thoughts – Page 2 – Tiana Feng

How To Create A Mind

April 15, 2013Books, Entertainment, TechnologyLeave a Comment

Fascination in the mind led me to read Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Though Revealed. The first part of the book goes into compelling detail about how the human brain stores and analyzes information.

The later half philosophises artificial intelligence. It questions and eloquently investigates the ethics behind the artificial mind. If a computer had the same power as human brain, should it be considered conscious? Kurzweil thinks it should be and makes many references to the Jeopardy winning robot, Watson.

He also questions free will, making allusions to the fact that not all human decisions are done of free will. Often we confabulate to make it seem like something was done on our free will. For example, our decisions are often made based on our past experiences. Therefore our past is influencing our decision and free will is one devoid of influences. It thought this was a quite perplexing thought.

Kurzweil explained that Watson (and even iPhone’s) Siri is able to learn from the environment and as technology grows they will be able to learn things the same ways as humans do. If that happens, would we treat computers like humans? Only in time can we truly answer that question.

For anybody who’s interested, here is a lecture Kurzweil did at Google on the topic:

We Remember The Sound Of Our Keys

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013Books, Inspiration, Life, MusicLeave a Comment

People are able to distinguish between songs through earworms. However, there’s also a whole world of sounds and soundscapes we are exposed to on a daily basis. In Murray Schafer’s A Sound Education, he explores these every day sounds through 100 exploratory exercises.

I had the pleasure of meeting Schafer in my third year of University. Our class delved into a few of these personally with Schafer. The most memorable was this particular exercise involving keys. A group of five people put their keys into a pile. Schafer then jingled all of the keys behind their backs and asked the participants to identify their own. Everybody had the right keys.

The sound of our keys is not something we really think about but we hold them every day, listen to them jingle in our bags and pockets as we look for them and open our doors. Personally, my keys are pretty boring. I don’t own a car or a bike so I only have one key on my chain with a Dine Alone beer opener and a Johnny Cupcakes oven mitt. Instead of nice jingling, I hear simple clanking.

What do your keys sound like? I dare you to try this exercise with a few of your friends and I’m sure they will guess the right keys!

Side note: This book seems to be hard to find, so if any of my Toronto friends want to borrow this I have a hard copy!

Jalapeno Burgers at The Wing Company

October 6, 2012March 27, 2013Food, Restaurant ReviewsLeave a Comment

On my way to work every morning, I pass by The Wing Company. Though, I have yet to try their wings, I was drawn into the place by their sign advertising burgers. $6.99, burger, fries and drink included. As me and Nash are currently on tight budgets, it was worth a try!
I ordered the BBQ Bacon and Jalapeno Cheeseburger. It wasn’t as massive as some of the other bugers we’ve had recently, but it was pretty delicious.

It was exactly as it’s name described. A burger with bacon, jalapeno, cheddar cheese with the perfect kick of BBQ sauce. I enjoyed the kick the peppers gave and the BBQ sauce was nice and tangy. It was a simple burger, but it was definitely more flavourful than some of the other ones I have eaten lately. Plus, this was a meal for under $10.
The fries were made skin-on and gave it a lovely crunch texture. They were warm and tasted fresh. The only thing wrong with them was that they weren’t served salted. Although that was easily fixed since each dine in table had salt, pepper and vinegar for customers to season their food to their liking.
I had a pleasant dining experience at The Wing Company. The staff was friendly and I’ll definitely be back to try some wings next time!

That Is Old News…

August 22, 2012Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

Yesterday we all learned the existence of Chadvil. An hour later I turned to Nash and said something along the lines of “WHY ON EARTH ARE PEOPLE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS? IT’S OLD NEWS. WHY ARE THEY JUST FINDING OUT NOW?” Then he asked me how something from an hour ago is considered old news. It made me ponder.

Before social networks the phrase “That’s yesterday’s news” was still a thing. Now with Twitter and Facebook we are inundated with vast amounts of information, and we are able to find out about things almost instantly. It’s scary to think that maybe years from now an hour ago will be too slow. Imagine what our future kids would say. That’s 5 seconds ago’s news.

Whether it’s celebrity deaths, world news, the viral video, they’re instantly forgotten about as soon as they are posted. It also makes me wonder how fast actual news outlets have to be in order for them to survive. That’s a bit frightening.

Thanks For Putting Up With Me

August 13, 2012Life, RelationshipsLeave a Comment

Me and Nash’s anniversary is coming up. We think it’s tomorrow, but we’re not the type to count days. It seems more indefinite this way. Indefinite seems like a strange word. Like forever, but possibly a longer time. That’s a really long time to be with someone.

Then I realized, he must put up with a lot. The dude wrote me the most beautiful letter thing on my Facebook wall, so I thought I’d return the favor with this blog post thanking him for the myriad of things he must put up with while being with me.

Thanks for…

Not sleeping and coming to late night shows with me. Many of which have probably made you question my taste in music.

Eating burgers with me. We’ll probably grow obese and both die of heart-attacks, but it’ll be the best death ever.

Waiting to meet parents. Asian parents, enough said.

Being patient and waiting to watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad and Adventure Time with me. Even when their facebook pages contain spoilers.

Dealing with my social media addiction. You’ve let me instagram my food, foursquare places and twitter our stories. This is probably the third wheel in our relationship.

Losing video games on purpose. You must be losing occasionally right? I mean you can’t seriously get beaten by a girl in Tekken.

Letting Teddy lick your balls

Love you.

An iPhone Without 3G Is Like Popcorn Without Butter

August 7, 2012August 7, 2012iOS, Life, TechnologyLeave a Comment

willitblend — Without 3G you might as well blend it.

I went over my 1GB data plan today. I decided to turn my phone off instead of incurring any more fees. I’ve only had a smartphone since Christmas but I already feel like a cripple without it’s data-eating ways. Having an iPhone without 3G is as pointless as popcorn without butter.

Here are some things you can’t do without 3G:

iMessage: By default, iPhones running iOS 5 and higher send iMessages. I couldn’t receive messages from any one with an iPhone or send any without manually clicking “send as SMS” first. In addition, without data you can’t sent people pictures of your dog.

Social Networking: Can’t tweet, Facebook, Pinterest, Chime.in, Tumblr or Foursquare what I’m eating.

Find Out Where I am: I had to go pick something up in an area I’m not so familiar with. I took a streetcar, but didn’t get off on time. I even turned on my 3G (getting lost seems like a valid reason to). However, the service must disable itself after you too much over your data plan, because it would not work. I was stranded and had to ask Nash where exactly I was in relation to where I wanted to go.

Without internet to distract you, here are things you end up doing:

Looking at people on the bus: Since my head is not down and immersed in some sort of social network, I have to focus my eyes somewhere. Looking out the window resulted in a lot of sand in my eyes so I started looking around inside the bus. There’s a ton of funny looking people in the world.

Reading other people’s things: I ended up accidentally reading part of someone’s erotic novel.

Listening to brown people talk in circles: “you know?” They seemed to be having something delicious for dinner though.

Thinking to yourself: Sometimes I write blog posts while I’m on the train, but today I thought this one up in my head.

Thank goodness my cellphone billing period restarts tomorrow. One day of this nonsense was enough.

10 Types of People That Need to Stop Calling My House

April 10, 2012April 11, 2012Life1 Comment

Our family is seriously considering cancelling the home phone. With the exception of a handful of people who don’t know how to use the internet, nobody calls the house. The four of us have our own individual cellphones and the only calls we seem to get are the irritating kinds.

Duct cleaning services are by far the worst offender. Every day it’s a different company in the city. How many ducts can possibly need cleaning that requires the need for 100 companies making 25 calls a day? I’m beginning to think that all these companies and phone calls are just a front for something else. I mean, if you did need duct cleaning, I don’t think you would go to the first person who calls you. You’d probably research it first. It’s not cheap. Maybe these duct cleaning calls are a secret message for “Do you want to buy drugs?”

Continue reading ➞ 10 Types of People That Need to Stop Calling My House

Lessons I Have Learnt from Draw Something

April 5, 2012April 5, 2012Art, iOS, Technology, Video Games3 Comments

elvis — Really horrible drawing I did of Elvis

If you don’t know already, Draw Something is the new mobile game sensation. It’s basically a set of Pictionary that you can play with your friends who have Apple and Android devices. I have been playing it for a couple of weeks now and through observation I have realized and learnt many things.

Celebrities are really hard to draw. I try my hardest not to use words when I am drawing clues. I think it’s cheating. However, when you get hit with a celebrity, it can become hard.

drake — This is Drake, boyfriend didn't get it.

britney — Name the first generic blonde person you can think of!

People draw people that look like themselves. Whenever the drawing requires the use of a person to describe something, they always seem to look like the person who drew the picture. I’m guilty of this too. My people always look like the doodles of me that I do on My Life In Drawings. Other people do this too though. My friends who have blonde hair draw blonde people. Those that have curly hair draw curly haired people. Even if it takes an extra step to do these things.

pegasus — Guess the hair colour of the person that drew this.

It can be used as a genius marketing plan. Companies should insert their names into this game. Subliminal advertising after all. And hey, if your logo isn’t recognizable for anybody to want to draw it, maybe you should do something about that.

Continue reading ➞ Lessons I Have Learnt from Draw Something

Things I Learned So Far From Video Blogging

February 21, 2012Life, Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

On my music blog I started making video album reviews. It was definitely something that I had my doubts of doing because of some great fear of not being liked or that people would make fun of me. It has only been a few weeks, but here are some things that I took away experience so far:

Continue reading ➞ Things I Learned So Far From Video Blogging

Yes, I Will Eat That Much

February 10, 2012Food, LifeLeave a Comment

I don’t know why but every time I go out to eat I get rather trivial looks and then am asked the question “Are you sure that’s what you want to order?”

tripleporkpoutine — Triple-pork poutine? Hell yeah I did.

Yes, damn it. Why would I ask for it if I wasn’t sure? I admit that me (and my boyfriend) are pretty small framed people. That doesn’t however mean I munch on salads and bite size portions. I enjoy and can chow down on any fat guy’s happy meal.

One day I was in BQM in Toronto and was faced with a dilemma: Should I get the bacon filled poutine or a delicious burger? The solution? I got both.

Continue reading ➞ Yes, I Will Eat That Much