Almost 20 years ago I had a friend named Stephen Badhwar. He was one year ahead of me at Trent University and we were friends, off and on, for 5 or 6 years.

When I first met Stephen he dressed in crested blue blazers, and had military dioramas in his dining room. Over the years we knew each other, he shifted from that lifestyle into being the manager of a cooperative organic farm and living in a tipi.

Stephen was always interesting, no matter his world-view.

The last time I saw Stephen was on the GO Train from Toronto. We bumped into each other by chance, and had a couple of stops to catch up. He was south from Atlin, BC, where he had established himself, his partner and their young son.

I haven’t seen nor heard from Stephen since then, which was probably 10 years ago.

I’ve done a little Googling, and I’m fairly confident that this letter is from Stephen — mostly, ironically, because I recognize his signature. I’ve dropped him a line, and I’ll see if I can’t renew the acquaintance.

Apropos of my last post, here’s an sample of the same paragraph, part of an earlier post here, rendered in various text-to-speech systems. All samples have been converted to MP3 files (using iTunes) for ease of comparison:

• IBM Text-to-Speech: Unconstrained U.S. English Text Demo
• Male Speaker
• Female Speaker
• AT&T Natural Voices Demo
• Male Speaker (American)
• Female Speaker (American)
• Male Speaker (British)
• Female Speaker (British)
• Festival Voice Demo
• Male Speaker
• Winbond USA TTS Demo
• Female Speaker
• Testen Sie die ATIP Sprachsynthese interaktiv
• Male Speaker
• Female Speaker
• Mac OS X Built-in Speech
• Male Speaker
• Female Speaker
• Robotic Speaker

To my ears, the IBM female voice is the best sounds — it has a certain melodic quality that’s quite pleasant. The AT&T speakers are very good too, if a little over-zealous. Winbond can’t really be faulted for its poor quality — it’s a “TTS on a chip” system, not a general purpose software system.

As an experiment, I’ve begun to translate the posts on this weblog into audio files, using the Festival text-to-speech system.

Festival is a free, open project of The Centre for Speech Technology Research at the University of Edinburgh. The system makes it easy to translate text — like the words in this post — into speech — like that which you’ll hear if you click on the little speaker icon beside the post title, or the “listen” link at the bottom of the post.

The speech isn’t quite “human,” but I’ve found it clear enough to allow me to understand posts. And because I’ve converted the audio files to MP3, it’s possible to dump them onto an audio player, or anything else that one might do with an MP3 file. I’m not intending the audio files to replace the text, simply to offer new ways to manipulate it.

As an aid to experimentation, I’ve also added a new RSS feed that links directly to the audio versions of posts.

I welcome comments.

I’m now on my third cell phone. The first one was a Nokia analog phone the size, relatively speaking, of a brick. I moved up to a digital phone with an AudioVox 4500 about three years ago (Catherine’s using it now), and finally moved to my current phone, a Nokia 3285, about a year ago.

I originally got a cell phone to let my clients contact me in an emergency — it replaced the pager I wore on my belt for the same purpose. It was cheaper than a pager, allowed for longer messages, and it worked in the US, which was a step up. I’ve come to use it, more and more, as an extension of my office phone, especially when I’m traveling.

I’d like to get a new phone, mostly because, as I’ve come to rely on my current one more and more, its weaknesses have become more and more glaring. What follows is a list of the qualities of my “ideal phone.” So far I’ve not found a phone/carrier to match all of these items; I welcome comments and suggestions from the readership on options.

• Coverage across Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown is most important, of course, but I’d like to be able to be reached in Summerside, Cavendish and New London too.
• Roaming coverage in Southern Ontario, Boston, and southern New Hampshire. These are the areas I travel to most frequently, and where a phone absolutely must work.
• Small. I’m tired of big cell phones.
• Works with Apple’s iSync to allow me to synchronize my phone book and calendar. It would be nice if the phone had Bluetooth, but I’m willing to sync with a USB cable. I need at least 500 entries in the phone book; I would prefer 1,000.
• Usable as a modem with my Apple iBook. I don’t have a lot of use for this feature, but there are some times when it would be invaluable.
• Available on a month-to-month plan. I don’t want to sign a contract for service.
• Long battery life. Talk time, which I don’t use a lot of, is less important than standby time: I don’t like to have to worry about plugging in my phone at night, every night.

So far, the only phone that appears to qualify is the Motorola v60 from Aliant (warning: crazy website). Telus Mobility appears to offer the same phone. Rogers has weak Island coverage, and questionable coverage in southern New Hampshire. Fido has no coverage on the Island.

Anyone own a v60? I welcome comments from the field.

Christopher Lydon, who is quickly becoming my favourite broadcaster (narrowcaster?) has recorded an interview with Adam Curry [MP3 file]. Lyndon is a good interviewer; Curry is a good interviewee.

The Zap Your PRAM conference is coming up soon — Oct. 24 to 26. The speakers are getting nailed down, the caterers called, the Internet access arranged. Things, in other words, are coming together nicely.

If you’re interested in coming to the conference, please contact us soon; we’re closing registration on Oct. 14 so that we can get numbers for food, lodging, etc. firmed up.

If you’re interested in weblogs, design, technology, radio, film, or the future, you’ll find a niche at the conference: we’ve got a good mix of Islanders and visitors, and if nothing else I can guarantee that you’ll suffer from a weekend of interesting conversation and good food.

Ian, it seems, has had a busy week too. These are the days that make life worth living.

I’ve heard that line a hundred times. I’m on the phone with customer service talking about my computer order, or my phone bill, or my credit card balance. Things are taking a while. “This computer is really slow today…” or “We’re having some network problems today…” or “Things are really slow here…” are the excuses almost universally offered.

I have only to conclude that the technical infrastructure underlying most of society is serious impaired. Do computers simply not work that well, most of the time?

I met another Ed fan last night — I’ll leave her name out of this in case she doesn’t want to be outed — which was nice, because I thought I was the only one.

Last night’s episode was interesting. I won’t say “bold” or “daring” because it was a trick — a faux documentary being shot about the real faux characters — that has been used before, most prominently by M*A*S*H.

That said, it was an interesting way of dealing with the “new car smell is gone” aspect of Carol and Ed’s relationship, especially as doing it otherwise would probably have been either boring or blechy or both. I continue to be intrigued with the “Ed’s best friend” character — he’s probably got the most untapped depth on the show, and some of it came out last night.

I realize that this is getting dangerously close to becoming a soap opera chat blog. Just be glad you caught me 10 years after my addiction to All My Children — back then I would have been waxing on about Adam Chandler and Erica Kane and Jackson Montgomery. You would have hated it.

Oliver and I walked up Prince St. last night to visit Ann and David, and then Gary. Ann and David are on Granville St., Gary is up and over a bit on Walthen Drive. Both of their houses were without power. The weird thing was that you only had to go a block in either direction (or, in Gary’s case, one house up the street) to find the power back on.

As it was after dark when we trekked from Ann and David’s to Gary’s, and the street lights were on (or not on), the experience of entering and exiting this little corridor of darkness was sort of like stepping back into time.

People inside the Loop of Darkness were hunkered down, throwing out food, talking about the hurricane, fraying at their ends. People outside the Loop were going about their normal business: eating, singing, laughing, watching television.

It’s horrible to be without power. Both because of the practical difficulties that result — cold showers, spoiled food — but also because it smashes us straight into an immovable wall over which we have little or no control.