Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language

When Stephen Fry laments “it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophiles don’t enjoy language,” it’s as if Michael Phelps were to lament that not enough people enjoy water. So when Stephen wholeheartedly recommended Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language, which he characterized as more playful and engaging than books on similar subject matter, I was hard pressed to say no. It’s taken me ages to find time to get into the meat of this book (strictly my own fault), but now, about two-thirds of the way through, I wanted to offer it my wholehearted recommendation for anyone who is even remotely interested in language and its origins and evolution.

Deutscher’s prose is indeed playful and accessible, his examples thought-provoking, and his subject matter fascinating: what are the forces that shape and transform language?

Deutscher mentions more than once that “These days, there are no systems of communication which are in the process of evolving their first words.”  He’s right, I suppose, but only on a technicality.  Last week I was taught the basics of a computer scripting language I’d never worked with before. Surely the constructs of some arbitrary scripting language represent one of many “artificial” systems of communication which are in the process of evolving their first “words” (and tokens).

I am writing this now as Deutscher transitions in the book from talking about the destructive forces which are applied to language (which favor economy, expressiveness, and analogy), into the constructive ones which enable new linguistic richness to blossom. Metaphor, apparently, provides many of the raw materials for new grammatical elements.

With that observation under my belt, and aspiring to be a creative force in the universe, I suddenly feel a bit better about my obsession with admiration of Roger’s Profanisaurus (a dictionary of profanity that originates in the pages of the UK’s Viz magazine, which derives cleverness and vulgarity in equal measure from a playful, multi-layered cocktail of metaphor, rhyming slang and other wordplay).

And of course there are my dear LOLcats, who reflect (again in equal parts) the absurd and absurdly rapid evolution of linguistic memes as they’re propelled at the speed of the internets. Since I’m in Ireland, and Deutscher recently reflected on the necessity of the word possessing-implying “have”, here’s a somewhat appropriate LOLCat I just cooked up  – with my cap off to Jim Condron for his help with the Irish word for “flavr.” (context here for the uninitiated)

oirish kitteh tinks: deres a flavr on meh, so dere iz.

Back to Deutscher’s book.  He spends the fifth chapter illustrating a point by employing a fictional dialogue between a cast of characters at a ‘George Orwell Centennary Conference’.  it’s a technique akin to the one I admired in Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach. Actually, that’s all I have to say.  Check it out.  Go for a swim.  And apologies to Deutscher, Mellie, Fry for this rambling but heartfelt review.

PhotoSynth is the Microsoft Research / Seadragon / UWashington technology that can process a collection of photos and turn it into a scene that can be navigated in 3D.

At this year’s Siggraph conference, there’s an interesting paper from the University of Washington and Microsoft about finding more intelligent paths through collections of photos like the ones produced by PhotoSynth.
Here’s the video that accompanies that paper:

(Click for direct link to YouTube)

When I was working for Microsoft in Dublin, I experimented with what was then an internal tool for creating PhotoSynths.  I ran around Dublin taking photos of some famous places.

Two of my favourite Photosynth collections were shot in the early morning quiet at The Temple Bar Pub.  Now, with the public release of PhotoSynth, I can publish these to the web!

Temple Bar (Front Bar), Dublin, Ireland

(Click for larger view on Photosynth site)

If I could go back and shoot these again, I’d put more time into taking close-ups of objects and memorabilia of interest. Photosynth shines in scenes where the viewer is interested in navigating the scene to discover and examine points of interest.

Temple Bar (Back Bar), Dublin, Ireland

(Click for larger view on Photosynth site)

I also have Synths of Newgrange and the Liffey River which I will post when I have a chance to find the original photos.

Congratulations to the PhotoSynth team, and please send me a link if you ‘Synth something cool!

I have long suspected that the Irish are mad, and now I have proof.

At some point during the National Productivity Centre crunch time, I received a mail from Irene Dehaene, informing me that I’d been nominated for the Best Blogger award at the IIA and Enterprise Ireland Net Visionary awards next month. 

I was overwhelmed, and remain extremely grateful to the person or people who nominated me.  It is tremendously gratifying to know that while I was living in Dublin, stumbling to keep with a finger on the tech scene pulse and keep developers informed and enthused about what was coming down the pipe, someone was listening and appreciating what I had to say.  It’s an honour to be recognized for that.

But I’m not the best blogger in Ireland.  I have incontrovertible proof of this fact: I’m currently in Canada.  In fact, I’m in Windsor, which some of you may know as the town across the border from Detroit where, according to Michael Moore, nobody locks their doors.

Since Twenty Major is incomprehensibly not on the shortlist, and Podge and Rodge aren’t yet blogging, I don’t have a candidate I can wholeheartedly throw my voting weight behind.  So I wish the very best to all the candidates and, again, am very grateful for the honour. 

And I hope that those who are still answering Ireland’s Call keep reading – I now have the new and hopefully interesting perspective of being a globetrotting Canadian, now an independent IT consultant, who had the good fortune of living and working in Ireland for 6 years. 

And, believe me, the “6 years living and working in Ireland” bit makes for some amazing story value back here in Canada.

Right.  I’m off to Guatemala for a bit.  I’ll post some pics of beautiful autumnal Canada first.

You’d be forgiven for being surprised to find out that I haven’t yet begun my travels, and haven’t even dipped my toe in the water for more scuba.

Instead, I’ve been working as an independent consultant for the past few weeks, helping to complete the development of the first application for Ireland’s National Productivity Centre, a joint venture between the Irish Management Institute and Microsoft Ireland, who are supported in their effort by a host of industry collaborators.

The environment of the National Productivity Centre (NPC) is the coolest part: A boardroom with seven enormous wrap-around screens, a table full of tablet PCs, teleconferencing gear straight outta Microsoft Research, and all the supporting technology you could eat. As much as I like the applications that have already been developed for the NPC, my head is swimming with ideas for what could be built for that space.

Part of the first NPC application (shown in the photo above) integrates Virtual Earth with a Windows Presentation Foundation front-end to provide a geographically-partitioned view of case studies where Microsoft technologies are being put to work to simplify how people work together and improve business insight.

And so my time in Ireland (to date) now ends as it began: with a demo for Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (below).

My good friend Damian Isla was a major part of the original Irish demo adventure, which culminated with Bertie, man of the people, herding virtual sheep on national television. Now, after thoroughly enjoying the celebration of Damian’s marriage to his incredible wife Julie, it’s time for some much-needed rest, after which I’ll enjoy the fruits of Damian’s most recent (technical) labour!

I’m writing this post in case anyone else out there wants to know what will happen to a European XBox 360 (in my case, from Ireland) if it’s moved to North America (in my case, Canada).  [update] The story started out not particularly great, but now, a few updates later, it is significantly better.  By purchasing a new power supply, you’ll have everything you need.  And although games are marked as region-specific, it turns out that many of them are not, and so by checking them against a list, you’ll find you can purchase many games in the shops, even those that are marked as “NTSC only”! 

So here’s the run-down.

Buying new games in the shop: You can NOT buy North American games and play them in your European XBox360.  XBox360s do not play games that were purchased in other regions, as per this.  [Update: It looks like the North American versions of some XBox360 games will work with a PAL (European) XBox360!  Thanks to John in the comments for the link to VideoGamesPlus at Blogspot where they test North American games in a PAL system and list the ones that work.  And here's a chart at Wikipedia of Region-Free 360 titles.]  For titles that aren’t region-free, you’ll need to have them shipped to you.  Solution: make some friends before you leave.  And maybe give them a few Euros for future postage.

Buying games through XBox Live and XBox Live Arcade: This continues to work just fine and you can purchase new XBLA games using this method.  I had to change my Region from Ireland to Canada before I could sign in to Xbox Live.  It updated my console before I was able to sign in (this could have been a routine update, I’m not sure).

PAL/NTSC 50Hz/60Hz: My European XBox works fine on an NTSC TV. 

Watching DVDs: You can ONLY watch DVDs from the XBox’s home region.  So my console rejects Region 1 (North American) DVDs.

Power Supply:  The European power supply — you know, that LOUD, GRAY BRICK sitting behind your TV? — DOES NOT WORK in North America.  If you use an outlet adaptor to physically plug it in, the unit will not accept as input the 110V power from North America.  Trust me, I tried; the power supply gives the amber “stand by” indication, but the XBox360 console itself gives you a flashing red ring. The European XBox power supply requires an input of 200 to 240 Volts from which it will generate an output of 203 Watts for the XBox at 12V / 16.5A.  Think about that for a second.  203 Watts is the equivalent of, like, 5 light bulbs. 

If you go looking for a voltage adaptor that will step up the North American voltage from its native 110 or 120 volts to the required 200-240 volts, most power adaptors you’ll find will produce around 60 Watts, which is adequate for a toaster or a microwave, but not your XBox360.  It sounds like this guy, Mike, had better luck finding one than I did when he moved the other way across the Atlantic. 

Your alternative is to pay a fortune for a North American XBox360 Power Supply (I got mine from Future Shop.)  They are scarce though, so call before you go.  Mine cost $99Cdn.  Ouch.

So here are the options, as far as I can see:

Option A: Buy a new XBox360 power supply in North America for ~$99Cdn.  Keep your old games.  Buy region-free games, and have games that aren’t region-free shipped to you.

Option B: Buy a new Xbox360 core system in North America for ~$299Cdn.  Don’t bring your core system with you.  Take out the hard drive.  Keep all peripherals.  Sell your old games that aren’t region free.

If you have any questions about this or suggestions for me, I’d be grateful to hear from you.  I have it up and running now, and confirmed that I can play an NTSC title on my PAL XBox (Project Sylpheed, which specifically says on the package it is for NTSC only), but other than that, I haven’t had the time to do any gaming since I’ve been back.

BONUS LINK: If you’re interested in embarking on a cross-Atlantic move in either direction with your XBox360, you should also read Mike and Rion’s guide.

BONUS #2: On a simpler note, here’s my guide to moving a European Nintendo DS to North America: (1) Play it on the plane. (2) Go to store and purchase game for $24Cdn (approx. 16EUR) instead of 49EUR. (3) Keep playing.

As part of my Last Stand demo, I showed how to integrate Nintendo’s Wiimote controller into XNA, first to navigate a butterfly around an environment by tilting and rolling the controller, and then to walk a creature across a tightrope wire by holding the Wiimote like a balancing pole.

I won’t be posting the code to this demo, but here is a description of how this works and how you can integrate the Wiimote controller with XNA, possibly to make your own Wiimote-controlled applications on the PC.

WiiMote Control:

I integrated the Wii controller using Brian Peek’s Managed Library for Nintendo’s Wiimote, which I found through Coding4Fun.  Brian includes a test app which you can use to help connect and test your Wiimote.  It took less than 20 minutes for me to integrate this library into XNA and map the accelerometers to the butterfly’s motion, but it had previously taken me 4 days and 8 (yes, eight) different attempts to find a Bluetooth adaptor that would work on Vista and speak with the Wiimote. 

Having Windows talk Bluetooth to the Wiimote is the hardest part:

The Wiibrew Wiki offers a list of Bluetooth devices which can communicate with the Wiimote.  Bear in mind that Vista seems to complicate things tremendously.  Many of the drivers for Bluetooth dongles listed as Wiimote-compatible are incompatible with Vista, and when I forced two of them to install, they sent me from Bluetooth to Bluescreen. 

I used the EPoX BT-DG05A Bluetooth USB Dongle.  The Microsoft Bluetooth stack included with Vista never spoke to the WiiMote at all, regardless of dongle model on the PC.  Instead, I am using the Toshiba Bluetooth stack (5.10.12), which Toshiba supports being installed onto Vista.  Be forewarned that Toshiba’s stack, when installed on a non-Toshiba machine, has a built-in 30-day timebombed expiry.  As of today, there is no way I could find to acquire a longer license to it… so Toshiba, please offer us a way we can license your stack. 

Wiimote input is limited to Windows-based XNA games:

Once you get the Wiimote talking to my PC, having accelerometer input is very, very, very, very cool.  Both the Wiimote itself and the Nunchuk that can be alternately attached contain 3 accelerometers each, with output normalized to gravity. 

Although this provides Wiimote input for Windows games written with XNA, when I publish my XNA game to the Xbox360, I am unable to use the Wiimote.  #ifdef statements in the code make the Wiimote bits conditionally compile for the Windows version.

Animation:

My butterflies are animated with the XNA Animation Components library, which you can download from Codeplex.  Thanks to David Astle (who leads the project) for sorting out a little bug in the InterpolationController.  It’s been fun making a (modest) contribution to that project. 

Now I can significantly slow down the animation, and the engine smoothly blends between frames of Phil’s animations, giving the butterflies a really natural look, even when they’re at rest.

Flocking butterflies:

The autonomous butterflies follow the rules of Craig Reynolds’ classic Boids flocking algorithm, which encourage separation, alignment and cohesion of members of the flock.  They avoid obstacles, and tend towards a target.  Here’s the Boids pseudocode that I worked from – and it’s really cool how a high-level language like C# lets you work almost directly from that pseudocode!

Art Assets:

The butterfly and Mawg’s models and animations, as well as the environment, were created by Phil McDarby and originally appeared in Still Life and Mind Balance. The skydome also appears in my Guitar Hero X-Plorer demo.

p.s. If you liked this, you’ll also like the Lego NXT Wii Bowling Robot!