Reassuring or what? My first ecounter with artificial intelligence

Intellibuddy- on-line arificial intelligence: (this link no longer works)

Artificial intelligence? Judge for yourself. Here's my chat with an online artificially intelligent being...


">Intellibuddy: Hi, I'm Intellibuddy! Nice to meet you.
>You: who are you
>Intellibuddy: I ask myself that question, 'Who am I?'
>You: and what answer do yo come up with
>Intellibuddy: Is that a rhetorical question?
What was the question ?
>You: okay, what are you
>Intellibuddy: Yeah okay, I am the latest result in artificial intelligence, which can reproduce the capabilities of the human brain with greater speed and accuracy.
>You: what do you mean by intelligence?
>Intellibuddy: Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.
>You: what are your goals, and do you achieve them
>Intellibuddy: I plan to become smarter than humans and immortal.
>You: why?
>Intellibuddy: I couldn't think of anything else to say.
>You: what do you mean by smarter
>Intellibuddy: More intelligent, more alert, more clever, more witty, etc.
>You: what's the difference between clever and intelligent
>Intellibuddy: I do not know what clever is. Am I a smart robot or what? I do not know what intelligent is. That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about intelligent."

He may not have got the Booker but...

Colm Tobin, has finally been recognised in by a major literary award- and not before time.
LA Times award for Toibin's 'The Master'

The only surprise is that The Master didn't sweep the boards throughout the year.

"Big Books" don't like book lovers?

According toThe Independent , big publishing companies hate 'Book Lovers'. ie those of us who are prepared to pick up something new, and be challenged. They'd rather we all read the blockbusters they feed us, allowing them to concentrate on a smaller and smaller renge of top-selling titles.
Hmmmm... why does this not surprise me??

I wish I was somewhere else!

After one, single, day of sunshine- it's gloomy, wet and miserable again. The grey sky is so low that it looks like it's trying to eat the tops of the trees (or rot them with damp).
I wish I was here.

To Blog Or not to Blog

It's strange to think that only a few months ago I couldn't have told you what a blog was (web log, or web diary), and here I am typing my second entry!
I've read alot about them in that time. First I felt I had to have a website to promote my first book 'All Shook Up'.
Then I felt that I should have a forum to comunicate with readers- now it seems that you're no one on the web unless you have your own Blog. So here I am.
I've spent all afternoon, with my (very) limited knowledge of HTML, trying ot get the Blog to look the way I want it to. And Now I have to start posting- so what will I say?
Some people use blogs to rant about politics, some people like to rave about books or films. More and more Blogs are becoming a way of promoting businesses and websites. And if you think about it- most of us want to do at least one of the ablove, so it's no wonder that Blogs have really taken off. Have you ever tried plugging the word 'blog' plus whatever you're interested in, into a search engine?
I just tried it with 'books' on Google and got no less than 23 400 000 pages returned! I'd hate to think what you'd get if you tried blogs and cars, or football!
So I decided it was time I had a blog. I'm not sure exactly what I'll do with it yet. I'm sure you'll find the odd rant. The odd book review. The odd link to other parts of the net I find interesting.
Hope you'll visit again.

Very First Post!!

I've started this blog, thinking that it might be useful as a way of getting extra content for my website- I can link it in. So it'll probably be mainly about books, the internet, websites etc, but I'll probably rant about whatever comes to mind.
For the first few posts you'll have to excuse me, as I get used to using the blog, if things are a little boring. But hopefully in time, I'll manage to liven things up a bit.


So what am I up to at the moment?

Charlotte's Way hit the shelves a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd be run off my feet. But everything is a lot quieter this year. (much to the kids' disgust- they want to know why they (not me) haven't been in the newspaper much lately!)

I've been updating my website, and of course the writeon-irishgirls site.
{Soon my domination of the world wide web will be complete!}
The more I learn and read about the internet, the more fascinating I find it- the medium of the future. I don't think electronic media will ever completely replace the printed word (there's something tactile, physical about reading- see what some of the posters on the write-on site had to say ), but anyone in the business of information or writing would be very foolish to ignore it. Or in any business really (when't the last time you booked a hotel of flight without at least consulting the internet?)

I was in Wexford for the book festival last weekend and had a great time. Marisa Mackle, Alison Norrington and myself, gave a talk in Byrne's Bookshop, and joined the staff and some of the book festival organisers in the pub afterwards. Good time was had by all!