See it: the JokePicker Chip

Click the JokePicker Chip and you're in control. Inside Funny Bits from Your Talking Chips you'll find 5 little joke-telling-and-laughing icons just waiting for you to tell them what to do. Do you want the Robotto to tell only knock-knocks using silly voices and demented laughter? This is the chip that will let you make it happen.

Icons unbuttoned

Some people like demented laughter (right, Igor?) and some don't. Some people live for puns, others think punsters should be expunged. With the Laugh and Joke Chips, you get a purely random selection of jokes and laughs. It's a quick way to sample Funny Bits From Your Talking Chips in all its full-bodied glory.

The JokePicker Chip lets you pick and choose. It's your key to five little funny-chip icons that you can control. Think of them as little cyber-jesters, eager to please, but each with a built-in attitude. You can customize their clowning to suit your taste, and your moods—using the JokePicker Chip.

Even in their native "unbuttoned" state, the icons can help you to pick and choose among the riches of FBTC. Here's how. Let's start with the two animal icons. If you double-click either one, the computer laughs—just as it would if you clicked the Laugh Chip. But there's a difference. Funny Bits comes with 7 kinds of laughter—demented, giggle, goofy, group, happy, kids, outburst, sarcastic—the icons let you pick the kinds you want.

The evil green octopus icon is programmed for "sarcastic" or "demented" laughter—ideal for laughing at other people's jokes.
The cheerful robot-dog icon laughs happily, uproariously, cheerfully—well, lots of ways. But it never sounds sarcastic or demented. This faithful friend is for laughing at your own jokes, of course.

If you double-click one of the three face icons, the computer tells a joke—just as it would if you clicked on the Joke Chip in your opening window. But, again, there's a difference. Funny Bits From Your Talking Chips comes with not just one collection of jokes. We've got seven—barbs, kids, knock knock, puns, quibbles, quips, and riddles. By clicking on one of these icons, you're actually choosing a particular kind of joke you want to hear.

You're also choosing a set of voices—Funny Bits comes with 12—Agnes, Bruce, Bubbles, Cellos, Fred, Junior, Pipe Organ, Princess, Ralph, Trinoids, Victoria, Zarvox. Most of the time (for example, with the Joke Chip) we stick with Agnes, Bruce, and Victoria. They're the easiest to understand. But you can program these icons to use any voices you want. In fact, the Robotto starts out using only the 9 weirdest voices around.

	The gap-toothed Kiddo icon tells jokes and riddles specially for kids—or the juvenile at heart.
	The mustache-disguise Groucho icon goes for puns and insulting barbs. As you know if you like this kind of wordplay, a lot of the laughs you get in response are sarcastic or demented. Well, thatÕs what happens with this icon too.
	The Robotto icon uses weird computer voices to tell its jokes. Because these voices can be hard to understand, we asked this icon to stick to simple jokes—one-liner quips and knock knocks.

When you drag some or all of your icons onto the desktop, you can get jokes and laughs at a moment's notice. If you double-click on an icon, it does its schtick and takes you back to the Finder.

What if you want a different set of jokes, voices, or laughs? You can program any of these icons with any or all the above. You can opt for a-laugh-with-no-joke or a-joke-with-no-laugh.

There are only two no-nos. First, you can pick zero voices, or you can pick any number of voices from 2 to 12, but not just one—maybe because talking chips like to talk to themselves in their spare time. Second, if you set an icon to no-joke-with-no-laugh, then clicking the icon does nothing and what's the point of that? So if you uncheck all categories, the relevant icon complains.

See the: Circuit Board — Joke Chip — Laugh Chip — JokePicker Chip — AutoJoker

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Page Created: June 16, 2001

Page Modified: September 1, 2001