Yes, yes, I know it's supposed to be a weekly thing, but hear me out. Not only have I been busy on the personal and professional front, I have managed to read a few books (of which reviews shall soon be up), but I have also discovered something, so freaking amazing, it has changed the way I write and has nearly tripled my writing speed efficiency. Hold on to your horses; I will get to it eventually.
Being a lawyer sucks because of the insane work pressure you're subject to and being immersed in a world of new inventions (I am a patent lawyer), only helps a bit. But this month, my personal life took precedence for once and I was able to attend a very close school friend's wedding. Yay! for him, but my parents took it as a sign to start pestering me for marriage as well. I am freaking too young for that. In fact, the other personal milestone was turning 26 recently (thanks for all the fish....and wishes), so you can understand my considerable horror at being woken up to a call from my parents wishing me a birthday and saying, now you're old enough, get married.
Anyways, away from all the mad hullabaloo of life, I managed to steal away precious moments of 'me' time during which I obviously picked up books to read. In fact, I lugged around a novel to read during the boring parts of the travel and was picked on for reading a 'dictionary' by friends. The nerve! Irrespective, I totalled a not-so-impressive tally of four novels during this period, all of which have been a pleasure to read.
Which brings me to the most important section of the post. The magic tool for writing:
No, no, not a wand. I wouldn't be that cliched. It's a DRAGON!
No, not the fire-breathing kinds. It's actually a speech-recognition software called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 by Nuance.
Another speech-recog software? What's so great about that?
I hear your scoffs! This one is MILES ahead of anything else on the market.
"You talk, and it types. Use your voice to create and edit documents or emails, launch applications, open files, control your mouse, and more. Quickly and easily capture your thoughts and ideas." That's what it says on the site.
And capture your thoughts and ideas it does. It trains to recognise your accent, speech style and even pauses to identify punctuation. It even delves through your entire word-files to understand what style you write in. So, basically it's a dream come true for an author. Just say the words aloud, when you have an idea and poof! they are on paper.
Hah! But I don't carry a laptop or a tablet around me all the time and ideas hit me anywhere and everywhere.
But you do carry around your mobile- Just record a voice memo and come back and feed it to Dragon and you'll have everything written down again.
And this is all besides the normal voice control features it gives you. My mornings go something like this, nowadays.
"Wake up." To the mic configured to Dragon.
"Open Word."
"Fabius lashed out. His brother was dead and he'd played the leading role in it."
"Open Firefox. Go to Google.com. Search synonyms for lash."
There you have it. The world of computers meshed with your ideas all at the beck and call of your voice.
So, go ahead! Buy it now. http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm. Yes, it's slightly expensive but the trial is free and the older versions are reasonably cheaper with not too much feature loss.
Still not convinced? This entire blog post was written with Dragon.
Signing off,
Utsav
Being a lawyer sucks because of the insane work pressure you're subject to and being immersed in a world of new inventions (I am a patent lawyer), only helps a bit. But this month, my personal life took precedence for once and I was able to attend a very close school friend's wedding. Yay! for him, but my parents took it as a sign to start pestering me for marriage as well. I am freaking too young for that. In fact, the other personal milestone was turning 26 recently (thanks for all the fish....and wishes), so you can understand my considerable horror at being woken up to a call from my parents wishing me a birthday and saying, now you're old enough, get married.
Anyways, away from all the mad hullabaloo of life, I managed to steal away precious moments of 'me' time during which I obviously picked up books to read. In fact, I lugged around a novel to read during the boring parts of the travel and was picked on for reading a 'dictionary' by friends. The nerve! Irrespective, I totalled a not-so-impressive tally of four novels during this period, all of which have been a pleasure to read.
Which brings me to the most important section of the post. The magic tool for writing:
No, not the fire-breathing kinds. It's actually a speech-recognition software called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 by Nuance.
Another speech-recog software? What's so great about that?
I hear your scoffs! This one is MILES ahead of anything else on the market.
"You talk, and it types. Use your voice to create and edit documents or emails, launch applications, open files, control your mouse, and more. Quickly and easily capture your thoughts and ideas." That's what it says on the site.
And capture your thoughts and ideas it does. It trains to recognise your accent, speech style and even pauses to identify punctuation. It even delves through your entire word-files to understand what style you write in. So, basically it's a dream come true for an author. Just say the words aloud, when you have an idea and poof! they are on paper.
Hah! But I don't carry a laptop or a tablet around me all the time and ideas hit me anywhere and everywhere.
But you do carry around your mobile- Just record a voice memo and come back and feed it to Dragon and you'll have everything written down again.
And this is all besides the normal voice control features it gives you. My mornings go something like this, nowadays.
"Wake up." To the mic configured to Dragon.
"Open Word."
"Fabius lashed out. His brother was dead and he'd played the leading role in it."
"Open Firefox. Go to Google.com. Search synonyms for lash."
There you have it. The world of computers meshed with your ideas all at the beck and call of your voice.
So, go ahead! Buy it now. http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm. Yes, it's slightly expensive but the trial is free and the older versions are reasonably cheaper with not too much feature loss.
Still not convinced? This entire blog post was written with Dragon.
Signing off,
Utsav
If I didn't love typing so much, this would probably be near the top of my list of Christmas/birthday/it's-Thursday-and-you-love-me-and-surely-that's-reason-enough gifts to beg for. How did your Dragon know when you wanted italics?? Could it just *hear* the slant in your voice?
ReplyDeletehaha..no..i had to say italics for that..although, you can create rules for that and say use rule no.x and it will italicize.
DeleteI KNEW IT! I KNEW YOUR PUNCHLINE! I was like, I bet this blog post was written using Dragon just so you can show us how awesome it is. I previously really wanted something like this, but I feel I can't edit and think out my prose while talking. But this might be awesome for first drafts. Hmmm.....
ReplyDeleteLove the wand by the way :D
ReplyDeleteis it sad that I knew it was an Alivan's version of the Elder Wand (Dumbledore's) right away? At least I think it's Aliva's. #embarrassedbutproudHPfan
ReplyDeletecorrect you are! and no its not sad...knowing where to buy wands is necessary!
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