Posts from July 2017

Fake Oregon Placenames

Dan Hon recently trained an A.I. to generate British placenames. I followed his recipe and did the same for Oregon placenames.

I found a list of real Oregon placenames at the US Board on Geographic Names. I did a round of A.I. training with the raw data and found the output too noisy. So I did a little data massaging and gave it another shot, this time with cleaner results.

I set the whole thing up on a free AWS instance with the torch-rnn docker image. It was a snap. A slow snap. It would be faster with more processing power.

Without further setup, plan your next camping trip and imagine the vistas you'll see in such artificially imagined Oregon places as:
  • Thkewood Meadows
  • Cookstop Lake
  • Thedrel Springs Cemetery
  • Water Reservoir
  • Rogah Butte
  • Newar Creek
  • Willaning Creek
  • Dazian
  • Booper Summit
  • Pister Creek Ranch Spring
  • Josspor Ridge
  • Bickmass Log Pond
  • Trout Bucktuby
  • Monnnit Hellant Plant Creek
  • Pitter Cip Number One
  • Seven Creek
  • Giam Creek
  • Hemil M Creek
  • Hug Waterhole
  • Dukapin Meadows
  • Bensbush Creek
  • Malow Creek
  • Lattle Lake Recreation Meadows
  • Mule Park
  • Road Ranch
  • Bruck Creek
  • Gregley Park Recreation Site
  • Forent Well
  • Kench Bed Reservoir
  • Indian Slide
  • Sinkhawk Trail
  • Tondyle Canyon
  • Spilling Pond
  • Syn Reservoir
  • Pieson Reservoir
  • Thirn Mountain
  • Fence and Swalich
  • Lower Spring Cemetery
  • Bolard Creek
  • Coney Butte Park
  • Skihino Peak
  • Laix Spring
  • Clenmill Creek
  • Oshers Forest
  • Fork Slow Spring
This is a random linear sampling from potentially infinite output. It might be funnier to go through with an editorial eye and find the most amusing, but it's getting late and I have a trip to Fence and Swalich to plan.

Saturday Links, Late July

And now, the wokest links (apologies to @ameliargh): In other news:
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dance space
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Untitled
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infrastructure
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down the hall

On the Records

My dad has an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and he just started a classic rock blog called On the Records. He's writing brief but dense artist summaries that are easier to digest than a wikipedia entry. He's also adding personal stories about his relationship with music. His post From Records to Playlists reminded me just how far music technology has progressed in a short period of time. Blogs! They're still neat. If you like music that was mostly delivered via vinyl you should meet my dad.

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Link Pile, Early July

It has been a while, dear reader. I was about to declare link bankruptcy, delete all to-share links, and start again with a clean slate. However, in the rush to find the latest and greatest links I assume you might have missed one of these non-organized gems from the past arbitrary amount of time. Or maybe you'll rediscover a popular link from weeks ago and see it from a wiser, weeks-older perspective. Anyway, here's Wonderwall (of links):

Oregon Country Fair

I had a great time with friends at the Oregon Country Fair yesterday. It's a fun event with an amazing atmosphere. This year I mostly took atmospheric pictures with an old Lensbaby selective-focus lens. Sometimes it's good to go lo-fi.

Oregon Country Fair 2017
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Dryden
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sunset drive
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DIY Fire Pit
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