[cableshaft]

So I diligently kept a pen and paper journal about my game designs for three years (wrote about 100,000+ words on paper). Switched to digital for a year, wrote 120,000 words just in 2019 (starting every morning sitting at a Starbucks and writing it helped), switched back, then switched back again, doing less and less words each year (for 2021 I'm at like 15,000 words, so pathetic, it's only like 12 entries total, need to get back into it).

But for the pen and paper I was manually transcribing it to digital (and still only transcribed about half of it). I didn't know OCR had gotten that good (and still suspect my writing isn't clean enough for great OCR).

But maybe I should give this a try, might be enough to get me back in the habit. Also trying to avoid doing as much typing lately (because of some arthritic-like pain in the fingers on one hand, although it's my writing hand :/)

[cableshaft]

So this got me trying out various things for dictation and transcription, as that would mean I wouldn't have to type quite as much.

I tried using Windows Speech Recognition, and it's unfortunately seems to be pretty garbage. Tons of mistakes I had to manually correct, couldn't say too much at all without it being so garbled I didn't remember what I really said to correct it manually.

But then I found out about built-in Apple Dictation on Macbook, which sends it to Siri, and I tried reading some old journal entries, and it's actually pretty darn good! I might be able to get through transcribing my other notes using it with minimal corrections. Just need to make sure you state punctuation, or else it doesn't really put any into it.

Still didn't seem that great for programming code though. Would be cool if I could find something decent for that.

[ineedasername]

Windows Speech Recognition, and it's unfortunately seems to be pretty garbage

Dragon Naturally Speaking (a paid product) is pretty good at normal dictation. My workplace bought me a copy when I was recovering from wrist surgery and it wasn't bad, especially since I could still use one hand. I've seen people mention using it for programming, with a bit of difficulty and a learning curve. But you can create your own custom commands, which is pretty much required if with keywords in a language that don't have a dictionary entry.

[daotoad]

You might find this presentation interesting: https://thenewstack.io/perl-programmer-pioneers-coding-by-vo...

[kingcharles]

I diligently kept ideas in notebooks for eight years while in jail. When I moved from one jail to another, in year five, the guards lost all of them and I had to start again. When I got out a few months ago I left one of my two notebooks on a table and my friend's dog ate it.

[artificial]

Bummer with the hand! Have you taken any supplements or do any exercises? Not sure if it’s an RSI but there’s hope out there!

[atlantic]

I occasionally suffer from arthritis in my right hand. I've found that regular use of Baoding balls keeps it at bay.

[bserge]

Google's OCR (as found in Lens, Docs and whatever) is insanely good. At least that was my impression based on my own notes (my writing is horrible and I often add very small side notes).

Oh yeah, camera quality makes a big difference.