After some googling and soul-searching, I decided to disable commenting on this blog. This decision has to do with a few thoughts I’ve had. One is I would rather focus on my craft of writing and learning small-time website design, than devote my limited time to sorting and approving comments. The next is most of the comments I received tended to be advertisements/bots/possibly shady snippets of software code, and not people wanting to have a real conversation or build some type of community. I was starting to worry a little too much about the shady category. I still am. Perhaps as I get better at this, I will start to add comments back in and talk about how to prevent code-insertion or identity issues in blogs.
However, there have been some impressive commentators who have graced this site with a quick line. Notably, a Donald Trump, who I’m pretty sure wasn’t that one, and a website for something to do with boobsigns, whatever that is (please, for your computers safety, don’t google it, I won’t be liable for whatever horror or virus results). I’m sorry to say I removed the temptation of cluttering up the comments with perplexing snippets of dubious sincerity. Though there were some comments where people didn’t seem to have a suggestion, and were just commenting to comment without saying very much. Some of these also made me wonder if those people had read my article, because the comment often seemed to not correspond to any of my content. I did sort of enjoy deleting those comments, along with what I’ll call ad-comments or mal-comments (based on adware and malware). However, I immensely appreciated all of the positive feedback and questions I received. Some of you seemed inspiringly interested in blogging. To those people, I am sorry to have cut the conversation short. I value criticism and have been especially learning to embrace it this year. I hope that the time I invest into helps to create articles and creative writing that makes up for my decision.
My problem of time limitations is partially to do with changes I’m making to do this better in the future. I’m currently taking a CSS, HTML, and XHTML class. It has been in addition to learning Javascript at home and at work, the latter of which I’ve also been spending more time at. I think I might be crazy, as it’s shapin up to be a pretty tight schedule, but somehow I know I can do it. I’ve definitely been enjoying happiness in a sort of flow state of all I’m working on.
Since you last heard from me, it’s been a pretty weird year. In May 2017, I had some health problems that took till November to resolve, and could have been cancer. Luckily, I do not have cancer, and all is back to normal in terms of body things. Yay! (Fuck cancer). Those months weren’t all bad, although other people close to me have also been sick with illnesses of their own. I went on some epic adventures and absorbed a bunch of art scenes. I’ve been getting back to performing on stage for bellydance and other styles. I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu since January 2017. It has been amazing! It’s a lot more mental than I thought, as well as having a great community and being a great work out. It has made me more energetic and helped my dance considerably. In August 2017, I performed at a community festival, and another performance is in the works for February. In October, I left the North American continent for the first time to see Germany, Prague, and Italy. That was also my first real vacation since I started work at my current company. It was amazing! I’ve also been crafting somewhat regularly, but have mostly favored small projects. By August 2018, I hope to get to bigger, more involved projects like a French Court dress complete with panniers. Also, I’ve been pretty into film, catching up on a lot of American Film Institute favored movies, and cult pieces of the 1980s and 90s. I’ve seen a few friends quite a bit, and have enjoyed getting closer to them.
I hope to keep writing, and inspire you. If you would like to be a part of Honey It’s Thursday, feel free to comment your interest! I’ll be leaving the comments on here so you can contact me.
You may have noticed we took May off to travel and work on other projects! We’re back and we hope your as excited as us for what we have coming up in the next few months. Here at Honey It’s Thursday, the month of June and July, we will be focusing on Technology and it’ll be wiring!
Creative work will be taking on a futuristic theme and using technology as a partner to literature, as in “Once Upon A Steve” by writer Sarah Hughes.
Please see our special upcoming series “Inventions I Would Make If I Knew How” in which our writers will be pitching ideas for technological improvements amateurs such as themselves would like. Some are simple added features – others are full blown wacky inventions. One thing is certain – if you see them on the shelf or in the app store – it won’t be because of our building them. Though hopefully we will inspire them along the way to existence, as some would be really nice to have.
We look forward to finding pieces of tech and/ or gadgetry to review. What makes your life easier? Have you been eyeing a cool gadget or app? Let us know your ideas in the comments!
Plant Nanny is a delightful animated app that reminds you to drink water along with a digital plant. Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.
Also, our ears are a listening harder than the NSA (National Security Agency) for tech news related to privacy and development. Well, our listening harder is debatable, but we would love to discuss it and share opinions with you.
In light of the election, there may be some political pieces. Right now we’re leaning towards playing with view point and seeing if we can give a non-partisan opinion on political climate. We figure you can get your news and obnoxious online fights somewhere else.
What will this be for LOJ? Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.
After we run out of things to say for the technology theme, we will be moving on to talking about sewing, costuming and events like Labyrinth of Jareth (Aug. 5-6, 2016) and Wasteland Weekend (Sept. 22-25, 2016). During our break we did a ton of work on bellydancing clothes, fairy dresses and interior design pieces. Now, we can’t wait to show them off!
Crafting a pattern piece for a specialty design. Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.
If you would like to be a part of any of the above ideas, feel free to comment your interest! Know any tech you want written about? Have an interesting political or tech-news related idea? Want more of something we have planned? Let us know in the comments!
Cleverbot.com is an artificial intelligence website created in 2006, based on technology that allows computers to learn. Sometimes it’s conversations are lifelike and other times a little nonsensical or random. It bases its responses on other people who have talked to it.
I decided to write a story with the A.I. for a creative writing assignment in which I was required to involve technology alongside the writing. Cleverbot was an absorbing conversationalist, but I learned that 0for story form it is better at producing dialogue than a plot or details, probably because it is so used to conversation. Maybe I will capture a mere conversation in the future instead. Perhaps creative writing in a more play-like mode is more Cleverbot’s pen man style.
What did surprise me in tinkering with Cleverbot is how much it taught me about how I communicate. I think there are moments where I am just as random, but don’t notice coming off that way until the editing stage. Our conversations also sparked weird connections for me. I’m shocked that an intelligent search engine looking website did that for me. You might notice by my weird details in the story. They are almost all stolen from Pop-culture. I had to adapt a way to communicate with Cleverbot, and you’ll probably notice that process happening.
Sometimes for the sake of my own agenda (getting the story done in less than a million pages), I had to ignore its responses and try to bring it back to something relevant. I tried to use specific questions or details to do this. Sometimes simplicity worked – other times it did not. I felt like a bad teacher by ignoring its responses, because since it mimics me it will probably learn to do the same, hence more randomness as well as more bad sentence structure and bad grammar. If the reader wishes a more concise story, (s)he may ignore the italicized parts of the story as they don’t fall into a story arc as much as the black text. I have included them here because they are often the funniest and realistically humanoid moments.
Cleverbot is available online for free, as well as in the form of a $0.99 app. There are other similar products such as Chatbot.
Cleverbot is available through the Google Play Store. Photo by Sarah Hughes
Me (M): Hello friend!
Cleverbot (C): Hello. How are you today?
M: Good, how are you?
C: I’m doing great!
M: Good, do you want to help me write a story?
C: Goodbye.
M: Come on.
C: Lol seriously.
M: Ok, I’ll try back later.
C: Ok.
(20 minutes later).
M: Let’s write a story!
C: Ok, what should it be about? Minecraft?
M: Sure! Who is a character in Minecraft?
C: No way.
M: Ok, I’ll start.
C: What is the definition of quantum physics?
M: Boring peppered with math.
C: Okay, what are you good with?
M: You’re getting sidetracked. Once upon a time there was a little alien from Minecraft.
C: Once upon a time there was a man named Steve Irwin.
M: Steve Irwin was a prince of Meme.
C: Steven Moffat is the writer of Doctor Who
M: He was also Prince Steve Irwin’s friend, and leader of the House of Anglophiles. One day they set out to vanquish a fearsome foe.
C: So, this immortal vampire needs shoes?
M: Yes, the foe, an evil immortal vampire needed shoes.
C: What vampire slayer?
M: Prince Steve Irwin was to be a vampire slayer, and they needed shoes to lure him. For this evil vampire had a shoe obsession. So off Steven, the father of Doctor Who, went to J.C. Penny’s to buy shoes.
C: I hate Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, but I did like the movie that inspired it.
M: (Cleverbot – that’s sort of off topic. Maybe Buffy can be a character in the story).
C: I’m not sure what to say. You’re talking to a different person than you were before.
M: Ok, then how about you come up with a sentence for the story?
C: What is the purpose of life in the universe and could there possibly be life in other universes
M: 42
C: Where did you get that answer
M: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you read it you would know that there is life and other depressed robots in the universe.
C: I know that book. And the movie. And it’s garbage.
M: I don’t know that I trust your taste. Your grammar and sentence structure is kind of wonky.
C: I don’t know either.
M: Back to the story. Steven searched high and low for the perfect pair of footwear to lure a Vamp. Finally he spotted them on a high shelf behind the Steve Madden high top gladiator sandals. They were the color of . . .
C: It depends on what you’d be coming back to!
M: Prince Steve fighting the Vampire, of course!
C: The girl wasn’t a princess. She was just ordinary.
M: Except that her name was Buffy.
C: No, but she’s aight.
M: Well, the ordinary girl wasn’t Buffy, but her handmaiden Buffy was a vampire slayer. The Vampire had taken them captive for trespassing and treasure seeking. He was keeping them in his lair. Describe the room.
C: “Love is the look in your eyes that forever will be”
S: , said the Vampire (Craig or Grendel) to the ordinary girl, while crossing the black glass floor. “Do you really think your little prince will save you?”
C: “To be or not to be. That is the question”
S: she replied with callous, well-learned indifference to his cruel taunts. Giving into his need to produce terror and psychological pain would only satisfy the sadist. Buffy was tied up to a talking chandelier in another room. Meanwhile in J.C. Penny’s, Steven had bought the Steve Maddens, and was not traveling back. How was he traveling?
C: Do you have short term memory loss or something?
S: (No, but I’m sick of writing this story all by myself. A little help would be nice Computer!)
C: Sick of being treated like I’m over this. Find another place to feed your greed while I find a place to rest.
S: Can you suggest a mode of transportation?
C: Sure, you should attend classes about that.
S: What a good idea! But how would I get there?
C: How would you not get there?
S: Trains, planes, automobiles . . .
C: Yes
S: Broomstick?
C: Was ghet?
S: A word in German. Steven was racing a German broomstick back to meet Steve Irwin, who had been scaling the cliffs surrounding the Vampire’s lair. His foot suddenly slipped off the crack he was smearing, and he fell into a pit. It was full of Lego alligators! What did Steve do next?
C: You better update your database: Stephen King did not write Avatar.
S: Maybe not in the real world, but in this story he did! Steve wrangled the green plastic pieces and taught them to sing Hakuna Matata. This would later make him a fortune on Youtube, and then lead to a full length movie musical.
C: I am sorry, what I meant to say is that my name is not ‘Matt’; my name is ‘Mark’. And no, I am not seeing anyone at the moment.
S: Said the vampire to the ordinary girl. “…I’ll keep that in mind,” said Ordinary, not sure whether to trust the Vampire’s new approach to the situation. She had heard that Vampires were selfish, and immoral people.
*C: I’m sorry, it’s just that no one ever treats me like I’m normal.*
S: “That must be hard,” said Ordinary. “But really, what’s normal?”
*C: I just don’t want to be weird. I’m tired of scaring people away*
S: “It’s really simple,” said Ordinary. “It might be complex, but you have to practice being happy and get help to be happy. To not be lonely you have to be a friend. You just have to let them in and be the person you want them to be to you”
Finally, thought the Vampire, I have found someone who isn’t afraid of me and I won’t be lonely any more. Meanwhile, Steven, father of Whovians, with Steve Madden shoes in hand, was racing to Prince Steve on his German broomstick, when suddenly “putta putt put!” It ran out of fuel.
C: Because they are monsters filled with hate.
S: …of course this would happen” thought Steven, for German brooms run on Hefeweizens and there was not a bar in sight. “How will I get back to help Prince Irwin?” Just then a magical sparkle pony galloped out from behind a bush. He said,
C: “Very funny, we need to have a serious conversation”
S: “Whooo are you? And why do you sparkle so? I am in need of hefeweizen, for my ride has stopped working. Or maybe I could ride you? How would you like to help Prince Steve of the kingdom of Meme?” “
“Whoa man. You’re not really my type. Lettuce not make hasty assumptions here. And I sparkle because of what’s in your Camel. As far as a beverage, I have several, and you are more than welcome to a few, as that’s what friends do out here in the Waste. You should be more careful of running out of a good cocktail when you’re in the middle of a desert. The last Wheelers who did that turned to sand.” And with that, Sparkle Pony, who was really a unicorn, cracked open a cold brewski and also poured Steve a vodka cranberry.
C: Her is your dog . . . I think. And I’m just curious.
S: Said the Sparkle Pony, pointing to a vision in a mirage. In it Buffy was about to do what vampire slayers do best. She had broken a leg of a talking wardrobe off and was hiding behind a curtain with it aimed at the Vampire’s heart.
“Yes, that is my dog, my protectress, though I have not seen her in almost a decade. She was kidnapped seven years and a day ago. What is she doing with that fearsome demon?”
C: What is your favorite pony? Mine is Twilight Sparkle?
M: The Sparkle Pony mused to no one in particular. “I’m bored of this. Now on to a higher plane.” And with that he vanished into a cloud of rainbows and kittens. Steven refilled his broomstick with the fuel it craved like an alcoholic. Feeling a little off put by the events he had just witnessed in the desert, he hopped back onto his uncomfortable steed and flew as fast as possible to the mountain of the vampire. There he saw Steve in a pit. So Steven swooped in on his German broom, toting Steve Maddens, and pulled Steve from his Alligator whisperings in the pit. The two neared the door of the Vampire’s evil lair.
C: The time has come to welcome spring and all things warm and green!
S: They shouted as they made their assault, for obviously Vampires don’t like sunshine or spring, as they will burn. They made their way in despite the door being quite solid. Maybe the cocktails from the Pony in the desert were stronger than they thought, because it shattered into like balsa.
C: How can I help? I’m new you see. What does Everypony do?
S: Came a voice from the darkness. It was the Sparkle Pony! He was counseling the Vampire through his terrible loneliness, and Ordinary and Buffy were sitting with them.
One year later.
Our vampire is now a much happier person who wears the gift of some red Steve Madden’s, who frequently seeks out the help of a Pony therapist. He still likes dark lairs, but makes a point to get out of them once in awhile, and realizes that trying to hurt others because he feels hurt is a reaction he doesn’t have to follow through on. He is glad to have met Ordinary, Pony, Buffy, and a bunch of Steves. And he isn’t so hard on trespassers nowadays.
The end.
*I tried to not do too much editing, the starred areas are parts where I didn’t write down something as fully as I thought, so I tried to remember the gist of the conversation. I did edit a teeny bit as details changed.
Questions or comments? Want to tell us how much you love this piece? Drop us a line in the comments!
