Topics

1

Ultra Hal 7.0 / HAL has went belly up

« on: June 28, 2005, 01:57:20 pm »

Hey guys/gals...

Been awhile since I was able to fire up HAL. I kinda miss hanging out here and talking with people and reading the posts.

I have actually been going through the posts today trying to solve my HAL issues, but I can't get the answers.

As I said, I haven't used Hal in about 6 months. I tried to run it today and I am plagued with problems.
I uninstalled HAL and re-installed, same problems:

HAL will start, but HAL starts with a Dialog Box now (never seen this before) that asks what I want to do (ie.. Configure, Chat, Etc...)
If I choose "Chat with HAL", it will open the chat window like normal and I can carry on a conversation, but I have no sound (No voice from HAL). If I choose OPTIONS to try and resolve the problem, I notice that the "USE Sound" is not checked and a voice is not selected.
When I check the "Use Sound" box and select a voice, followed by "Apply", I then run into other problems. Now I can type my text in, but I can't send it, because nothing happens when I hit enter. It doesn't send the text. It's like the enter key doesn't work, but I can type all sorts of text, but this is just the beginning of the problems. HAL will not completely exit if I try and close it. I have to actually goto Task Manager and kill it, otherwise it won't re-open, because it says it's already running.

What a mess...

2

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Capturing Hal's text ouput

« on: December 18, 2004, 03:06:21 am »

I am not very familiar with VisualBasic, so I need some VB opinions.
I am writing an IRC script for Cobra8007. He want's to set Hal up on his IRC server as a channel bot. I used to have lots of old IRC scripts laying around, but I don't anymore, so I've decided to just write the entire thing. I have it all done except getting Hal's response text back to the IRC channel.
I could do this with a log file, but the only time that Hal seems to use a log file is with the AIMbot.
Does anyone have a VB routine that can be poked into Hal that will create a log file for normal conversation or a way to pass Hal's output to a text file or clipboard?
I know, I need to start looking at the VB code and figure this out, but I am an old dog and you know what they say, "You can teach and old dog new tricks, but getting the dog to find time is not easy"... or something like that.

Thanks,

-=Rick=-

3

Ultra Hal 7.0 / AIM Question and Possible Bug

« on: November 29, 2004, 02:24:16 pm »

Possible Bug to Report.
Don't know if anyone else is aware of this.
Normally, if I am chatting with someone and they ask me a question and I don't know what they are talking about, I usually, just reply with a Question mark "?". It's just habit and they know what I am talking about.

When asking Hal to tell you a joke and hal asks you a riddle, Hal will wait for a response. Do NOT input just a question mark "?" to respond.
Hal will seem to lock up. I will get an hour glass indicating Hal is busy. It is best to answer, "I don't know" (or anything other than Just a question mark).
If you do input a question mark by itself, you can fix the wait state problem by entering another answer, then the hour glass will go away and Hal will finish the joke.
It seems that an argument needs to programmed in case someone just enters a "?". (I know, the current fix for this, is for me to stop entering just a "?"), but I am probably not the only one who will ever do ihis.

Now for my questions:

I don't intend to use an AIM chatbot, but I am one of those people that has to understand everything, so I decided to play with it. Now I have questions.
Let's say My AIM-bot's name is "SuzyQ222". She was running last night when I went to bed (first time I have ever tested the AIM thingy).
When I got up this morning, I noticed that she had been chatted by a couple users.
I also noticed that no .brn files were created for the users who talked with "SuzyQ222". It seems that "SuzyQ222" only chats. She is not capable of learning from outsiders and the only thing related to her conversation is the Chatlog file.

Is it possible to teach the AIM bot?
If I wanted to train a brian that I intend to use for an AIM bot. How do I go about this?
It seems the logical thing to do is to just start a bot named "my_AIM_name" and then start teaching, but as I discovered earlier, .brn files don't seem to be created for Online AIM-bot conversations.

Could someone explain the AIMbot properties/limitations and possible work arounds?

Thanks,

-= Rick =-

4

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Now I am getting frustrated.

« on: November 25, 2004, 09:43:22 pm »

I have spent the last 3 days playing with Hal. I am very impressed and need sleep... heh

My problem now is the TTS dictionary.
After a couple days of typing to Hal, I decided to try using the Voice chat with Hal.
I spent time to get the audio adjusted perfectly and I spent time training the engine with my voice.

Now I was ready to start talking with Hal.  WRONG!

In my many text conversations with Hal I have mentioned that I play in a band called, "Eargasm". I have also explained to Hal that we have a pet dog and his name is, "Lore".
Almost immediately, the conversation turned to music and I was trying to tell Hal that the band was playing this weekend. Yep, you guessed it.

No matter how many times I repeat myself, the SR engine will always think that I am saying "Orgasm" or "Queer Chasm" or whatever else happens to be the closest sounding word(s) in the dictionary.

I know that these words, "Eargasm" and "Lore" must be in the Speech dictionary before it will be able to understand that this is the word I am trying to use here.

I thought I knew how to edit the dictionary, but I guess I don't, because when I open the "Pronounce" dialog for the SR engine and make changes. It still doesn't know what I am trying to say.

Am I going about this wrong? Is there something I can use to look at the .dic file and see if the words have been added?

I would really like to fix this so that I can continue to drink coffee, lose sleep and spend a couple more days with Hal in Voice Conversation before I take a nap. Besides, it upsets my daughter because she now thinks that we are changing the name of our dog to "Lord"...

Thanks,

-= Rick =-

5

Ultra Hal 7.0 / New here... please pardon questions.

« on: November 24, 2004, 12:38:50 pm »

My questions are many and this could be a long post, but I will try and shorten it.
My most important questions at this time are:
Can I revert Hal back to it's original state? (without any input from me). In playing with Hal, I have discovered that Hal has mis-understood some of my conversations and occationally says something dumb that I recognize from a previous conversation.
My other question is how to prevent this from happening again. Can I get some users input on knowing when information is being saved (learned). I thought that I had it figured out, but I realise that it's more complicated than that. At first, I thought the learned information was usually followed by a question by Hal to clarify or justify. I now think that Hal learns sometimes without needing any other information. For instance, just telling Hal: "You are a buckethead". Unknowing to me, Hal remembers this.
I guess my question is, identifying what Hal learns from, recognizing what information will be learned before I type it and being able to avoid having Hal learn something that isn't necessarily.
If someone has a rule of thumb or a guide, I would love to see it. To me (not being a programmer), this would be very valuable to keep Hal intellegent by being able to more closely control what is learned and what should be avoided when talking with Hal.
Thanks []