Second blogiversary

It is two years since we started blogging. There have been times when I have got tired of dictation and flirted with the idea of calling it quits. Then I will think, maybe a couple of posts more. And then, maybe one more post. And what do you know? It has been two years! 'Will I?' is not a bad way to go.

For the past few months the nurse has been typing part of the blog thus reducing the load on Jaya. She doesn't know English. I look at the required letter on the keyboard and she guesses the correct letter after a few iterations.It has been working quite well and has improved with practice. Sometimes she will press the key too hard and the letter will get typed multiple times but that is part of the game. She doesn't know that some characters require two keys to be pressed simultaneously and I don't know how to convey it to her. So Jaya will type characters like !, ( ), ?, etc. and do cut and paste. Jaya will also type the passages from books, which she can finish in a few minutes. This is my favourite part where I just have to point out the relevant passage and relax.

For typing capital letters, I ask the nurse to press Caps Lock. The problem with this is that I sometimes forget to turn it off with the result that some letters get typed in capital. If a I am lucky, I will notice the error early but sometimes I will notice my goof-up only after a while by which time quite a few letters would have been typed in capitals. Having to delete them all and retype them doesn't put me in a good mood. I can't glower at anybody since it was my bad so I will satisfy myself by glaring at the monitor.

The single quotes have been typed by the nurse and the double quotes have been typed by Jaya. That is all there is to it. I don't know if it qualifies for some peeveblogging but now you know how the sausage is made. If there is some spelling mistake, I don't immediately correct it because it will take too much time for the nurse to position the mouse-pointer correctly. I will make all such corrections when Jaya does the editing or wait for a Spell Check. Sometimes I will miss an error which will not be caught by Spell Check. For example, in this post, the original sentence was:

REPORTER: Will it be right if I put it this way - "Professor Dirac solves all the problems of mathematical physics, but is unable to find a better way of figuring out Babe Ruth's bathing average"?

Obviously the Spell Check did not correct it. I later noticed the error by accident and corrected it. I must have made many such errors for which you would have maintained a diplomatic silence. For all acts of omission and commission, mea culpa.

So thanks to Jaya and the nurse, this blog has entered its third year. And thank you to all readers who have dropped by.