So what started as a little rest to recover from summer school and then get the Mysteriour Mr. NO moved to New York City — um, yeah, about that? Huh — became a 4 month hiatus.
Apparently, I can change the course of media overnight (be sure to leave your suggestions and tips in the appropriately places, I will take requests on a first come/highest tipper basis).
YouTube announced support for subtitles and captioning. See the announcement at TechCrunch.
Web video has changed a lot about advertising, PR and broadcast media. Yet it’s fairly easy enough to avoid, or at least ignore. I have enough distractions as it is, so if there isn’t a large world of captioned video on the web it didn’t really feel like any great loss.
Until the 2008 presidential campaign.
I had a email exchange — a conversation if you will — with Valeria Maltoni of ConversationAgent recently. She commented that I had “an interesting story.” (I hope I have not breached any form of trust by revealing that assessment.) This reminded me that I had started to write my personal narrative, but had only released a v0.1b and not gone back to edit it or add in parts that I had missed. Since I am job hunting in earnest now. It seems like a good idea to visit this topic again. After the jump, my personal and professional development as narrative. I think this kind of exercise is worthwhile as a way to create structure out of seemingly divergent paths and to hone my presentation in a competitive marketplace, a way to grasp my personal brand story. Your feelings?
Two posts to Lifehacker this week — DivXLand Media Subtitler Embeds Subtitles into Movie Files and Subdownloader Grabs Subtitles For All Your Movies — lead me into the world of subtitle sharing (what seems to be an outgrowth of anime fanboys and fangirls that share subtitles with each other). Apparently there some legal issues here in terms of who owns the dialogue (just so you are warned). Also to note, this seems to be a heavily non-OS X community. The DivXland Media Subtitler is Windows only. And the Subdownloader is still in beta for Apple and even that as a very, very opensource project is still uncompiled; more work than I wanted to get into. But, Deaf online video and movie watchers may want to go spelunking into this corner of the Web and see what they come back. Let us know in the comments what you find.
So fingerspelling is a bit frightening, a much bigger hurdle than signing words and phrases. I mean it feels like a bit like what watching foreign-language television used to when I could hear. A lot of fast attempts at communication and about zero comprehension. I’ve taken to practicing quite a bit in random places, especially proper nouns while standing around on the weekends at my Saturday job. But I feel like perhaps I need to it to the next level. Not quite hire a personal trainer, but at least get the Jane Fonda Workout version of fingerspelling DVDs. Any suggestions? I’ve seendifferent DVDs here and there. But before I buy, I’d like to know if anyone has good or bad experience with any. Dawn Sign Press has this one as do several others. I’m sure I saw another one somewhere. Thoughts?
A counselor for a department of vocational rehabilitation gets the Q&A treatment at i711.com. Since I’m in the process of trying to find work in NY, this came at a good time. I’ve been reluctant to seek out these types of departments. I always imagined that their ideal client was someone that was really bad off: accident victims, muscle degenerative diseases — these types of things. I feel able-bodied, I just can’t hear very well anymore. Feels more like something that can be accommodated and adjusted on my part and off I go. I’m a midwesterner in temperament, so questioning how much the world owes us is a regional hobby. The counselor gives good answers. I definitely need to reassess my opinion of VR and how that can fit into my job search.
Hey there! Sorry to keep you hanging. That last week of Gally summer-session ASLI was intense. Homework, midterms, finals, final assignments — throw all of that in with some big decisions at home… and I feel like I went to bed and then woke up and its the middle of August.
So the first question is easy, how did it end? It ended well. I haven’t gotten my final grades yet, but everything was pointing toward at least an A-.
I’m really glad I took the class. I learned a lot more than I thought capable. My teacher, Gabriel, and classmates were awesome. We really bonded by the end. I’m set to take ASLII this fall. And I have a million and one questions and comments for you all here as well. Mostly about my feelings of inadequacy (will I stop speaking in halting ASL? will I ever get proficient and fingerspelling? etc.) and thoughts on studying and practice. You can bill me for all of this later.
But first, an announcement of sorts after the jump. Followed by me in my ASL practicing glory.
Tomorrow is midterms. Eek! right? These compressed summer schedules everything is faster. I just had a spring break, it lasted 20 minutes. Anyway, since I really should be studying. A quick few thoughts.
Maybe it was my last post, or maybe it was several hours watching myself sign on a web cam or watching the documentary Through Deaf Eyes, but somehow yesterday the stage fright (mostly) went away. It was like everything just clicked. Or that I wasn’t embarrassed by my own mistakes (or myself). That all made for a pretty good Wednesday. And once I am able to relax, I learn a lot easier.
Monday was a whirl so I didn’t have time to put down my thoughts. Now — two five hour classes and a couple study sessions later – here are my thoughts on learning ASL so far anyway.
The Gally summer school is intentionally intensive. Both less and more so than I had hoped. Partially from my own doing. I will only be taking one two week session. It would not have been possible for me to miss 4 weeks of work, unfortunately. Also, to save costs, I’m not living on campus — I already live in DC and fairly close to Gally as it is – nor did I take an afternoon one credit course. So anyway, I’m not in the classroom as much as I probably should be. I’m poor and with an inflexible job is what that all means.
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- Captioning Sucks!
Now let’s fix it!
![[Advertisement] Captioning Sucks! Now let’s fix it!](http://nonedesign.net/upload/captioning_sucks.jpg)
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