Patrick Roberts

Flying

Computer Generate a Good Audio Book

I first tried another text-to-speech program, TextAloud, but the result was too poorly phrased to bear. The program didn't even interpret multiple blank lines as a new paragraph. It would just say the words on both sides of the space without any pause between. Stupid.

via www.mindmaking.info

On the blog for my book, I shared a script that uses speech synthesis to automatically record an audio book from a text file, phrasing and pronouncing it well.

Convert OpenOffice.org Writer / HTML to Kindle

 

The ebookmaker.py that I recently posted now also helps you to publish your book on Kindle. The script makes a zip of a specially formatted HTML file of your book, plus resized images, that you can upload to Amazon's DTP. Judging from the preview of my book, the conversion works well.

Luckily Kindle now supports non-US authors.

Convert OpenOffice.org Writer / HTML to ePub

I found no easy way to make a decent-looking ePub, the standard ebook format, from my book (sadly) composed in OpenOffice.org Writer. Seeing an excuse to stop writing passive prose, to write living code, I sketched a script that makes an ePub from the HTML that Writer exports:

ebookmaker.py

Example: python ebookmaker.py mybook.html

This produces mybook-clean.xhtml -- clean simple HTML of your book that you can paste into your blog or wherever -- and a mybook.epub containing resized images.

The script starts with a table of options to personalize. Those options probably don't yet offer enough control to make the script work perfectly with other books, depending on how the formatting differs from mine, but if you know a little Python and regular expressions, you can adjust the rest.

Do you know a better tool? I tried a few other converters, such as Stanza, but the results were hideous.

Let me know if you use this. It wasn't much fun to write. ePub uses XHTML, which is XML, which, if you can imagine, is the kind of formal language that a herd of UN lawyers would design.

Now that I have my ePub version, do you know any popular sites to share it on?

Safely Offer Open WiFi

I got sick of typing and retyping a 26 letter WPA key every time I or a guest brought a new wireless device to the house. There must be a way to offer unsecured WiFi while protecting my home wired network. Network segmentation - or is it segregation? - seems to be the solution. Here's how I did it.

Connect your DSL or Cable modem to the router that will offer open WiFi. Set its local IP to 10.0.0.1. The two routers must be on different subnets. They can't both use 192.168.1.x addresses.

Connect the WAN port of the 2nd router to any LAN port of the 1st. Set its WAN IP address to 10.0.0.2. Obviously, the DHCP server on the 1st router should be set not to use that address. Set the gateway and DNS to 10.0.0.1.

My second router had a few port forwards. To spare duplicating those all in the 1st router, I simply set the 1st router's DMZ to 10.0.0.2, the address of the 2nd router.

If you're a network security expert, let me know of any flaws.

(Graph drawn using yEd.)

Fric & Frac (The Ladybugs) by Christiane Walch

via fricnfracladybugs.blogspot.com

Quantum Spin

Two days ago I visited the Quantum 2 Cosmos exhibit at the Perimeter Institute.

They severely exaggerated the quantum computer display. More of a poorly presented quantum flip-flop.

On the upside, there was a gimbal rig motion simulator.

Book Cover Concept

Too classy?

Simple Secure Remote Backup by E-mail

(Photo: bydo)

mailbak.py - a short command-line Python script. It zips the given files, encrypts the archive with GPG and e-mails it to your preferably large mailbox.

Aristotle, Politics, I.4

"For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others ... if the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves."

Emerson

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration had broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not a literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned... The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things, as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits."