Based on the title you may think that this writing will be about the great Karate Movie by Bruce Lee, but you would be wrong. However, I have to say that some of my spastic and involuntary moves could easily be interpreted as smooth karate moves. In fact, I'm thinking of opening my own gym, after the highly successful restaurant that I wrote about in a previous blog, Che'SpaZtics, is up and running of course. There I would teach a form of Martial Arts that I will call Attack-Cia Karate. I would practice this form out in public, and I can imagine that the comments may be heard as something like this, "Daddy, look at that funny man, it appears as if he's having a seizure as he walks down the sidewalk." "No son I heard about this, I think he's practicing a new form of handicapped Karate."
But that has gotten me off subject. What I wanted to write about is not my physical prowess,(I guess that the people who know me well, will laugh at that part), but about my experience with Dragon speak, the program that will follow spoken commands on your computer. I have been using this program for one week now, and so far it has gone very well. In fact, I am dictating this blog right now which is the real reason for the title. Except for a few corrections, which I am sure will get smoothed out over time as I learn to use this program, this blog is being written almost entirely by dictation, (so far the program is about 95% accurate to what I say, of course, that also accounts for about 95% user error).
The very first thing you do when you set this up is to read to it from some sentences that it provides so that it learns your speech patterns. There are numerous language dialects to choose from including slurred English, which I have mine set on as I sound like I have a mouthful of oatmeal sometimes. Okay that's a slight exaggeration there really is no slurred English, but I do find that the process is very smooth and it picks up with excellent accuracy everything that I am saying. I also wanted to address this issue because as Ataxia progresses, the speech can change, and I had a question about what happens if your speech changes or degrades over the years. I found a setting that allows you to reset the program and then retrain it to your current voice patterns. I should also mention here that Dragon is very particular to the voice that does the initial training and set up. Melissa tried to open a browser which is a simple command, and it would not respond to her voice. I gave it the same command, and it began instantly. Dragon is also always on your desktop and listening for your voice all you have to do is wake it up by saying, " Hello, or Hey Dragon," which could be quite entertaining at parties. Gosh, I'm starting to sound like a commercial for Dragon! "Amaze your friends, dazzle your family, be the envy of your neighbors"!
Some of the other things that you can do with this program are to open it up and execute various applications. An example of one of those programs would be Facebook. Dragon will post a status update for you which I have found to be a useful and fun feature. For it to be able to do that, you have to give it your passwords and account login information, so it knows where to go when you ask it to do specific things. It can also play music for you through the computer by either accessing your files on the hard drive or playing music through Spotify. I do not use any music services like Spotify, as everything I like to listen to is already on my hard drive, so I gave it access to play my music through Windows Media Player. Of course, to do that I had to sink all my music to Dragon, and now all I have to do is say play and the name of a song,(which really backfired just now because as I was saying how to do it, a song started playing on my computer)!
So that, in a nutshell.....er, greatly eggshell, shotgun shell.....whatever shell, is Dragon. It really has, in only a week, made my life easier. I would recommend it as a digital assistant. Because all though I can still type and coordinate the computer mouse okay, the use of Dragsubstantiallyincreased my speed, and at a time when a lot of other things seem to be on a decrease, this is a good thing.:-)
The very first thing you do when you set this up is to read to it from some sentences that it provides so that it learns your speech patterns. There are numerous language dialects to choose from including slurred English, which I have mine set on as I sound like I have a mouthful of oatmeal sometimes. Okay that's a slight exaggeration there really is no slurred English, but I do find that the process is very smooth and it picks up with excellent accuracy everything that I am saying. I also wanted to address this issue because as Ataxia progresses, the speech can change, and I had a question about what happens if your speech changes or degrades over the years. I found a setting that allows you to reset the program and then retrain it to your current voice patterns. I should also mention here that Dragon is very particular to the voice that does the initial training and set up. Melissa tried to open a browser which is a simple command, and it would not respond to her voice. I gave it the same command, and it began instantly. Dragon is also always on your desktop and listening for your voice all you have to do is wake it up by saying, " Hello, or Hey Dragon," which could be quite entertaining at parties. Gosh, I'm starting to sound like a commercial for Dragon! "Amaze your friends, dazzle your family, be the envy of your neighbors"!
Some of the other things that you can do with this program are to open it up and execute various applications. An example of one of those programs would be Facebook. Dragon will post a status update for you which I have found to be a useful and fun feature. For it to be able to do that, you have to give it your passwords and account login information, so it knows where to go when you ask it to do specific things. It can also play music for you through the computer by either accessing your files on the hard drive or playing music through Spotify. I do not use any music services like Spotify, as everything I like to listen to is already on my hard drive, so I gave it access to play my music through Windows Media Player. Of course, to do that I had to sink all my music to Dragon, and now all I have to do is say play and the name of a song,(which really backfired just now because as I was saying how to do it, a song started playing on my computer)!
So that, in a nutshell.....er, greatly eggshell, shotgun shell.....whatever shell, is Dragon. It really has, in only a week, made my life easier. I would recommend it as a digital assistant. Because all though I can still type and coordinate the computer mouse okay, the use of Dragsubstantiallyincreased my speed, and at a time when a lot of other things seem to be on a decrease, this is a good thing.:-)
Jason- I really enjoyed and laughed at your blog. I knew right away it was DRAGON SPEAKS. Question for you if you know the answer: I have ataxia from my brain surgery and my speech is pretty iffy. I've had ataxia 8.5 years. For the first two years the joke was "What??" when I spoke. Now some people understand me, and some people read my lips. I'm making a video about my brain surgery and I have tried many different narrations using other people as my voice or in the 3rd person. I recorded the last narration using my own voice. Now I've been asked to use my voice throughout. The main filmmaker thought if I talk really slowly and articulate then maybe it can work. He understands my limitations. After reading your review I thought maybe DRAGON can record my voice so it's understandable to all people. Does DRAGON have a feature that can make my voice sound normal like ??? Let me know if you know!
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