Voice recognition – part two

My nameistailor in care
This is a long process

These two phrases are what stared back at me from the screen on one of my more successful attempts at using voice recognition software. The assurance that “it’ll take a month to train it” is starting to look wildly optimistic.

Last time, having explained about breaking my left arm and wrist and ending up in “stookie”, we parted with three unanswered questions. They were:

Does the microphone headset still work after 12 months lying in a drawer?

Will the author have to speak to his computer in an American accent?

Will every second paragraph of text contain a swear word as he forgets the computer can hear him?

This week it can be revealed that:

Yes, the microphone headset is A-okay;

Speaking in an American accent is still up for serious consideration; and

The author would happily delete all the expletives if the ~£!^&* thing could consistently string more than five words together.

So far no real work has been undertaken with the vr software. All efforts have been concentrated on crunching through the set up tutorial and training exercises, all of which has come as a bit of a novelty when the normal approach is to figure out new software on the hoof, and the manual is a port of last resort.

It was very quickly obvious that what we had here was software where the learning and set up curve is steep and devoid of shortcuts. Indeed, a classic, and quite literal, case of only getting out what you put in.

This has meant long sessions of talking to myself, or, to be strictly accurate, reading an assortment of extracts from those literary giants that are Aesop’s Fables, The Wizard of Oz, and The Road Ahead by Bill Gates. If there’s been one experience to epitomise the dangers of being a solo online worker operating from a home office this must be it. I must get out more.

Now halfway with four or five more training sessions to go, the case for vr software remains, in this author’s opinion, distinctly shoogily. That said, he remains open-minded having conjured up the vision of a world without keyboard or mouse. A world where there’s finally room to put your feet up on the desk and work at the same time.

Ending up with a cast on an arm needn’t be an entirely negative experience then. Quite apart from the necessity to gain exposure to voice recognition software and/or one handed typing, a whole new world of challenges opens up.

Suddenly everyday stuff like drying your back after a bath or putting on your socks becomes a challenge that needs to be thought through logically. It is in many respects what life must be like when you’re three or four years of age.

Until this unfortunate bone breaking incident, I didn’t know, for example, that I could tie a school tie with one hand. Largely because it hadn’t occurred to me to try - it’s not something that normally pops into your head thirty seconds before the offspring’s school bus.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere for small to micro-sized business. And it probably can be summarised using the words ‘necessity’, ‘mother of invention’, ‘flexibility’, ‘improvisation’, and ‘adaptability’.