I don’t know why I never thought to google the phrase “transcription software,” but it occurred to me today, and up came the website for Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software. It looks like it used to be shareware, but is now freeware. I downloaded it and played with it a bit, and it seems to be pretty great. It has an audio player built into the same program as a text editor, so you can play your audio file, transcribe in the same program, and use the function buttons to execute transcription commands, such as the most essential one of all: rewind. And you can even set how far back it jumps each time you hit rewind — 5, 10, 15 seconds, whatever works best for you. It also has a rather useful feature that slows down the audio speed, so that when transcribing interviews, it’s easier to type what the subject is saying. I’ve used something like this before, but this is much superior to anything I’ve tried, as it manages to slow the speech down, yet has very little distortion.

If you have need of such a thing, I highly recommend checking it out. Not only does it seem to work pretty great, but the price is also right: free.

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Get out there and vote today, people. Well, Democrats that is. Democrats vote today. Republicans are supposed to vote tomorrow. No, really.

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Just got back from World Fantasy, and will likely post a wonderful con report like thing tomorrow, but I wanted to just quickly, before passing out from exhaustion, put out this notice that I seem to have misplaced my iPod, and so if anyone at the convention happened to have found one, to please let me know. It’s a brand new 80 GB black video iPod, in a black Marware case. If you take it out of the case, it’ll be obvious it’s mine, as it’s got my name and phone number engraved on the back of it.

I’ve called lost and found at the hotel I stayed at, at the con hotel, and the rental car place, but all of their lost and found departments were closed for the night, so it’s possible it’ll turn up at one of these places. No need to check the airline, as I checked no luggage, and it was on the plane that I discovered it was missing. But if anyone has any other ideas, please speak up! It would be quite sad if I’ve lost it; I only just bought it like a week or two ago.

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Ralan just posted the winning stories of the 2006 Grabber Contest. My friend Amy Tibbetts won for her story “Builders of the Bone Castle,” which you can read here. The second and third place winners (and honorable mentions) can be accessed by the buttons at the top of the page; initially, I didn’t notice them there and was looking for links in the main Table of Contents page, so that’s why I point it out. Congrats to Amy, and to the other winners!

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