In which she breaks keyboard silence

[zeborah]

So after heleninwales suggested I try speech recognition, and I complained about all the reasons why it was impractical, I went out and did a pile more research to see if it was least possible. And it is! It took a while to get the setup I want, though.

I started off by utilising my personal contacts (whose names I won't name in order to protect the nearly-innocent) to procure a copy of MacSpeech so I could test it and see of it would be useful for my workflow without forking out hundreds of dollars. I then spent a lot of time fiddling with headsets, creating profiles, training the software, restarting the darned software every time it crashed, swatting the cat away from my microphone mouthpiece, testing a Bluetooth microphone, training the software again, trying to figure out why it made my computer so slow, and so forth.

I did eventually decides that, with a lot of kicking and screaming, it could prove useful. So I purchased my own copy and downloaded it. Approximately 20 seconds after installing it, it offered me an update. Fortunately that was much quicker to install.
I wrestled a lot with microphones after that, too. The Bluetooth microphone was too far from my mouth, and getting a longer one would put it at risk of the cat again. The training wasn't going well. I was getting frustrated. Finally I decided to go back to a USB headset. I went to the Warehouse and picked up the only USB headset they had. I spent that evening training the software yet again, and the next evening reading the entire manual. It's going to be pretty good once I get the hang of it. Shall write more when I'm not running late for work....

Comments

[irinarempt.pip.verisignlabs.com]

Please let the cat try, and post what she says! I think it was Terry Pratchett who got half a page of 'rrrr rrrr rrrrr' once when his cat had fallen asleep on his microphone.

[zeborah]

It's more that she tries to bite the microphone off the stem that attaches it to the rest of the headset...And alas I don't think she's talkative enough to say much interesting, but I'll definitely let everyone know it if she does.