Juxtapose and go, “Hmm …”

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From The Star:

And just below that:

Well, it made me chuckle.

May

31

Elsewhere on the web

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Blogging Ultima. [via]
“The purpose is to blog the experience of playing the now-defunct Ultima series by Origin Systems (plus a few other names here and there) from beginning to end.” I will now shamefully confess I never managed to finish a single Ultima game and since it would probably be nine kinds of different hell to get those games running under Windows XP, this is as close as I’m going to get.

Guild Wars guild of the week: Elite Deaf Team.
“… when a group of deaf players got tired of trying to find groups that didn’t use voice-chat software, they decided to come together and form the Elite Deaf Team.”

Firefox updated.
Patch the browser to version 2.0.4 by selecting the “Check for Updates …” option under Firefox’s Help drop-down menu. The release notes mention security fixes so don’t dawdle.

Manchester United to sign Nani.
We should see a few more spectacular goals and celebrations at Old Trafford if this video is any indication.

May

31

Make Windows XP talk and cuss

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What, you didn’t know Windows XP could do speech? To be perfectly candid, I had completely forgotten about this text-to-speech feature but was reminded of it when trying out WordWeb 5.

The feature is called (oddly enough) Speech and it can be found in Windows XP’s Control Panel. Click on the “Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices” category then click on the Speech icon. You should see this Speech Properties window:

Click on the Preview Voice button to preview the boring standard text (i.e. “You have selected Microsoft Sam as the computer’s default voice.”) Replace the standard text with your own and hit the Preview Voice button to hear the Windows Text-to-Speech engine read it out.

I recommend Insult Monger’s list of Hokkien phrases because it’s been scientifically proven that Hokkien obscenities are especially hilarious when read out by a robotic American voice. Some creative transliteration may be needed to get the pronunciation correct and you may also have to increase the Voice speed setting a few notches to make it sound natural.

Go wild.

(I did the exact same thing 15 years ago with Dr SBaitso, the speech synthesis application bundled with Creative’s Sound Blaster soundcard. What can I say? I’m easily amused.)