Comments on: Writing text with my voice

By: Anatai

Anatai — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:53:35 +0000

didja lose your voice? just kidding I check here everyday for your blog but haven’t heard from you in awhile and miss it. Still working through the past episodes in astronomy cast and the more I listen the more I enjoy them. Thank you and Fraser for your tireless efforts!

By: Radwaste

Radwaste — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:24:54 +0000

Hi, Pamela! Saw you at Dragoncon, IIRC. Can’t believe you need any parts replaced!

Have you tried ViaVoice?

And how is the Finder at recognizing speakable items? Small differences in mic quality and placement matter, too.

Hook your mic up to a recorder, speak to it, play it back and crrank up the volume to listen for inadvertent phonemes.

Maybe you’ve done that. Mere moments at D*C, and I had the impression, “pretty sharp”.

Anyway,

Cheers!

John

By: ZZMike

ZZMike — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:07:21 +0000

“… feel this terrible urge to pace and rant and use my arms to talk. I’m not giving in to my desires, I’m sitting quite still at the kitchen table, …”

NO!!!

People are wired to speak with their whole body. How many times have we seen people on cell-phones, speaking to people miles away, walking down the street, gesticulating wildly? For some odd reason, it seems to help the thinking process.

When you’re talking to the computer (is that a treatable ailment?), your hands are free – use them.

At least, give it a try.

More than a few doctors dictate workups to a speech-to-text PC in their offices.

I think one of the things is, we can talk faster than we can type (well, most of us). Having the brain a sentence or two ahead of what we’re putting down is a great help (I backed up at least twice in that last sentence, and had no idea of this parentetical when I started).

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:50:37 +0000

Don’t you just love technology when it works? Maybe you can use this to make instant transcripts for Astronomy Cast and give Preston’s hands a break too.

By: Martlark

Martlark — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:13:06 +0000

Sorry to hear you have become a keyboard victim. I was struck down with the same problem in 1989. Almost cured now. Take heart, with good care of your hands and patience you will get better.

By: Mike Simonsen

Mike Simonsen — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:23:43 +0000

This is just another reason I love having you as a friend. You are always ahead of the curve and blazing a trail through the woods for me to follow.
I type like I play keyboards– loud, hard and rhythmically. And I just hate the keyboard on my MacBook. Love the notebook, hate the keyboard.
I would pay good money to bypass this piece of crap. I feel a trip to the Apple store coming tomorrow.

Have a good time at .astronomy conference.

Mike

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:51:06 +0000

I sometimes have bouts with carpal tunnel syndrome. It was worst when I was pregnant with my daughter. That’s when I started wearing wrist braces at night to keep my wrists unbent. Every so often if I’ve done a lot of typing, I wear them again for sleeping. They really help.

I also switched to mousing with my left hand when using my desktop machine. And I do finger and hand stretches I learned in grad school. Force yourself to take breaks from typing.

As for talking to the computer, I haven’t done much dictation, but I’ve tried reading mail and web browsing. You can do a lot with the Mac including defining your own shortcuts. But it gets annoying after a while especially if you are up late and don’t want to disturb your family. But your blog sounds good. I read it as though you are speaking. You could dictate it and then go back and proofread. Proofreading’s a good idea anyway.

I don’t think it would be fun trying to code verbally. I’m doing circular doubly-linked lists in C++ in my data structures class, and the pointer dereferences would be a pain to get right.

I was going to suggest you investigate Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I see that MacSpeech uses their engine. It looks like it did a pretty good job – or your proofread.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:57:07 +0000

If you write in the same location here’s a good hardware solution: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ I’ve use a Contoured keyboard for a bunch of years and it’s the one thing I’d replace in a New York minute if it ever stopped working.

– jerry

By: SF Reader

SF Reader — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:42:01 +0000

I must admit it spells better than you, but I’m something of a spelling Nazi. Only one error leapt out at me, and that’s a near homonym.

Hey, can you use audible punctuation?

Victor Borge

Dennis

By: Colin J

Colin J — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:57:19 +0000

You should post some unedited bits so we can see how accurate it really is. I’ve looked at some of that software, but never played with it. I’m interested in how it all works for you, keep us posted!

By: GregW

GregW — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:56:46 +0000

As long as you aren’t sitting there holding the mouse going (in a scottish burr), “Hello Computer” I think you’ll get along just fine with speech to text.