Monday, November 16, 2015

Analyze Emotions in Photo Faces... and Art!

Microsoft has a photo recognition "tool" that finds faces in a picture and analyzes them for very broad emotions (happy, sad, neutral, etc).

You just upload a photo to the site and it will put a square around each face it finds and you hover them to see what emotions their tool thinks are being displayed. They also have a tool to tell you if a picture is "adult" or not, but this post is about the emotion recognition.

https://www.projectoxford.ai/demo/Emotion#detection








The weird thing about this is - it works with art! I had it analyze a number of my pictures and it found faces and analyzed the emotions the characters were displaying.



It seems like this ... I don't know if I'd say it's significant, because It obviously finds "earmerks" common to all faces, but still - this means ... artists can relay fictional emotions for fictional characters? Weird, anyway.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

My View: Bernie Sanders, Hillary, etc.

Even if I *could* speak for "all" of my party, I couldn't do it for Democrats because I'm an Independent, which is poised to become THE largest "party" in the US, bigger then GOP and Dems combined.

Hillary comes off as extremely hawkish, which I don't agree with. She's a corporatist and/or Third Wayer, who is funded almost completely by Wall Street and Corporations. She has NEVER held these further-left views that she has recently espoused, and clearly has been driven that way by Sanders and even the other Dem candidates, no doubt much to the dismay of the DNC chair Debbie Washerman Schultz.

Schultz, said, in an indulgent, amused tone as one would used with a child, when asked about Sanders or socialism of something: "Oh, pff, no. That's... the Democratic party is left-wing of course, but we're still American. We certainl aren't socialist" (paraphasing). And then when asked what the difference was BETWEEN Democrats and socialists, couldn't answer. (Maybe the first part of this paragraph was here reply, can't recall offhand).

I don't pretend to understand everything in life or politics or money or social issues or whatever, and anyone that says they do is either lying or selling something, probably both. Sanders has stated his stance against (unnecessary) war, he's much more focused on income inequality, free tuition for 4 year colleges, breaking up monopoly monolithic corporations, actually setting tax rates right for PEOPLE, righting the economical spending, etc. A litany of things. Actual REAL progressive things.


Not "liberal", past that - PROGRESSIVE. I don't care if he calls it socialism or ham-sandwichism. I'm not intimidated by words, and I judge things by what I can see or read or currently understand about them. I do lament the fact that "progressive" is a somewhat reviled term because it has been co-opted by leftist extremists the way some see other terms as also co-opted by leftist extremists, to authoritarian, speech stifling extents.

There is criticism of Bernie Sanders because he's "not a Democrat". That's still this same nonsense at work. If you compare him to ACTUAL *real* Democrats, from just a bit over a decade or so back, or especially multiple decades, he is the ONLY Democrat in the Democratic party. Hillary is CERTAINLY not one, and the media doesn't give enough exposure to the others to even tell.

I don't claim to know the intricate details of exactly how Bernie is going to do X or Y, but you can say that about ANYONE. Whoever someone is voting for, that person very rarely will be able to comprehend what is involved in the claims they make, about how they're going to make certain things come about - and that is still on the general surface level. Unless you yourself came UP inside political circles, you really have no idea how the guts are cut, even if you understand the topic.

Bernie Sanders isn't perfect. He's not "powerful", and yes he's been in politics for 30 some years. But in those years, you can look at his actions and his record, in politics and in society, and see how he've voted and what bills he's sponsored or voted for or against, and what sides he's been on during social issues. Sanders is one of the few, possibly the ONLY person that even comes CLOSE to being authentic and I believe he will do everything he can to make exactly the changes and put the plans into place that he says he will. I don't give that benefit of the doubt to ANY other politician in any party. Hillary, if elected, will immediately or as quickly as possible, return to her Neo-Republican roots and ignore, undo or twist any promises or claims she made that are "too left leaning" for the banks or corporations to be happy with.

*Elizabeth Warren and Larry Lessg, both no longer in the picture, are also included with Sanders

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Fear of Clowns (My Initial Personal Story)


I wrote this on a forum in response to a lady that is concerned her 2 year old daughter cries nightly and is scared of a woman she "keeps seeing". I am not sure I believe a child that young can communicate in any meaningul way, at least I didn't even know what time or dates were until I was 7 and it was pointed out in class via a school room calendar that the year was "1980" - which was like handing someone a can of beans and saying "Tomorrow's red is puppy".

I remember a very vivid (well, it used to be, I'm 42 now) dream about a clown - I've remembered it for a long time so it MUST have been when I was very young, though I realize with remembered dreams, it's unreliable to factually state much about them, but I'd say I was probably 3-5 maybe?


This is possibly my earlier memory and was a typical clown but looking very scary and behaving, leaning and leering ominously - this was in like 1977 or so, I don't think I had any any cognizant knowledge or understanding of things like what a clown was. I've had some form of fear of clowns ever since this, and this *might* have been caused by something I happened to see on TV or a book (there was a killer clowns scare at some point, and John Wayne Gacy was around), but it could have just been dream imagery of something I had seen some earlier time (maybe Bozo on TV) that became a nightmare.

Monday, November 09, 2015

Psuedo-Review: The Resurrected (1991 Lovecraftian Horror)

So... this post is for anyone that is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. I just watched 1991's "The Resurrected", and as far as Hollywood Lovecraft movies go, in my opinion, it's probably THE most Lovecrafty and I highly recommend it - it is a modern (for 1991) tale of a private detective investigating Charles Dexter Ward.

It stars Chris Sarandon, the head vampire from the original Fright Night, and even better - John Terry, who played Hawk the Slayer, one of my favorite moves EVER! This is a MUST see for anyone that happened to miss it til now (like me)!

Rating: 8.5/10



Sunday, November 08, 2015

Movie Review: Don't Blink (2014 Horror/Mystery)

Horror Movie Review for November 2015



Title: Don't Blink

Genre: Horror/Thriller/Mystery

Cateogy/Type: Unseen Force?

Cast: Brian Austin Green, Mena Suvari, Jack Ward, Joan Kelly, Robert Picardo (closing cameo only)

Produced: EchoWolf 2014

Other:






I enjoy "different" horror movies. I'm not interested in torture porn and gore and people getting chopped up. I want something INTERESTING, whether it's Lovecraft or weird time travel or alternate dimension or thought-created nightmare stalkers - there has got to be a "WHOAH!" for me to enjoy horror movies.

This movie was one of those, with the caveat that, though I won't spoil the ending, if you loathe movies that leave some lingering but relevant questions, you may not cotton to this film.

But like me, if you can seperate this "style" of moviemaking, which I've seen some just call "lazy", the actual progress of the people and actions in the film were compelling and it is definitely a mystery type horror movie, though not a room-to-room-magnifying-glass type.

If you saw and liked Coherence and I see people are comparing this to Phantoms (I haven't seen that yet, somehow), or if you like the "unknown/invisible", creeping ominous threat movies like Mr. Jones or Resolution, I think you may enjoy this film.

I'm not saying it's perfect - there's a good amount of irritation at a few of the way things go down or people behave, that I felt kept it from being more fluid, and while the acting is by and large at least decent and believable, there are some boneheaded decisions, but not like most horror movies, or at least not as frequent, as it really doesn't get a chance to build to that level before the horror is in play.

I did like the dialogue for one of the characters, who was a modern sci-fi and horror movie type that was constantly referring to what was going on as something from Stephen King or aliens or zombies or "the spirit of an ancient Indian burial ground", which made me laugh - he seemed the most "real", well, until later, but that's not germane to the point.
Anyway, a lot of people on forums and other sites are giving this a really low rating, and while, for the overall and idea of a complete story, I can kinda see why... I still think what there IS there is good and different and not anything close to "usual horror movie stuff".

I would have given it an 8/10, but I had to stop at 7 because of the unsatisfying or at least not well-enough intimated ending, because I agree with some people that say the "figure out what YOU think it means" is one thing, an artist can't show you a pristine, untouched canvas and say "just IMAGINE the awesome picture YOU want there!".

Rating: 7/10 on IMDB (I posted this review there too)

Friday, November 06, 2015

A Short US Election Related Macro

I haven't been "slacking" off (been doing stuff), but I haven't been doing much online, no videos or anything. I have GOT to get back to doing stuff! Some of my videos on Yotube are even getting a little notice, get a new view on my last one every day or two! I gotta get back to making fun videos! Or ones on Ouija boards. Or SOMETHING!