Word: dragone
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...heard, "Using potato vice, the auto use a tomato." While the idea of potato vice intrigued me, I was getting discouraged by my machine's tin ear. I spent a week with Dragon Naturally-Speaking Mobile ($250), a 4-oz. tape recorder that holds 40 minutes of speech and fits in the palm of my hand. It's designed to take dictation...
...much and suffer from repetitive-stress injury. According to some estimates, within a few years half of all workers who type on computers will complain of some form of RSI, from numb fingers to inflamed wrists. In fact, I decided to try out Naturally-Speaking Mobile because of Dragon Systems Inc.'s history of making great voice-recognition software, NaturallySpeaking Preferred, for PCs. I've known lots of reporters with burned-out wrists who now dictate their stories and who swear by Dragon's products...
...problem? I talked to Kevin Gervais, who provides tech support for Dragon, and he was mystified. First, he made sure that I had an adequate sound card (check www.naturallyspeaking.com for a list), a minimum of 32 megs of RAM and a 133-MHz or better PC. Since the recorder comes with a good microphone and headset, that wasn't an issue, though it can be if you just use the software on your PC without the recorder. Then we went over the setup procedure. I had read 20 minutes of a Dave Barry book into the recorder to familiarize...
...English speaker uses 40 different sounds, called phonemes; the Dragon system used our training session to predict how I would say each of those sounds. Finally, I dumped in a few columns of "vocabulary builder" so the software could learn some of the peculiar phrases I use, such as "trainshouters" and "Bust-A-Move." Everything checked out. "My guess," said Gervais, "is that just by being more conscious of how you speak, you'll improve your accuracy...
...leave this place, bags in tow, Heidegger in our hip-pockets, and who sweeps in to fill our vacuum but all these old people? This year, they did so to an old-style British "Panto," a comical take on the fairy tale "Cinderella"; a traditional "St. George and the Dragon" mummers play; lots of familiar carols and rounds, including the ceremonial "Boar's Head Carol" from Oxford; Susan Cooper's classic solstice poem "The Shortest Day" and a spectacular rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" you'll never forget. And, as always, Revels audiences are kept busy, singing carols...