Blog 51 Lake Ketchum Art Galleri

Blog 51
Lake Ketchum Art Galleries

Life On a Lake

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

277

Okay, we admit it. We were a little hard on BillG. He's a sensitive guy, and we can't hold him personally responsible for one of his products that doesn't, ahem, function up to what it's advertised as being, or doing.

So we gave old MS Word Speech Recognition another try. We had gone through initial training, so we went back to the training utility for Dictation, and read aloud (to the mounting dismay of our attentive dogs) long passages from Bill's book and from Bertram Russell. Time passed, and the utility told us it was listening hard and remembering our peculiarities of speech patterns.

We read aloud from Edna O'Brien's excellent Irish novel, Wild Decembers, and this is what came out:

A reading from Federal crimes while the summer is for LDAP and unflagging in charge of the mound road to the sound of this sound jarring in the profile of the passing landscape produce some new machine that squad from the color of the brick the regions of the big wheels scrubbed and mark Whitlock and Ryan nock meeting their Mac of the trails

No better, is it? I won't quote O'Brien directly, only say that she don't sound a bit like this. She is lilting and soaring and poetic.

So we tried a bit from from Alice and Bill’s "The Hard Edge," Computer Shopper, March 2004, p.128, thinking perhaps MS Dictation was more of a technical app and didn't recognize anything much of a literary bent:

Allison bill gates technology fans someone Blocking began sweeping into everything from news articles to cover stations over of the subway beta tester clear after all people seen bullish and information online in some form or another starting from time to their

No, no, no! Wrong again, and totally unusable. Perhaps it was my voice, which is rather soft and flat. So I decided to work a bit on a couple of select lines that any techie ought to be able to understand. I pounded them out and t his is what resulted:

Another way to add a new scene to your list is look for the little orange exit mail graphic the most wanted popular sites right click the icon disease double click and scratch their heads then click properties cut-and-paste URL show the properties box into the subscribe out on one lines and that the gas and peerless automatically MSDN get that into your list automatically

Well, better, I had to agree, but not good enough. As we used to say in radio transmission lingo in our stint in the Army Signal Corps, "Not commercial."

And what is MS Office and Speech Recognition if not commercial?

276

Microsoft rules the Internet and most of our home computers. It is a fact, not an opinion. And Bill Gates rules Microsoft. So it is only natural for some of us minions to take issue with the Supreme Commander once in a while.

I've taken a swing at MS Speech Recognition earlier and am about to do so again. I mean, I can't make the damn thing work, no matter how carefully I practice speaking the sample text into my new little microphone. So, in my opinion, it is practically (key word, there) worthless.

So if you can make it work, please contact me and I'll apologize to Big Bill and his staff. and I'll follow your lead and try again.

So, more in a sprit of fun than in any degree of hope for successful accomplishment, I decided to try Word Speech on a bit of Chaucer. I mean, if it doesn't work with Contemporary Me, maybe it needs something a more tested and traditional. (Yeah.)

Remember The Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales? If you know any Chaucer at all, you'll remember the bit that starts,

Here Bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury

han that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
{So priketh hem nature in hir corages};
Than longen folk to goon on pilgimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Okay, you dig?

So I spoke the words in my best Middle English into the mike, and this is what came out:

As a freshman from the general prologue to toss for Canterbury tales one of the proliferation of this sort of the four of the law to have some trouble, and David of having such a quick trip to the stand for one year of use and what was right, 5/2 in an article in the “as we all have so often around his health: that’s all well as that. It’s a good idea so far have been shot, shows that all four state: down from the launch had problems for the sake of strong as strong as for all of its more than 601 and a specific provisions of the union and to have about a farewell to this whole thing is to live for the sake of the old one that they’ve said they felt that did not say what they sell for two to one)>when you how long should have a full day of all, she did that come into the bowels of the of what did they put it in, and also for LAN says: her share of the window that four out of a right to . . . .

Not so great, is it?

I thought I might be at fault, so I tried again, speaking ever more carefully. The result?

Habitat of all of the tale of intent of the one of the parole officials of the back door of the law to have to file an affidavit saying this is the effect the same time as the winds of goods with his wife of a visit by a bit of a hole that have had profits of the oldest of the hospital from his house for sale is one of those taken of the things that have all the so-Déjà vu, shows that long before that will have to show The back of human heart of the right of the. . .

And there I gave up.

Wouldn't you have?