I was in bed with flu like symptoms all over Christmas and by the new year I couldn’t breath so it was time to call the Dr in. He arrived saying he wondered how long it would be before I called him in so I guess our area is well infected with whatever infection it is. The end result is that I am full to the brim with antibiotic and steroid so bang goes my after Christmas diet as I am now eating anything not screwed down which is the usual result of taking steroids. My blood sugars are running in the high teens too despite the increase in meds before Christmas so all in all it is a step backwards.
Being stuck in the house over the holiday has allowed me to start to play with voice recognition software. I first tried the voice recognition software built-in to Windows 7. I was able to set up my hardware microphone and headset without any problems. The tutorial was easy to understand and I thought that the training of the software to recognise my voice went just fine that is until I try to enter text into MS Word. All I got was gobbledegook. I went 8 and tried the training and again with roughly the same result. From there I went along to the forums to see what results other people had got. It seemed to be a mixed bag. There were a higher percentage of female users who reported good results. My voice is soft and deep and has a Yorkshire accent. I suspect that the Microsoft software couldn't cope with this. So having an old copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking in my software library and I decided to load it and give it a try.
It was easy to load, not too difficult to configure but training it to recognise my voice was a very different matter. You are offered a selection of scripts to read, I chose John F Kennedy's inaugural address. I think if I had read it before, and I might not have chosen it because it contains many policiballic words. It took about 20 minutes to read all the address but once I had and had identified the language I wish to use (English UK) I've found that it now makes very few dictation mistakes. The help files tell me that the more I use it the more accurate it will become will become. I have used it to write this blog and with one or two words that were not recognised by the editor so please excuse the few spelling mistakes, I think that a first attempt it isn't bad.
The test will come when I try to use it to write a chapter for the book I am writing for my college course. Watch this space to see how I get on.
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