Hands Off! MacSpeech Dictate

I started having problems with circulation in my hands years ago and eventually had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand in 2009. The surgeon, Dr. Robert Markison, in San Francisco,* recommended that I get MacSpeech Dictate and a Sennheiser ME3 microphone. I did it, started using it, amazed at how well it worked, but gradually got back into keyboarding by hand.

In the last year I’ve started having circulation problems in my right hand again; my fingers are cold a lot of the time, like default for the right-hand is cold. So I’m using gloves (the best ones are rabbit-fur-lined leather ones), moving around (hiking gets the circulation going in all body parts just fine), and getting into MacSpeech Dictate much more fully. I’ve just had to work at it (and basically be alone, so I’m not disturbing others), and it’s getting smoother all the time. It’s a brilliant program.

I’m writing this now by talking into the mike while I’m stretching my arms overhead (actually hanging some of my body weight from a piece of half-inch galvanized pipe that’s attached horizontally to the bottom of the rafters about 6 1/2 feet off the floor). (It’s interesting the means you have to go to in order to counteract body-numbing effects of working on a computer. Bob Anderson uses the phrase “creeping rigor mortis.”)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking seems to be the same type of program for Windows operating systems.

I wholeheartedly recommend this approach for anyone with hand problems.

*Markison is a remarkable guy. Not only a very fine surgeon, but a medical illustrator, musical instrument designer, musician, and craftsman. He alters saxophones or other woodwind instruments so that the players hands and thinkers are in a more ergonomic positions. He also has made his own shoes and neckties. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I highly recommend him for anything to do with your hands.