No. 17 Sunday 9 October 2011
Well, after what I wrote in last week's blog, I now have the ability to use a speech recognition program. This came about because I used the microphone that was provided by the program writers. The beauty is that I can now dictate my blogs instead of having to use my one finger typing to write the rubbish that I put down here. It also makes writing a blog very much quicker, although this does not mean that my blogs will be more frequent or more newsworthy - those are a function of my brain rather than my finger!!
The last week, subsequent to my blog, is one I would prefer to forget. On Saturday evening I started feeling pretty awful and this continued on Sunday and Monday until on Tuesday morning I decided to call the doctor. I had thought this was result of my flu jab but the doctor said it was merely an infection that I had picked up somewhere. She prescribed an antibiotic which I have been taking since then and it finishes next Tuesday. Whatever caused the problem seems to have gone away and I now feel somewhat better, in fact, I felt well enough to do my shopping on Thursday and to go to my Quaker Meeting today. I noticed that the temperature outside today was very much cooler than it was last week, but then I suppose it is October and we have to expect these changes for quite a time now. The real shock is going to come at the end of the month when the clocks go back and it starts getting dark in the late afternoon.
The changes to the BBC are going to make my TV watching a little more difficult because, as they say, there are going to be more repeats. My memory is such that I cannot always remember the title of a programme I have been watching or which episode it is. It is only when I have been watching something for a little while that it registers that it might be familiar, which is what happened to me this afternoon. This business of repeats is something I have experienced a number of times on various commercial channels and I'm getting quite used to it. The advantage of watching commercial channels is that most of them seem to have their breaks at around the same time so if I am watching the programme on one channel that I do not wish to see the rest of, I can always change to another channel and continue my TV watching elsewhere. Of course with every advantage there is a disadvantage, and it is the advertising breaks which are the disadvantage because for obvious reasons the advertisers repeat particular adverts at various times. This means that one gets familiar with certain adverts, some of which are particularly irritating.
Having used my new speech recognition program to write this blog, I find there are certain bits of it that I have to get used to, and discover what I am doing wrong which produces a result that I did not expect. It is, however, somewhat easier to use than pounding the keyboard. It is just that I have to get my brain into gear and decide what I am going to say before I actually say it. The one peculiarity of this program is that I have to speak in a slightly more staccato fashion so that it can sort out which word I actually mean. I am sure I will get used to it, but I have to expect a fairly steep learning curve until I've got it properly sorted.
Mike
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