voice commands for google assistant through headphones

Text <name> saying <message>
Call <Name>
play <song>by <artist>
Remind me to <activity> at <time>
Turn it up/down
Volume 5

songs:

Play some pop music Play news from NPR What’s the name of this song?

Control what’s playing

  • Pause or stop: Pause. Stop. Stop the [news or podcast].
  • Resume: Resume. Continue playing. Continue playing [news or podcast].
  • Next: Skip. Next. Play next.
  • Previous: Previous. Play previous.
  • Find info: What’s playing?

Podcasts:

Listen to [podcast name].

Play [podcast name]

Listen to the latest episode of [podcast name].

Listen to a comedy podcast.

Find me a podcast about cooking.

Recommend a sports podcast.

Show me a podcast about cryptocurrency.

  • Play some pop music
  • Play news from NPR
  • What’s the name of this song?

You are a neanderthal

What would a caveman think of the technology from today? Things that would seem logically impossible to him would be doable. It would be ‘magical’.

Now let’s put ourselves in this position and think of some absurd possibilities with some logic. For starters, let’s take a common example- wearing stones. The logic here is that the filtering of sun rays that the stone has benefits.

Now here’s some logic: At an atomic level, every ray of light impacts the atoms it interacts with, leaving an imprint. At slightly macro level, this is how/why we are able to get photographs. In fact, atomic photographs are already possible as of 2017 in research labs.

Now taking this into the magical realm: What is a photo/video of the moment could be recreated from an object!
Movies have imagined people who touch things and can reflect back into the past! this is similar.

Thanking customer service professional

The customer service professionals/representatives get a lot of rude calls daily. People forget to be courteous to them as they done see them and it’s a one time transaction.

I make it a point to thank them, shower then with praises and make them blush. If it occurs to me, I even try a joke or two.

Next time if you call in and get a polite, enthusiastic personality on the line, I’ve probably just called before you.

Please return the favor, please be extra courteous and shower praises next time you call. Remember they are people.

Automation for repeated tasks on a page

It woud be really nice if the software industry would have a solution for tackling automation for repeated tasks on a page. For example, the Amazon Smile site has a huge list of ‘subscriptions’ to follow/unfollow. There is no option for unfollow-all, whilst I have close to 50 items that are somehow set as follow. I wish I could instruct the browser to tackle all of them at once.

From an implementation perspective, if Selenium were built into browsers with a thin AI layer, one could get this easily done.

#iwonder #howcomenoonehassolvedthis

Resolving Logitech Unifying receiver problems and how to solve them.

Had a few diagrams to update and thought it would be quicker to do with a trackball, so plugged in a unifying receiver to my office computer and expected to proceed as normal. To my surprise, it did not work. I tried the following:
– 1. Tried installing the Logitech win10 unifying receiver. That did not work as it required elevated priviledges
– 2. Tried the chrome extension App that Logitech provides (link). That did not pick up the receiver! tried several times, all different USB ports on the computer
– 3. Tried the chrome extension on a different computer. No luck.

At this point, I was about to conclude that the receiver has gone bad. Thought I try one last thing.

– 4. Tried running the win 10 logitech unifying software on a different computer. that did the trick

Surprisingly enough, now when I plugged out the receiver and plugged it into the office computer, it STILL worked!