Tuesday, July 30, 2013

A royal baby watcher on why the royal baby watch was pointless


As I've blogged about before, I find the royal family interesting because they have this really bizarre job that they have to do and it's interesting to me to see how they do it.  I'm also interested in fashion, so I will totally click through for a picture of a female royal, just to see how they've costumed themselves for this bizarre job.

Despite the fact that I'm childfree, I also think babies are interesting.  They're all little and cute, with these ridiculously tiny (but fully functional!) hands and feet, and it's interesting to me to see what they can do and to speculate on what they must think about what's going on around them.  I will totally click through to see a picture of a baby.

So that makes me totally the target audience for royal baby media coverage, which I unrepentantly consumed when the time came.

However, I think it was a complete waste of time to have media staking out the hospital for weeks and weeks in anticipation of the birth, because there was no story to be had by doing so.

Don't get me wrong, I do think the royal baby is news, objectively speaking.  Under the current system, he's third in line to be our head of state.  His identity is approximately as relevant as the identity of a political party leader. (But he's much more adorable to look at!)  On top of that, there is public interest.  When you've got a large chunk of your audience wanting to know biographical information about a public figure, it is appropriate to report it.

The thing is, what is there to know about a newborn in the first day of their life?  Their name, gender, date and time of birth, weight and length, whether they're healthy, and what they look like.  That's literally all there is.  There isn't any more yet because the poor kid hasn't been around long enough yet.  Even his parents aren't yet able to answer questions like "Is he a good sleeper?" or "How's he nursing?" because they haven't had enough time to find out yet.

All they could get by camping out in front of the hospital was pictures of the baby and maybe a soundbite or two of royals charmingly expressing appropriate delight at the birth of the baby.

All of which the palace would have released anyway.

All that time and effort and sitting out in the hot sun, and it made no difference to us as the interested audience. It just took up a lot of airtime and column inches on "no baby yet", all of which could have been better spent on something else.  We still would have gotten all available information through official channels, and there was simply no other information to be had.

Monday, July 29, 2013

The folly of measuring calories in exercise

Sometimes people talk about calories in terms of how much exercise it would take to burn them off.  There has even been talk of putting the amount of exercise needed to burn the calories on menus. I think this is a red herring, because it might lead people to believe that you have to exercise enough to burn off all the calories you consume.

This isn't the case.  A lot of calories (probably even the majority of our caloric intake) are burned by our baseline metabolism and the activity of everyday life. When I had my dysphagia incident a couple of summers ago, I was being as sedentary as possible to preserve what precious few calories I was able to consume. I didn't exercise at all, I took elevators and escalators instead of stairs, I took the subway to the next stop instead of walking. Despite that, I still lost about a pound a day because of the calories burned in the course of everyday life.

I'm concerned that if you present food to ignorant people in terms of hours of exercise to do, they might think that in order to be healthy, they have to go out and jog for three hours to burn off their dinner.  Then they might feel the need to exercise the point of unsafeness, or to eat unhealthily little, or otherwise deliberately exercise off a greater percentage of their caloric intake than necessary and thereby not leave enough for everyday life.  (And, of course, non-ignorant people can calculate how much they need to work out for themselves.)

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Faking it

Dear Carolyn
In the mid-1990s, when I was 22 and my brother was 18, our family took a Caribbean cruise. It was fun, but not so much fun that I cared to go back again.
Now that my parents are in their late 60s and retired, my mom has gotten it in her mind that all four of us should take another cruise together as a family. They have even offered to pay. 
 
Aside from not having an interest in the cruise, I am also not interested in taking a family vacation. I am single and in my late 30s, and a family vacation smacks of desperation, a way of saying, “Oh, how sad, he didn’t want to go by himself, so he went with Mommy and Daddy.” Also, traveling anywhere with my parents is never a simple process (I suppose that can be said of a lot of people, though). In short, a cruise might be a vacation for my parents, but it would be anything but one for me.
I have repeatedly explained that neither a cruise nor a family vacation (wherever the destination) interests me. Nevertheless, the badgering continues. 
For the record, I take my own vacations, usually by myself. I also see my parents about once a month, so it is not as if I ignore them and am being “guilted” into a vacation. Any thoughts?
 I was surprised to see not only Carolyn, but also a huge number of people in the comments, suggest that LW would regret not going on the cruise after their parents die, because they'd feel bad about missing an opportunity to spend time with their parents.

This surprises me because if you asked me in a vacuum "What if they die and you don't get to spend any more time with them?" my immediate visceral answer would be "Then it's even more important not to spend what time we have left together doing something that makes me resent spending the time with them."

This also makes me wonder if there are people who actually enjoy spending time with their loved ones doing something that their loved ones don't actually have interest in doing.  Because I hate it!  It makes me feel so awkward and just want to run away and go home.   When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes on their own initiative try to take me to something that I was interested in but I knew they had no interest in, and it just felt awful and cringey and dreadful, and generally not worth doing at all.  Even when I invite my friends to do something that I'm not completely sure if they're into, and they accept my invitation of their own free will,I still find myself worrying in the back of my mind that they might not actually be into it. So, in this context, I just can't fathom how someone can enjoy an activity if their loved ones don't actually want to be there and are going along just to humour them.

Actually, I wonder if there's a correlation between this group and the people who want others to go through the motions of being religious?  As someone who takes religion seriously (which is why I left the church and started living as an atheist in the first place), I've always felt it's terribly insulting to the deity to go through the motions and not mean it.  But if there are people who genuinely enjoy having their loved ones go through the motions of things they actually hate doing, maybe they'd think their deity would feel the same way?

Monday, July 22, 2013

The tale of the GO bus skeptic

The scene: I'm sitting in a GO bus, putting on my seabands in the hope of warding off motion sickness.

Guy next to me: "What are those things?"
Me: "They prevent carsickness. I put them on my wrists, and this sticky-outy plastic bit presses into an acupressure point that relieves nausea."
Guy next to me: "Those are a scam, you know!  They're totally unproven, they don't do anything at all, it's all in your head!"

Now, it is true that I can't say for certain that the seabands work.  I've never thrown up while wearing them, but I also haven't thrown up on many many occasions when I wasn't wearing them.

But this guy was about to sit next to me for a long bus ride. If it were true that the anti-nausea measures I'm taking are entirely psychosomatic, he would have an immediate personal investment in my believing in them!  Why would you try to convince the person next to you on a long bus ride that their psychosomatic anti-carsickness measures are all in their head?

Friday, July 19, 2013

Thank you Blogger!

I recently blogged about a Blogger error message that prevents you from posting or saving posts unless the post has a title.

It seems this error has gone away.  I can now once again save and post messages without a title!

Given the recent spate of Google decision that hindered my user experience and disregarded my needs, I'm very glad to see Blogger is responsive to this!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Analogy for why social media is not a replacement for RSS

One of the things I found most bizarre in all the discussion surrounding the cancellation of Google Reader is that some people (including, apparently, some who work at Google) seem to think that social media is a suitable replacement for a feed reader.  As though we're perfectly content with reading whatever our internet friends choose to share and have no need whatsoever to curate our own reading list.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

I've just caught up on the Inspector Gamache series, and am waiting with bated breath for the next book to come out in August.

So suppose, on the release date in August, I walk into a bookstore and ask "Do you have the latest Inspector Gamache book?"

The bookstore worker answers, "Here are some books I read and enjoyed recently!"

That doesn't solve my problem, does it?  I want to know what happened with Inspector Beauvoir.  I want to know how (or whether) Peter and Clara's marriage is holding up. I want to find out who leaked the video.

The books the bookstore worker read and enjoyed recently won't address these needs.  They may well be good books, I may well enjoy them, they may well end up being new favourites that I end up following diligently.  But, even if I read and enjoy them all, I will still want to read the next Inspector Gamache.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition V

9. If you tell someone (or say about someone) that they should just get a job, as though it's that simple, you're required to hire them.  You must hire them to do something they're capable of doing (or that you're willing to train them to do) and pay them enough to make it worth their while.

Oh, what's that?  You don't have any work that needs doing?  Or you couldn't afford to pay them reasonable compensation for the work that does need doing?

Exactly.

Monday, July 15, 2013

People who don't have preferences

Quite often, if someone mentions that they don't like a certain food, someone else will reply with something like "Oh, you just haven't tried really good [food].  You have to get it fresh, in season, organic and locally grown, and eat it raw, not cooked.  Or if you have to cook it, just steam it lightly, make sure you don't overcook it."  They give all this advice that is ultimately aimed at getting the most flavourful [food] possible.

But when I don't like a food, it's because of the flavour.  I don't like olives because they taste like olives.  I don't like cantaloupe because it's so cantaloupey. Making it more flavourful would just make things worse. 

Are there really people who want some flavour, any flavour, no matter what it is, and would only dislike a food because it's lower in flavour?

You see something similar in nutrition advice from time to time.  They recommend that you reduce your salt use by shaking spices on your food instead of salt, or you put lemon juice on your salad instead of salad dressing.  As though you're after a flavour, any flavour, rather than a specific flavour.  (But, somehow, the flavour of actual food won't do.)

I also see this sometimes when I'm complaining about my annual apple drought.  I'm all "I can't find Cortland apples!" and people respond with "You should get some blueberries, they're in season now!"  My complaint is about the absence of a  specific variety of a specific fruit.  Why would someone think this need can be addressed with a fruit, any fruit?  And if it could, there are plenty of kinds of fruit commercially available, including other kinds of apples right where my beloved Cortlands should be. Don't you think I'd have already bought some other fruit and stopped complaining if some other fruit would solve the problem?

Actually, this also reminds me of the Google Reader shutdown.  One of the arguments in favour of the shutdown was that people allegedly don't need RSS in this age of social media.  My social media certainly does provide me with things my friends think are worth sharing (and is useful in this respect because it isn't all stuff I would have stumbled upon myself), but I still want to read the things I want to read.  Having a steady stream of things to read is insufficient; I also want to read specific  things.

Are there really people like this, who don't have specific preferences and think anything will do interchangeably? Or do people who like to give others advice on the internet just think there are?

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Things They Should Invent: emergency information robocalls for power outages

My power didn't go out in the storm earlier this week, but, being a bit of a Twitter stormwatcher, I did occasionally look at Toronto Hydro's Twitter feed to watch the show.  However, as many people have noted, using the internet for primary method of communication during a power outage is problematic.  People's personal internet access is going to be out, so only those whose cellphones have internet (and haven't run out of battery yet) and those who aren't currently in the power outage area can access the information. This means that the information is going to be less available to more vulnerable people (elderly, poorer, etc.) who are also likely to be less resilient to difficulties of a power outage.

Here's a simple solution: if there's a power outage, Hydro automatically robocalls affected customers telling them the status, the size of the area affected, and the ETA for power restoration.  When the status has changed significantly (ETA has changed, or area affected is significantly smaller), they send out another robocall.

People could opt in or out of emergency robocalls, so those who do have smartphones without landlines wouldn't have to use up valuable battery life fielding phone calls that give them no new information.

Perhaps they could also have mass text messaging (for people who don't have data plans - or if data isn't working due to the outage) since that's less of a drain on the battery than a ringing phone.

In any case, methods of immediate and automatic information distribution that aren't dependent upon electricity do exist.  They should make use of these during power outages.

Monday, July 08, 2013

Things They Should Invent: car alarm that goes off if a child is left in a car seat

Recently in the news, there have been a number of cases of babies and toddlers dying after being forgotten in a car on a hot day.  This makes me think they should invent something to alert parents if they walk away from the car with the kid still in the baby seat.

Some of the media coverage (can't seem to google up the exact article) mentioned that there are some alerts that work with smartphones, but those depend on the parent having a smartphone and having the app installed and the smartphone being on and charged.  If your battery's dead, or you've turned off your phone for a meeting, or it's just at the bottom of your purse and you're in a noisy environment, you might fail to notice the alert.

I propose something simpler and more immediate:  if the car is turned off, there is weight in the carseat, there is no weight in the driver's seat, and all the doors are closed, the annoying horn-honking car alarm goes off.  (Proposed added bonus feature: rather than the usual horn honky car alarm sound it produces the sound of a baby crying.)

The advantage of this model is it draws attention to the car, even if it for some reason it fails to attract the parent's attention.  I know people generally disregard and curse out the source of car alarms, but someone walking past might take a peek in, and if the car is parked somewhere staffed, the staff might notice.  This increases the chances that someone will notice the baby's presence and intervene.

Ideas for how this could be engineered: cars could have a built in attacher thingy for baby seats (baby seats have to be physically attached to the car by more than just a seatbelt. The ones I've seen are attached by a bolt-like thing behind the back seat.)  The attacher thing recognizes when a car seat is attached (the same way the seatbelt detector detects when the seatbelt is fastened) and then there could be a weight detector in the seat of the car (maybe there could be a button to press to "zero" it to an empty baby seat).  The car would therefore know when there's a baby seat present and when the baby seat is occupied.

The other advantage of this model is it wouldn't require any proactiveness or diligence on the part of the parents.  If it doesn't occur to the parents to take precautions against accidentally leaving the baby in the car, the car will do so anyway, much like how some cars already warn you if your seatbelt isn't done up or if you've left the lights on.

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

"Required field must not be blank"

Lately, when I type up a blog entry, I've been getting an error message "Required field must not be blank".  Through trial and error, I've determined that the required field is the title field.  In other words, Blogger has made post titles mandatory.

Problem: Blogger also will not permit us to save posts unless we have typed something in the title field.  Which is problematic, because I like to write my titles last, after the whole post is composed. Yesterday I started writing a good post that required some precise choice of language and some careful composition.  I didn't finish it last night (not unusual for more mindful posts) so I clicked Save. I got a "This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave - data you have entered may not be saved" error, but I knew I'd just clicked save so I told it to go ahead and navigate away.  And then, this morning, my careful work was all gone!

Dear Blogger:  If you're going to require titles to post (which strikes me as completely unnecessary, BTW), there's no need to require a title to save a draft.  The draft is, by definition, not finished.  It's okay if it doesn't have all the required elements.  In fact, it will save you a small amount of storage space if you don't force people to fill out a field they don't need to fill out just yet.

Edited to add: I've just discovered that the post body field is not a required field, just the post title.  That's a wee bit ridiculous...

Monday, July 01, 2013

The choreography of conversation when not everyone understands the language

From David Eddie
Every spring my mother-in-law arrives from Europe. While she stays in her own home we see her often, usually for meals and then a four-day visit to the cottage with us. Although she speaks English very well, she seems to feel we should all be learning her language and accommodating her, to the point that she will often speak her language at these meals. So instead of saying “pass the butter” which is hardly a complicated matter in English, she will revert to her own language and then she hooks in my husband and they begin talking and no one has a clue what they are saying. I know it’s a power grab so she can control the conversation and cut me out but my husband is afraid to stand up to her because she has quite a temper, and because he says that at 78 you get to do what you want to. This causes untold friction in my family and, judging from the number of mixed marriages in Canada, for many other families, I am sure. Is it rude to speak a foreign language in front of people who don’t understand?
My credentials: I was born into a bicultural family, where some family members don't speak the local language very well, and still others choose to talk among themselves in the heritage language despite being functionally bilingual. I am fluent in the local language, but for most of my life I understood nary a word of the heritage language.  (I understood it as a toddler as well as a toddler understands anything, then lost it when I began school and started learning it in adulthood, but I'm still nowhere near fluent and can  follow along only sporadically.)  So I grew up immersed in this situation, but nearly always as a unilingual party who didn't understand half of what was being said.

In this capacity, I propose that the best approach is for the husband to translate the conversation for his wife.  He doesn't have to do every single word, he can just say "Mum's asking about our vacation, so I'm telling her the story about the elephant and the guy with the hat." If his mother's receptive English really is fluent, perhaps he can even respond to her in English so his wife can follow along, and his wife can participate in the conversation too. Then when his mother responds in the heritage language, he can translate her statements.

While all this is happening, the wife should feel free to participate in the conversation in English even if she doesn't understand every word that's being said.  For example, after the husband says "I'm telling her the story about the elephant and the guy with the hat," the wife could chime in with "And make sure you tell her what the weather was like that day!" - regardless of whether he's already told her that part. 

As an added bonus, if the mother can in fact express herself in English as easily as LW thinks she can, she will naturally begin using more English in this context.  It might be to speed things up, but it quite often even happens through normal code-switching patterns.

This will achieve the same result but make the mother feel like it was her idea, all without having to have an awkward conversation trying to convince her not to converse with her child in the language in which she naturally converses with her child.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Journalism wanted: how on earth do fish die in a flood??

Mentioned in passing in an article about the exciting adventure of Calgary zookeepers trying to rescue giraffes from a flood with hippos the loose:
On Tuesday, several of 140 dead tilapia that zoo staff couldn’t save were still scattered on the muddy, wet floor of the giraffe and hippo building. Six piranhas and at least two of the zoo’s 12 peacocks also died in the flooding.
Tilapia and piranhas are fish!  How on earth do fish die in a flood???

It says they're scattered on the floor, which suggests that the water receded and left them behind.  Is that normal?  Does that mean that fish in the ocean have to follow the water when the tides move?  Why didn't the force of the water pull them along?

In any case, you can't just mention in passing that fish died in a flood and not explain.  It's a great big question mark, even if it's not nearly as exciting as rescuing giraffes from hippo-infested waters.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

"What do you think you can do about it?"

From Carolyn Hax:

Dear Carolyn:
My second-grade son was upset yesterday because his best friend at school told him to toughen up (my son was crying over something) and also told him he was not one of his best friends anymore. What do I say to my son?
 Carolyn's answer starts with:

Next time — since they’re both probably over this already — it’s hard to go wrong with a 1-2 plan of acknowledging his feelings — “I can see you’re really upset, I’m sorry,” plus hug — and directing him to come to his own way of dealing with it: “What do you think you can do about it?” 

I've heard this parenting advice before - that you should ask kids "What do you think you can do about it?" - and it seems unhelpful to say the least.  My own mother has tried it on me (one of those times when you can tell your parent totally read something in an article), and I just found it infuriating.  If I had any remotely productive ideas what to do about it that I hadn't tried already, I'd be trying them!

I think this is even worse to say to a child, because when parents ask children leading questions like that, it quite often implies that the parent thinks the child is supposed to know what to do.  I'm old enough to be his mother, and I don't even have any idea what he should do.  Sitting here in adulthood, we have the luxury of saying "Okay, you're welcome to leave then," but that doesn't work when you're a kid and it's more difficult to function in the classroom and the playground when you don't have someone present whom you can claim as your best friend.  Actual friendship aside, the social logistics of school require having people you can call friends. (This is something I keep meaning to blog about but haven't gotten around to yet.)

I've seen Carolyn Hax give this advice to parents before, and I think it's even worse coming from an advice columnist.  The kid doesn't know what to do, so he goes to his parent.  The parent doesn't know what to do, so they write to an advice columnist.  And the advice columnist tells the parent to ask the kid?  How is that useful?

At this point, people usually ask me "Well, what advice do you expect her to give?  Do you have any better ideas?"  First of all, advice columnists (for whom this is their whole job) should be able to give better, more effective advice that gets better results than anything I could ever think of.  The fact that I don't know the solution doesn't mean an advice columnist wouldn't be able to come up with one, just like the fact that I can't make my hair stay curled doesn't mean that a hairdresser wouldn't be able to.

But, more importantly, advice columnists get a lot of letters.  If the columnist can't come up with a solution to one of the problems, they should run another letter where they can come up with a solution to the LW's problem rather than taking up valuable column inches being one of these people and telling the person who asked for help in the first place to think of the answer themselves.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Google's "unnatural link" detector is broken

I recently had a comment from a webmaster of a site I had linked to (who appears to check out as a real person) asking me to remove the link because they'd been hit by an "unnatural link penalty" from Google due to their being linked from my blog.

I did some googling around, and discovered that the "unnatural link penalty" is intended to reduce the page rank of websites that have spam posts linking to them, to render that kind of spamming useless.

The problem is, my link wasn't spam.  My link was a natural link in the truest sense of the word.

I'm not going to link to the post in question because apparently it causes trouble for this person's business, but it was one of my posts from during the financial crisis, where I was trying to figure out money-related stuff.  One aspect of what I was talking my way through would vary greatly from person to person, so I provided a link to an online financial calculator so everyone could calculate their own number for themselves.

This was absolutely natural.  I'm just a regular person who writes about what's on my mind. I was writing out my train of thought, partway through my train of thought I realized that everyone would have a different number and it was complex to calculate, so I googled up an existing online calculator and provided a link.  This is the very purpose of hyperlinks dating back to the earliest days of hypertext.  I had no interest in the particular business I linked to, they were just the first googleable result providing that particular kind of calculator.

The thing is, this is the very basis of Google's PageRank system - that people will link to thinks that are useful to them.  Google Webmaster Tools support says:
The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.
The site I had linked to had created relevant content that was useful to me and valuable to my readers, so I linked to it.  And now they're apparently being penalized for it.  Why?  Because I'm a blog?  Because there are people who use blogs for spam?  I don't even know.

From a purely algorithmic point of view, Google should be able to tell that I'm a human being, not a spambot.  My blog has been around a lot longer than most spam blogs have.  I don't update on any particular schedule.  My posts vary greatly in length and nature.  Quite a few of my posts have no links in them whatsoever.  I change my template every so often, and there are posts with the word "template" in them around the time of these template changes.  There's a twitter feed in my right-hand column, and it's updated on no particular schedule with the majority of tweets not containing any links.

On top of all that, Google owns Blogger.   I'm sure they have access to information that will show them that I delete spam posts, I have drafts of posts in my drafts folder, and I hardly ever make scheduled posts.  They could probably also see that I use the account I blog with here to comment on other blogs.  That's not the behaviour of a spambot!

I know there has been a lot of blogger spam lately, but you have a system where a website creates useful content, a blogger thinks "That's just what I need!" and links to it, and then the website gets punished for this, your system is broken.  Google needs to fix this!

Friday, June 21, 2013

Things They Should Invent: tell the neighbourhood what movie they were filming after they finish filming there

I'm pretty sure they're shooting a movie in my neighbourhood.  I've seen movie-ish pylons and trucks and trailers, and some lighting and camera equipment standing around with people milling about.  I think they might even have redecorated the smelly alley.  (Although there were also about half a dozen cop cars there, one of which said "Forensics", so it's possible it was in fact a crime scene.)

The internet won't tell me what they're filming, and there's no indication on site.  Which makes sense - if you're filming something with big stars in it, you want to keep it quiet so people don't flock to your location and swarm around seeking autographs.

But it would be nice to let us know after the fact.  And it could even be used to promote the movie!  What if they distributed a little note to residences and businesses in the area saying something along the lines of:
Dear Neighbours,

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we used your neighbourhood to film Awesome Movie, starring Big-Name Actor and New Up-And-Comer. Watch for us in theatres in summer 2014, when you'll be able to see your neighbourhood in the zombie apocalypse scene and the big dance number!
It would assuage curiosity, create goodwill, and probably lead a certain percentage of people who receive the note to go see the movie even if they wouldn't have otherwise. 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Building a Better Senate redux

I previously blogged some ideas for improving the Senate, building on the advantages of the existing model by making it less partisan.

While reading this article (although not directly related to its content), I came up with a simpler way to do the same thing.

First, we make senators non-partisan.  They can't be members of a party, they don't identify themselves as "Conservative senators" or "Liberal senators", there are no Senate party caucuses.  They're just senators.

Then comes the important part: government of the day cannot appoint any senators who are or have ever been members of its political party (or any of that party's predecessors).  It can appoint people who are or have been members of other political parties, it can appoint people who have never been a member of any political party, but it can't appoint from its own party.

Possible corollary, depending on what percentage of the people who are good senate candidates have ever been members of political parties: each government must appoint a minimum number of senators who are or have been been a member of another political party.  I can see pros and cons of this.

But, either way, it would be the political equivalent of having one sibling cut the cake and another choose the slice.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Zap2it vs. TV Guide online TV listings


For as long as I can remember, I've been using zap2it.com as my primary TV guide.  They could be customized to my TV provider so they'll tell me what's on the channels I actually get and they tell me the actual channel number (unlike the TV listings in the newspaper, where they say it's on channel 5 in the listings and then I have to look it up in the chart to see that channel 5 is really channel 6 on my TV).

However, Zap2it's advanced search function recently stopped working, which makes it significantly less useful to me.  For example, as you may have noticed, I'm an Eddie Izzard fan, so I like to know when Eddie's going to be on TV.  So I'd use Zap2it's advanced search function to search for "Izzard" under "Cast & Crew", and I'd get a list of every program Eddie's in for the next two weeks.  In the absence of this function, I'd have to either look up every single entry on Eddie's IMDB page separately (which is a wee bit inconvenient) or miss opportunities to see Eddie on TV (which cramps my style).

Fortunately, it turns out TVGuide.com's listings aren't powered by Zap2it (as many TV listings are), and they have celebrity-specific listings (like this) that fulfill the function for which I'd previously been using Zap2it's advanced search (and with a much nicer interface too - TV Guide lists every appearance in chronological order, whereas Zap2it would only list the titles of the shows the performer appears in, and I'd have to click on each one to see when it's on.)  However, I've noticed a variety of pros and cons of each system:

- TV Guide lets you add movies, or even celebrities (which basically means anyone with an IMDB entry - Jane Austen is in there), to your watchlist, whereas Zap2it only lets you add TV shows.  This means that, on Zap2it, if I want to watch The King's Speech, I need to search for it every couple of weeks to see when it's on, while on TV Guide I can just add it to my list and they'll let me know.

- TV Guide's celebrity pages also show you episodes of TV shows that have that celebrity in it, whereas Zap2it's show you every episode of any TV show that has that celebrity in it.  For example, Wil Wheaton has been in a few episodes of Big Bang Theory.  If I look him up on TV Guide, it will show only the episodes of Big Bang Theory in which he appears.  However, if I look him up on Zap2it, it will show Big Bang Theory as a whole, even if the episodes he appears in aren't airing any time soon.

- Unfortunately, TV Guide's watchlist is set up so that it only shows you the next instance of each list item, which is problematic when the item added is a celebrity, who may appear in multiple movies or TV shows. So if Eddie's in one show tomorrow morning and another tomorrow afternoon, the watchlist will only show me the one he's in tomorrow morning (unless I click through to his individual page).  But it will still show me the next airing of King's Speech even if it's a week from now.  In comparison, Zap2it's "My Calendar" function is set up like a calendar, and tells me which things are on each day. (Unfortunately, it's only limited to TV shows, not movies or celebrities or other search results.)

- TV Guide allows you to add as many channels as you want to your "favourites", so you can have a grid that consists of all the channels you get.  Zap2it limits you to 100 (which is frustrating when you get more than 100 channels but nowhere near all the channels).  Note to Zap2it: it's not about wanting to watch my "favourite" channels, it's about what's on the channels I get in my cable package. If I just wanted to watch my favourite channel, I'd turn the TV on to that channel.

- However, TV Guide's watchlist shows you what's on all the English-language channels offered by your cable provider, even if you've meticulously set up your favourite channels list.

- The problem is the "English-language" part - TV Guide doesn't show non-English channels (even if they're part of a basic cable package) in those celebrity-specific page.  If Eddie is on a French channel, I'll never know unless I try to deliberately search for the French title of everything he's ever been in.  Note to TV Guide: some people who speak English do speak non-English languages too!

- Another advantage of TV Guide's watchlist is there's a checkbox that says "New Airings Only", so you can only see episodes that aren't reruns.  This is useful if you're interested in  new episodes of the Simpsons, for example, but don't want to be informed of every single rerun.

- A disadvantage of TV Guide in general is it doesn't show the end times of programs in search results - you have to look them up in the grid.  This is particularly annoying for movies.  It will tell you that the runtime of a particular movie is 120 minutes and it will tell you that the movie is on a 9:00, but it won't tell you whether it's on from 9:00-11:00 or 9:00-12:00.  As we all know, such things do vary because of editing for television and commercial breaks.

- I think both systems could use a more robust category function.  Zap2it used to have a particularly good one, where one of the categories was Fitness.  So I used this to find exercise programs on TV (my preferred method of exercising).  But they later eliminated the category.  (When I switched to Rogers I started using my on-screen guide for this, but lately it's less useful because they're putting entirely too many things in the Fitness category, like reality shows about people giving birth and programs about alternative medicine, so I have to click on every unfamiliar title to see if it is in fact a fitness show.)

Currently I'm using Zap2it's calendar and basic search results primarily but TV Guide's more advanced search results and celebrity pages.  I'd probably switch back to using Zap2it exclusively if they reinstated the advanced search function and let us add movies, celebrities, and search results (i.e. anything with Star Trek in the title rather than having to add each Star Trek separately) to the calendar.  I'd probably switch to TV Guide exclusively if the watchlist was truly chronological, if they included non-English channels in search results, and if they included program end times in search results.

I'm glad that the two systems complement each other and mostly fill in each other's gaps, but it would be awesome if one of the sites (or both, or a third, completely new site) could add the features it's missing so it meets all the needs I've listed here.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Machine translation FAIL


One of the things I like to test translation software with is formal French complimentary closings.  French uses long, gorgeous, wordy passages where we'd just say "sincerely" in English, so it's useful to determine whether the software recognizes the function of the text.  I was recently demonstrating this, and got the following result (click to embiggen):




For those of you who don't read French, the phrase input here is a French complimentary closing, appropriate to a formal business letter. With the exception of one serious error, the English is a reasonable literal translation.

There are two problems here, one macro and one micro.

The macro problem is that the French is a complimentary closing, and the English is not.  English complimentary closings are things like "Sincerely," or "Yours truly," and that's how this sentence should be translated.  The actual words don't matter; the message is "This is to indicate that I am ending the letter in the prescribed letter, and the next thing you see will be my signature."

And the micro problem is that, on a word-for-word level, it translated the French "Madame" (i.e. Ms. or Ma'am) with the English "Sir", thereby addressing the recipient as the wrong gender.  Not only is this clearly unacceptable, it's something even the most simplistic machine translation should be able to handle. Even if an individual text in their corpus got misaligned, they should have some mechanism to recognize that "Sir" is not the most common translation of "Madame". Even a calque of the French ("Madam") would be a better translation than "Sir", which is a sure sign of a particularly bad translation. I'm quite surprised to see this happening in 2013.