AI AR isn't just for pirates

 

Time for Manual effort.

Luka and Artificial by Ed Adams

 

Finally, my Ed Adams Luka story hits the streets! It's the other half of Artificial and this time told from the AI's Point of View. 

We have Oliver Wells who gets headhunted to go to Geneva to work on the Brant Industries RightMind solution. It's the same company and lab that Matt Nicholson was hired to work in and they were even recruited at around the same time. Matt spends his time in stories such as An Unstable System and Jump, whilst Oliver creates and then educates an AI Large Language Model using generative text.

Suffice to say its not all plain sailing and I learned quite some things about AI during the novel writing. Oh yes, and and had some fun as well.

So prepare to read the full Artificial and then the relatively slim-line parallel volume of Luka.

Artificial,  by Ed Adams (on Kindle) - Oliver's Point of View

Luka, by Ed Adams (on Kindle) - Luka's Point of View

Cover art is by me, using a mix of Photoshop, AI and some modest oil-painting. Next I'm going to combine these two novels into an Annex to the Brant Manual of Peacekeeping Technologies.

Back once again with Strava , Swift and Garmin

 

I'm more or less caught up with my 'on target' pace of reaching 4,000 miles by year end. When I'm behind I focus on 'the gap' rather then the target numbers. So when it got down to 9 miles behind and then eventually 2 miles ahead, I though I was beginning to have closed the 500+ mile gap.

Of course, my Garmin has played up as well and left me with a few unrecorded items and I'm still not entirely sure what happened. They seem to get to Garmin Connect but not into Strava, nor to any other systems. It seems to be a Bluetooth / ANT+ thing. Technology, eh? 

 I still need to keep it up for the next 9000 miles to declare 'Platinum' victory. I realise I've collected Bronze, Silver and Gold already! (admittedly they are my own targets). Your mileage may vary as the Americans say.

I actually prefer the graphic that Strava displays on the iPhone. It shows me my planned target to date and 'the gap'. Now the gap is going positive  I guess It'll be easier, although December is a hazardous month with more mince pies and not so many rides. Still, it's only 800 miles to go in roughly 3 months. 

And for next year? Maybe I'll change the targets to something that involves intensity. Less miles but more 'intervals?' It's difficult to work out what could be the most useful.

biting the dust

 

The long term aspirations of the crass Tory branding at their conference were bared for all to see. Cancelling a project started in 2009 ten years too late. But as J-RM says, all the new projects are 'front-loaded'. Of course they are. Spend as much as possible on the 'shovel ready' before anyone realises the project is going down.

Paper the plans with aspirational diagrams, like the one below.

It is all too much. I'm an ex-Waterloo commuter and have suffered thousands of delays of a half hour or more travelling the one hour journey to my then home in Hampshire. 

Let's see: 220 working days per year. One third of the time a delay on the homeward journey of maybe at least 20 minutes. Do the same for London to Birmingham and we can see that the 29 minutes saved slips away to negligible. Unless you're feeling lucky. 

Now glance at the originally guesstimated £37.5 billion cost. It's now estimated to cost a total of £107.6 billion, according to Oakervee Review. That's the low estimate by the way.

And opening the Stratford link to Birmingham trains would mean they could get right down to Dover. It's been fobbed off because of a purported need for ten extra platforms at Stratford. Stratford is already the 5th biggest station in the UK and has 17 platforms currently as well as considerable land around it, but was declared a non-runner by then transport secretary Justine Greening. 

Another example of the implementation of north south divide?

But let's follow the money. Spent already £22.4 billion on London to Birmingham. Magically found for 'The North' = £36 billion. Wait. That's the entire budget being spent again and the lumpy £22 billion swept under a bumpy carpet.

And its all about capacity too. Tube manages 2-3 minute intervals = 20trains per hour(mph). Fast trains are lower capacity. The Tokyo-Nagoya Bullet trains/Shinkansen manage 14 tph. And on our prestige lines like the Eurostar, we manage Ebbsfeet-Ashford at 8 tph.  

Another example of it always works in PowerPoint.

The iron heel - a Tory trope?

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ Famously from George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Suella Braverman illustrates the totalitarian trope by standing on a guide dog tail whilst talking  at the Tory Conference (she did later apologise).

But always – do not forget this, Winston – always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.

A picture of undistilled power, control, and oppression: the key themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four and much of the work Orwell wrote in the wake of his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. 

A current distillation of that type of power is illustrated below by a knowing heckler ejected from the conference and escorted away by police. Not a good look during your speech, Rishi.

Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels  is said to have influenced Orwell. In Swift's Book IV, Gulliver finds himself among the Houyhnhnms, horses with reason and intellect who have perfected a kind of totalitarian society:

Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country, would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors’ faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs.

Ouch. 

mythical project control

With all of my writing recently, I've been neglectful of rashbre central and I think this is my 'worst year ever' for creating posts. 

Anyway, this time I'm back in the tar pits of project management. I've often mused at the silence of Jacob Rees-Mogg in all of the current government turmoil, but decided that he could be adopting a farmer's position over the various twists and turns. Then I stumbled across the Infrastructure and Projects Authority Annual Report for last year and realised his strident Minister of State at the Cabinet Office role means he is across all of the infrastructure projects. Remember Red Amber Green? as a quick way to signify that things are in good shape?

• Red = eek
• Amber = oh dear, we can probably continue to fudge our responses for a bit longer
• Green = tickety-boo.

And remember in project management that a project is 80% complete for 50% of its lifetime.

I recall Frederick Brooks on man-months and later Barry Boehm on project stress.

Well, it is interesting to note that J R-M sits over half a trillion pounds of investment.  He probably describes it as successful whilst presiding over 5% Green projects and 78% Amber and 9% Red. By a stroke of genius, there are another 7% of project now classified as 'exempt' from this kind of troublesome scrutiny. Like some of the power station projects.

That 7% alone is worth £48.2 billion. Remember when things were measured in millions?

Using one of Jacob's own charts it come out something like this:

In amongst the projects listed are HS2, the schools rebuilding programme, Skynet 6, the Single Trade Window. To be honest, there are charts in the summary that don't add up. Take this chart below which shows whole life costs. Check out military and it says the whole life cost is £3.9 billion. Bong. That's not right. 

On this other chart it says it is £194.7 Billion.

No wonder they can't keep a handle on the projects when there are such large amounts of billions sloshing around in the spreadsheets. 

Of course the change to a three tier rating system has successfully buried the Amber/Red projects. No one wants to be the Project Manager who gets the extra scrutiny and so this could be seen as a master-stroke.

It is tempting to examine these numbers further. Let's use a simple filter for the Green Successes, and to be generous, we'll add the Amber/Green as successes too. Oh dear, from 2013 at 48% successes, we are down to 10% in 2022. Oops.

Still. with the debating skills of Eton, I'm sure this can be explained away. Otherwise use a few more charts to obscure the message. Then there's the Government Project Delivery Profession accreditation scheme. Oh yes.

Andrey Kurkov - Grey Bees

I read ANdrewy Kurkov's 'Death and the Penguin' several months ago. It's set in Kyiv during the mid-1990s. The Soviet Union has collapsed and organised crime gangs are running the show in the newly independent Ukraine. The novel's protagonist is an unassuming writer, Viktor, who lives what he describes as a life 'neither good nor bad, just ordinary'. Although he does have a pet Emperor penguin - rescued from a zoo that gave away small animals it could no longer feed (something that really did happen).

I based much of Ed Adams 'Play On, Christina Nott', referencing a similar era, having my own direct experiences from my time in Moscow. 

Suffice to say crime, oligarchs, corruption, gangsterism. In Moscow and prior to that in St Petersburg. It was Putin, of course.

In Death and the Penguin, journalist/author Viktor takes a job writing obituaries for a local paper, which seems ideal for him - reasonably well paid, not too demanding of his time, and enabling him to write even if it isn't the novel he'd like to. But somehow the hapless author finds himself dragged unwittingly into a tangled mess of organised crime that becomes more complex and dangerous by the day.

The thing about the post-Soviet setting is that reality can be very bizarre, as well as bleak. It feels like a novel that captures the spirit of the time. Viktor is oblivious to things going on around him and his lack of curiosity about his situation and fatalism is understandable and even protective in a world where trying to understand things is likely to be impossible and definitely going to be dangerous.

The presence of the penguin might suggest a cutesy element, but the entire book is without any sentimentality. The ending I felt was a masterstroke. The penguin is a loveable character, but it is never anthropomorphised or seen behaving in a way that is not believable for a penguin that finds itself isolated in a flat with just a middle aged human for company. Even the arrival of a little girl is not a cue for domesticity - the child is treated much as the penguin; fed and cared for but not cherished. And the girl herself is as matter of fact and pragmatic as the rest of the characters.

And now, I just discover, Kurkov has written another book - about beekeeping in Ukraine. Set in the now, in the Grey Zone. Its already on my Kindle.

Ed Adams : The Church : work in progress

I've almost finished my novel called Luka, and decided to make a start on the next one. It has a working title of 'Cozy 2' at present and is a direct follow on from 'Cozy'. I'll change the title when I can think of a better one (The Church?). 

This one is also set in Exeter and will be about a ecclesiastical man who is dragged into a world he doesn't fully comprehend. He's seen stuff on the margins, that's for sure, but this... 

I'll look for interesting characters too. I dropped Stéphane Gérard into the first Cozy novel, knowing I could use her again later. 

She arrived at the party at Magister Grange as a very close friend of Bettina Kübler, a Swiss researcher, at Brant, Geneva, working on eDefense. Stéphane works in weather systems using Théorie des Jeux to manage climates. It is typical Brant work and also typical Brant mischief. She is Swiss (or was it French?), but based in Exeter, which has those connections with meteorology. 

I was going to have her married to our new cleric, but I'm having second thoughts. I think the vicar  (Let's call him Leonard) may be married to Penelope Richards instead. She is a local landowner and viticulturist. 

You can tell Penelope is only a part-time farmer from her outfits. But that blonde hair will have to go. Too confusing. That vicar on the draft cover looks a bit gangster too, doesn't he?

Write On, as they say.

Picture it

I thought I'd post something that was a bit of fun. Well of general interest anyway. I see that Digital Camera World have produced a list of the top 50 photographers. Like any such list, there will be people missed out etc, but I thought it was a pretty good attempt to list them and to show illustrations of their work. Above is Henri Cartier-Bresson, complete with a brace of Leicas, and below is Annie Leibovitz, snuggled up to Mick.

 The whole list is impressive, with Ansel Adams, Sebastião Salgado, Bill Brandt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Irving Penn, Don McCullin, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Alfred Stieglitz, Joel Meyerowitz, Edward Steichen, Bert Hardy, David Bailey, Man Ray, Martin Parr, Lewis Hine, Robert Mapplethorpe, Weegee... and so the list goes on. I can instantly think of pictures by everyone I've mentioned as well as thinking of others not in the list. Let alone some of the modern hot shots depicted below.

Climate forward with agreeable lunches

Now there's an interesting juxtaposition. The day after Rishi earnestly announces a roll back of the much vaunted Net Zero ambitions, there is an unrelated summit in New York about climate change. Called Climate Forward, it is about the actions needed, with an earnest agenda and an agreeable lunch.

Featured artists include Bill Gates, Al Gore, Robin Wall Kimmerer (environmental biologist) , Michael R. Bloomberg and Ebony Twilley Martin (Greenpeace exec director).

Most speakers get 30 minutes to make their points. I guess it's a drinking from the firehose event. 

It is good for the New York Times to show it has an international perspective, but will it become a landmark event? We shall wait to see.

Best get used to Chinese (simplified)

净零回滚？把那些不方便的事情推到遥远的日期，以后我们都会忘记它。 2030年？直到 2035 年。或者我听说过 2050 年？将所有东西喷成亮绿色。就是这样。将调度箱设置为绿色。真是一个想法。

汽车的所有这些部件。 9速变速箱、离合器、飞桨。开始按钮。就像一辆老式汽车，前面有一匹模型马。甚至让它们听起来像兰博基尼。好吗？

燃料费用。不要让您的能源账单易于理解。不要让人们管理他们的账单。当然还有很多其他方法可以回滚。升级就意味着降级。还有那些大项目。让他们跑，直到钱花完为止。当所有的咨询资金都花光后，行动迟缓的审计师就被派了进来。

还有那堵红墙。称之为绿墙。让一切都变得绿色。就是这样。控制力和确定性。

Less than Net Zero.

Net Zero rollback? Just push the inconvenient stuff to a date so far in the future we'll have all forgotten it. 2030? Make it 2035. or did I hear 2050? Spray paint everything Bright Green. That'll do the trick. Make dispatch boxes Green. Thats a barnstormer of an idea.

All those bits of a car. The 9-speed gearbox, the clutch, the flappy paddles. The Start button. Like old cars had model horses on the front. Even make them sound like a Lambo. Good innit?

Fuel costs. Don't make the energy bill comprehensible. Don't let people manage their bills. There must be so many other ways to roll back. Levelling Up means levelling down. And those mega projects. Let them run until the moneys all gone. Send in sluggish auditors when all the consultancy money has been spent. 

And that red wall. Call it a green wall. Make everything green. That's it. Control and certainty.