Tuesday 29 March 2005

Pic of the day: The box.

Another dragon arrives

Today I was back to work after the Easter holy-days. This went well enough. I did not get sick, and I was not particularly tired when I came home. But then when I looked in my mailbox, there was a small slip telling me that a packet from Great Britain was waiting at the post office. This was obviously my long awaited new speech-recognition program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8.

As long-time readers may remember, the post office is located in a supermarket about half an hour's walk away. Normally this is not a problem, but then again normally I have not been without food for two weeks. I have mostly kept up with drinking, though; so even though I have lost a few pounds, I don't have problems going about my everyday tasks. Therefore I decided to go fetch the packet. First I drank some juice and water, and even ate a teaspoon full of honey. Then off I walked.

As always when I get packets from abroad, it took some time for the combined shop and post assistants to figure out the paperwork. I guess there aren't so many others around here who get packets from abroad. (The speech-recognition keeps insisting that I get my packets from "a broad"... I thought no one used that expression anymore. It is certainly not politically correct.) The box was also ridiculously large; it did not fit into my shopping bag, which normally holds several days' worth of groceries. Considering that this is a software program, they could just have sent me a CD or even let me download the program once I had paid for it. Admittedly there is a thick manual, and I guess it is nice to be able to read that as a book rather than in PDF format. But still, there was a box within a box within a box. Perhaps people would resent having paid so much if they didn't get a large box? Not I, though. I have plenty of cardboard in my home already.

The walk home was quite a bit harder than the first half hour had been. Before I had come half way, I was getting tired. Before I was home, my legs hurt. I guess I have not kept completely in shape during these two weeks of illness. But I got home without collapsing or anything like that, as expected. So all in all it was a good trip.

***

Upgrade from version 7 was easy, but not perfect. I just put in the CD, and the program took care of the rest. It discovered the previous installation and completely replaced it. However, it did not upgrade the existing user automatically. Instead it insisted that I create a new user. When I tried to skip this, the program denied me access completely. After I had gone through the full creation of new user, I was allowed to go in and upgrade my existing user. This took a long time, during which the program appeared frozen. An ordinary user might have panicked and terminated the program during this time. Since I work as a software user support, I don't panic quite that easily. Inspecting the processes with Windows task manager, I saw that the program used varying amounts of memory and CPU; from this I concluded that it was still working. Suddenly it finished, and I was ready to dictate.

Well, not entirely! I had already registered the program online, which incidentally asked for a lot of personal information, almost bordering on the private. But before I could use the program I had to activate it. (Okay, I could have used it five times first.) Activation happened almost automatically when I clicked the activate button. But it required being online at the time. This means that you can not run Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 on a computer that is not connected to the Internet! That's hardly a problem for me; I practically live online. And I suppose any computer modern enough to support this program also comes ready for the Internet. Even so, it needs to be said. Also you can only activate it a few times, 5 or 6. I seem to remember that it gave the number during the activation, but now I can't find it in the manual. Since this is a program you may want to use for the rest of your life, you should not randomly install it on computers you are not likely to use.

***

Yes, I mean what I said near the end of the previous paragraph: You may want to use this program for the rest of your life. Already it understands me noticeably better than the previous version. According to one reviewer, after a while it is practically impossible to make the program miss understand. As you can see, I haven't used it that long yet... :-)

But finally the program lives up to its name: "NaturallySpeaking". I don't have to strain to speak loudly and clearly enough for the program to understand me. For the first time, I don't feel like I'm talking to an Oriental exchange student. Sure, in version 7 it was a college student rather than a high school student. But in version 8, I feel like I'm talking to a native English speaker. Or rather American speaker: The program is available in several versions of English, all of which come with the original CD. I installed the American English version, since I have a lot more friends in the United States than in the United Kingdom. Your mileage may vary.

Since the program can draw on the experiences of its predecessor, the new user will probably not be able to use it quite that easily the first day. You may have to read through several of the training sessions, or make corrections for the first few days. But it's a good bet that after a week, if you sit down alone with the program without noise in the room, it will understand you just as well as a human would. Okay, a slightly retarded human... but probably better than President Bush. (Just kidding -- I hope!)

I doubt you can imagine how it feels for someone with almost chronic laryngitis to finally be able to speak softly and casually. It feels like a miracle. (And no, the program did not recognize "laryngitis" the first time, but it was willing to learn.)

A reasonably modern computer is necessary, and a noise canceling microphone. The box includes a headset with a noise canceling microphone, but you may want to invest in something better to avoid frustration. Then again, you may want to save that money until you have tried with the free microphone. It could be good enough for you. After all, I am not a native English speaker, much less American. The program might have an easier time understanding you, if you have some variant of English as your mother tongue. And as I said, Dragon NaturallySpeaking learns over time, so your results should improve if you stick with it. Read through several of the training sessions and run the acoustic optimizer. Soon you too can talk to your computer as if to a friend. A slightly retarded friend, perhaps, but you are probably used to that. I just hope this attitude doesn't color my journal from now on...