Jeff's RSI Stuff

I have tried just about every keyboard, mouse, trackball, and any other input device imaginable. While I will discuss all of these in future entries, I want to discuss one particular trackball today.

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One of the things that I find helpful, is being able to keep track how much I use my computer. Simply recording when I started and when I stop a task however is not very useful. This is especially true when I use voice recognition software which does most of the typing for me.

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I began using voice recognition programs about 10 years ago. Back then, you would spend $1000 or more to get a program that was barely able to work. You would have to talk in a robotic like monotone putting a pause in between each word. Even then you were lucky to get 70% accuracy (no matter what the marketing hype said).

Things have come a long way. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is an excellent example of that. I am using Dragon right now to "type" this paragraph. Without Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I would not be able to put together this website.

Right now I'm getting about 99% accuracy, and can dictate much faster than I could ever type. All this without exacerbating my injuries.

All of this power does come at a price. I'm running a very fast computer (a pair of dual core processors and 4 GB of RAM). I'm using a very expensive microphone. While none of this hardware is necessary, it dramatically increases the flexibility of the program.

In the future I plan to put a video on this site, illustrating the tips and techniques I've amassed for using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.