I'm writing this post, or rather, it might be more accurate to say that I'm composing this post, using a nifty little piece of software I picked up last week for use in doing transcriptions of audio files for my research. Of course it also has the side benefit of allowing me to play around and use voice commands to browse the Internet, to chat with friends via IM, or of course to write silly LJ posts. The software is called NaturallySpeaking, and compared to the last time I used voice recognition software, about five years ago, is a major step forward. I haven't really spent any substantial time training the software but I estimate that I have around a 98% accuracy rate already. Ironically, however, the only word it's got wrong so far in this post is the number 98, which initially represented as 90. This leads me to conclude that the software has an inferiority complex, or low self-esteem, or just that he doesn't believe me. I guess we'll have to see how useful it is in the long term; my typing rate is quite high -- around seventy words per minute -- and it seems quite possible that even though speaking is faster than typing, the fact that there will be some errors, coupled with the fact that I have to pronounce punctuation or type it in manually, will make it more of a pain than it's worth. Several people in my department swear by it, however, so I'm willing to give it a shot. At the very least, it's a neat little toy to play around with on a lazy weekend.

PS: bonus points for identifying the reference in the title of the post.

Tags: geekery

Last night we went out for sushi and then out to see Star Trek (much better than feared/anticipated), in our last night of freedom (we just got home after picking Arthur up from my dad). Anyway, before the movie, I was waiting for Julie outside the bathrooms when I spied a nerdish-looking lad, maybe about 14, waiting anxiously a few feet away. Aww, I thought to myself - a fellow geek, junior grade, taking his date to see Star Trek. A moment later, his mom came out of the bathroom. A moment after that, the two of them went into the Hannah Montana movie. Ouch.

Tags: geekery

Julia is having problems on her computer with the Vundo / Virtumonde trojan. There seems to be a lot of advice out there online, much of it contradictory, all of it suggesting that it is damn hard to get rid of. One program, VundoFix, claims to fix the problem, but I have no idea whether this is accurate or safe. So, dear f-list, I need your advice and assistance. Spybot / Adaware / AVG are not solving the problem. Do any of you know how best to get rid of this, or is this something we're going to need to call in professional assistance for?

ETA: The Vundo problem now seems to be fixed but there are some other problems, such as the XP Antivirus / MS Antivirus scareware. Help, please? We are out of our comfort zone in terms of dealing with this sort of stuff.

ETA: The problems now seem to be fixed (for now at least). Thanks, jteethy and amaena!

Tags: geekery

After over a decade of passive resistance (at least on my part), we finally broke down and got cell phones this afternoon. For those of you who have me on Facebook, my new mobile number is entered there.

Tags: geekery

I'm in the market for a good webcam that is simple to install and use (my parents are going to get the same one I get) in the $50-$75 range preferably. The one we have now has serious problems with sound and the video quality is terrible; I suspect that it was cheap (it was a gift, I believe). So if anyone has any recommendations, I'd appreciate it.

Tags: geekery

Having this new laptop (it's a Dell Latitude D630, for those who are interested) has really changed how I use my computer around the house. You see, my old Toshiba (purchased in 2004 at the start of my postdoc) was fine, but had three significant disadvantages. First, it was quite heavy in comparison to the modern generation of laptops. Second, its battery seemed to decline very rapidly, particularly in the last year or so but even before that. I couldn't get more than an hour, sometimes even less, before having to run to plug the damn thing in - so I always left it plugged in. Finally, the touchpad was always very erratic; resting your wrists even anywhere close to the touchpad would make it react (usually by clicking). So I turned it off soon after I got it, and used it only with a mouse. All three of these things made it inconvenient to move around, so it basically served as a desktop computer for the past four years. Right now, I am eating oatmeal at the kitchen table with Julia and Arthur; he's watching Cars (again...), blogging away on the new computer. Several times over the past three weeks I've actually used it on my lap. There's this whole aspect of technology that I haven't really exploited before (though not for lack of interest). Now I guess the next step would actually be to get a cell phone, wouldn't it?

Tags: geekery

I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman for a long while now, and particularly so since we met him in 2005 during his Anansi Boys book tour, when he was nice to Arthur and even nicer to us by letting us and other kid-enabled fans to go first in the lineup which otherwise would have had us waiting for several hours, infant in tow. And so now Arthur has some nice signed books that he can enjoy when he is older (but not too much older, because I'm jonesing to read them to him). Honestly from his blog Gaiman just seems like an average guy - an average guy who has tens of thousands of goth girls screaming to jump his bones, but even so.

I think I've read most of what he's written (certainly all of his non-comics work) but lately I haven't had the time to do as much reading as I would like, so I only now got around to reading Fragile Things, his 2006 collection of short fiction. I had already read a few of these stories during awards nomination seasons in years past, such as his Cthulhu-Sherlock Holmes masterpiece, 'A Study in Emerald', or 'The Problem with Susan', his fictional critique of the dreadful wrap-up to Narnia. But some of the finer stories are ones that had escaped my attention entirely, such as the short and Borgesian 'Other People', the poignantly disturbing 'Pages from a Journal ...', or the dark romantic horror of 'How do you think it feels?'. A personal favourite, and also I suspect for every coffee-addicted anthropologist who has ever felt like a total fraud at a conference, is 'Bitter Grounds'.

In my opinion, Gaiman's novels are good but not fantastic and his poetry is all right (I admit I'm not much for poetry), but he excels at shorter pieces and is every bit the equal of, say, Harlan Ellison or Ray Bradbury, to both of whose work his writing owes a debt. I thought the novella-length 'Monarch of the Glen', set in the world of American Gods, was one of the weaker pieces and doesn't live up to the novel (which isn't his best novel anyway, despite winning all those fancy awards). But this is just a quibble - it's a fine book and I look forward to re-reading it one day when I have copious spare time.

Tags: geekery

OK, folks. I need a new web design program. I have been using Arachnophilia 4.0 for years and years; the newer versions are all Java programs and I find them to be clunky and slow. But at the same time, I feel like I'm stuck in the year 2000, valiantly failing to enter the Information Age.

My requirements for a new program are as follows:

1) Free or at least under $10-15 US.
2) Available for Windows XP.
3) Easy switch from HTML to WYSIWYG.
4) No MS-Word-style bloaty crap added to my pages.
5) Needs to be able to handle CSS well.

Basically I pride myself on making tight, compact HTML pages (with CSS) that I can understand and revise easily. I don't need all the high-end functionality, but I do need something that will help me remain efficient. Is there anything out there? Any recommendations?

Tags: geekery
Current Music: Metallica - Broken, Beat & Scarred

Last night I was reading a book to Arthur called 'Visual Foolery', a kids' book on optical illusions that begins, "Have you ever watched a movie or television show that featured a magician?" To which Arthur replied, "I watched a TV show called poker," which was true, insofar as he came up to see me while I was watching poker on TV. When I asked him whether poker had any magicians, he replied, "No, just a bunch of guys playing poker." Fair enough, since Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari wasn't in the game.

On the geekery indoctrination front, Arthur came in from his playroom to the office today and told me, "Daddy, I need your help with Firefox. The server at nickjr.com isn't working." As indeed it wasn't.

Tags: arthur, geekery

I just had an incredible idea for a super-villain: The Passive Voice. The love-child of E.B. White, he was verbally berated throughout his childhood for his grammatical laxity, and then he acquired his powers as a linguistics student during an argument with an ornery composition professor over the phrase, "I've been had."

Powers: Can use the power of his statements in the passive voice to cause things to happen, but only indirectly. He is thus fiendishly difficult to arrest because it is extraordinarily difficult to prove that he is directly responsible for crimes.
Weaknesses: If forced to use a sentence in the active voice, he loses his powers.
Catchphrase: "It was done."
Sidekick: The Periphrastic Kid, a spirited teenager who inserts adverbs in her employer's verb phrases ("He has been defeated." "Soundly defeated, boss.").

Of course, now that this has been written down, inevitably I will be informed, probably by xypharan or some other one of you who is more knowledgeable about these matters, that it has already been done.

Tags: geekery, language
Current Mood: crazy
Current Music: Pentangle - Hunting Song