Bad Faith Awards 2008.

I had intended to write a longer post today on something suitably witty and profound — but I’m suffering the mother of all brain-fades and so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to make do with a chance to vote in the New Humanist Bad Faith Awards 2008.

As they say on their blog, this is your chance to help decide “which deluded fantasist will walk away with the prestigious 2008” award and with nominees such as Sarah Palin (she just had to be, didn’t she?), Rowan Williams (not to be confused with Robin Williams; one’s funny, occasionally, the other just isn’t) and Stephen Green of Christian Voice (with a list of godly vileness as long as my arm… actually, I’ve just measured, and it’s longer than my arm — much longer), I think it’s fair to say that we are as ever spoilt for choice!

So run along when you have a chance and make your choice. This could well be the most important voting decision you ever have to make… oh, sorry, I slipped back into pre-US election vote-for-Obama mode for a minute, there!

© 2008 Gary William Murning

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Project Guttenberg and Voice Recognition Software — My Saviours!

So I lost my copy of Her Privates We (also known as The Middle Parts of Fortune), Frederic Manning‘s (highly factual) fictional account of life in the trenches during World War I. It’ll probably turn up but, to be frank, I didn’t much fancy actually sitting down and reading it. I knew it would provide invaluable background for my new novel, but I have so much research to get through that as soon as I remembered that I had it somewhere I started trying to think of research shortcuts (i.e. ways of avoiding reading it!)

And, sure enough, one occurred to me — a fairly considerable one.

First, I took a look at Project Guttenberg to see if it was available as a free ebook, which, as it turned out, it was, along with lots of other books that could be highly relevant. So, I downloaded it as a plain text document and then, to save my poor old eyes, I sat back and, using the “Read This” function on my voice recognition software, listened to the opening chapter.

Now, it isn’t a perfect system. It has a number of “voices” but my voice of choice sounds very much like Stephen Hawking. Which is fine by me. The idea of having Hawking reading to me tickles me. However, I probably wouldn’t use it in any situation other than research. I wouldn’t read a book for relaxation this way because, well, the mechanical tone would quite possibly spoil it (although it isn’t half as bad as you’d probably imagine it to be.)

For this purpose, though, the combination of the Project Guttenberg texts and the voice recognition “Read This” function is pretty much perfect. I can even have it reading to me in the background whilst I do something else.

Ain’t technology brilliant?

© 2008 Gary William Murning

At My Command.

Yesterday, after reading Joseph’s blog post concerning Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 voice recognition software, I decided to order myself a copy and give it a go.

I have used voice recognition software in the past (mainly IBM’s earlier products) and found it actually extremely useful and surprisingly workable, at least when compared to the alternatives — a keyboard being rather difficult for me to use, as I have limited upper body movement. A couple of years ago, however, I switched to using handwriting recognition on a Pocket PC, finding it a little slower, but somehow more natural in the way it felt.

Given my current workrate, however, I have felt that the handwriting recognition system has been holding me back somewhat. Hence my deciding to give this a go again.

And, boy, has voice recognition improved in the past couple of years! The speed and efficiency of it is remarkable. It demands little of the system, other software working away merrily at the same time without any clashes. The recognition rate is, as claimed, in the region of 99%. Correcting the few mistakes it makes is quick and easy — and improves recognition vastly.

As you may have guessed, I’m actually using it to write this. I’ve made only a couple of corrections, it’s taken me a matter of minutes, and I’ve hardly had to move at all!

Remarkable.

Now, however, I’m faced with something of a dilemma. I have only a couple of chapters — three, actually, now that I think of it — to finish on the Children of the Resolution, and I can’t make my mind up whether to use this to complete it, or stick with the handwriting recognition. This might strike you as not being all that much of a problem at all, but my concern is that it may alter the tone of my work, however slightly. I have read through some of my early work, the stuff I wrote using voice recognition, and I don’t really think it will be an issue — not if they are anything to go by. In my earlier work, I sound pretty much the same as I do in my current project, but…

Maybe you can help. Having read the above, answer me this: do I still sound like me? 🙂