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Speak & Spell Hacking For Fun And Profit
Bowie J. Poag writes "Pete Casper has created a number of truly bizarre Speak & Spell hacks, and case mods (!) suitable for live performances. The highly modified Speak & Spell can be controlled either by the membrane keypad or using an Atari joystick of all things. Tons of photographs and MP3 samples included.. I want one. Now."
>Tons of hotographs
Now Slashdot is only linking to images captured in the infrared spectrum? Great, now I'm going to have to spend the dough to update to the PowerBook with the face-burning screen, in addition to the penis-scorching base.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
"Tons of hotographs." Looks like the /. editors could use a Speak & Spell. ;)
What's a 'hotograph'? Is that like a 'icture'?
I had a Speak n' Spell when I was young. It eventually got whacked a few too many times and its database somehow scrambled:
SnS: Now spell: "Erkngwhkfzgnkil".
Me:[A] [P] [P] [L] [E] [Enter]
SnS: Incorrect. Please try again.
Me:[M] [O] [N] [K] [E] [Y] [Enter]
SnS: Incorrect. Please try again.
Me:[S] [T] [U] [P] [I] [D] [Enter]
SnS: Incorrect. The correct spelling of "Erkngwhkfzgnkil" is: S A U C E R.
It was great! Sadly, it sounds nothing like the "Random Noise" or "Glitch" mp3s. I'm disappointed.
...wow (and their was much rejoicing).
come on fhqwhgads
Tons of hotographs and MP3 samples included..
My browser doesn't seem to have hotograph viewer support. Is that one of those new 3-D hologram thingies?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Can we MAME this one?
Do I need an original Speak & Spell to apply the mod patch?
Will the Speak & Spell manufacturer put a stop and desist order for mod chips?
Will we? Will we?
How long until we kill this invention?
This space for rent.
I still remember the math one
GREDDER THEN LEZZ THEN! LEVIL ONE!
I used to laugh at how that thing sounded.
of course, I didn't use it so much for spelling as I did to get it to pronounce dirty words :) This synth hack seems far more practical!
I played with one of these when I was a girl. Later as an adult I heard a Steven Hawking lecture and my first thought was, "Oh My God, it's my first spelling teacher."
I keep waiting for him to in the middle of some physics lecture or interview say, "spell Schwarzschild radius."
Didn't E.T. already do this twenty-some-odd years ago?
Today it was announced that a new toy product was lauched on to the market.
"Speak and Tinnitus" is an updated version of the popular 1980's toy "Speak and Spell". Unlike the original which taugh kids how to spell. The new varsion gives children the condition known as Tinnitus, also known as ringing in the ears....
as comedian dane cook says
'speak and spell... they should call it speak like the devil'
'a b c d e f g, i will kill your family'
err, here
Shut up, Steve Jobs.
I was thinking the other day that there weren't enough bad techno songs out there yet...
....you could have told me would be avaiable to me in the future ten years ago, a speak and spell I WANT, would blow my mind the most....
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Anyone want to submit a joint patent application for the hotograph? With a snazzy name like that, I bet we could sneak a real whizbanger past the patent inspectors. "Device and Method for Producing Intense Gonadal Discomfort" or something like that.
i think h would come before "i will kill your family"
IANATE (I am not a trained ear), but...
Here's my take on the tracks presented:
1. Slow Melodic - Between the deep "bong" noises (bong noises, indeed), you can hear the faint cry of an abused robotic child. They have tortured the soul of this Speak N Spell.
2. Rhythmic Loops - This is almost too short to care.
3. Loop N Pitch - This has an enjoyable mid-eighties video game flare to it. If I didn't know better, I'd think that this came from a mutilated Atari.
4. Slow Loop N Pitch - It's the same as #3.
5. Rythmic Loop 4 - Is neither. It sounds like an abused telegraph.
6. Glitch Pitch - probably the most interesting of the collection, I'd imagine that this is similar to a robotic death.
7. Rythmic Loop 1 - This track has the annoying qualities of an alarm clock coupled with the repetative nature of your boss. Not recommended for those with heart conditions.
8. Random Noise - Sounds EXACTLY like the intro to Metroid Prime. It's scary.
9. Glitch - Sucks. Nuff said.
10, Rythmic Loop 2 - is the closest thing to outputting something worthy. This has coffee edge with 9-volt-battery-on-toungue power.
11. Loop w / Randomize - I think this is the sound my bathtub makes when emptied.
12. Distortion - SATAN has possessed the Speak N Spell. It's actually pronouncing things - but in this case, at best, it sounds like a smoker that has a tube cut in their throats.
My end analysis:
WHAT DID THESE TOYS EVER DO TO YOU, MAN?!? Poor things.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
Wrong. The correct spelling of photograph is p-h-o-t-o-g-r-a-p-h.
Now spell...
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Perhaps I am too much of a bottom-feeder to recognize the value in this, but does anyone think that those MP3s sound like complete shit? I was expecting to hear the thing rapping the Random House Children's Dictionary, and instead it sounds like a SnS having a seizure. Hell, I used to do *that* when I was a kid by hitting the damn thing really hard.
_sig_ is away
You don't think hacking a 30 year old electronic toy to make "music" is News for Nerds?
And by when, of course, I mean then.
Especially funny since he actually pronounced it that way until we corrected him. Never let a child use one of these things unsupervised!
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
When my siblings and I were young, we went through a very trying time when our Speak and Spell was posessed by the devil. We were minding our own business when the damn thing turned on by itself and started spouting random sentence fragments. As if this wasn't scary enough, the power button completely ceased to function. When we tried turning it off, the screen started scrolling unintelligible glyphs and it dropped the english language entirely and began speaking in tongues. The worst part was that those things have one of those damn impenetrable battery compartments that can only be opened with a coin or similar flat object, so while my younger sisters cried I had to run around and try to find something to kill it with. Quite traumatizing for a bunch of children under the age of 12.