Been trying out my AirPods Pro as a dictation rig. You might recall I lost access to Dragon Dictate a while back when they stopped doing Apple updates. I still don't have a decent multi-app solution for speech recognition, but I have been using the built-in Dictation feature that ships with the latest version of MS Word (which I get thru a 360 subscription).
It's not nearly as snappy, responsive or accurate as Dragon - or at least as the second last version of Dragon, which was the peak for MacOS. But it's more than good enough to fill in. Its main failing is in recognising the sort of weird made up words I tend to use in novel writing, especially sci fi stuff like The Shattered Skies. And it doesn't like 'Kolhammer' much, either. But then neither did Dragon. Kept wanting to call him Admirable Coal Hammer.
One clear advantage Word does have – ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that — is in Bluetooth connectivity.
Dragon was always hopeless with wireless headsets. It really wanted that hard connection between Mic and processor. But Word's on board dictation feature seems to handle the AirPods without a problem. They're just accurate as my wired headsets. This opens up the possibility of stalking around the office and dictating copy, as I like to do.
I often find myself getting sleepy at about two in the afternoon, and it’d help if I was able to dictate into my iPad for an hour or so. I could put the fondle slab on the standing desk, plug myself into the air pods, and walk around the room talking to myself like a crazy man.
As a matter of fact, I just did and still am. The speech recognition seems fine, even from way across the room. The only real issue so far is that Microsoft’s built-in dictation isn’t nearly as good with formatting commands as Dragon. But it’s pretty good, and to be honest I tend not to format via spoken command anyway. Even on Dragon, it wasn’t that great.
I do like the idea of being freed from the wired headset, however, and this brief experiment with the AirPods and Ipad seems to have worked pretty well. So I might give it a go at greater length tomorrow.* I find the lure of a nap in my office recliner chair to be some powerful magic after I’ve had lunch, so it could be quite the productivity boost if I could stay on my feet and awake for the Sleepy Hour.
* Update.
I tried the new set up, dictating a chapter of WW 3.1 this morning. Got just under 2000 words done in about two and a half hours. With a migraine! Imma call that a win.
If you think about it, what a miracle all this stuff is. My grandma rode to school on a horse cart, and they didn't get running water till the sixties. Now as I type, this latest version of Word tells me I'm swearing too much. Just like Grandma did. Weird.
I was talking about the extraordinary technical advances my mother's generation has lived through (she's 76). She grew up in Kalgoorlie where they didn't have refrigeration when she was a kid, and now she's seen the introduction of not just colour TV but TV itself, then the internet and all the advances in between, all in one lifetime, it's pretty wild.
When she got her drivers licence she did it in a new car that had indicators etc, but she still had to do hand signals because that was the requirement still and my brain melted a bit. I'd been telling her how Teslas have a "dog function", where the onboard monitor displays a message saying the air con is on and set to 24 degrees and the doggo is fine, please don't smash the windows to save me sort of thing, and she marvelled at how far cars had some since she started driving because... 🥴
I'd read that it's apparently going to be written into law that every official document produced in Australia from March 25th has to have at least 5 'C*nts' per 100 words...
Hey JB, thanks for the short chapter preview, but did you really have to make the writing so small? I had to blow it up considerably to be able to read it
So, how do you get MS Word to spell ‘Kolhammer’? I have a similar problem, with unusual character names that it won’t recognise (I.e. ‘Bagg’ gets me ‘bag’).
It almost always transcribes it as coal hammer. So most of the time, I just dictate my way through the piece and then do a search and find to replace that. In the original Dragon program, I had our favourite Admiral entered into the application dictionary, and 90% of the time there was no problem. For some reason, however, when Nuance sold the code to Microsoft, that didn’t come across.
It does, yes. As i understand from my long ago and now obsolete psych degree, you're drawing on different parts of the brain. But it's not that hard to retrain yourself. I jump pretty easily between the two.
If you think about it, what a miracle all this stuff is. My grandma rode to school on a horse cart, and they didn't get running water till the sixties. Now as I type, this latest version of Word tells me I'm swearing too much. Just like Grandma did. Weird.
I was talking about the extraordinary technical advances my mother's generation has lived through (she's 76). She grew up in Kalgoorlie where they didn't have refrigeration when she was a kid, and now she's seen the introduction of not just colour TV but TV itself, then the internet and all the advances in between, all in one lifetime, it's pretty wild.
When she got her drivers licence she did it in a new car that had indicators etc, but she still had to do hand signals because that was the requirement still and my brain melted a bit. I'd been telling her how Teslas have a "dog function", where the onboard monitor displays a message saying the air con is on and set to 24 degrees and the doggo is fine, please don't smash the windows to save me sort of thing, and she marvelled at how far cars had some since she started driving because... 🥴
Cursing-protection has been removed from the Dutch variant 😁
The Australian version inserts them at random points on your behalf.
I'd read that it's apparently going to be written into law that every official document produced in Australia from March 25th has to have at least 5 'C*nts' per 100 words...
Hey JB, thanks for the short chapter preview, but did you really have to make the writing so small? I had to blow it up considerably to be able to read it
"fondle slab" LOL!
This is quite impressive, you must be pretty happy soldiering on through the migraine via dictating
It’s a hell of a lot easier, yes. I don’t have to look into the big bright screen and I can wander around my office to distract from the headache.
So, how do you get MS Word to spell ‘Kolhammer’? I have a similar problem, with unusual character names that it won’t recognise (I.e. ‘Bagg’ gets me ‘bag’).
It almost always transcribes it as coal hammer. So most of the time, I just dictate my way through the piece and then do a search and find to replace that. In the original Dragon program, I had our favourite Admiral entered into the application dictionary, and 90% of the time there was no problem. For some reason, however, when Nuance sold the code to Microsoft, that didn’t come across.
Does dictating take some getting used to?
It does, yes. As i understand from my long ago and now obsolete psych degree, you're drawing on different parts of the brain. But it's not that hard to retrain yourself. I jump pretty easily between the two.
And maybe a coaster as well?
Talk to my teens.
One of the nice things about Word’s dictation? No set up or voice training. Just works straight out of the box.