Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

Okay, the other day I gave in and bought Dragon quote NaturallySpeaking, since it was 40% off for one day. After it arrived in the mail I tried to run the speech recognition, only to discover that the microphone was not properly plugged in to my computer. So I had to wait for Audrey to come by today to plug-in the new microphone headset which came with the program I've now spent about an hour fiddling with the tutorial and I am now using the program to write this entry.

We are still learning each other; one trick we are having to learn is distinguishing between directions and what I actually want to say. And of course, On my end actually knowing what I want to say. So far so good however.

Dragon dictate does not recognize DreamWidth's entry window directly, but openness and dictation box from which I can transfer the text. Which I will try to do now…

So -- I was in the middle of replying to a comment yesterday, when Audrey plugged in my new replacement earphones.

Adjusting to that was one change too many, and my geriatric computer promptly gave up the ghost and died-- all lights out.

So today, after work, Audrey went to the local computer mega store and bought a new Windows tower (I will pay her back by check tomorrow).

So now, I am suddenly working with Windows 8 and getting used to the feel of a new keyboard, and getting reacquainted with the feel of an actual mouse...

And, until I learn rescue is possible, I'm working on the assumption that all the files I had stored on my old hard drive are lost.

But I'm refusing to be depressed about this. Most of the writing I cared about, I've posted here on my journal. So a good troll through my archive will rescue most of my work.

I've downloaded Google Chrome for my browser (can't tell you how much I hate Bing), and AOL desktop for my mail... And I will download a new copy of OpenOffice and RealPlayer, and Windows Movie Maker... And Noteworthy Composer... Good thing you don't need hard copies of CD Roms anymore.

But there are a couple (so far-- I'm sure more will come up as days go by) that have me WTF-ing:

1) Windows 8 has no Notepad/basic text writer?!
2) The only way into MS Paint is through Wordpad?!

WTF?!

*sigh*

For the record, my old computer was eleven years old... That's like ninety-nine in human years, right?

I meant to signal boost this. I failed. The Calender caught up with me. I intended to write something. I may, still. But at the moment, I am feeling speechless.

So I urge you to read this blog post from Dave Hingsburger instead:

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/01/1440-international-day-of-mourning-and.html

A quote:

In a graveyard, not far from where I type, 2011 people were laid to rest. Only 571 have names. A full one thousand four hundred and forty lay nameless and forgotten. Even if you knew them once, you'd never find them now.

How could this be?

The is a graveyard that lay on the lee side of institutional walls. That institution is now closed. No footsteps echo down the long corridors, the smells of human captivity are slowly fading, the tools of segregation are growing rusty in the dark corners of back wards. Many people who lived there are now free. Many are now finding their way as full citizens, part of the community that once rejected them. Many will never know a moments surety that citizenship is an irrevocable thing.

Murderers serve less time than people who committed the crime of difference.
(end quote)

There are free closed-captioning tools online, that grab your uploaded video, and allow you to write captions as its playing. But the fiddliness varies, and sometimes, the websites go wonky. So I figured it would be worth my while to learn how to do it myself, offline. And I thought, as a Public Service Announcement, that I'd share what I learned this week.

First: It's simple, and more intuitive than you might think.

Second:: Subtitle tracks can be written in .txt format, in Windows Notepad; When you go to save them, change the .txt extension to .srt. and hey, presto! you have a subtitle/closed caption track.

Third: 'Simple' does not necessarily mean 'easy,' however; You do have to mind your commas and colons, so don't proofread while you're tired.

Fourth: Parts of a subtitle/caption code (each letter in this list represents a single line):

a) the number of the title (1, 2, 3, ...)
b) the start time (hour:minute:second,millisecond) arrow (-->) end time (hour:minute:second,millisecond)
c) text of the title
d) empty line

( What a closed-caption file looks like )

Fifth: Things I can do to make the next time I do this easier:

a) make a boilerplate for the time code line, so I can just fill in the numbers, and am less likely to put a colon or comma in the wrong place

b) open Notepad, and write the captions as I go along with putting the video the together, so I don't have to go back and figure out the timing after the fact.

c) YouTube doesn't measure in milliseconds, just just round up to the nearest second, and don't worry about that bit.

---
Reasons to go to the "extra trouble" of writing a caption track:

1) It's the right thing to do; the last U.S. Census to include information on deafness or hard of hearing status was 1930. But the most recent estimates from Gallaudet University have about 13% of the total U.S. population have some trouble hearing speech clearly (and that's including all ages, from birth -- it goes up to about 30% when you get into the 60s). And that doesn't include people who can technically hear, but still have trouble understanding the spoken word (not to mention, either, the people who can hear, but may wish to watch your video with the sound off -- such as when they're watching videos in the library, or alongside someone who's reading, or...)

2) Even if no human uses the caption track you provide, Google/YouTube does. Putting a track on your video allows people to find it with greater accuracy in Google Searches -- based on the things you actually say in the video, even if they can't remember the title you gave it, or the exact name of your YouTube channel.

3) Once you have a caption track on your video, Google can provide a translation into other languages. Yes, Google Translate is often dodgy/spotty. But it can do a better job translating my poetry into Arabic (say) than I can. At least, it gives speakers of other languages a sense of the gist of what your video's about.

... Yeah {Sigh}. Batteries on my motor chair gave up the ghost late Friday night/early Saturday morning. Called Rehab supply place first chance I got (this afternoon). Audrey won't be able to get the chair in to have new batteries put in until late Friday afternoon (alternatively, I could make an appointment for a week from Thursday at the earliest to have a repair person bring the batteries to my house). So yeah... And then, after the batteries get put in, they'll have to be charged for several hours before they can be used.

In my manual chair, getting from one side of the house to the other takes about twenty minutes. ...My toilet and kitchen are in the opposite side of the house from my Internet. I'm also about three inches too low for optimally comfortable typing.

So if it seems to you that I've gone unusually silent, or not commenting as much... that would be why.

In the meantime, Friday is the deadline for entries in this month's "Disability Blog Carnival." I'm working on a poem to submit to it, along with a video of said poem. I was planning on making and scanning illustrations for it... But now, I am too low / short to use the scanner... So I'll have to steal images from the Internet, instead.

My mother graduated from Bronx Science (which I mention in the poem) in 1952 -- five years before their modern campus was built. The building where she went to school was built in 1918, and from written descriptions, apparently was Gothic in architecture, and had gargoyles. An image of that building, at the time she graduated, would be a cool thing to put in my video ... But after several hours of Googling, I've come to the conclusion that no such image is available: cue tired, frowny face.

*Sigh*

Had to get up extra early (for me) and go out and buy a new refrigerator/freezer, today... After driving home from the Mall in August heat and traffic, you get an icon description of my Na'artitude (Text: The Muse is Willing But the Brain is Mush):



The fonts are Maiandra GD (16 pt) and Franklin Gothic Demi Condensed (various sizes).

Snaggable with credit...

Audrey picked up the computer this afternoon, brought it to my house, and plugged it back in. She forgot to plug in my headset speaker/microphone, however, and I can't clearly see or reach the outlets the plugs are supposed to go into... so I won't be able to watch videos with sound, at least until she comes back Wednesday afternoon -- woe.

Remember my post about how to add closed captioning to your videos? I wish everyone would do that. And I wish YouTube would let folks put captions on vids that aren't theirs (hello, PBS Kids' channel, and Harvard lecture series, I'm looking at you. I don't want to pirate your vids, and repost them on my own channel, but if you refuse to caption them, these are the actions people will be forced to resort to -- just saying).

Anyway, here's what I did over the last five days without you, in order to keep sane (relatively):

1) Came up with the idea of a "Bunny Bag":

Write out, in longhand (because I had no word processor, of course, but writing longhand also forced me to slow down and think deeply about my story, so I'd have a head start when the month of writing rolls around and take more time, so I'd have something to do) on one side of a legal pad page the idea for a potential NaNoWriMo/"Camp NaNoWrimo" story. Then fold said page into thirds two ways, and then fold into fourths (fold into thirds, as I normally would for mailing a letter, then turn 90 degrees and fold in thirds again, then fold that into quarters). And then, drop each "controlled wad" of paper into a brown paper lunch sack. A month before the challenge starts, I will reach into the bag and pull one of the them out, And that's the story I write ... of course, like the Doctor, I may decide to ignore the dictates of chance, if, in the moment, I hate what I have in my hand.

Some pages had more white space than others, and some pages had writing squeezed into the margins, but at least that limit helped make certain that each story idea had roughly the same average of detail. And of course, no single story page is folded exactly the same as any other, but close enough so that when I reach into the bag to pick my story for the challenge, I won't remember which is which just by blind feel.

There are eight "bunnies" in the bag. Not as many as the dozen John Steinbeck (allegedly) promised, but enough to make the final choice uncertain, and therefore interesting. Some are stories I've tried my hand at recently, so I'm giving myself a chance to take a second stab at them. But a few are brand new. Only one story idea (from a creative writing assignment from grad school 20 years ago) turned out to be "stillborn" -- got halfway down the page, and realized "There was no 'There' there" anymore.

2. Read Morality for Beautiful Girls, which Audrey lent me years ago, and I promptly forgot about. It's one of the novels in the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it had a major named secondary character who's a wheelchair user (the protag's adopted daughter), and who is not held up as an object of pity... although the depiction is not without its weaknesses, I still welcome it.

3. On Saturday night, I grabbed the scissors and gave myself a super-short (above the ears), one-handed haircut. My hair is about (probably) 65% shorter than it was on Friday... It ... looks not terrible.

Ugh.

I can't actually remember the last time in my recent life that I've had an actual, random, viral something in my head and throat.

I've had migraines and allergy attacks, but nothing catching for years.

The last time I got really sick with an infectious thing was in 2002, when Dad and I went to see the movie Gosford Park in the theater, and I used the public restroom. And I came down with the flu that night (believe it when the experts tell you that the difference between a cold and the flu is that the flu hits hard and fast, and gives you a fever, and makes you hurt in your bones.)

This is not that.

( cut for 'Ewww, gross!' )

I hope I'm in condition to shop tomorrow, because I need to refill my pantry.

(Manually cross-posted to my LJ mirror)

On Sunday, November 27th, I was having lunch with my long time friend and writing mentor, Irene O'Garden, who founded The Art Garden, and she asked me what writing, other than The Art Garden, that I've been doing. So I started talking about Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream.

And another guest there, Scott Laughead, got really excited by the idea of what I was doing, and said that I should find a partner, and apply for a grant to support my work on this, because it's important (And that getting a partner would make it easier to get a grant, because it would show potential donors that this is more than just a pet peeve or private pipe dream or fantasy).

I agree that it's important; I truly believe that participating in storytelling (in whatever medium, and whether as teller or audience) is central to our humanity, and that the stories we tell have a profound impact on the realities we bring about. And yes, noticing that the Experience of Disability can be found in folklore (and literature) is one way to acknowledge that Disability is part of human experience. Period. And it's about time we got over the idea that the Disabled are always rare exceptions, and this whole, new "politically correct" thing that we have to change everything for, out of the blue, because some do-gooder got a bee in her bonnet...

And seriously? even the idea that someone might give me money to do something I've loved ever since I can remember loving stuff is a downright heady and intoxicating idea.

But --

Bwah?

Turning Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream into something that would even make sense to use grant money would mean turning it into some form that engages the Capital P "Public," in some way (and that makes the idea very Scary [Capital S]). And right now, it's very much a private, editorial, thing: just my private opinions, based on my own experience (very real and valid, but also limited).

How do I change PNAD from a private noun into a public verb, so to speak?

I'm tickled by the idea, but I'm also stumped.

Any suggestions?

Copy-pasted from a reply to badbookworm:

I'm currently under the northeast quadrant of Hurricane Irene... the probably won't come over for another 6 hours or so, and then it will be about another 8 hours before it clears out. I consider the fact that I have Internet / electricity at all a bit of a miracle. So I'm using it before I lose it.

Additional: I woke to rain about 9 am. Don't know how long it had been raining. The rain totals for Chesapeake reported about an hour ago said we'd already had 7 1/2 inches of rain. So...