Pronoun haiku

A recent scientific study shows how the use of pronouns saves processing cycles in the brain.

And of course, if we didn't have pronouns no one could have written this excellent haiku:

I am he as you
are he as you are me and
we are all toge'er

Digression: Boogie woogie blog

Here's a great blog on record collecting by Ted Barron, with lots of information on my favorites in the blues and folks genres. MP3s for many of the songs that are covered. This is just great. I found an old post about all of the covers of the blues standard "Goin' Down Slow," just as an example (I'm partial to the version by Howlin' Wolf). I could spend too much time on this site if I let myself.

Festival for the Eno

I celebrated 4th of July by taking the family to the fabulous Festival for the Eno in Durham yesterday. The music is always great, the crafts booths are interesting, the whole experience is wonderful. If you've never been, then go.

Digression: The Grateful Dead in Greensboro

I went to see one of my old favorites Sunday, the Grateful Dead (or just "the Dead"). The Coliseum was the first stop on their new tour. Good show. They still really rock after all this time. Warren Haynes filled in on lead for the late great Jerry Garcia. Sorry, no video of the concert unless someone has posted some that I don't know about. But here's a recent Touch of Grey instead.

Real money in Second Life

As things go bad in our first lives, apparently some performers are making money in Second Life. I've spent a lot of time listening to live music. I've spent only a little time in SL, just doing projects for my MBA program, and I must say I don't see the attraction of listening to music in SL. Maybe I'm just Old School, but performances need to be seen live to get the real experience. But, if people can make some extra cash by working as virtual performers, I say good for them.

Digression: Shakori Hill Grassroots Festival

Here's an unsolicited plug for my favorite music festival of all time, the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival. When I first moved to the area in 2006 I went to the festival, and it was just like meeting old friends. Different obligations kept me from going again in 2007 and 2008, but I look forward to going this year. I mean, Ralph Stanley is the headliner. How can you beat that?

The audio environment

I've always been an audio guy, if you can't tell from my blog posts. Speech recognition systems and the music digressions, that's most of what I talk about. Fact is, I was an audio recording engineer at several radio stations before I started the speech/psychology thing.

In the 1970s we kept our libraries of sound effects on old scratchy vinyl LPs to use for recording commercials and promos and such. I hadn't thought about that for years until I found this absolutely wonderful website for free sound effects and environmental sounds. I happened to have a need for some background music for a project I'm working on, so this was a nice find.

Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects Download the music and sound effects you need for your multimedia project today at Partners In Rhyme.

Happy Christmas 2008

Happy Christmas (War is Over) from 1971 is one of my favorite videos of all time. It's appropriate for the season.

Digression: the Wolf is Howlin'

We VUI designers talk a lot about voice quality and distinctiveness and persona, but nothing you ever hear from any voice talent or stage or screen actor compares to the personae of the old time blues musicians. Here's the great, absolutely unique Howlin' Wolf completely throwing himself into a performance of "How many more years."

Digression: the passing of a Giant

Bo Diddley died at his home in Archer, Florida yesterday. I was a fan for years. I used to live in Gainesville, just a few miles from Archer. Bo frequently played a lot of concerts in the area, many of them for free, so I was fortunate to see him several times. Bo was the first person people called when they wanted to put on a charity fund raiser, and he usually came through. He did a lot of good for a lot of people, and he will be missed.

I was on a flight from Gainesville to Indianapolis in 1993 when he sat down in the seat in front of me. He told his seat mate a story. He was in the airport bathroom when a young guy approached him. "Hey, I know you! You're BB KING!" He just laughed about it. "Man, I don't look anything like BB King."

Here's a great video of him in concert. Watch it, and you'll be a fan.

Digression: got my mojo workin'

Here's a video of the great blues master Muddy Waters. Proof that if you have a great team that works well together you can nail a tough project cold and make it seem effortless.

Nothing here about innovation or VUI. This is just one of my favorite musicians, and it's my blog.

Is your IVR persona Devo?

Distinctiveness and originality count for much when establishing a brand. Brand managers often push designers to create unique, memorable products, which designers are usually happy to do. A speech IVRs persona, the image created in the mind of the customer by the system's voice, vocabulary, and interaction style, is a tempting target for marketers who want to create a differentiated experience for callers.

When distinctivess and originality are pushed far enough, as in this fine video, the audience may be left puzzled, confused, even outraged. I call highly idiosyncratic, over-the-top IVR personas Devo IVRs, in honor of the band's memorably distinctive songs and videos.

Nearly all IVRs are intended to help callers accomplish a work goal. Highly idiosyncratic personas rarely help callers achieve goals, and may even hurt if the presentation is distracting enough. Sometimes this is a hard message for branding experts and marketers to hear.

Digression: Christmas Truce of 1914

The song Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen gets a lot of play in the U.S. during the Christmas season. It's a perfect little late-1960's pop song with great hooks and a singable chorus and a nice message. More than just a hit novelty song for a short-lived band, however, it's based on an incident that occurred during World War I.

In what became known as The Christmas Truce of 1914, German and British soldiers fighting in France defied their commanding officers and celebrated Christmas with each other in no-man's-land between the barbed wire and trenches. As in the song, the Germans initiated the truce. The soldiers exchanged presents and sang carols. They played football (soccer) with each other. The truce lasted only a day in some places, in others it lasted into the new year. After the truce ended the massacre began again.

The truce is one of many stories that demonstrate that the people in the trenches often have a good deal more sense than their supposed superiors. A lesson for people who would aspire to be leaders.

Digression: Homage to blues musicians from another era

In the early 1960s in the US there was a good deal of interest in authentic American folk music, the so-called "folk boom." Some of the people who were in that scene developed an appreciation for old-time blues recordings made in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Very little was known about these recording artists and all that remained, apparently, were a few hard-to-find 78 rpm records and some old publicity photos. It occurred to a few blues enthusiasts that perhaps some of the musicians who had made the records might still be alive, so they set about trying to find them.

In fact, many blues musicians from that time and place (primarily Mississippi and Texas) were already gone. The Depression had wiped out the small recording companies that had recorded the artists, tastes in music had changed, and nearly all of the old time blues artists had died or otherwise faded into obscurity. A few, however, remained, and there are several dramatic stories of how some of the musicians were rediscovered.

For blues fans it was like travelling to London to find a group of theater actors from the Elizabethan era still performing plays by Shakespeare. The musicians were of a completely different place and time, playing in a unique, emotional style that had been lost for decades. A few, like Skip James, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and Bukka White, enjoyed a few short years of popularity in the mid 1960s as they played the college music and folk festival circuit and re-recorded some of their earlier songs.

Here is Skip James singing "Crow Jane" and "Devil got my Woman." James had lost a little bit of his facility with the guitar and vocal power when these movies were taken, but we're fortunate to have anything at all. It's hard to find anything more emotionally powerful than Son House singing "Death Letter." It's possible to find some video of John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, and Lightnin' Hopkins as well. Give a listen.