AI Wishlist: Use email to reply to voicemail

By Robert Ellison.

Google tried this with Duplex, but for the solved use case of making a restaurant booking. The restaurants didn't like it and we didn't need it.

What I want is - transcribe my voicemail and send me an email. During that step drop any obvious spam. If I choose to reply to the email phone the person back, repeatedly, until you get them on the line and convey the reply and take down any response.

This looks like Twilio for the telephony, Whisper for the transcription and OpenAI realtime for the conversation. Do I want it badly enough to build it? Maybe. I should do this first though.

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I can finish a web page in Android 15!

By Robert Ellison.

I have occasionally been critical of Android, so I'm delighted to have something positive to report. For even fairly long articles I can now read the whole thing!

Over the last few updates my phone has become almost useless for reading. I'm probably an edge case in the TikTok era, but reading is important to me. Android has got progressively more psychotic about preserving battery life with Adaptive Battery and the war on background services and numerous other 'enhancements'. If I take my attention away from what I'm reading for a split second Android kills the process, plows salt into the memory it once occupied, and emails the developer to request an environmental impact statement.

In theory none of this should be a problem because Android has an activity lifecycle that tells the app it's going to be hung, drawn and quartered. The app can then save the current state and restore it when the user comes back to the app. Of course many developers can't be bothered with implementing this properly and Google seems to set a very bad example here. Chrome - back to the top of the article for you! Google news - full reload of a fresh slate of stories so the one you were reading isn't even in the list any more.

Android 15 blissfully fixes this and has done more than exercise, diet or beta blockers for my blood pressure.

I hope it's not a regression...

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San Francisco to Shasta Lake

By Robert Ellison.

A hyperlapse of the ~4hour drive from San Francisco to Shasta Lake in California. Shot on Rivian Drive Cam. Details for getting usable footage from that here. Edited in DaVinci Resolve.

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Fix Rivian Drive Cam Distortion

By Robert Ellison.

Rivians have a drive cam feature that will continually record footage from four cameras (front, rear, left and right) while you're driving. It's a built in dash cam which immediately got me excited to make hyperlapse style movies of interesting drives.

My first attempt was very, very sad. Rivian dumps out the footage in some fisheye format that looks terrible. It also often skips frames, so when imported to DaVinci Resolve the dread Media Offline error pops up all the time during playback. Insta360 Studio handles the dropped frames and so I created the hyperlapse there and tried to zoom in enough to fix the fisheye but overall I was very disappointed. Hopefully Rivian fixes the footage or provides some sort of tool to make this feature usable at some point.

Today I wrestled with the problem a bit more deeply and got something working. The image at the top of this post is a drive cam frame that is dramatically improved. The trick is using the lenscorrection filter in ffmpeg. The filter requires k1 and k2 coefficients which I solved for by generating hundreds of videos and eyeballing them, like the horrifying experience of visiting an optician and suspecting that they're going to write your prescription based on your opinion of which letter looks better. After much juggling I settled on -0.45 and 0.11. In terms of command line this translates to:

This re-encoding also has the happy side effect of fixing the dropped frames.

I would love to have some official numbers to plug in (hint, hint Rivian). My Rivian is a 2025 Gen 2 R1S - I have no idea how much the camera module varies between different Rivian variants so this might work for you or might need more fine tuning. Having cracked this I'm currently processing some footage of a trip to Shasta Lake and will post that soon (update - it's here).

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Affording MUNI

By Robert Ellison.

MUNI is headed for a ~$300 million deficit over the next couple of years. A small part of this is my fault. I live where I do for easy access to public transport. I used to take the 28 to work at least three times a week before the pandemic but like many people in San Francisco I now work from home. That's only part of the story though. MUNI decided to let kids ride free, and this is about 15% of their ridership. Many people over 18 decide not to pay as well, and fare dodging is reportedly around 20%. Over a third of passengers are not paying at this point.

As recently as 2021 fares were almost 20% of MUNI's revenue. In the 2024-2025 budget that's down to 8%, $108 million out of a $1.4 billion dollar budget.

In the short term MUNI has to reverse the trend on fares. My kids can afford to pay (at least I can) and a transit system in crisis should not be subsidizing my family's commute. MUNI has added more fare inspectors, and maybe that would help, but other steps could be taken here. MUNI fare gates don't check that you've paid on exiting the system - why not? Busses could enforce boarding at the front and producing payment or proof of payment. We can't have one fifth of users skipping payment. Also, the diverse range of payment methods removes any social pressure to pay. If I board and sit down without tagging I could be a fare dodger or I could have bought and used a mobile pass.

Longer term we need to be less embarrassing. You can't have an It All Starts Here campaign and then install whatever these ugly things are. We're also going to spend $200 million replacing the floppy disks that run light rail (maybe with laserdiscs?). San Francisco is the heart of the AI revolution. We take driverless cars instead of Ubers. MUNI's ballooning costs are largely people. At the very least the light rail system should be fully automated.

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Clikapudi Loop

By Robert Ellison.

A fairly long loop, just over seven miles, next to Shasta Lake. Clikapudi means 'to kill' in Wintu and the name refers to an 1800's battle between local traders and the Wintu Indians. Great views of the lake and some pleasant forest sections. Probably could have done with knocking off a few miles of going around inlets but worth the visit.

Hike starts at: 40.738557, -122.215905. View in Google Earth.

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Waters Gulch Loop Trail

By Robert Ellison.

Short 3.5 mile loop trail next to Shasta Lake. There is a nice spot to have lunch near the water half way round. The final stretch is on a twisty road with no sidewalk but overall a pleasant hike with a range of terrain and views.

Hike starts at: 40.782201, -122.335434. View in Google Earth.

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Time Lapse of the Milky Way over Lake Shasta

By Robert Ellison.

A 4k timelapse of the night sky, including the milky way, shot from Lakehead, California over three nights in late November / early December 2024. Best enjoyed on a big screen in a dark room. Winter has the benefits of long nights and I was delighted to be in a dark place with no full moon for a change. You don't get the galactic core like you do in the summer though. Check out this Jasper version for the summer view.