Axodys

AppleScript: Automated Audio Blogging

When I first stumbled across this link I didn’t fully comprehend what it was talking about. I’m familiar with the concept of audio blogging (basically including a sound file of yourself reading a particular entry in addition to the entry), but the next step hadn’t occurred to me. That is to say, having the computer examine your text, convert it into speech using a voice of your choice, then converting that output into mp3 format and uploading it onto your weblog. Very clever.

At lunch today I decided to install the latest version of Zope after reading about a cool package that allows you to edit objects in the text browser of your choice. I found a binary package for MacOS X downloaded it, saw that it came with Python 2.1, and promptly decided that I should really just download the source and compile it myself since Jaguar comes with Python 2.2 preinstalled plus gcc 3.1. This made perfect sense to me at the time and I was all set to start jumping through the compile hoops when I realized there was a reason the binary distribution included Python 2.1; Zope 2.5.1 has some incompatibilities with Python 2.2.

Doh! Back to the binary package.

The zope installation was actually quite painless as I’ve done it a few times before (but not in quite a while). I (./start &)ed zope up, created a user for myself and promptly realized that the package I wanted to install on zope requires tkinter.

Groan. Do I really want to install Fink/XDarwin? Well, not now that lunch is over.

Based on my own rough estimates, I drove approximately 360 square drive wood screws today in the course of installing 90 cedar planks in our new fence. Thank goodness for cordless drills. Can you imagine doing something like that by hand? I imagine that’s why hammer and nails reigned supreme for so many years.

The fence is looking great, but there’s still quite a bit left to be done before we can close the door on this project. Building the gate is definitely going to be a bit involved, but it will be very handy to have in back when we need access to the alley. We still need to install a corner fence post as well, but Mary’s dad will be taking care of that tomorrow. I’d like to be able to work on it some more tomorrow, but I have a feeling I could be tied up with some work related projects for most of the day.