Maker Fair’s Idea of a Photobooth May 17, 2015
Posted by stuffilikenet in Geek Stuff, Mutants, Photography.add a comment
Souvenir May 13, 2015
Posted by stuffilikenet in Music, Toys, Uncategorizable.add a comment
My stepdaughter has been out and on her own for a year or more and very successful, too. She took most of her stuff with her when she went, but I found this in the attic yesterday, and it brought back a bunch of memories of her teen years, when she found my electric guitar (a gift from a friend; thank you, Shabnam) and started noodling with it. Eventually she became good enough to write songs and I was just as proud as any father could be…but somewhere along the way I bought her this:
Cute, isn’t it? Battery-powered and takes standard jacks 
Perfect for Father’s Day–except that my kid has the guitar. 😦
OctoTranslator May 11, 2015
Posted by stuffilikenet in Applications, Awesome, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Star Trek Technology.add a comment
is my latest app in the Google Play store (in fact my second). It is intended to help language learners create custom flash cards for use with Anki, which is possibly the best free flashcard program for Android phones (also available on iPhones, but who has those?).
OctoTranslator can take input from your microphone in any language your phone recognizes and can translate it to any language your phone can pronounce (this is called OctoTranslator because I used to have seven languages choices other than English…but I got upgrades, and so did OctoTranslator), by sending it to Microsoft Bing for translation (the same algorithm used in Skype). It can return a text-only translation or it can read it to you using your Android phone’s TTS, which is pretty robust these days. The real fun is saving to a data card to be mailed to you all zipped up in a single file, suitable for importing into Anki.
This is free. I would like reviews and testing, so feel free to take it and play with it, especially you Anki users, and lovers of foreign tongues (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”).
I must say I had fun testing this (I seem to have a macabre sense of humor when it comes to test phrases. People overhearing me say things like “Spanish eyes is not really a casserole” and “Is your Mexican food made with real Mexicans?” make for real head-turning fun in line at the bank. Takes the shine off it when they realize I’m joking, more’s the pity).
Get it here. (Offer not good after curfew in sectors R or M).
EXCITING, HORRIBLE UPDATE:
Octotranslator has died; “ArgumentException: Invalid authentication token. Microsoft DataMarket is retired. Please subscribe to Microsoft Translator, in the Cognitive Services section at https://portal.azure.com. Please visit https://cognitive.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1128340-announcements-action-required-before-april-30-20 to find detailed instructions. :” is the result.
I knew I should have paid Google instead.
EXCITING, WONDERFUL UPDATE:
Octotranslator has been reborn. I went with Google Translation’s APIs, so you may continue. I fixed a few glitches along the way, but users will not have noticed any of them anyway.
Stuffilike.net 