Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

well, y'all are in for it now.....I stumbled into a sale at the local Office Depot....my birthday is coming up, so I bought myself a laser printer and a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (you talk, it types)....I can finally start that history of SF I keep threatening to write. Heck, I just think I may use this thread to blog about the experience....I think you will all hate me by the time I'm done....

I use Dragon Dictate for all my musings. (Sometimes, rereading old messages, I wonder what it was I said that resulted in what it typed...)

But,... A laser printer? Hard copy? You're not one of those people who prints his e-mail before he reads it? How 00'sy. :)

G33z3r wrote: "I use Dragon Dictate for all my musings. (Sometimes, rereading old messages, I wonder what it was I said that resulted in what it typed...)

But,... A laser printer? Hard copy? You're not one of th..."

I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I use a lot of unusual words, plus it doesn't do so well for dialogue. The punctuation is a pain too. In the end I found it much slower and more error prone than simply typing.

I bought a good keyboard with individual switches for each key and typing is a pleasure.

I've tried Dragon speak a couple of times because of Parkinson's. Not mine, thankfully. My uncle was diagnosed about 15 years ago & spent the next decade having progressively more trouble typing & using the mouse. A friend at work also got it & tried it. I wasn't impressed, either. English is not a good language for a computer to understand.

Windows 7 has a version built into it that will allow many computer operations to be handled by voice. It requires 20 minutes of orientation to start & I found a really good microphone was needed, too. Speaking in a somewhat stilted manner helped, but all was lost in some programs. The worst was Outlook. That managed to lock up the computer fairly often.

The company I work for bought into this a while back thinking it would be really popular. I don't know how many pre-purchased licenses they picked up for it but they recently sent out an email saying that they are giving the licenses out for free now to staff. I assume it wasn't very popular.

Spooky1947 wrote: "well, y'all are in for it now.....I stumbled into a sale at the local Office Depot....my birthday is coming up, so I bought myself a laser printer and a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (you talk,..."

I will be interested to know how it works for you. I find it faster to type. No doubt, this is due to my high school typing teacher, back in the per-personal computing days. She made us learn to type a couple-hundred words a minute--or so I remember it.

I thought the voice-recording function on my phone would be helpful for texts and notes, but I still type from habit.

But I absolutely love my ivona text-to-Speech software for listening back to my stories. It is my most helpful proof-reading tool.

Text-to-Speech. Speech-to-Type, these can be very useful tools.

I'm busy converting my pulp scans to pdf files now...it's going to take about a month at this rate to get them all done....it's so exciting to actually be able to see the magazines I've read about all my life, but never been able to find...first issue of Amazing Stories, the issue of Astounding that kicked off the Golden Age, the magazine cover that inspired the design of the USS Enterprise (and it was one of Hugo Gernsback's magazines...is that cool or what?)...

a couple of explanations....the laser printer I snaged was only $70 (it was a clearance sale and I had a discount card), the price of a good inkjet printer. I did the math, I can print 1500 pages with it for the same price 400 inkjet pages would cost. Also, my brother (he works for Xerox and knows his printing) said it would do what I needed.

As for the Dragon program, it set me back $30 bucks. I got the Dragon Basics and it came with a microphone headset. I picked the Basics version because I didn't need all the bells and whistles of the full version....just type what I say into the word processing program is all I need, thank you. I never learned proper typeing. Despite this I a excellent at the hunt-and-peck method...I can do 40 or 50 words a minute when I get a full head of steam going, useing 3, sometimes 4 fingers...I've even been known to do this in a darkened room by the light of the computer screen. Problem is I can't spell for spit...and having to check the source for correct spelling while I'm taking notes slows me down to a snail's pace. The Dragon program will help immensely while I'm taking notes and doing first and second drafts.

in the middle of converting my Amazing Stories files to pdf...makes them easier to page through, but takes forever...I was particularly interested in the Shaver Mystery stuff Ray Palmer put into the mag as I have a interest in the weird fortean stuff...Shaver claimed it was all true, Ray fanned the flames, the SF mainstream turned their backs on Amazing, and circulation went thru the roof...I was particularly interested in how excited Ray got when the Arnold UFO sighting was reported in 1947...Ray used his editorial to claim it was proof of Shaver's claims...it wasn't long before Mr. Palmer helped (or was it singlehandedly...got to look that up...) launched Fate magazine, a mag about all things paranormal. In fact the very first issue (which I use to own...I snagged a near complete set off e-Bay for $100 years ago, alas destroyed in a house fire) had a cover story about the Arnold sighting...John A Keel, of The Mothman Prophecies fame, once called Ray Palmer "the man who invented flying saucers"

I'm loving all this old pulp cover art...always (well, almost always) the three B's...the BEM (Bug-Eyed Monster), the Babe (always being threatened by the BEM), and the Bum (some guy rushing to the rescue of the Babe)....and what's with all the brass bras???? Carrie Fisher from Return of the Jedi would have been right at home on a cover of Planet Stories!!!

Yes, sexism was alive and well in the early days of SF...so was the racism...going through my scans of these old pulps, the only skin color other than white you see on the cover is on a BEM...times sure were different back then.

I just finished converting all my Amazings to pdf, next will be the Astoundings...after that I'll take a break from file conversions and start taking some notes

still, even with all the sexism and racism, the cover art is lovely...the weird robots, the funny-looking space suits (they look all-so Victorian), the art-deco space ships, and those whacky-weird BEMs....

still converting files...at this rate it will take another 3 to 4 weeks, even then I'll be risking melting my poor laptop's processor...still I can't help stopping here and there to dip into the letters columns and editorials...real gold there...I already found the fan letter from one Isaac Asimov that earned him a place in First Fandom....I mean WOW...does it get better than that????

also, my sources have churned up some reference works I wasn't aware of....awesome stuff!!!

working on a chronology now....got to have a timeline of what happened when.....can't keep it all in my head!!!

Almost done with the conversations to pdf!!! Then the real hard work begins!!!

The cnversions are totaly done...I'm strting from the beginning now, with Amazing Stories #1, reading the editorials, reading the letter's page, checking the mag's contents, and making notes notes notes...I seem to have read somewhere about friction between H G Wells and Jules Verne...they certently had different approaches to SF...in reading the earily editorials Gernsback wrote for Amazing it is plain Gernsback was from the Verne school of SF...and yet it is also plain today that Wells' style of SF carried the day...also I just read a letter to Amazing where a reader called Verne an "obscure" author!!!

G33z3r wrote: "I use Dragon Dictate for all my musings. (Sometimes, rereading old messages, I wonder what it was I said that resulted in what it typed...)

But,... A laser printer? Hard copy? You're not one of th..."

G33, I just printed a hard copy of Gernsback's editoral from Amazing Stories #1 (it was only 1 page) where he explains what kind of fiction he was talking about when he said STF...I'm going to frame it and put it on the wall of my library room...totally worth having a lazer printer!!!!

WOO HOO!!!

I'm going thru the old Astounding scans (some of them were made from microfilm and are thus pretty bad), and I have found most all the letter cols from when The Great Staple War (Bob Tucker vs. DAW) was going on....now THAT was a trip...one side was against the use of staples to hold together SF pulps, the other was for 'em....it was all just a bunch of foolishness of course, and a good time was had by all until somebody faked Bob Tucker's death, the editor fell for it, and boy was he (the ed.) mad when he found out...

still plodding along...in the course of research i have discovered that the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) is still active with a on-line presence (just google)...i'm joining, 'natch...membership dues range from FREE to $18...check em out!!!

What do you think of the dictation software? My husband is always trying to get me to use that function on my phone. But, I have a retainer, and I guess a weird enough way of speaking (living in several regions as well as the UK) that it never understands me and I just wind up getting frustrated and wanting the throw the phone. It's more work than just typing with my thumbs (which I'm teenager fast at anyway).

I really don't like my Dragon Naturaly Speeking..I have a VERY thick southern accent, it never understands me quite right...however, I have been having problems with my right thumb lately (trigger finger) making it hard to write longhand, so I plod along best as I am able

:-P

You shoot guns with your thumb? TALENTED!!

:)

It's not just you. I think that dictation software has a LONG way to go. Half the country has a southern accent (slight exaggeration). If it can't pick that up, it's got issues.

(I have a bit of one from living in Texas. (Lubbock and Dallas) It comes out on certain words, if I'm tired, or if I've been hanging with/talking to/watching on TV southerners. I have the same issue with the Brit accent. Pacific Northwest has a decided lack of accent, a bit of a void as it were, so all the other influences jumble me up. I never did pick up even the slightest New York accent. Ha! Not my favorite place I've ever lived!)

YIPPEEEE!!!

I just scored the legendary "Ah! Sweet Idiocy"...100% got-to-have for any complete history...been trying to get a copy for years, finaly made the right conections...reading it now, lots of inside baseball in it...and it proves, once and for all, fandom is just one unending BS session