I see your lips moving but all I hear is.....

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Monday is usually the day when I sit down and try writing as many different blog posts as possible. Today is no different from any other Monday. Well, it is slightly different. Today I'm not writing anything: I'm speaking. That's right,

I'm speaking.

Talking.

There is also a large amount or hand waving, pacing, and staring out of the window.

The reason is because this post is being created using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software.

I'm following the lead taken by Havi at The Fluent Self and starting to get more and more into speech recognition software. So far it's working out quite well. Of course there are always problems with using software like this. You can't just talk and hope that it will understand everything. What you have to do is teach it to recognise how you talk and how you pronounce certain words. The manual, which is 256 pages long, contains chapters entitled "Starting to dictate", and "Correcting and editing", along with the ones you would expect such as "Formatting, numbers and punctuation", and "Hands-free computing".

The one thing I have found about the software is that if you try and speak slowly so that it will understand you it tends to make more mistakes than if you speak at a normal speed. I find this very peculiar.

So, I suppose I will have to spend the next two or three days just talking into the microphone in an effort to try and train the software to better understand the words I'm speaking. But, at the moment it's not doing too bad a job.

Havi of course is a great proponent of destuckification, and using something like speech recognition software is one way to remove the obstacles which are causing you to stick in your writing. All you have to do is think and talk the computer will do the rest - almost. I suppose that given enough time it will become second nature to be able to talk in such a way that the computer will completely recognise everything I say and still be able to create useful, informative, and well written posts.

I recommend visiting her site, especially if you're suffering from something which needs destuckification.

Dragon Naturally Speaking can be found here: