Geeky Cat Miusings

Parenting is a difficult endeavor and so parents are trying to keep tabs on their kids with whatever means is available to them: by giving them cell phones to find out where they are, by looking at the browser history log to see what sites the kids visit online, and soon they will be giving them an ultrasonic toothbrush with on-board Wi-Fi to connect to the home network and report on the child’s brushing. Many kids don’t like to brush their teeth so they will skip the whole process or sometimes they will brush only the front teeth so that they will successfully pass any rudimentary inspection. They won’t be able to cheat with this toothbrush because it will report to the caregiver how long the toothbrush is used for, the oscillation frequency, whether the bristles made contact, and any indication of bad breath. Okay… but I can see why they wouldn’t call it an iBrush: because it could be referring to a technology enhanced mascara(eye-brush).

But I would love to see that technology used to help me improve my teeth brushing regime and this is what I think it should be able to do. Perhaps the iBrush could tell me if I have brushed all areas of every tooth with equal pressure and a sufficient amount of time. While the toothbrush is brushing my mouth couldn’t it also be scanning for any problem areas such as cavities or gingivitis and send me a warning e-mail (along with phone number) to contact my dentist and set the task up in my calendar? A good toothbrush could prevent a lot problems by detecting the number of bacteria in the mouth and give a warning signal if the harmful bacteria grow out of control which can lead to periodontitis, a serious gum infection. Could it possibly send out warning signals whenever I go to the candy bowl and eat a couple of sweets? How about making it customizable with several different levels of warning such as discreet beeps for the lowest level of warning, for medium warning level it can play The Candy Man, and for the highest warning level it can emit a screeching sound like the dentist’s drill? Maybe I am on to something here… if the toothbrush is also an mp3 player there is no need for the toilet paper dispenser with iPod Dock. If the iBrush could do all this I would be all set - except for one thing…..any guesses?

I would be ever so grateful if they could make an iBrush for kitties - something that would make them happy to have this thing poking in their mouths because it is ever so hard to brush their teeth.

During my teenage years I used to read books about graphology and how handwriting analysis reveals the writer’s personality. It used to be fun to look at my friend’s handwriting and see if the analysis in the graphology book matched up with their personality as I knew it. There is more to graphology than just entertainment: some companies use it in the personnel selection field, police departments use it in assessing the personality of potential criminals, attorneys have used it (i.e., jury selection), teachers have found it helpful in understanding their students (and you thought the teacher was just interested your the content). Handwriting analysis looks at characteristics such as pressure, connecting strokes, letter height, slant of line and so much more. I was hoping to find an online handwriting analyzer but all I have come across so far is a site that asks you to look at your paper handwriting sample and answer a series of 50 questions to describe the writing style.

There are other methods of personality analysis such as drawing a pig. Try it, it is a lot of fun!

After you have drawn your pig (don’t forget to send me the link to your pig), have a look at some of these:
Warren’s Pig
Tony’s Pig
Geeky Cat’s Pig

More Interesting Tools….

This blog is written with Google Docs, a Web-based word processor application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online and post them to their blog. You can edit your document while collaborating in real-time with other users.

Even a geek loves poetry but does not always have the time or inspiration to pen a poetic stanza. So I turned to the internet for a solution and this is what I found: Bad Poetry Generator. The effort required is minimal (which a geek is always short of) - all you need to do is enter the first line of the poem and hit the Groove button and it spews forth some pretty interesting poetry. Poetry is subjective so only you can decide if it is bad or not - here is a helpful hint for you to make judgment on a piece of poetry - if it touches you then it is good poetry. Here is my geeky poetry:

Diana is a geeky cat
The Leprechaun told me he saw it rolling down fifth street
but young enough to bat
I slowly licked the bottom of her rosy feet

and here is another:

Diana is a geeky cat
So save my soul, you creature of the night
allright, what did you do with the cat
My jacket was put on way too tight

And catch this daddio:

There is no space in time
and gasping for air is all you can do
too bad you’ll never have a clue
slipping slowly over my satin shoes

Ever wonder how you would look like as a blond, or as the opposite gender, or what you would look like as you age (though I was really put off by that thought when I watched Honey We’re Killing the Kids - they show how kids get fat and ugly supposedly because of the way the parents are raising the kids. Ever wonder why the kids looked so much uglier than their parents when they were aged?). Perhaps you wonder how you would sound if you were the opposite sex or maybe you just want to hear your voice at a different pitch: a sexy deep voice or as a youth. Well, you can and it is free. Listen to this:

Yes, that is me reading my blog and no, I did not have a sex change.

Here’s how to do the same. Audacity is open source recording and sound editing software that is really neat to use. Installation is simple. If you want create an mp3 you will need to download the LAME MP3 encoder: after downloading, just unzip the file and place the lame_enc.dll some where on your computer. I find it easiest to save it in my Audacity folder (C:\Program Files\Audacity 1.3 Beta) so that I can easily find it at any time.

Open Audacity and set the project rate to 11025 Hz at the lower left corner. Plug in your microphone into your computer and test your sound levels. You need to plug your microphone into the microphone-in or line-in socket on your sound card. With your mic plugged in, you now need to do some tests to make sure you get a good audio level. To do this you will need to check your volume and gain settings for the mic/line-in jack and make some simple recordings. To record in Audacity, just press the red record button and speak into the microphone. Hit the yellow stop button and then press the green play button to play the recording back. You may need to adjust the volume settings for your operating system and tweak them to raise or decrease the volume. What you want is a good level with little or no distortion.

When your are satisfied with the settings create a new project in Audacity (Ctrl + n) and hit the red recording button. Wait a few seconds and speak into the microphone. Hit the stop button when you are finished speaking. You can see the waveform of your recording in the main track area.

Play it back. Do you like it? You can edit the recording to remove any unwanted noise and mistakes by playing the audio until you reach the part you wish to edit and then use your mouse to select the unwanted sound and cut it (Ctrl + x).

Once you are finished editing make sure you have saved the project (File > Save Project As) so that you do not lose your work. Now let’s change the pitch. Select the part you want to change. In my case it was the whole track so to select all go to Edit > Select > All. Then select Effect > Change Pitch… and the Change Pitch dialogue box will give you an estimate of the current pitch in the from pull down menu (my pitch was A). I wanted to lower my pitch so I clicked on the down radio button and then selected A#/Bb from the to pull down menu. Click OK and Audacity will do its magic. Audacity does have a preview button but I found it to be slower than just processing the whole effect - it is easy enough to undo what you have just done. Click the play button to hear your sexy deep voice. If you like what you hear you can save your recording as a mp3 File > Export As > MP3. If this is the first time you are saving as an mp3 you may need to indicate where the lame_enc.dll is.

And that is it. Now go ahead and try to lower or raise the pitch of your voice with Audacity and please share your transgendered voice with me.

I can’t believe it — blogging turns 10 and yet it seems like a fairly recent phenomenon to most people. It has spiked in popularity in the last couple of years with an estimated 100 million bloggers having their say online and many people joining in everyday.

Who is the father of the blog is currently in hot dispute and some people wonder who has the time to read all these blogs. I enjoy reading my friend’s blogs to find out what is going on in their lives, their thoughts on issues, their struggles, their humour and their quirks. I wish I could post my comments to all their blogs because I feel blocked out when they don’t enable comments.

But, wow, I can’t believe blogs have been around for 10 years –I think I first touched a computer for the first time just 10 years ago. I think that makes me a baby geek

I understand that some of you can not see my new favicon. You may need to delete your browser’s cache which is known as the Temporary Internet Files folder. The browser stores items you have seen, or downloaded from the Web, including images, sounds, and Web pages to make browsing the Web faster: the browser will display elements in your cache instead of taking the time to download the files from the remote server. This means you may not always be seeing the latest information on the Web.

To clear you cache on Internet Explorer 7: go to the Tools menu and select Internet Options. Under the General tab select Delete… and then hit Delete files… for Temporary Internet Files.

To clear your cache on Mozilla Firefox 2: go to the Tools menu and select Clear Private Data… Make sure Cache is selected and hit the Clear Private Data button.

Restart your browser to see the latest Web page.

Thanks for reading my blog,
kitty

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

~Jane Austen

Some Italians celebrate saint’s day — it is customary to wish people well, and perhaps give a gift on the day the saint with whom they share their name — called Onomastico in Italian. March 19 is St. Joseph’s Day and Italians traditionally eat zeppole, a fried pastry that can be filled with ricotta or cream or covered with honey. Well, mom and I thought we should should get in on the celebrations and I bought a couple of fritters and we indulged ourselves by splitting them in two so that we both can have a taste of the ricotta and the cream (crema ) fritter.

I have never celebrated my Name Day - I always believed that there was no Saint Diana. But thanks to the Internet, I know now that I too have a Name Day: June 10—in honor of St. Diana of Andalò of Bologna. Maybe I will celebrate my Onomastico this year — I will need to have a traditional Diana dessert — what could it be???

My Podcast

See that little image of a cat next to my website’s URL in the address bar above? The little cat face is called a Favicon: a little custom icon that I made. It helps to visually identify your site - besides showing up in the address bar it will also display beside the page title when the page is saved as a bookmark and next to the page’s title in a tabbed browser.

One way to create the icon is by downloading this free plugin for Photoshop. Here is a link to a very good tutorial for creating favicons with Photoshop: http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/favicon.html. There are also tutorials and plugins for creating the icon in Fireworks.

GoLive CS2 is able to make the icon without the need to install any plugins and it has the capability to create different sizes for the icon if your Photoshop source file has layers or layer sets as stated in this tutorial. This method has the added advantage of using the smart object technology - whenever you update the original image the icon will update as well.

The easiest way to make a favicon is by going to this site http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ and uploading the image you want to convert - it will convert it to an icon for you to upload to your site.

While you can use a regular gif image for the favicon, it is best to use the icon format since it is recognized by all browsers. The icon format can hold several different images, all in one file with simpler images for different colour depths or larger images for placement on the desktop. See for yourself — drag the cat icon from the address bar to your desktop: the desktop image is twice the size of the image in the url. And now you have a shortcut to my website