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Happy New Year everybody! Even though it’s a little late, well at least it’s just a little late. Let’s all hope 2009 will be a great year for everyone in terms of health and wealth. Did you get smashed and made a fool of yourselves on New Year’s Eve? I know I didn’t because I stayed home and didn’t get invited to any party. *sobs* We had to watch the countdown to the New Year and the fireworks on TV. However one of our neighbors did had a great party that night. They were playing their music so loud all night long but being New Year we let them have their fun…until beh tahan liao!

After midnight we though the party would die down soon and the music would stop. I was so tired I went to bed after midnight despite the loud music. Terese couldn’t stand the loud music so she stayed up waiting for the music to stop. I fell asleep half an hour later, I can sleep through World War 3.

I found out later from Terese that she waited till 2 am but the music still didn’t stop and she was getting pretty agitated by then. She was so tired but couldn’t sleep with the loud music so she rang the local police! Yes she called and complained to the police and was greeted by a very well mannered but tired police officer who took down her complaint about the noisy neighbor and said they’ll take care of the problem but to be patient because it was a rather busy night for them. I can understand that. Half an hour later the music stopped. The police must have showed up at the neighbor’s and told them to stop the party. Trust me when I say this is the first time we’ve ever complained to the police about our neighbors, we usually just let them do what they wanted but this time Terese just couldn’t stand it anymore. Happy New Year!

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Filed under: Life as I see it, Festivity, Personal

Nowadays just about everywhere you go you can see people wearing an mp3 player or an iPod in their ears as they carry on with their daily routines especially the younger generations. Mp3 players and iPods are great for commuters on their daily grind to work and back but they also make people less social; they tend to keep to themselves in their own little private world oblivious to the outside world.

Having said so even Terese and I have iPod in our household, in fact we have 2 iPod shuffles. I tried using it a while but then I prefer to listen to the radio, talk back radio to be exact. With mp3 players and iPods you just listen to your favorite songs over and over again but the radio is different; the songs played are randomly chosen so you never know what you’ll be listening next. Still I’d rather listen to the talk back radio whereby the host will talk about a certain topic, any topic at all and then the listeners can phone in to comment, argue or give feedbacks about the particular topic. It’s like blogging but on the radio!

When we’re working at home I like to listen to my talk back radio all day long but unfortunately Terese doesn’t share my enthusiasm for talk back radio, she’d prefer listening to music. So to keep her happy I had to get myself a personal radio so I can listen to my talk back radio while she listens to her music. All’s well except the talk back radio is on the AM band. If it was on the FM band then I have a few personal FM radios at home all given free from everywhere like one I got from buying Nescafe and another some shopkeeper who gave it to me when I was in Singapore trying to entice me to buy something in his shop. Of course being the kiamsiap foochow that I am I didn’t buy lah.

Anyway I had to find a personal radio that will receive AM stations as well. Been looking all over town and finally I found one from Tandy Electronics selling for $40. It’s a cool little personal radio with earpieces and when I’m wearing it on me people who see me think I’m wearing an mp3 player. Little did they know Old Uncle Wuching is just listening to his talk back radio on his $40 personal radio that impersonates an mp3 player! But it’s a good little gadget and I’m happy with it. It’s the best $40 I’ve spent so far. Talk back radio on 3AW on 693 on the AM band is the most successful radio station in town but the listeners are mainly more matured listeners like myself. The younger generations don’t want to listen to it saying it’s old folks station, they rather listen to their hip hop, R&B, techno and pop stations. But for the rest of us 3AW is the station for us. I like it coz it’s like blogging on the radio!

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Filed under: Computer, Gadgets & Internet

If I had a crystal ball and knew in advance how bad the economy was going to be then I might have thought twice before taking that bold step and bought the business to run it myself. I might have just looked for another job and will not have the worry I have now wondering why people are not spending money. The only worry I would have would be wondering what to have for dinner on the way home from work everyday.

Well how would we have known that just 2 months after buying my business Wall Street took a dive for the worse, followed by the US recession, then Europe followed, Japan and now it looks like Australia isn’t far behind. It’s a global domino effect; stock market in Australia is also falling, companies are closing, people are loosing jobs and suddenly running my own business isn’t such a good idea anymore.

But what’s the alternative? Cut my losses and work for someone else? Then I’ll still be worried, this time about my job security and hoping the business I work for doesn’t go under also and I’ll be in an even worse situation.

So tough times demand tough actions; prepare for the worse, batten down the hatchet, tighten up my belts, I’ve been through bad times before and survived them so this time is no different. We will get through this.

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Filed under: Personal

Like many of my fellow blogger friends, I started blogging on a free blogging platform. It’s good for people just starting out blogging and not sure how far they want to take their blogs to. You also get to learn all you can about this ever popular past time. Eventually after months of blogging and finding that I was really into blogging I felt it was time to move to another level and that’s getting my own domain name and webhosting.

There are so many companies wanting to host your blogs that they are willing to offer all kinds of great deals. Some even offer http://webhostinggeeks.com/freedomainnames.html that come with their webhosting so it always pays to look around for the best deal to suit your needs. A good place to start is at WebHostingGeeks.com where they have already rated for you all the top webhosting sites on the internet saving you the hassle of trolling through the internet looking for your web host. All you need to do is pick the one that you think can provide you with the best service you deserve so you don’t have to worry about it and concentrate on what you do best and that’s writing for your blogs!

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The problem with speech recognition software is that it may not recognize some of the more recent words and spelling we use in our everyday living. Thank goodness someone has come up with a way of training Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 software to recognize different spelling words like SuperZ. Check out the original blog article at AskSuperZ.com after viewing the video below to learn more;

Press Release:

The video above was created by a blogger that goes by the name, SuperZ.

I couldn’t write that name before using Dragon NaturallySpeaking until I trained Dragon NaturallySpeaking to recognize the name SuperZ. I mention that because I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking right now to write this article (notice Dragon new when I said the words right now that I meant the word right and not the word to write).

I’ve been writing articles and reviews about Dragon NaturallySpeaking for close to two years. I’ve had a lot of experience with the software, and I wanted to reach out to other bloggers and see what they thought of the software.

SuperZ tried out the software and as you can see from his own video, the results that he’s getting after having used the software for just a week are pretty amazing. His computer is keeping up with just about every word that he says, and typing those words out for him in text.

Well frankly that’s exactly what Dragon NaturallySpeaking is supposed to do these days and it lives up to its claim of achieving 99% accuracy and I’ve clocked it typing faster than its claims of 150 words per minute.

That’s right you can type 150 words a minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. You do have to spend a little time editing from time to time, but you type so fast that editing doesn’t take that long. You get the typing done faster and the editing is a breeze because you only have to look at the way that you phrased words. Dragon NaturallySpeaking almost never makes a spelling mistake. It types out the entire word based on the vocabulary that has stored in the machine. So it really can’t misspell a word it’s pulling the word straight out of a dictionary.

The only exception might be the case when you run into a name like SuperZ, which is not in your dictionary yet. When you run across a name like that, all you have to do is add it into your dictionary and train the software to recognize that new word or name. It just takes a second and after that you’ll be able to say SuperZ all you like and Dragon NaturallySpeaking will know exactly what you are talking about.

Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
Softduit Media
www.softduit.com
PS this article includes about 381 words that I wrote with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. It took me about 4 minutes to write and 4 minutes to edit this article. The writing time included the short amount of time it took to train dragon to recognize the name SuperZ. Editing took 4 minutes because I’ve been working all night and I’m not reading too fast! J

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Filed under: Uncategorized