In a fit of wanting to type faster, I looked into the latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. After 30 mintues of googling, I’ve decided that speech recognition is still not ready for prime time. :-( (dear reader. Do not dispair. Read my update below!)

I found several blogs and sites that talked about how excited they were at the prospect of how the software could help them, but I never found any followups. That says to me that everyone who tried it got dis-interested quickly. When I first tried speech recognition several years ago, I had a similar experience. After a few days with it, I thought that if I only put more dedication into teaching the computer how I spoke, I could get some use out of it. But I just wasn’t interested in putting that much effort into it. Hence, the waning interest. Well, here we are, 10 years of research, my computer is 200 times faster (!!! 3 Ghz vs 14 Mhz!!!) and the reviews still say pretty much the same thing.

The most useful review was from John Udell’s Weblog. He included a video of him dictating a letter. His was virutally the same experience I had 10 years ago. The recognition had about a 2% error rate. That sounds good until you realize that this posting so far is 203 words… That means there would have been 4 errors in the preceeding text… errors that were spelled correctly and were likely gramatically correct, just not what I intended to say.

So then you have to correct the errors… That can be terribly slow, and error-prone in itself in an audio interface. Listening to John Udell patiently talk to his computer in a carefully moderated voice, and having the machine still make dumb mistakes drove me crazy, and I’m a patient guy.

Grr. I don’t know… Maybe I will give it one try. I tried to type as fast as John was dictating and I very quickly realized that, when it worked well, he was going at like 100 to 120 words per minute. I type at something like 25-40 WPM. I would love to be able to integrate this kind of performance in my typing life! Maybe I could dictate and then edit by hand? I don’t know…

update 4-29-05: I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 now for two days and I’ve got to say that I’m extremely impressed with it. My previous reservations were unfounded. I’m typing this right now with my voice. It’s pretty darn cool, and yes, I’m going a lot faster than I could type after only one day of training. it takes a little bit of getting used to, speaking to the computer, but really not that much. More importantly, I feel that I’m using a different part of my brain in order to write things. It’s a speaking thing, not a writing thing. That was one thing that I was hoping that I would get out of this.

Woot!

I’ll keep my intrepid readers abreast of how I’m doing with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Oh, and as for the microphone, I’m surprised to say that I’m very happy with a cheap lapel mic that came with my web cam.

Gosh darn it, it’s even becoming easier to say things like “Send that” instead of clicking on the Send button in Outlook.

You know, I have to admit that it’s kind of nice to hear my voice in an otherwise quiet room. It’s better than listening to the mindless, brain sucking television in the background.

Update 5-3-05 I’m convinced.

I am now able to type and about 80 wpm. That’s twice as fast as I have ever been able to type in my life. With more practice and the new headset that will be arriving in a few days, I am fairly confident that I will be able to tie at 100 wpm very reliably. This gosh darned thing is good! There are still a few small issues but they all seem conquerable. For example, right now the integration with Firefox is less than perfect. But there are tools to get past that. I’m really pretty impressed.

Of course, instead of me doing just necessary things faster, I am now becoming more verbose. I think I like that in my Internet life.

Case in point: this is getting to be a pretty long blog entry, isn’t it? It’s not that I’m spending more time writing this entry, it’s just that I’m “typing” a lot faster. Woot!

(and it is a bit of a novelty teaching the computer to understand the word “woot”)

update 5-5-05: That’s it, I’m hooked. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is amazing. I really can type/speak at about 80 wpm. It’s still taking a bit of getting used to but darn it, this thing works. I went out and bought a good dictation headset (an Andrea ANC-750) from Knowbrainer.com and that has improved the accuracy quite a bit (of course, it’s also an excellent gamer headset ;-). I’m thinking less and less about how I speak to dictate after just one week.

Update 5-20-05: I continue to be happy with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 (DNS8). My biggest gripe with it right now is its memory and performance footprint. When it’s running it takes longer than normal to switch between windows, even if DNS8 isn’t engaged. That makes it so that it’s a bother to leave it running on the odd chance I’ll want to issue a “close window” or a “send that” command. Though I admit that I’m a huge short-attention-span-theater window switcher. I have 2 monitors and at the very moment I have 12 windows open. On any day when I’m spending more time writing than not, DNS8 stays running.

Update 9-14-05: FYI I continue to be an avid Dragon NaturallySpeaking user. I got a DMCA takedown notice from copyright-compliance.com last week representing Scansoft saying about this very page (where I gush happily about DNS)…

It has come to the attention of Scansoft that you are distributing unlicensed and unauthorized Scansoft Products.

If anyone can find the unlicensed Scansoft product on this page, I’ll give them a prize.

Update 10-7-05: Sweetness. I just installed another gigabyte (bringing me to 1.5 GB) and all of the lag that I’ve been seeing when moving between programs has gone away. I can now leave Dragon NaturallySpeaking running much more of the time without a strain on my PC.

If Zonealarm says, “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services is trying to access the internet”, “Validation: Not available in ZoneAlarm”, “Application:svchost.exe” you should Allow it to, and Remember this setting.

The Generic Host Process is a good program from Microsoft. Google for it to find out more.

I can’t tell but I think this switch sometimes flips to “Deny” on it’s own, which is a bad thing because then the computer will have no internet access. 2 clients have told me, “I don’t know, I don’t think I denyed it.” Comments?

This happened on Zonealarm 5.5.062.004

This works great. Stolen from here.

Cygwin + Rxvt

I’ve been playing around with Cygwin since I’m forced to run WinXP on my work laptop. Cygwin’s great, I’ve used it on and off since when it was GNU-Win32 by Cygnus, but there’s a lot of improvements to it in the last year or two.

One of the things that’s irritated me is that the default console uses the cmd.exe shell as a base – makes it hard to copy + paste with the mouse, among other things. After some effort, I found the right combination of tweaks to get Rxvt working as a decent console in Cygwin.

[You’ll of course have to install Rxvt from your favorite Cygwin mirror. – Lee]

Step 1: Edit ~/.Xdefaults – the settings below create an 80×80 terminal window with a deep-blue-black background and yellow-white text (looks nice, easy on the eyes) and assign VIM-style color codes:

(see comment 6. A change might be needed to this code. I haven’t tested it yet but you might need it. Tell me if it works for you please)

! ~/.Xdefaults - X default resource settings
Rxvt*geometry: 80x80
Rxvt*background: #000020
Rxvt*foreground: #ffffbf
!Rxvt*borderColor: Blue
!Rxvt*scrollColor: Blue
!Rxvt*troughColor: Gray
Rxvt*scrollBar: True
Rxvt*scrollBar_right: True
Rxvt*font: Lucida Console-12
Rxvt*SaveLines: 2000
Rxvt*loginShell: True
! VIM-like colors
Rxvt*color0: #000000
Rxvt*color1: #FFFFFF
Rxvt*color2: #00A800
Rxvt*color3: #FFFF00
Rxvt*color4: #0000A8
Rxvt*color5: #A800A8
Rxvt*color6: #00A8A8
Rxvt*color7: #D8D8D8
Rxvt*color8: #000000
Rxvt*color9: #FFFFFF
Rxvt*color10: #00A800
Rxvt*color11: #FFFF00
Rxvt*color12: #0000A8
Rxvt*color13: #A800A8
Rxvt*color14: #00A8A8
Rxvt*color15: #D8D8D8
! eof


Step 2: Modify your c:cygwincygwin.bat to invoke your shiny new Rxvt instead of cmd.exe:

@echo off
C:
chdir C:cygwinbin
set EDITOR=vi
set VISUAL=vi
set CYGWIN=codepage:oem tty binmode title
rxvt -e bash --login -i

I installed Bittorrent on my spenix.com account. I may be volunteering a little technical help in distributing this year’s Burning Man Screen Saver for The Burning Man Screen Saver Project.

I’m a bit excited since I submitted about 15 photos of my own to this year’s project. The Vault of Heaven screen saver is due out in April or so.

On a side note, if you have any large files you need distributed, I’m now your go-to guy!

4-10-05 update. The Screen Saver doesn’t need Bittorrent. Oh well.

This is why: http://livejournal.com/

Temporarily Unavailable

LiveJournal is currently down due to a massive power failure at our data center. We’ll provide updates at /powerloss/ as they’re available.

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Win XP SP 2 allows you to set a PPPoE connection as a default connection instead of having to dial it. That means that it will automatically dial the PPPoE connection when its needed. That’s nice.

I had a problem re-configuring an HP PSC 2510 photosmart all-in-one printer. I wanted to change the router that the printer was connected to.

The stupid blue light on top of the printer wouldn’t come on, indicating that it was connected to the router via ethernet.

The key turned out to be: unplug the printer for 2 full minutes. After that, when I turned it on, I got a network connection and could continue installation.

Full instructions for configuring the printer on a wireless network:

1. Unplug printer for 2 minutes
2. Plug printer into router via ethernet
3. Turn on printer and wait for blue light
4. Install HP software. Note that it takes 30 minutes
5. The printer will eventually be assigned an IP address. It might take 2 full minutes longer than you think it should. Go to the Network setting on the printer and print out the network configuration
6. On the computer, go to http://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn to set the SSID, WEP, etc.
7. Disconnect the printer from the router.
8. The printer’s blue light will turn off. It might take another 2 minutes for the light to come back on. If it doesn’t, check the network settings on the printer to make sure that the radio is on.
9. Revel in the wirelessness of it all.

I was installing Verizon DSL for a customer and ran into a big problem. The CD installation hangs. I called customer support and they said that was a known problem (!!!). Here’s what to do:

1. Call Verizon at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Get a username and password from them.
2. Go to the home page of the Westell Versalink 327W wireless DSL modem at 192.168.1.1.
3. Click on “Profile Editor”.
4. “Edit” the connection. If it says something like user= NewDSLCustomer”, you know the install crapped out. Replace the username and password with the client’s.

Until you’ve done this, you’ll be able to use PPPoE directly by “Connecting” to Verizon Online. But that is a bad stopgap.

Now that my blog lives on my website, I can blog whenever and wherever I want as long as I have an internet connection. Like right now, I’m at a customer site waiting for a program to install. It’s a pretty weird feeling. It’s a lot like the giddy cutting-edge-ish feeling I had when I first got a cell phone. “I can now talk to anyone, at any moment! I am the master of my technology! Mu ha ha!” Of course, that feeling didn’t last too long. We’ll see how long this feeling lasts.

Now, everyone can follow along all of the things that I do during my day.
Installing an HP printer…. 1%…. … … … ….. 2%.. … Are you all following along at home?

Hmm, polished edges can sometimes rust pretty quick.

After way too much deliberation, I’ve decided to go with WordPress.

WordPress, don’t fail me now.

I’ll see what I can do about importing my old journal into this system as soon as I can figure out how to do it. It might take a while.

For the time being, my previous journal pages will continue to be available on my old journal pages.