Amongst the lots of goodies I received was a hands-free
headset like these. This cracking bit of kit allows me to do lots of things with the
laptop while wandering around the house. I can use the voice recognition system
to control the laptop operation, create letters, post blogs, listen to music
and the BBC I-player etc from almost anywhere in the house. So, I can amble
through to the kitchen and make myself a coffee without missing any of my
favourite music. One of the downsides is that now I wear the headphones almost
all the time and there have been times when my lovely G has been calling to me
not realising that I have the headphones on and of course I haven't heard a
word she said. Sorry – one of the best things about it is that now I wear
headphones almost all the time, if my lovely G is looking for me to give me
jobs to do etc, I can’t hear a word of what she's saying. Blooming marvellous!
One of the other useful features is that the headphones work
even in the smallest room in the house. Yes guys – technological advancement
now means I can go to the loo and be perfectly cocooned while occupied listening
to my favourite stand-up comedy routines or youtube music at the same time. Add
a book or newspaper and I can be gone for ages.
Technology is all about making life better for us and as far
as I'm concerned these little beauties are a major step forward. Even better,
as an extra bonus, the even keep your ears warm. Must have been developed by a guy!
And now you'll have to excuse me. I've just picked up my
newspaper and have an appointment to attend to in the smallest room. Don't wait
around for me – I may be gone some time………….
This may look like an ordinary blog. As you read it, it may even sound like an ordinary blog, but from this end of the laptop it's a different beast altogether. The reason for that is that this blog is being written without me even touching the keyboard in any way. I can absolutely promise you that my dainty little fingers have not been banging away in the usual four, five or six – fingered typing style in order to allow you to read this.
A few weeks ago I bought and installed a voice recognition system for the laptop which allows me – when connected to the laptop by a headset – to dictate speech into a microphone and have it translated into type automatically. It's taken me a while to get used to the system but now I've been using it for some time it's become used to the nuances of my speech patterns and so the words are typed as fast as I speak them.
Hopefully this will encourage me to do a bit more blogging although that hasn't happened this week as I've not been feeling particularly well. I have spent some time working with the word recognition system - which is called 'DragonSpeak' - and have used it to collate together lots of poems for future ‘Sunday Posts’. I've also spent some time reading up on background information on the series of blogs I want to do about " putting Scotland on the map" which I hope will mean that these can be posted a bit earlier than was possibly going to happen, at least if I was operating the laptop in the traditional way.
I do feel the voice recognition system is still a bit stilted and I'm not used to being so organised in my thoughts that I have everything prepared to just speak it out and have it land on the page fully formed. Hopefully though, that will come in time.
One thing is for sure; this has taken a fraction of the time it previously would have done even for this short post, if I had been typing it in the traditional manner. Although it's strange to hear your voice echoing in your head while you're sitting alone in front of the laptop, I hope I get used to it pretty quickly and become even faster in knocking out the odd blog post.
