old software

I downloaded an IRC client tonight (it's a geek chat thing, the instant messaging of the 1990's but still alive and well today...) and that was a jarring experience.

It was this thing called Masquerade and a description says it added voice synthesis to the chat. I was curious about that because my dad had mentioned text to speech software to me during a phone call and I've been looking to see what his options are. Of course he doesn't want to chat, he wants to push a button and have the computer read the web page out loud.

Anyway I installed the program - uh, oh copyright 1997... and I ran it. I almost jumped out of my skin. Some female figure on the screen with an ugly perm and talking in a voice like Colossus meets Fran Drescher on Thorazine. (I can't remember the name of the movie but Colossus was a supercomputer that had taken over the world, the film was made in the 1960's.) Of course my sound was cranked all the way up since I'd been playing music so that made it all the more unpleasant.