Tag Archives: dragon speech recognition

Sunday 20th April 2014 – EVEN THOUGH IT’S EASTER SUNDAY …

… I was out working today. And not at my place either but at Cecile’s. She came home today for a couple of days and so I liberated a lawn mower and attacked her jungle. At least she can find her house now. I also lit a fire for her to warm up her house seeing as it’s been empty for almost a year.

She came round here too for a couple of hours and I made tea for both of us. It’s nice to have visitors occasionally.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI should have been playing Teilhet this afternoon but the Goatslayers couldn’t raise a team. So that was today’s footy kicked into touch.

Apart from that, I’m disappointed with this Dragon speech recognition software. Try as I might, I can’t find out how to inport an *.mp3 file into it to be transcribed. And that was what I wanted it for in the first place.

As for Audacity – I started to import a soundtrack of a video at about 15:30 this afternoon. It’s now 02:05 and it’s still trying to import it. I’m not very impressed with this either.

So apart from all of that, I’ve not done very much.

And I don’t care either. And it’s Bank Holiday tomorrow too.

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Sunday 8th September 2013 – “NOTHING IS MORE EMPTY …

clinton agricultural fair fairground maine USA… than a deserted fairground” said John Betjeman in his book First and Last Loves.

So I reckon that he must have been to Clinton, Maine in the past because, believe me, this was empty and deserted. Mind you, it was something silly like 07:30 in the morning in the middle of a torrential rainstorm so that might have something to do with it.

Anyway, we didn’t hang around any and we were on Interstate 95 pretty early heading back northwards. A stop at Dysart’s truckstop for breakfast (for me, beans on toast with hash browns on the side) but, unfortunately, no cheerleaders, and then off shopping to a place called Sam’s Club.

Anyone from the UK will immediately recognise the concept only under another name – Makro – a trade warehouse for small businesses.

We ended up with three trolley-loads of stuff to bring home but I reckon that I won the prize, finding a copy of “Dragon”, the speech recognition software that works with my new dictaphone, and all for $45, which is cheap in any kind of currency.

We were so long in there that the sun was out when we left, and by the time we arrived at Houlton, it was a pleasant evening. Here we changed partners. Darren and Rachel were in a rush to get back home but Zoe still needed some shopping so I swapped passengers, and Zoe and I went on a rather fruitless expedition around some of the Houlton shops.

abandoned rolls royce scrapyard bridgewater maine USAThe border crossing is at Bridgewater in Maine – that brings us over to Centreville, and here at Bridgewater is a junkyard and a sight that you don’t see every day – a scrap Rolls Royce. THat shows you just how much these new Rolls Royes have degenerated since the days of the Silver Cloud in the earky 1960s.

It’s not the first Rolls Royce that I’ve seen in a scrapyard. The legendary McGuinness’s in Longport, Stoke on Trent had a Rolls Royce in there for a few years, but that was full of silt to a depth of about 9 inches – clearly major flood damage and probably only Third-Party insurance. Beyond the financial capability of anyone to put right, I imagine.

But this one seems to be undamaged in the general scheme of things – I reckon a major repair bill that is beyond the capacity of the owner to put right and enough to frighten off any prospective purchaser.

But what a way for a Roller to meet its end – stuck at the back of a junkyard off the beaten track in the wilds of Maine. That’s a sad story.

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Thursday 29th August 2013 – I PICKED UP MY CAR THIS EVENING …

… and they knew that it was me coming, as it has almost 17,OOOkms on the clock and quite a few scratches (some of which they hadn’t noticed). But I’m not complaining as it’s a top-of-the-range model with built-in 110 volt inverter and also a reversing camera, so I can see who I’m knocking down when I’m going backwards.

This morning though I went into the city centre to the railway station to see the trains but that didn’t work. It’s underground, the station, and they don’t let you down until your train is called, rather like an airport. But no worries – there weren’t many trains to see. The local rail network is a little, well, truncated. In fact there’s a line that passes about 1km from the airport and it would be the easiest thing to run a spur to it, there’s no obstructions in the way, but instead there’s just a shuttle bus running to the city centre at the mercy of the weather and the traffic, of which there is more than enough.

park monument statue montrealI went for a wander around the city centre afterwards, looking at the statues (and there’s more than enough of them too) and the skyscrapers (ditto) but as far as I can see, although the city centre has some pretty beautiful spots and corners, it has some pretty desolate windswept alleys too. Overall, it’s no different than any modern city enywhere else in the world and the part of Montreal that is preserved is really just a showcase for the tourists and everywhere else it’s pushed aside in the ruthless quest of mammon.

After lunch it was back to the hotel, back to thr airport, pick up the car and then off across the city to my storage unit to pick up my stuff. Now the car is all kitted up and ready to go and I’ll be off on my voyages.

But at the station I had the most excellent luck. A discount electronic place that had a sale on – and they had the next dictaphone higher up in the range to my old one – exactly the same and with a “pause” but with a data connection too. And that works fine and with GOM player and its facility to step back 5 seconds at a time, this is the works. It’s compatible too with “Dragon”, the speech recognition software that the OU used, so all I need to do is to find a student who might have a copy of “Dragon” for sale.

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