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# I am a dictator.
- URL: https://mrussell.co.uk/i-am-a-dictator/
- Published: 2026-10-12T17:18:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T18:37:42.000Z
- Author: Mark Russell

At the beginning of this year I had an unfortunate accident where I dislocated my right hand ring finger. Since you asked, eight months on it's still healing and has a long way to go. Unfortunately, I'm not a lop-sided left-hander who struggles with scissors, and so everything that requires fine motor skills has been somewhat compromised, not least writing and typing. For a long time, I've had either a splint, a cast or a medieval style torture device to wear, and that has meant all sorts of trouble with my keyboard, including the propensity to hit return too early because my straight, next-to-pinky would dink it midway through a sentence.

I also happen to have worked a lot with lawyers recently and, as I'm sure you know, they like to ramble on a bit. A couple of them put me on to voice-to-text dictation software. They used a well known proprietary one which I tried first. It was impressive, but I prefer not to send my most intimate words off to a service if I can avoid it and I also like the idea of having as much open source stuff in my arsenal as I can. [I landed on Handy](https://handy.computer/?ref=mrussell.co.uk), and I haven't had to lift a sore finger since.

![](https://mrussell.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/handy-sm.png)

It takes a bit of getting used to. Give it a fortnight. I naturally ummed and aaahed. I now rarely do that. At first, it really made me feel like I had to have clear, composed utterances before I started speaking. Now I'm able to pause and leave eons of silence to accumulate while I compose my thoughts and get it all out. I expect it's given a real jolt to my verbal fluency.

The worst side effect comes when you're with other people and you can't justify muttering all your inane thoughts to an open room. It becomes a horrendous chore to have to revert to the keyboard.

I've tried probably ten plus different apps, free and paid. Some that link APIs like Groq, others that run a small model locally, which Handy does. (Parakeet Unified is the current one for English speakers.) There are also forks of Handy, which has an MIT licence, that take it a little bit further. But I'm somewhat enamoured by the little rubbery avatar, and I keep going back to Handy.

I've lived a long time where efficiencies are promised and new technologies are heralded as massive time savers. That's mostly been bollocks. But talking at your computer rather than prodding it with your fingers and thumbs has provided solid proof that I can get on with stuff way quicker than I used to.

I wholeheartedly recommend you become a dictator like me.