so you don’t want the cloud based misery of a Corlexagle , but yet you still feel like you are missing out, what to do?
There are a plethora digital assistants out there, most run on a Raspberry Pi, are named after some super hero’s computer, and use Flite for speech output and maybe pocketsphinx, for speech input, but more likely they use Google’s speech api, so where is the win in that?
Enter Mycroft AI, named I believe after the fictional AI in my favorite book “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, Mycroft “Mike” Holmes IV, who is in turn named after the fictional Sherlock Holme’s fictional smarter brother. Already a good start.
Mycroft is also cloud based :(, but all hope is not lost. The developers seem to put privacy forward in their thinking, and this all open source, and the rumor is that it can all be installed locally. …just don’t expect documentation.
You wanted get started and help write mad skills for your new helper. The fast, easy (and sadly systemd loving, freedom hating) way is to download their image for the Raspberry Pi, setup an account, get a sound card, speakers, and a microphone. Just follow the instructions on their site. Their instructions are way better than I can offer, so just go the Mycroft AI site and read, you’ll want to get many details, so read ALL of it, not just enough to find the link to the image.
Now, you’ve played around with that for a bit, wrote some useful skills that I can siphon off you, and you are still *unsatisfied because the log clearly shows all your words heading off to the internet for processing. What next?
First install your favorite virtual machine software (I use virtualbox), get a Gentoo Image. , boot it up. emerge-webrsync, emerge -uDN @world, and wait. Come back tomorrow, or maybe the next day.
Back? cool. now you’ll have to wait for the next episode as I am still compiling. Gentoo, oh Gentoo, my love, my chagrin, my time sucking friend.
DId I tell you about my encounters with the Replacements? ok the good one first. The show was sold out, but a friend and I were on Hennepin Avenue on the night of the release party for Tim. We decided to walk up 7th street to 1st avenue (they intersect go figure) to see what we could see. Nothing is what we saw, nobody, not a soul, but the 7th street entry door was propped open! We stood there for few minutes and listened to “Bastards of the Young”. Still reading? ok the other story. I was walking down the street (I’m postitive it was 4th), and I see this guy walking down the other side, sure enough it was Paul Westerberg. It felt a little like the song “Skyway”.