Six Hoots
and a holler

Even though I have been blessed with the physical ability to produce occasional bursts of typing 100 words per minute, the key word there now is "occasional."  With the advent of old age when the best stories are told, my typing has slowed down to an average of only 70 words per minute, and even then only for a few minutes at a time before cries of anguish erupt from my twisted wrists.

With feverish anticipation I plugged it in and commenced talking.  Oh the gibberish that rattled forth to greet me from my computer screen!

It was gibberish -- not in twisted syllables -- but with actual words misappropriated for the suitable occasion.

The Dragon hath ears to hear, and it typeth in strange peripatetic convolutions that which it heareth in a manner sure to spark the imagination of any writer.

For example, Mark Twain said that if you took the words "and it came to pass" out of the Book of Mormon that it would only be half as long.  Here then (fresh from the Dragon's mouth) are five substitute versions of the simple phrase "and it came to pass."

and it came to assess

and intend to excess

and it came to paste

and came as

can came to us

These five transliterations come AFTER having spent 20 minutes TRAINING the Dragon in the official training exercise. 

Now the holler, after all that practice and AFTER training the phrase into the software five times -- here is version #6 of And it came to pass ,,, "and it came to us around the undersigned."

That's right, Dragon Naturally Speaking was an absolute failure at producing anything useful. On the other hand, great humor and good plots come from revealing the sudden, and the unexpected combinations or permutations.  What writer on earth couldn't launch a thousand ships of burning satire or emaciating humor from transliterations like that?

Funny or not, I was wanting my money back.  

But, I wanted something else even MORE than I wanted the money.  I wanted to talk and type at speeds of up to 140 words per minute!  

You probably do too.  Right?

The natural inclination is to think that if you have been interviewed on the radio more than 50 times, for an hour at a time, that you spoke clearly, succinctly, and with perfect enunciation.  You would think that with a name like NATURALLY SPEAKING that you could sit down and naturally type by talking. You would think that if you trained the software for an hour that the typing would flow like water.  

No.  

After several years I tried Version 9 and my ninth brush with the spoken western came out like this:  "Sam Jones had come west for his health he pack begun because it look good on his hip the sun was hot when we come as it surged through the mystique brush in the dry wash. Sam wiped the sweat from his brow and let's back along the trail. Someone was following him he heard the clip will own still occasionally but it hadn't bothered him all that much either."

That's a whole lot better than version 3 was, but I have to admit even now that the actual wonder is that ANYBODY on earth can understand your peculiar brand of speaking.

Think about it.  The human tongue is not a one-size-fits-every- mouth-I-know invention.  Some tongues are wide, some are long, some are thick, some are thin and if you're from Boston your speech is almost totally incomprehensible to anyone that grew up in San Dago. How then can we expect a simple piece of software to understand all the subtle inflections unique to our vocabulary on a minute's notice? 

In short, you can expect to spend almost as much time in learning to speak naturally as it took for you to learn the basics of using your favorite word processor. 

Fortunately, there is a great deal of satisfaction in taking command of the Dragon. I just plain feel good ordering that big Dragon around.

Some mechanical warnings first.  Do not expect the Dragon to sleep through the office blitzkrieg.  Your microphone is sensitive enough to pick up the sounds of a chair scraping in the cubicle down the hall  Occasionally it can hear a curse uttered around the corner and behind a closed door.  Clear your throat with the microphone on and you get a burst of gibberish which can best be erased by uttering the command:  SCRATCH THAT -- after you have learned to hold your mouth right, of course.

You will need to practice using the Dragon in a room furnishing relative peace and quiet.  If the composing room where you are planning to do your talk and type is at the kitchen table with the television on in the den, forget it.  Find yourself a soundproof closet.

Second, don't even think about using your live mike for dictation instead of the more meddlesome and restrictive headset.  Be sure the boom on the headset is positioned at the same distance from your mouth each time, and set it at the same horizontal and vertical position each time.  This will hasten the day when you and the Dragon can understand each other well enough to get a story down on paper.

Third, be sure to set the software to YOUR identity before trying to talk and type.  You can tell when it is on by looking for your name down near the bottom of your screen, just above the task bar.

Fourth, bring up the Dragon Pad and practice your typing in it.  The Dragon Pad is a full strength .rtf and text editor I have quickly learned to love, even when the speaking doesn't produce typing that makes sense.  

the DragonPad is a (RTM and text editor I have quickly learned to love, even when the speaking doesn't produce typing that make sense.

The most intelligent thing you can do after learning that you don't know anything, is, From within the Dragon Pad, go to HELP, and click on TUTORIAL.

The tutorial is designed to first impart knowledge, and second to give you hands on experience.

A word of warning, any words you allow to go unrecognized will be words that come back again and again unrecognized. 

Proficiency is a derivative of Practice.  To obtain the benefits of proficiency you must practice.  The more you practice, the more proficient you become.  Just like I was back in school, I practice for an hour or more at a time, twice a week.  The more I practice, the more I like the software.

Once you get the hang of using The Dragon®, you won't want to live without it -- because with The Dragon you can:

Manage your e-mail by voice - You can create and send e-mail by voice. You can listen to your messages being read aloud to you.

Quick correct list - Proofread and make changes to your work as you go.  If a goof gets by you, you can come back to anywhere in the document to correct or train that goof.

Switch between applications - Launch programs by voice and switch between applications just by saying so.  Now, THAT is handy.

Share the program - By creating and storing different voice files on the same computer.  Enny, Many, Miney, Moe, and YOU can all share The Dragon on one computer, with a separate language file saved for each of you.  It may be the only way you'll ever communicate with that guy from Boston.

What You Say is What You Get - 250,000 word total vocabulary.  Well, that may be a telling point for the Dragon; for me it was (and is) a byte consuming nuisance.  A vocabulary with a mere 800 words would cover over 90% of all phone conversations, and if your main character has a gangster mentality then having a 372 word vocabulary will suffice. Think of it like this, Every word contained in the vocabulary is one more word that must be sifted out every time anything you say comes close to it.  Learning and training time would be greatly reduced if the software had far fewer words already installed. It took over four hours for me to get through the "A" section removing all the installed words I will never in my life need.  To finish the project would involve far more time than I ever intend to provide.

You will need a minimum 266 MHz processor to use this program.  You will also need Windows® 98/XP, 2000, Millennium, or Windows NT® 4.0 (with SP-6 or greater) 

Where do you get it?

Uh -- Fortunately, I don't remember where I did actually buy my Version number 9 of Dragon Naturally Speaking software, but http://www.templatezone.com/small-business-software.php is offering version 8 for just $99.95. 

the end

The last hoot... Let's read: "Talk to your computer and watch your words instantly appear in letters, e-mail, instant messages and chat rooms. You can even surf the Web by speaking!" 

"talk to your computer and watch your words instantly appear in letters, e-mail, instant messages and chat room.  You can even serve the winner by speaking!"

Came out pretty close to it, it?  There may be something to distract in Ankara.  It sure funny to me.