tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9178166184247930282024-03-18T02:47:28.448-07:00StenoKnight CART BlogMirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-42116635236154655812016-06-12T22:58:00.003-07:002017-11-29T19:17:27.468-08:00Back to Coworking!In 2011, <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2011/03/how-coworking-saved-my-home-life.html">I wrote a post</a> about leaving the Brooklyn coworking space I'd been renting, where I'd met the co-founder of Plover, where I'd done my first stint of remote captioning, and where I'd spent many happy months in the company of other freelancers and entrepreneurs. That coworking space no longer exists, sadly, though I learned recently while listening to the podcast Startup that the same building housed the first offices of Gimlet Media, which was a disorienting coincidence. These past five years, I've had a home office in a huge two-bedroom apartment (with seven closets and an eat-in kitchen!), and it's been wonderful. I've done a fair bit of remote captioning in that office, though the majority of my work has been onsite since we moved here. That's all about to change, though. This Saturday, we'll be moving to a much smaller 2-bedroom apartment about 20 blocks downtown, with only two closets and a nice but narrow kitchen. We're downsizing almost everything -- ditching our kitchen table, buying a smaller couch, getting rid of hundreds of books plus several bookshelves, and leaving behind our three beautiful desks, which won't fit in the new space. The new space, you see, won't have a home office, because the second bedroom will be used as... A bedroom.
Yup. We're having a kid. He's due in August. I'm currently trying to switch most if not all of my captioning work from onsite to remote so I won't have to spend 8 or more hours a day out of the apartment like I have been for the past many years. I'm also planning to work fewer hours in general, at least until we get our feet under ourselves as parents. That'll probably mean spending down some savings, but I can't think of anything I'd rather spend it on. The trouble with captioning, though, is that it doesn't coexist well with screaming babies, and there's hardly space in the new apartment to set up my equipment anyway. So starting July 1, I'll be hotdesking at Harlem Collective, a fantastic new coworking space that opened just a few months ago on 152nd Street. It's got 24-hour access, which is perfect for the early-morning overseas conferences I sometimes find myself captioning, and with luck, it'll only take me about 15 minutes to get there from my new apartment, which means I won't have to be away from the kid for long. I'm a little sad about losing my home office space, but I'm so excited to start this new adventure.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com796tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-91954252045138011802016-04-12T13:18:00.000-07:002016-04-12T13:18:52.120-07:00Support The Future of Steno!<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/159876394" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
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This poor blog has been sadly neglected lately, but someone pointed out that I should probably alert its readers to the ongoing <a href="http://stenoarcade.com">crowdfunding campaign</a> we're currently running over at <a href="http://opensteno.org">The Open Steno Project</a>. I mostly post about Open Steno Project stuff over at <a href="http://plover.stenoknight.com">The Plover Blog</a>, which is targeted towards steno amateurs and hobbyists rather than professionals. This blog, by contrast, mostly assumes an audience of professional captioners like me. It's a small group of people (only 465 Certified Realtime Captioners in the United States, <a href="http://www.ncrasourcebook.com/listing/results.php?keyword=&service_type=&category_id=456&where=United+States&location_1=&location_3=&location_4=&dist=&zip=">according to the NCRA Online Sourcebook</a>!), but one that's obviously extremely close to my heart.
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So here's my appeal, addressed to any of my colleagues and future colleges who might read this blog.
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The number of people who can use a steno machine has been trending gradually but inexorably downwards for a very long time. Machine steno used to be taught in high schools, secretarial schools, anywhere it might be useful for someone to learn a faster method of transcription than longhand, pen shorthand, or typewriting. Manual steno machines were inexpensive and plentiful. They could be bought on a whim. Some people who learned machine steno studied it diligently enough to become professional court reporters. Others, who couldn't quite match courtroom speeds, used them to take dictation. Some probably just learned the skill for fun, or in case it might become useful at some point in the future.
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Then came the 1980s, when for the first time you didn't need to transcribe your steno notes into English for them to be useful. Computers were able to do that for you. That's when steno went on lockdown, and that's when the decline began.
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Instead of $30 for a machine and a short self-study course or a few semesters at a trade school, you suddenly needed to pay thousands of dollars for hardware and software. Trade schools became eligible for Federal student loan money and started charging up to $20,000 a year for court reporting programs, despite the fact that, as always, there was an 85% dropout rate from court reporting programs. Steno was no longer something people could pick up and teach themselves on a whim. You had to pay dearly just to give it a try, and if you weren't in the 15% that got to professional court reporting speeds, the price of failure was enormous.
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Most professional stenographers -- court reporters and captioners -- know all of this already.
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But what we don't always admit to ourselves is that if we don't drastically change something, our profession won't continue to exist in the future. Our technology is by far the fastest and most accurate means of turning human speech into realtime text, but if fewer and fewer people continue to learn how to use it, our deaf and hard of hearing clients will have to settle for whatever accommodations are available to them.
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Some people have proposed initiatives to get more high school students into steno schools, but that seems ill-advised to me. Is it ethical to encourage kids to spend huge amounts of money on software, hardware, and schooling, even if most of them might not have the baseline fine motor skills or literacy skills or dedication or determination or whatever ineffable thing ensures that they become one of the successful 15%? However you cut it, those are not good odds.
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Wouldn't it be better to give a huge number of people the opportunity to develop baseline steno skills first, without any real risk or financial barriers, and then let the best and brightest of that number continue on to professional careers, while the rest float along happily at a hobbyist or amateur level, writing at 140 to 160 words per minute and ecstatic to have doubled their qwerty speed? A huge number of people spend their days entering text at a computer. Why not give them the opportunity to do that more quickly and efficiently? Why should this machine only be considered useful at speeds above 200 WPM?
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This is the reason for the <a href="http://stenoarcade">Steno Arcade</a> campaign.
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Over the last five years, about 500 people have attempted to teach themselves steno using $40 to $200 hardware and our free online textbook. Many of them have succeeded and are delighted with their new skill. A precious few of those have gone on to professional certification as realtime captioners or court reporters. 500 people isn't bad, but we could reach so many more.
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In the time since we launched the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/449000/">playable demo of Steno Hero on Steam</a>, we've had over 5,000 downloads. 5,000 people have gotten a taste of our game, and <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/449000/#app_reviews_hash">most of them love it</a>!
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Not everyone wants to teach themselves a new skill out of a textbook.
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Many, many people learn new skills every day by playing video games. Often that skill is just "be better at this specific video game", but people have learned <a href="http://rocksmith.ubi.com/rocksmith/en-us/home/">how to play guitar</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/uDraw-GameTablet-Studio-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B003ZTTCBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344291001&sr=8-1&keywords=udraw%2Bstudio">how to draw</a>, <a href="http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/home/">how to fly an airplane</a>, and, of course, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-LxHUgI2W0&nohtml5=False">how to touch-type</a>.
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Any skill that requires repetitive practice of granular movements that start easy and gradually increase in difficulty can be taught and reinforced with a video game. Steno meets these criteria beautifully.
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That's why we're building a free video game suite to teach steno. Our software is already free. Our hardware is already affordable. Two of the three barriers that were built against free and widespread access to steno in the early computer age have already toppled. The only piece left is education.
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If you contribute to the <a href="http://stenoarcade.com">Steno Arcade</a> campaign, you will help bring steno into the living room of a middle schooler, high schooler, college student, or career-pivoting young adult. They'll pick it up on a whim, just as people did with those big, heavy manual machines nearly a century ago, and they'll give it a try. They'll start out slow and awkward, gradually pick up speed, eventually find that they're writing faster on their steno machine than they ever managed on their qwerty keyboard, and a few of them will decide that they want to pursue the breathless rush of turning words to text at 200+ WPM as a career.
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Short of this, I don't see the trajectory of our profession changing in any meaningful way. Fewer people will enter steno schools. Most will drop out. Those that succeed will see their colleagues retiring around them without anyone younger coming in to take their place.
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I love steno with all my heart. I don't want to see that happen. If you care about this technology and this profession, please consider <a href="http://stenoarcade">contributing to the Steno Arcade campaign</a>, or at least spreading it around to friends, colleagues, and potential future colleagues. If we can make this happen, we can turn that trajectory around and make sure that our jobs and the clients who rely on them are supported and secure, well into the future.
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<a href="http://stenoarcade.com">Be a Steno Hero! Help us build Steno Arcade!</a>
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<a href="http://stenoarcade.com"><img src="https://www.crowdsupply.com/img/1fd1/t-shirts_jpg_project-body.jpg" width=500></a>Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com71tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-56537310389866527622015-10-08T06:56:00.002-07:002015-10-08T09:53:10.963-07:00A11ycampNYC PresentationsI captioned half of <a href="http://a11ynyc.com/camp/schedule.html">a11ycampNYC</a> a few weekends ago, switching off with the illustrious <a href="http://stanographer.com/">Stan Sakai</a>. I also gave two presentations, one five-minute lunchtime demo that I captioned myself, and one full-length presentation that Stan captioned. Eventually I want to upload this with fully edited, properly timed captions using Amara, but I thought I'd post the provisional versions for now, just so they're out there. If you'd like to see the other presentations that day, all with recorded (unedited) live captions, check out <a href="http://livestream.com/internetsociety/a11nyc/videos/">The Internet Society's recording archive</a>.<br>
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Here's my five-minute steno demo:
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<iframe src="http://livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/4375102/videos/100400953/player?autoPlay=false&height=360&mute=false&width=640" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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And here's my talk, The Three Prongs of Steno Accessibility:
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<iframe src="http://livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/4375102/videos/100398662/player?autoPlay=false&height=360&mute=false&width=640" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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Stenographic technology has been used to provide realtime captioning for over 25 years, but two other important potential applications of steno for accessibility are less well known: 1) As a way to rectify the catastrophic levels of underemployment in the blind/low vision community (especially those who use screen readers and are already comfortable processing speech at over 300 WPM) by making it possible for them to become professional realtime captioners, and 2) By integrating it with text-to-speech technology to allow for a truly conversational speech synthesis system for AAC users. In this session, I'll discuss these three potential applications and the way they intersect.<br><br>
Many thanks to Stan for captioning me and to Thomas, Shawn, and Cameron, the organizers of a11ycampnyc and of the ongoing a11ynyc Meetup group! It was a fantastic experience.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-83322044085895042322015-08-27T11:52:00.001-07:002015-08-27T13:51:15.978-07:00Help Crowdfund Captioning And Interpreting for Polyglot NYC!<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sz_HlDEdCb4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><br>
<a href="http://polyglotconference.com/">Polyglot Conference NYC 2015</a> is <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/pcnyc2015"> looking for funding</a> so that they can pay for captioning of two simultaneous tracks plus full interpreting teams for deaf attendees. Ellen Jovin, the organizer of the conference, writes:
<blockquote>Polyglot Conference NYC 2015 will bring hundreds of polyglots and language enthusiasts from around the world to New York this October for two days of wide-ranging language talks. Speakers include the inventor of the language Dothraki for the HBO hit Game of Thrones, multiple polyglots who speak 6+ languages, New York’s own celebrity teen polyglot Tim Doner, linguist-writer John McWhorter, representatives of major language-learning publishers, and many others. We will have exhibitors, book-signings, goodie bags for participants, and the sharing of absolute mountains of inspiring and useful information.<br><br>
As part of our event, we are crowdfunding to pay for interpreter and live captioning services. The plan is to record the conference talks, then convert the live captioning later so that it can be used on videos available online to the deaf and hard of hearing, as well as polyglots and language enthusiasts around the world who do not speak English natively and might appreciate having a written transcript to supplement the audio/video. People who will benefit include many enthusiasts who wish to attend the New York conference but can’t afford it, or who have disabilities making travel impossible or difficult, or who are unable to obtain visas. If you know anyone who would be willing to contribute, we would be most grateful, as we want to spread information globally about the joys and value of language-learning to as many people as we can. Richard Simcott, who appears in the video, is a co-organizer and speaks 16+ languages. He is unbelievably gifted and a real leader in the polyglot community.
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Please spread the word as far and wide as you can, and know that if you chip in a few dollars, you'll be able to see all the captioned conference videos online afterwards! I'd really love to be able to be one of the captioners at this conference. It looks absolutely amazing.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com68tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-60522215680853766852015-08-13T22:13:00.001-07:002015-08-17T08:04:18.542-07:002015 NCRA Convention Wrap-UpIt's already been a little while, but I just wanted to blog about the NCRA convention while it was still somewhat fresh in my memory!<br><br>
It all started on Thursday. I got there early, set up the <a href="http://openstenoproject.org">Open Steno Project</a> table, and then headed over to the <a href="http://thejcr.com/2015/08/03/2015-realtime-contest-results/">Realtime Contest</a>. I'd never competed before, and I knew that test nerves were definitely going to be a problem, but I wanted to give it a shot. Since I've never taken testimony in my life, I didn't care much about the Q&A (and, predictably, I bombed it), but I managed to struggle through a halfway decent Lit that sounded smooth and almost ponderous to my ears, but was thwarted by my thumping heart and jittery fingers. Later I found that I came in at 11th place, which was good enough that I wasn't totally disappointed in myself, but not quite good enough to be satisfied. Next time, whenever that may be, I'm gonna aim for top five.
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After the test, I met up with some of my long-time steno Twitter buddies for a food crawl. From right to left: <a href="https://nerdformacros.wordpress.com/">nerd_for_words</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/mscourtreporter">@mscourtreporter</a>, her husband <a href="https://twitter.com/chefie_B">@chefie_b</a>, his cousin (dunno if she has a Twitter), <a href="https://twitter.com/stenoknight">me</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/stenyes">StenYes</a>, plus two photobombers in the back. Not pictured: The charming but elusive depo reporter <a href="https://twitter.com/chr1st0p43r?cn=cmVwbHk%3D&refsrc=email">@chr1st0p43r</a>.<br> <br> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qj75kr1RyOiULr_c7vpD6KKwkOCZ-iIDeIk0gGs-0JxOQDbzpsJ_LKObev-SZ6bppoPB3MB_FtwAwNiYhM1vFvMX10KPxMEJsueMbZNexlx52H3PZzqveF88wCHIYIu7WN8XlpWsQxk/s1350/CL7O1e9UMAA9_mi.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qj75kr1RyOiULr_c7vpD6KKwkOCZ-iIDeIk0gGs-0JxOQDbzpsJ_LKObev-SZ6bppoPB3MB_FtwAwNiYhM1vFvMX10KPxMEJsueMbZNexlx52H3PZzqveF88wCHIYIu7WN8XlpWsQxk/s1350/CL7O1e9UMAA9_mi.jpg" width="550"></a>
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We had everything from banh mi to roasted okra to bubble tea to vegan sushi to waffles to black sesame milkshakes to deep-fried shrimpy radish cubes, and it was all AMAZING.
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Grinning and replete, I rolled home and into bed to prepare for the next day.
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Friday morning, I got to speak a bit about the Open Steno Project at the opening session (here's me being an excitable dork about steno, with Dom Tursi looking less than impressed):
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwgTPEWxx5FhGukzA1t7Rm0YkkPkNWJxZvAsb0bUSYrhjvpbdnbgDA8rwzH80uHPKbZ7oa15xKthV9Z89JRu7qeinKEf7QzAgXQmNVs6zY6u8H0rCxV8LtyirLmEmm2NIAMcB82LB3Bs/s1350/Premier+wMirabai.jpg" ><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwgTPEWxx5FhGukzA1t7Rm0YkkPkNWJxZvAsb0bUSYrhjvpbdnbgDA8rwzH80uHPKbZ7oa15xKthV9Z89JRu7qeinKEf7QzAgXQmNVs6zY6u8H0rCxV8LtyirLmEmm2NIAMcB82LB3Bs/s1350/Premier+wMirabai.jpg" width=550></a> <br>
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And then spent the rest of the day manning the Open Steno Project table with <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/about">Josh Lifton</a>, Plover's first programmer and inventor of the <a href="http://stenosaurus.com/">Stenosaurus</a>, which should hopefully be coming out in the next few months! Stan helped out too, which was awesome, since he's Plover's first and most illustrious success story. He started on Plover way back in 2010, then wound up <a href="http://stanographer.com/by-popular-demand-how-i-got-into-stenography/">teaching himself steno</a> and becoming a Certified CART Provider without ever setting foot in a steno school.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6peY5zzfwq9xlyWs-poaxa8t_G8ovlRj-Efovw4I8uBXz6wR0a_nZfdXlswmx-0BNYI4UYXxHLHDDD3FVj9iklLC3zKxzJ73mMt3CPqaGD4itZzjhyj1kznMG8mpMSr6prhn-wuatWgs/s1350/0730150959.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6peY5zzfwq9xlyWs-poaxa8t_G8ovlRj-Efovw4I8uBXz6wR0a_nZfdXlswmx-0BNYI4UYXxHLHDDD3FVj9iklLC3zKxzJ73mMt3CPqaGD4itZzjhyj1kznMG8mpMSr6prhn-wuatWgs/s1350/0730150959.jpg" width="550"></a> <br> <br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmZh9Y5oYJlN9ELtT2Ppj2gNCfw47NGEMjiAQmlAQ6WA5cCLBy6Iy9LbuDlFMCaeQlQ4j_ilwpPv85u75sywQ6NPuwFvH8_8Y9JgfIhMOC-vifHzCHemhXYtPh6JdCZF4U-dVqhMBV58/s1350/0730151408a.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmZh9Y5oYJlN9ELtT2Ppj2gNCfw47NGEMjiAQmlAQ6WA5cCLBy6Iy9LbuDlFMCaeQlQ4j_ilwpPv85u75sywQ6NPuwFvH8_8Y9JgfIhMOC-vifHzCHemhXYtPh6JdCZF4U-dVqhMBV58/s1350/0730151408a.jpg" width="550"></a> <br> <br>
We got a lot of great questions about Open Steno, and several people signed up for the Stenosaurus mailing list or said that they were gonna buy a Stenoboard kit for a younger relative who might be interested in steno, which made me really happy.
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Then the
<a href="http://whitecoatcaptioning.com">White Coat Captioning</a> team (Stan and me plus our fearless leader Norma Miller) assembled for one of our rare but always delightful in-person meetups. We had delicious Indian food for lunch, and got to indulge in our favorite pastime: Talking shop.<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwQSj8W96_af2JcYSr-3fqYZgO9p0C_F3-_MacCduJPgaA6gbAtwemu9cvCUvXKn8DmG1gwuab_ozX5lLLqG8Z4DuXhdH3qAj7hZQSZM9WT-C7SvSYx42MPPUVFIBU-eNafOQbdNZt_tw/s1350/11800205_10104365643282768_4663254077622183108_n.jpg"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwQSj8W96_af2JcYSr-3fqYZgO9p0C_F3-_MacCduJPgaA6gbAtwemu9cvCUvXKn8DmG1gwuab_ozX5lLLqG8Z4DuXhdH3qAj7hZQSZM9WT-C7SvSYx42MPPUVFIBU-eNafOQbdNZt_tw/s1350/11800205_10104365643282768_4663254077622183108_n.jpg" width="550" /></a>
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<br> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_W-brN-bzR9iSUF24YX5LvJ-7Wdtaxzl2Ti11nt299SqbWOCFnbgLZZMyqhYOKIVaBmK34Co3AV5iYmFEYM8-tk04H6ZaODXjPVgc7fL9FD58JNcXnZru5FzESLqAyH30Q9yrYb-EKWc/s1350/11811435_10104365643741848_3383789466982019476_n.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_W-brN-bzR9iSUF24YX5LvJ-7Wdtaxzl2Ti11nt299SqbWOCFnbgLZZMyqhYOKIVaBmK34Co3AV5iYmFEYM8-tk04H6ZaODXjPVgc7fL9FD58JNcXnZru5FzESLqAyH30Q9yrYb-EKWc/s1350/11811435_10104365643741848_3383789466982019476_n.jpg" width="550"></a>
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That night we went to the CART/Captioning Reception, and then straight on to the screening of <a href="http://www.courtreportingmovie.com/">For the Record</a>, which Stan starred in alongside other steno luminaries. At the end they all got up on stage and answered questions, and it was a heck of a good time.
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I hadn't managed to go to any sessions on Friday because I'd been so occupied with the Open Steno Project table, but I was kicking myself after Norma told me how amazing she'd found the seminar on Creative and Critical Captioning. I mean, just look at this description:
<blockquote>Composing Sound – A Workshop on Creative and Critical Captioning – Ever wonder what sparks of imagination come from the next generation of caption users and captioner creators? In this workshop, we will explore a number of creative and critical exercises for discussion about — and then the creation of — captioning as another way of thinking about writing. Immersed in digital media, social media, and multimodal texts at all times, college-age students are a part of the next generation of caption-readers and caption-makers (aka, CART-writers). Led by a university professor of college writing courses who is deaf (a CART-user herself), in this workshop we will roll up our CART sleeves and think about the creative and critical potential of captioning for the present and the future.</blockquote>
I was crushed to have missed it, but fortunately Brenda Brueggemann, the deaf professor who led it, did another session on Saturday which I was able to attend: Making an Elevator Speech for Broadcast Captioners/CART Captioners. It was a heck of a lively session, with lots of spirited back and forth, but eventually this is what my group managed to come up with:
<blockquote>Public event captioning benefits everyone, including people
with hearing loss, non-native English speakers, people who want
to take notes, and people who find that multimodal access helps
them to comprehend dense and difficult material.</blockquote>
<a href="https://twitter.com/bjbrueggemann?cn=ZmF2b3JpdGVfbWVudGlvbmVkX3VzZXI%3D&refsrc=email">Professor Brueggemann</a> conducted the session with expert aplomb, and I'd be thrilled if she would consent to come back sometime. In fact, several captioners and I have decided that we're going to petition the NCRA to make an official policy that each convention going forward will have at least one deaf or hard of hearing speaker. They're the people who can best direct us on how we should do our jobs, and their perspectives are absolutely invaluable.
<br><br>
I also got to help out with the Tech Connection session, talking up the <a href="http://www.text-on-top.com/">TextOnTop</a> system, which now offers automated multilanguage translation and (even more exciting in my book) a micro-USB dongle that works in small tablets such as the HP Stream 7.
<br><br>
Finally it was time for my own session, Advanced Topics in CART. I was pretty worn out by then, but that was okay, because it was much more of a collaborative discussion than a presentation per se. We voted on which subjects were most interesting to the assembled crowd, and came up with the following four areas, which more than filled up the time:
<br><br>
* Proactive conference captioning: How to get conferences to offer captioning without a specific request from a deaf or hard of hearing attendee. We talked over various options, such as putting together compilations of positive feedback for captioning from previous conferences and transmitting them via Storify, asking organizers to conduct audience surveys and write blog posts after each conference, retweeting pro-captioning comments from the conference hashtag while the conference is going on, allowing attendees to get a crash course in steno by playing on our steno machines during breaks, and someone even brought up the possibility of contacting venues such as hotels and convention centers rather than conference organizers themselves, with the thought that if they had a standing resource for captioning, they might be able to reach an even broader sector of conferences. Very promising stuff.
<br><br>
* One-stroke googling: How to configure various types of steno software to make a single touch of a foot pedal or a particular steno stroke search for a highlighted word or name via Google on a secondary monitor. It doesn't seem like any software has this technique completely hammered down yet (Plover can sort of do it, though it's a little cumbersome), but there's high demand for it among remote captioners. Hopefully it'll be readily available across platforms in the near future.
<br><br>
* Dealing with dodgy WiFi: Ways to deal with a dicey WiFi connection, from trying to boost it using systems such as <a href="http://speedify.com/">Speedify</a>, trying to work with it by using bandwith-limiting caption systems that used text streaming rather than high-bandwidth screen sharing apps, or circumventing the need for WiFi altogether, when possible, by using cell phone audio, TextOnTop, wireless LANs, or Bluetooth.
<br><br>
* Remote caption audio troubleshooting. I asked the crowd what one element turned their daily audio from a screechy, staticky nightmare into an actual decent job. They had all sorts of answers, including buying a mixer board, pushing for the university to update the video streaming software they use for online courses, using teleconference meeting rooms with "octopus mics", and using the integrated two-mic system offered by <a href="http://www.oneinterpreting.com/">OneInterpreting</a>. Unfortunately I forgot to mention my own lifesaving solution for jobs involving a sound board: Making sure the computer running Skype is plugged into a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-UCA222-BEHRINGER-U-CONTROL/dp/B0023BYDHK">USB audio coupler</a>.
<br><br>
That discussion led into an even more interesting one, about the dangers of hearing loss for both onsite and remote providers. We talked about which jobs we decided to turn down for the sake of our hearing health, a few providers talked about how getting hearing aids helped them to continue the work they loved without any drop in quality, and many of us admitted that the fear that prevented us from getting baseline hearing tests was both counterproductive and potentially career-ending. It was so incredible to be in a room with dozens of my colleagues, all of us with years of experience and vast amounts of passion and knowledge for captioning, sharing tips and commiserating and getting excited about making our jobs even better. It was a magical experience, and I can't express how grateful I am to have been able to be a part of it.
<br><br>
After that, I had to go pack up the Open Steno Table, and by then I was too exhausted to even think about going to the dance that evening. I came home and went to bed with the best of intentions, but didn't manage to wake up in time to go to either of the Sunday morning sessions. It was a marvelous handful of days -- intense, challenging, and fun as all get out. Introvert that I am, I was completely thrilled to be able to shmooze with some of the best stenographers in the country, and to hear all their mindblowing stories. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get out to next year's convention, but I'm so, so glad I got the chance to experience this one in my own home city.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-28290912675396600192015-07-01T15:43:00.002-07:002015-07-01T15:43:59.471-07:00Advanced Topics in CART at the 2015 NCRA ConventionWay back in 2006, I was just starting my second year of steno school when the NCRA convention came to New York City. I got myself a student membership and had a fantastic time. Over that weekend I schmoozed at the Friday night CART/Captioning reception, attended a number of interesting seminars (including the one where I learned the OEU diphthong trick as an all-purpose wildcard for briefs, which has proven absolutely invaluable over the years), had lunch with the legendary Ed Varallo, and got a small but tantalizing taste of what my future professional life might look like. I've often joked that being a realtime captioner among court reporters is like being a tailor among barbers; they both use scissors and we both use steno machines, but we all do substantially different jobs. While many seminars at NCRA conventions focus on things like transcript preparation, negotiating with law firms, advocating for official reporters in the courtroom, and other legal-heavy subjects, there tends to be a dearth of captioner-specific material. I went to the national convention in Nashville in 2013 and to TechCon in Atlanta last year, but each time most of the seminars related to CART and captioning were focused on basic 101-level "how do I stream text to clients", or "how can I switch from depo reporting to captioning" sorts of subjects.<br>
<br>
Early this spring, I put in two proposals to speak at the 2015 NCRA convention, which will be coming back around to my own home town. The first was an introduction to <a href="http://openstenoproject.org/">The Open Steno Project</a>, talking about our ethos, our current offerings, and our plans for the future. The NCRA didn't go for that one, so I decided to register the OSP as an exhibitor in the expo hall. <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/about">Josh Lifton</a>, my original cofounder and inventor of the <a href="http://stenosaurus.com/">Stenosaurus</a>, will be there helping to man the table, and we're hoping we might get a sneak preview of a working Stenosaurus to show off to interested visitors. Today I ordered Open Steno Project badge ribbons and <a href="http://stenoknight.com/plover/ospbrochure.jpg">brochures</a>, and I'm really excited to start getting the word out.<br>
<br>
My other proposed session was accepted! It's called Advanced Topics in CART (Saturday from 4:00 to 5:30 on the Realtime Track), and I see it primarily as a roundtable discussion on everything that reaches beyond the elementary topics discussed at length in previous years. Everyone is welcome to sit in -- students, aspiring captioners, new professionals, and anyone else who's interested -- but I'd mostly like to hear from experienced captioners and CART providers who want to exchange ideas, ask questions, and solve problems collaboratively among their colleagues.<br>
<br>
Over the next few weeks, I'm hoping compile a list of topics to kick off the session. For example:<br>
<br>
* How to behave when hired to caption a conference proactively and not for the sake of any particular deaf or hard of hearing attendee. Is it appropriate to make jokes in the captioning stream when presenters try to interact with you? Should you advocate for the benefits of proactive captioning while on the clock?<br>
<br>
* How to balance a mixed roster of onsite and remote work, or of work obtained through agencies versus directly contracted with clients.<br>
<br>
* Steno students and captioning interns: Are they welcome in classrooms and workplaces of deaf/HoH clients?<br>
<br>
* How to describe the differences between CART and non-verbatim methods such as Typewell and C-Print in a respectful and accurate way to potential clients.<br>
<br>
* Changing trends in the field and what we can look forward to in the future.<br>
<br>
So those are some items off the top of my head. Can you think of any more? I'd like to get a fair number of them, so I can have a few to choose from on the day of the roundtable. Please share this post with any CART Providers and captioners you might know; I'd love to hear from all of them.<br><br>
Oh, and if you attend the CART/Captioning reception on Friday night, please come up and say hi! I'm really, really excited to have such a huge concentration of awesome steno people in my city this month. It's gonna be a blast.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-52075360641523004892015-06-11T08:24:00.001-07:002015-06-11T08:24:05.637-07:00Hearing Loss Scam SpamYesterday, a multimonth experiment came to an end. I just couldn't take it anymore. See, ages ago I realized that certain vital work emails were being sent to my spam folder in gmail, no matter how many times I marked them "not spam" or "priority". Non-fishy, obviously legitimate things like the <a href="http://www.pepnet.org/">PEPNET</a> or <a href="http://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=DSSHE-L&H=LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU">DSSHE</a> mailing lists. More than once, it was an invoice or a job offer. I know that most of the time when someone gets an email from "The United Nations", it's part of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419_scams">419 scam</a>, but sometimes the actual United Nations requires actual captioning services, y'know?!<br><br>
After I'd discovered far too many important emails trapped in spam, I had to make a decision: Either I had to manually go through my spam folder every day -- which would be almost impossible -- or I had to establish a series of whitelist filters, where everything containing a specified word would go directly to my inbox, even if Gmail thought it was spam. The words I selected were:
<br><br>
steno <br>
cart<br>
invoice <br>
transcription<br>
transcribe <br>
caption <br>
captioning <br>
stenography <br>
disability <br>
disabled <br>
deaf<br>
<br><br>
and...<br><br>
hearing<br><br>
The first 11 keywords have served me well. A lot of important stuff that would have gone into spam has been caught by those words and brought to my attention. That last one, though... That was the problem.
<br><br>
Regain Hearing Loss - Reverse Hearing Loss In Days in less than 3 weeks?<br>
Why Amish Have Such Great Hearing<br>
Proven 200yr Old Method To Reverse Your Hearing<br>
Jailed For Finding Hearing Loss Remedy<br>
<br><br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2hg3AZMgeI_BhjbxDlgbqoXRGvB_FcAUJoi6p0O6OXbkL2aoYEkJJpUzyrkoqSqEHHatACeqB53uEiHKcnoVLpIrdpbLLfjMlRxaGnjlCnPGYmkdzf-uxWiSwR1WB566U4e1ZTjn_x0/s1600/hearingwhut.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2hg3AZMgeI_BhjbxDlgbqoXRGvB_FcAUJoi6p0O6OXbkL2aoYEkJJpUzyrkoqSqEHHatACeqB53uEiHKcnoVLpIrdpbLLfjMlRxaGnjlCnPGYmkdzf-uxWiSwR1WB566U4e1ZTjn_x0/s320/hearingwhut.png" /></a><br><br>
And on and on and on, in infinite variations, hundreds of spam messages a day. Now, I've got a pretty efficient email sorting method. I strive to get to <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=inbox%20zeo">Inbox Zero</a> as often as possible. When I wake up, I plow through everything at once, sorting messages into @reply and @action. Everything else either gets archived or trashed. Only after I've gotten to Inbox Zero do I start tackling the @reply box. But even with a pretty disciplined sorting method, deleting hundreds of hearing-related spam messages every day was getting really, really tedious.
<br><br>
I kept the keyword whitelisted for a long time, though, partly because I was worried about missing an important work-related email... But also partly because I felt weirdly bad about the whole phenomenon. Like I should be paying witness to the ways in which people with hearing loss are preyed upon, the ways in which spammers try to exploit and manipulate them. I tried to think to myself, as I was deleting this drek every day, "What if I'd just lost my hearing, and this landed in my inbox? Would I be tempted to click on it? How are these spammers making their money? Who falls into these traps, and what kind of snake oil is eventually sold to them? Is it actively harmful, or just expensive and ineffective? Are these sorts of messages tested for how well they target desperate people? Which ones work best? And what's their obsession with the Amish?!"
<br><br>
For a long time, I tried to use my thrice-daily spam-blasting time as a way to build empathy for the people I know who have had to deal with both the annoyances and frustrations of late-onset hearing loss and the neverending aggravations of both well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning people who insist that there must be an easy cure just around the corner, if only they'd keep looking for it. There must be a pill you can take, a device you can buy, an exercise method you can do, that's better than any hearing aid, that can make you good as new again, that can take care of all your problems. I'd think of the constant struggles my clients have to go through to get captioning arranged and paid for, to remind coworkers not to cover their mouths when they speak to them, to cope with the fatigue of lipreading for days on end, while all the time these shady companies are trying to stick their knife in wherever they can, constantly probing for a moment of credulity or weakness, all in the hopes of making money.
<br><br>
Spammers? Are freaking evil.
<br><br>
Finally, I realized I couldn't handle it anymore. I wasn't learning anything new about the attempted exploitation of late deafened and hard of hearing people. I was just getting angry and fed up with weeding out hundreds of lying messages every day. I took the keyword off my whitelist and resigned myself to missing any work emails that included "hearing" but not "captioning", "steno", or "deaf".
<br><br>
Today I woke up to a strangely quiet inbox and a feeling of intense relief.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-40687090764989909222015-04-15T11:25:00.001-07:002015-04-15T11:25:24.756-07:00New Bag, New VideoIt's been a long time since I've posted a "what's in my bag" update. Back in 2012, I wrote a post as part of my <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/02/cart-problem-solving.html">CART Problem Solving</a> series called <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/03/cart-problem-solving-schlepping-gear.html">Schlepping the Gear</a>. At the time, I was using a Tamrac 5550 photo backpack. Since then, I've gone through a <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=823535&gclid=Cj0KEQjwmLipBRC59O_EqJ_E0asBEiQATYdNh3SDA_o1WmQj5TXcD4Mzl65Lnq2MYVEXTiUdkWerbN4aAns78P8HAQ&Q=&is=REG&A=details">Lowepro DSLR Video Fastpack</a> and a <a href="http://www.burton.com/default/performer-elite-duffel-bag-70l/S16-122271.html?dwvar_S16-122271_variationColor=12227100008">Burton Performer Elite Duffel Backpack</a>. The Lowepro was nicely compact, but a bit too small to carry everything I wanted, and the Burton was massive, but far too long and floppy to be at all practical as a daily backpack.
<br><br>
Just as my Lowepro's zippers were gasping their last, I was fortuitously contacted by Christopher of <a href="http://www.bag-collector.com/">Bagbot</a>. We originally talked about the possibility of me commissioning a custom-designed steno bag from him, but then he pointed me to the <a href="http://missionworkshop.com/products/bags/backpacks/roll_top/large_vandal.php">Mission Workshop Vandal</a> and said that it seemed to fulfill most if not all of my stated requirements. I bought one and have been using it for a little under a week, taking notes the whole time. I might send it to him for additional customization once I've collected enough real-world usage data, but even out of the box it's a far better solution than anything I've used before. Here's a captioned video of me showing off everything I've been lugging in it for the past several days. <br><br>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hruVRMCH7lY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br><br>
I had to wrap up the video in a bit of a hurry because the university's AV guy suddenly walked into the room I was using, so I forgot to mention the two front pockets:<br><br>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjti5RUL5sOPDS74MjlzPIdkAhk8GjV6-HW9Li_zlofBrUo9ZTYWUhYLVf2Rs-3sVr5hF6yZekU8J4ecKjiff4_cUuOV-4XbdCzR_9Milekxnn2f43yLfXKMT0NQo5k4btf533-r5ihcS4/w1339-h754-no/0415151214.jpg" width=500><br><br>
They contain a flat spool of gaffer's tape and my 4G hotspot.
<br><br>
Anyway, if you have any interest in acquiring a new bag, I highly advise checking out <a href="http://www.bag-collector.com/">Bagbot</a>. It's a fantastic resource, and Christopher is a ridiculously helpful and knowledgeable guy. It's a massive relief to have a functioning bag again, after several frustrating weeks. I'd recommend the Mission Workshop Vandal to anyone with a ton of gear to haul who wants a durable, flexible, relatively compact bag with a huge amount of potentially expandable space.<br><br>
If you don't have any steno gear to haul, check out this dude using it for his groceries. (Soundtrack is instrumental music only; captions not required.)<br><br>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/10704302" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-12893060880296503982015-04-13T17:24:00.001-07:002015-04-13T17:24:27.147-07:00Article on Captioning at SRCCON<a href="http://opennews.org/blog/srccon-transcription/">Erika Owens has written a fantastic article for Open News on captioning at SRCCON last summer</a> (which is rather less "gee-willikers" in tone than <a href="http://articles.philly.com/2014-08-13/news/52732917_1_tech-conference-dinosaur-dying-art">the one posted on Philly.com</a> in August), and it stands alongside Lindsey Kuper's article <a href="http://composition.al/blog/2014/05/31/your-next-conference-should-have-real-time-captioning/">Your Next Tech Conference Should Have Realtime Captioning</a> as a beautiful explanation by a non-captioner of why captions are so great for a huge swath of conference attendees -- not just those who self-identify as deaf or hard of hearing.
<br><br>
I didn't get to provide captions for SRCCON last year, but the response to Norma and Stan's captions was so overwhelmingly positive that it looks like they'll be captioning it again this year, and I'm really hoping my schedule will allow me to come and help them out! I love seeing the momentum build for tech conference captioning. It seems like whenever it's offered at one conference, it kicks off a chain reaction in audiences and organizers alike. Perhaps in the future it'll just be <i>de rigueur</i>, and anyone who wants to attend or speak at a conference -- whatever their language fluency or hearing status -- will have it freely available to them without any effort on their part. Here's hoping!Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-62168580872149658892015-03-30T17:15:00.002-07:002015-03-30T17:16:10.337-07:00Gratitude<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpjUtX-6RQgX-SzHxvUagzqH1I2Xr5EV9cZ2tflbSNjQHkz1m9ewz9Cs24yO2r3nXFECbRL-r2A-MBC3vYsc3QtOz6l55kOf2Cv1wYc3-APvX8ECFbXvHmBtRx8yc3zr5IyRTyYl8jlgc/s1600/scnm.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpjUtX-6RQgX-SzHxvUagzqH1I2Xr5EV9cZ2tflbSNjQHkz1m9ewz9Cs24yO2r3nXFECbRL-r2A-MBC3vYsc3QtOz6l55kOf2Cv1wYc3-APvX8ECFbXvHmBtRx8yc3zr5IyRTyYl8jlgc/s320/scnm.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
Since I started this job eight years ago, I've been absurdly, ludicrously lucky in so many different ways. Not only have I managed to make a good living doing what I love, not only have I managed to commission and design the software I use for a fraction of what it would normally have cost to develop it, but I've found some seriously incredible people along the way.<br />
<br />
I first learned of Norma Miller when I was still in steno school. Her blog, <a href="http://www.nownorma.com/">Now Norma Knits</a>, was mostly focused around her knitting projects, but back when I spent most of my free time obsessively searching for steno blogs, a post of hers on <a href="http://www.nownorma.com/2010/12/nostalgia.html">the captioning work she used to do for the BBC</a> came up, and I devoured it. She continued blogging intermittently about her work, and about the student she was captioning through <a href="http://www.nownorma.com/2008/10/280-the-thing-a.html">medical school</a> at the time, and then I knew I had to contact her. See, when I was a little kid, I was obsessed with all things medical. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Coloring-Book-Wynn-Kapit/dp/0321832019">The Anatomy Coloring Book</a> was my favorite coloring book, and I would spend hours pretending I was in medical school, making up tests and quizzes and homework assignments for myself, and then even more hours filling them in. At the time I figured that if I wanted to study all that weird, gross, glorious stuff for real -- anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, and all the rest -- I'd have to become a doctor when I grew up. <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/02/how-cart-helped-me-sneak-into-stem.html">For various reasons</a>, I eventually realized that actually becoming a doctor was not going to be my calling, but I still had that intense hankering to be a fly on the wall in medical school, and there Norma was, literally living my dream. I sent her some fan mail and we struck up a correspondence that kept going after I graduated steno school and went into business for myself. When I landed a remote captioning contract with a medical school a few years later, I realized I wasn't going to be able to handle it all myself (since I also had a few onsite clients at the time), so I got in touch with Norma and asked if she was up for pitching in. That led to me eventually giving the entirety of the contract over to her a few years later (as my onsite clients demanded more and more of my attention), and a few years after that, we began to talk about setting up the first realtime captioning firm specifically dedicated to serving medical, dental, veterinary, and pharmacy students and professionals. That, of course, became <a href="http://www.whitecoatcaptioning.com/">White Coat Captioning</a>, and it's a fairly new enterprise, but already going strong.<br />
<br />
Rewind a few years. Remember how I mentioned that my onsite clients were demanding so much of my time? I was the sole captioner for two art schools in the City, with new students who needed captioning coming in all the time, and I wasn't sure what to do. I couldn't cover all of it myself, but I didn't want to give up the contracts to another firm unless I could trust them to hire only solid, reliable, fully qualified providers. Unfortunately there wasn't anyone I knew in NYC who fit the bill. There was Jennifer Bonfilio's excellent company <a href="https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/">Coast 2 Coast Captioning</a> out in New Jersey, but she had too many of her own clients to be able to do much work in the City. I didn't want to have to start my own company, since I've always been a sole proprietor by nature, but I knew I'd have to find someone to help me out in a hurry or risk putting my clients in a terrible bind. In a sudden and wonderful stroke of luck, I got a phone call out of the blue from a captioner named Cory, originally from the Bronx, who'd recently moved back to the area. He'd been doing television captioning for decades, but was looking to move into Brooklyn and switch to CART, and he wanted to know if I had any advice for him. We met for lunch one day and immediately hit it off. He was humble, honorable, and razor sharp. Most importantly, though, he could write beautiful clean realtime, and he could write it fast. He was also a lifelong reader, which I've found is the single best indicator of whether someone's cut out to do CART or not. I happily offloaded some of my excess work to him, and in a few years, he decided to start up his own NYC-based firm, Access Captions. Because he's been doing this work for most of his life, he knows the difference between a court reporter and a realtime captioner. He knows how to hire people who can interact respectfully and professionally with clients. Best of all, he's able to train people up from newly minted rookies into seasoned pros. Like any true captioner, he's a detail-obsessed perfectionist in the best possible way, and he's now running the firm I wish I could have sent my clients to, back before he first got in touch with me. He came along in the nick of time, and I honestly have no idea what my work life -- or the general state of academic CART in this city -- would look like if he hadn't.<br />
<br />
Okay, back to 2010 again. I'd been working on getting <a href="http://openstenoproject.org/">The Plover Project</a> off the ground, and (again, as a result of staggeringly good luck), I'd managed to find <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/about">someone with a PhD from the MIT Media Lab</a> to build the software for me. As Plover took shape, <a href="http://plover.stenoknight.com/">I started blogging about it</a>, and a hotshot polyglot linguistics major from Seattle named <a href="http://stanographer.com/">Stan Sakai</a>, who had taught himself pen shorthand on a whim, wound up stumbling onto my blog. He downloaded Plover, gave it a try, got instantly hooked, and immediately found himself a student version of Eclipse (since Plover wasn't quite ready for prime time at that point) and a Gemini steno machine. Over the course of the next year, he practiced night and day, and finally got up to 225 words per minute without having ever set foot in a steno school. He graduated with his Bachelors Degree, registered a DBA as <a href="http://superlativerealtime.com/">Superlative Realtime</a>, started doing CART at the University of Washington, got his CSR, RPR, and CCP certifications, and finally buckled under my insistent pestering to come out here and help Cory manage the huge amount of work that Access Captions had landed by that point. Always the adventurer, Stan packed his bags, found a roommate in Hell's Kitchen, and flew across the country. In the few short years that he's been here, he's worked at the UN, wowed tech firms and coding conferences with his white-hot realtime, and is currently whupping unbelievable amounts of butt while captioning an <a href="http://stanographer.com/steno-hell-german/">intensive German class</a>. I couldn't have designed a better poster boy for the Plover Project if I'd tried.<br />
<br />
Now Cory, Stan, and I are all here in NYC, covering as much onsite CART as we possibly can, alongside Cory's other contractors. Norma is holding down the fort in Vermont, with her medical-specialist captioners scattered all over the country, and the two of us are slowly but surely building up White Coat Captioning's client roster. We've all known each other -- or at least have known about each other -- for almost a decade now, but last Saturday was the first time we all had a chance to meet up in person. I'm just so unbelievably happy and grateful to have found colleagues like this. Whenever I send them work that I can't cover, I know with absolute certainty that they'll handle it brilliantly. And if at some point I ever get stuck in the doldrums, I know they'd be happy to send some work back my way as well. We trust each other, we like each other, and we're all constantly learning from each other. People talk about freelancing as an inherently lonely business, but I'm a heck of a lot less lonely knowing that these three amazing people have got my back.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-41990038215028478612015-03-16T20:30:00.000-07:002015-03-16T20:31:17.390-07:00Stump the Stenographer at the AMPHL Conference and Win!<img src="http://ssl-product-images.www8-hp.com/digmedialib/prodimg/lowres/c04447333.png" width=550/><br>
<br>
I'm going to be representing <a href="http://amphlconference.org/">White Coat Captioning</a> at the <a href="http://amphlconference.org/">Association for Medical Professionals with Hearing Loss</a> conference in Ann Arbor on May 16th and 17th, and if you're going to be there, you'll have the chance to win an HP Stream 7 tablet running Windows 8.1.<br>
<br>
All you have to do is come by the White Coat Captioning table in the exhibit hall and speak, sign, cue, or write a medical word or phrase of your choice. I'll have my captioning equipment set up at the table. If I'm unable to replicate that phrase, correctly spelled, on my computer screen within a few seconds, a card with your email address on it will go in a jar. At the end of the day, I'll pick a card out of the jar at random (assuming anyone's managed to stump me), and that person will win the tablet. It's portable, lightweight and versatile; a perfect handheld device for displaying wireless captions, among many other things. I'll be streaming captions to one at the table, so you can see how cool and compact it is.<br>
<br>
To keep things fair, I'm going to give each person three chances to stump me. If I'm able to correctly write all three, tough luck. Your card won't go in the jar. If you stump me three times, you'll get three chances to win! So keep your textbooks handy, because I've got over seven years of experience captioning for Pharmacy, Medical, Dental, and Veterinary schools, plus several more years transcribing interviews for medical journals specializing in Ophthalmology, Hematology, Oncology, Hepatology, and Gastroenterology, among others. (<a href="http://stenoknight.com/fields.html">A more complete list of subjects I've captioned or transcribed can be found here</a>.) Hit me with your best shot!<br>
<br>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4g9yAqDwrbl2fwxA_-u6HlX0VKnbIZw3YnzNYfTuOF-TGxulKL_CCQzBkiwaELiRoNDcGD4bxLn5QRYmHFySt7_34sm8Uk0RznUYXhCwXW526bqQycbt9Ig9hzkPhHzgPpuCjzIG4Nu0/s320/whitecoatcards.png" width=550/><br>
<br>
White Coat Captioning is the only CART and captioning firm specializing in medical higher education and technical conferences. For a simulation of what medical captioning looks like when provided by a captioner with medical experience versus one without, check out this video:<br>
<br>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-aZZ8h0RaCM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>
<br>
The experienced captioner is on the top. The inexperienced one is on the bottom. But I'm pretty sure you already figured that out.<br><br>
Some firms put captioners without any medical experience on high-stakes jobs, with disastrous results. When you work with White Coat Captioning, you know that will never happen. See you in Ann Arbor!Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-67479548625245271812015-02-06T15:33:00.002-08:002015-02-06T15:33:33.853-08:00Strong Demand for Tech Conference CaptioningThis blog has been neglected for far too long while I've been focusing my attentions on <a href="http://plover.stenoknight.com/">The Plover Blog</a>, but I've decided to try and get back in the swing of things by posting at least an occasional update here every so often.<br>
<br>
To that end, I wanted to mirror a Storify I made several months back after polling my Twitter contacts for feedback on conference captioning. I've been doing quite a bit of conference captioning recently, with several other conference organizers contacting me with at least tentative interest, and I thought it would be worthwhile to get many of the arguments for it in one place:
<br><br>
<div class="storify"><iframe src="//storify.com/stenoknight/demand-for-tech-conference-captioning/embed?border=false" width="100%" height="750" frameborder="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe><script src="//storify.com/stenoknight/demand-for-tech-conference-captioning.js?border=false"></script><noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/stenoknight/demand-for-tech-conference-captioning" target="_blank">View the story "Strong Demand for Tech Conference Captioning" on Storify</a>]</noscript></div>
<br><br>
It's linked in the Storify, but I wanted to specifically point out the excellent article <a href="http://composition.al/blog/2014/05/31/your-next-conference-should-have-real-time-captioning/">Your Next Conference Should Have Realtime Captioning</a>, by Lindsey Kuper, organizer of !!Con, which I captioned back in March 2014. Many thanks to Lindsey for making it happen; it was a wonderful experience.
<br><br>
I also wanted to post my response to an organizer who asked me recently whether captioners or ASL interpreters could be interchangeable, because this is a common source of confusion for people who want to make their conferences accessible but aren't sure where to start.
<br><br>
"They have different but sometimes overlapping uses. Basically, if
someone requests ASL, you should definitely provide it for them,
because it's definitely possible that they're more fluent in ASL than
in written English, and having to read through captions and then
translate into ASL in their head might be really fatiguing. Many
people are equally fluent in both, of course, but if they're
requesting interpreters rather than captioners, there's usually a good
reason for it. Also, a big advantage of ASL interpretation is that the
interpreter can walk with the attendee and interpret conversations
with other attendees between talks, which is much trickier to do with
captioning.
<br><br>
If you don't get requests for ASL, I'd say it might not be worth
providing proactively, because odds are there won't be anyone there
who knows it, and then you'll be paying interpreters to interpret for
nobody. (An estimated 95% of people with hearing loss don't know ASL, because
most people lose their hearing later in life, after they've already
learned their first language, and most forms of hearing loss fall into
the mild/moderate range, whereas the vast majority of people who know
ASL are in the severe/profound range, which is comparatively rarer.)
<br><br>
On the other hand, even if you don't get specific requests for
captioning, I'd encourage you to provide it proactively, and not just
because I'm a captioner. The fact is, hearing loss is extremely common
-- 1 out of 7 people have it to one degree or another -- and
conferences, where the presenter is at the front of a big room and
usually too far away to lip read, can be among the most difficult for
people with an amount of hearing loss that otherwise isn't too
limiting. So people who are just fine speaking one-on-one with someone
in a quiet room can be totally at sea in a conference situation.
<br><br>
Captioning is also really helpful for people who speak other languages
and are more fluent in written English than spoken English, people who
have attention deficit issues, and people who want to take notes. If
you stream your captioning, you can also give people a chance to keep
a live feed going on their phone while out in the lobby or wherever,
which gives them more flexibility to keep tabs on talks they're really
interested in while still being able to hack or socialize.
<br><br>
TL;DR: If you get a request for ASL, please do honor it, even if it
means you then won't have enough funding to provide captioning (though obviously
both would be ideal). But if you don't get any explicit ASL or captioning requests, please
consider providing captioning anyway. In a room of 100 people, odds
are that 15 to 20 people at least will get a substantial benefit from it.
Live captions are also useful as a starting point for captioned video,
if you're planning to post talks online, which is not only useful from
an accessibility standpoint, but <a href="http://www.business2community.com/video-marketing/closed-captioning-increase-video-views-seo-roi-0959005
">greatly improves SEO</a>".
<br><br>
If you'd like to read more on this particular topic, please see the excellent <a href="http://audio-accessibility.com/news/2013/02/cart-or-asl-or-ald/">Audio Accessibility Blog</a> for the perspective of a deaf accessibility and user experience designer who frequently attends and presents at conferences.
<br><br>
I'm happy to say that <a href="alterconf.com/">Alterconf Oakland/SF</a>, a conference I recently captioned remotely (after captioning their New York City session onsite) did have both ASL interpreters and captioning provided proactively, and I know for a fact that at least one person in the audience (Ian Smith, aka @metaforgotten, in the Storify above, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-smith/39/399/a03">a programmer and linguist</a> whom I've known on Twitter for ages but sadly have yet to meet in person) made use of both the interpreters and the captions while attending.
<br><br>
I have him to thank for this picture:
<br><br>
<img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8uOLoFCEAE-v9B.jpg" width=550><br><br>
Unfortunately there were some unforeseen technical glitches at the conference venue that prevented me from getting a clean sound feed from the AV board. I had to use audio from the laptop microphone as a last resort, which, as any captioner can tell you, will produce wildly variable results. Some speeches were as clear as daylight, and I got every word. Some were terribly distorted to the point of inaudibility. Fortunately <a href="http://www.alterconf.com/sessions/atlanta-ga">AlterConf Atlanta</a> has pledged to do a full test of their audio equipment before the event, so there should be no further problems on that front. Kudos to AlterConf for their indomitable commitment to accessibility by successfully finding sponsorship for both ASL interpretation and captioning! If only all conferences could follow their example.
<br><br>
Technical difficulties notwithstanding, we got some more great feedback from attendees, so here's just one more brief Storify:
<br><br>
<div class="storify"><iframe src="//storify.com/stenoknight/alterconf-oakland-sf-audience-feedback/embed?border=false" width="100%" height="750" frameborder="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe><script src="//storify.com/stenoknight/alterconf-oakland-sf-audience-feedback.js?border=false"></script><noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/stenoknight/alterconf-oakland-sf-audience-feedback" target="_blank">View the story "AlterConf Oakland/SF Audience Feedback on Captions" on Storify</a>]</noscript></div>
<br><br>Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-52614615099642210502014-04-13T09:19:00.000-07:002020-02-11T10:40:39.118-08:00Wearable Realtime Slides [slide deck removed due to image rights issues]<br>
I think my Wearable Realtime lecture yesterday went really well! I tried to discuss both my enthusiasm for the potential of Glass in captioning and my many reservations about the success of the Glass initiative as a whole. Then I passed my unit around and captioned the question and answer portion live to Glass using <a href="http://ploversteno.org">Plover</a> and <a href="http://streamtext.net">Streamtext</a>. People really seemed to get a kick out of it, which made me happy, because the audience at <a href="http://www.ncra.org/Meetings/TechCon/">TechCon</a> attracts relatively few captioners and CART providers; most people there are court reporters, videographers, and other legal services people. I tried putting in a bit of legal material where I could, but of course accessibility on Glass is my main focus, so it was encouraging to see that people who don't live and breathe captioning still found it interesting.<br><br>
The two most relevant pictures from my talk:
<img src="http://stenoknight.com/machineviewkublai.jpg" width=500><img src="http://stenoknight.com/computerviewkublaicropped.jpg" width=500><br><br>
These were taken in my hotel room using the <a href="https://support.google.com/glass/answer/3405215?hl=en">Glass Vignette</a> tool. Feel free to <a href="mailto:mkk@stenoknight.com">email me</a> if you want the Streamtext settings I used. I got them from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-deandrea-lazarus/17/35b/386">Ian DeAndrea-Lazarus</a>, a fellow Glass Explorer and Master of Public Health student at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry.<br><br>
Hopefully the complete video of my talk will be online in a few weeks. I'll caption it and then post it here, so stay tuned!Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-83047734322934740962014-03-24T11:26:00.001-07:002014-03-24T11:27:56.148-07:00Back from Hiatus and Presenting at TechCon!Well, it's been over four months since I last blogged here. Phew! I must admit that last semester was a bit of a blur. Captioning at a dental school is great fun, but pretty intense. Still, I've managed to get a few things done since last fall.<br>
<br>
First off, I'm going to be presenting at <a href="http://www.ncra.org/Meetings/eventdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=11433">NCRA's TechCon</a> in Atlanta on April 12th. My talk is from 3:30 to 5:00 pm, and is on "wearable realtime", with an emphasis on captioning through Google Glass. The bespoke captioning app I've been working on with a deaf programmer is sort of in limbo at the moment, so it may not be ready by then, but the Glass firmware has been improved considerably since <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/06/glass-for-captioning-first-field-tests.html">my first post on the subject</a>, and now works with both <a href="http://streamtext.com/">Streamtext</a> and <a href="http://www.1capapp.com/">1CapApp</a>, so while a customized Glass-native captioning application might be nice, it's not a prerequisite to using Glass for captioning anymore, which is great.<br>
<br>
Second, I've been practicing my Cued Speech since I took a four-day workshop on it last June. I think I'm finally fluent enough to post a video! It's not perfect, of course, and there are certainly more than a few mistakes, but I'm definitely a lot faster and smoother than I was only a few months ago, so I'm encouraged by my progress. I've been <a href="https://www.beeminder.com/nepomuk/goals/cuedspeech">cueing a few pages per week</a> out of whatever book I've been reading, and also getting together weekly with a friend over Skype to practice cue reading. My production is still a lot better than my reception, but I'm getting there.<br>
<br>
Here's me cueing <i>They Can't Take That Away From Me</i>, as sung by Billie Holiday:<br>
<br>
<object width="600"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/SoYym-Z43bs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/SoYym-Z43bs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br>
<br>
(As you probably guessed, that is not a clarinet during the instrumental interlude. It's the sopranino recorder I keep in my steno bag for practicing during my lunch hour. But I don't play clarinet, and it was the nearest thing to hand.)<br>
<br>
Speaking of videos, I also recorded a short little number demonstrating the difference between a captioner with considerable medical experience and a robust medical dictionary when confronted with medical material and... The opposite of that:<br>
<br>
<object width="600"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/-aZZ8h0RaCM?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/-aZZ8h0RaCM?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br>
<br>
Well... I think that's enough of an update for now. I'm going to try very hard to keep updating this blog more regularly in the future. I hope to see some of you at TechCon! Please always feel free to find me and say hi, or to send me any questions or comments you might have in the mean time.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-38557649486788614352013-10-28T05:38:00.002-07:002015-02-02T06:25:03.247-08:00The Little ThingsIn my article <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/03/cart-problem-solving-schlepping-gear.html">Schlepping the Gear</a>, I gave a brief rundown of all the stuff I kept in my steno bag. But I'd like to speak in more detail about some of the less obvious items I carry every day, and what I use them for. None of these are specifically steno-related, but they sure do come in handy every now and then.<br>
<br>
<img src="http://www.hersheys.com/assets/images/icebreakers/products/icebreakers_icecubes_Peppermint.png" width=250><br>
* Gum/breath mints (Most onsite CART jobs involve sitting next to the client. Make sure your breath is fresh! My favorite gum for this purpose is <a href="http://www.hersheys.com/icebreakers/cubes-products.aspx#/ICE-BREAKERS-ICE-CUBES-Peppermint-Gum">Ice Breakers Ice Cubes</a>, because I love popping the tiny liquid mint bubbles with my teeth.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Staples/s0333886_sc7?$splssku$" width=250><br>
* Screen cleaning kit (I used to carry a pen-sized bottle of screen cleaner, but these days I find it's more convenient to use the <a href="http://www.staples.com/Staples-Laptop-and-LCD-Cleaning-Kit/product_569259">pre-moistened cloths from Staples</a>, which pack flat and have no danger of leaking. Having a clean laptop -- especially your screen -- is a subtle but vital aspect of professionalism when providing onsite CART. You don't want your client to have to squint through the grime to read your captions, and you don't want them to get grossed out when you hand them a tablet to carry. I also have several cans of canned air, which I keep in my home office, and I try to spray the crumbs out of my computers on a regular basis, but those are too bulky to carry on the job. Single-use screen cleaning cloths work just fine.)
<br><br><br><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ay8SY3l4L._SL1000_.jpg" width=250><br>
* External battery for phone (I don't know about you, but my Motorola Droid 4 barely holds a charge past noon, no matter how sparingly I use it. Admittedly, that might be because I often get up at 5:30, but still; if I don't get home until 8:00 or so, that's eight hours without a phone unless I find some way to charge it. Typically I'll just plug it into my Surface Pro's auxiliary charger slot. But if for whatever reason I don't have the opportunity to connect it to AC power, this little external battery is there to save my bacon. I can plug my phone into it and leave it in my pocket. It takes an hour or so to charge it back up to full capacity (longer if I'm using it while it charges), and usually has enough juice for about 1.5 full charge cycles. I love it so much I'm thinking of buying another one just to have on hand. They can be pricey, but they're ridiculously useful when you can't get to an outlet, you don't want to drain the power on your laptops (or inconvenience your client) by plugging your phone into their USB slots, and suddenly going incommunicado is not an option.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://stenoknight.com/gafferspool.jpg" width=250><br>
* Flat spool of gaffers tape (This is one of my easiest hacks: A length of <a href="http://www.containerstore.com/shop/?productId=10000691">plastic shelf divider</a> snapped off so it's about 6x4 inches, with a few hundred lengths of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaffer_tape">gaffers tape</a> wrapped around it. This way, I don't have to bring the huge, bulky spool the gaffers tape comes on, but I always have 30 or 40 feet of it at the ready. Gaffers tape is special because it doesn't leave behind adhesive residue on floors or carpet, and it's easy to tear off pieces either transversely or along its length. I use it to cover over extension cords when my laptop is placed at a distance from an outlet, so that I don't create a tripping hazard. I also use it to cover the indicator lights of my laptop when I'm in a theater or other situation where light leakage would be distracting.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Staples/s0766063_sc7?$splssku$" width=250><br>
* ID card on retractable cord (The building I work at requires me to flash my official Contractor badge when I come in, so I hooked a <a href="http://www.staples.com/Cosco-MyID-Brass-Style-Carabiner-Reel-for-ID-Badge-Holders-Key-Cards/product_357692">retractable badge holder</a> in to the breast pocket of my <a href="http://www.scottevest.com/">ScottEVest</a> jacket, which has a special loop just for the purpose. This way I just have to unzip the pocket, reach in for the card, show it to the guy at the security desk, and then let it go; it'll spool back into my pocket and I can go on my way. Very convenient.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Staples/s0080984_sc7?$splssku$" width=250><br>
* Business card case (I have a slim <a href="http://www.staples.com/Buxton-Slim-Card-Case/product_461742">leather one</a>, with my <a href="http://stenoknight.com/img/stenoknightbusinesscard.jpg">business card</a> on one side and <a href="http://ploversteno.org">Plover</a> stickers on the other)
<br><br>
<img src="http://www.lifeviewoutdoors.com/images/detailed/0/lightload-towels.jpg" width=250><br>
* Towel tablets (As <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/24779-a-towel-the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy-says-is">Douglas Adams</a> so rightly pointed out, a towel is a ridiculously useful object, especially when you own a lot of expensive electronics. I keep a few <a href="http://www.ultralighttowels.com/">lightload towel tablets</a> on hand in case of rain, spills, puddles, wet subway seats, or anything else I might encounter. Extremely useful little objects!)
<br><br>
<img src="http://cdn.healthygoods.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/thumbnail/320x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/6/16-oz-klean-kanteen-wide-insulated-water-bottle-black-eclipse.jpg" width=250><br>
* Water bottle (I'm extremely happy with my <a href="http://www.kleankanteen.com/products/insulated/klean-kanteen-insulated.php">insulated Kleen Kanteen</a>. It keeps stuff cold for hours and hours, and it's got a nice big plastic loop in the lid. I made a length of Velcro tape with the hooks on one side and the loops on the other and ran it through one of the straps on the side of my backpack. Now I have to do is run it through the water bottle's lid and close it on itself, and I know that the bottle will stay in my backpack's mesh side pocket no matter how much bumping and jostling I put it through.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://demandware.edgesuite.net/sits_pod21/dw/image/v2/AAMV_PRD/on/demandware.static/Sites-leatherman-Site/Sites-master/en_US/v1382946653011/large/9-sidekick.jpg?sw=763&sh=763&sfrm=png" width=250><br>
* Multitool (I love my <a href="http://www.leatherman.com/9.html#start=16">Leatherman Sidekick</a>, though I admit that frequently I have to take it out of my backpack when I know I have to go through a metal detector or security checkpoint of some kind, and sometimes I forget to put it back in. Still a tremendously useful thing to keep around.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://c.shld.net/rpx/i/s/pi/mp/5681/4521338516?src=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.oppictures.com%2FMaster_Images%2FMaster_Variants%2FVariant_500%2F161962.jpg&d=814535025f0c55f652d54beb5fa1de95961173db" width=250><br>
* Superglue (Individual use <a href="http://www.bisonoffice.com/scotch-single-use-super-glue-0-07-oz-4-pack-clear/MMMAD114/p/?bo=1514&gclid=CMaAi_jCuboCFY6Y4AodtH4A5g">tubes of Superglue</a> can be absolute lifesavers when you need to do last-minute repairs to a steno machine that's been knocked to the floor by a careless student. Oh, yes, that's happened to me. More than once. Not fun.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://cache3.smarthome.com/images/44084gy.jpg" width=250><br>
* 3-to-2 prong adapter (Use <a href="http://www.smarthome.com/44084GY/AVB-Cable-U-09-3-Prong-to-2-Prong-Grounding-Adapter-Gray/p.aspx">these</a> sparingly; I understand that if you don't actually screw the metal bit in, they're not completely safe. But sometimes there just isn't a three-prong wall outlet anywhere, so these can mean the difference between running on battery and possibly going dark during a job or being able to plug in. I always make sure to keep a <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Belkin/BZ103050/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=googlebase&gclid=CJGQqonEuboCFdKf4AodZ20AwQ">surge protector</a> between the outlet and my electronic gear, and so far I haven't had any problems at all using this thing, but as with any electrical improvisations, be careful.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://images.highspeedbackbone.net/skuimages/large/C184-03137_chiclet01_gfv_mn_698694.jpg" width=250><br>
* 1 foot extension cord (More common even than a two-prong outlet is a situation where I just can't fit my surge protector in the available outlet no matter how I twist and turn it. This <a href="http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=698694">short extension cord</a> is much more convenient than my usual 15-foot-long one when the problem is just finding space around the outlet to plug in my stuff.)
<br><br>
<img src="http://www.containerstore.com/catalogimages/128412/KlipoCutlerySetClear2_x.jpg" width=250><br>
* Sistema cutlery set (not to be confused with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systema">Systema</a>, the scary Soviet martial arts technique. My lovely Ladybug Spork broke off one of its wings a few weeks ago, which of course was heartbreaking, but I have to admit that the <a href="http://www.neatlysmart.com/catalog/item.aspx?sku=81591&gclid=CJLAz_2brroCFdOe4AodqmAAQA">Sistema Cutlery Set</a> is actually way better. It takes up just a little more space in my bag, but it lets me assemble a full-sized spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks to suit the needs of any meal. I really like it. I've also started using a <a href="http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?Sec=23&Sub=106&PID=2661">Muji bento box</a>, which fits in my backpack's other mesh side pocket, to supplement the stuff I carry in my <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/09/bag-lunch.html">lunch bag</a> every day. It works really well, and holds more food than the small Tupperware containers I was using before.)
<br><br>
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to <a href="http://depoman.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=213656#213656">this post on Depoman</a>. Below is a selection of things they carry in their bags. Click through to the post for more, especially for court reporting-specific items (about which I know next to nothing. Is an exhibit sticker the same thing as an exhibit label? I have no idea!)
<br><br>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGz-76HYAHeyDPlWxfJJcCkDm2rKOeLKCbQzk4JNSyVW-61hxeF7klRVCdiPiYQjFBoXK3sBLm5nXpL8j2zVh2XWN2x4e5XkBb7JX_Mvogz5CvlspnrE772LKuRM21vgyXkzVT2ZtxXLE/+U.jpg" width=250><br>
* campus map (for onsite CART)<br><br>
<img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6647610787_015d0b26f7.jpg" width=250><br>
* cough drops (for scratchy throats)<br><br>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9zRlQ8POllAKL_janC__nnY2M2zK6Uz3HLSmDc3WxJS8fqk_7wldSxFl7q0kEtLyOcurSKR_L69l20Jc2k4gkL3gqx1yn3gQkO6aFWYiLeFjUOroSoqaX0oGHiULOruG_JdSMpjiTBHq/s1600/fingerless-gloves.jpg" width=250><br>
* Fingerless gloves (for chilly mornings)<br><br>
<img src="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/hpc/detail-page/c26-B00112T9SA-1-l.jpg" width=250><br>
* Garbage bags (for putting over steno bag if it rains)<br><br>
<img src="http://classycouponclippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/kleenex-300x245.jpg" width=250><br>
* Kleenex (for spills, runny noses, or emotional witnesses)<br><br>
<img src="http://www.gearculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/colgate-wisp-peppermint1.jpg" width=250><br>
* Colgate Wisp toothbrushes (when you have garlic bread for lunch)<br><br>
<img src="http://www.magicgloves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/whistle-compass-thermometer-magnify.jpg" width=250><br>
* Magnifying glass/whistle/compass (For... Um... I got nothing. Is this another court reporting thing?)<br>
<br>
So that's all the non-steno stuff I keep in my bag. Have I left anything out? What bits, bobs, and gewgaws do you bring with you to every job?Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-88892275416698750212013-09-19T21:16:00.000-07:002013-09-19T22:47:33.266-07:00Bag lunch!<img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4009/4391650061_bf58888650_o.jpg" width=300><br>
<font size=-2>Bag lunch photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/4391650061/">Jeffrey Beale</a></font><br>
<br>
When Fall semester started, I decided to start bringing my lunch to work, for the first time in the six years I've been CARTing. There are plenty of reasons why I hadn't done it before: <br>
<br>
* New York City is full of delis, bodegas, diners, and restaurants, offering an unbelievable variety of food. <br>
<br>
* I carry a <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/03/cart-problem-solving-schlepping-gear.html">26-pound backpack stuffed to the gills with equipment</a>, which just barely fits under a subway seat as it is. Clipping on a lunchbox or insulated lunch bag would add weight, bulk, and ungainliness, and would probably look kind of unprofessional, to boot. <br>
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* I wake up at 5:30 am several days a week. The last thing I want to do at that hour is put my lunch together from scratch.<br>
<br>
But, on the other hand, bringing my lunch has real advantages:<br>
<br>
* Eating out is expensive. The University's cash-only cafeteria is pretty good, but most entrees are $10 or more, and most of it isn't particularly healthy. There isn't always seating during the lunch rush, plus having to get cash for it all the time is a pain. Most of the places near the University are even more expensive, and their healthiness is usually in inverse proportion to their tastiness.<br>
<br>
* I clean out my fridge every few weeks, and I always seem to come across leftovers that never got eaten and just went to waste. I hate that feeling.<br>
<br>
* I'd rather eat several small meals than one big meal. If all I've eaten all day is a large lunch around 11:00, I'm much more likely to be hungry when I get out at 5:00, which makes it all too tempting to just buy a bag of chips at the 7-11 to eat on the bus ride home, spoiling both my dinner and my lipid levels. If I have some breakfast on the train to work, most of my lunch at 11:00, and then a handful of nuts and fruit at 3:00, I'm much better able to ride out my belly until I can get home and put dinner on the table.<br>
<br>
There are lots of good reasons. But what do I do about the lunchbox situation? See, my subway stop is near the end of the line, so I'm almost always guaranteed a seat when I head in to work. When I head home at rush hour, on the other hand, I almost always have to stand, and my giant backpack makes things awkward both for me and for my fellow passengers. My backpack has two small mesh pockets on each side, but they're definitely not big enough to hold an entire day's worth of food. Finally it hit me: The good old brown paper bag. If I pack a full bag in the morning, I can eat the most perishable items on the train to work as breakfast (taking care for courtesy's sake not to eat anything too crumbly, messy, or stinky). When I take my steno machine out and set it up for my first job, that frees up space in my backpack to stow away the remainder of my lunch. I nibble on it over the course of the day, and then I can throw the empty bag away before heading home completely unencumbered. I fit a small <a href="http://www.kleankanteen.com/products/insulated/klean-kanteen-insulated.php">stainless steel water bottle</a> in one of my backpack's mesh pockets, and it turns out that two empty Tupperware containers, nestled inside one another, fit very nicely in the other. That lets me bring leftovers from the night before, which eliminates the wasted food problem. I feel a little bit bad about throwing away the bag every day, but I was able to find 100% recycled paper bags, and there are recycling cans all over the University, so the environmental impact isn't as bad as it could be. Bringing my lunch also gives me an excuse to use my ladybug spork, which lives happily inside my backpack among all the electronics and cables:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hog-Wild-Beetle-Spork-BLACK/dp/B002XG4AEG"><img src="http://static.neatoshop.com/images/product/21/3921/Beetle-Spork_16849-l.jpg?v=16849" width=300><img src="http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/106/1/AAAAAkHrJV8AAAAAAQYSrg.jpg?v=1211665987000" width=200></a><br><br>
Here's my lunch for today:<br>
<br>
<img src="http://stenoknight.com/baglunch.jpg" width=500><br>
<br>
* Refried beans left over from the Mexican restaurant delivery food we had on Tuesday.<br>
<br>
* Mixed greens with homemade Mustard Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette.<br>
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* <a href="http://justbento.com/handbook/johbisai/miso-tamago-miso-marinated-eggs">Miso Marinated Boiled Egg</a>.<br>
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* Thyme-dill <a href="http://www.junkfoodguy.com/2012/05/20/new-stacys-perfectly-thymed-pita-crisps-being-the-weirdo-at-the-yard-sale/">pita chips</a>.<br>
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* Grape-flavored fruit leather.<br>
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* String cheese.<br>
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* Carrots, bell peppers, radishes, and celery.<br>
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Pretty tasty! When I finished the beans and greens, I just popped the small container inside the big one, and stuffed them both in the mesh pocket of my backpack. I've been making different variations on all these things for the past few weeks. Other things to go in the bag:<br>
<br>
* Cut-up cubes of Jarlsberg and Gouda, two of my favorite cheeses.<br>
<br>
* Apricots, plums, apples, pears, or grapes, sometimes with a small foil packet of peanut butter (which you can buy in small quantities at stores like <a href="http://www.minimus.biz/">Minimus</a>).<br>
<br>
* Granola bars, all along the spectrum from healthy (low sugar, flax seed and almonds) to not so healthy (chocolate and peanut butter).<br>
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* Mixed nuts. I like an equal mix of cashews, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds and peanuts.<br>
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* Salsa, either homemade or storebought.<br>
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* <a href="http://www.iherb.com/Beanitos-Simply-Pinto-Bean-With-Sea-Salt-6-oz-170-g/31907?utm_medium=cse&utm_source=pricegrabber">Bean chips</a>, which are a tiny bit better for you than potato chips, but still taste great with salsa. As a longtime junk food addict, I'm all about the marginally healthier alternatives.<br>
<br>
* <a href="http://www.wasa-usa.com/">Crispbread</a> with butter and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite">Marmite</a>. I know it's weird for someone who grew up in Montana to love a British staple like Marmite, but I can't help it. It's been my favorite condiment since I was a kid and my dad got me hooked on it. (No idea how he started eating it; he grew up in Queens.) So savory and salty. Mmmm. High in niacin and folic acid, too!<br>
<br>
* The old standby: A classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. <br>
<br>
* Iced herbal tea. I like making some fridge tea -- usually a mix of berry flavors and chamomile -- and then diluting it heavily with water, so there's just a hint of flavor. The straight-up berry tea is usually too sweet and cloying for me.<br>
<br>
I've also ordered a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Brown-Lunch-Cookbook-Cookbooks/dp/0762727586">The Brown Bag Lunch Cookbook</a>, so when it arrives it'll hopefully give me even more ideas. And it's fun crawling around the web, looking at sites like <a href="http://justbento.com/">Just Bento</a>, which gave me the recipe for the miso marinated eggs. Even though I don't have room for an actual bento box and lack the patience to construct the intricate designs and patterns bento is famous for, it's fun to see what people are getting up to in other corners of the lunch-lugging world.<br>
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/lunchlist.jpg" width=500><br>
<br>
The last issue, of course, is how to deal with that whole bleary-eyed 5:30 am thing. I've realized that I can do most of the packing on the night before, or sometimes even the weekend before. I'll cut a whole bunch of vegetables on Sunday and put them in a quart-sized Ziploc. They'll stay fresh all week, and I can parcel them into individual sandwich-sized bags as the urge takes me the evening before I think I might want them. At first I'd get really excited about a particular lunch item and then forget to take it out of the fridge in the morning, but I've more or less solved that by writing a menu for myself on the whiteboard before going to bed. Then, even though my brain is only operating at a fraction of its normal capacity when I'm stumbling around in the wee hours of the morning, I can just go straight down the list and put everything together. I suppose it's only a matter of time before I forget my lunch entirely and have to eat out after all, but that'll be okay when it happens. It's the overall change of habit that counts, and I have to say I'm having a really good time with it. We'll see how long I manage to keep it up, but so far, so good!Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-78957502688416088662013-08-27T17:08:00.000-07:002013-08-27T17:09:16.308-07:00Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss 2013 Web ConferenceI'm the captioning sponsor for the Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss web conference, to be held on Saturday, September 7th, 2013. I finish my weekly recorder lesson at noon, and then I'll have to ride my scooter quickly downhill to my home office in order to get setup in time for sound check, so it'll be a very musical day. I'm really looking forward to this conference. I've captioned for AAMHL for several years now, both onsite and remotely, and they always put together top quality events. So if you love music and you've either got hearing loss or you work/play with people who have hearing loss (and specifically, for this conference, cochlear implants, though I'm sure plenty of the information will be relevant for non-CI users as well), feel free to register for the conference!<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.aamhl.org/joomla15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=72">Making Music with a Hearing Loss: Issues for Cochlear Implant Users</a><br>
<br>
Note: All time listed in this announcement are for Eastern Standard Time (EST) <br>
<br>
The Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss (AAMHL) is pleased to announce our second web conference on September 7, 2013, featuring presentations on listening and making music with a hearing loss when you are a cochlear implant user. The intended audience is for consumers, musicians, music teachers who are interested in the effects of cochlear implantation on music perception and music performance. <br>
<br>
We will be using voice-over IP (no calling in via phone) and captioning will be provided for this online event.<br>
<br>
If you have questions regarding the conference or registration, please email us at info@aamhl.org <br>
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Agenda:<br>
1. Introduction of our Association and our presenters (1:00-1:05 pm EST) / Wendy Cheng<br>
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2. Musical Interval Perception between Cochlear Implant Users and individuals with Normal Hearing (1:10-1:40 pm EST) / Dr. XIn Luo<br>
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3. Factors that Contribute to and Impede Satisfactory Music Participation by Adult Cochlear Implant Users (1:45-2:15 pm EST)- / Dr. Kate Gfeller and Ms. Virginia Driscoll<br>
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4. Developing a Music Rehabilitation Program (2:15-2:45 pm EST) / Mr. Richard Reed<br>
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5. Cochlear Implant Musicians Panel (2:45 to 3:30 pm EST) / Wendy Cheng, Moderator: Blue O'Connell, Lisa Jordan, Sara Gould, panelists<br>
<br>
Bios of presenters and panelists:<br>
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Wendy Cheng is the founder of AAMHL, and is also studying viola and music theory while raising two musical daughters. She hopes to obtain a music degree someday.<br>
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Dr. Xin Luo is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University. Prior to this appointment, he worked as a post-doctorate research fellow at the House Ear Institute. Dr. Luo has authored many publication and studies on pitch perception and cochlear implants. <br>
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Dr. Kate Gfeller holds a joint appointment at the University of Iowa's Music Therapy department and the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She is currently the principal investigator of the Music Perception Project at the University of Cochlear Implant Clinics. <br>
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Virginia (Ginny) Driscoll is an investigator at the University of Iowa's Music Perception Project. She received her masters in music therapy at the University of Iowa in 2006.<br>
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Richard Reed is a composer, musician and cochlear implant advocate. Before losing his hearing to antibiotics, Richard played piano and Hammond organ with Junior Walk and the All Starts, Otis Rush, Mark Cutler, and many other R&B, Blues and Rock and Roll bands. Unable to appreciate music for almost ten years, Richard underwent CI surgery in 2001. Richard is certified by the Hearing Loss Association of America and Gallaudet University as a hearing loss specialist. Richard is a guest lecturer at universities, symposiums and research facilities across the globe. His experiential knowledge help researchers improve the fidelity to hearing loss technologies. <br>
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Blue O'Connell is a music practitioner at the University of Virginia's Medical Center, a songwriter, and avid cochlear implant user. She resides in the Charlottesville, Virginia area where she gives concerts in coffeehouse settings. <br>
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Lisa Jordan received her bachelor's degree in music education from West Virginia University in 2004. While working as a high school band director, she began to lose her hearing, and opted to receive bilateral cochlear implants in 2012. Lisa has even performed her oboe and flute in musical ensembles post-implant.<br>
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Sara Gould began playing saxophone at the age of 9. She continued playing all 4 kinds of saxophones even after her hearing loss progress to the profound stage. She received her first cochlear implant in September 2009 and her second implant in December 2009. She currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she plays with several saxophone ensembles. Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-67786898076609431502013-08-09T16:03:00.003-07:002013-08-09T16:05:29.062-07:00NCRA Convention Post!I'm in the Newark airport, waiting for my flight to Nashville as I write this. I'll be getting in around 9:05 this evening, and staying until Sunday evening. If you see me in the hallway, please say hi! I'll be giving ad hoc Plover demonstrations at various points around the convention, and I'll be demonstrating <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/06/glass-for-captioning-first-field-tests.html">Google Glass</a> for captioning Saturday morning at 10:00 am at the "CART: The Tech Connection" seminar. Speaking of Plover, check out <a href="http://plover.stenoknight.com/2013/08/tons-of-new-stuff.html">my most recent post on the Plover Blog</a>, including my new <a href="http://stenoknight.com/wiki/FAQ_for_Stenographers">Plover FAQ for Steno Professionals</a>. If you have any questions about Plover that aren't answered by that FAQ, please feel free to ask, either in person or by emailing me at <a href="mailto:info@stenoknight.com">info@stenoknight.com</a>. I'm really looking forward to meeting new people at the convention and to catching up with some of the people I've met at previous events. Please don't be shy about flagging me down if you see me around! I love talking about steno, and I can't wait to spend a whole weekend doing pretty much nothing but. Here's a bigger version of my profile picture, so you can see what I look like:
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/mkkcsmile.jpg">Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-12599345524318873482013-08-09T15:51:00.000-07:002013-08-09T17:18:48.155-07:00Making Tablets Client-FriendlyMost CART providers do the lion's share of their work one-on-one, with a single client reading from their laptop, which is usually mounted a foot or so away on a tripod. There's an unwritten social convention that it's not polite to reach over and fiddle with someone else's laptop, and I've found that virtually all my clients respect that rule without having to be asked. But what about when a CART provider sends their realtime feed to a tablet, which the client holds in their hands, often sitting at some distance away from the provider, or moving around the room while the provider stays in one place? For some reason, that simple act of holding a screen rather than viewing it while mounted on a tripod changes the whole situation. When people hold tablets, they're tempted to play with them; it's practically a law of nature. And if you don't want your client to have free rein over everything accessible via your tablet, what should you do? Fortunately, there's a very simple solution: Lock it up.<br>
<br>
I use an app called <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.friendlockpro&hl=en">Friend Lock Pro</a> on my Samsung Galaxy Tab II. It's simple, aesthetically attractive, and only $1.99.<br>
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/tablet-unlocked.png"><br>
<br>
This is what the homescreen of my tablet looks like when it's unlocked. Notice the large dolphin icon. That's a link to the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.mgeek.TunnyBrowser">Dolphin Browser</a>, which offers an aesthetically attractive full screen mode for realtime CART streaming. I made the icon nice and big using <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gabetaubman.giganticon&hl=en">Giganticon</a>, and set Dolphin Browser's homepage to the URL I use for realtime captioning via Streamtext. To get to the captions, it's only a single button push away. When I'm ready to hand the tablet to the client, I push the lock icon and get this:<br>
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/tablet-locked.png"><br>
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Now Dolphin Browser is the only app accessible to the client. They can page through my homescreens and eventually find my personal screen (though I have blank homescreens on either side of the main one as a sort of buffer):<br>
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/tablet-personal.png"><br>
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But if they try to access my email, they only get a notification that the app has been blocked. All notifications are also turned off, so the client won't get annoying (and possibly confidential) pop-ups from my email, calendar, or other apps while they're trying to read the captions. To unlock the tablet, I just have to draw a simple design in Friend Lock Pro's unlock screen, and the tablet is mine again. I can use it to access student schedules, display prep material, log my steno practice, or navigate to my next gig, using my own personal apps. Then I can lock it back up again and hand it on to the next client, secure that none of that information is accessible to them. Since installing this app, I haven't had to fret or worry about what the client is doing with my tablet when they're out of my sight. I can't recommend it highly enough.<br>
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I'm not a paid endorser for this app or anything; I'm just really, really happy with it! If anyone knows of equivalent apps for iOS devices, feel free to let me know about them in comments, and I'll pass them along to my iPad-loving colleagues.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-48636353852154760502013-07-16T11:59:00.001-07:002013-07-16T14:06:10.590-07:00Lucky Printer Giveaway!<img src="http://stenoknight.com/rmr-certificate.jpg" width=500><br>
<font size=-1>My RMR certificate</font><br><br>
So I'm a little late with blogging about it, but if you've checked my <a href="http://stenoknight.com/resume.html">resume</a> or <a href="http://stenoknight.com/FAQ.html#ncracerts">FAQ</a> page recently, you'll know that I am now Mirabai Knight, CCP, CBC, CRR, RPR, RMR! Yep, after several <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/04/cart-problem-solving-test-nerves.html">false starts</a>, I finally passed that last pesky 260 WPM Testimony exam and got to add "Registered Merit Reporter" to my roster of certifications. I have to say it feels pretty good. While I'm disappointed that there aren't any merit-speed realtime certifications, which would be more directly relevant to showcasing my professional skills, the RMR shows that I've got at least a certain amount of speed, even if it doesn't speak much to my realtime accuracy. I'll be taking the RDR written exam this fall, just to collect the whole set of certifications offered by the <a href="http://ncraonline.org/">NCRA</a>, and then I guess there's nowhere else to go but the annual conference realtime and speed competitions. Still haven't decided about those. I don't tend to do my best under test-taking conditions. If they had a test with guaranteed medical subject matter I think I'd do pretty well, but since most of it is full of legal vocabulary, I'd be starting from a disadvantage. I did promise myself that I'd get to go to the NCRA convention if I passed the RMR, though, which is very exciting. It'll be my first national convention since I was a 120 student back in 2006. I wish I could be there for the world record attempt so I could root for my <a href="http://superlativerealtime.com/">main man Stan Sakai</a>, but sadly I have to work until Friday afternoon, so I won't be getting in until Friday night. That also probably means that I'll be missing the CART and Captioning dessert reception, though I'm gonna hustle from the airport as fast as I can, in hopes of catching the tail end of it. But if any readers of this blog are there, please feel free to flag me down in the hallway and say hi! I'll also be presenting a very short demo of how to use <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/06/glass-for-captioning-first-field-tests.html">Google Glass for Captioning</a> at the "CART: The Tech Connection" seminar on Saturday at 10:00. (Oh, and I'll be trying to do small informal demos of <a href="http://ploversteno.org">Plover</a> throughout the weekend. Have you seen <a href="http://plover.stenoknight.com/2013/07/plover-241-released.html">our latest release</a>, complete with a video demonstrating our hot new on-the-fly dictionary update system?)
<br><br>
So anyway, I'm really looking forward to putting that RMR ribbon on my name tag. Lord knows it took long enough to get there; I had to take the thing five times, all told. But that's what steno is all about. You keep failing and failing and failing, and then finally you wake up and realize that not only do you have the speed, but you're so much faster than you need to be, and somehow that fact has made those test nerves just magically melt away.
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This is my practice graph for the RMR. As you can see, I stopped practicing while waiting for results, which is not recommended, but I just couldn't bring myself to do yet another take when it might turn out that I'd passed.
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<img src="https://www.beeminder.com/nepomuk/goals/rmr/graph" width=500><br>
<font size=-1>My RMR practice graph</font>
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And I have to give big props to Ann Plainos Record, for our <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/04/competition.html">competition</a>. She won hands down (and I sent her a basket of gourmet New York-made munchies as a prize), but just having that extra push helped hugely with my motivation in those last crucial weeks of practice.
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But there's one more component of my success. On my next-to-last attempt at the RMR, my old portable printer (which had seen me through the RPR and both the Jury Charge and Literary portions of the RMR) suddenly gave up the ghost, and I wound up unceremoniously dumping it in a garbage can next to the subway entrance before heading home. So for the attempt in May, I actually bought a printer solely for the purpose of getting this one last take.
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It's an HP Deskjet 1000, and it cost me about $40. It's certainly not the best printer you'll ever use; these low-end machines tend to be made of cheap components and sold for rock bottom prices so that people will spend lots of money on ink. It's not a patch on the giant, sleek double-sided printer I keep in my home office, but then again, it's far more portable, and it's totally serviceable for low stakes, low volume printing jobs. I really don't see myself getting much use out of it, now that I've passed all the available NCRA speed tests (yeah, sorry, I just enjoy typing that sentence way too much), so I've decided to give it away. After all, it turned out to be lucky for me. Maybe it'll be lucky for you too! The box is a bit ripped up from when I opened it, but it's otherwise in near mint condition; only about 15 pages have been printed on it.
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YGZIY0/ref=pe_175190_21431760_3p_M3T1_ST1_dp_1"><img src="http://img2.targetimg2.com/wcsstore/TargetSAS//img/p/12/96/12967670.jpg"></a>
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I'm going to be completely arbitrary and subjective about this give-away. Email me at <a href="mailto:info@stenoknight.com">info@stenoknight.com</a> with the subject header "Printer Giveaway" and give me your most persuasive argument about why I should give it to you. Make it interesting! Tell me your story! The person whose email makes the most compelling case will get the printer shipped to them, and hopefully some of that good old test passing magic will come along with it.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com203tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-88526010104905537862013-06-17T11:36:00.000-07:002013-11-25T07:37:50.069-08:00Glass for Captioning: First Field Tests<b>Glass for Captioning series</b>:<br>
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<a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/01/augmented-reality-captioning.html">Augmented Reality Captioning</a><br>
<a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/06/preliminary-impressions-of-google-glass.html">Preliminary Impressions of Google Glass</a><br>
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<b>First Field Tests</b><br>
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Last week I tried Google Glass out in the field for the first time. I've gotten a new pair now; Google was very helpful and accommodating when I told them about the optical flaw in my last pair and happily switched them out for a new one. There's still a little bit of glare underneath the screen, which they told me is pretty much inherent to the design, but it's much less than before, and the glare along the sides is gone, plus the smeary left edge has cleared up and the text overall seems crisper and less diffuse than before. I think my prior set just had a slightly misaligned projector or something. Absolute top scores to Google's customer service team, which was communicative, timely, and quick to move.
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There are still some frustrations when it comes to actually using Glass for captioning. Initial tests seemed to offer Hangout Screen Sharing as a good solution; the resolution was clear enough that about 8 lines of captioning were visible, very readable, with all of my carefully tweaked Eclipse display and font options on view, plus it would allow me to use all the realtime editing tricks I rely on every day to clean up misstrokes and define new words from my steno machine. It sounded like a slam dunk. When I was just writing a few experimental words for myself, it seemed perfect. Unfortunately, as I feared, when I started actually transcribing the professor in action, the amount of lag involved in refreshing an entire computer screen several times a second quickly tanked the experiment. This was a particularly slow and steady lecturer, but the display was consistently 10 to 20 lines behind my laptop's display, and sometimes it would skip whole swaths of texts in order to catch up to the present, only to fall immediately behind again. So much for that idea. Incidentally, my laptop was on good quality institutional Wi-Fi, and Glass was tethered via Bluetooth to my phone, using the connection from that same institutional Wi-Fi. Glass can connect to most Wi-Fi networks directly, but this particular one required an authentication type that wasn't supported, so it had to piggyback from the connection on my phone. I've also had some trouble connecting it to my 4G hotspot, but I want to fiddle with it some more before deciding whether it's Glass's fault or user error.
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So the next day I gave up the beautiful dream of lagless screen sharing and went to the fallback option: Hangout Chat. I set it up well before the class started, which was good, because currently Glass offers no way to turn off the little blips, bloops, swoops, and blats it makes while connecting to someone via Hangout. I really hope they offer a silent option soon; the bone conducting speaker makes the sound louder to the user than to anyone else in the room, but it's still clearly audible and potentially quite disruptive. By default, Glass displays video from whoever you're hanging out with, but I turned that off to save Glass's battery. So then it displayed my user icon, but that was a distracting background against which to view the text, so I set my user icon to a plain black rectangle. Then I muted Glass's own microphone and camera, also to save on battery life. This is what I wound up with:
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshotblankmuted.png" width=400>
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The Hangout Chat interface without text.
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshotnotbad.png" width=400>
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The Hangout Chat Interface with text.
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The two main distractors are the prefix of my username before every line of text that's sent (inescapable in this sort of text chat format) and the two prominent "camera muted" and "microphone muted" icons in the center of the lowest part of the screen. I think this is somewhat poor design, considering that new text starts at the bottom and is pushed upward, and that the very top of the screen isn't used by Hangout Chat at all. So rather than keeping the mute icons down at the bottom, interfering with the newest and presumably most important texts, why not put them at the top and out of the way?
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The battery was also a little disappointing. On the previous day, when I was screen sharing, it died completely after less than an hour. That was too bad, but I had higher hopes for Hangout Chat, which presumably required less juice. And indeed, its total life was about an hour and 40 minutes, but the intensely irritating low battery alert came on just about exactly halfway through:
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshotlowbattery.png" width=400><br>
<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshotlowbatterywithtext.png" width=400>
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So not only does the alert pop up when the battery's presumably only at 50% of its capacity, but the alert is an entire line of full-sized text smack in the middle of the screen. How does that make sense? What's wrong with a discreet little battery icon tucked away in the corner of the screen? I can only hope that as the UI is updated (which happens on a pretty regular basis, I'm happy to say), this will be fixed to be less disruptive. I'll also probably post a comment to the Glass Explorers' Forum. This is, as I have to keep reminding myself, a prototype device, and a lot can change over the next few months.
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But here's the most serious issue, which you can also see in the pictures above: Once an old line of text is pushed up to make room for a new one, it's suddenly severely truncated. So if you didn't manage to read the entirety of the text the first time around, it's going to be all but useless to you as soon as another line comes in. For captioning, where text can come in at a pretty solid clip, that is a big, big problem.
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshottruncated.png" width=400><br>
<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassscreenshottruncated2.png" width=400>
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This is the main thing that's keeping me from enthusiastically offering Glass to my clients. If all they've got to work with is one line of text, it won't be good for much except slow-paced one-on-one conversations, and if the battery is really only good for less than two hours (I haven't yet tested it with the microphone active, which would presumably reduce the battery life even more, even though it would potentially allow them to interact and even move around without me and my machine having to sit there at their elbow), that severely restricts the circumstances in which Glass will actually be useful.
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What about the future? Will Screen Sharing get less laggy? Will they remove the truncation from previous messages? Will they show the username the first time a message is sent and then allow it to be implied for subsequent messages? Will they condense alerts to icons and move them out of the way? Or will I have to commission special captioning Glassware to solve all these problems for me? I guess we'll have to wait and find out.<br>
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Oh, and one last thing. By request, a picture of me actually wearing Glass. Dork Factor: Significant.<br>
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<img src="http://stenoknight.com/glassmir.jpg" width=550>Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-41479868986746516892013-06-04T15:19:00.004-07:002013-06-04T21:44:25.678-07:00Preliminary Impressions of Google Glass<font size=-1>For background, <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2013/01/augmented-reality-captioning.html">read my first post on augmented reality captioning</a></font>.<br><br>
I picked up my Google Glass last Thursday. It's certainly an impressive bit of hardware, and I'm very excited about the possibilities for captioning, but of course it's still a prototype device; the consumer models won't be released until after a year of additional quality testing and user feedback. The first pair they gave me had an unresponsive touchpad, and the second pair (the one I have now) seems to have some kind of optical defect that results in a lot of light scattering and glare, which I didn't notice with the first pair. I think I'm going to have to go back to Google to see if they can either repair the problem or give me another pair. The light scattering is just obnoxious, though. It doesn't actually prevent me from using the device. The voice recognition is about as good as one would expect (which is to say, borderline okay when one speaks slowly and deliberately, but pretty terrible with casual speech); no surprises there. It comes with a nice clear plastic lens insert, which will be good to protect the user's eyes in potentially messy situations. It's more lightweight than I expected, and the interface is pleasantly intuitive.<br><br>
But the really exciting thing is that it seems to be caption-ready pretty much out of the box. I just started a hangout with myself, using my personal Gmail account on Glass and my professional Gmail account on my computer. My computer got video from Glass's camera (which was pointing over the top of my computer monitor, into my apartment's foyer), and Glass got video from my laptop's camera, which showed my own face wearing the admittedly dorky-looking Glass. I muted my laptop's microphone to test the sound quality of Glass's microphone and was impressed with its clarity, though of course we'll have to see how that alters depending on background noise and how far away the people we're captioning stand from the person wearing Glass. Best of all, though, when I typed into the hangout's chat window, the text came up instantly on Glass, with perfect clarity. So even though I haven't actually tested it with my steno machine yet, I think that as long as I use Plover or Eclipse with the Keyboard Macro setting turned on, I'll be able to send captions to Glass without having to commission any additional software. The Wi-Fi in the place I'll be using it is fairly reliable, but if it isn't I can always use my 4G hotspot as a backup. And if the microphone proves to be as good as it seems to be at first glance, I'll be able to caption remotely instead of having to stand next to my client, cramming myself into tiny spaces and generally making a nuisance of myself. The only downside is that I'll have to press "Enter" on my steno machine (which I've mapped to R-R, because it uses the two strongest fingers of the hands) after everything I write. But that won't be so terrible. I actually had to do that when I captioned a webinar two weeks ago, using Plover with the closed captioning feature built into <a href="http://www.instantpresenter.com/">InstantPresenter.com</a>. It's a little tricky to get into the rhythm of pressing Enter each time, but it's certainly not a dealbreaker. More concerning is that Glass's display is designed to be above and to the right of a typical user's line of sight, forcing the user to glance upwards whenever they want to read anything on it, which might result in some eyestrain after constant use. I also haven't tested the battery life yet, though I'm hoping that Glass's battery will be able to withstand at least an hour or two of constant video chat. It's all very promising. Now I just have to get that optical defect sorted out, and then start testing it out with clients!<br><br>
Our accessible cyberpunk future is so close, I can practically taste it.<br><br>
<img src="http://www.droid-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/google-glass1.jpg" width=600>Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-49817640850552172922013-05-21T11:00:00.002-07:002013-09-01T13:18:57.033-07:00Variables in Wireless CaptioningThe end of the semester is looming, and with it I'm taking on more work outside of my ordinary daily academic CART schedule. Last week I did an awards ceremony and a graduation ceremony, and yesterday I captioned one of the monthly <a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2013/05/20/songbooklpa-broadways-future-featuring-michael-cooper?nref=62993">Songbook</a> performances at the New York Public Library. All three of those events had one thing in common: Wireless captioning. In each case, I was given a partial script of the event, which I was able to feed line by line to the client's screen. Other parts were CARTed live, so I had my steno machine at the ready to switch off from line feeding when necessary. This necessitated a split screen view in Eclipse, which was very different from the <a href="http://youtu.be/bf2mbAoXfGU">clean, stripped-down view I like to use with my clients</a>. In addition, two of the events had multiple viewers, seated at a distance from one another, and the event organizers didn't want me to project open captions to a big screen at the front of the venue. Wireless captioning to the rescue!<br><br>
<img src="http://vortexeffect.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/galaxytab2-7.jpg?w=610"><br>
Samsung Galaxy Tab
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<img src="http://cdn3.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3443821/Microsoft_Surface_Pro.jpg" width=500><br>
Microsoft Surface Pro<br>
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I used my laptop to send the script and monitor my CART output, with pending translation display turned on to give me an extra <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/04/cart-problem-solving-lag.html">1.5 seconds of error correction</a>, since the client wasn't reading my screen and wouldn't be forced to read Eclipse's confusing markup syntax. Then I used <a href="http://www.streamtext.net/demos">Streamtext</a> to send the captions to web browsers on my Microsoft Surface and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (to replace my dear old Samsung Q1, now on its last legs and looking somewhat junky), as well as to the smartphones and iPads of any audience members who pointed their browsers to the caption feed's URL. According to the guy in the NYPL sound booth, there were about 15 people using their own equipment to view captions yesterday, which is probably a record at that particular event. Why Streamtext? Well, there are a few options for wireless captions, with pros and cons for each:<br>
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* Screen sharing apps such as <a href="http://www.screenleap.com/">ScreenLeap</a> or <a href="https://join.me/">Join.me</a>.
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* Peer-to-Peer connections such as <a href="http://www.eclipsecat.com/product/teleview-30">Teleview</a> and <a href="http://www.eclipsecat.com/product/bridge">Bridge</a>.
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* Free document collaboration services such as <a href="http://etherpad.org/">Etherpad</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs">Google Docs</a>.
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* Instant messaging applications such as <a href="http://www.google.com/hangouts/">Google Talk</a>.
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At these particular events, I didn't want to share my screen, since it was split into two unsightly panes, and because screen sharing is usually restricted to specific devices, while I wanted the captions to be accessible to any number of audience members without having to hook up their equipment individually. Screen sharing is also heavier on bandwidth than simple text streaming, doesn't allow the caption viewer to scroll backwards and review captions they might have missed, and is prone to lag, especially as more devices are added to a single screen. Peer-to-Peer connections such as Teleview and Bridge have a lot of potential, and many of my colleagues have used them, but I've been reluctant to use them much after experiencing several problems with freezing, broken connections, and incompatibilities with institutional Wi-Fi. Since reliability is all-important in a captioning situation where you're not on hand to troubleshoot potential problems with every caption viewer's device, I prefer to use server-hosted text streaming services. That way, if the connection drops on the user's end, they just have to refresh their browser once their connection resumes, and the captions start streaming again as usual. If the connection drops on the captioner's end, they have to reset their connection and then wait for users to refresh their browsers.
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That's not ideal, but better than peer-to-peer services, which require both provider and users to go through a synchronized handshaking process whenever either party drops a connection. Instant messaging applications are similarly limited to predetermined lists of users, which wouldn't have worked for me in this situation (though they've proven to be helpful as a stopgap during one-on-one CART when the text streaming service has a sudden outage and I know the user's IM identity). Additionally, instant messaging requires the captioner to press "enter" after every line of text, which slows the rate of captioning, and it doesn't tend to support script feeding. Document collaboration services also don't tend to support script feeding, though they can be useful in live captioning situations that don't require script feeding. However, the collaborative editing features can often prove to be more of a hindrance than an asset in most live captioning situations, and the interface isn't always as clean and simple as I'd like.
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So as of right now, Streamtext is my go-to service. It's server-hosted, reliable, supports line-by-line script sending, and can connect any number of users on several different devices by streaming the captions to a single URL accessible by nearly any web browser. It also offers customizable font and color settings, which can be set by the captioner or customized by the user. The only real disadvantage is that, like most good things in life, it costs a pretty penny, starting at $6/hour and increasing from there, depending on how many users are connected at a time. At times, my Streamtext bill has exceeded $400/month, and while it's deductible as a business expense, it hasn't been much fun to pay that bill, knowing that I might have been able to get by with a cheaper or entirely free service instead. Still, I've been burned too often by inconsistent services to want to switch from Streamtext without an extremely compelling reason.
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So what other variables are at play, besides the text streaming service? Well, if you're supplying your own devices to clients instead of requiring that they provide their own, you'll want to configure them properly. In my case, the Surface was easy; I just pointed Chrome at my all-purpose text streaming URL (<a href="http://stenoknight.com/nypl">http://stenoknight.com/nypl</a>, since I first set it up for use at the New York Public Library, and have been using it for various other purposes ever since), which redirects to <a href="http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=nypl">http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=nypl</a>. That way, as long as I set up my Streamtext job to point to a file called "nypl", users only have to input my short Stenoknight.com URL instead of the long, awkward Streamtext URL. I've put a link to the site on both my Surface and my Galaxy Tab 2, for quick and easy access. On the Galaxy Tab 2, I initially tried Streamtext with the default browser and then with Chrome for Android, but neither of them supported full-screen viewing, and I didn't like how much real estate was taken up by the address bar and browser UI, so I installed the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.mgeek.TunnyBrowser&hl=en">Dolphin Browser</a>, which supports simple toggling in and out of full screen mode. The result is a clean, simple text-only interface on both tablets, with customizable font resizing and seamless transitioning between portrait or landscape mode, to fit each client's preferences. One of the three events I captioned was held outdoors, so I was able to crank up the contrast on both devices, with large white text on a black background, to compensate as much as possible for glare.
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The last and ultimately most crucial decision was how to make the internet connection that would keep everything running smoothly. My preference when providing remote or wireless captioning is always to connect my captioning computer to a wired wideband Ethernet connection such as the one I use in my home office, but that's not always possible in every venue. At all three recent wireless captioning events, I had access both to institutional Wi-Fi and to the connection offered by my 4G wireless modem/hotspot, but my decision on which to use varied wildly with the circumstances. At the awards ceremony and the library gig (both indoors), the institutional Wi-Fi was strong and steady, faster than my 4G modem and more responsive, with significantly less lag time. At the outdoor graduation ceremony, however, the situation was reversed. The Wi-Fi signal was weak and patchy, dropping frequently and showing significant lag. My 4G modem, on the other hand, had a strong signal throughout, and I quickly switched all my devices over to it from the Wi-Fi during setup. The only disadvantage there, of course, is that the 4G modem has a limited range, and I was concerned that my client's connection would drop if the Galaxy Tab were brought up to the stage during the actual diploma-granting portion of the ceremony. My client decided to go without captioning for that part of the event, so it was never put to the test, but the range limitation is definitely something to keep in mind when choosing a hotspot-based internet solution over institutional Wi-Fi. I've heard of services such as <a href="http://www.connectify.me/store/">Connectify</a>, which claim to consolidate multiple internet connections as a sort of failsafe mechanism, but I haven't yet given it a try; definitely something to investigate now that the semester's wrapping up.
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So there are some things to consider for onsite streaming to multiple wireless devices at public events. Please feel free to share your own tips and tools, if you solve these problems differently! There's always something to learn in this business, and the technology is advancing all the time, so it's important to keep up to date as much as possible. As more people start carrying smartphones and tablets, essentially providing their own caption-viewing devices, I foresee a boom in open-URL wireless device captioning for public events, and we captioners will need to be able to offer it.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-35748650610364733242013-05-14T13:38:00.000-07:002013-05-14T13:38:01.928-07:00Former CART Client Wins NSF Fellowship!!CART providers are bound by rules of confidentiality not to disclose the names or details of people they've captioned for, but in this case my client graciously allowed me to use her name and link to her information. A few years ago, I captioned several classes (including <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/02/cart-problem-solving-latin.html">Latin</a>, one of my all-time favorite subjects) for Navena Chaitoo, an undergraduate at Fordham University up in the Bronx. Now she's graduating, and yesterday she informed me that she won a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to further her education in public policy and management at Carnegie Mellon University! From the article she sent me:<br>
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<i><a href="http://fordhamnotes.blogspot.com/2013/05/rose-hill-student-wins-national-science.html?m=1">“I was diagnosed with a severe-to-profound hearing loss when I was about 5 years old, and at the time, my audiologists relied on the latest medical studies to determine that I would probably never graduate high school,” said the Brooklyn native. “Ultimately, my parents knew better and saw to it that I had all the accommodations necessary to offset my hearing loss, which allowed me to be as successful as I am today.”<br><br>
[...]<br>
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Chaitoo will continue research she began at Fordham on the economic wellbeing of persons with disabilities in the United States, particularly the indirect as well as direct medical costs of persons with disabilities—a topic in which she has been personally invested.
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Navena is only one of countless examples demonstrating how important accommodations can be, and how much can be achieved if they're put in place. The communication access came from CART providers like me and the other captioners who've worked with her, but the brilliance, insight, and dedication all came from her. This woman is amazing, and I'm honored to have played a part in her success. I know she'll just keep going up and up from here, and I'll definitely be watching to see the great things she does in the future.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-917816618424793028.post-86002179118881176632013-05-07T12:52:00.002-07:002013-05-07T12:52:37.581-07:00Thresholds and ToleranceI'm not a fan of starting a blog post by quoting the definition of the topic in question; it's virtually always just a lazy attempt to co-opt some of the dictionary's presumed authority or credibility and doesn't add anything of substance to the author's argument. That said...
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<i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_tolerance">"Tolerance is the permissible limit or limits of variation in a measured value or physical property of a material, manufactured object, system, or service. [...] A variation beyond the tolerance [...] is said to be non-compliant, rejected, or exceeding the tolerance."</i></a>
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I'm quoting this definition because it refers to a specific technical meaning of an otherwise well known word. Most people aren't familiar with the word "tolerance" used in this sense, but it's a useful concept not just in mechanical engineering but in the provision of transcription services for Deaf and hard of hearing students and professionals. In my <a href="http://blog.stenoknight.com/2012/05/cart-problem-solving-series-sitting.html">CART Problem Solving</a> series, I addressed the popular misconception that a tolerance of 90% accuracy was acceptable, because most people think of 90 and 100 as rather large numbers that are pretty much equivalent to each other, even though language is such a fine-grained system that 100 words constitutes only about a paragraph of text, and a 90% error rate works out to an error in just about every sentence. I also talked about the ways in which human captioners are able to use lateral context clues to fill in the gaps of non-ideal audio conditions, while outside of a perfectly amplified, perfectly enunciated standard American accent, automated speech recognition systems go from almost adequate to laughably awful perilously quickly.
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Tolerance enters the captioning sphere in other cases as well. Speed, for instance; if a professor's average rate of speed is 160 words per minute (quite a bit below the typical rate of speech, which tends to be between 180 and 220 WPM), a stenocaptioner (AKA a CART provider like me) with a speed of 240 words per minute will be able to achieve virtually 100% accuracy, because any errors can be immediately caught and corrected. A text expansion provider (using a system such as C-Print or Typewell) may have a speed of 140 words per minute or so, which means that if the professor's rate stays completely steady all the way through, they will probably be able to capture a good 85% of what's spoken. Since they're human and not just a mindless speech recognition system, they will give preference to writing down important things (names, technical terms, relationships between concepts), and will try to make sure that the remaining 15% of speech that they're too slow to capture consists mainly of "Um", "Uh", "You know", repeated words, irrelevant asides, and inefficient phrasing that can be tightened up and paraphrased to use fewer keystrokes. In some cases, that will be enough. The professor's speed will never rise above 160 WPM throughout the entire class, and there will be plenty of chaff to ignore, leaving enough time to take down the important content, even though the provider's writing speed is lower than the professor's average rate of speech. By contrast, the stenocaptioner will probably choose to leave out the "Um", "Uh", and "You know" sorts of filler words for clarity's sake, but will not omit repeated words or attempt to paraphrase the professor's wording, no matter how inefficient it might be. Stenocaptioners are focused on providing a verbatim realtime stream, only omitting words that add absolutely no value to understanding, while text expansion providers are focused on tightening up whatever they hear so that it can be written in as few keystrokes as possible. So far, so good. This is a case where stenocaptioning and text expansion are more or less equivalent, and the difference lies mostly in whether the client wants the pure, unmediated words of their professors to interpret for themselves, or whether they'd rather have a condensed version of the information delivered in class, more along the lines of the bullet points on a PowerPoint slide.
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Change any of the factors in play, and the results will be very different. For instance, say the professor's average rate of speed is still 160 words per minute, but that's because his rate is 135 when he's writing formulas on the board (about half the class) and 185 when he's explaining what the formulas mean (the other half of the class). Or it's 140 for long stretches at a time, when he's lecturing on the information mandated by the syllabus, but it shoots up to 200 for brief moments, when he gets excited about a particular detail of whatever he's talking about. The stenocaptioner, whose top speed is 240 WPM, is still able to get 100% in all of these situations. The text expansion provider, on the other hand, will be able to handle the 135 WPM formula sections almost perfectly, but will start cutting or condensing words and phrases from the 185 sections, and will be forced to leave out over a quarter of the material from the 200 WPM sections. If this particular professor has a tendency to repeat words, insert lots of filler words, pause between sentences to take a drink of water, or otherwise speak in a lightweight, inefficient way, the text expansion provider might be able to deliver a workable portion of the class's important material, because there will be enough less important stuff they can cut out and still have enough reserve speed to write down the good parts.
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If, on the other hand, the professor is an accomplished speaker, who says precisely what she means in precisely the way she means it, if her lectures are a constant stream of dense technical jargon and precise, specific descriptions of how everything fits together, if there's no chaff or filler to cut out and no awkward repetitions to rephrase... The text expansion provider is out to sea. They've got to start cutting important material in favor of leaving in vital material, and that becomes a dangerous guessing game when it comes to the grade of the student they're transcribing for. Text expansion services acknowledge this to a certain extent; they tend to say that CART is recommended when the material is technical or highly precise, such as in the graduate and professional programs that I specialize in. And admittedly, there are some classes and some subjects and some professors where a 140 WPM typing speed, as slow as it is when compared to a stenocaptioner's 240 WPM typing speed, is enough to deliver most important material given in the class.
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The question is: How do you tell which situation you're dealing with? If you're a disability director and you're trying to decide between hiring a text expansion provider or a certified CART provider for a given student's schedule of classes, it may seem obvious to choose the former, since text expansion services are cheaper and more widely available. But have you audited the professors in all of the classes in question? Does their average speed always stay under that 160-180 WPM sweet spot? Is there enough extraneous speech to discard and paraphrase without losing important information? Are there ever spikes of higher speeds, and if there are, can you guarantee that none of that high speed material will appear on the test? Have you checked to make sure that there won't be any guest lecturers or student presentations during the course of the semester? Guest experts, since they're not used to speaking for students, tend to speak at 200 to 220 WPM or higher. One that I transcribed a few years ago spoke at 280 WPM, and I found myself starting to do the same sort of paraphrasing and chaff cutting that my text expansion colleagues do as a matter of course. I think I managed a good 90% to 95% of relevant material given in that lecture. But I didn't reach that paraphrasing threshold until I encountered a speaker at the high end of the rate-of-speech bell curve; for text expansion providers, it's their starting point. They don't have any speed in reserve, and if there's nothing extraneous to cut out, they start losing important material very quickly. Give them a 280 WPM speaker, and they're now losing a full 50% of everything that's spoken.
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Of course, you could make the argument that most students without hearing loss don't take in 100% of every lecture. They might daydream or nod off, experience a moment of inattention, miss a word or two here or there while skimming through their notes from the class before. Even without getting every word of every lecture, many students do quite well. But where's the cutoff? How many words can you lose and still receive equal access? Which words can you leave out and which must you absolutely leave in? Who do you trust to make that call? It all comes down to tolerance.Mirabai Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16494847224950297255noreply@blogger.com5