Naturally Speaking I'm Blogging

This is my first attempt to write a blog posting using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I have only spent about an hour using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. So I don't think the program is fully trained yet. However, what the program is able to achieve so far is quite surprising. Everything that I have dictated up until this point, has been correct.

I am having slightly more trouble using the commands, however, they promise to be extremely useful, if for example, I am able to dictate a blog posting, copy it, then paste it into a blog post. At the moment, I am using the DragonPad application to do my dictation. It seems that the DragonPad is optimized for taking in spoken dictation. Later on I will try dictating directly into the blogger application.

The ideal situation would be to sit looking at the screen surfing the web with voice commands, and then using the Google toolbar to send webpages to my blog where I can add text and then post.

One of the things that I am interested in finding out is whether or not some of my recent reluctance to do typing is related to the pain it generates either immediately or after the fact. (Ever since the end of last year, my left shoulder and upper on inheriting during an off to typing.) Whether or not the pain has been a deterrent to typing, I am more determined than ever to pursue computed dictation as an input method for my writing.

I have tried this several times in the past, using previous editions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the main competitor, IBM ViaVoice. (Interesting to note, Dragon NaturallySpeaking very easily recognizes both its own name and that of IBM ViaVoice.) Each time, I eventually gave up.

In my recent reading about voice recognition software, which I can remember testing at least 10 years ago, I noticed that several people stressed the need to persist with a voice recognition program in order to get the best performance from it. Apparently, Dragon NaturallySpeaking continues to learn as you use the program. The more you use the program, the better it works. This added incentive may be enough to keep me going through some off the rough patches.

There are several surprising side effects to using voice recognition software. Personally, I am getting quite a kick out of making the computer do something with just my voice. Having something, albeit an inanimate object, obey my every come on, well it's just rather satisfying.

(Notice that in the last sentence I used the phrase "obey my every come on" but in fact what I said was obey my every command, so you can see that there are some interesting wrinkles to be worked out.)

To review, I have now dictated thus far with only one or two mistakes. Not bad for $89 (at Staples) with fairly comfortable headset included.
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Great Guitarists Never Die? My first year roomie fron uni lives on

One of the greatest guitarists of our time is someone you've probably never heard of, Steve Donnelly. Here he jams with another excellent player, Elliott Randall. Might seem a little slow to start with, but watch those fingers warm up, until Steve's pick goes flying!

Chey's Xtreme Flowers "Today's Best" on Zazzle

Chey's amazing image called Extreme Azalea's was selected as one of "Today's Best" on zazzle.com!

In fact, she has been getting a lot of favorable comments on her latest direction in digital imaging, taking her photographs of flowers and 'shredding' them into various levels of abstraction. Like Xtreme Sunflowers:

In-Fill Blogging: Ethical? Annoying? Who Cares?

I assume there are statistics out there that will back me up when I say most blogs drop off faster than most new Year resolutions. They start ambitiously, sustained by initial enthusiasm, then the posts start to falter. Periods of revival occur from time to time.

One reason I think/know this? I have started a lot of blogs that have fallen off the wagon, so to speak. This very blog right here...

Farewell Eudora, Hello Penelope: Your faihtful users await your email excellence

If I had more free time, like a lot more, I would consider having a farewell party for Eudora. Which Eudora? Not Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer prize winning author? No, Eudora the email program that was named after Welty thanks to her widely anthologized short story: Why I Live at the P.O.

I have used Eudora (a dialog from which can be seen above) as my main email client for about 15 years. I have faithfully paid for upgrade after upgrade, all the way to version 7. My Eudora email archives tell the story of my life for those 15 years. The version that I have used for the last few years has a superb search feature that lets me access just about any aspect of that past in a matter of seconds.

But alas, Eudora is no more. Or rather, there will be no new versions. From 1991 to 1996 the program was supported and improved by Qualcomm, the folks who make cell phones (nod if you find that as puzzling as I do). Along the way a sponsored version was developed and the latest version of that can still be found. But the paid version is no longer sold.

Thankfully, Qualcomm made the laudable decision not to simply ditch the code and strand loyal users. The company donated the code to the Mozilla Foundation. You can found out the latest at Penelope on MozillaWiki. That's right, the new name for Eudora is Penelope. And although Penelope is not quite ready yet, she is getting there.

Hence this posting. After all, the decision to hand the code to Mozilla was last year. The official end of Eudora paid edition was May of this year. But the fact that Eudora is evolving is still news to a lot of Eudora users. I mean, I am a heavy user and I only found out by accident when I went to the web site looking for a better understanding of the Junk Mail filter (yes, it has a pretty good junk mail filter as well as a great search feature).

I think there could be millions of people out there happily using some version of Eudora not realizing what has happened. So, fellow Eudorans, go the link above and bookmark it. Soon it will be time to test and perfect a successor.
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Electric Vans v. Internet Shopping

An interesting story in the London Sunday Times speculates about the effect of Internet shopping and resulting shopping delivery requirements.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis that Internet shopping is pushing up carbon emissions, there are so many offsetting factors to consider. But I was impressed with the Smith Edison electric vans featured in the story. With a 3500 pound payload, 150 mile range, and 50 m.p.h. top speed, these vehicles could handle a large percentage of the local delivery duties in most countries.

Islamic Terrorism: The view from Scotland

The closer you are to acts of terror the more you tend to think about them. That can produce some useful insights. I happened to be in London in October 1992, standing a few hundred yards from where an IRA bomb went off in the Sussex Arms pub, with deadly consequences. That made me think very seriously about terrorism. For example, I like to point out to my fellow Americans that Britain never defeated the IRA, it was forced to craft a political solution.

Fast forward to July, 2007. My wife and I are in Scotland for a few days of rest and relaxation, just as the Scottish parliament opens and a Scot, Gordon Brown, takes over as prime minister of Great Britain from the very English Tony Blair. Then a Muslim man, who is not from England or Scotland, drives a Jeep full of explosive materials into Glasgow airport. Here are some observations:

1. The airport was re-opened less than 24 hours after the attack, a very British response to terrorists: Don't let them change your way of life.

2. Within 2 days of the attack some Scottish Nationalist politicians were publicly speculating as to whether Scotland would be safer if it seceded from the rest of Britain (the SNP has historically opposed the war).

3. In Gordon Brown's first speech to parliament he suggested a change to the British constitution that would shift power to declare war [or not] to parliament. Such a change could have prevented Blair from going to war in Iraq [given that 80% of the British population were opposed to that war].

No wonder Bush looked so sad to see Blair go. It is clear that a lot of people in the UK think the terrorist acts committed by Muslims in the UK are a result of the UK's support of the Iraq war. In other words, they see a connection between acts of terrorism and the acts of other players on the global stage.

Of course, Bush might be consoled by the fact that Tony Blair's wife is no longer "the wife of the Prime Minister." Cherie Blair has frequently been at odds with the official Bush/Blaire doctrine, for example:

The prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, was last night forced to apologise after she acknowledged that Palestinian suicide bombers may be driven by a lack of hope about their future. On a personal appearance with Queen Rania of Jordon, Mrs Blair told reporters: "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." Guardian, June 19, 2002

and

Cherie Blair has criticised the policies of the US President George W Bush, attacking his stance on terrorist prisoners and gay rights. Scotsman, October 31, 2004

Google Bug Mis-categorizes Users: The joys of bear-beiting

You wouldn't know it from where you sit, but I am writing this post in German. I can demonstrate what I mean with an image:

I am actually writing this post in Scotland and I don't sprechen Sie Deutsch. So why are the Blogger menu items in German? The answer is a bug in Google's slightly too clever system for presenting users with geo-appropriate versions of itself and its applications. I first noticed this when visiting England earlier this year. One of my browsers has google.com set as the home page but clicking the Home button in that browser took me to google.co.uk. You might not think that is a problem, but when you search for something like a Sony Viao via google.co.uk you get offered the best deals on Vaios in the UK, which is not what you want if you live in the US and plan to buy your Vaio there (for one thing laptops generally more expensive in the UK, and for another, their keyboards are significantly different from US models).

However, getting the UK version of Google is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to getting the German version, which is what has been happening on my trip to Scotland. And it is not just Google search that is in German. All the Google apps, including Blogger, are in German and so far I have not found a way to 'make' Google sprechen Sie Englisch. What I have found is one explanation for this problem: Google uses the location of the ISP by which you are connecting to the Internet to determine what country you are in. Google then uses the language of that country in its menus. (What Google does in multi-lingual countries like Belgium and Canada I don't know.)

But how does this ISP-language link explain German Google appearing in Scotland? A quick traceroute showed that the ISP used by the hotel at which I am staying is based in Germany. They have a UK company but apparently the main servers are registered in Germany. Apparently the coders at Google had not considered that possibility.

The whole thing is a great example of the huge difference between physical categories and digital categories. Categorizing physical things is challenging. Read David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and you realize how tough (for example, I had no idea there were two kinds of indexing specialists known as lumpers and splitters).

Weinberger ably demonstrates that one of the wonders of the web is the way it can break down categories. Search for a book at Amazon or anything on Google and the results will display its many facets. Search for "cycle" and you will see what I mean. Cycles of all kinds pop up: life, the sea, pedal bicycles, motorcycles, and so on. And your media choices include data, images, news, blog posts, etc. However, when you connect to the web you do so from a physical location. Google determines and categorizes that location for you, but not always accurately.

This whole Scottish-German experience has been quite educational. I think I might have found a new way to teach foreign languages. When you use a foreign version of a program that you know well, like Blogger in this case, you quickly recognize and translate foreign words, such as bearbeiten, which means edit. Actually, I'm rather partial to bearbeiten. Sounds much more exciting. Honey, I'll be there in a minute, I just have to do some quick bear biting.
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Army Gets Big Boost in Safer Vehicles: Too much, too late

The US Army is placing rush orders for up to seven times more specially designed armored vehicles to help protect troops in Iraq in a move that could cost more than $20 billion. The vehicles are MRAPs, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.

The decision to order up to 17,770 MRAPs for the Army comes as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made the vehicle the Pentagon's top priority. "The MRAP's V-shaped hull and raised chassis are up to four times safer against the top threat to U.S. troops in Iraq — improvised explosive devices, or IEDs."

How could any true patriot argue dispute the virtue of the Army getting a big boost in safer vehicles? Well, consider:

1. By the time the vehicles are built and deployed in Iraq, America might not be in Iraq.

2. The MRAPs will only escalate the conflict (they are already vulnerable to newer devices being deployed against them).

3. You cannot defeat terrorists by upping the weaponry.

4. You cannot solve a problem today by spending today. The time to provide these vehicles was 2003 when we sent in the troops. Or 2005 when they were urgently requested.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that our armed forces should get the best possible equipment to do their dangerous jobs as safely as possible. But it is a bit late for that in Iraq. The whole invasion was a blunder and surely the best course of action now is to retreat and conserve resources, physical and fiscal.
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Charge Bush With Contempt? Go Leahy

Senator Leahy, not exactly a political hot-head, said on Sunday that he may seek a charge of contempt against President Bush. The contempt charge could come into play if the White House continues to withhold documents pertaining to the firing of US attorneys. Read on in the article and you see that contempt could also be in the cards with respect to the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.