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Having fallen off my bike recently and broken my collarbone means that I can't type with both hands, for a consultant this is a poor place to be. Now that I'm on the mend I decided to buy dictation software, as it may be another 3 to 4 weeks before I can type while again.

There is pretty much only one option for dictation software on the Mac. Dragon Dictate is a retail only package, because it comes with a dedicated headset, this is a Plantronics 610 with an approximately 2 m long cable. It plugs into a specific USB adapter and the Dragon dictation software listens to this. There is a wireless version for about £100 more. I bought the wired version of Dragon Dictate from Amazon for £130.

I got the software yesterday, it takes about 10 minutes to install. The headset is quite comfortable and the setup takes about another five to ten minutes. since then I've used it to write about half a dozen e-mails including words like peripatetic, pneumothorax and phrases like King's Cross. It is pretty accurate and certainly faster than one-handed typing. It does require a slightly different way of thinking as Dragon dictation works best with flowing sentences, it makes many more mistakes if you give it halting fragments of text. It works by matching word frequency and sound analysis. There is an inherent statistical bias towards Americanised speech, but it's quite straightforward to edit this. One annoying bug is its habit of adding space before every word while editing. So if you are not careful you can end up with double spaces between words betraying your edits. I'm hoping they will fix this in a subsequent revision.

Reading on various support forums for Dragon Dictate it seems that having a recent i.e. less than two-year-old Mac running 10.6 is pretty essential. Having 4 or 8 gig of memory installed helps a lot as well. The ability to dictate directly into MarsEdit or Mail is a real help. I can see myself using this quite a lot even when I have recovered, as despite having written a book my typing speed has never been that quick. I'm aware that this won't work very well in a shared office, but for using at home it is fine.

I'll update this review, as I use and train the application more. It is possible to both train Dragon dictation in terms of the vocabulary you use by giving it documents you have written and train it to your voice by reading sample documents they provide. I think a few hours spent doing this will improve the accuracy a lot. At the minute it varies a lot from stretches of near-perfect, when I give it 10 to 20 words at a time to getting one in 10 words wrong if I give it halting speech. Because of the statistical nature of its matching it often substitutes phrases rather than getting individual words wrong. So you develop a habit of reading what it is just typed for you, which is a slightly odd style of writing. Though on the whole it is a good and enjoyable experience.

I went out to see the fourth Harry Potter film (trailer), last night, with Tom, Simon and Katy. I'd not read any of the books, nor seen any of the previous films. So it was all a bit of a mystery. Simon's t-shirt adding to the whole experience, marvellously.

It was a good film, enjoyable, a bit scary and entertaining. Most of it made sense without knowing anything about the Harry Potter world and that world seemed to be more sophisticated than I'd expected. I understand that this is the best of the four films so far, from Tom. The earlier films like the books are apparently weaker too. So maybe I'll join the masses and read Harry Potter. Perhaps unlike His Dark Materials they are set to improve until the end. The final book of that trilogy, The Amber Spyglass disappoints, I feel.

Back to the film, the special effects are wonderful, they make the creatures, the magic and the buildings feel very real. The acting is fine, with enough teenage angst humour to cut through what might be a bit staid and 1950s if played straight. Some of the adult roles must have been great fun to play.

In terms of trailers, Narnia looks too clean and prissy, King Kong on the other hand looks the part.

I, finally, got a new phone last weekend, I've replaced my aging T68i with a lovely Nokia 6600.
I've had it a few days and have had time to get an opinion of it. On the whole I really like it, the screen is bright and clear, the camera movement is sharp and fluid. My only complaint is that the battery life can be a bit short if you keep it in a pocket, as the screen will keep turning on when the joystick moves, this behaviour can empty the battery in a couple of days, bluetooth also drains the battery quickly.
The phone is quite big, but not really that much bigger than a t68, though larger than a t610. The screen is a great size, but a little vunerable to knocks I think. It feels oddly light too, like the curves on the side of the phone are empty.
It is a bit odd though, as the handset is actually a small computer that happens to be running a phone application. Speaking of which Russell Beattie's guide to software for your 6600 is essential reading. Also Christian Lindholm's guide to UI tips and tricks is very useful too.
The Orange package differs from the normal shipping European model, it has some custom applications, backup and update, plus a packet video player, but no Opera. It comes fully setup from Orange to work on GPRS for WAP browsing and feels quite quick.
Thus far I haven't used it as a bluetooth modem or installed Opera to web-browse, too many easier ways to get online. However I have ssh'd into my webserver from the train. I'm planning to install Kablog, next to play with proper moblogging. I've also been investigating, via google, other ways to engage my 6600 =)

I have been meaning to write about A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick, for a few months. I read it last year and really enjoyed it, but found it challenging and disturbing. It is a dark exploration of drug addiction and it is a vaguely autobiographical account of Dick's life. It traces the life and decline of Robert Actor and his dual life as a crime fighting drug cop or Narc and as Bob Actor a drug using sometime dealer. The paranoia and madness that come from the book is quite powerful. I really enjoyed it as the plot works, but it is a book you put down for a bit from time to time.
I was reading on Matt Jones' site about the new Wired on "The second coming of Philip K Dick", so I did some hunting and it seems that Warner Bros. have an option to make a film of A Scanner Darkly. Read more on the Philip K Dick fan site

On Sunday night I saw Monica Vasconcelos at Ronnie Scotts in Soho. She is a singer and songwriter, based in the UK, but from Brazil.
Monica has a great voice and she sings with quite an infectuous sound. Nois the band are all quite talented and through them you get involved in the music. I was in Sao Paulo a few years ago and the feeling is similar, you want to be part of the show, rather than just in the audience. Lots of people were clapping along with the percussion on Sunday.
They play a good mixture of sounds ranging from their own material to covers of 60s and 70s Brazillian classics. Basically it is music to feel good to, relax and enjoy it.
She has two albums available, the first Nois is mainly Brazillian music and is sung in Portuguese, which makes for melodic and precussive sounds. They mix the different music styles from Brazil with European and Latin Jazz sounds.
Their latest ablum, Oferenda is also good, a bit more polished and has some songs sung in English, see this short review on the BBCi music site or listen to this short clip (30 seconds RealAudio).

Chat in work made me remember Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, quite my favourite book when I was a little boy. I made my Dad read it to me again and again. Buy it for all the children you know.... perfect for anyone from 3 and up, the illustrations are still in my head, read the reviews on amazon for more adulation...

My friend Nick has a band, the CatDesigners. They are kind of like early Bowie, with a variety of other influences.
They have released a new first album Chemical Jazz, you can buy it here. If you need convincing, listen to these two tracks from the album Gravity means and Dizzy Q.
The album is really pretty good, a variety of different styles, but not a disparate collection. Nick has a good voice and the mood moves from guitar led to more sparse pieces. The two tracks give a good impression of the album. One thing to note though the website is broken in Safari.

UPDATE: the DVD of Belleville Rendez-vous is available from amazon.co.uk on pre-order, released on the 26th January.

This delightful and bizarre animated french film is one of the best I have seen this year. Belleville Rendezvous, originally released as Les Triplettes de Belleville in France is an exploration of the realtionship between a child and his grandmother. It is also a looney adventure with fantasty scenes of huge cities, shoes that eat people and dogs that dream.
The soundtrack is great fun too. Lastly the website has a storyboard, games to play and musical postcard to send. It is a good movie tie-in site, really giving the feeling of the film, without completely giving away the plot.

Phil Askey from Digital Photography Review has reviewed the A70 (amazon) and has done a much more thorough job than I have time to do.
Some quick additional thoughts, the camera is excellent and for the money highly recommended, especially if you are familar with the Canon SLR layout. Simple and straightforward to use and also offering sufficient manual control over white point and aperture or shutter speed. It is also ready to shoot quite quickly from poweron and doesn't suffer too badly from shutter lag, you tend to get what you intend to take, except in really fast moving events.
Some caveats, the lens had barrel distortion at the minumum focal length, but this is quite common. The screen needs to really be read straight on and suffers in bright sunlight.
You really need to budget for rechargable batteries and additional memory (128MB compact flash) too.
The camera offers some fun and useful additional features, movie mode being one, but the panoramic mode is quite well thoughtout and I've used it several times to take scenics.
One of the better 2-300 pound cameras around at the minute. It has replaced the 35mm compact that I used to carry, but I'm still taking my EOS 30 if I intend to take real pictures. A perfect take anywhere camera.

Is it inevitable that technological tools feature creep. Mobile phones started as a tool to make a call, with a small facility to store numbers. Then SMS arrived and gradually phones have had more and more things added to them. So much so that the basic talking to people function is not the focus of the device anymore.
I have also been reading an article on the possible future of camera like devices and some thoughts struck me - is there a market for a simple phone or simple camera and what do I carry with me and what do I really need and use.
I have my camera, a Canon Powershot A70; my phone, a Sony Ericsson T68i and my PowerBook. Bluetooth connects them together via a D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter DBT-120. I tend to carry my PowerBook, phone, camera and of course I bring my iPod (30GB, 15GB and 10GB) virtually everywhere with me. The new ones do look very nice, particularily the ability to use AA batteries with them.
My palm pilot sits forlorn and dormant at home, until I get moblogging ideas from time to time. It has been displaced by my phone and a sheet of paper.
I did use my palm quite a lot, but with a powerbook, there just isn't the call for it and it is just easier to use paper to keep my todo lists on. I've found that a folded bit of A4 in my jeans pocket is perfect for running my life, much faster to use than a pda. It affords use, there is virtually no user interface to it, the idea is almost funny. I can check it anywhere, to integrate with everything else, I manually transfer tasks from it to my laptop from time to time, usually when rewriting it. Most of the jobs on it are transient tasks, like call someone etc, so there need be no record.
My phone keeps my numbers and a snapshot of my calendar via iSync with my PowerBook which is the home for everything. With a digital camera I do take a lot more pictures than I did on film, but it is still quite in fits and starts.
I think that three to four devices is my limit, one to communicate with, one to listen to and one to capture pictures with. Plus my computer for writing, organising and storing all of this. Realistically I cannot see any of these devices disappearing.
I like taking pictures too much to loose the amount of control that camera phones represent. I need some manual control and a decent lens, this is present in the A70, but my film camera is still much more of a picture taking tool. I cannot imagine putting a bulky device like a combo pda phone in my pocket and carrying it around with me everywhere. I dislike the P800 or the new three phones for this reason, much too big.
The iPod is pretty perfect, even better now it is smaller and lighter. the design has been thought about clearly and it is just right for use as a music playback device. It would never work as a camera, though it could have a radio or video playback added without spoiling it too much.
So for me it is focused devices that do one job well and do not obscure it under a morasse of other functionaility. Certain features might be handy, GPS can give me location and then with internet access this can give me local information. However this is an add on, like word processors, phones have got to the point were they attempt to do everything badly.
This seems to be turning into an anti-pda and or smart phone rant and it sort of is I suppose, laptops are getting cheaper and better, so a phone, laptop and camera dispenses with the need for a pda smart phone type device. I can't see the point anymore, I'd rather have a decent screen to read and a large keyboard to type on. I know that my pda can offer me amazing things, but are they really just a glorified notebook for the laptopless. I don't want to have to carry another device around and keep it up todate with everything else. Technology is meant to solve problems, not create them. More on this and short reviews of some things I like in the next few days.