There’s a new text-to-speech voice with Leopard that is really good:

• open the control panel
• open “speech”
• select “alex” as the voice

Now, this doesn’t work with Firefox, but it does with Safari. to use it:

• go to a webpage you want spoken (news pages work well).
• select the text you want read.
• go to the “safari” menu
• go to menu item “services”
• go near the bottom for sub menu item “speech”
• select “start speaking text”

It’s not perfect, but if you need to do something else and still catch up on blogs, news, whatever, it’s good enough that the point will get conveyed.

(Listen to this post through the voice)

I’ve watched this skit three times now. Granted, Hulu doesn’t have full SNL episodes, but the skits they’ve been releasing are pretty good. Perhaps a new era for the show?

And let’s not forget the gardening tips from a man who is scared of plants:

Wired has a piece on a newly created electrical component: The memresistor. Originally conjectured in the 70’s, HP has finally created one and this component will join the transistor, the capacitor and the resistor as a basic component of electronics. As the memresistor remembers how much charge has gone through it, it can be used for fuzzy computing applications that require more than 1/0, on/off binary. My knowledge of physics is not highly advanced, but it seems this will provide a revolution in computing… this would be perfect for neural nets which heavily use summations.

It’s good to see that after all of these years people are still interested in Superchunk! So interested that the mere mention of them holding a free show with some new band (I haven’t really heard of them: the Arcade Fire?) will prompt huge lines to form in hopes of a ticket.

I got a flier in the mail that asked me if I had seen this 64 year old woman who had been missing since 1958. It begs the question, are kids ever retired from the missing kid database? If this 64 year old woman is out there somewhere, doesn’t she have he own life by now? After all, she’s been missing for 50 years. Who will bee notified if she is found? Her parents? Wouldn’t they be around 90 by now? Aren’t there kids who have gone missing more recently and more locally whose photos can fill my mailbox? Really, is this organization so hurting for a reason to give Stanley Steemer some ad space that they had to dig in there database half a century and over a thousand miles from my time and location?

…Curtains of Night, Bellafea… Some good music has been at the Local 506 the past couple of days. It was absolutely great to finally see Wembly. Robosapien will school anyone when it comes to bringing the party. Curtains of Night have that unique mix of stoner rock and hardcore that I was instantly in love with… And Bellafea finally has a full-length album!

Here’s a shot of Wembly:

Here’s a shot of Robosapien.

I just saw 15 snakes on my run!