Technorama

This weekend I was following up on an idea that was burning a hole in the back of my brain. I wanted to find out how to create my own voices for my TomTom ONE GPS unit. A little Google searching and I came up with this fine gem courtesy of Graeme Lucas in the UK.

The process is pretty simple if you’ve dealt with audio before. If not, the instructions are very complete and you should have no problems. It only takes Audacity (free), a knowledge of what phrases to say and what to call them, and convert them in to the CHK file (Graeme provides a utility for free). I was quite happy with the result although I did have to tweak a few of the audio clips to make it sound more natural. This afternoon I took the girls to the movie and my voice navigated us there and back. Now it’s time to do some character voices!

If you have a TomTom and would like to load my voice, download it and copy it to the /voices folder on your TomTom unit. Using Microsoft Explorer, the TomTom will show up as a drive letter. Again, full details are on Graeme’s site.

Have fun and let me know if you create any TomTom files of interest. We can setup our own exchange if this works well. Now to get to work on some character scripts…

This week is Shark Week on Discovery and one of our favorite shows, Mythbusters is going all out. If you’re a Mythbusters fan, you’ve GOT to see the shows this week.

Let me tell you, I’m a SCUBA diver from way back, and some of the stuff they’re doing – well, I wouldn’t do it. One of the myths they had was that lights make sharks more aggressive while diving at night. Grant, Tory, and Kari were in the water at night with a bunch of (blue?) sharks and they were getting pretty aggressive. I had to imagine myself in that same situation feeling the panic instinct starting to kick in. No thank you!

Adam, on the other hand, had a much more enjoyable time testing a myth about sharks being repelled by hot chili peppers. I won’t tell you the outcome, but Adam found the whole thing very enjoyable safely from within a steel cage.

There were several more tests all done with the same skill and entertainment value that you’ve come to expect from the Mythbusters. Go and check them all out!

If you haven’t caught our previous interviews with Grant Imahara and Adam Savage. Several years later and they’re still fun to listen to!

The last Friday in July is designated as Systems Administrator’s day by http://sysadminday.com. I first learned about this on the now defunct podcast In The Trenches. Since then I’ve made sure to do something nice (usually pizza for lunch) for my Sys Admins. This is the first year since I found out that I don’t have any direct reports of my own. Spread the word, say thank you to your own systems administrator(s) – they’ll appreciate it.