Thursday 16 October 2003

Pic of the day: Does this look like a dragon to you?

Here be Dragons?

First the doctor thing. It was uneventful, as such things go. Instead of going to work, I got off the bus at Tangvall, and walked over to the Health Center. I presented myself to a stressed nurse assistant and mentioned my appointment. Only a few minutes later I could go to the lab. I delivered the slides with their feces samples – it's not like they needed a bucket – and a small glass with a urine sample; formerly it held vitamins, but there was no mistaking it now. Then I sat down in a chair, and the lab nurse started to take blood samples. I lost count of how many samples she took, but that was because she seemed very distracted by something going on elsewhere in the office and I got distracted by her distraction, you understand? But anyway, there were several of them. Blood samples, that is. I think there were only two nurses, or whatever they were.

That was basically it. I was told that the doctor would call me if there was anything wrong in the tests. This is probably some standard phrase they are programmed to tell, since I am supposed to call the doctor next week anyway about the ultrasound. Incidentally, there probably is something wrong: The blood sugar is too high, since I forgot myself and drank a glass of chocolate milk in the morning. The other tests should probably not be much influenced by this, and I guess I can take the test again another day. They should not require people to perform conscious choices before 10 in the morning; I had only meant to make myself some sugar-free synthetic juice and then suddenly I had drunk chocolate milk instead.

***

Onward to dragons. Actually I guess there is only one, since Dragon 7.0 seems to have replaced Dragon 5.0. I am speaking about the speech recognition software from Scansoft. Amazon.UK delivered it quite rapidly, by air. So now I have upgraded. And it is indeed better. When it works at all, which it doesn't right now, but it worked for a while. Still not good enough to dictate a novel, for instance, but the occasional journal entry should be OK. If I get it to work again. ^_^

The improved accuracy is the most important aspect for me. But it has also a row of small enhancements in the command interface. Better and more extensive menus, more commands and more flexible commands. I don't plan on using these much. My hands are still very much attached to my wrists. I just need to unload some of my text entry. Even if I have to edit a bit by hand, it is still an improvement.

I had planned to demonstrate it, but since it is temporarily (?) unavailable, and since Catwoman is on ICQ, I'll save that for another day. If any, as I suppose it is prudent to say. "God willing" as the apostle so humbly puts it. Although right now I feel fairly OK. Of course, perhaps God wills that too.