Josh Millard

One of my favorite examples is Garkov, the auto generation of Garfield strips using Markov chains. http://joshmillard.com/garkov/

Maybe the language model could use some smoothing? It seems to frequently regurgitate lines from existing comics rather than composing new ones. For example, [1] has "Either mom's cooking dinner, or somebody got sick in the kitchen..." in panel 3, which is almost entirely the 1 June 1986 comic [2] which has "Either mom's cooking dinner, or somebody got sick in the furnace duct." Cool work nonetheless, and a fun way to re-encounter a favorite. [1]: http://www.joshmillard.com/markov/calvin/?6570264084521539584 [2]: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/06/01

Even though this is five years old, I hadn’t seen it before. It’s a very cute trick. The followup by Josh Millard is even better: http://www.joshmillard.com/2007/10/04/retro-histo-making-an-image-fit-…

The derivative I also like, and don't see it here is the markov chain garfield - from back when markov chains were the bee's knees in text generation. The generator is fed by existing garfield comic text, and the generated text is superimposed to a template of existing comics. It might take a few refreshes, but I always manage to amuse myself with the absurdity that it spits out. https://joshmillard.com/garkov/

GPT3 can answer questions, in comparison this model works a little bit better than a markov chain. http://joshmillard.com/garkov/

FWIW you can help out http://www.joshmillard.com/2015/07/06/wanna-help-edit-calvin-and-hobbe…

Heya, that's me! I also wrote up some details on the how and why of the whole thing, if you're interested: http://www.joshmillard.com/2015/07/06/calvin-and-markov/

I like mine, but it's one that has the least text... http://www.joshmillard.com/markov/calvin/?2159343074602731008

This is awesome. The first one I got is incredibly sinister: http://www.joshmillard.com/markov/calvin/?7952922445356769280

A script for generating images with self-similar histograms (read the first article!) - http://www.joshmillard.com/2007/10/04/retro-histo-making-an-image-fit-…

I'll leave this here, since it's loosely on-topic (of Markov chains:) http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/ — Garfield strips with MC-generated text instead of the original. I've had countless hours of fun with them.

Markov Chains can be quite amusing when applied to a corpus of similar texts, and often stunningly human-like. I maintain a list of humourous applications: https://github.com/sublimino/awesome-funny-markov Some favourites: - Erowid trip reports and tech recruiter emails - https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter - Calvin and Markov - Calvin and Hobbes strips reimagined http://joshmillard.com/markov/calvin/ - Generate your future tweets based on the DNA of your existing messages - http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/ - Fake headlines created by smashing up real headlines - https://www.headlinesmasher.com/best/all - The most confusing subreddit (often on the front page) - https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditsimulator The original Markov-generated content prank: "I Spent an Interesting Evening Recently with a Grain of Salt" https://web.archive.org/web/20011101013348/http://www.sincity.com/penn… And of course (un-amusingly!) - Google's PageRank algorithm is built on Markov Chains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#Damping_factor n.b. there used to be parodies of Hacker News, but both are down: https://news.ycombniator.com/ and https://lou.wtf/phaker-news

Closer still: http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/