Someone from Taiwan!

The OCVolume category contains posts with emails I received regarding OCVolume. Close to when I am about to graduate from university, I heard from someone in Taiwan inquiring about OCVolume.

Hi Danny,

Thanks.  The first question for you is  - Is it an speaker dependent or independent?  I have trained it with my own voice and seems that works pretty well, I have not tried with others.  Since the code is neat and good, I am not sure why you stop working on it?  I personal consider it as a treasure of human being.

By the way, may I ask you a personal question? How old are you?  Where are you located right now?

I also included my personal e-mail address of G-mail, please reply to all so that I can connect with you from there. Thanks and have a nice day.

We exchanged multiple emails because the person was about to immigrate to Canada and I was also an immigrant to Canada so there are some similarities.

Hi Danny,

Thank you very much for your answer, I am also from Taiwan too.  If fact, I will immigrate to Canada this summer.

Let me introduce a little bit about myself and my family. I am an old guy who is full of curiosity - nearly double of your age.  I hope that I am not too old to be your friend. I have twin boys, and they are 12 years old now.  They will be at Vancouver this summer, and I hope that they will be your friends in the near future too.  My cellular phone at Taiwan is 886-xxxxxxxxx and I will send you my skype account by another e-mail address of mind: _____@_____, maybe we can talk to each other sometime.

The reason why I am interested at OCVolume is because I do not like the way most of the giant software company are running their business too. I have experienced Sphnix from CMU, HTK, Micosoft Speech, viaVoice from IBM  ..etcs, and I feel that OCVolume is very good although I know it is uncompleted. I do like to know all of the details about OCVolume.  Please tell me anything that you can.  I do not have any specific purpose about it, just want to learn more. By the way, when you be graduated? and what is you plan after that.

I have in the IT industry for more 20 years, maybe I can share with you some experience too.  Thanks again and hope you have a nice day.

Regards

My experience at ScanSoft told me that the money in speech industry is no longer in the core recognizer but in the customized solutions surrounding it. I worked on custom solutions for telephone speech solutions and decided that isn’t for me long term.

Thanks Danny,

I guess I am in the similar situation as you were while you were in high school.  I am not good at all in programming or Math.  I do spend some times to study the HMM and finally I got it from a Web site of Leed University.  But the problem of mine is I do not know VQ at all and my programming skill is pretty limited.  I only learned BASIC while I was about your age now.

You are not a dumb kid, my friend ! I am not sure if you are a genius, but I am sure that you are someone very special.  I can tell that you may give-up on the voice recognition field from the mails between you and me; I will not suggest that you do it that way if it is true.

Mr. Michael Dell and Bill Gates are almost the same age of mine. In fact, Michael and I are exactly the same age.  I do not know Bill, but I met Michael once while I work for a Taiwanese Computer company, the feeling of mine was very strange while I met him.  Because I knew his story while we both were at the age just like yours now, he was selling the self-assembled PC in States, and I was doing the same thing in Taiwan.  We had different result while 20 years went by.  You probably will be the next Bill 20 years later.

Please do not take it wrong, I am not trying to tell you Money is everything, there is always something more important than it.

Do you still speak Chinese?  I hope that I can talk to you soon.

Thanks and have a nice weekend.

Regards