Belated New Years Resolutions
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 8:01AM Yes, I know it's nearly March, but it's never too late for some New Years Resolutions.
Firstly, much as I love twitter, it has seriously impacted on my blogging activities. I think this is just because it's so easy to blast out 10 or 15 small tweets a day rather than sit down and construct a couple of paragraphs of considered text. This is a shame, so as of today, I'm going to write a blog post every single day (at least for the next 30 days).
The reason for the 30 days, well at least it gives me a target rather than blandly saying, a new post everyday forever. Hopefully, I'll become so used to it (and provide enough value to the reader), that it will be worth carrying on.
Another resolution will be for me to start using MacSpeech Dictate to write each and every blog post starting with the next one. I started using this before Macworld and was seriously impressed but I've not used it much recently. I think the reason why I've not used it, despite its impressive performance is two fold. Firstly, because of the bother of using the supplied USB headset and secondly, because to think as you speak!
Some quick testing indicates that I can use my podcasting mike which is permanently set up on a boom, to record my ramblings and have it accurately transcribed, so that's the first barrier out of the way. As far as thinking whilst you speak, by forcing myself to use MacSpeech Dictate for each blog post, that will give me plenty of practice to get into this new mindset. I just know it's going to speed things up significantly for me once I master it, heck, it may even be a good subject for a show! (Full disclosure - The copy of MacDictate I have is a review copy which unusually, I did not buy. I've not agreed on any promotion or coverage with the vendor - just so you know!)
So that will be enough for now although there are a couple of other belated New Year Resolutions I think I need to adopt. But I'll leave that for another blog post!
Reader Comments (4)
You might instead look on twitter as a way to rapidly prototype a blog post, even get feedback on individual parts of it before you even write the first draft.
Hi Don,
Got a quick question for you.
I know have a copy of AppleScript 1-2-3 by Sal.
Just wanted to know if MacSpeech can be used to launch scripts or if it's just used for dictating speech to be turned into text?
cheers
Don -- I'd like to see you record your blog post on your iPhone, then later transfer the file to your Mac and have it transcribed by MacSpeech Dictate for posting on your blog. Perhaps you can report on this. Many thanks!
Dave P.
Yes, Wayne. I'm pretty sure you can run Applescripts from MacSpeech. As well as a dictation mode, it has a command mode to allow you to control your mac.