Sunday 24 January 2010

clean speech

and speaking of phones, love this idea, that the phone can spot swear words in speech to text and replace them with a row of symbols. It reminded me of the story I was told by someone who was happily playing with his child's toy that translated text to speech, seeing how far he could go with typing in obscenities for the toy to declaim. He managed to get quite a few but there were some words that must have been deemed so foul by the designers that the toy would not even attempt to speak them out loud.

I am not sure whether I would want a piece of software to edit swearing out of speech, although on reflection, I can think of a few people I would like to nominate for permanent use of something similar, everytime they open their mouths.

Monday 11 January 2010

breaking the unbreakable phone

I did feel sorry for the poor man from the company that makes the unbreakable phone that gets broken in this clip by the reporter from the BBC. Boys do like a challenge don't they?
This phone is obviously unbreakable in the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable, or that the shoes my son went through in three days were kidproof

Friday 8 January 2010

hardcore gaming granny

I am hoping that 2010 is the year when I catch up with all the things I have started and couldn't finish, partly because of family stuff and partly because I am so easily distracted.
I am hoping to spend a little more time on sorting my blogs this year, and thought that posting something about a hardcore gamer in her seventies was a good start. I read this blog and loved it. Not the stuff about the games, but the great way the blogger talks about grandma. I also love that grandma confounds expectations of how grandmas are meant to behave, as she is so foul-mouthed, speaking as someone who is trying not to swear in front of kids and grandbabies. This women could be a role model for Catherine Tate's Nan.