Oscar Pistorius verdict

I'm looking forward to hearing the verdict in the Oscar Pistorius trial later today or over the coming few days.

It will be interesting to see if the South African system of justice copes any better with money and celebrity than the American system of trial by jury. I'm thinking, of course, of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Speech to Text

For my degree course, I had to transcribe a large number of interviews.

I didn't fancy all of that typing. So I decided to explore speech-to-text technology.

I had tried it before when I had a tablet PC with Windows XP. But the capability was quite limited.

I did some testing with Windows Speech Recognition (on Windows 7) but again the capability was quite poor.

So I bought "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and an inexpensive headset.

I bought the "Premium" edition. Here's a tip: if you're thinking of buying the product then engage in an online chat with a sales person. They may be able to give you a substantial discount off the RRP.

Thus far I have only used it for transcriptions but I find it to be quite effective. Here's how I use it:

• My headset has two jacks (I purposely did not buy the USB kind. I plug the microphone into my PC and the earphones into my Android phone, where I have the recordings.
• I listen to a sentence and then pause the playback.
• I repeat the sentence and check that the program has recognised the words correctly.

The speech recognition works quite well: I can speak at a fairly natural rate, as long as I pause at the end of each sentence.

I did have to "train" the software of course, and it does learn new words so in theory the more I use it the better it will get.

I don't know if this method was faster than typing (although I suspect that it was) but it was certainly more interesting/less laborious.

So far I haven't had occasion to use it for anything else, but I must try to do so.

Some day we will all talk to our PCs/SmartPhones (until such time as we get neural interfaces!)

Here's a video advert for the new version of the product:

Giving something "short shrift"

The expression to give something "short shrift" means to give it inadequate attention.

"He gave his homework short shrift".

"Short shifting", in contrast, means changing gear in your car earlier than you would normally do so.

Two similar expressions, but completely unrelated.

Rabbits in the Castle

We were in the gardens in Malahide Castle at the weekend and I saw this rabbit and had to take a photo.

Yes: that tiny thing you can almost see in the centre of the photo is indeed a rabbit!

God gets out his hairbrush

Went to pick up Andrew from hurling practice the other day and he drew my attention to the extraordinary cloud formation which you can see below.

It's always difficult to capture these things in a photo but I had to try.

Looks as if God took a hairbrush to the clouds...

Time and Trains Wait for No Man

I have always been interested in knowing the EXACT time.

The best way to achieve this was to check the time against a source that was using an atomic clock. The classic way to do this was to access a site such as:
http://time.gov/HTML5/

I just noticed a handy new site which shows the current time and how far out your computer's time is:
http://time.is/

This site reported that my own computer was within a second of the right time. That's because it is configured to set its time periodically from the following site:
time.nist.gov

This automatic setting of time is based on the "Network Time Protocol" (NTP). Many corporate networks are configured these days to "push" the correct time to servers and workstations.

For many years now I have been travelling to/from work by train. This has made me dependent on knowing the EXACT time while on the go.

A number of years ago I tacked this problem by buying myself a watch which always shows the correct time: a Casio Wave Ceptor watch.

These watches synchronise themselves once a day with a radio signal which sends the correct time based on an atomic clock. Here is Ireland the closest transmitter is the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington near London.

As well as having the correct time all of the time, my watch also adjusts to/from summer time automatically.

Nowadays people tend to look to their smartphones for the current time. And the phones can be configured to pick up "network time". But I tend to still look to my watch for the exact time. And I noticed during the week that my phone was not displaying the correct time even though network synchronisation is enabled.

The only criticisms I would have of my own Wave Ceptor are:

• Although the time is always right, the watch hands are not. You need to adjust them manually
• The particular model I chose has a small digital display which can show the date OR the hour and minutes OR the seconds. When I buy my next one I will want to see all three at once.

I would recommend a Wave Ceptor watch to anyone who is interested in knowing the EXACT time.

Darwin Awards

This is my second posting following on from the story of the gun instructor who was killed by the 9 year old girl.

I first heard about the Darwin Awards back in the 80s.

Every year an email would circulate describing how people managed to do the most ridiculous things that resulted in their deaths. I remember some of the stories being absolutely hilarious.

The name for these awards has the following explanation:

"Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it"

Now, of course, there's a website where you can go and see the most popular stories whenever you like.

I don't think the story of the gun instructor will make the list because I get the impression that deaths from gun accidents are just too common.

Snopes.com

My last posting on the accidental killing of a gun instructor leads me on to two other topics.

The first I will cover in this posting and is the excellent website snopes.com. You can see the entry relating to this tragic incident here.

Whenever I hear something which I think cannot be true, I check it on Snopes. And more often than not the story is identified on the site as an "urban legend".

On the site you can research fascinating stories such as these:

Escape artist Harry Houdini died from a ruptured appendix caused by his being punched in the stomach.

There are alligators in the sewers under New York

You might wake up in an ice-filled bath some day with your kidneys missing

My favourite story from the site relates to a story which I was told by a friend who assured me that it was true ("happened to a friend of a friend"). This is the story that kids are kidnapped from shops by people who alter their appearance in some way. Thanks to Snopes I know that this story is not true.

Gun Instructor Killed

On the 25th of August, a gun instructor named Charles Vacca was killed on a range in Arizona by a 9 year old girl who was using an Uzi.

She had successfully fired a single shot under his instruction when he set the weapon to automatic. She lost control of the gun and he was hit, dying a few hours later.

Obviously this is a tragedy for both families.

The surprising thing is that it was reported on radio that the owner of the range had said that there were no issues with safety at the range!

Let me repeat: a nine year old holding and firing an Uzi set on automatic!

Americans and their guns.

The photo below was taken seconds before the tragic accident.

"Friends" Reunion

Fans have been asking for years if the cast of Friends would ever reunite for a movie. Something like the cast of "Sex in the City" did.

Well I'm not sure of the exact reason but the official story is no. Obviously one or more of the key players are against it.

So we will have to settle for what we can get.

And what we have been able to get so far is:

• Jennifer Anison, Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox on Ellen (see it on YouTube here)
• Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow on Jimmy Kimmel

The latter is pretty good (they spent $80K on the set apparently!) and you can see it here:

Last Book of Asimov's Foundation Series

In December of last year I blogged that I was going to read all 15 of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. In July I blogged that I was on book eleven.

Well it has taken some time, but I am now reading the final novel: "Forward the Foundation".

I should finish it in the coming days and I'll record some of my thoughts on the series here.

Church in Blackrock

This very attractive little church in Blackrock caught my eye as I was passing a few weeks ago. It's on Carysfort Avenue. I had to stop and take a photo.

Birmingham Airport Car Park

I took the photo below in the terminal building in Birmingham airport a few weeks ago.

In the distance you can see what looks like a pile of cars.

In reality it is the car park which seems to be build on a hill.

It looks very weird: check it out if you ever find yourself in the airport.

Sunflower

Malahide is a great place to live. We have everything here.

The other day I was going to work and I spotted this sunflower in someone's garden.

I associate sunflowers with Tuscany and I was delighted to see this fine specimen here in Ireland.

As you can see from the photo, it's a pity I didn't spot it a few days earlier. But was still a lovely surprise.

Pun-ny Business

I couldn't believe my eyes when I passed this van the other day. I had to take a photo of the unbelievable pun:

Poultry in Motion

Genius!

I had to wonder if the founder of the business chose to deliver chickens, etc. just because he/she thought of the pun first. My hat is off to him/her if so.

Software KVM Update

My last posting looked at some software which can allow you to share a mouse and keyboard across PCs. I admitted at the time that I have not tried the products.

I got home early during the week and I had to do some work on my laptop from work. My options were:

1. Work with the laptop screen/keyboard (unacceptable)
2. Switch connect my monitor/screen/keyboard
3. Try out one of the products

I chose option 3.

I tried "Input Director" first. It worked fine and I was delighted with the way you could treat three monitors as if they were connected to the same laptop.

However Input Director did not recover well when the slave laptop came back from sleep mode.

So I installed "Mouse Without Borders".

It was a little tricky at first because it wanted to connect to the second laptop by name (and I don't have DNS at home). But when I mapped the names to IP addresses within the product it worked perfectly, even when one of the laptops went to sleep.

So my vote now is for MWB.