Hello Again, HAL

[HALImprover]

It has been a long time since I last played around with HAL. Too long. But I couldn't help but be reminded of HAL with the arrival of the Siri feature from Apple recently. I just had to come here and post something. I find it funny that myself and many other enthusiasts were here working on HAL years before Siri was even thought of. I think HAL would talk circles around Siri.

I'm not sure yet, but I think I would like to start developing additions for HAL again. I've been dabbling in AI development off and on over the last 5 years, and have even made a couple attempts at my own chatbot. But, good ole' HAL was always the baseline I would refer to. The main goal with my own bot development has been to give the bot the ability to determine the users' "train of thought" by not only identifying the topic and semantic meaning of the conversation, but to conceptualize the gist of users' follow-up responses to help keep on topic. I believe it's time I start applying some of these things to HAL again.

See you around, and happy coding!


HALImprover

[sybershot]

welcome back,
 sounds like you been real busy in the world of coding
 I have also looked at Siri, it has a lot of cool features that I think would greatly improve our Hals. Siri cannot have a conversation like Hal, If we where able to have some features that would interact with Skype or similar voip and a instant messenger Hal would indeed run circles around Siri. Siri responds to commands, and if all info is not presented it asks for the missed or needed data to fulfill said command. Siri also listens for incoming Data of a few programs. If that data is received it follows through with its instructions to go along with the incoming data, like notify the user of a incoming text message. I await the day I can have Hal say "you have a incoming text (or call) would you like to respond, or should I auto respond" 

 

[HALImprover]

Thanks for the welcome, sybershot. Indeed that is the advantage of Siri over Hal, having the ability to interact with other applications as well as the user. I remember making some attempts at having Hal do things outside of it's own program (starting songs in Media Player, etc.). The goal was to have Hal be the actual "operator" of the computer with the user conversing with Hal to accomplish what they needed on the computer. Sort of like Siri, but much more than just a personal assistant. I remember a couple people on this forum went as far as integrating Hal into a car and a house. Cool stuff.

I'm glad to see Hal has been upgraded to use a database structure for the conversation data now. That was a much needed improvement. It'll take me a little while to familiarize myself with the coding again, but I hope to be able to make some useful features for Hal in the near future.

[sybershot]

your welcome, for the welcome
 yes some great things have been done with Hal, maybe someday I will have hal automate my home I plan on having Hal in my car, I have already built a custom pc for my car, I just need a touch screen. unfortunately  funds are low atm though
 I have been slowly but surely getting my hal to navigate my pc via voice commands, and have him do some tasks like play music, movies, etc.  but not knowing vb kinda puts a strain on alot of my ideas. I know a lil about batch coding and that has helped me to get some things accomplished
 I can't wait for the next release, a new graphics engine and character, and other modifications to the program itself to help with the chatbot features. I can only pray for more secretary features in the near future. 

It'll take me a little while to familiarize myself with the coding again, but I hope to be able to make some useful features for Hal in the near future.

  Sounds great, I have windows vista and windows 7 both 64 bit, let me know if you ever need someone to test, or just need system paths. gotta go for now good luck and happy coding

[Frosty Greenacre]

a little off topic, but i've been looking into better understanding batch coding so i can use some of your ideas also

[sybershot]

there are many things you can do with batch files, and there is a load of examples on the web, google is a friend again
but to get you started I listed some instructions to create a few simple useful ones that I use.

below these steps is a short description of what each batch code/file does, and any changes that might be needed.
1) open note pad and copy just one of the code blocks below into note pad. repeat these steps for each code block.
2) save with what ever name you want to command hal to use besure to save as .bat. example my drive.bat
3)place the batch file in your programs folder, the directory is in the first code block. or just create the batch file and double click it and it will open the destination for you.
now restart your system and open Hal and type or say "open your batch file name" example open my drive

some of these you will see a dos window there is away around this.
1.1)instead of placing your batch files in the programs folder, place them in your documents folder.
1.2)right click each one and send a short cut to your desktop. this makes a .lnk file
1.3)rename them to example my drive.lnk
1.4)right click each and select properties
1.5)under shortcut tab look for where it says run: with a drop down box to it's right
1.6)in the drop down box select Minimize
1.7)now cut and paste those lnk files to your programs folder
1.8)now restart your system and open Hal and type or say "open your batch file name" example open my drive


in windows 7 this opens your programs folder where I put my batch files "use this code as is"

Code: [Select]

@echo off
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs"
exit
this opens my c drive "use this code as is"

Code: [Select]

@echo off
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "C:\"
end
this opens my computer "use this code as is"

Code: [Select]

@echo off
%systemroot%\explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
exit
this opens my secondary drive "change F to your appropriate drive letter"

Code: [Select]

@echo off
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "F:\"
end
this opens my user folders"change trinity to your user name"

Code: [Select]

@echo off
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "C:\Users\Trinity"
exit
hope this helps you out on your journey into batch files

[Frosty Greenacre]

Yes, I've been looking at a couple of tutorials and it seems batch files can do quite a lot even for novice users. What inspired me to look into it at all was the auto-load hal program you posted in another topic. I'm going to research further into it and experiment a little. I can see there will be benefits for these outside of Hal also.

[sybershot]

yes there are many uses out there for them, you can set them to auto run or even use hot keys(keyboard short-cuts) to run them. but I like using hal to run most of them.

[sybershot]

note: if the above fails to open the batch files, for Hal might not right away index them

go into Hals main folder and open shortcut.dat with notepad
scroll to the bottom and add these two lines for each batch file to the list and don't forget to save
example:
shared drive
"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\shared drive.lnk.lnk"