Month: October 2018


  • Converting text to speech with AWS Polly

    I wanted to try my hand at using the AWS Polly text-to-speech service.  Polly offers several different voices and supports multiple languages, most of which sound pretty good, especially if you use SSML when passing text.  SSML is where the character of the speech (rate, tone, pitch, etc) come into play.  See here for more detail.…

  • WordPress Plugin Recommendations – 2018 Edition

    I’m not an optimization expert nor am I a WP power user but I have been using the platform for over ten years.  I have a strong preference for plugins that are lightweight, easy-to-implement and configure, and have a clean removal (plugins which leave artifacts are a huge pet peeve of mine).  Here’s a list…