I'm in a strange situation this semester. I have two classes over four days for the same student, and for whatever reason, that student often doesn't need CART for those classes. However, they don't notify the company, so I dutifully get all set up and ready to go every time, only to wind up with an extra hour and a half of free time on my hands. That adds up to six hours a week that I'm getting paid without having my time used up, so I've got a lot more time to work with this semester than I've had before.
I don't seem to get any more done than usual, but I do feel a lot more relaxed about things. At the moment, I'm booked solid for the next two weeks, which is a nice feeling. When I go into a week not having my normal amount of hours pre-booked, my schedule is totally up in the air. So far this semester I haven't had a time when I couldn't fill the hours by the end of the week, but it often comes down to booking something on Thursday for Friday, and it's stressful letting it go for that long. I could book something ahead of time for less money, but I'm experimenting with sticking to the rate I've set, and so far it's worked. I know I'll have to lower it for December and January, though, when there aren't going to be many classes to cover.
I thought about expanding my captioning hours during that time, but for now I think I'm just going to see what happens if I don't. I do average about two hours a week of captioning, so that will fill in the gaps at least a little bit. I've been doing a bit of government meeting work, but that's going to go away for December and January, too. I could send out "increased availability" emails to some companies that pay less than my rate but more than captioning, but I'm going to hold off on that for now, too.
I love the accuracy I'm able to get with CART. Even with captioning, my tran rate is usually 99.95% or better, and with CART it's typically 99.97% or better. And at least two-thirds of what didn't translate came out right anyway because of TM. I even get 100% all the time, and my wpm hits 300 quite a bit. My best average wpm for captioning is still around 215. I want it to be higher, but I don't get to practice captioning much. I write the news for four days straight, and I feel great about it by the fourth day, but then I have a week off from it before I do the four days again.
Showing posts with label captioning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label captioning. Show all posts
9.22.14
I've been coming up with briefs for some words that I felt like were taking me too long to write:
best practices - BIKTS
capacity - KAIPS
scenario - SAERN
criteria - CRAO*IR
apologize - PAO*LGZ
at the end - T*END (add DA*I for "of the day")
Bahamas - BA*EMZ
I couldn't believe how often people were saying "at the end of the day!" It takes so long to write out.
I have a new practice for when I can't make out much of what's being said, which can be a problem with remote work. Before I would just listen to see if I could catch any entire sentences or thoughts that made sense and write those, and leave out the rest. But now I write every word that I can hear, with a dash for any words I can't. I think it probably does actually help. Even if it doesn't totally express a complete thought, you can still get a sense of what the person's saying.
I still occasionally stroke "dun" when I'm trying to write "done," and I actually got to use "dun" the other day. The news anchor was talking about Facebook posts coming back to haunt you, and she said, "dun-dun-dun." I also correctly spelled tracheostomy, which I was pretty proud of. On the other side of the token, I had been doing a lot of Canadian meetings, and then I was captioning the news and the Pope started saying something in Italian, and I reflexively wrote "[ speaking in French ]". But then they said he was meeting with Rabbi Skorka, who I'd never heard of before, and I correctly guessed/fingerspelled "Skorka."
I love the Eclipse FB group, although as I learn more things it becomes a little bit less useful, since I already know a lot. There is one frustrating thing about it, though. It seems like whenever I come up with a problem, or something that would make my Eclipse experience better, and I'm pretty sure there should be a way to accomplish what I want, I make a post, and the only thing I ever get back is people saying, "Why would you want to do that anyway?" I guess I should be used to it by now, but somehow it's still irksome.
best practices - BIKTS
capacity - KAIPS
scenario - SAERN
criteria - CRAO*IR
apologize - PAO*LGZ
at the end - T*END (add DA*I for "of the day")
Bahamas - BA*EMZ
I couldn't believe how often people were saying "at the end of the day!" It takes so long to write out.
I have a new practice for when I can't make out much of what's being said, which can be a problem with remote work. Before I would just listen to see if I could catch any entire sentences or thoughts that made sense and write those, and leave out the rest. But now I write every word that I can hear, with a dash for any words I can't. I think it probably does actually help. Even if it doesn't totally express a complete thought, you can still get a sense of what the person's saying.
I still occasionally stroke "dun" when I'm trying to write "done," and I actually got to use "dun" the other day. The news anchor was talking about Facebook posts coming back to haunt you, and she said, "dun-dun-dun." I also correctly spelled tracheostomy, which I was pretty proud of. On the other side of the token, I had been doing a lot of Canadian meetings, and then I was captioning the news and the Pope started saying something in Italian, and I reflexively wrote "[ speaking in French ]". But then they said he was meeting with Rabbi Skorka, who I'd never heard of before, and I correctly guessed/fingerspelled "Skorka."
I love the Eclipse FB group, although as I learn more things it becomes a little bit less useful, since I already know a lot. There is one frustrating thing about it, though. It seems like whenever I come up with a problem, or something that would make my Eclipse experience better, and I'm pretty sure there should be a way to accomplish what I want, I make a post, and the only thing I ever get back is people saying, "Why would you want to do that anyway?" I guess I should be used to it by now, but somehow it's still irksome.
Clean Words
Just in time for my captioning work, Jeremy put up the list of dirty words that you could add to your "words that have been deleted from the spelling dictionary" file. If you don't have a word in your spelling dictionary, the Eclipse AI won't guess it for TM, integrated pre/suf, or anything else. All you had to do was paste the list into your file, and voila. I took an extra step, though; I wanted to text global all the words as {NULL} so they couldn't even possibly be on the screen for captioning.
It would've been a laborious process doing it by hand, but thanks to some playing around that I did for the IE (it's a long story involving importing/exporting dictionaries to use special keyboard layouts, and I don't even think I needed to do it in the first place), I realized that you can export a dictionary, edit it in Word, import it, and make changes that way! So all the times that I've wished I could "find and replace" all instances of something in a dictionary, I actually could have!
I used it to put = {NULL} after all the words, and also to change them to all caps since that's how they're going to look when I'm captioning, and I instantly had dictionary entries for the entire list. And there are some really bad words on that list, so I'm glad I'm protected now.
I also realized that for captioning, you want to have a lowercase "s" with your acronyms; like if they say there were multiple DAs, you don't want that coming out as DAS; it doesn't make any sense. So as I was editing and I noticed letters next to "s," I slowly just defined them with a lock case, but eventually I actually had time to write/define them all. I hadn't missed many, and it turned out to not take that long (I probably should've just done that in the first place, but I thought it would be more time-consuming than it was).
I had 1st defined as "first," which was really annoying. I don't know how that happened, but I definitely fixed it. I've also been defining common phrases like "10 or 15," "10 to 15," and "10 and 15" with the 10 as a numeral, because otherwise it comes out as "ten or 15," and I don't think about it fast enough to use my numeral trigger before the "ten."
According to my list of things I wanted to write about, I also spent some time paying attention to getting things like YA*RD and WI*CK in my dictionary as ^yard and ^wick, but I don't remember about that anymore. Probably a good thing to do anytime I'm writing something with an asterisk, expecting it to stick, and it doesn't. Maybe I'm not seeing them anymore because I get the delete space in there instead now.
I got into the suffix spelling rules and fixed it so I can't get things like "creativetivity," "establishmentment," and "streghtenenned" anymore, too. Really you would think the AI would be smart enough not to do those in the first place. I guess I don't have those things defined properly in the pre/suf table.
It would've been a laborious process doing it by hand, but thanks to some playing around that I did for the IE (it's a long story involving importing/exporting dictionaries to use special keyboard layouts, and I don't even think I needed to do it in the first place), I realized that you can export a dictionary, edit it in Word, import it, and make changes that way! So all the times that I've wished I could "find and replace" all instances of something in a dictionary, I actually could have!
I used it to put = {NULL} after all the words, and also to change them to all caps since that's how they're going to look when I'm captioning, and I instantly had dictionary entries for the entire list. And there are some really bad words on that list, so I'm glad I'm protected now.
I also realized that for captioning, you want to have a lowercase "s" with your acronyms; like if they say there were multiple DAs, you don't want that coming out as DAS; it doesn't make any sense. So as I was editing and I noticed letters next to "s," I slowly just defined them with a lock case, but eventually I actually had time to write/define them all. I hadn't missed many, and it turned out to not take that long (I probably should've just done that in the first place, but I thought it would be more time-consuming than it was).
I had 1st defined as "first," which was really annoying. I don't know how that happened, but I definitely fixed it. I've also been defining common phrases like "10 or 15," "10 to 15," and "10 and 15" with the 10 as a numeral, because otherwise it comes out as "ten or 15," and I don't think about it fast enough to use my numeral trigger before the "ten."
According to my list of things I wanted to write about, I also spent some time paying attention to getting things like YA*RD and WI*CK in my dictionary as ^yard and ^wick, but I don't remember about that anymore. Probably a good thing to do anytime I'm writing something with an asterisk, expecting it to stick, and it doesn't. Maybe I'm not seeing them anymore because I get the delete space in there instead now.
I got into the suffix spelling rules and fixed it so I can't get things like "creativetivity," "establishmentment," and "streghtenenned" anymore, too. Really you would think the AI would be smart enough not to do those in the first place. I guess I don't have those things defined properly in the pre/suf table.
Already Waiting for Summer
I did a lot of captioning over the summer. About the middle of July, I realized that if I didn't make any changes, I was going to have the same amount of CART work for fall semester as I did for spring semester, and I didn't like the idea of that at all. So I started sending out my resume to some companies, slowly at first, and then doing more as I wasn't finding any with rates that I wanted.
I wound up applying at 35 places, which, in hindsight, may have been a bit much, but I wasn't getting any confirmations on fall classes being available, so I felt like I had to keep going. I actually wound up getting more offers for classes than I could even take from my main company; it seems like they have more work now than they did in the spring.
So right now I've got 13 hours a week in classes from them, plus this month I did 3 hours a week of captioning (trying to take it down to 2 for next month), and then I'm pretty sure I could fill in the rest with non-class hours from the main company. But if I were only with them, I'd have to do captioning during the summer, which isn't really where I want to be. The company I'm with now pays considerably less than CART, but I could always look for another company.
But, if I can cobble together enough CART companies with work over the summer, I may not need to do captioning at all. So I'm trying to balance about ten companies right now, hoping that they'll have summer work, too. Two of them have a lot of government meetings, though, and I guess those aren't going to carry over into the summer, so it might not actually be helpful at all. It's tough balancing all of it and I wish I could just drop the captioning hours now, but I feel like I need to wait and see what happens during the summer before I do that. Summer is so far away, though!
I wound up applying at 35 places, which, in hindsight, may have been a bit much, but I wasn't getting any confirmations on fall classes being available, so I felt like I had to keep going. I actually wound up getting more offers for classes than I could even take from my main company; it seems like they have more work now than they did in the spring.
So right now I've got 13 hours a week in classes from them, plus this month I did 3 hours a week of captioning (trying to take it down to 2 for next month), and then I'm pretty sure I could fill in the rest with non-class hours from the main company. But if I were only with them, I'd have to do captioning during the summer, which isn't really where I want to be. The company I'm with now pays considerably less than CART, but I could always look for another company.
But, if I can cobble together enough CART companies with work over the summer, I may not need to do captioning at all. So I'm trying to balance about ten companies right now, hoping that they'll have summer work, too. Two of them have a lot of government meetings, though, and I guess those aren't going to carry over into the summer, so it might not actually be helpful at all. It's tough balancing all of it and I wish I could just drop the captioning hours now, but I feel like I need to wait and see what happens during the summer before I do that. Summer is so far away, though!
More New Stuff
Another new idea I picked up comes courtesy of Phoenix theory, via Jade King on her FB group. I think Phoenix doesn't use the asterisk for conflicts, and they teach the idea of stroking R-R after something there might be a problem with. So, mat might be MAT, and Matt would be MAT/R-R. I absolutely love it! I've used it for all sorts of things - Mayhew, Wei, Wie, Barr, Busch, Cannes, Pitt, Starr..the list could be endless! I'm fairly good about being able to use the asterisk for things like that, or being creative like KA*UN for Kahn, but there's only so much I can think of. As with all things, now the problem will be remembering which things I used R-R for. But if anything comes up frequently enough that I can actually remember it, it will be an easy stroke to use.
No one ever really said a.k.a. much in CART, but it seems to come up a lot on TV. Not only is it annoying having to fingerspell it every time, it looks weird in all caps when the rest of the sentence is also in all caps, so I came up with AIK/R-R as an outline for it.
I've also made briefs for a couple buzzwords that come up a lot - best practices (BIKTS) and takeaways (TA*EZ).
It took me forever, but a few weeks ago I finally figured out how to do credits properly. They're supposed to pop on in their entirity regardless of the fact that most captioning is roll-up and done in two or three lines. At first I thought I would just have a stroke with the entire caption as the definition, but that was still roll-up. Then I figured out how to read in a block file, but with the stations that do two lines, for example, only two out of three credit lines were showing up. I knew I could probably just ask the captioning company or a FB group, but I was determined to figure it out myself.
I finally happened upon the answer in the sports section of the new NJCaptions (now C2CC) captioner's manual. You can put a "position" tag in your stroke that reads the block file; and you put the pop-on as a script command in that block file, and voila! If you're doing an opening credit, you can put the position tag for the rest of the programming in its own stroke, and stroke that after you do the opening credit to put it back to two lines or however many you need. I feel so much better now that I can do the credits properly!
No one ever really said a.k.a. much in CART, but it seems to come up a lot on TV. Not only is it annoying having to fingerspell it every time, it looks weird in all caps when the rest of the sentence is also in all caps, so I came up with AIK/R-R as an outline for it.
I've also made briefs for a couple buzzwords that come up a lot - best practices (BIKTS) and takeaways (TA*EZ).
It took me forever, but a few weeks ago I finally figured out how to do credits properly. They're supposed to pop on in their entirity regardless of the fact that most captioning is roll-up and done in two or three lines. At first I thought I would just have a stroke with the entire caption as the definition, but that was still roll-up. Then I figured out how to read in a block file, but with the stations that do two lines, for example, only two out of three credit lines were showing up. I knew I could probably just ask the captioning company or a FB group, but I was determined to figure it out myself.
I finally happened upon the answer in the sports section of the new NJCaptions (now C2CC) captioner's manual. You can put a "position" tag in your stroke that reads the block file; and you put the pop-on as a script command in that block file, and voila! If you're doing an opening credit, you can put the position tag for the rest of the programming in its own stroke, and stroke that after you do the opening credit to put it back to two lines or however many you need. I feel so much better now that I can do the credits properly!
Briefs and Things
I have a couple things I've been working on, like trying not to repeat consonants. I think my theory is set up to react better, for example, to GAOI/YA/NA than GAOI/YAN/NA. It could be defined either away, but I'm trying to train myself to do it the first way, and I think TM will make better choices that way, too. It's a real problem writing things 50 different ways. Even though they're legitimate outlines, they're not in my dictionary that way yet, and they're not translating.
I've been seeing lots of areas where I can make briefs in things that get repeated frequently. For weather, they say partly cloudy/skies, mostly sunny/skies, pop-up showers, patchy fog, seven-day forecast, and hour-by-hour forecast. I've got briefs now for NBA, NCAA, NFL, and NHL. Even things that aren't specific like "umbrella" and "preliminary" seem to come up a lot.
I also finally sorted my dictionary by strokes and frequency, and I'm trying to learn briefs now for organic, especially, and invitation. Organic is sticking, and I've used it 168 times in the past 10 days.
Mostly I'm just working on getting used to the IE. I still haven't gotten it into a comfortable position. I rarely ever feel like I can just write on it. It seems like I have to really slow down and be super focused about what I'm doing, or everything comes out wrong.
I'm still having problems with the whole "one word, two words, hyphenated" thing, but that's probably something everyone has problems with. I think I'm getting better, though. When in doubt I used to just put an asterisk in the second word and hope it would work out, but I haven't been doing that as much lately. Now my go-to is just to write it as two words, and then when I edit the transcript later I figure out what it should've been and add it to my list of words to practice if it wasn't supposed to be two words. 8 out of 20 words on my list right now are from that category. The worst are the ones I can't use an asterisk to join, like shorthair.
Since the asterisk is farther away (or at least it feels that way) on the IE, I changed "we're" to WAOER. I think I've almost fully learned to do it that way instead of WAO*ER, but I keep trying to do YOUR and YAOUF and WAOEF without asterisks now, too. I guess I could change them all, but I'd really rather have WAOER be the exception.
I haven't had any luck at all learning SKP-P yet. I think I need a different method than just writing it five times a day, because that's not working at all.
I've been seeing lots of areas where I can make briefs in things that get repeated frequently. For weather, they say partly cloudy/skies, mostly sunny/skies, pop-up showers, patchy fog, seven-day forecast, and hour-by-hour forecast. I've got briefs now for NBA, NCAA, NFL, and NHL. Even things that aren't specific like "umbrella" and "preliminary" seem to come up a lot.
I also finally sorted my dictionary by strokes and frequency, and I'm trying to learn briefs now for organic, especially, and invitation. Organic is sticking, and I've used it 168 times in the past 10 days.
Mostly I'm just working on getting used to the IE. I still haven't gotten it into a comfortable position. I rarely ever feel like I can just write on it. It seems like I have to really slow down and be super focused about what I'm doing, or everything comes out wrong.
I'm still having problems with the whole "one word, two words, hyphenated" thing, but that's probably something everyone has problems with. I think I'm getting better, though. When in doubt I used to just put an asterisk in the second word and hope it would work out, but I haven't been doing that as much lately. Now my go-to is just to write it as two words, and then when I edit the transcript later I figure out what it should've been and add it to my list of words to practice if it wasn't supposed to be two words. 8 out of 20 words on my list right now are from that category. The worst are the ones I can't use an asterisk to join, like shorthair.
Since the asterisk is farther away (or at least it feels that way) on the IE, I changed "we're" to WAOER. I think I've almost fully learned to do it that way instead of WAO*ER, but I keep trying to do YOUR and YAOUF and WAOEF without asterisks now, too. I guess I could change them all, but I'd really rather have WAOER be the exception.
I haven't had any luck at all learning SKP-P yet. I think I need a different method than just writing it five times a day, because that's not working at all.
Earnest Captioning
I've started captioning in earnest now. I did 26 hours in May, 20 in the first two weeks of June, and I'm already scheduled for 30 in July. I wind up picking up a lot of shifts as things go along, though. I've worked on every day of the week, but mostly in the evening. I still like to keep morning/afternoon open for CART, since it pays better. I've captioned a variety of things; PBS shows, those shows where they tell you about stuff to do in the area, and even an infomercial. I didn't like that one at all. They talked so fast, and they kept repeating the same thing.
I mostly do news, which I'm not that fond of. It's awesome that they only talk for about 10 minutes, and then take a break, and then they're only back for a couple minutes before you get another break. Even if I caption an hour-long show, they're never on for a very long block of time. I don't enjoy the content, though. I like classes better, although classes can get pretty boring, and it's really painful writing for that long without a break.
I've been sitting down to get ready about half an hour before my show is scheduled to start, to give me time to get the IE adjusted if I need to move anything around, and pull up my briefs for the station, and the info sheet, and the live stream of the broadcast, and get my screen organized with everything where it needs to be. About half the time, I have to call in 10 minutes before the show to make sure the station can see the captions. And I've been trying to do about 10 minutes of prep on the current news.
My prep hasn't been too fruitful, though. About 80% of what I put in doesn't even get used. I recently switched over to just looking at the headlines, and then if they tease a story I'll see if I can find any info on it. I've only done that a few times, but it's worked out okay so far. I'm going to try maybe sitting down 25 minutes ahead of time instead of 30. It really starts to suck up a lot of time in your day once you get enough newscasts going that are only billable for 30 minutes, but you're losing an hour or more of your time to them.
I'm starting to feel more confident about writing the news, though. At first it was pretty scary, but it's not a big deal anymore. I do hit 300 wpm regularly, though, especially during the weather. My average speed for captioning is at 198 wpm, compared to 181 for CART. I think having to write so fast for captioning has helped me write faster on CART. I feel more confident about being able to get everything that's being said, anyway.
Sometimes the shows have scripts. I don't like that at all. It takes like two hours to prep an hour long script. I feel like I'm a transcriptionist. I could just enter some words and write it live, but I know it'll look a lot better if I go from the script. Eclipse is supposed to have a feature that puts a new paragraph after each period, but it doesn't work for me for some reason. I should probably call support and see what they say about that.
I mostly do news, which I'm not that fond of. It's awesome that they only talk for about 10 minutes, and then take a break, and then they're only back for a couple minutes before you get another break. Even if I caption an hour-long show, they're never on for a very long block of time. I don't enjoy the content, though. I like classes better, although classes can get pretty boring, and it's really painful writing for that long without a break.
I've been sitting down to get ready about half an hour before my show is scheduled to start, to give me time to get the IE adjusted if I need to move anything around, and pull up my briefs for the station, and the info sheet, and the live stream of the broadcast, and get my screen organized with everything where it needs to be. About half the time, I have to call in 10 minutes before the show to make sure the station can see the captions. And I've been trying to do about 10 minutes of prep on the current news.
My prep hasn't been too fruitful, though. About 80% of what I put in doesn't even get used. I recently switched over to just looking at the headlines, and then if they tease a story I'll see if I can find any info on it. I've only done that a few times, but it's worked out okay so far. I'm going to try maybe sitting down 25 minutes ahead of time instead of 30. It really starts to suck up a lot of time in your day once you get enough newscasts going that are only billable for 30 minutes, but you're losing an hour or more of your time to them.
I'm starting to feel more confident about writing the news, though. At first it was pretty scary, but it's not a big deal anymore. I do hit 300 wpm regularly, though, especially during the weather. My average speed for captioning is at 198 wpm, compared to 181 for CART. I think having to write so fast for captioning has helped me write faster on CART. I feel more confident about being able to get everything that's being said, anyway.
Sometimes the shows have scripts. I don't like that at all. It takes like two hours to prep an hour long script. I feel like I'm a transcriptionist. I could just enter some words and write it live, but I know it'll look a lot better if I go from the script. Eclipse is supposed to have a feature that puts a new paragraph after each period, but it doesn't work for me for some reason. I should probably call support and see what they say about that.
Scripting Graduations
I'm scheduled to cover three graduations, starting with two tomorrow.
I got scripts for two of them. I've never used a script before. I saw
someone use one once, and they told me a few things. I also watched the
two-hour AccuCap training video, so I at least saw what's possible
there, although nothing really stuck concretely since it wasn't relevant
to me at the time. I spent about five or six hours formatting the first
script. It took me forever just to figure out how to name segments
using script commands.
I also learned that copying and pasting from Word is not a good idea, after I had already edited the entire script. I had to go back through and take out all these weird little places where the tabs in Word didn't show up in the script, but when I pushed them through realtime, they were making this weird arrow. I had to look up how to format songs, because at one graduation they're playing the National Anthem, and at both they're going to sing the Alma Mater.
I had to put tons of professor names in my dictionary, and text global all kinds of stuff to make sure it's going to come out capitalized properly even if I don't have time to do it manually. I put a little note to myself in the spaces where someone is likely to talk and it's not scripted, so I'll have a little bit of a head's up that I need to start writing. My biggest worry right now about the whole deal is that I'm going to accidentally send out one of those notes!
I don't have a script yet for the first graduation, and it's at 1:30 tomorrow. If I have to just write it live, at least I kind of know the process since I've read the scripts for the other two.
I was able to use a cool shortcut I saw on the Eclipse FB group to help me out with scripting. I tested out how I'm going to arrange everything on the actual day, and it was tough fitting all the windows in, so I got rid of the notes display with Ctrl+Shift+F5, which was a huge help.
I also learned that copying and pasting from Word is not a good idea, after I had already edited the entire script. I had to go back through and take out all these weird little places where the tabs in Word didn't show up in the script, but when I pushed them through realtime, they were making this weird arrow. I had to look up how to format songs, because at one graduation they're playing the National Anthem, and at both they're going to sing the Alma Mater.
I had to put tons of professor names in my dictionary, and text global all kinds of stuff to make sure it's going to come out capitalized properly even if I don't have time to do it manually. I put a little note to myself in the spaces where someone is likely to talk and it's not scripted, so I'll have a little bit of a head's up that I need to start writing. My biggest worry right now about the whole deal is that I'm going to accidentally send out one of those notes!
I don't have a script yet for the first graduation, and it's at 1:30 tomorrow. If I have to just write it live, at least I kind of know the process since I've read the scripts for the other two.
I was able to use a cool shortcut I saw on the Eclipse FB group to help me out with scripting. I tested out how I'm going to arrange everything on the actual day, and it was tough fitting all the windows in, so I got rid of the notes display with Ctrl+Shift+F5, which was a huge help.
Captioning Success
I didn't get any captioning jobs in April, but I did get put on the calendar for a few hours in May. Classes ended in April, so I have more availability now than I put on the sheet for that company. I kind of don't want to take on too much work until I get and get used to the IE, though. I wanted to let the company know I do have more availability before May 15th, when they make the schedule for June, but it's looking like the IE might not even get here by then. I'm pretty much holding off on all new prospects until I get used to the IE, though.
It was kind of sad when my classes ended, but it's been really nice not being locked into those classes this week. I captioned my first news broadcast last Friday. News is totally different from CART. It's harder to write. You don't really ever get time to get your footing before they switch to a new story, and you never know what the next topic is going to be. It's a lot easier on my arm, though. It doesn't hurt nearly as much. It only goes for about 12 minutes and then you get a break, and then four minutes, break, four minutes, you're done. If you only caption for half an hour, it's over before you know it.
The prep is insane, though. There's so much to prep for on a news station you've never done before. I was hoping I'd get to stick with one or two stations that I would cover multiple times this month, but I'm doing eight different stations. You could spend all day prepping news stories, too. At least the weather is nice and predictable.
It's really hard to get back into the rhythm of just letting the mistakes go when I caption. I have so much more time to fix things in CART. With captioning, if I take a second to try to fix it, I wind up getting totally hung up and missing a bunch of important stuff. The flow is just totally different. Practicing doesn't seem to help, either. It seems like the only effective practice is doing it for real. It doesn't help that I only got scheduled for weekends in May, even though I'm available at 5:00 central every day of the week. I did pick up one show next Wednesday at least.
It's pretty exciting getting to caption the news. It's definitely a wider audience than one consumer. I feel important when I do it, but there's also a lot more pressure. It's really easy to let the pressure get to me and start messing up, so I just have to try not to think about it, and pretend I'm just practicing.
It was really bad the first time I did it. There were so many things I hadn't ever done before, like putting on credits and dialing into an encoder. It was terrible thinking about it. I didn't want to do it at all. But like most things, it wasn't so bad, and I'm really glad I have that income channel now that classes are over.
The pay isn't nearly as good as CART though, and I didn't get many hours in May, so for the entire month I'm making less than what I made for a week of CART. But it's still valuable to have, and hopefully as the summer goes on I can pick up more hours. I had better; if I don't, I'm actually not going to make any profit. If it keeps going this way, I won't even pay for the cost of AccuCap/the other equipment/phone lines. AccuCap was a one-time cost, though, so I guess either way, having captioning during the summer will pay off in the long run.
I've gotten disconnected on two out of five encoder calls that I've made. I don't know if it was my lines or a problem with the encoder, but I hope it wasn't my lines, because I don't know the first thing about trying to fix them. I've heard some people have better luck with serial modems, as opposed to USB ones, so that might be the first thing I try. I know I'm not going to get anywhere with calling the phone company, so I really hope it doesn't come to that.
I captioned a couple of budget presentations for cities/counties for my original company this week. They talked so fast without any pauses, it really hurt my arm. One of them even went on for three hours and 20 minutes. My right arm and hand didn't hurt too much though, so maybe something like that will be feasible once I fix whatever's wrong with my left arm. They have a lot of events that go longer than three hours, but I just can't take them. Three hours is my limit.
It was pretty much exactly a year ago that I took my first jobs for that company. I did a couple similar events back then, even. I think my writing was about a thousand times better this time. It felt totally different. Last time I was really out of my depth. It felt totally comfortable this time, though.
It was kind of sad when my classes ended, but it's been really nice not being locked into those classes this week. I captioned my first news broadcast last Friday. News is totally different from CART. It's harder to write. You don't really ever get time to get your footing before they switch to a new story, and you never know what the next topic is going to be. It's a lot easier on my arm, though. It doesn't hurt nearly as much. It only goes for about 12 minutes and then you get a break, and then four minutes, break, four minutes, you're done. If you only caption for half an hour, it's over before you know it.
The prep is insane, though. There's so much to prep for on a news station you've never done before. I was hoping I'd get to stick with one or two stations that I would cover multiple times this month, but I'm doing eight different stations. You could spend all day prepping news stories, too. At least the weather is nice and predictable.
It's really hard to get back into the rhythm of just letting the mistakes go when I caption. I have so much more time to fix things in CART. With captioning, if I take a second to try to fix it, I wind up getting totally hung up and missing a bunch of important stuff. The flow is just totally different. Practicing doesn't seem to help, either. It seems like the only effective practice is doing it for real. It doesn't help that I only got scheduled for weekends in May, even though I'm available at 5:00 central every day of the week. I did pick up one show next Wednesday at least.
It's pretty exciting getting to caption the news. It's definitely a wider audience than one consumer. I feel important when I do it, but there's also a lot more pressure. It's really easy to let the pressure get to me and start messing up, so I just have to try not to think about it, and pretend I'm just practicing.
It was really bad the first time I did it. There were so many things I hadn't ever done before, like putting on credits and dialing into an encoder. It was terrible thinking about it. I didn't want to do it at all. But like most things, it wasn't so bad, and I'm really glad I have that income channel now that classes are over.
The pay isn't nearly as good as CART though, and I didn't get many hours in May, so for the entire month I'm making less than what I made for a week of CART. But it's still valuable to have, and hopefully as the summer goes on I can pick up more hours. I had better; if I don't, I'm actually not going to make any profit. If it keeps going this way, I won't even pay for the cost of AccuCap/the other equipment/phone lines. AccuCap was a one-time cost, though, so I guess either way, having captioning during the summer will pay off in the long run.
I've gotten disconnected on two out of five encoder calls that I've made. I don't know if it was my lines or a problem with the encoder, but I hope it wasn't my lines, because I don't know the first thing about trying to fix them. I've heard some people have better luck with serial modems, as opposed to USB ones, so that might be the first thing I try. I know I'm not going to get anywhere with calling the phone company, so I really hope it doesn't come to that.
I captioned a couple of budget presentations for cities/counties for my original company this week. They talked so fast without any pauses, it really hurt my arm. One of them even went on for three hours and 20 minutes. My right arm and hand didn't hurt too much though, so maybe something like that will be feasible once I fix whatever's wrong with my left arm. They have a lot of events that go longer than three hours, but I just can't take them. Three hours is my limit.
It was pretty much exactly a year ago that I took my first jobs for that company. I did a couple similar events back then, even. I think my writing was about a thousand times better this time. It felt totally different. Last time I was really out of my depth. It felt totally comfortable this time, though.
Career Outlook
I had to practice to the news a bit to do the testing for the captioning company, and I realized that they talk really fast on the news. It's terrible. I just feel like I'm getting hammered. It's at least an average of 200 wpm. Some of my classes are like that, and I hate those ones. It's probably just because it hurts a lot to write that fast, though.
But it made me realize how much I like CART. Sometimes it's boring, but lots of times I get to hear about really interesting stuff. I've been more grateful now that I get to do CART. It's especially nice when people talk slowly and I can get almost every word out perfectly, at like 99.9% accuracy.
I've been trying to bring more of a captioning philosophy into my CART. Flow is especially important in captioning. Words are scrolling by super fast. I've been given this advice before, but I didn't take it to heart as much as I should have - the idea that if you make a mistake and you can't correct it right away, don't correct it at all, or it will be really confusing. You don't want to have a wrong word, and then 15 words later put the correct word. It won't make sense anymore.
It's also difficult for the consumer if you keep backspacing, like erasing a bunch of words and then writing them again. Plus, for me, it trips me up and slows me down to do that, anyway. So I've been focusing more on just letting mistakes go and not trying to fix them, especially if they're ones where the intended word can easily be inferred. It's really hard, though. Whenver I see a mistake, I want to pounce on it and fix it. But it's important not to do that if it's going to mean I miss some stuff that comes after it.
I'm trying to be more conscious about what I'm writing. My instinct is to write as fast as I can and as much as I can, but that stresses me out and causes me to make more mistakes. I do much better, and actually get more of the content, if I just relax and allow myself room to paraphrase if I need to.
The owner of the captioning company said that "newbie" captioners tend to start out getting around 2000 words per half-hour broadcast. My tests were between 2800-3000, and she said 3000 was what a veteran captioner would get. So I'm not leaving out too much. I'm surprised I'm even getting that much. I checked on some transcripts from when I practiced to the news about a year ago, and they were around 2200. I guess I am getting better, whether it seems like it to me or not.
It's hard for me to believe I really am a professional. I've been working at it for so long, and it seemed like I wasn't making any progress and I wouldn't ever get here. I wasn't fully confident in myself when I got my first job. But now I've passed the CBC and CCP, and passed tests to get hired at numerous companies. All I see is the mistakes I constantly make every day, and it makes it seem like I'm not good at this. But I get great feedback from the consumers. My skills must be solid.
I'm finally earning enough to make a living doing this, and I really do do it well. I just wish it didn't hurt so much! I feel like I could take on a lot more work if I weren't limited by the pain. It seems like I can work about 4 hours a day without being in complete agony, so that's where I try to draw the line. I get jealous hearing about people who can work for 8 hours a day without pain, though.
It's scary thinking about when I do start captioning. I blocked off anything before 5p CT for CART, so I'm only available to caption during nights and weekends. I'm covering a class right now that meets 4 times in 8 weeks at 6p my time, and it seems like my arm hurts way worse at 6p than it does in the morning, regardless of how much writing I've already done that day. I'm dreading having to write an average of 200 wpm at night.
I have to have some kind of income during the summer, though. I might be able to piece together 20 hours of CART a week during the school year (it hasn't happened yet, but hopefully I'll land more permanent classes next semester than I did this semester), but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting much during the summer. And you can't just work for a company during the summer; you have to be available year-round if you want summer hours.
It all takes so much time to put together! I feel like I'm on the right track at least, though.
The worst is having to CART 3-hour classes. For some reason that seems to be a lot of what I get. My arm just doesn't hold up for 3 hours. I can go for about 45 minutes before I start really running into trouble. On the one hand, I wish I could just not offer to take those classes, but on the other, I don't think I would get much work if I didn't do them. There's usually a 10-minute break in the middle, but that doesn't help much.
I have 3 hours of CART scheduled for Sunday morning. That will be my first time working on the weekend, so it should be interesting. I had this Tuesday off, so I guess that was my Sunday. It just occurred to me that I get paid 15% extra for working on the weekend. That's the policy that the main company I do work for has. I love that company! They're the best. I want to try to do as much work as I can for them, but the problem will be if other companies offer me full-semester classes before that one puts out their schedule.
But it made me realize how much I like CART. Sometimes it's boring, but lots of times I get to hear about really interesting stuff. I've been more grateful now that I get to do CART. It's especially nice when people talk slowly and I can get almost every word out perfectly, at like 99.9% accuracy.
I've been trying to bring more of a captioning philosophy into my CART. Flow is especially important in captioning. Words are scrolling by super fast. I've been given this advice before, but I didn't take it to heart as much as I should have - the idea that if you make a mistake and you can't correct it right away, don't correct it at all, or it will be really confusing. You don't want to have a wrong word, and then 15 words later put the correct word. It won't make sense anymore.
It's also difficult for the consumer if you keep backspacing, like erasing a bunch of words and then writing them again. Plus, for me, it trips me up and slows me down to do that, anyway. So I've been focusing more on just letting mistakes go and not trying to fix them, especially if they're ones where the intended word can easily be inferred. It's really hard, though. Whenver I see a mistake, I want to pounce on it and fix it. But it's important not to do that if it's going to mean I miss some stuff that comes after it.
I'm trying to be more conscious about what I'm writing. My instinct is to write as fast as I can and as much as I can, but that stresses me out and causes me to make more mistakes. I do much better, and actually get more of the content, if I just relax and allow myself room to paraphrase if I need to.
The owner of the captioning company said that "newbie" captioners tend to start out getting around 2000 words per half-hour broadcast. My tests were between 2800-3000, and she said 3000 was what a veteran captioner would get. So I'm not leaving out too much. I'm surprised I'm even getting that much. I checked on some transcripts from when I practiced to the news about a year ago, and they were around 2200. I guess I am getting better, whether it seems like it to me or not.
It's hard for me to believe I really am a professional. I've been working at it for so long, and it seemed like I wasn't making any progress and I wouldn't ever get here. I wasn't fully confident in myself when I got my first job. But now I've passed the CBC and CCP, and passed tests to get hired at numerous companies. All I see is the mistakes I constantly make every day, and it makes it seem like I'm not good at this. But I get great feedback from the consumers. My skills must be solid.
I'm finally earning enough to make a living doing this, and I really do do it well. I just wish it didn't hurt so much! I feel like I could take on a lot more work if I weren't limited by the pain. It seems like I can work about 4 hours a day without being in complete agony, so that's where I try to draw the line. I get jealous hearing about people who can work for 8 hours a day without pain, though.
It's scary thinking about when I do start captioning. I blocked off anything before 5p CT for CART, so I'm only available to caption during nights and weekends. I'm covering a class right now that meets 4 times in 8 weeks at 6p my time, and it seems like my arm hurts way worse at 6p than it does in the morning, regardless of how much writing I've already done that day. I'm dreading having to write an average of 200 wpm at night.
I have to have some kind of income during the summer, though. I might be able to piece together 20 hours of CART a week during the school year (it hasn't happened yet, but hopefully I'll land more permanent classes next semester than I did this semester), but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting much during the summer. And you can't just work for a company during the summer; you have to be available year-round if you want summer hours.
It all takes so much time to put together! I feel like I'm on the right track at least, though.
The worst is having to CART 3-hour classes. For some reason that seems to be a lot of what I get. My arm just doesn't hold up for 3 hours. I can go for about 45 minutes before I start really running into trouble. On the one hand, I wish I could just not offer to take those classes, but on the other, I don't think I would get much work if I didn't do them. There's usually a 10-minute break in the middle, but that doesn't help much.
I have 3 hours of CART scheduled for Sunday morning. That will be my first time working on the weekend, so it should be interesting. I had this Tuesday off, so I guess that was my Sunday. It just occurred to me that I get paid 15% extra for working on the weekend. That's the policy that the main company I do work for has. I love that company! They're the best. I want to try to do as much work as I can for them, but the problem will be if other companies offer me full-semester classes before that one puts out their schedule.
Captioning Progress
It turned out that Eclipse doesn't have an iCap encoder, which wasn't surprising. So I contacted the company that asked me to get connected first, and they said they would watch me write without the encoder connection. I did a couple of sessions with them, and they felt positive about it, so I got my USB modem and my second phone line, and called Eclipse and made sure I could connect.
It was a little rocky at first. I wound up being on the phone with Eclipse for 20-30 minutes. I think all I really needed to do was reboot the computer. I had already done it after installing the modem, but I think it just needed one more go. The modem was super easy to buy/install, and getting the second phone line was just a matter of having them turn it on. Easy as pie. Then I did a third test with the captioning company, this time connected to their encoder. I was only connected for about 10 minutes, but everything went fine.
I was surprised how easy it went with them - I just dialed the number, and poof, I was connected! I don't think I need an audio coupler or a mixer or any of that intimidating stuff you read about needing. My headphones connect wirelessly to the phone, and I think that's all I'll need. So I signed the contract, and I'm officially on board with that company. The only downside is that it doesn't pay nearly as well as CART. It's still considerably more than Caption Colorado, though, and I didn't have to sign anything saying I wouldn't concurrently work for other companies.
I haven't gotten any captioning jobs yet because they made the schedule for all of April on March 15th. I don't mind, though; I have plenty of CART work to keep me busy right now, especially since I'm still doing my data entry job. I officially put in my two weeks for that, though, and April 14th will be my last day there, which is pretty exciting. It was a great backup to have, but it's been a drag for a while.
I got on with another CART company, one that's been in the works since they contacted me in November. I haven't gotten any work from them either yet, though, so I'm not sure if anything's really going to come out of that. I also tested with a company in the UK a month ago. They still haven't graded it, but I'm pretty sure I bombed it, so I'm not expecting much there, either.
I added on another company that I do overflow work for. It seems like they have at least a few jobs a month. It doesn't pay as well as my main company, but I think it will be good to do some jobs for them. I could also look into captioning for the original CART company I started with. For captioning, they pay about as much as the new captioning company I just joined. I don't want to have my hands in too many things, though. I think it's best to let the things I have play out for now.
It was a little rocky at first. I wound up being on the phone with Eclipse for 20-30 minutes. I think all I really needed to do was reboot the computer. I had already done it after installing the modem, but I think it just needed one more go. The modem was super easy to buy/install, and getting the second phone line was just a matter of having them turn it on. Easy as pie. Then I did a third test with the captioning company, this time connected to their encoder. I was only connected for about 10 minutes, but everything went fine.
I was surprised how easy it went with them - I just dialed the number, and poof, I was connected! I don't think I need an audio coupler or a mixer or any of that intimidating stuff you read about needing. My headphones connect wirelessly to the phone, and I think that's all I'll need. So I signed the contract, and I'm officially on board with that company. The only downside is that it doesn't pay nearly as well as CART. It's still considerably more than Caption Colorado, though, and I didn't have to sign anything saying I wouldn't concurrently work for other companies.
I haven't gotten any captioning jobs yet because they made the schedule for all of April on March 15th. I don't mind, though; I have plenty of CART work to keep me busy right now, especially since I'm still doing my data entry job. I officially put in my two weeks for that, though, and April 14th will be my last day there, which is pretty exciting. It was a great backup to have, but it's been a drag for a while.
I got on with another CART company, one that's been in the works since they contacted me in November. I haven't gotten any work from them either yet, though, so I'm not sure if anything's really going to come out of that. I also tested with a company in the UK a month ago. They still haven't graded it, but I'm pretty sure I bombed it, so I'm not expecting much there, either.
I added on another company that I do overflow work for. It seems like they have at least a few jobs a month. It doesn't pay as well as my main company, but I think it will be good to do some jobs for them. I could also look into captioning for the original CART company I started with. For captioning, they pay about as much as the new captioning company I just joined. I don't want to have my hands in too many things, though. I think it's best to let the things I have play out for now.
First Quarter
I've been doing a lot more business CART now that I'm working for a new company. I get to cover lots of meetings, mostly about the status of various projects. It's really tough, because I never know what anyone's talking about. Every job is about a different topic with different speakers, and sometimes the meeting only lasts for 15 minutes, so I barely have time to get into any sort of rhythm.
One of my classes is cultural anthropology. The teacher uses a lot of what I like to call "$10 words"; one that sticks out is "tutelage." There's all kinds of weird terms, like patrilineal, matrilateral, Ju'/hoansi, ethnography, you name it. The teacher only talks at about 160 wpm, but it's tough keeping up with all the weird stuff that's not in my dictionary, or at least not in there the way I want to write it. It's kind of fun though to fingerspell something and then look over at the Auto-brief window and see if it was already in my dictionary or not. AB shows me a suggestion for the word in one place if it's already in there as something, and in a different place if it's not.
I don't have to edit the transcripts at all for this company (most of the time I don't even have to send one in), which is pretty cool. I still go through them for myself and identify problems/add words to my dictionary, though. I also run them through a Microsoft Word spellcheck when I'm all done fixing things, and I usually catch one or two more things I can change in my dictionary that way.
I was concerned that when I need to fingerspell something, I don't necessarily remember after the event is over that I had to fingerspell it, so it will never get in my dictionary. I couldn't find anything that would really help me search a tript for fingerspelling, so I came up with my own way of doing it. I go through the whole tript and find every instance of the stroke A* (which is my &A), and check for words I need to enter. Then I go through again and check for E* (which is &E). I figure most words probably had an A and/or an E in them, and call it good. I find a lot of first/last names that way.
I was actually getting backed up on transcripts that I needed to go back and look at for a couple weeks. If I had a repeat job for the same class/person, I would edit the transcript before that repeat job, but so many of them were just one-offs that I never had time to edit. I finally got them all cleared out today, though. It seemed like an impossible dream, but somehow it happened!
I'm kind of interested to get into captioning and hopefully have some commercial breaks. CART ends early a lot of the time (never during my anthropology class, unfortunately), but it can be non-stop writing for hours. It's really tough on my arm when I have to do that. If I could get in a few commercial breaks, I think it would help a lot with the pain.
One of my classes is cultural anthropology. The teacher uses a lot of what I like to call "$10 words"; one that sticks out is "tutelage." There's all kinds of weird terms, like patrilineal, matrilateral, Ju'/hoansi, ethnography, you name it. The teacher only talks at about 160 wpm, but it's tough keeping up with all the weird stuff that's not in my dictionary, or at least not in there the way I want to write it. It's kind of fun though to fingerspell something and then look over at the Auto-brief window and see if it was already in my dictionary or not. AB shows me a suggestion for the word in one place if it's already in there as something, and in a different place if it's not.
I don't have to edit the transcripts at all for this company (most of the time I don't even have to send one in), which is pretty cool. I still go through them for myself and identify problems/add words to my dictionary, though. I also run them through a Microsoft Word spellcheck when I'm all done fixing things, and I usually catch one or two more things I can change in my dictionary that way.
I was concerned that when I need to fingerspell something, I don't necessarily remember after the event is over that I had to fingerspell it, so it will never get in my dictionary. I couldn't find anything that would really help me search a tript for fingerspelling, so I came up with my own way of doing it. I go through the whole tript and find every instance of the stroke A* (which is my &A), and check for words I need to enter. Then I go through again and check for E* (which is &E). I figure most words probably had an A and/or an E in them, and call it good. I find a lot of first/last names that way.
I was actually getting backed up on transcripts that I needed to go back and look at for a couple weeks. If I had a repeat job for the same class/person, I would edit the transcript before that repeat job, but so many of them were just one-offs that I never had time to edit. I finally got them all cleared out today, though. It seemed like an impossible dream, but somehow it happened!
I'm kind of interested to get into captioning and hopefully have some commercial breaks. CART ends early a lot of the time (never during my anthropology class, unfortunately), but it can be non-stop writing for hours. It's really tough on my arm when I have to do that. If I could get in a few commercial breaks, I think it would help a lot with the pain.
Captioning Coming Up
I did wind up passing the CBC/CCP at better than 98% accuracy (I forget what it was exactly). I'm so glad I finally passed it. It feels great to know I'll never have to take another test like that again, and I'm one of only about 230 people in the entire country with the CCP designation. People think 96% accuracy at 180 wpm isn't good realtime, but it's harder than it sounds.
Out of the 15 CART companies I applied to in December, I wound up getting work from two. One has still only been a few hours, but I got some meetings and regular classes from the other. I was hoping it would be a lot more, but I guess they have more captioners than work. That pretty much put the nail in the coffin of my "remote CART as a career" idea. I've slowly been trying to work my way into captioning.
I bought AccuCap, and I watched the Eclipse webinar on it. There doesn't seem to be too much to worry about in terms of learning new things. I understand how to blank and/or pass, and I made dictionary entries for that as well as moving the captions around the screen. I've already got a dictionary set up where a new line follows all punctuation. I set up some speaker IDs for the reporter, announcer, interpreter, etc. I've got parentheticals for applause and other noises already.
I did get a good idea from the AccuCap webinar, which was to make a "dirty words" dictionary that has text globals for any words that I don't want to go out on the air. That way if I had something like "damn" and I didn't ever want that to go out, I could do a text global and change it to "darn." Then if TM changed something to "damn," or if "damn" showed up for any reason, it would just get changed to "darn." I haven't set up that dictionary yet.
The big hurdle is getting all the equipment I need to connect to an encoder. I got one land line in anticipation of getting iCap software. I couldn't believe all I'd need was an internet connection, but it turns out it's true. The iCap software is free, so I downloaded it and tested it to make sure it's communicating with Eclipse, and I seem to be good to go.
I asked about captioning at the CART company I'm getting some hours from, but they don't do a lot of captioning. They're looking into getting me started for it, but even if they give me the okay, their technical person said they're "almost exclusively" on traditional encoders that won't work with iCap. It seems like it would just be a lot of prep for not a lot of jobs. I'm going to give them until Monday to get back to me, though, and then I'm going to move on to the next thing.
The next thing is that one company said once I can hook up to an encoder I should let them know and they'll watch me write some stuff and we'll go from there. I'm not sure if they have an EEG encoder (for iCap) or not, but I'm going to call Eclipse and see if they have one so I can make sure my connection's working. If that company doesn't do iCap, I guess I'll have to move forward with getting another land line and the rest of the equipment I need to connect to traditional encoders. Only working for one company that can offer me a couple of classes a semester at best just isn't a secure enough career option.
It really took a lot of time to get the land line set up; I had to actually buy a cordless phone, which meant I had to research cordless phones. I wanted one that I could use with my Bluetooth-capable headphones that have a built-in mic. And then the cable company sent a new "gateway," which was a router and modem in one, so I had to get that set up, and set up the phone, and everything.
It all takes so much time! I'm glad I'm getting started on it now. Hopefully I have my foot in the door somewhere by the time these classes are over. The last day is April 30th - only two months away! And I probably won't even get paid for the preceeding week because it will be finals week or something. I don't like not having any work lined up for the summer, and not knowing if I'll even get any classes next semester.
Out of the 15 CART companies I applied to in December, I wound up getting work from two. One has still only been a few hours, but I got some meetings and regular classes from the other. I was hoping it would be a lot more, but I guess they have more captioners than work. That pretty much put the nail in the coffin of my "remote CART as a career" idea. I've slowly been trying to work my way into captioning.
I bought AccuCap, and I watched the Eclipse webinar on it. There doesn't seem to be too much to worry about in terms of learning new things. I understand how to blank and/or pass, and I made dictionary entries for that as well as moving the captions around the screen. I've already got a dictionary set up where a new line follows all punctuation. I set up some speaker IDs for the reporter, announcer, interpreter, etc. I've got parentheticals for applause and other noises already.
I did get a good idea from the AccuCap webinar, which was to make a "dirty words" dictionary that has text globals for any words that I don't want to go out on the air. That way if I had something like "damn" and I didn't ever want that to go out, I could do a text global and change it to "darn." Then if TM changed something to "damn," or if "damn" showed up for any reason, it would just get changed to "darn." I haven't set up that dictionary yet.
The big hurdle is getting all the equipment I need to connect to an encoder. I got one land line in anticipation of getting iCap software. I couldn't believe all I'd need was an internet connection, but it turns out it's true. The iCap software is free, so I downloaded it and tested it to make sure it's communicating with Eclipse, and I seem to be good to go.
I asked about captioning at the CART company I'm getting some hours from, but they don't do a lot of captioning. They're looking into getting me started for it, but even if they give me the okay, their technical person said they're "almost exclusively" on traditional encoders that won't work with iCap. It seems like it would just be a lot of prep for not a lot of jobs. I'm going to give them until Monday to get back to me, though, and then I'm going to move on to the next thing.
The next thing is that one company said once I can hook up to an encoder I should let them know and they'll watch me write some stuff and we'll go from there. I'm not sure if they have an EEG encoder (for iCap) or not, but I'm going to call Eclipse and see if they have one so I can make sure my connection's working. If that company doesn't do iCap, I guess I'll have to move forward with getting another land line and the rest of the equipment I need to connect to traditional encoders. Only working for one company that can offer me a couple of classes a semester at best just isn't a secure enough career option.
It really took a lot of time to get the land line set up; I had to actually buy a cordless phone, which meant I had to research cordless phones. I wanted one that I could use with my Bluetooth-capable headphones that have a built-in mic. And then the cable company sent a new "gateway," which was a router and modem in one, so I had to get that set up, and set up the phone, and everything.
It all takes so much time! I'm glad I'm getting started on it now. Hopefully I have my foot in the door somewhere by the time these classes are over. The last day is April 30th - only two months away! And I probably won't even get paid for the preceeding week because it will be finals week or something. I don't like not having any work lined up for the summer, and not knowing if I'll even get any classes next semester.
12.7.13
I was feeling pretty confident about things after the CCP/CBC exam, and I decided I couldn't wait around anymore for my arm to feel better. I applied to about 15 CART companies trying to drum up some real work. I got promising responses from a few. It's three weeks later now, and I've only actually done any work for one, and that's only been a couple of hours. I'm hopeful about getting some classes from another next semester, but I'm not sure it'll be a full schedule.
I'm starting to have serious doubts about my ability to make a career out of CART. I don't like having downtime. I'd rather be working. Like it or not, I'm about to have an entire month off. I may actually have to invest in captioning. The good thing about that is I can start any time; it's not dependent on semester schedules.
I've been having a problem where I keep writng -fy as FAOI, even though that's "fie" and -fy should be FEU. I had SUR as Sur for some reason instead of sur-, which caused a problem somewhere, so I fixed that. I wrote that Frozen was a "prison success movie," which was just weird. I guess it's good that it translated that way, but I certainly didn't remember that I'm supposed to write "princess" as PRIN/S*ES. Maybe I should change prison to PR*IN.
Jill posted a brilliant idea on depoman. Instead of just having "-ville" and "-borough" and whatnot just attach, she has them defined to cap the previous word *and* attach to it! I updated a few pertinent entries of my own to do that, and it's totally awesome.
I also joined the Eclipse group on FB, where I've learned some great tricks. You can use ALT + S/ALT + A to add a single word to your spelling dictionary instead of having to run a spellcheck which pushes you down to the next misspelled word whether you wanted to go anywhere or not, which is a lifesaver. There's a command to bring up your steno notes if they're not showing up on a transcript.
The most important thing I saw was a reminder to upgrade to Version 6.0.0.12. I was on .9, and I don't even think I knew there was another update. If I did, I didn't know it was a stable one. I upgraded, and it turns out they fixed the auto-brief window so it works in keyboard macro output! They fixed it around the start of the semester. I *so* wish I had known that! It would've been amazing. I've got it going now, but there's only one week left in the semester.
I haven't had time for dictionary maintenence for a while, but there was a period where I was making good progress on it. I decided it made more sense for ya'll to be YAL and -ial to be Y*AL, so I changed 961 entries. I was really used to doing -ial as YAL, though, and it's not going over so well in my writing yet. -cade needed to be KA*ID to avoid conflicting with Cade, but there weren't many of those. Similarly, -tate (141 entries) got updated to TA*IT to avoid conflicting with Tate.
-gate (162) had to be GA*ET, for obvious reasons. I was writing -ality as ALT and it wasn't translating, so I did 434 of those. Latin was defined as LANT, which made sense. I'm not sure I actually even write it that way, but I updated 86 -lant entries to be LA*NT. -rate words (465) weren't working as RA*T, although I thought I fixed that already. I went ahead and did 84 -fied words as FAOID and FID, so that should work no matter which way I do it.
BER is ber-, so I updated -ber (208) as B*ER. "-zation" words (273) weren't coming out properly. I think I decided they should be fine as STKAIGS, but I defined them all as STKA*IGS for some reason. I wanted my para- prefix (232) to be PA*R, but it wasn't defined. -cate (238) wasn't working as K*AT. YOR is yore, so -ior (84) had to be Y*OR. I'd probably write yore as YOER, though, so I'm not sure I really needed to do that one.
I'm down to only 13 more problems to fix, so maybe I can get them done over winter break.
I'm starting to have serious doubts about my ability to make a career out of CART. I don't like having downtime. I'd rather be working. Like it or not, I'm about to have an entire month off. I may actually have to invest in captioning. The good thing about that is I can start any time; it's not dependent on semester schedules.
I've been having a problem where I keep writng -fy as FAOI, even though that's "fie" and -fy should be FEU. I had SUR as Sur for some reason instead of sur-, which caused a problem somewhere, so I fixed that. I wrote that Frozen was a "prison success movie," which was just weird. I guess it's good that it translated that way, but I certainly didn't remember that I'm supposed to write "princess" as PRIN/S*ES. Maybe I should change prison to PR*IN.
Jill posted a brilliant idea on depoman. Instead of just having "-ville" and "-borough" and whatnot just attach, she has them defined to cap the previous word *and* attach to it! I updated a few pertinent entries of my own to do that, and it's totally awesome.
I also joined the Eclipse group on FB, where I've learned some great tricks. You can use ALT + S/ALT + A to add a single word to your spelling dictionary instead of having to run a spellcheck which pushes you down to the next misspelled word whether you wanted to go anywhere or not, which is a lifesaver. There's a command to bring up your steno notes if they're not showing up on a transcript.
The most important thing I saw was a reminder to upgrade to Version 6.0.0.12. I was on .9, and I don't even think I knew there was another update. If I did, I didn't know it was a stable one. I upgraded, and it turns out they fixed the auto-brief window so it works in keyboard macro output! They fixed it around the start of the semester. I *so* wish I had known that! It would've been amazing. I've got it going now, but there's only one week left in the semester.
I haven't had time for dictionary maintenence for a while, but there was a period where I was making good progress on it. I decided it made more sense for ya'll to be YAL and -ial to be Y*AL, so I changed 961 entries. I was really used to doing -ial as YAL, though, and it's not going over so well in my writing yet. -cade needed to be KA*ID to avoid conflicting with Cade, but there weren't many of those. Similarly, -tate (141 entries) got updated to TA*IT to avoid conflicting with Tate.
-gate (162) had to be GA*ET, for obvious reasons. I was writing -ality as ALT and it wasn't translating, so I did 434 of those. Latin was defined as LANT, which made sense. I'm not sure I actually even write it that way, but I updated 86 -lant entries to be LA*NT. -rate words (465) weren't working as RA*T, although I thought I fixed that already. I went ahead and did 84 -fied words as FAOID and FID, so that should work no matter which way I do it.
BER is ber-, so I updated -ber (208) as B*ER. "-zation" words (273) weren't coming out properly. I think I decided they should be fine as STKAIGS, but I defined them all as STKA*IGS for some reason. I wanted my para- prefix (232) to be PA*R, but it wasn't defined. -cate (238) wasn't working as K*AT. YOR is yore, so -ior (84) had to be Y*OR. I'd probably write yore as YOER, though, so I'm not sure I really needed to do that one.
I'm down to only 13 more problems to fix, so maybe I can get them done over winter break.
Headway
I'm finally starting to feel good about my realtime. Out of the last three news broadcasts I've practiced, my lowest accuracy was 98.83%. I'm starting to not get freaked out when I make a mistake, and be aware of what's being said while I fix mistakes. I still haven't gotten any work from the company I signed a contract with, though. I'd really like to get my feet wet and see where I stand on some actual CART work.
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
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