Talking Timer

talking timer screenshot

News flash: I am working on 2.6. Changes include

Fixed a bug where upload sometimes failed
Fixed a bug with saving setting of 'show options dialogs'
Using MSXML ('Ajax') latest version
Weblog is now customizable (though only in registry for now)

3.24MB - for Windows 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista

The Talking Timer (formerly "RubikTimer Talks!") is a timer especially made for blindfold cubing. It's easy to use, and has lots of options. The main feature: it allows you to listen to the essential timing marks while you are solving. That way during a BLD solve you will instantly know if you're going to hit that record time.

Talking Timer has a very intuitive and smart user interface. It resizes the font when you resize the window, making it useful as a background for your video's as well.

Features List

Resizable timer
Accept/Discard/Start/Pause/Stop
Adjustable Countdown
Logs all times to a text file
Analyze LogFile (starts Excel)
Select Puzzle Type
Metronome
Beep at interval
Spoken Elapsed time - in a Sexy female voice
Add Video URL and comments to logfile
Personal online cubelog

Online cube log

Every user of Talking Timer can get their own personal log with their times. When switched on, times are uploaded automatically and you can visit your page at any time. You can also compare your times with those of other speedcubers!

Installing Talking Timer

Normal setup

Download the file and open it. Follow the instructions. That's it.

What's included

After running the setup the installation folder (most likely "C:\program files\RubikTimer 2.5.1 - for BLD\" will contain the following files

RubikTimer 2.5.1.exe
Speech.dll
About.htm

The Speech.dll file contains the sound files with the voice of the talking sexy woman (BTW: it is not Yasmara). So if you don't use the sound, don't worry, you can still use the timer.

Required files

If you run into problems it might be because you are missing one of these runtime files:

Visual Basic Runtime (1040Kb)
Script components
for Windows 2000/XP (659Kb)
for Windows 98/ME (664Kb)

Also available

The older versions of Talking Timer are still available. They don't talk, so it's just a timer, but they are just as friendly. The last one is still in the files section of the yahoo group.

Known limitations and planned features

Sometimes you will see the timer skip a second, or the voice will skip a second. This is due to the asynchronous calls to audio playing. It does not affect the accuracy of the timer.
For now only English speech is supported. If anyone is willing to create wav-files for other languages, let me know, and I will incorporate them.
No averages and sessions are supported, nor will they ever be. The logfile should be sufficient. If it is not, there are lots of timers that do have this.
The 'Analyze' function will open up Microsoft Excel. I had no way of discovering what spreadsheet application is on the hard drive. Of course you can also import the log file in any other spreadsheet or database application.

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