Saturday 12 March 2005

Pic of the day: Everything has its own time. (Screenshot from Sims2.)

Time passes

I'd be happy to continue writing about Sims 2: University. But I haven't played it long enough to know all that happens in the last part, and the impact on life after exams. I think this can all be covered in one entry, so I will not write it until I have played it through. This, I have heard, takes at least 8 hours of gametime. I would probably spend more. And contrary to popular belief, I don't play games all day long, certainly not one single game. So we shall have to let time pass, and then see.

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On a related note, I was amused to read that in my Five years ago entry, I whined about the Sim children not growing up. The Sims was the hot new game back then, and may have contributed slightly to my subsequent hospitalization. Changing day rhythms is a pretty powerful stress factor. Anyway, my wish is certainly fulfilled now. The Sim kids grow up and become sim teens, then sim students, before they finally become full grownups. And then it begins over again. If it seems kinda pointless, this endless chain of birth and death, then you are not alone: Buddhists have said the same for two and a half thousand years. But people continue to love their life. And I continue to love Sims 2 as well. ^^

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One and a half year ago, I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7.0, a speech recognition program. It was a large step up from 5.0 which I had tried before and found not usable except in emergencies. But even version 7 made a lot of mistakes. Last fall I upgraded to version 7.03 and got a noise-canceling Plantronics microphone (headset, actually). This helped, but I still had to speak somewhat unnaturally to be understood. That puts strain on my throat, which is anyway not good at talking for more than a few minutes now and then.

There is now a version 8 out, another major step forward. Not a revolution, but some pretty nifty evolution. I've seen a couple videos where end users (not the company that made it) demonstrate how well it works. It is definitely better than 7. They claim that its recognition rate is now 25% better. This cannot possibly be, since the old one gets about 90% of the words right or more when used correctly. You can't get 115% accuracy. So perhaps it is the misheard words that are reduced by 25%, which would be a lot less impressive. From 90 to 92.5% isn't exactly a giant leap for mankind. But be that as it may, the demos and other testimonies from users are pretty clear. This time it should be possible to talk to the imaginary exchange student in the PC as if to a friend, or at least a coworker. I will order it tomorrow.