Look blog post, no hands!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future because I have written today's post mostly via headset.

Yes today, in a first for this blog and my writing career of many, many decades, this is the very first time I've ever used any kind of dictation software, let alone AI, to help craft a post on this blog. That's exactly what I'm doing today.

As you're reading this I'm speaking this or I was speaking this through my camouflage gaming headset and the microphone that came with it. That conveniently was somewhere around the shed and took quite some time to find, plus the splitter that I needed for the computer. That was it. I apparently had the parts for this the entire time just downstairs, waiting to be unearthed and waiting to be put to good use.

Thanks to finding a program called Wispr Flow, here I am crafting up the latest post for this blog here at Adventures of El Migo Almigo via my voice. Very, very, very strange because I am used to putting fist to in a keyboard and mashing fingers against keys, sometimes slightly, sometimes frantically. The point is that I can type pretty quickly but unsurprisingly speak quicker than that.

Thanks to a recommendation by tech guide Stephen Fennick Fenech when I was talking to him on today's radio show, he said, "Why don't you give it a try? I use it." This is Stephen (speaking), of course, for notes, dictation, and long-form pieces. I thought, "Well I've got nothing to lose here. Why not give it a go?" So far so good.

About 100 of these words were stopping and starting this piece until I got my flow feeling correct

I am going to go through the post when it's all done and pasted into Word because that's what I'm using on my computer at the moment and correct it as we go. For the most part it is looking pretty good so far and it's remarkable because I'm literally going off the top of my head. I am staring at a blank screen so at this stage of recording into this I have no idea exactly how accurate it is.

I will write a follow-up paragraph in a sec once it all finishes and put it into Word, ready to paste into Blogger. For the sake of things this is pretty nifty technology and I've got to say I'm enjoying this free trial immensely. Who knows this could be the start of some big things, because while I enjoy writing, sometimes just putting a thousand words to my latest project can be a bit of a slog. My brain and my voice seem to work a lot faster than my keys and my fingers could ever catch up to. If it can grab what I'm thinking and speaking and chuck it on paper just as soon as I finish speaking it, well, like I said, this might be the start to possibly my writing revolution. I think that's enough for waxing lyrical into my gaming headset for now. This has been a very first test and things are looking pretty good for Wispr Flow so far.

Post-dictation notes (back to fingers on keyboard for this bit)

-I've made corrections to anything that needed it above and included words I forgot to say in brackets. Amazingly the only thing that it tripped up on were names.

-Once I installed the software (I'm using Windows btw) it was simply a case of opening up a writing program (Word), hitting the CTRL + Windows button twice to start the process, then sitting back and talking. 

-This part of the blog that you're reading here was actually spoken to just as a test, just to see if it could record and then paste directly into Blogger, negating the step of having to use Word first and then copying into plain text and all that jazz. Nope apparently you can just open up a writing window, a blogging window like this one. You can start the process, speak the words, and voila but it's finished. There the words appear like they have now. (This is a big tick for me!) 

-The post above clocked in 511 words and I don't think I spent more than 4 minutes speaking it out. Considering sometimes it can take me 40 minutes to churn out over 1000 words when I'm writing book (to be fair I do go back at times and change 

-Honestly it feels a bit weird talking to yourself when there's others in the house, especially if they're unaware of what you're doing. Thankfully I did explain to my wife exactly what was going on (and she's pretty much used to my crazy random adventures anyway so no worries there) and I'm sure it'll impress the kids soon enough when they get home from school.
However when I have the house to myself, look out - I feel I'm going to speak into this thing A LOT.

-The headphones I'm using are an old pair of RIG 400's that I bought years ago to play games late at night without disturbing the household. The microphone that came with it is just a plug in 3.5mm jack type with zero frills. As gaming gear goes it's entry level affordable that won't make you feel like you're in the recording studio when Dark Side of the Ring was being produced but hey it works. And even better, this simply mic and cans setup works brilliantly with Wispr Flow. 

- Currently I'm using the free trial just to see how it goes but day one has been a spectacular success. I've got another 14 days of trying this out before I have to decide whether I want to buy the pro version.

Given that it's $16 a month Australian for unlimited words, and given the ease of use and everything else that I've enjoyed so far, and just the feeling of not having to click away and type as fast as I think, that's really really affordable in my mind. $16 a month, what's that? A little over $0.50 a day roughly for a month is really really good value for something like this, especially if you're going to use it a lot like I think I am. (Again I spoke this part, really getting used to the process of thoughts to screen without typing involved.) 

-I mentioned the splitter that I needed to connect both the listening and speaking parts of my headset to the computer and that looks something like this: 

You plug the splitter into your computer and your headset to the splitter and away you go. These should be a available wherever you get your hi-fi gear or of course via places like Amazon (affiliate link.) If you already game with a headset and a working mic, there's every chance you already have this. 

-If you don't like the sound of your own voice, you can of course do this with the sound muted. The microphone will still work just fine even though you don't have anything relayed through the headphones. 

-And finally if you want to give this app/program a go yourself then here's a referral link to Whispr Flow. 

Good luck, happy Whispring and coming soon, an update on attempting to write books with this service!