Computer: Start Dictation
Usually I would consider myself to be a good faller. Being tall and gangly, im alway tripping over something or accidentally knocking something over. Words like graceful are not usually used to describe me. Overtime I have not become any more graceful or in control of my body, however I have become quite adept at minimizing the damage that occurs when my klutziness gets the best of me.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself being driven to the ER after slipping on a patch of ice, cradling my dominant arm and cursing out loud with each bump we drove over. My thoughts were a mix of feeling stupid, worrying about what it would mean for my ability to work on our product, Epochly, and a series of increasingly creative expletives. The next few hours were blur of nurses, doctors, specialists and contorting myself into extremely uncomfortable positions so that I could provide the specialists with good X-Rays and CT scans. I learned that I have done a real number on my elbow, breaking my humorous bone and fracturing both my radius and ulna, with the possibility of ligament damage. What a crappy Saturday.
Since running a tech company involves a lot of work on the computer, I was going to have to get a bit creative in order to continue to be effective at my job. I needed to come up with some solutions to speed up my productivity and doing everything solely with one hand just wasn't going to cut it long-term. Fortunately for me, natural speech recognition has come a long way in recent years. I decided to dive in and see what out-of-the-box solution Apple's operating system had for me.
I was extremely impressed with the out out-of-the-box systemProvided to me by Apple.I could quickly switch applications, select text on the screen, write emails, and do a number of other things that I did not expect to be able to do with their built-in system. If the out-of-the-box commands don't meet my needs, I can extend the system by adding my own user built commands. Although this system isn't well-suited for Programming, I can make my life a little easier by adding custom commands while using my editor in typing one-handed. If I have VS code open and I say the keyword commander, VS code will open the fuzzy search command palette and I can speak into it to look for what I'm trying to do.
I'm also excited about exploring Different tools designed help codersWrite code hands-free. There is a open source project called voice code that seems promising, as well as an iOS specific program called voicecode.io that, while expensive, seems really interesting. I still have quite a lot to learn on the subject, but the dictation tools that are currently out there are really helping me be more effective at my job despite the health issues that I'm currently experiencing. Voice recognition and dictation tools like this are godsend and allow me to heal properly but still move my product forward.
In fact I wrote this entire article with voice recognition. Although there's some mistakes and some awkward wording, I think it turned out pretty well. What do you guys think?
Further Reading:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14198/windows-7-dictate-text-using-speech-recognition
