K TELL E IO I ROB I I I GAMY H LID O GIGS HI DILLS MN M KHZ X FEY KIT HACKS H THAN OB I I OAR DAVIS BELL M K ZIBO AM H LN H LU CHEW EH X LOB X YE LAOS H K HA TAMI I X I LN MODEM AH PU TOGS K K GOO GOG FOOL X TWO IN GWYN MG V LAIN X MEEK R FIT I I RELY YO STEIN X H MN JR BIG LN I AGREE I A AXE O I H HZ H SPREE GLIB X I AT SWAPS OS H K LAD HE HUCK AH K LEN SLUT I HG K MEG M OSCAR KC QUILLS SO ROMPS I X JR X H LBJ PL HI SOPS K HE I IN KIEL DI TOIL K GS MGM ZR GOTH I MANX OB SWIM M LU I K H V COO X MIX KENS H GULP M SO FLINT HONK LODE V AMOS X H M ADO DOOR K LN V SNAG M K HG M PL K WOES KC IO WAGS ZN X K GS M LO EBERT E JILT O O ENG OK COD H K YAK H KW QUAD YO HG M MHZ YELLOW MIX NP PET MOSS K EYCK H EMMY X CADGE CID YO A CHEN K TRIAD I YAK X K KC IO JUN M DIET CULL IO I LUSH TY H LIKE X I AZANA OK LN X ANON LE UGH HA IO I DOCK TIPS H DIOR X GOD IO COT M NEW YUK I OUR A DRAB I HUE O UM JR LUCRE MY LTD OLAF O IN X AWAY CAW GEE STOATS TULSA UNIT GET DUCHY K H GET V GUY YUKON DUO I I KW ENRAGE HI OK SIKH M MUG HG CLOD ANN ERGO HE IBIZA V IBO CLOT M NOSY EU MALT K ZN OK ONYX INVAR H FIB H TRAPS BANNS X H MICH CZAR MN LO JOVE JIG FIRM X MES M TEA X COIF TATUM O KOOK ON I CAROL GO BAWDY M GUT OB O TOD LLAMA M LE COZY X WHO IR HA OMIT HUNKS TH K H RIO K H M HOSES I WII EH I NINA V IO ELI OGDEN ZN STOWS X H HULL I BRET K H RYE OK H SLY DIOR V LI GRUS X K JAZZ NAG LN X I DI ILLS PIG TUXES H MN HI IO IVY SWASH I CUBS PU CLIO K UGH GOA MY ETTA VEILS AX PIS NEST TI X HUS SLOB I K UTOPIA V KC I I ETTA I GS H GO LN HENS PM PALE GULP A WRIT O FIVE ZR ION X HULL K MONA I OW HG LASH V LICIT O DISCO V MY MONK FM IGOR ZN TY ENDUE KEGS SI ETON A WIZ X UTE H RIB STANK MY SHUN MN MN X GEO HE TWIG MU X ZN GS TRULY GIBED X WU EH DOUBT HUNG I IO ADDERS I GONNA IF ADZ GEO EH R BIT ISM E CARLO H HIKE M THETA X ROUTE O LOOP K RAGING O HUI LITHE DENY A UGLY I H DOLT FIB IT OHIO LI UBANGI LO I EH X X K FIT O AVIOR R CELIA HUE GOD BOLT MUD WEIR K H GYM

I believe I did say that some of these were going to be bloody awful.

[MichaelPaulukonis]

LASH V LICIT O DISCO V MY MONK FM has actually been one of my favorites radio stations for a few years now.

[enkiv2]

You could grab out only the sections of that number that are dictionary words, I guess.

On Tue Nov 11 2014 at 2:14:54 PM Michael Paulukonis < notifications@github.com> wrote:

LASH V LICIT O DISCO V MY MONK FM has actually been one of my favorites radio stations for a few years now.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/10#issuecomment-62600525 .

[cpressey]

@enkiv2 Ironically, all of those words did come from /usr/share/dict/words -- I don't know why it contains single letters, but apparently it does. Abbreviations, too.

Actually, thinkinaboutit, doesn't a real dictionary usually have entries for "J" and "FM" and such too?

Anyway, I know what you mean, and yes you could throw the whole thing through a filter to clean it up, but then it would lose an interesting property. As it is now, you ought to be able to reconstruct the original binary file from the words.

The whole thing was a hack of course (I'm starting to regret the experiment-a-day goal; it's like speed chess; don't play speed chess, Bobby, it'll ruin you) and I doubt it generates an "optimal" phone number mnemonic. I'm pretty sure it would be possible to do better with some kind of dynamic programming ish solution. (And I'm pretty sure the same applies to a number of other experiments I've done so far as well.)

@MichaelPaulukonis Your frequent musical references are sorely tempting me to write a synthesized music generator as one of the experiments. Arguing that a piece of music is a novel is probably beyond even my own post-modernist-conceptual-non-media-specific (lack-of-)sensibilities, though.

[MichaelPaulukonis]

• Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
• Pricksongs and Descants
• Blood Music
• Novel (musician)

[enkiv2]

Generative music is definitely worthwhile. There's probably room for an intersection between generative text and generative music, as well. (Think of Music From Small Programs, then apply the same to text -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o)

On Tue Nov 11 2014 at 11:14:14 PM Michael Paulukonis < notifications@github.com> wrote:

• Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
• Pricksongs and Descants http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/15/pricksongs-descants-robert-coover-review
• Blood Music http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_%28novel%29
• Novel (musician) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_%28musician%29

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/10#issuecomment-62667898 .

[cpressey]

"Proust in his first book, wrote about, wrote about..."

(I blame VincentToups for bringing up Proust)

[enkiv2]

Actually, do you guys want a copy of one of my music generators? Count it as an experiment and take a day off :-). It takes a number, and uses factoring to produce a set of musical properties, outputting a midi file.

On Wed Nov 12 2014 at 8:32:00 AM Chris Pressey notifications@github.com wrote:

"Proust in his first book, wrote about, wrote about..."

(I blame VincentToups for bringing up Proust)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/10#issuecomment-62717600 .

[cpressey]

@enkiv2 Thanks for the kind offer. (And thanks for referring to us with a plural! The Deros really appreciate it.) We're getting pretty close to the goal of 30 experiments now I think (depending on how you count) but a "day off" would be great! Why, I could start working on my novel...

Only hitch is that the Lab has, up 'til now, a fairly strict policy of having all the experiments & lab materials be in the public domain (ideally Unlicense for code and CC0 for non-code.) Would you be OK with that? If not I can probably talk the legal department into accepting some other open source license.

(Even if not for publication, I would not mind at all just playing with the music generator, sure.)

[enkiv2]

That's absolutely fine with me, though it uses MIDIUtil as a dependency (which appears to be bsdl or mit license).

On Wed Nov 12 2014 at 11:19:52 AM Chris Pressey notifications@github.com wrote:

@enkiv2 https://github.com/enkiv2 Thanks for the kind offer. (And thanks for referring to us with a plural! The Deros really appreciate it.) We're getting pretty close to the goal of 30 experiments now I think (depending on how you count) but a "day off" would be great! Why, I could start working on my novel...

Only hitch is that the Lab has, up 'til now, a fairly strict policy of having all the experiments & lab materials be in the public domain (ideally Unlicense http://unlicense.org/ for code and CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ for non-code.) Would you be OK with that? If not I can probably talk the legal department into accepting some other open source license.

(Even if not for publication, I would not mind at all just playing with the music generator, sure.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/10#issuecomment-62745019 .

[cpressey]

@enkiv2 Excellent -- the project is not as picky about dependencies (I've been using py-editdist and gutenizer extensively and they're both in the ISC/MIT/BSD-zone too.) You could either open a pull request on the NaNoGenLab repository to add a new directory to it, or email me the materials -- my email address is my Github account name at catseye.tc. Thank you again.

I re-counted and I seem to have about 26 experiments now (depends a bit on what I want to consider an experiment.) Of course, some of them really deserve a bit more fleshing out, but they will get that in good time. Since we're not even quite at the half-way point yet, I guess I can slow down. I have a few ideas that are either larger (and maybe more intimidating) experiments or full-fledged entries, so I'll probably start turning my attention to those.

[cpressey]

@enkiv2 Actually -- actually -- hang on a sec -- or at least, no hurry. Apparently, a Complication has Arisen.

It was no problem getting it cleared by Legal of course (the bigger problem was finding them. They recently moved offices to Cavern 14b, apparently. I took a wrong turn at the bottomless pit of acid and was lost for hours.)

No, the problem was getting the idea past the Postmodernism Triumvirate. I wasn't expecting that at all. I was expecting them to nod in silent assent like they always do. Really, I was beginning to see that step in the experiment approval process as a bit of a no-op! But this time, when I mentioned the concept of a generated musical novel, all I got was three furrowed brows. I must say, it was quite dis-concert-ing.

I must therefore assume that Significant Aesthetic Considerations are now afoot, somewhere deep in the bowels of the Earth. 'Pataphysical reasoning of tectonic proportions, no doubt. So I'm laying kind of low at the moment, just staying near my bench, working on my reports, y'know.

But anyway. If I don't get any correspondence from them about it in the next few days, I'll just go ahead with it. What could possibly go wrong?

[MichaelPaulukonis]

What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdStcXSD38c

[cpressey]

Yes, yes! Ha, ha! That's a good idea @MichaelPaulukonis, let's all think about jolly things like massive earthquakes to distract ourselves from the ominous possibilities of the IMPENDING PARADIGM COLLAPSE. Ha, ha!

La la la la la.

The Lab's all quiet now. The pressure's getting to me, I think. I fear that, though I came into this month a relatively-happy-go-lucky Dr. Jekyll, I shall exit it a shambling Mr. Hyde.....nnn.

Ugh!

[MichaelPaulukonis]

I drive to work every morning under a hand-painted exit-sign that read "WTC 7 TRUTH/CONTROLLED DEMOLITON". I am good about ignoring IMPENDING PARADIGM COLLAPSE.

[cpressey]

Wow. I've never been to New York, but everything I hear about it makes it sound just delightful.

Anyway! To try to cheer myself up, for this evening's commute's experiment, I made this:

A cowboy, a priest, and a cat walk into a bar.

The cowboy says to the bartender, "I'll have a whiskey and soda."

The bartender says, "Aren't you a cowboy?"

The priest says, "Yes, but don't tell the cat!"

Ha, ha! Nothing like a little Bartok to get my mind off things. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Aauugh! The change, the chANGE! I knew I shouldn't have injected those noocytes! What was I thinking?!

[cpressey]

Well, I feel great this morning! That 40 of whiskey that I drank last night must've wiped those noocytes right out. It's a bit odd that I don't even have a hangover, but hey, I ain't complainin'!

Come to think of it, that Greek chorus singing that Bee Gees song on the train was a bit odd, too. But I'm going to take a cue from M.P. and just ignore it!

Today's going to be a good day, I just know it!

[MichaelPaulukonis]

I've got a thousand ideas, and no time to implement them. My son woke me up for the potty at 4:30am (actually, he wanted to wake up my wife, but she was nursing the baby, so I was something like his third or fourth choice, a disappointment he made known vociferously) and I had trouble falling asleep, my mind was racing with code ideas! I almost went upstairs to start typing; but I knew if I did my son would follow me up and start playing angry birds on the Roku.

So, anyway. Back to evaluating insurance forms to make sure there are no gaps in effective dates!

[cpressey]

So get this.

I get back from lunch to find that a cylinder has come down my pneumatic message tube. I open it up. There's a note inside. Typewritten on human skin. Yeah, that's from the Triumvirate, for sure.

With trembling hands, I light a kerosene lamp so I can read it more easily (it's kind of dark inside the hollow Earth, you see) and unfold it:

Ah, nice. I do appreciate it when they use my real name instead of calling me "Underling No. 7,683". They spelled it correctly, too!

Really?

Ohhh. Hmm. Yes. Yes, you may have something there.

Golly!

What in blazes does that mean?

OK, I will. But this is madness! November is almost half over, there are already more "Mo"s than I can count competing for attention in it, and how big is a two-and-a-half-hour-long .ogg file anyway, like 2 gigabytes?! And what kind of awkward name is "NaOpGenMo" anyway? How would this even work?

Wow. Just... wow.

I'm going to have to digest this.

(Think about it, I mean! Not eat the skin. C'mon, that's just gross.)

[MichaelPaulukonis]

It couldn't literally be 50,000 beats of middle C played on a clarinet, because that would not be opera.

Your Triumvirate is... oddly lacking in certain areas.

Have you seen KrazyDad's Birdsong Book ?

[cpressey]

It couldn't literally be 50,000 beats of middle C played on a clarinet, because that would not be opera.

Whereas 50,000 "meow"s is literature?

Your Triumvirate is... oddly lacking in certain areas.

I'll be the first to admit that they're... not quite all there. The "Project Brandenburg" to which they referred also doesn't seem to exist, either, AFAICT. (At least, not in this timeline!)

And technically they have no authority over above-ground affairs.

Still, y'really want to stay on their good side. You don't wanna know how many planets these entities have hollowed out for merely for their own amusement, you really don't. They're like the Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos of... well whatever the heck it is that they're the Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos of.

So I'm stumped. On the one hand, this is clearly insupportable. On the other, well... rainbow heart stickers! They mean business.

What say you, @enkiv2? Ever tried running that MIDI generator of yours for two and a half hours?

I guess it's not that hard to create a repo and start a resources thread, at least...

(And yes, I saw the issue for the Birdsong Book, but have been too stunned at the amazingness of the idea to formulate any response as yet.)

[MichaelPaulukonis]

50,000 "meow's" is literature, where literature is defined as "words".

50,000 beats of middle C played on a clarinet is opera only where opera is defined as "music that does not have to include singing words" which somewhat eliminates the one distinction I thought "opera" had over "music".

They had come in the fugue to the stretto When a bearded one man from the ghetto Stood up and grabbed Her tresses and stabbed Her to death with a rusty stiletto. -Edward Gorey (not having anything to do with opera, I guess, but "libretto" reminded me of this)

[cpressey]

I see what you're saying, but if Mendelssohn can write Songs Without Words, well, then, an entire Opera Without Words doesn't sound completely out of the question to me.

(Never mind the avant-garde conceptualists of the 1970's who redefined music as "any action". Redefined for themselves, anyway -- I'm not sure this kind of outright sloppiness was accepted by many other folks. Fluxus, was it? I don't have any references for this factoid at hand at the moment, but it sounds like the kind of shenanigans they'd have gotten up to.)

[MichaelPaulukonis]

The Fluxus artists aligned themselves with musicians who were thus redefining, and vice-versa, but the movements converged and diverged.

[moonmilk]

NaOpGenMo... argh, I'm in.