IBM Watson Personality Insights

Back in 2010, I did a post on I Write Like which reported the author most similar to a writing sample. I gave it several samples for which it gave me several different authors. The trend I noticed was the topic of the sample seemed to predict the result.

IBM Watson Personality Insights :

uses linguistic analytics to extract a spectrum of cognitive and social characteristics from the text data that a person generates through blogs, tweets, forum posts, and more.

It matches keywords in the writing to the Big 5 personality test and gives a summary based on it. So, it should be easy to skew too. I was able to find pieces of text from my blog that skewed the scores for all five measures. So, just like the other one, which samples I give it determines my “personality.” Something like FiveLabs’ Facebook Analyzer where it is looking at all or at least a huge sample of my writing probably would work better.

Trial One: Review: The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States :

You are shrewd, somewhat inconsiderate and can be perceived as indirect.

You are unstructured: you do not make a lot of time for organization in your daily life. You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. And you are self-focused: you are more concerned with taking care of yourself than taking time for others.

Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.

You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person.

Big 5: Openness 91% ; Conscientiousness 12% ; Extraversion 23% ; Agreeableness 11% ; Emotional range 59%

Trial Two: Organizational Breakdown

You are inner-directed, skeptical and can be perceived as insensitive.

You are unstructured: you do not make a lot of time for organization in your daily life. You are carefree: you do what you want, disregarding rules and obligations. And you are calm under pressure: you handle unexpected events calmly and effectively.

Your choices are driven by a desire for connectedness.

You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

Big 5 : Openness 85% ; Conscientiousness 43% ; Extraversion 21% ; Agreeableness 21% ; Emotional range 26%

There was a 19% increase to Conscientiousness, 10 increase in Agreeableness and 33% decrease in Emotional range.

Trial Three: TED Talk: Jennings v Watson which I liked because it is ABOUT Watson, so it is kind of pandering.

You are skeptical, shrewd and analytical.

You are self-conscious: you are sensitive about what others might be thinking about you. You are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself. And you are energetic: you enjoy a fast-paced, busy schedule with many activities.

Your choices are driven by a desire for organization.

You consider both achieving success and taking pleasure in life to guide a large part of what you do. You seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person. And you are highly motivated to enjoy life to its fullest.

Big 5 : Openness 84% ; Conscientiousness 81% ; Extraversion 1% ; Agreeableness 12% ; Emotional range 62%

There was a 69% increase to Conscientiousness from the first trial and a 22% decrease to Extraversion.

I thought maybe Muzzled could get me a low Openness score, but it was the highest yet.

I did manage to drop Openness through the text of a private post rant about Valentine’s Day. It got down to 24%. Plus emotional range got all the way up to 97%.

You are easily rattled and somber.

You are organized: you feel a strong need for structure in your life. You are down-to-earth: you prefer facts over fantasy. And you are susceptible to stress: you are easily overwhelmed in stressful situations.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You consider both taking pleasure in life and independence to guide a large part of what you do. You are highly motivated to enjoy life to its fullest. And you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them.

Big 5 : Openness 24% ;Conscientiousness 41% ; Extraversion 27% ; Agreeableness 60% ; Emotional range 97%

 

The post IBM Watson Personality Insights appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From IBM Watson Personality Insights published July 28, 2015 at 05:57PM.

Check Backups

I get a daily report about backups for each of the projects. One particular one has shown some odd results. The report has columns for: Completed, Successful, Partial, Failed, Missed, and Active. The particular problem is that backups show up in none of those columns when it is actually still actively running. (So it should show up as active?)

So I wrote the other day a Bash script to check some things. In the future I can quickly assess if this is the SNAFU (Situation Normal All F***ed Up) or something else. Really, the other day I had to track back into my history this information to do it manually, which is stupid.

#!/bin/bash
###########################################################
# Check backup status.
# 2015-JUL-24 Ezra Freelove, email@domain.com
###########################################################
# Look for running processes
echo “… Backup processes”
ps -ef | grep [p]rocname
# Report logs
echo “… Logs”
ls -ltr /path/to/agent.log /session/path/to/clientlogs/*.log
echo “==========”
# Specific lines excluding spam and blank
tail -100 /path/to/agent.log | grep -vf /home/me/myscripts/backups/exclude/ckrunning.txt | grep -v “^ $”

If the backup is still running, then the ps will show the PID and time started.

In addition the logs are reported with the most recently changed at the end.

The agent talks to a central service to find out when it should be doing stuff. The exclude/ckrunning.txt file uses the below entries to ignore spammy lines where the agent is checking but not told to do anything. This ignores about 70 of the 100 lines when everything is normally operating from my check.

• Sleeping
• Workorder received: sleep
• Requesting work

Long-term, I guess I should ask why the long-running backup does not appear in the Active category when it obviously should.

The post Check Backups appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From Check Backups published July 27, 2015 at 11:37AM.

Dear App Makers

Listen, I get it. I used your app. Yay! I even like it. So, maybe my friends will like it too? Seems reasonable.

BUT, I am not one of the jackholes who post that stuff on Facebook and Twitter.

The sad reality is, the more painful you make it to escape your requests to spam my friends about your app or even make me have to dismiss it too much, there are dozens of competitors who I will gladly try. The odds are very good I am using your app because I became too annoyed with one of your competitors.

I like you, but I am not in the least very loyal to you.

Thanks,
Ezra

The post Dear App Makers appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From Dear App Makers published July 24, 2015 at 08:30PM.

Review: The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The shooter in the recent Charleston massacre reportedly said:

“You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country.”

In the aftermath, the mayor claimed to not know much about the treatment of blacks in South Carolina because it was not taught in schools. That prompted people to create a reading list. This was one of the books I noticed from the list.

It documents lynchings in the early 1890s. Further, it describes in detail the newspaper reporting about some of the events such as the original accusation, actions taken prior to, the killing, and actions taken afterwards. (There were too many to document them all.) The simple plea here is for justice. Not retribution or actions taken against those who unjustifiably lynched. But for this country to stop allowing the murder of people either before they are tried or after a court found them innocent. One of the most powerful was a gentleman who was about to be lynched when a foreman told the mob that the person they were about to hang could not have done it because he was with the foreman, they let him go. The flimsiest of evidence would have seen him hung, but an eyewitness of the right skin color was enough to prove guilt or innocence.

In some respects I could see Ida B. Wells-Barnett might find the current legal climate where our people are arrested and found guilty at exorbitant rates over our peers who commit the crimes at the same rates disconcerting. But compared to her own time, we do have it better.

The first section explains that under slavery, killing one resulted in a many hundred dollar loss. So, one would beat a slave enough to break him, but try to avoid killing him. The first motivation for killing blacks was to prevent race riots, and for some reason the victims of these often surprisingly had no weapons with which to defend themselves. The second motivation was to prevent voting and established control over the Southern states. The third motivation was protecting the virtue of white women. THIS. The Charleston shooter killed three men and six women to protect the virtue of white women. In 120 years we have made little progress.

While a teenager I found a death threat letter signed “KKK” saying they would kill my father for dating mother from about 40 years ago. People stare at me when out in public with a pretty fair skinned girl, especially when she hugs or kisses me. But a hundred years ago, my father or myself would have been hung from a tree, shot, and burned for anything like this. A project noted below has a listing for the reason for lynching as “Writing Letters to White Girl.”

The burning thing was curious to me. So I looked up attitudes on cremation in Christianity. The dot I needed connecting was that when Christ returns, the dead would be re-animated and join him. Burning these people was a deliberate attempt to prevent any possibility of these people joining Christ. So, not only were they killed but they were prevented salvation? So very low.

Was it depressing to read this? Yes.

Was it worth reading? Yes. The Mary Turner Project has a description of a lynching 20 years after the Red Record. Plus it looks like they are building upon the work of Ida and others.

View all my reviews

The post Review: The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From Review: The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States published July 09, 2015 at 08:52PM.

Loud and Proud

I realize I live in the great echo chamber. Most people I know live in the United States. Therefore, the political talk I hear is of the US. Because of friends in England, I hear some of the politics there. Other countries election issues come from news sources like the BBC or NPR.

The ever lengthening election cycle seems rather stupid.

1. First impressions matter more than an opinion on every topic, an answer for every question, or every baby kissed. Naturally voters do not think this is the case. But they have pretty much decided after 15 seconds of seeing the candidate.
2. All these speeches are good for those cities with convention centers, stadiums, and society groups. The candidates will give so many of them they will become tired and overworked versions appropriate for the best cross-section of likely voters stripped of any real meaning.
3. The armies of spies circle like vultures and strip the candidates of any value. They seek every secret and gaffe.

Other countries must look at this circus and uproariously laugh at us. Billions wasted to change already set minds. Candidates embarrassing themselves, their parties, and our society. Impossible promises made to say anything to win. And the voters knowing that 99% of all this is bullshit.

Our best efforts at treaties and agreements stalled or languishing because what is the point of making one with the current president when he could be replaced by one of the many crazy people calling for unacceptable terms and promising not to honor it?

Enemies can point to statements made by hawkish candidates as justification for their behavior.

Personally, I think the first primary should be the first Tuesday after July 4th and the parties holding their conventions the last week of August. Then the three debates the last week of September and second week of October. Candidates should not be allowed to start campaigning until the first of June. Maybe they can register prior, but meh.

Maybe the requirement to register in every state should be fixed for this plan to work? Dunno.

(Yes, I know the title was misleading some of you to think this was a gay pride post. Sorry. Not sorry.)

The post Loud and Proud appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From Loud and Proud published July 08, 2015 at 10:29PM.

My July 4th Thoughts

Legislative gridlock creates problems because events that logically should be avoided hit the precipice before a deal is worked out to prevent a catastrophe. The media portrays the cause of this state of affairs as due to partisanship or incompetence, which while either may be true, what makes me more nervous are politicians claiming a mandate. Winning an election by less than a majority or even somewhat more than half does not a mandate make. No one opposing you also does not give you a mandate. Win 66% or more? OK, twice as many people like your ideas than all other candidates combined. They have given you a mandate.

Even worse is a whole party assuming control of the House, Senate, and President of the United States. Yes, they can push through legislation that solves the party agenda, but this stuff ends up riddled with problems. Handouts to keep blackmailers in line. Unforeseen consequences. Bills written in secret and only unveiled where few have the needed time to read it much less comprehend every nuance. The opponents may actually have legitimate points which get ignored because they are on the wrong side.

Learning from their opponents is something this country needs more of its politicians. A quote I liked from The Virtues of Political Disagreement:

… It remains true that very different perspectives and ideologies, pursuing their own agendas, have often provided fundamental insights for their rivals. A striking example is the way social democrats supporting a secular welfare state have learned from both free-market economists and from religious organizations how to improve the delivery of social services. Similarly, feminist insights have helped conservatives rethink their views of the family.

Of course, the Affordable Care Act represents something of this. The model for it was a Republican idea as an alternative to Clinton’s health care reform plans. A Republican governor and Democrat legislature implemented that model in Massachusetts. The final bill was riddled with other things on top. Some of them are still being fought out or implemented. The more rabid of the Democrats hate this bill because it is not Single Payer, what Clinton hoped to pass. That creates a weird dynamic where Republicans and Democrats agree.

The post My July 4th Thoughts appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From My July 4th Thoughts published July 04, 2015 at 07:27PM.

Review: Born with Teeth: A Memoir

Born with Teeth: A Memoir by Kate Mulgrew
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK. I am a total Star Trek nerd. Next Generation definitely is my favorite, but I really enjoyed her as Captain Janeway on ST: Voyager. So I was intrigued to read about Kate’s life off screen. My usual problem causing me to avoid memoirs in favor of biographies is the glossing over the rawness of real life. Every negative encounter turns out to have a silver lining. Some of that is in here, but I did appreciate being allowed into the messiness that is real life.

Orange Is the New Black fans should note she abruptly stops the memoir around 1999. Though, really, this backstory to the actress explains for me how she approached her character “Red” on the show.

View all my reviews

The post Review: Born with Teeth: A Memoir appeared first on Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4.

From Review: Born with Teeth: A Memoir published July 04, 2015 at 04:40PM.