BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Okay, folks…

You’ll be seeing something new on the blog posts these days… It looks a little something like this:

In fact, there is probably an icon just exactly like this one sitting just below the title of this very blog post. Uncanny, eh?

Well, you see, it’s like this… There is a plug in for WordPress which allows your blog posts to be converted to audio via a text to speech converter. Granted, it isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, it pronounces E K as Eck… and when I write one of my thoughtful pauses into a post… one which should sound and read something like a long hum… the converter stumbles over that with a hrrrmmmmm as you just heard.

I suppose this all means I will have to start adjusting my spelling on some things… However, I have already noticed that it doesn’t necessarily pronounce some normal everyday words all that well. And, I am not about to start spelling things phonetically just for the sake of the converter.

Still, like I said, although it isn’t perfect, it is a far cry better than the garbled phoneme spewing “Doctor Sbaitso” program that came with the original sound cards back in the day… read, prehistoric computer era.

But, what makes it totally excellent and incredibly cool is the fact that it now allows Brainpan Leakage to be listened to as well as read. This means you can subscribe to B L via Odiogo… the service that does the conversion… and download the entries as MP3’s or as sound files on your iPod. If listening is your preference, of course… Me, I prefer reading, especially since I stick pictures and even an occasional music link in my posts.

Either way, you’ll probably still want to subscribe to the notifications via the blog itself. That way, you’ll be able to click your way over here and read the entry whenever the text to speech converter stumbles a bit.

Anyhow, you can do the audio subscribing thing below. Or, you can find the same link in the Networked Blogs section of the menu on the right side panel.

Okay… I have some other words to write, so I’ll sign off. And never fear… Just because I am rambling now, it doesn’t mean the schedule has changed.  The next installment of… let’s see if this works… Maa waage… still deploys tomorrow.

More to come…

Murv

… ADDENDUM: Well, I edited this after the sound file had been generated, so if you listen you will notice that a couple of sentences are skipped… Also, my Mahwage substitute didn’t fare any better… Oh well. Apparently machines can’t speak with a lisp.

… ADDENDUM 2: Apparently the service re-gens updated versions of the file… I did not know that. Way cool.

Just a quick note here… I mean, after all, the next installment of Mahwage deploys tomorrow, and I’m sure you don’t need me cluttering up the flow of the series with too much rambling…

Anywho, I received an email or two about the chimp with the gun “avatar” on my replies to your comments – you will also notice that a few other folks have interesting little pictures too, whereas the bulk of you have a generic smiley face emoticon type of thing.

The emails have pretty much been kind of Steve Martinish, (if you remember his old standup routines of the 70’s… Yeah… I do…)

“Hey… …Murv… …Is there some way that I… …can have an avatar… …too?”

Well, yeah, actually, you can… You see WordPress supports something called “Gravatar” which is a site that allows you to set up a free account and “link” an avatar to your email address. It’s quick, easy, and completely painless, (unless you have trouble deciding on your avatar that is)… It will even let you upload several different avatars and assign them ratings (i.e. motion picture style – G, PG, R, X), and blogs which support it will filter which avatar is used based on it’s inherent “content rating” as set up by the author/blogger.

Kinda cool, eh?

So, for those of you wanting to have something other than the generic smiley face thing that I set up as the default, there you go. Easy like pie. Or cake. Or whatever…

Gravatar can be found here: http://en.gravatar.com/

… Anyway, if you don’t do the Gravatar thing, it’s no biggie to me. Your comments will just continue to be tagged with the emoticon guy… Unless I get squirrely and change it… and, well, you know how I tend to get squirrely every now and then…

Bwuh ha ha ha ha ha ha! 

More to come…

Murv