Decided to try a little automatic dictation using the mechanism built into Windows 10. Basically by pressing windows dash H, you get a mechanism that is designed for speech to text transcription, what they call dictation, that should allow large scale recording of input. It isn't ideal, but if one is one of those folks that could speak off the cuff and produce quality output, I can see it being very useful indeed.
Having a bit of fun tonight with some old tech that I used to use heavily (and may I say brilliantly) back in the 1990s. WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.
I have an ancient copy of WP from way back when, and used a setup with a DOS... emulator? Anyway, a DOS box running inside Windows 10 called vDOS, which is pre-configured to work specifically with WP. Nice thing about WP DOS (not so much the Windows versions) was its focus initially on inputting content -- creating correspondence or news articles first, long before one gets to the point of worrying about formats and layouts. I prefer this way of working. Create good content, and formatting is a matter of not screwing it up. Format first, and to me the content is weaker and less valuable. Maybe "The medium is the message," or part of it. But it isn't all of the message, and after a certain point the medium gets in the way of effective messaging.
WP DOS lets me write the way I write this blog, content first. But it also does fully-justified text by default. Software that can import from WP DOS produces output that may be simpler, but has a better shot at high quality content. Hard to explain, I suppose. If you know what I mean, it's obvious, and if you don't, you might never get the point.
I'm not a brilliant writer. But WP DOS, I think, allows me to be a better writer than I might otherwise have been.
Another thing I suspect from my experience. I was an early adopter of what was called "desktop publishing." I'd create newsletters and flyers, taking advantage of the fairly new graphic tools available in the 90s. But the impact of Microsoft Word and other software with similar design philosophy has created so much "pretty" junkmail that I don't think people even look at a lot of the content. It's a blur and discarded before reading more than the apparent headlines and glancing at the pictures.
Even DTP based on work from WP DOS tended to be better, because the first task was saying what needed to be said. Layout and art and such was all secondary. You got more meaningful material, and people expected that -- back when news was news and not just clickbait and top 10 lists (said the old guy).
Had an inquiry for some voicework, narrating a poem by GK Chesterton. So possibly back in the saddle, albeit in a small way. Or a more suitable title might be "40 Days in the Saddle, by Major Assburns." :-)
We'll see how it turns out, okay?
Griz
My longform content has, well, been mostly nonexistent for a long time. Last time I posted a new podcast was 2023, obvious when you look. And I said at the time I was going to record John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of Women." And then, well, I didn't. And haven't.
Not even sure I spelled Mill's name right, it's been so long.
I am trying to get my butt back in gear. With the chaos of the last few months (since being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma), it's a big step forward to be wearing pants. Okay, maybe a little exaggeration there.
I will likely have to do podcasts in quick and dirty mode for a while. I'm way out of practice, and the quality tricks I used habitually Back Then are simply forgotten now. I have to sand off the rust and recreate such skills as I used to have, or more likely new techniques entirely.
Bear with me. Turns out cancer is kinda stressful, and moreso when one adds in PTSD. (Read about the symptoms of PTSD for yourself from your own search. Even my apparently casual tone may derive from PTSD itself.) I definitely have the former, and appear to have the latter according to what I've gotten from the local County Veterans Service Agency or CVSA. Though I had inquired about it on the off chance, I was surprised when they came back with "we think based on our records that you actually do have PTSD." I ended up putting myself in-patient in the Psych areas of Essentia Health - Duluth to find out what exactly that means, what to watch for and so on. Learned little -- and found that some folks close to me aren't entirely convinced I have PTSD. As usual, I'm baffled and confused, but it does make sense of some recent behavioral changes on my part.
Anyway... I'm dusting off some old hardware and software and seeing if I can regain some old skills I used to have. For example, there was a time when I was very effective with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Yes, I mean DOS from Way Back in the Last Millenium. There was a time when I was very employable, not really for skill with that software, but for skill writing correspondence and articles, which derived from using that tool, much better for Actual Writing than Microsoft Word. Tricky to get WP-DOS working under Win10, but doable. Still figuring out how.
I might also look at whatever is current for WP under Windows -- not an ideal solution, but likely easier to implement. If the newer versions don't allow for creating the content before creating the format of the content, then they are simply a step backward. WP-DOS was best for typing what I wanted to say, and then figuring out how to format it, selecting fonts and such. If I can make it work, I may even regain some of my old abilities as a writer. This blog seems better than it was, simply because I'm just writing without first formatting. Maybe my need to do that is rare?
So please be patient with me, and I'll try to become once again that fella I used to be. Who would not have used "fella" in the above sentence. Baby steps, okay?
-- Griz
