Now that I actually have time to update, I seem to be more interested in making notes about things I want to include. I was starting to feel like it was pointless because I never had time to write about anything. Maybe I'm just noticing more things now that I'm able to see more mistakes.
I picked up a cool tip from Kosmo's Korner, and it wasn't even the feature of the vlog. During one of the videos, he mentioned hitting "H" twice to mark two words next to each other, and it's an awesome hyperkey. Before when I wanted to global something, I had to navigate to the last word in the phrase, and sometimes I had to use Ctrl + left arrow to get there, and it was a huge pain.
Plus, even if I was at the beginning and I pressed "G" to global, sometimes it would only pick up the first stroke, even though it had combined two strokes into one word, and I had to hit escape and navigate to the end of the word, G, and then up arrow to pick up the first stroke. But now I can just type H, and it picks up the entire word; and if I hit it again, it picks up the next word, for as many words as I need! It's so much easier.
I had a weird problem where I couldn't get re-present (as in present again) to come out because "represent" is also a word. I tried manually writing the hyphen, so of course that didn't work. So I had to define RE/H-F/PRENT as "re-present." I also realized as I was going through a transcript that someone said "and you, Tara," and I thought they said a name I had never heard before, "Utara." There are so many names I haven't heard, and there are a lot of international students in that class. I didn't bat an eye fingerspelling "Utara," but I was so embarrassed when I figured it out later!
I learned A*B as "Alabama," but I changed it a long time ago to "an," with A*EB for Alabama. For some reason, I always think of Alabama as BA*EM, but that's not defined as anything, so when I'm writing I just have to delete it and write A*EB. And it finally dawned on me - why don't I just define BA*EM as "Alabama"? There wasn't anything strategic about using A*EB, so if it didn't work, there's no reason not to change it.
One of the things Word spellcheck catches that Eclipse spellcheck doesn't (probably because I don't have it set to) is repeated words. Sometimes I'll stroke my brief for "of the" and then I'll also stroke "the," and I don't write it when people repeat words like that, so there's no reason not to just define OF-T/T as "of the." After doing that for a long time, I finally thought, why not take it a step further? Because then I wind up writing "are the the," and I have to define "R-T/T" as "are the," but I could take all that out of the equation by just adding the the=the to my autoreplacements table, or making a text global for I I = I, both of which I did (because for some reason the I I=I didn't work in the table).
I come up with a lot of briefs, and they seem like a great idea, but then I totally forget about them, and down the line I think I need to come up with a brief for something, and stroke my idea, only to find out that I already made it. Sometimes I would put a new brief on my "to practice" list, but I never made it a routine, so I'm working on doing that now. I think it will help things "stick" a lot better.
Speaking of briefs, I learned DAOIGS for "diagnosis" in school, and I stroke it pretty much every single time when I try to write "diagnose," which comes up a lot more often than "diganosis." I decided to leave DAOIGS as "diagnosis" since that's what I was taught, thinking maybe it's ingrained somewhere, but I finally made "diagnose" DAO*IGS, and it's so nice not worrying about what's going to happen when I write DAOIGS anymore.
I also put in KPAOUNGS for communication and THAO*IVG for Thanksgiving. I have 30 different outlines for Thanksgiving, and I'm still writing it in ways that don't come out right. I put THA*FG in as a brief for it last year (and wrote it exactly 0 times), and that obviously didn't stick, so I'm trying THAO*IVG. We'll see if it conflicts with THAO*EVG for "thieving."
I had to change N-G from "inning" to -ing in, because I was stacking it like crazy. I think it might have something to do with gradually turning that minLR up, because I only just started noticing it. I still have it set below the default, though. I'm also stacking THAS a lot, but I'm not changing it from "that is" because I've written that about 15,000 times. I'm actually purposefully not making a lot of splitting-related entries, because I'm hoping to be able to reduce the splitting with the Gen O.
Showing posts with label Kosmo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kosmo. Show all posts
Tips from Kosmo
I think I've settled into a good work routine. I have 13 hours a week standard with classes, which seems to be the perfect number, and I fill in the rest with teleconferences and government meetings. I wasn't too thrilled about the government meetings, but I figured it would be good to work for companies that might have work during the off season; only after I accepted the offers did it occur to me that there probably won't be that much government work during off times. It's still a good standby to have, though.
Writing this post reminds me I think it's time to make some more three-stroke briefs. Apparently I've written avant-garde 987 times, but it doesn't seem like I write it enough that I would remember a brief for it. I tried to do briefs for five words last time, and only three of them "stuck." I've written "especially" 1700 times the three-stroke way, and since I made a brief for it four months ago, I've written it in one stroke 1800 times, so that's definitely the shining example.
"Agriculture" and "organic" were also successful. Now I'm going to try to remember "invitation" and "degrees," which didn't stick last time, and I guess I'll go down the list in order and do "avant-garde," too. I did start using the degree symbol when I write the weather, though, so that's one degree-related practice that stuck.
Another awesome trick I learned from Kosmo's Korner is the "join paragraph" macro. I knew you could join paragraphs, but I never thought of doing it while realtiming. There are tons of times, though, when I start a new paragraph, and then one or two sentences into the paragraph, someone else says something, and I wish I could stick those one or two sentences back onto the first paragraph. And now I can! It doesn't affect StreamText, but it does make the transcript look a lot better. It's a little bit corny, but it's like Kosmo says - it's all about making you look better.
I had a bit of trouble making it work because I only have one space after a period by default, but when the paragraphs joined, there were two. I had noticed that in editing, too, and it was really annoying, so I called support about it, but they didn't know what to do. Then I realized that at least during realtime, I was using a macro, so I could just program the macro to delete the extra space, which I did, and now it's perfect!
Writing this post reminds me I think it's time to make some more three-stroke briefs. Apparently I've written avant-garde 987 times, but it doesn't seem like I write it enough that I would remember a brief for it. I tried to do briefs for five words last time, and only three of them "stuck." I've written "especially" 1700 times the three-stroke way, and since I made a brief for it four months ago, I've written it in one stroke 1800 times, so that's definitely the shining example.
"Agriculture" and "organic" were also successful. Now I'm going to try to remember "invitation" and "degrees," which didn't stick last time, and I guess I'll go down the list in order and do "avant-garde," too. I did start using the degree symbol when I write the weather, though, so that's one degree-related practice that stuck.
Another awesome trick I learned from Kosmo's Korner is the "join paragraph" macro. I knew you could join paragraphs, but I never thought of doing it while realtiming. There are tons of times, though, when I start a new paragraph, and then one or two sentences into the paragraph, someone else says something, and I wish I could stick those one or two sentences back onto the first paragraph. And now I can! It doesn't affect StreamText, but it does make the transcript look a lot better. It's a little bit corny, but it's like Kosmo says - it's all about making you look better.
I had a bit of trouble making it work because I only have one space after a period by default, but when the paragraphs joined, there were two. I had noticed that in editing, too, and it was really annoying, so I called support about it, but they didn't know what to do. Then I realized that at least during realtime, I was using a macro, so I could just program the macro to delete the extra space, which I did, and now it's perfect!
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