I've been playing with espeak a bit with my RS Media. The master plan is for a bit of perl to grab slashdot headlines, espeak them into a .wav, convert .wav to .mp3 (lame), transfer .mp3 to RSM via serial (nocturnal's bluetooth serial mod), and send a command to play the new mp3's then delete them.

Here's a couple of espeak samples I toyed with. In this case espeak was run with -ven-sc+m1 option for a male, scottish voice, though it probably won't actually stay that voice in the long run. If this ends up working as I want I'll whip up a standard personality using mp3's created this way, so his voice always stays the same.

This is all preliminary. Awaiting budget to acquire the bluetooth bits needed. If there's enough (any) leftovers from the insurance money for my flaming truck I might be able to start soon.

I remember the speech program on the macs. For me it was more like a decade-point-five ago, senior in high school, and making the cute little mac in the corner utter curses at the teacher. Ah, good times.

Watch out, don't step in the anthropomorphization.