Tuesday, January 22, 2013

S**T Talker

No doubt most of us, one time or another, have experienced a deja vu moment. A feeling of fleetingly living the same life-experience again. I think moments like this are summed up brilliantly by Pink Floyd in the words of the song Comfortably Numb:

"When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I... Have become comfortably numb
"

Anyway, I digress slightly, but hope it conveys what I was thinking, feeling when I was listening to a Music Radio Station, I believe it was Magic 105.4, and the people in the studio were having a laugh and messing around with an american female 1970s style electronically synthesized voice. You may recall the sort of thing if you had seen repeats of early versions of Department S, Mission Impossible, Ironside and so on and those voice distortion devices that were placed against the phone mic to disguide the voice of the caller.  It was at this moment, when I heard it on the radio that my mind was racing, where had I heard something similar in electronic voice alteration/manipulation? Having racked my my mind for a few days I realised that it reminded me of a computer program called Shit Talker.  I unreservedly apologies to readers of this blog, I am not being offensive, it is the name of the program.

Although we had some laughs in the office; believe it or not, it is relevant to investigations when checking out hoax and other types of calls. Of course, today, with voice detection and recognition techniques these type of programs do not present a problem. But if, sometime, you want to have a laugh in the company of friends then the program is still available http://unaesthetic.net/st/dl.shtml . I wouldn't use it on the phone though, it isn't a good idea.

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