
Show HN: BrainTripping - language model comedy - h34t
http://www.matt.is/introducing-braintripping
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conesus
BrainTripping is a lot of fun, but what I love about is that it's one of those
ideas that is completely unique. Something I've never heard of before and then
get to experience something completely new.

Once you get past the learning curve of knowing that the end trip is a mash of
your thoughts and the original's writings, it becomes easier to see how to
think on BT.

Kudos on the launch, and here's hoping for a bright future.

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rhizome
Nice resurrection of Forum2000! Props.

[http://randomfoo.net/junk/200402/xalton.forum2000.org/matrix...](http://randomfoo.net/junk/200402/xalton.forum2000.org/matrix/forum_hof_questions.html)

[http://slashdot.org/story/00/08/13/0213225/end-of-an-era-
for...](http://slashdot.org/story/00/08/13/0213225/end-of-an-era-
forum-2000-closes)

~~~
h34t
Oh, fascinating! Thanks for the link.

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DanielRibeiro
Pretty cool! There are some hilarious submissions: [http://images-
cdn.braintripping.com/trips/4f9efd4088cbda0300...](http://images-
cdn.braintripping.com/trips/4f9efd4088cbda030000113e/img.png)

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jontang
Total blast! Love how each selection can take the sound bytes into a whole new
direction. Well done!

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slig
Really nice! Amazing graphics. Did you do them too?

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h34t
An illustrator helps me out on those. That was a happy accident; I was going
to use photographs, but found that getting permission for all of them could be
impossible, so the only way to make it graphical was to come up with original
portraits. I didn't realize that they'd change the entire character of the
site in a really good way.

~~~
wtvanhest
Hi, Nice work on that, is there any way you can introduce me to the
illustrator?

My email is my HN username @ gmail

~~~
filip01
Me too please. realfilip @ gmail.com. Thanks.

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mnicole
I laughed at the premise alone, but seeing the submissions and trying it out
myself was a blast. Great work on this. I'd almost like to see an X vs. Y
poetry slam.

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makmanalp
<http://www.braintripping.com/new/paul-graham>

~~~
drv
This one's interesting:

"I'll just write everything this way from now on." \- pg as Paul Graham 3
months ago

<http://www.braintripping.com/trips/4f90ad9fb3b88b0300000f3a>

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yakshaving
Nice work on this! The illustrations are superb -- Sort of reminds me of the
"Fake steve jobs", "Fake Grimlock" and that whole set of cool meme-generating
twitter feeds.

Seems a bit overdesigned/overengineered though right? Do you really need the
adlib typeahead? Or did you realize that people needed more constraints than
just being able to type whatever they wanted into a box?

Seems like you could have an entire conversation between a few famous
celebrities (alive or deceased) and then take that conversation page and make
it atomic and shareable... and I feel like that would get traction.

Just my 2 cents.

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jawr
Quirky idea, gave it a little whirl. Really love the feel of the website; the
graphics are awesome! Nice work.

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obliojoe
I have been playing with this for a few weeks now and I've had some really
great conversations with people I don't know, using the vocabulary of people
who are not me. Surreal and addictive.

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dwerthen
I enjoyed the way that the "intelligence" of it left a lot of room for ones
creativity. Nice game/tool when one is in need of a little something to get
the writing flow going!

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minikomi
This is really fun! I kind of would like to be able to select a few different
"expressions" from the character I choose to emphasize the tone of what they
say.

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rdl
This is really fun, but coming up with interesting things to say is hard
independent of whose brain you are using.

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caublestone
This is better than anonymity.

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_pferreir_
Great! Are you using a markov chain for the suggestions? Is it a "dissociated
press" kind of thing?

~~~
h34t
Similar, yes. The main difference here is the role that you (the user) play in
shaping the output.

~~~
_pferreir_
Are you using only the previous word as the input for the chain? I wonder if
it would be better to use something like the previous 2 words. I think that's
how Mark V. Shaney managed to be so convincing.

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reddickulous
I want something like this but hooked up to my facebook friends.

~~~
h34t
I've been playing with that. Haven't got it right yet, though.

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Axsuul
Really creative idea and +1 for Backbone.js! It seems like your Leaderboard
views linger when changing to another view. Otherwise, really polished, good
luck!

~~~
h34t
Ah, thanks for catching that!

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delano
Wow, great work! It takes a lot of effort to think and write in character
(phrases, vocabulary, and most importantly mood).

I've had a lot of fun tweeting as the old-timey characters for one of my
brands (<https://www.blamestella.com/news>) but it's definitely felt like hard
work at times. Huge kudos for really breaking it down and simplifying it.

~~~
h34t
Thanks! I took a screenwriting course a couple of years ago, and the first
exercise was writing dialogue as a 17-year-old girl. It was rather mind-
bending. While developing BrainTripping I was often surprised by word
combinations that are second nature to me, but other people never use (and
vice versa).

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comatose_kid
Would be cool to allow people to have themselves added + feeding the site text
written by them. Oh, and you need Gandhi on there.

~~~
jerf
While I have fun writing in Jerf's voice, I'm not sure why anybody else would
want to...

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rufugee
Mind sharing what OCR software you used? I'm working on project which has just
this need.

Thanks!

~~~
h34t
If you email me (me at matt.is) I can get back to you - I played with so many
I can't remember which one at the moment.

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oulipo
awesome, I'm currently working on a website to build experiments around the
writing process

I have quite a few idea and I like those kind of projects that permit to
liberate the creativity (through constraints!)

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roycyang
Love the ability to download the trip so I can add it to my own site.

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tunnuz
That's a really interesting project. And I love the graphics!

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NHQ
This is incredible!

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fredsters_s
Love this site

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mdonahoe
This rules.

I don't like the text input system.

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yycom
Tutorial doesn't work in ios

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ybother
~or~ how to get a bunch of people to train your neural network

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bonaldi
Only Facebook connect or manual login? I choose neither.

