Voice Controlling Hexy

(This post is a bit rough, but I figured I should get it out there, since I won't be working on Hexy for a little while.)
Before we get started:

1. The code used to make this all work is on Github. I'm new to ROS, so I don't claim that it's set up correctly.
2. To get things to ROSLaunch nicely, I had to make some pretty hacky changes to how PoMoCo deals with directories. Basically, it now has to use full paths to every directory ( these paths are created at runtime using __file__ ). I haven't seen it fail yet, and I can't think of a specific failure mode, but it makes me very uncomfortable, and I'm looking for a way to change it.
3. ROSPoMoCo isn't a full substitute for PoMoCo yet. Offsets, for instance, can't be set in ROS, though they are loaded from the .cfg file.

After a bit of hacking, I've ported most of PoMoCo over to run as a ROS Node. This node listens for new moves on the /moves topic and runs them if it is able to (If it can't find the move, it issues a Warning and ignores it).

At this point, it's time to take advantage of ROS to do neat stuff with Hexy. At first, I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to do, but some Googling brought up this blog post, in which an iRobot create is controlled by voice. The package used to do this is perfect for controlling something like Hexy -- pocketsphinx will broadcast any recognized phrase on the \output topic, and the set of recognized phrases can be set with a text file.

A Native Google Talk Client for Linux(Sort of)

I've been using Google Talk more frequently as of late, but upon investigation, I was disappointed to learn that Google hasn't released a Linux client for Google Talk. I did, however, notice a reference to a "native" (whatever that's supposed to mean) ChromeOS client. Since I knew that ChromeOS is running Linux under the hood, I decided to check it out. Amazingly, despite wads of yellow tape warning me that it would wreak havoc on my computer and slay my firstborn, it seems to work seamlessly as a Linux client for Talk in Ubuntu 11.04! Video chatting between two semi-native clients doesn't always work, and using both the client and, say, gmail chat at the same time has it's rough edges, but it's fine.