Voice recognition software waxes poetic!

My copy of DragonDictate should arrive today. In the meantime I'm continuing to play with the iPhone app (including dictating this very post). I used it last night to take some notes for the next scene I'm planning for my historical fantasy manuscript. Either it's getting better at understanding me or I'm getting better at speaking to it.

The one mildly annoying thing is that I have characters named Cass and Ben. I might just have to call them Cassandra and Benjamin and then use find and replace to get their nicknames into the final version. You see, the app keeps hearing them as "cats" and "been."

Earlier I had some fun with the app by reading it some famous poems just to see how what it heard compared with what I was actually reading. So for your amusement I present "If" by Rudyard Kipling, as heard by Dragon for the iPhone. (Click on the link for the real words.)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about don't deal them a place
Or being hated don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good nor talk too wise

If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just same
If you can bear to hear the Trease you've spoken
Twisted by Navis to make a trap for Falls
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken
And stoop and build up with one L tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pigeon toss
And blues and start again your beginning
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and send you
To serve your turn on after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them hold on

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With 60 seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And which is more you'll be a man my son

That's the best result I've gotten so far with anything non-21st century. Though I'm not sure about this "pigeon toss" business. I might be willing to risk everything on pitch-and-toss, but I ain't touching no pigeon. Just feathered rats, those things are.