Geek Stuffs

Speech Therapy: Using Voice Recognition Software #1

Geek Stuffs

I was recently purchased a voice recognition software called Dragon dictate. It costs US$300. I must say it is very expensive, but the reason why I spend this amount of money is to be able to write my post off-line using a digital recorder.

What I realised is, that it is very difficult to use a voice recognition software if I don’t speak properly in the right pronunciation grammar. I know that with the Malaysian accent, it is extremely difficult for the software to recognise my voice. But I also know that the software will continue to learn as I correct the dictation. the decision to need to make is whether to continue to correct my dictation or fix my speech. I think, the combination of both will be ideal. Pronunciation is something that will take time to change. I always rushed through my pronunciation. Example: the Silent B in the word combination. My typical way of pronouncing the word combination is “comination”. and there are many more examples that I probably wouldn’t know.

I guess I should take this as a speech fixing therapy, and hope that by continuing to use the software I will be able to speak better English. I notice that my speech and my mouth doesn’t really synced. I don’t prove my voice out when I speak. I can to close my mouth when I speak. And the result of this is that, I don’t get proper pronunciation with the words that I say. I need to really fix my speech because I think that is a lot of value in a speaking clearly.

Speaking clearly is very important for my job. If I do speak clearly, it will project a different personality to my future clients and bosses. I think even after less than 12 hours using the software, I am already speaking better. I think if I continue to use it for the next 10 days-I will be amazed at the result. In fact I will compare the recordings of my speech last week to my future recordings next week.

As I continue the journey with the voice recognition software, I will continue to post some blog notes so that I can share the painful journey that I am experiencing. I know it is very tough but if I continue to persevere I will be able to enjoy the technology. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to write this post using a digital recorder, and transcribed using the software when I’m back home.

So day one, it has been an interesting journey discovering that my English language is poor. I hope that in the next 30 days I will be able to improve my English in pronunciation and grammar.

Till tomorrow, we shall see whether I get better with my English language. I hope that I will get better.

Image Processing Technique: Noise Reduction

Geek Stuffs, Photography

Learned a new technique today, which is the following:

  • Noise reduction on Lightroom. By zooming 100% – we can adjust the noise reduction but at the same time avoid the image from being washed out.
  • Masking the sharpening. By pressing the key Alt (Option) while adjust the slider, we can see the areas where the photo will be sharpened. More importantly is that the noise that was introduced by the camera are not sharpened. If this gets sharpened – the noise will be come more apparent. As such – we need to pay around with this.

Not sure if the photo below do any justice. The difference can perhaps be seen if I were to print this.

compare

Design Thinking – Something new that I learned

Fun Posts, Geek Stuffs

I have been waking up very early in the past couple of months. Rejuvenating the lifestyle that I was accustomed too. And during this early hours – there are few things that I would do:

  1. Organize my day
  2. Clear my high priority tasks
  3. Learn something

These 3 items are done before I head to the gym to do and complete my workout. This is very similar to Miracle Morning. I am fortunate that the firm that I work for provides a comprehensive learning platform that allowed me to learn at my own pace. This is not inclusive of classroom training. What’s more awesome is that the training is tailored to my career and it is a combination of both materials that I can get off the web and internals. This is particularly relevant as the world becomes more digital.

The topic that was put in my learning path is “Design Thinking”. Never knew that this existed. I have been having the same thought process and has pursued my client to follow the same way. It’s just that I felt that I was probably one of the few who thought that people should think in this way while embracing the digital world. After looking thru this topic – I felt awesome (…. Until shit hit the fence the same day!).

Design Thinking is similar to agile, but instead of having sprints of development – it is about having sprints of prototyping and realizing ideas. This is very much like the whole concept of “start fast, fail fast…”. What’s the beauty about this is that it helped people to look at different ideas and work on it, until you find that one idea that’s cool. There are so many resources out there on the web. Just google design thinking and you are bound to see endless amount of resources.

In fact, there’s this video that I watched on YouTube that relates the principle of design thinking to Isabel Brunel. Go figure out who the person is. The video is below:

 

This is the new way of doing things, I have 256 pager document that I need to read. Comes from a company that was acquired by the firm. They specialized on these things, as such it is important that I read it, and embrace it in my daily work with the client. Not going to be easy though!