The Mechanical Turk Project photo 36003 740 0 right photo In early 2008 I came across an interesting idea that Amazon had started working on called Mechanical Turk The idea was pretty simple rather than writing software that was capable of artificially intelligent tasks it was instead plausible simply to pay people very small sums of money to perform very small tasks This is what the Turk program did The Amazon system allowed developers like myself to create small programs that would integrate with their Turk API In my case I wrote a very simple program that would display a random photo from my collection and request that the user describe the photo in the text box I provided to them All of this was spelled out on within my user space but provided that the person described the photo in at least 10 words they would be paid a sum of 0 01 1 penny I suspect that this type of thing is mostly aimed at people in English speaking emerging markets around the world India for example but proved to be invaluable to me On the initial 3 month run I wound up having over 8 000 photos described strong Update March 3rd 2012 strong I ve done some additional exploring of this system and in the few years since I first started experimenting with it Amazon has made huge strides In 2008 their developer API was pretty cumbersome to figure out but they ve really managed to solve this by simplifying the submission process The downside is that it requires a few extra steps on the developer s end but the upside is the simplicity to understand how it all works and to begin a campaign The dataset importation used to be automated but now one just uploads a CSV file of the data Again it s an extra step but is so simple to do that I can t really complain All that being said I ve recently launched another several thousand photos and had 100 of them described within just a few days For the most part the entries submitted were very good I will likely do a full scale launch within the next few weeks and have Amazon Turk workers detail ALL of my photo collection This is a pretty mammoth amount of data processing that people will be doing for me and I m excited to think how it will change my search criteria strong Update October 28th 2015 strong em small political rant within em After many many years of wonderful successes with the Mechanical Turk project I decided that it was time to once again overhaul some of my older code I spent several days rewriting a bunch of the internal mechanics of u openFace u the software I designed that powers this entire website Given the importance of this piece to me I focused heavily on the Mechanical Turk processing From a code point of view everything went great As it happens though there is now a community of Mechanical Turk watchdogs they have no affiliation with Amazon by the way This was an interesting experience for me The new scripts I wrote to compliment the detailed classes I ve already written were probably a few thousand photos in when a small group of people Californians as it happened started sending me angry emails In a nutshell they told me that the price of each photo should be more like 0 30 0 40 Keep in mind it takes about 15 seconds to look at a picture and type a 10 word sentence about it Always one to engage conflict I tried reasoning with them I explained that this was just a personal project and that I couldn t possibly spend that kind of money on it At 0 01 0 02 per photo it costs me about 40 00 for 1 000 photos the fees are over 100 at such a low rate Still when I process 8 000 photos it can add up So while the fees would be a lot less at 0 30 per photo 1 000 photos would wind up costing me nearly 400 00 It then follows that 8 000 photos would cost me about 3 200 I explained to this group that if it did cost that much I simply wouldn t be able to use the service and then nobody would get my money It s a hobby of mine to catalog my life and the time I share with those people important to me it s not a business It s all at a financial loss They weren t having it They were angry and not shy about letting me know But then I took a step back from their complaints and I realized that like most marketplaces the people who are doing the work are extremely delighted to have a steady source of income coming in Many of those people might live on just a few dollars per month and so the opportunity to make even 20 00 from me is huge to them For some of them it can entirely change their quality of life and open new doors Of course their lives are nothing like my own I m sad for that and would do most anything to change that I d sure as shit rather help a group of people from emerging countries like Brazil India China etc than have a bunch of people from California complain that I m not doing enough to help THEM while they sit in an air conditioned Starbucks sipping lattes and yelling at me from behind their MacBook Pro So like so many things in life once you tune out the background noise the Mechanical Turk project continues to be pretty amazing I m delighted to give money to these people all around the world they do a wonderful job for me

Cheers no more photo 36004 740 200 right The DVD jacket of the final season photo On May 11th 2011 I watched the very first episode of the famous 80s show Cheers In fact it was the pilot episode It s taken me just over 4 months to watch the show from start to finish ten whole seasons Of course I d seen many of the episodes in syndication over the years but the story is a lot different when you watch it in order like this courtesy of Netflix The show did not end the way I assumed it would but it was a great series and I d recommend it to anyone photo 12671 286 200 right Me standing in front of Cheers a few years ago photo I know a lot of people tell me I m crazy for watching these old types of sitcoms but it was a brilliantly written show Perhaps more interesting though is that you can start to see how their ideas were copied in later shows Had I known from the beginning I definitely would have started cataloging all of the overlaps that Seinfeld took from Cheers since I m such a huge fan of Seinfeld and more importantly know all of the episodes inside and out The most esoteric reference I remember off hand was when someone in Cheers unfortunately I cannot remember the specific episode used and then explained the word anathema I can only assume that Larry David saw this episode and wrote the word down in his little black book because in Seinfeld S2E6 The Statue em George Students can t clean It s anathema explaining They don t like it em em Jerry How long have you been waiting to squeeze that into a conversation em It s not a word one hears every day and certainly not one I think would make for your average punchline but there was in both of them There is also a pretty sizable number of people in Seinfeld who originally appeared as guests on Cheers first In an early episode of Cheers for example Michael Richards better known as Kramer plays as character that winds up laying a claim to Sam s bar Anyway I would highly recommend starting this show at the very beginning to anyone who has a Netflix account

The Applejuice Pregnancy Tisa and I had been dating for about 4 months when she signed up to participate in a clinical study for wisdom tooth removal Basically it was one of those deals whereby they pay for all of your expenses in exchange for you testing out new post operative pain medications Of course you always run the risk of being in the placebo group or having the medicine not work or worse work adversely but of course the cost of not having to pay for wisdom tooth removal makes it highly worthwhile Anyway I woke up very early one Saturday morning so that I could take Tisa to the clinic around 38th street and Kerbey Lane so that she could get on with the procedure It was probably around 6 30 in the morning that I dropped her off I drove back home got into bed and quickly fell asleep It probably wasn t more than forty minutes later that I was awoken by my phone It was Tisa and she needed me to come and pick her up at the clinic I asked her what was wrong and she said we would talk about it later I was very concerned at this point and worse was that I was exhausted and had a summer school final to take later in the afternoon I went and picked her up at the clinic and as we started to drive home I asked her what had gone wrong She told me she had failed the obligatory pregnancy test that they give everyone Naturally my heart stopped beating I m not sure how long it took to resume normal function After some brief period of time she exclaimed to me that she was not pregnant At least not that she knew of I was utterly confused A couple of weeks prior Tisa had been out with some of her friends and at some point a little pot smoking may have occurred The clinical studies are very specific in that you can t have any type of prior drug intake to participate Of course most rational people recognize that smoking pot weeks earlier is not going to alter the chemistry of a pain narcotic weeks after the fact but that s how they operate Evidently when Tisa went into the bathroom to fill her urine sample for both a pregnancy AND drug test there was a bottle of apple juice sitting atop the toilet Although we argued about it quite extensively I contended it was just accidentally left there by someone else but she swore that it was specifically there so that people had something else to use Whatever the case she did in fact use the apple juice She mixed some of the apple juice with warm water and turned that into the doctor for her test So the punchline to this entire story is that I have no idea how this happened why it happened or if it is in any way scientifically relevant but evidently a watered down apple juice can alter the chemistry of a clinical pregnancy test to show a false positive

The Paintball Gun This was an absolutely ridiculous idea from the get go but somehow Dave G and I thought it would be fun Since we were both making pretty good salaries and really not having much to pay for other than rent and bills we were buying all sorts of random toys for around the house One afternoon we took off to Academy and came across some paintball guns Thinking paintballing might be something we could get into we each bought a gun an over sized hopper and a box of paint Of course the problem with having a paintball gun is that you inevitably want to shoot it And once you shoot it you inevitably want to shoot it at something And after that milestone you inevitably want to shoot at someone Dave and I got the idea that we would each get to shoot the other person one time Dayna happened to come over and was more than happy to bear witness to this We drew to see who went first and Dave lost He marched over to a tree in our backyard probably about 20 yards away and turned his back to me I calked the gun told him I was going to fire and shot him square in the back He got a huge welt as we expected but was otherwise fine seeing on how he knew he was about to return the favor I marched over to the same tree and turned my back to Dave He fired but his first shot missed me This actually only made my situation far worse as I could literally hear the air from the paintball whizzing by my head The apprehensiveness of being shot from such a close distance was terrible Finally Dave took aim again and fired He hit me square in corner of my right ear It stung terribly and the entirety of my head and ear were covered in water based paint I have no idea what Dayna thought of all of this but she happily watched on

The Coke Machine photo 252349 253344 0 right Jeff Smith filling up a bag with our prized sodas photo While there were many many tiny acts of vandalism that occurred in my freshman dorm room one of the most exciting ones was that of the Coke machine It was exciting only because we had heard the details of this particular trick through the grapevine and assumed it was just an urban legend and a bad one at that The idea someone explained to us was that if you managed to inject salt water into the internal machinery of a Coke machine then for whatever reason it would provide you with free sodas The idea was that the salt water being highly conductive of course would short out the machine and this was the trigger response for a failure Again I realize this sounds entirely improbable Since my roommates and suite mates knew that I generally didn t consider consequences to most anything they encouraged me to give it a go We got a container of Morton salt and a regular iced tea pitcher with a nice pouring spout For whatever reason the hot water in Dobie was exceedingly hot and this made the experiment all the easier I filled about 1 6th of the pitcher with salt filled the rest with hot water and then stirred them together for a few moments The water being as hot as it was allowed the salt to dissolve very easily and efficiently In fact I distinctly remember how powerful the salt smelled likely due to it supersaturating the water I walked out of my dorm with pitcher in hand and proceeded down the hall to the Coke machine By this time I had a small audience behind me I carefully started to pour the pitcher of hot saltwater into the coin slot of the machine While a lot of it spilled down the front a lot of it also managed to go in I was probably about half way through the pitcher when we started to hear what sounded like an electric motor shorting out It was a sporadic hum at first but eventually started getting louder and more consistent almost like a broken door buzzer Finally when I was about 3 4 of the way through there was a loud sound and the Coke machine literally dropped every single coke in the machine We could hear the sodas fall down the shoot and saw them quickly bottleneck in the dispenser at the bottom Celebrating and somewhat euphoric from such a stupid suggestion actually working we bagged up all of the sodas and brought them back into our dorm I m not positive but I think this became somewhat of an urban legend in the dorm itself as I distinctly remember people asking me if we could really do it Even stranger is that we continued doing it for months to come but somehow or another never got questioned about it Apparently nobody ever took notice of the fact that our dorm room was filled with hundreds of soft drinks and meanwhile the Coke machine right outside of our dorm was often covered with a salt precipitate empty and changeless And so it happens if you pour hot saltwater into the coin slot of a Coke machine you can enjoy the rewards of free sodas

The Blue Softee Some time during our Junior year in college while living as roommates Klaus and I got the idea that our dear friend Sunni needed a present She had broken up with her boyfriend of many years just months before and was clearly upset over this event as one would expect most anyone to be There was discussion of trying to find her someone but unfortunately neither Klaus nor I were going to be of any help in this department One late evening in our cozy 41st street apartment Klaus and I took to the pipe as we did on so many other nights there It probably wasn t too long before we were stoned out of our minds reminiscing on memories past I ll never be sure if it was Klaus or myself who suggested it in all likeliness it was me but we somehow decided that it would be comical to purchase Sunni a vibrator After some initial laughter we somehow figured that it would be a nice gesture Within moments we were huddled around my smoke stained monitor trying to find Sunni the perfect fulfillment when alas the Blue Softee presented itself I filled out the order form with my information and we sent it and a bottle of cleaning solution anonymously to Sunni and Laura s cottage duplex on 33rd street There was a note attached with some sort of innuendo though I can t recall it

The 22 Quarter Over the weekend of October 17th 19th of 1997 and while still a freshman at the University of Texas in Austin I took a weekend trip up to a friend of a friend s ranch near Plano Texas Jake Shaw whose parents owned the ranch was in school with a number of my good friends namely Jon Weitzel Nate Christianson Tom Kelley and Kelly Dotson I drove up to Waco on that Friday afternoon picked up Jon and Jake in my F150 and we proceeded to drive another 2 3 hours north to the ranch There are probably a dozen stories worthy of telling from that particular weekend hunting catfish Jon and Jake recreating Woodstock throwing bullets into a fire and on and on but this particular one is with respect to a 22 caliber rifle a quarter and shrapnel Jon and his girlfriend at the time Meredith Watson were already off doing their own nightly thing and I was hanging out in the kitchen with Kelly Dotson I don t recall if we were playing quarters or how the idea of the quarter came about but at some point I thought it would be cool to make it into a trinket for her necklace Having played with the 22 all day long I knew it was sitting outside on the porch and so I went outside with a project in mind Of course I was well beyond a safe level of intoxicated when I decided I could just shoot a hole through the quarter My first effort was to shoot downward and into the ground I placed the quarter on the grass outside and centered the barrel of the 22 over the quarter Without much thought for what might happen I pulled the trigger expecting to see a positive result It did not work Instead the quarter got pushed an inch or two into the ground and had an enormous dent in one side of it this would later lead to another story Although I m sure I was amused with what had happened I was still intent upon accomplishing my original goal I took another quarter out of my pocket and this time instead of shooting into the ground thought it wise to shoot into the air I pointed the barrel of the gun straight up and placed the quarter atop it With the quarter balancing over the center of the gun barrel I gently pulled the trigger The quarter flew up into the air and landed on the ground below me As you might imagine it was pretty hot but it DID have a perfect hole through the center of it I excitedly walked inside to deliver my gift to Kelly She looked at me and asked what had happened to my face Perhaps it was the alcohol or being the nearly innocent and unintelligent age of 18 but when you break metal apart that metal has to go somewhere As it happens the shrapnel from the quarter sprayed through part of my face at an angle that covered part of my nose cheekbone and the outside of my right eye Thankfully none of it actually went into my eye I never did have it checked up on by a doctor so who knows if I still have shards of nickle and zinc in me Nevertheless Kelly got her quarter necklace and I proved to the world that a 22 shell will go clear through a quarter at literal point blank range

A Personal FAQ About Me strong 1 What is your name strong For the purposes of this FAQ Kevin will do just fine but I ll give you a hint go to a href http www kevinludlow com this a URL strong 2 Where are you from strong Originally I m from the little town of Manalpan New Jersey My family moved to Texas when I was eight or so and I spent the next 10 years living in Houston Texas After I graduated from high school I moved to Austin Texas strong 3 Where do you live now strong In an apartment in Austin Texas strong 4 How tall are you strong Ummm I d like to say 5 10 but I m told that might be generous by an inch or so strong 5 What color eyes do you have strong Blue strong 6 What is your favorite color strong Green strong 7 Are you married strong No strong 8 Are you single strong Would a non single guy have a website with multiple FAQ s about himself on it strong 9 Are you rich strong Most certainly strong 10 Can I call you sometime strong Hmmm why don t you email me your picture first strong 11 Are you the type of guy that enjoys dates strong Actually I prefer plums though dates and more importantly the act of dating has appealed to me a time or two strong 12 Do you have any favorite authors or books strong I have to be honest I m not much for reading Not that I don t like books I just prefer having them read to me via audiobooks or CDs I generally prefer mystery books random fact books history books and generally anything scientific in nature strong 13 What about your favorite TV shows strong I don t watch that much TV I like the FOX block of The Simpsons Seinfeld King of the Hill and sometimes That 70 s Show Other than that I tend to stick to the Discovery Channel the History Channel and movie channels such as HBO namely b c I hate commercials strong 14 And for the trifecta how about movies strong I think my favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption As for clever movies I like Guy Ritchie s Snatch I ve enjoyed all 30 or so Hitchcock movies that I ve seen and also like a number of old silent pictures with Charlie Chaplin and or Buster Keaton A local Austin band Guy Forsyth has put on a fabulous show a few times by playing an original score to Buster Keatons The General strong 15 What kind of music do you listen to strong I listen to most everything except for rap and country Tho even some rap has grown on me thanks to the Tony Hawk and Grand Theft Auto video game series I ve recently really gotten into listening to more worldly music and of course being the narcacist that I am I enjoy listening to some of my own homemade music strong 16 What kind of a car do you drive strong A black 2004 Saturn Ion2 Quad Coupe strong 17 What other cars have you owned in the past strong My first car was a white 1993 Mitsibushi Mighty Max small pickup truck This was followed by a cherry red mocca Ford F150 Eddie Bauer pickup truck After that came a cherry red mocca 2000 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer This is about when I moved to New Zealand First I purchased a 1989 Honda Beat 50cc Scooter then a 1981 Subaru Leone After returning stateside I purchased my 2004 Saturn Ion2 Quad Coupe strong 18 Do you like to travel strong Indeed strong 19 Have you visited much of the United States strong Most all of it I still have yet to visit Alaska Hawaii and a few states of the central north such as the Dakotas and Montana strong 20 Have you traveled outside of the United States strong Yup I ve traveled to some of the Virgin Islands Mexico dozens of times New Zealand Australia Fiji and Puerto Rico technically not part of the US strong 21 Where would you like to go next strong I would really like to visit Canada Cuba Japan Thailand Russia and then Europe more or less in that order strong 22 Do you have any pets strong No sadly I ve seemed to develop certain allergies to some pets strong 23 What pets have you had in the past strong My family has had and I grew up with cats of the following names Henry Fluffy Tabitha and Sam Dog names were Barney a sheltie Freckles a k a Senor Taco a long haired chihuahua and Sampson a mutt We also had a horse for many years named Tara Personally I have had dozens of fish including a few large mouth bass I had a pet crawfish named Bob and my personal favorite was my pet mouse named Mario Van Peebles Mouseman III a k a Mousie strong 24 Was it really necessary to type all of these questions strong You re the one that read them strong 25 Is there anything that really annoys you strong Yes people that would have typed the former answer as Your the one that read them

Avalanches Ahead After hitting lots of bad weather on the Southern Scenic Route from Invercargill Bluff towards Te Anua we stayed a night in Te Anua in the pouring rain even losing power for awhile Without much change in the weather we headed out to Milford Sound what we are told is one of the most beautiful places in all of New Zealand It was about a 120km drive and upon the last 20km the bridge and tunnel were closed due to extremely high winds and avalanches that had covered the roads We stopped for awhile in the Hollyford town campsite but ultimately just had to turn around At least we know where to come back to Since forth we have arrived in Queenstown I would like to bite some of my words a bit at this point and note that the skiing here looks fabulous I am dissappointed that we were told Queenstown skiing is so expensive While the town itself is certainly more upscale than Methven the ski rentals are actually a little cheaper and the lift tickets the same price I am pondering doing one last day of snowboarding just to get a feel for the Queenstown mountains Photo Gallery Updates strong NOTE NEW PICTURES HAVE NOT YET BEEN ADDED Due to the slowest internet cafe that exists in the modern world located in Queenstown s Mall the pictures have not yet been uploaded to the server They should find their way onto the server sometime tomorrow evening from Dunedin Sorry for the inconvienence strong a href http www austinsmoke com modules php set_albumName album02 amp op modload amp name gallery amp file index amp include view_album php Camper Van a a href http www austinsmoke com modules php set_albumName album09 amp op modload amp name gallery amp file index amp include view_album php Animal Encounters a a href http www austinsmoke com modules php set_albumName album33 amp op modload amp name gallery amp file index amp include view_album php Larnach Castle a a href http www austinsmoke com modules php set_albumName album34 amp op modload amp name gallery amp file index amp include view_album php Bluff a a href http www austinsmoke com modules php set_albumName album35 amp op modload amp name gallery amp file index amp include view_album php Southern Scenic Route a

The Nike Cluster On May 16th 2000 Dave Guezuraga and I launched a new type of model rocket that we had never used before Dave was the engineer behind this particular rocket and it would seem in hindsight that he crafted the machine rather well The launch site was set at Zilker park and though the sunset made for some scenic views it was only the result of us getting there late As a note it s usually not a good idea to launch model rockets at night if you expect to find them again We had a rather large crew audience for this particular launch which consisted of Eric Zavesky Klaus Wagner Annie Van Zandt and Dayna McKay The schedule called for at least one test launch of the Nike Cluster but time permitting two would ultimately ensue To give a peek into the power of this rocket this particular rocket flew on D engines specifically D12 3 engines but it happened to fly on 3 of them at once It was roughly equivalent to 24 class A engines strong The Nike Cluster Launch Number I strong photo 35954 739 300 right A bottom view showing off its 3 class D engine mounts photo Launch Number I Launch Date May 16th 2000 Launch Time 20 18 Launch Location Zilker Park Approx Landing Distance 200 meters strong How did we capture this footage strong If you happen to notice the glass looking thing sitting in the middle of the above bottom right picture it is actually a 10 gallon aquarium The purpose of having it was so that we could capture the footage that we did Generally speaking we would put it directly next to the launch pad with a video camera inside of it For this particular shoot the video camera was a Sony Digital 8mm The aquarium simply helped to protect the camera from being destroyed strong The Nike Cluster Launch Number II strong photo 35981 739 300 right The ignitor hits all three D12 3 engines at once photo Launch Number II Launch Date May 16th 2000 Launch Time 20 48 Launch Location Zilker Park Approx Landing Distance 200 meters Notes Rocket barely recovered Sustained damage from landing in a tree lost parachute and nosecone In the interest of science and exploration why stop at one launch when you can do two Truthfully it was probably not a good idea for us to have gone ahead and launched the Nike Cluster a second time The sun was almost down and it was apparent that recovering it may be somewhat of a problem The video camera we used to capture the images happened to have nightvision on it and I suppose we figured we had some sort of an advantage over the night sky We weren t entirely wrong It took about 30 minutes to recover the Nike Cluster from the first launch and have it prepped for launch II It just so happens there would not be a launch number III