Taste of Tech

I’ve been playing with this all week. Go over to Mutating Pictures. You’ll see a computer-generated image. Rate how much (on a scale of 0-10) the image looks like a face. The system “learns” from the ratings people give it, and over time, the images improve.

What’s really going on? Philipp Lenssen started with 1000 random images. These images produce “offspring” with mutations. Initially, up to 15% of the image changed with each generation, though he has reduced that number as the site has gained popularity. As people rate the images, higher ratings extend the life of the image and allow it to produce more offspring. Lower ratings kill off the images. Over time, the images that are selected look more like faces, and the entire site “evolves.” In the discussion, Philipp explains more about the algorithm behind the experiment.

I told Darrell about this. “So we’re a subset of the infinite monkeys?” he asked.

“Not really. We’re the people reading what they’re typing. We then decide which monkeys should be allowed to reproduce, and which should be killed off.” While there’s no Shakespeare yet, we may be at the point of tabloids already, or even bad blogs. That’s pretty amazing.

Within the first day, all of the 1000 original images were killed off, and the average image was lasting 58 minutes. Yesterday, there were more than 71,000 hits on the site.

Recently, Philipp added two new sets of images to the pool. A second set of faces is currently evolving from the same originals, to see if they end up looking like the first set. At the same time, a new set of pictures is being used to produce an “animal.” He left the name ambiguous on purpose to see what develops. You can also see the progress by comparing a sample of the original pictures with the current generation.

No monkeys were harmed during the creation of this blog post.

Dave’s been trying to get me to try Ubuntu out as a desktop OS. I’ve tried to run Linux on the desktop several times. It just always seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I can’t find the drivers I need. Or I can’t run the applications I use. Or it’s just too much of a pain to use. I’ve tried a bunch of different distributions, and the result has always been the same. Dave says it took him eight tries before he was ready to switch. This is going to be my sixth.

I’m going to give it an honest effort. I will take a standard desktop computer and install Linux on it. I’m going to use the current version of Ubuntu, which is designed to be a desktop operating system. I will try to configure it as my primary computer at work. I’m not going to place unreasonable demands on it. I don’t expect the management software for my NEC phone switches to work in Linux. I don’t even expect to be able to play SimCity on it. But I do expect it to do all of the things I normally use my computer for, including web browsing, email, productivity applications (word processing and spreadsheet), podcast aggregation, Internet telephony, and calendar and PDA syncing. It needs to play any kind of audio and video media I encounter. I need access to network drives, printers, digital cameras, and MP3 players.

I’m starting with a Dell Optiplex 740. This machine is about a year old. It has an AMD Athalon processor, 1 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk. Unlike previous attempts, when I expected Linux to perform better than Windows given the same hardware, I’m using essentially the same hardware that we would put in a classroom today. I’ll be comparing it to a comparably equipped desktop running Windows XP. I’m not going to do crazy amounts of performance testing. On that front, everything will be subjective.

I’ll keep posting some running notes about the journey here on my blog. They may not be quite as polished as my normal posts, so they may not be on the front page of the blog. Just check out the “desktop linux” category any time to keep track of my progress.

So… I booted from the CD and double clicked the Install icon.  So far, so good.