Engine Punk

A few weeks ago, I had a comment on this very blog that mentioned voice-activated dictation software. It described Dragon NaturallySpeaking as a secret weapon when it came to formatting text documents in readiness for publishing. I've had a lot of problems with using Word and PDF generators but had got around it by using Open Office Writer. I was interested to hear about this Dragon product as another alternative to using Word. It was as I researched Dragon NaturallySpeaking that I realised that this might be an alternative to learning to touch type. I had already embarked upon a touch typing course (E-typing) but it soon became apparent that I would never be as quick as I fought or spoke. I am a reasonably fast two fingered typist but very often my ideas come spilling out of my brain and my fingers trip themselves up. In fact, I seem to be getting less accurate as I get older. I decided to try Dragon NaturallySpeaking and ordered the Preferred version, complete with a Phili...

I was near Andover at the weekend with my neighbour and tractor man Andrew. We dropped in on my scrap buddy, Rob Robinson-Collins who has a weakness for Allards. Here are Rob and Andrew in Rob and Tina's back garden. If ever Rob rings me up to tell me that he has discovered another Allard, or parts thereof, I don't dissuade him. I encourage him. I'm happy to say that he is rarely in any doubt about the desirability of any Allard or Allard parts so it is not difficult for him to follow my advice to, "Buy it!" We both realise that this is not really what having a scrap buddy is all about. What should happen, is that one of us says to the other, "Look, what you really want is just one car and one motorbike and that's it." Sometimes, one of us might actually say this but it is quickly ignored. Very often, this sentence is not uttered at all. Here, Rob is explaining the niceties of shortening an Allard chassis to Andrew's boots. You may have not...