Monday 14 Dec 2020
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dictation
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Yesterday I tried recording a journal entry using my voice. The idea was sound
but I ended up talking for over fifty minutes!
I am rather disappointed with the available offline speech to text
transcription software -- I thought this was a solved problem.
There is the Google Speech API, but this isn't free and the `gcloud ml speech`
client only seems to work with tiny files. There are also plenty of online
services that want to charge $5 an hour for audio transcription.
The transcription software I ended up using is Picovoice. It's free for
personal use. They have multiple engines, each with a different purpose and all
named after animals. I am using the "leopard" engine.
https://github.com/Picovoice/leopard
Leopard does a pretty good job of taking a large audio file and converting the
whole thing to text. It's also very quick and accurate enough to be useful.
It requires that the audio be a single mono WAV track, sampled at 16,000 Hz.
This is easy enough to do with Audacity and could be easily automated with a script.
Leopard's translation is far from perfect however, often misunderstanding what
I am saying. It also does not understand punctuation, pauses or capitalization
- it just outputs a stream of uppercase words.
This means that fifty minutes of rambling audio can take another fifty minutes
of editing to get it into a useable state.
Future recordings are going to have to change. One thing I am trying today is
to use dictation operators.
For example, when I end a sentence I say "stop" (just like a telegram!). I can
then easily replace "stop" with a period and a new line.
I will also need to be more thoughtful about what I am saying, and to enunciate
my words clearly to avoid transcription errors. I can also have longer pauses
between sentences (because time doesn't matter) so I have plenty of time to
think.
todo
----
- [x] Book haircut -> tomorrow @ 15:30
- [>] Purchase groceries for lunch
- [>] Purchase chocolates the Chris and Anna
- [x] Book time with Pete for a virtual coffee -> tomorrow @ 1400
- [x] Encourage family to go out for fish and chips by the blue lake tonight
- [ ] Finish editing yesterdays journal entry
- [ ] Send message to Anne thanking her for her postcard and wishing her well
- [x] Visit the climbing wall around 5pm for a training session
- [?] (Hopefully!) pick up repaired bike wheel from shop.
- [ ] Configure parents email use the new Zoho Server
work
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Today is a learning and development day. The focus of the learning will
be be programming language haskell.
1. set up a skull compiler on computer
2. complete a hello world program in haskell
3. build a more complex application such as a web server or command line tool
I wrote my notes in wiki/haskell.md
morning tea
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I (finally) convinced mum to walk down to the local cafe, "Grøunded". We walked
via Wylie street and I shouted us hot drinks. I had a good time and I think mum
enjoyed it. It would be nice to do this a few times each week -- surely just
going for a short walk outdoors would be good for mum's mental and physical
health -- I know it does wonders for my own.
sums
----
Summing patterns are interesting:
sum [1..10] -- 55
sum [1..100] -- 5050
sum [1..1000] -- 500500
sum [1..10000] -- 50005000
sum [1..100000] -- 5000050000
Sums of 1..10x can be done by dividing 10x by 2 and concatenating it.
Example: 1..1000
1000 / 2 -- = 500
"500" ++ "500" -- = "500500"
...
sum [1..20] -- 210
sum [1..200] -- 20100
sum [1..2000] -- 2001000
sum [1..20000] -- 200010000
sum [1..200000] -- 20000100000
Example: 1..2000
2000 / 2 -- = 1000
1000 / 5 -- = 200
"200" ++ "1000" -- = "2001000"
...
sum [1..30] -- 465
sum [1..300] -- 45150
sum [1..3000] -- 4501500
sum [1..30000] -- 450015000
sum [1..300000] -- 45000150000
sum [1..n] = (45 * n / 3) + (n / 2)
Evening
-------
I spent most of yesterday learning high school.
In the evening around 5 pm, I cycled on mum's bike to the climbing wall in
town. I claimed for half an hour, trying out a couple new walls and also
completing the green overhang claim and the blue wall climb. I'm very proud of
myself. The wall was a lot busier yesterday in the evening, there were perhaps
20 people there. I would like to return again tomorrow for another short
climbing session.
On the way back home, mum's bike locked up on me. The chain had slipped off the
rear cassette and had got stuck jammed next the wheel. I tried to fix it but it
was not possible without any tools -- I tried my best but just got covered in
grease. I gave called dad and he came and picked me up. Thanks dad.
I was still keen to go out to the blue lake and have fish and chips for dinner
with the family. It was 6:15 pm and I was still trying to organise everyone. I
put an order in with the Ranolf Fish & Chip shop, managed to get the whole
family in the car along with the picnic gear and we drove off. It was 6:40pm by
the time we were organised and dad wasn't in the mood to go all the way out to
blue lake, so we decided to go to Lake Rotorua instead.
We found a picnic table near the playground and enjoyed our dinner. Afterwards
we cleaned up and went for a short walk by the lake checking out the latest
progress on the LakeFront Development Project.
On the way back home dad felt like some ice cream so we stopped at Countdown.
At home, I put on "The First Great Train Robbery" - a 1978 film starring Sean
Connery and Donald Sutherland. An entertaining film with some fantastic stunt
work by Connery.