Day of Dragon Full Stop

Today, I learned, or rather, re-learned Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech to text software program. My, how this program has changed! Now, not only does this program recognize accents when speaking English, it even distinguishes between American English and British English, spoken with an Indian accent, Spanish accent, Asian accent, and a couple more I can't remember right now. Which means, if you grew up in South Africa, for example, you most likely learned British English.

You must let the computer know which type of English you will be speaking, British or American, and then stick with it, because if you tell the computer you will be speaking British English and you say "period" the program types out p-e-r-i-o-d, rather than the dot at the end of a sentence, as we say in American English. You must say "full stop", which is how the British end their sentences. The program also recognizes Northern American accents (New England), southern accents (think dahlin and y'all), and is most comfortable with midwestern English (rather flat).

Apparently, this program would not react surprisingly if you used the expression "dead slow", which is what I read when I was driving in London and entered a parking garage.

This program, however, does not appreciate giggling. I got the giggles when I was dictating this afternoon, because we were practicing dictating tongue twisters, and I thought they were hilarious. It didn't help that the fellow next to me also saw the humor in what we were dictating and started to laugh at the same time. Actually, what started the giggling in the first place was the simultaneous dictating he and I were completing. We apparently have about the same rate of speech (somewhat fast, but not hideously so), and we were attempting to bomb through the exercises quickly, as some of them seemed rather absurd. That was enough to get me giggling (you put me in a room for any long period of time and expect me to concentrate fully on the task at hand for hours on end, and I am bound to see some humor in what I am doing; hence the giggling. I admit it. I started it). I was keeping it under control, and then he started laughing, and that was it. I was a giggling idiot. It's really difficult to not giggle. I believe it's better just to get the damn giggles out and be done with it. Which is what I eventually did, and got back to business (full stop).

Tomorrow is the advanced workshop on Dragon. Let's hope I can giggle a lot on the way in, in the morning, to get it out of my system (full stop).