Stage fright!

I've never dictated the story for a newspaper, and I've never even dictated a letter. I used to kid myself that I was a "reasonable" typist, so I'd pound out a  beautifully phrased letter on my typewriter, for my secretary to post. But it didn't take long for me to realise that that young, clever young woman, as matter of course, used to retype those golden words as a matter of course, and it took only one comparison,  for me to recognise why.
The above is just to set the scene for the big announcement – this posting is a direct result of my dictation, courtesy of the software program called Dragon.
In truth I have to admit that I'm not really proceding any faster than I did by typing last time, but that's mainly becauset I'm not a practised dictator (literary type, that is). It's really a little bit embarrassing to be instructing a computer that seems to be working a lot faster than am I.
But I'm not grumbling, but full of new enthusiasm.
It is a fact that we all  have opinions and most of us like airing them, and it seems fairly safe to be doing this in a blog that very few have ever shown any evidence of having read in the past.
Therefore, having disposed of all the explanations, and having proved there's more than one type of dictator, my bold plan for future posts is to analyse as many of the world's problems as I can handle, and then pass on my suggestions. The real plan, though, is just to type/talk and see what happens
The hope is of course that I might encourage some friendly debate, or even a little gentle criticism.
So here goes   –

Back from the depths

I abandoned this blog a couple of years ago and I think that was partly through boredom, seeing that a fair bit of our world was still at peace then, and politics in Australia, and  South Australia, were rather settled. In short the really wasn't anything to be grumpy about, outside or inside the family circle.
More likely, though, the literary hiatus developed from my typing standards having dropped from "just fair" to "lousy"! There's nothing that discourages literary flow more than having to correct at least one typo in every word.
I blame all deficiencies on either failing eyesight, lack of co-operation between brain and fingers, or the fact that laptop keyboards (and most of the desk-top PCs) don't fight back. Every keyboard I've had in the past four years at least has insisted on energising "CAPS/LOCK" if my little finger goes within  two inches of it.It's been a long struggle, but here I am again!
A year or two ago I loaded a speech recognition program for my laptop. It seemed like a good idea, but the software wasn't then able to make much sense of my voice.
A month ago I updated the software (Dragon) and now we're getting on well (after a bit of dictate-orial tension), and I can now talk to my computer and get much better text with much less  bad language.
But that's not all! Last week I sat my laptop up at the back of my desk, connected it to an additional monitor, and then installed a new and separate keyboard . That's such an improvement in itself that I've actually really and truly typed this post with my poor old Dragon left lamenting, and I've only had to correct about six words (so far). Next post will be dictated, and we'll see what we shall see.