The next six months

Because I've spent so much time working on this project, I've been procrastinating on my goal of reading the Bible in a year, so I will need to devote 5-6 hours a week on that until June.

With the hope of biking across Canada this summer, I need to start getting back into shape, and there is lots of planning to be done.

Littlehamberg is set to arrive late March / early April!

Work for Wilf on various web sites.

Hopefully gone all summer biking across the country!

1.

The plan is to take one of my two LCDs and set it up in the corner of our kitchen with the Voice Tracker array microphone in front and below it. This will require purchasing a used computer (hopefully for cheap) off of Kajiji and putting it below the kitchen counter. Connecting the monitor/mic to the computer will unfortunately involve drilling a 2" hole through the kitchen counter.

2.

Grace will require some changes to reduce the number of false positives: That is, when she responds to a perceived command that is just two people talking in the background. To help prevent this, I'm going to change the grammar to have "Grace" be a command that must be recognized on its own before the speaker can speak the command. Currently the word "Grace" can simply be spoken as the first word of a sentence, and I expect that plays into the number of false/positives. I'll also need to add a "Confirm/Cancel" mechanism to certain commands to give additional control and further reduce undesired actions such as spontaneously playing songs.

3.

I need to finish up exercise 34, which allows appointments to be added. This will serve as the base use case of the system, allowing me to add events and ask queries such as "What appointments do I have this week?" or "What is my next appointment?". I will use this over the next number of months as a test bed for the technology.

4.	Program state needs to be saved on a regular basis and whenever the program closes.

5.

Some basic power management needs to be added so that the computer monitor is turned off soon after a command/question has been answered. This will save energy and make the system more elegant. (Who wants an LCD monitor shining from the corner of the room all the time?) Power management to put the computer into hibernation mode also needs to be added so that when we leave for work and at bed time, the system will automatically turn off to save energy.

6.	An interface needs to be added to the outside world so that, via the web, commands can be given and queries answered from any computer or handheld device. I'll also add a command line utility to my Linux environment at work so that I can type something such as:

7.	I would like to create a simple, concise web site to present the ideas I've cultivated while working on this project. This will likely be a work in progress over the next few months.