Unfortunately, "ransom" was not on the list. February 9, 2013 11:46 AM   Subscribe


Hurm.
posted by vrakatar at 11:49 AM on February 9, 2013


Oh man, that works a bit better than I expected.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:54 AM on February 9, 2013


ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.
posted by The Whelk at 11:54 AM on February 9, 2013 [6 favorites]


(having some firefox issues, should work in chrome. will fix firefox asap)
posted by dmd at 11:56 AM on February 9, 2013


You might want to make that word list a little more readable though if you want people to be able to check for whether the words they want to use are actually in the list. And/or do some slick ajaxy real-time word-completion-list dealiebobber so it's obvious when they're writing a rogue word.

For context for like everyone else, I recorded the first thousand or so words on the mefi word frequency tables back in like 2011 because dmd asked for it on a whim. Apparently he finally did something with that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:57 AM on February 9, 2013


The real-time word-completion-list dealiebobber was originally the idea, which is why I stole the code from up goer five, but I couldn't get the js to work.

Better JS minds than mine (which is basically everyone) are more than welcome to send me patches.
posted by dmd at 12:00 PM on February 9, 2013


I'm confused as all hell
posted by sweetkid at 12:02 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


If anyone wants to do something better with this, here's all the word sound files.
posted by dmd at 12:05 PM on February 9, 2013


Finally, the fool-proof way to read poetry onstage!
posted by The Whelk at 12:08 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


> For context for like everyone else, I recorded the first thousand or so words on the mefi word frequency tables back in like 2011 because dmd asked for it on a whim. Apparently he finally did something with that.

You seem to mispronounce MeFi!
"Pronounce" wasn't in the list
posted by bjrn at 12:09 PM on February 9, 2013 [5 favorites]


Apparently he finally did something with that.

But what did he do? I don't understand.
posted by sweetkid at 12:11 PM on February 9, 2013


sweetkid: Type stuff in the box. Press Speak. It reads it in cortex's voice, assuming you used one of the top 1000 words used on metafilter. If it doesn't have the word, it just skips that word.

If anyone can tell me why it doesn't work (sometimes) in Firefox, I'd be grateful.
posted by dmd at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2013


He cut up all the individual words in the word list I recited, indexed them against the word list, and created a little javascript toy that will speak in a stilted, uninflected, vocabulary-poor simulation of me for arbitrary text entered.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2013


Weird. That. Was. to. Hear.
posted by infini at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


I like the pauses between words when played on my iPad. It gives tension and deliberation to the sentence being spoken.
posted by birdherder at 12:14 PM on February 9, 2013


Between the audio from the Metafilter podcasts and the transcripts, one might be able to expand the word list.
posted by RichardP at 12:22 PM on February 9, 2013


The real challenge is, can you have cortex explain your job using only the ten hundred most common words?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:28 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Please help make it better! on github
posted by dmd at 12:29 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Great, now I just need "Josh" "Millard" "passport" and "verify."
posted by klangklangston at 12:31 PM on February 9, 2013 [36 favorites]


Unfortunately, "ransom" was not on the list.

Leave. The. money. Near. The . Fountain. I. Will. Be. Watching.
posted by The Whelk at 12:36 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Between the audio from the Metafilter podcasts and the transcripts, one might be able to expand the word list.

Really, if someone wanted to do all the extra work (the bulk of which I think would be in just slicing up the damn word list recording into word-sized bits and indexing them), the simplest thing would be for me to just read more words. It's not terribly exciting stuff but it's not very time consuming either.

Other random thoughts, for potential extenders:

- Starting the playback of sample n a little bit before the end of playback of sample n-1 would pep up playback speed a little and get rid of some of the gaps.

- Having a link generated for a given phrase to make it easy to link would be fun. Right now I guess you'd just have to hack the url manually.

- A failover mode for unidentified words where it plays a short white noise sample or a bleep could help preserve the illusion of flexibility even when it doesn't know a word.

- Parsing some basic punctuation for pauses and maybe rough inflection could be fun: turn commas into short pauses, periods/exclamation points/question marks/colons/semi-colons into longer pauses, and use a pitch shift to turn terminal words down a little and interrogatives up.

Obviously none of that will change it being a fundamentally silly approach to speech synthesis, but hey.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:37 PM on February 9, 2013




You need to import words from Metafilter Insult Jazz
posted by jozxyqk at 12:47 PM on February 9, 2013 [4 favorites]


I just played the Fuck mp3, well said dear cortex
posted by wheelieman at 12:55 PM on February 9, 2013


I was all disappointed that it wan't working for me, and then figured, ok, maybe lol isn't a commonly used word. Let's take lol out. So I did. But it still didn't work. Typed something else and it did work. So now I'm all disappointed about a whole new thing:

cortex, how come butts isn't one of your most commonly used words? I feel like you've really dropped the ball here.
posted by phunniemee at 1:00 PM on February 9, 2013


Hey, this was based on aggregate word frequency across the site. If butts is not common enough in that context, the blame falls with everyone but me.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:01 PM on February 9, 2013 [6 favorites]


"Dump the motherfucker already" doesn't work either. :(
posted by JanetLand at 1:01 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Cortex's Biff Tannen impression.
posted by jozxyqk at 1:04 PM on February 9, 2013




cortex teaches counting
and world domination
posted by beryllium at 1:13 PM on February 9, 2013


Something about the emphatic recording of the word 'that' makes me laugh. It could be a funky new beat!
posted by winna at 1:35 PM on February 9, 2013


Apparently, Robocortex cannot say "cats." This is impossible to fathom.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:43 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I was also hoping to get "Damn your pony" to work also, but no dice.

Although, if someone could get it to read the Chose Your Own Adventure post from yesterday, I would love them to an unseemly degree.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:53 PM on February 9, 2013


Until you record the word "Jessamyn," my slashfic audio novel isn't going to work out.
posted by xingcat at 2:09 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


This. Is. Pretty. Great. Actually.
posted by desuetude at 2:25 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Aw, man. Both "plate" and "beans" are missing from the cortex codex.
posted by subbes at 2:35 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


metafilter is a website that has many links to lots of other ones often with similar or related links put together with each other and where various people post comments to talk about the links

but i wish i could end this with

VICTORY END
posted by Flunkie at 2:38 PM on February 9, 2013


I cannot believe "trigger" and "warning" weren't in there. There goes my plan to record that to be my text message alert when my parents text me.
posted by kimberussell at 2:41 PM on February 9, 2013 [5 favorites]


Bug report: typing "eight" causes it to say "eighty".
posted by Flunkie at 2:47 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh yes, just in time for the MeFi Swap mix CDs.
posted by maryr at 2:52 PM on February 9, 2013


Thanks, Obama.
posted by maryr at 3:03 PM on February 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


LobsterMitten: "The real challenge is, can you have cortex explain your job using only the ten hundred most common words?"

That's easy!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 3:42 PM on February 9, 2013 [14 favorites]


Here's the list in human-readable form.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 3:46 PM on February 9, 2013


Flunkie: Thanks, fixed. Apparently we have eighty, but not eight.
posted by dmd at 4:15 PM on February 9, 2013


This seemed appropriate.
posted by Lexica at 4:19 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


I am 12 years old.
posted by deborah at 4:23 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


LobsterMitten: "The real challenge is, can you have cortex explain your job using only the ten hundred most common words?"

Risk management.
posted by Lexica at 4:25 PM on February 9, 2013


Cortex reads poetry
posted by nonane at 4:33 PM on February 9, 2013 [9 favorites]

The real challenge is, can you have cortex explain your job using only the ten hundred most common words?
Yes I can. But please don't tell my boss.
posted by Flunkie at 4:42 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


How is it possible that "roguelike" is not on this list.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:49 PM on February 9, 2013


Cortex! Upgrade your version of Dragon Naturally Speaking! It's a lot better now than it was in 1997.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:00 PM on February 9, 2013


This was just played at the board game meetup I am hosting.

Fortunately for you, the meetup is at my place, so there's not a bar, just beer that's already been paid for.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:01 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Added a share button. (Thanks tmkf!)
posted by dmd at 5:12 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Following his existential crisis, Cortex sticks it to the Matt I mean to the Man.

'Death' doesn't sound quite right? Or does it?
posted by Wordshore at 5:14 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Ok item NOW I get why this could be fun
posted by sweetkid at 5:30 PM on February 9, 2013


All I can think of is....
posted by zarq at 5:39 PM on February 9, 2013


Needs more bunny.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:58 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


You can make cortex tell you he loves you!
posted by orange swan at 7:06 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Thought this was a clever indie developer promoting Cortex Command.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:16 PM on February 9, 2013


You guys, cortex does scenes from Blade Runner!
almost
posted by Dr. Zira at 7:52 PM on February 9, 2013


John Madden John Madden Matt Haughey Matt Haughey uiuiuiuiuiuiuiu uiuiuiui John Madden Matt Haughey John Madden Matt Haughey
posted by boo_radley at 8:16 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


DTMFA works (almost).
posted by Apoch at 8:56 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


cortex: "For context for like everyone else, I recorded the first thousand or so words on the mefi word frequency tables back in like 2011 because dmd asked for it on a whim. "

Ah. I figured this was using the podcast transcripts and some annotations to train up something.
posted by pwnguin at 9:50 PM on February 9, 2013


You guys, cortex does scenes from Blade Runner!

You're not kidding.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:01 PM on February 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Why, I am offended!
posted by not_on_display at 11:41 PM on February 9, 2013


This is crazy!
posted by sambosambo at 1:15 AM on February 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


what
posted by xorry at 8:21 AM on February 10, 2013


You can make cortex tell you he loves you!

You can make cortex INTO BRUNO MARS
posted by psoas at 8:31 AM on February 10, 2013


You can make cortex rap. Sort of.
posted by maryr at 9:36 AM on February 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


This does not like Android.

So much for more Blade Runner.
posted by fiercekitten at 10:54 AM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


this is what I was going for
posted by dmd at 10:55 AM on February 10, 2013


Play these two links together: 1 2
posted by hydrophonic at 11:47 AM on February 10, 2013


Yikes. Set the second one to half volume.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:48 AM on February 10, 2013




That code was way too dense! I ran the code through a beautifier and re-introduced comments. It's in my fork on github.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:36 PM on February 10, 2013


Get well soon cortex
posted by not_on_display at 12:43 PM on February 10, 2013




I was expecting something more like Subservient Chicken.
posted by IndigoRain at 1:50 PM on February 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thanks to Pronoiac we now have SUGGESTIONS!
posted by dmd at 2:40 PM on February 10, 2013


And also color coding, so you can see what words are on or off the list!

Though it misbehaves sometimes, now that I look at it.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:59 PM on February 10, 2013


At a glance the suggestion/coding is super great!

Oblig.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:03 PM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Jesus, cortex, did you learn nothing from Glee?

I think I need to apologize to everybody for that.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:42 PM on February 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Dr. Zira: "You guys, cortex does scenes from Blade Runner!
almost
"
Fixed
mostly

My job
posted by Xoder at 6:50 AM on February 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


There's an odd bass tone in the background of the word "this" (and presumably the words preceding/following it in the recording?), any idea what that is?

Also making the audio slices at zero-crossings would seriously improve the flow of the speech.
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:22 PM on February 11, 2013


TwoWord: If you have the expertise, you're more than welcome to submit a pull request!
posted by dmd at 6:15 AM on February 13, 2013


I did some work with the audio - trimmed off some heading and trailing silence from the encoder, switching from stereo to mono, and a slight (1/100 second) fade-in and fade-out, which might satisfy TwoWordReview. But both lame and iTunes were adding some padding, which is frustrating. Any thoughts, or any other requested audio tweaks from sox?
posted by Pronoiac at 1:12 PM on February 13, 2013


Dunno. Put up a fork and try it out?
posted by dmd at 7:24 PM on February 13, 2013


Okay, here's the branch with wave files. It seems faster, at least working from localhost. The word files are around 40 meg.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:10 PM on February 14, 2013


I also just fixed "this-is-cortex" in my master branch, so it's playable at least - the color coding never liked it, but I don't care.

Could we switch to using fragments, like #words=test-test-test instead of ?words=test-test-test ?
posted by Pronoiac at 5:40 PM on February 14, 2013


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