Long time no post, again. I've still been plugging away with my two hours of practice every day. I kept up with my routine of using the actual live news for my speedbuilding practice until June, when I started doing the Caption Masters Series. I didn't exactly test into it, I just signed up for it, figuring I was probably good enough to do it. That's been true in some senses; I don't have any trouble at all keeping up with the homework, but I have yet to pass a test. You have to get 98.5% accuracy first-pass on live broadcasts, and I'm not quite there yet.
So far I've practiced the news and the weather. I can occasionally get a 5-7-minute weather segment at 98.5% accuracy on the first try, which is pretty cool. The teacher suggested we use "smart writing," which involves dropping adjectives and other things that might not be super important if it keeps us from dropping things that are important. It's been pretty effective. On the one hand, it's easier because you don't have to write things verbatim; on the other hand, it's harder because it adds an extra level of things you're thinking about the whole time. "What phrase wasn't important? What don't I have to write? How could I paraphrase that to make it quicker?" Of course, verbatim is always your ultimate goal. But it's more important to convey everything loosely than to convey half of it verbatim. Unfortunately, it's a strategy that's going to work against me whenever I take the CBC exam.
I don't use the tripod anymore. I felt like I couldn't reach the machine, so I went back to putting it on my lap. I just use a little leather portfolio folder to give it about 3/4 of an inch of extra height and keep it flat. That seems to be working out okay. I still feel like I'm a little shaky 75% of the time in terms of "finding" the keys, but I'm doing a lot better in that area than I was before.
I have a ton of free time to do steno stuff now, but I don't do it. I did spend about an hour working on a list of 30 "to-do" items I had come up with in the past few months, though. Here's what I fixed:
-Defined "out-" as "O*UT," yet I still had ~50 words in my dictionary defined like RAED/O*UT.
-Finally went into my pre/suf table and deleted all the StenoMaster stuff I don't actually use - the integrated -able, -en, -ful, -ive, -ize, -ment, -ness, dis-, and -ly. Hopefully that will result in TM suggesting fewer of those, although I've already got so many defined it's kind of a mess.
-Deleted 300 entries I made using "DZ" for "-ing."
-Fixed problematic word endings with -lick, -rat, -line, -rid, -rig, -man/-men, -woman/-women, -ard, -son, and -gan.
-Updated my "ego-" to AOEG.
-Updated "TAIR" to "TA*IR" in 100 words.
-Decided to do LAM/NAIT, etc. and NA*IT for Nate; COMP/KAIT, etc., and KA*IT for Kate
-Finally got around to changing all 113 of my leftover "nk" words from "*NG" to "FRNG"
I came up with a couple more things to fix after I did that. I also just started defining conflicts. I think I've stayed away from them all this time because I didn't want to take the time to sit down and train the AI. But I defined one, and it picked up on it almost immediately, so I thought, what better time to work out the kinks than when no one can see them?
1.05.12
It's been a while since I updated. I'm still liking the tripod with my LS. I'd like to move away from it and go to a lapdesk at some point, but that's down the road when I've perfected my positioning. I think I'm making progress on that front, but it's definitely not dialed in yet. I've been working on my sitting posture, starting with getting comfortable in the legs and back, and adjusting everything else from there, on a daily basis. The past couple of days it's worked out pretty well.
I got probably about 3 minutes into my last piece, and then I was ready to try out a new strategy I've been planning to start for a while. I completely abandoned the speed "tapes." The VITAC book suggests recording national news and practicing to that, and that seems like a pretty solid strategy. I really need practice writing spontaneously, and it's great for practicing a variety of names and terms instead of the same ones for two months at a time.
The book suggests breaking the episode up into each individual story. First you listen to it in its entirity, and write down/practice any words you think might trip you up. I always come up with an alarming number of them, way more than I feel like I should have at this point. I've tweaked my theory so much though, I just don't have any of it in my muscle memory at all. Which is why I'm also going back through my theory book. That's something I've been trying to do for a long time, but I let myself get sidetracked with dictionary maintenance.
Speaking of which, I got a lot done there. I finished all of my P and B inflected endings, and did 2-3 other things that I don't remember anymore. I have yet more I need to do, but I'm going to try to do that during non-practice time.
After you run through the story without writing anything, you write the introduction alone until you've got it perfect, then the story, then the follow-up. It's awesome not having people blazing along at a constant 250 wpm anymore! I don't pick it up nearly as fast as I should; sometimes it takes me 2-3 hours just to get a 3 minute segment. But hopefully, you can't go wrong practicing at real speeds.
I'm up to at least 130 wpm on all of my Phoenix drills, with an average speed of 150. I've been using the drill book for 30 weeks so far. Only another 30 to go if I keep up at this rate..
For those of you following along, perhaps in your own dictionaries, here are the rest of the possible word-boundary errors I've fixed.
Final word parts:
light, ground, long, box, fish, hound, fight, shot, saw, bag, book, cuff, cap, string, sick, strong, break, sight, knife, pot, sake, proof, seed, spring, hood, cure, night, week, stop, pick, suit, shop, coat, drop, sack, paper, track, bite, lash, pipe, place, berry, play, lance, piece, field, spread, bug, bird, port, pit, beat, wood, weight, word, guard, bed
Instances that only affected one word:
heartthrob, hedgehog, henpeck, hitchhike, hoodwink, inkblot, ironclad, jackhammer, landlord, livestock, mankind, nightclub, paycheck, pinstripe, shoptalk, skyrocket, smokestack, spendthrift, sunroof, wisecrack, carefree, shipshape, sideswipe, switchblade, bedfellow, bellhop, jailbait, kidnap, netherworld, nosebleed, postpaid, postscript, snowplow, stopgap, teacup, wastebasket, watchdog, waterspout, wiretap, shopworn
I discovered that I was writing "fore-" and "fore" the same way (thanks StenEd), but I don't think I'm going to fix it. I also had a lot of problems with words that start with "up" (uphold, uphill, etc) and "air" (aircraft, airstrike, etc).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)