February ’24

No snow?!This month we are going skiing. For me it has been about 15 years since I last went on a ski trip. I’m not sure I remember, but I am sure hopeful I will pick up the pace quickly. Alex has had some indoor practice, and for Alan it will be an all new experience. Ana is like me. She is experienced, but her last trip was also years ago. There was some uncertainty about the availability of snow on the piste. At my work it lead to a couple of laughs and even involved some AI. A couple of days before leaving some snow started to fall, but it was not enough to have white snowy pistes. In the end only some pistes with artificial snow could be used.

Skiing was fun! We started out in ‘La Molina‘, and visited ‘Marsella’, and ‘Les Angles’ in France. Skiing was like swimming. Almost right away I remembered how to do it. I was afraid I had forgotten, but the memory was still there. The kids also learned a lot! Alex can now safely go down a red piste, and is starting to ski in paralel. Alan can now easily go down green and blue pistes.

Hobby

I am a big fan of the game where you need to push big piles of coins from a plateau. A so-called ‘Pusher’. I have thought about buying a game a couple of times, but I always resisted. A pusher game is expensive, and it take a lot of space. I thought of a new approach. I bought the plans for the machine, and ordered the pieces to be laser cut. When they arrive I will only have to put the pieces together, and then I can do all the hardware myself. A small computer that drives a small motor and some lights, and manages some bells and whistles. If it works out I hope to improve the plans, and maybe make a transparent pusher.

January ’24

We started the year with Ana’s family visiting us. Juanjo put a very nice impression on how 2024 started for us on his YouTube channel. A few days later we had a visit from Marco and his family, which was fun. We went to Guayadeque for a small walk and some food in one of the caves. Afterwards we visited our home and has a stroll in the Doramas park, where I learned the magical words to get a nice picture with the kids: ‘Backs strait!’.

I, once again, paid Apple 99 euro to be able to develop iOS apps for another year, but my first app is still not done, even after being in the pipeline for over a year. I will see how it goes. Maybe this year I will find some time.

Our apartment entrance is right next to an escape room. It started a couple of years ago, and now we see big crowds standing in front of their door every now and then. This month it was finally our turn to try and escape. Well, we did it, with only seconds on the clock we managed to escape the room within the hour. It was a fun adventure, something different to the things we normally do. The kids told us they had fun, although I did notice some agitation during the game, probably caused by the stress about wanting to escape as fast as possible.

Agenda

Agenda?!Keeping an agenda is a very simple and effective way to keep track of things you need to do. You make plans, and you write them down on the date for which they are meant to be finished. This way you can select any day and see what needs to be done on that day, because all the plans you made in the past are written down of the day the plan was for. Logical.

Well, it seems that the logical way of using an agenda is not so logical after all. Our kids are learning something different on their school. All their tasks and appointments are written down on the day they initiated, with an indication for what day they are for. For example, the entry for today could be: ‘Tomorrow read biology page 64’, ‘Next week, on Wednesday, exam language’. The result is an, as I see it, useless agenda. Every day you need to look back for one or two weeks to see if there are any tasks for tomorrow. A terrible way of using an agenda, and a terrible thing to teach the kids.

Tamagotchi

Alan used to have a little crab as a pet. He kept it in his room in a nice crab environment with crab toys, water, plants, and some dirt so she could dig a nice hole. Sadly she kept getting older and older, and when we returned from our last trip she had passed away. To bad. Alan was in favor of getting a new pet, en we started to investigate. A walking stick seemed like a good idea, or maybe a new crab. Maybe even a hamster. The crab was nice but it spend most of its life inside its little hole in the ground. Only to come out to quickly get some food. The care for the little animal was also quickly allocated with Alan’s dad. That needed to change.

Searching for a new animal I also passed for a toy store. I hoped to find maybe a robotic fish, or something similar. Then I noticed the tamagotchi eggs. Maybe this could be interesting. The technology is from the last century, but if it’s fun, it’s fun. For Alan is was the perfect gift. He was so happy. His thoughts of any live animal disappeared immediately, as he started feeding and training the little digital animal. The animal also had a small game, and could be disciplined. The best part was that Alan could take it wherever he went. A great gift for sure.

The making of – Like and subscribe

Almost every YouTube video has a small part where the creator of the video asks the viewer to like the video and subscribe to the channel. Likes help other viewers to see if a video is worth watching. Subscribes help by generating lots of exposure for new videos. A channel with lots of subscribers will usually have lots of views for the videos they post. For amateurs it is really nice to see lots of people watching your content. For professionals a higher number of subscribers means a higher income.

Alex wanted to do something with this theme, so we made a ‘Like & subscribe’ stop motion. The idea was to add the short video at the end of a ‘normal’ video, just like the intro Alex used to start his videos. We would love to hear your opinion about this in the comments!

First we make the text. Every letter was drawn, colored en cut. Then we had to think of a nice idea for the short movie. Alex liked to do something with his skateboard, so we decided it would be nice to jump over the letters. Jumping over everything was a bit boring, so we added some variation. First a few jumps, then a dive, then a jump off the skateboard, then hitting some letters, and finally just ignoring the letters. Just let them come.

The story is really quite simple, yet at the same time it is personal, recognizable and a very powerful story. I helped Alex a bit by adding a bit of direction and evolution into the story. A young boy, avoiding confrontation, avoiding problems, and slowly gaining confidence. Learning on the go, while life goes on. Then when he eventually feels his knowledge is enough the tables are turned. First he simply repels the things that threat him and finally he has gained so much confidence that the can just ignore the threats. He learned that was he thought was a threat (or something dangerous) was really just an illusion, and that he can trust in himself.

In reality it is a story that applies to all of us. We start out fearing the unknown. Slowly we lose our fears and get to know yourself, and with this knowledge of yourself comes a tremendous power, where the faith you have in yourself can at times move mountains and have a giant impact on the world around you.

Making the movie took quite some effort. A stop motion is created by taking lots of pictures, and pasting them together into a movie. Alex was lying on the floor for over an hour, while me moved the letters, the skateboard, and Alex around. Then we took a picture, and went on to the next frame. In total we had almost 100 pictures, which was good for a short 18 seconds movie.

With a zoom at the end, and a fade to black we should get a nice ending of around 20 seconds. After adding some ‘special effects’ (by editing the almost 100 images one by one!) we got a really nice sequence.

All our efforts resulted in something quite nice! We think it turned out pretty good. What do you think? Do you think it is a good video to include in our YouTube content? Please leave any ideas/tips/suggestions/criticism in the comments below!

Lessons learned:
– We could use some music with the video, but finding a nice short piece is difficult, and it could result in copyright claims if not done correctly.
– Alex’ position was quite uncomfortable. Lying on the ground for the entire time. Next time we can see if there are alternatives, so the position of his head will look more natural.

Online friends / Astroturfing

a big ear with lots of people whispering in itMore and more time is spend online. Your social circles are formed online with people that feel similar to yourself. Where our social circles used to be centered around the town or city where you live, right now they can be everywhere. The same way that your physical friends can influence you, you can now also be influenced by the options and views of your online friends. Friends that you might have never met, but with whom you can spend lots of time.

Imagine a very near future where your online friends might all think siilar to you. A bit group of similarly minded people. All individuals that reinforce your thinking in a certain manner. Maybe 10 good friends, and maybe 20 more people who also think in a similar way. Maybe such a big group of people can influence you much more that you would think possible. Each of the persons you know has his or her own personality, which you get to know and trust.

Imagine all these friends are not as you would think. All of them are uniquely generated by an AI. In the blink of an eye there can be tens or hundreds of people who all think the same as you, and who will all try and navigate your thoughts to a desired outcome.

Maybe suddenly some of them will tell you about their experience with a new product, using the AI’s for some kind of advertisement. Or worse, your ‘friends’ influence your political opinion. This has already happened, where less powerful AI was used to influence groups of people and to redirect their thoughts and actions to achieve a certain goal. Now, with AI getting more and more accessible, the big danger is an abuse so personal it will be very hard to resist. You will not even know it is taking place.

If can even be done with less effort. Simply train an AI on how you interact with your environment. Let it learn how your friends and contacts behave, and at the right moment simply inject some additional conversation. Almost impossible to trace.

Even if this technology is used for good, avoid radical opinions, avoid unwanted behaviour, in the end the person that controls the AI controls the emotions and thoughts of lots and lots of people. A very dangerous future we are entering.

Lets just ask an AI itself

Would it be possible for an AI to generate a number of different identities all aimed at trying to influence someone to get them to buy a certain product?
Yes, it is possible for an AI to generate multiple identities to influence someone to buy a certain product. This is known as astroturfing, which involves creating fake identities or groups to simulate grassroots support for a particular cause or product.

The number of identities needed would depend on various factors such as the size of the target audience, the level of influence required, and the resources available for the astroturfing campaign. It’s difficult to provide a specific number without knowing more details about the specific situation.

However, it’s worth noting that astroturfing is generally considered unethical and can damage the reputation of both the product and the company behind it. Therefore, it’s important to approach marketing and advertising ethically and t

Alan’s first game

a photo of two soccer players when one player in an orange outfit kicks a burning comet across the field, right into the goalThe stress! We can feel the tention at home, the excitement. All these emotions, and the match is still a few days away. For Alan it does not matter. His spirit is up! High up, his thoughts are of victory. He is focused on only one thing. Every night we train football. Every visit to the park we need to bring a football. Every visit to a park with an area with grass we need to take Alan’s special football shoes. On wednesday is his first official match with his new team ‘Formento’ against another team!

He is sooooo excited, it look like it is a contagious feeling. We are all cheering for him of course. We all hope Alan’s team will win, but if for some weird reason this is not the case, that for sure we will be able to find some outside reason. A bad field, the ball was too soft, foul play by the other team, maybe missing a star player?

AI: Are we there yet?

A mind inside a fishbowl on top of a mechanical body walking through the sky on top of a cloudArtificial intelligence is a thing we keep hearing more and more about, but what are we really talking about? Is it really something smart and intelligent. It is certainly smart, but sadly the intelligent part still needs to be created.

A few years ago we had various very good search engine. You could give it a couple of words, and it would use those words to really quickly give a list of results that were related to the words you provided. They improved this search by remembering where people clicked. More clicks meant a result was probable better, so it got a bit higher score.

Now OpenAI has added a new layer to this. It’s tool ChatGPT can understand text, and can tell you something in a natural fashion. You can ask it a question, and it will give you an answer back, just like a normal conversation. Understanding someone is a very complex task. You can ask the same thing in lots of different ways, and small details can be very important or meaningless. The ‘engine’ is trained to know what is important, and what is not. Instead of giving you a list of sites, now you can simply get a summary as an answer. The AI is not storing a huge amount of links, it is reading everything, and storing the information it finds, which is what it uses to answer your question.

We are not there yet, but it is a huge step forward. Understanding language is really difficult, and making it seem ‘natural’ is very hard, but it looks like they really achieved something here. Still, there is no intelligence. For now there is no curiosity, no initiative, no desire. The AI only responds to queries. It remembers what you asked it, but thats it. You can ask it things, and it can tell you things, but it won’t do anything else. It is really good, and clearly the current ‘AI’ is much much better then the ‘old’ search engines.

We can even ask it directly.

Q: are you really intelligent?
A: As an AI language model, I don’t possess a conscious intelligence like humans do. However, I have been trained on vast amounts of data and algorithms to respond to various queries, so I can simulate an intelligent conversation with humans. I can understand natural language and can generate responses based on the information I have been trained on. My abilities are limited to what I have been trained on and what algorithms are available to me.
Q: can you repeat the answer in dutch
A: Als een AI-taalmodel …

Soccer

A painting of two football players trying to both get the ball on a football field, The players are painted with clear lines, lots of color. The legs of the football players and the football itself are much larger than normal. One player has a blue soccer outfit. The other player has orange colored clothes.The soccer gene is completely lacking in my. Father Kees and mother Nel were both soccer trainers with various youth teams at VVSB (The local team from Noordwijkerhout). My brother Bert was also a player. I was sometimes forces to visit the games and watch, but I prefered to spend my time picking grass for my rabbits. The game was not interesting to me, and I still don’t care for it.

Well, the gene is back! Alan has a love for the game that amazes me. Alan is part of the Las Palmas youth team of ‘Atleti Formento‘. Now, every night we play a game of soccer in the hall (with a soft ball), every visit to the park he spends playing football with the kids there, every weekend we go to the park what Alan tries out his new soccer shoes. Once a week he goes to training.