Comforts

Happy Slip is an example of the talent and creativity that's out there and being produced independently. This is pretty much a one-woman show: written, directed, acted and edited by her. Her videos are so funny. Greate job, Christine. And I'll always remember to wear my happy slip!

Well, this page has been missing since the site's beginning until now. What comforts can I share with you? Well, while hardly a comfort, I do have a calculator I've been working on (on and off) for a while now. I figured I might as well put it here. I've wanted to be able to program (computer programming—what other kind of programming would I be talking about? :-) ) for a while. When Java came around I figured I'd give it a try. It purported to be easy as well, which I thought was nice.
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Well, I struggled through it, I even made it school work. It's not totally complete. The buttons do not work, sometimes the display gets a few extra numbers (or boxes) in it, and sometimes the number positions are a bit messed up as well. I figure I'd have to start over again to get it working correctly. Currently, the code is at 1180 lines (a bit too much for me to keep track of :-\ ). So, if I do attempt it, I'd definitely take a page from "professional" coders and create documentation and outline class or method definitions. I'm doing much better now, however with my latest projects.

On a related note, my friends find it fun when I use AppleScript to to create cool (and fun!) speech responses to voice commands. The following examples work in AppleScript. I'm not sure with which version of AppleScript (or Mac OS) you could start scripting speech from.

Say "I like talking to you too!"

(Use "Speak" instead of "Say" for Mac OS 8.1 and below.)

Then save as an application, name it "I like talking to you." You can put it in the "Speakable Items" folder in the Apple Menu in OS 9,  In Mac OS X in your Home folder -> Library -> Speech -> Speakable Items; or just click on it in the Finder and say "Make this speakable" (with speech recognition on, of course).

Now try saying "I like talking to you." Did it work? Cool, huh?

I've been putting some of this stuff to use. If you take the time to read the Dictionary, there's a lot you can learn about doing. Also, there are many tips online. I came accross a script that let you "record" you Mac's voice to a file. I was able to put together a program to make it easy to use. Here's what I have so far: Speech to Audio. It requires Mac OS X.

Cool Stories

Here's a story (archive) about a stolen iMac and how, with the help of Timbuktu and AppleScript, it was recovered.