Freed Speech

I don’t know why I did not think of this before.

I have owned the Mac version of Dragon Dictate for almost 2 years, and the professional level microphone—the Blue Microphone Yeti—for least a year. I’ve been frustrated by the aggravation of having to put on a headset microphone with the cord trailing across my desk getting in the way. But for orthopedic reasons, I really should use speech-to-text much more than I have been.

Somewhere today I read about a person using this microphone with this software and the light bulb went off over my head!

So now, this large, imposing microphone has been “voice trained” and is set up permanently at the edge of my desk, ready to pull over at a moments notice, and without the aggravating headset, and mouthpiece that tickles my mustache.

This will certainly save my hands a few thousand keystrokes a week, but be prepared for some interesting language gaffes—that may be the microphone’s fault, or the software’s, or mine alone. For example, yesterday in an email, I SPOKE the word allegory and MacSpeech typed Al Gore he.

Once again, it’s amazing how little it takes to make my day!

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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