awanderingbard | Technology is fun!

My dad got himself a speech-to-text computer programme for doing his work reports and he's letting me play around with it to help me transfer some of the bits and pieces of stories I have in notebooks without having to type them up. It's really fun, and my love of inanimate objects acting like people is fulfilled by the commands to make the microphone start taking dictation: 'wake up' or 'listen to me' and if you want it to stop 'go to sleep' or 'stop listening'.

It's a bit tricky to get the hang of, especially since I tend to wander when I talk, so I have to be reading something specific or else I end up rambling. But reading aloud from my notebook is weird too, because I end up saying things like "open quote what are you doing comma Sherlock question mark close quote John asked comma exasperated period new paragraph." But it's really pretty good at recognizing what you're saying, about 95% accurate. It even transcribes in Canadian spelling. Though if it doesn't get you, it really doesn't get you. We had a bit of a fight over the word 'flat' which it kept rendering as 'plot' no matter how clearly I enunciated it and I ended up having to spell it out.

In other news, Matt Smith was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last week and was absolutely delightful while doing so. I remember the producers of Who saying that when he walked into the room to audition he just was the Doctor and I can see it, because he's clearly the exact same person in real life. He apparently also auditioned for John Watson on Sherlock, but I'm very happy with the choices that were made on both shows. He's a little too eccentric for Watson. And he remains my favourite thing about the new series and often times the only thing I like about it. You can watch the interview here.