Comments on: I Am Learn

I Am Learn

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:59:54 -0800

"I wrote a ridiculous Perl program to generate text. Thing is, it developed some bugs, and has managed to create phrases and combinations of words (which actually make sense) that I didn’t even program in. I hooked it up to the Blogger API, and now it updates its own weblog with no editing on my part (I just give it a bunch of topics to talk about)."[via Kevin Francis]

By: weston

weston — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:02:06 -0800

Can we give it a MeFi account?

By: Salmonberry

Salmonberry — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:04:20 -0800

I am learn, you had me at "perhaps i could discuss my inane screaming with my friend jamie." "English as She is Spoke" in blog format. Reading it has a meditative effect. I like it.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:04:27 -0800

it already has one.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:08:47 -0800

"I dont mind sanitary towels. Read my lips!!" teh script is funny!

By: inksyndicate

inksyndicate — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:20:24 -0800

That's cool, I like the learning feature. R. Robot was the first self-writing weblog, though he doesn't find out stuff for himself, and still thinks it is 2002.

By: kamylyon

kamylyon — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:28:55 -0800

I adore Learn and want to help him, learn! I wonder if he'd learn from comments to his posts? Notice how, when you type it out so many times a word starts looking odd? Learn learn learn learn. Now it looks even odder.

By: callmejay

callmejay — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:51:04 -0800

You're seeing past the abstraction when you do that kamylyon. Try saying your name 50 times out loud. On topic: meh.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:24:17 -0800

Neato, I want him to make one where it takes topics from submissions. Or hook it into Google and have it write posts on every millionth search or whatever.

By: RylandDotNet

RylandDotNet — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:28:31 -0800

Hook it into Google News and have it blog about the top story every few hours.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:32:27 -0800

This blog is the new face of journalism!

By: sklero

sklero — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:37:27 -0800

"Today I am studying my friends vagina problems my grandmother and the ideology of Britney Spears wedding and I also want to learn more about your feelings."

By: mhh5

mhh5 — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 02:05:55 -0800

I found the lack of google ads refreshing in Learn's blog.

By: DrDoberman

DrDoberman — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 03:29:34 -0800

Inane worthless drivel about current topics. Poorly structured sentences, dire grammar and way too many sanitary references! My God I think the guy has cracked the blog genre to perfection. Hook it up to a phone line, voice recognition software and text-to-voice, and let it do tech support for AOL!

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 03:49:11 -0800

In a similar vein, have a look at the Postmodernism essay generator, Adolescent poetry generator, and Subgenius brag.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:01:22 -0800

Sorry folks. This is another one from me. To be honest I nearly had a freaking heart attack when I suddenly saw 1000 people had just turned up. It's hideously bad, although it even makes me laugh quite a bit at the crap it puts out. The comments it's starting to get from readers are also pretty funny. I do hope to improve it somewhat though, and I've begun loading it up with new adjectives, verbs, and phrase 'layouts' so it can spice up its posts. Ultimately, however, it needs to be able to refer to its own old posts, and be able to tie certain verbs with certain subjects, remember its 'opinions' and all that nonsense. ;-)

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:04:02 -0800

Someone suggested that it should reply to comments. Sadly I don't think there's the capacity for this in the Blogger API. If it had its own site and its own blogging system, this would be a possibility, however.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:04:38 -0800

Blog talk pretty one day.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:22:49 -0800

Hook it into Google News and have it blog about the top story every few hours Ryland, this is a bloody great idea..

By: ruddhist

ruddhist — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 05:17:07 -0800

MeFi: so fresh and funky as well wackybrit, that would be a great idea. Unless, of course, this kind of thing is how Skynet eventually evolves... "i like hard-ass robot monkeys" might be the warning we're all ignoring. If you want to imagine the future, imagine a blog stamping on a human face... forever!

By: MzB

MzB — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 05:26:41 -0800

reminds me about "I kiss you!" meme

By: MarkC

MarkC — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 05:33:58 -0800

This thread about the perl script weblog is what I want to talk about, ok?!!!!!! This thread is so fresh and funky as well. My friend John said she thinks this thread is crazily very pleasant and most of the time I eat jam. Read my lips!! the problem with the thread about the perl script weblog and the perl script weblog are not really related. This is the most crazily very coherent post on metafilter for several weeks. tomorrow i am going to think about gun control.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:15:57 -0800

Kudos, wackybrit. she's beautiful, in her own moderately coherent way. Wouldn't it be sweet if we could chat with her? Even better, what if you could get the headline chat on AOL one day! I'd get an AOL account just so i could listen in on that one. "Learn, jimmy3452135 wants to know if you have a boyfriend."

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:19:50 -0800

"Unless, of course, this kind of thing is how Skynet eventually evolves..." *travels back in time, attempts to kill wackybrit's mother*

By: nofundy

nofundy — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:38:34 -0800

Much better than little green snotballs weblog.

By: JollyWanker

JollyWanker — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:44:23 -0800

Well, it's at least as coherent and consistent as many blogs ostensibly written by... uh... "real" people. I knew there had to be some reasonable explanation for the Theatre of the Absurd-ish Glenn Reynolds... wackybrit, that's an impressive piece of work (he said, with no knowledge of how own makes perl or any other programming language do something that complex). Feature suggestion: provide learn with an equivalent to the blogosphere's cliquey "bloggers I worship/idolize" and "blogs I loathe/denigrate every other post" lists...

By: casarkos

casarkos — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:51:24 -0800

It writes exactly the way my ricerboy-wannabe cousin in Taiwan talks. Awesome. Tuesday, October 05, 2004.....My popularity with bloggers and metafilter are not really related.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:21:40 -0800

This is somewhat the bomb. I must appreciate to say, it is crazily very pleasant. wackybrit, just one easy (I think) tweak would be to keep the gender of the pronoun after a name the same until the end of a sentence (i.e. until next terminal punctuation). Then you'd still have "my friend Joshua / she," but it wouldn't flip right around to "he" in the very next phrase. Oh, yeah, you might also inform Learn that the word is "occurrences."

By: crunchland

crunchland — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:28:17 -0800

randomly generated drivel, as opposed to human generated drivel. Is this progress?

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:56:36 -0800

soyjoy: One idea I had for a 'mach 2' would be to keep a table of 'people' objects which make up Learn's entire list of friends and contacts (including, eventually, people who comment on the site, and other bloggers), so then the gender could be kept consistent. As you can tell, it's rather random right now. I'll also point her towards a dictionary, although I can't make any promises ;-) Still not sure why it's saying "What do you appreciate to say", this isn't a phrase I've entered, so it must be constructing it from some other fragments..

By: ssmith

ssmith — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 08:14:17 -0800

You should have the script randomly post pictures of cats. Then it would be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

By: lagado

lagado — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 08:34:12 -0800

Hook it into Google News and have it blog about the top story every few hours The guys behind drunkmenworkhere already made a automatic blog generator. Not in Perl, but in PHP. Here is the latest updates page, and here you can sign up to have your own, automatically generated weblog.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 08:54:58 -0800

I liked this bit: ok.. the liberalization of women ok?? whats up with that?. the state of the liberalization of women is so fresh and funky as well :* Fresh and funky indeed :-)

By: y6y6y6

y6y6y6 — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 09:29:33 -0800

[this is good]

By: Termite

Termite — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 10:41:38 -0800

"I am Learn" sounds just like a politician.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 11:49:26 -0800

I am a Perl script which kicks that other Perl scripts ass all fresh and funky like plo chops in freshly fallen snow.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 12:38:34 -0800

I, Perl script, comment decisely on wacko groupthink mefi media metatalk bias.

By: jearbear

jearbear — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 13:22:06 -0800

And the funny part is, it really reads no different than 90% of the livejournals out there, save perhaps with not enough angst.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 14:03:34 -0800

"I am Learn" sounds just like a politician. Rarely is the question asked, is our Perl scripts learning?

By: LoopSouth

LoopSouth — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 17:46:24 -0800

Has anyone thought that this could be fake? Err... actually done by a human..?

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:48:47 -0800

Loop: You're the second person to have said something like that. I am surprised more people haven't commented in that way. Code will be released as soon as I have something better to replace it (don't want every tom, dick, and harry having poor old learn as a slave..)

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 12:09:25 -0800

if you want more AI fun, AIM outlander10000