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.
Showing posts with label Names. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Names. Show all posts
Rejected
I got a rejection letter from one of the companies I applied to a while ago. I sent them a realtime sample from when I did meeting minutes for the water district. They said my accuracy was decent (98.7%), but they didn't want to hire me because I had too many commas. Commas! I just took it to mean that they're not looking to take any beginning CART providers under their wing, so to speak. They're only interested in hiring people who could go out and work with no modifications. Which is fine. But I really could've just written fewer commas, if I had known ahead of time.
It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.
I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.
On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.
I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.
But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.
It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.
I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.
On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.
I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.
But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.
4.20.13
I have had a couple of minor successes. I seem to be writing faster when I "talk to myself" during practice. It used to be always around 150, but now it's consistently getting up to 214. Maybe that's a sign of a faster writing mentality overall. I'm also getting better at realizing that a word probably isn't in my dictionary - or at least not the way that first comes to mind to write it - and fingerspelling it on the fly. I did a great job getting Adriatic and panacea like that the other day, without skipping a beat.
I also had the brilliant idea to start defining things that I often immediately dash, like cruise for crews. Crews is supposed to have an asterisk, and lots of times I'll remember that - right after I stroke cruise. So I defined "cruise -- crews" as "crews." I've done that with about 40 entries now. It hasn't actually helped yet, but it should in theory. According to the dictionary, the only stroke like that I've ever actually used is H-F D-RB, which would be me stroking a hyphen followed by a dash, which I wanted to translate as only a dash. Since creating it a month ago, I've used it 14 times. Apparently I write "hyphen dash" a lot.
I'm also trying to fix a problem where I'll write something, know or hear that a new speaker is coming up, stroke the >>, and then read that something in the previous speaker didn't translate properly. I have time to fix it, but not time to delete the >> and fix it, and without thinking, I just dash and fix it. It's weird, though. The new speaker isn't saying the correction. I have to just let it go. I'm past the point where it makes sense to fix it. So, what I'm trying to do is wait until everything tranlates out before I stroke the >>. I'm not having much success with that yet.
I finished all my -ia corrections, and now I'm working on 1086 entries that end in "i." I put most of these things on my list so long ago I don't remember exactly what was wrong with them anymore. Back in my "defining suffixes" days, I defined all the "-i"s as consonant + I + *P, so -ni is N*IP. I was really only intending to use it for name-building, but I use it for pretty much everything now. Unfortunately, nothing is defined that way, so it creates a lot of problems.
3.16.13
I started using the plastic case my LS came in as a lapdesk for the LS when I write, which is awesome. It's great not having to take anything extra to balance it on. I still haven't quite gotten my sitting position down perfectly. I feel like I have to write at speed for about 10 minutes before I can get into the groove, no matter how much other practice I do beforehand.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
Practice and Theory
I'm
still having major problems with my dictionary. So many conflicts are
caused by the StenEd theory. I'm still working to get an asterisk in
every word ending that's also a standalone word - Nate, Kate, date,
nation, etc. It really helps to see my mistakes live as I make them,
though. Previously, after every take I would go through and check my
mistakes, and make note of words I wanted to practice. But it's
different when you're trying to write "live" and you actually see the
mistake come up. It has much more of an effect, and I'm more likely to
remember next time I write it that I need to write it differently,
because I don't want that mistake to happen again.
I'm also writing a larger volume of material now, because I only write a show once and move on. I don't repeat the same show over and over for weeks, or even twice. Seeing just how many words are coming up incorrectly solely because they're not in my dictionary the way I want to write them has made me feel like I need to just go through the whole dictionary and re-write every word to make sure it's going to come out right. I keep a record every show of how many of those "wrote it right but it wasn't in my dictionary that way" words there are, and after 32 shows, I've got an average of .32% right now. It's not horrendous, but it seems like it should be a lot closer to zero.
I've been at the process of re-writing all the words in my dictionary for about 6 weeks now, and I've made it through 7,000 entries. Only a year left to go before it's done at that rate!
I've developed an entirely new theory on defining conflicts. I now define a lot of misstrokes as conflicts. I figure, if it was only going to be defined as "fun" before, what's the harm in having the AI choose between "fun" and "gun" since what I wrote wasn't the correct outline for anything, let alone "fun" or "gun," in the first place?
I am staying away from defining correct outlines as conflicts, though, and trying to come up with different ways of writing things instead. I occasionally stack "N" and "A," like with "taken a," so I'm trying to write "A*N" for "an," but it's not sticking at all. I even write five sentences every day with "an" in them, and most of the time I can remember the asterisk when I write the sentences, but it's been months, and I haven't written it properly once during the news.
Instead of my old practice of going through a take and re-writing each incorrect word five times (that took forever), now I just try to remember as I go through and count errors/make dictionary entries, to also think about whether or not I need to practice that word more. If I do, I add it to a list. I have a list of 58 words I write five times each at the beginning of each practice session. I keep a record of when I added them to that list, and make sure I write them for at least five sessions before I take them off, although I often leave them on for longer. As words get deleted from that list, I add new ones that I found while writing the news.
There are all sorts of words on the list, from names that were hard to write (Ezekiel Emanuel) and new ways of trying to write things (MEN/TO*R, since TOR is a beginning for words like "torment"), to old ways of writing things that I still haven't quite gotten the hang of (EN/M*I so words like it won't conflict with "my"). It seems like an insurmountable task right now to get everything squared away in my dictionary and in my memory, but I guess I'll get there someday if I keep plugging away at it.
I'm still practicing two drills in the Phoenix book at the beginning of every practice session, and my average wpm on all of them is up to 178.5. It's been stuck there for a few weeks for some reason. I think having that cushion to drop words during the news (which I only do when I have to, of course) might be interfering with what little speedbuilding rhythm I had going. Whenever I get discouraged with it, though, I can look back to when I started using the book a year and a half ago, and my average was only 115 wpm. I am improving, whether it seems like it or not.
In support of my theory that I need to re-write all the words in my dictionary, is one particular word: Demetrius. I had it defined 15 different ways, and not one of them was the way I would write it today. I was originally going to identify word groups that I write differently, such as words that end in "cy" or "gy," and re-write only those groups as I identified them. I realized, though, that the problem was much larger than that. Before that, though, I fixed 60 "-cy" entries, 260 for "-gy," and 160 for "-ta," which I now write with an asterisk.
I also had about 1,000 entries ending in "ly" that I had defined with a tucked -L, but that I would never write. Those were causing lots of problems when I misstroked the -L in a word, so I spent some time getting rid of them. And I finally fixed my "di-" so it wasn't the same as my "-dy," but darned if I can remember to write it that way yet.
I'm also writing a larger volume of material now, because I only write a show once and move on. I don't repeat the same show over and over for weeks, or even twice. Seeing just how many words are coming up incorrectly solely because they're not in my dictionary the way I want to write them has made me feel like I need to just go through the whole dictionary and re-write every word to make sure it's going to come out right. I keep a record every show of how many of those "wrote it right but it wasn't in my dictionary that way" words there are, and after 32 shows, I've got an average of .32% right now. It's not horrendous, but it seems like it should be a lot closer to zero.
I've been at the process of re-writing all the words in my dictionary for about 6 weeks now, and I've made it through 7,000 entries. Only a year left to go before it's done at that rate!
I've developed an entirely new theory on defining conflicts. I now define a lot of misstrokes as conflicts. I figure, if it was only going to be defined as "fun" before, what's the harm in having the AI choose between "fun" and "gun" since what I wrote wasn't the correct outline for anything, let alone "fun" or "gun," in the first place?
I am staying away from defining correct outlines as conflicts, though, and trying to come up with different ways of writing things instead. I occasionally stack "N" and "A," like with "taken a," so I'm trying to write "A*N" for "an," but it's not sticking at all. I even write five sentences every day with "an" in them, and most of the time I can remember the asterisk when I write the sentences, but it's been months, and I haven't written it properly once during the news.
Instead of my old practice of going through a take and re-writing each incorrect word five times (that took forever), now I just try to remember as I go through and count errors/make dictionary entries, to also think about whether or not I need to practice that word more. If I do, I add it to a list. I have a list of 58 words I write five times each at the beginning of each practice session. I keep a record of when I added them to that list, and make sure I write them for at least five sessions before I take them off, although I often leave them on for longer. As words get deleted from that list, I add new ones that I found while writing the news.
There are all sorts of words on the list, from names that were hard to write (Ezekiel Emanuel) and new ways of trying to write things (MEN/TO*R, since TOR is a beginning for words like "torment"), to old ways of writing things that I still haven't quite gotten the hang of (EN/M*I so words like it won't conflict with "my"). It seems like an insurmountable task right now to get everything squared away in my dictionary and in my memory, but I guess I'll get there someday if I keep plugging away at it.
I'm still practicing two drills in the Phoenix book at the beginning of every practice session, and my average wpm on all of them is up to 178.5. It's been stuck there for a few weeks for some reason. I think having that cushion to drop words during the news (which I only do when I have to, of course) might be interfering with what little speedbuilding rhythm I had going. Whenever I get discouraged with it, though, I can look back to when I started using the book a year and a half ago, and my average was only 115 wpm. I am improving, whether it seems like it or not.
In support of my theory that I need to re-write all the words in my dictionary, is one particular word: Demetrius. I had it defined 15 different ways, and not one of them was the way I would write it today. I was originally going to identify word groups that I write differently, such as words that end in "cy" or "gy," and re-write only those groups as I identified them. I realized, though, that the problem was much larger than that. Before that, though, I fixed 60 "-cy" entries, 260 for "-gy," and 160 for "-ta," which I now write with an asterisk.
I also had about 1,000 entries ending in "ly" that I had defined with a tucked -L, but that I would never write. Those were causing lots of problems when I misstroked the -L in a word, so I spent some time getting rid of them. And I finally fixed my "di-" so it wasn't the same as my "-dy," but darned if I can remember to write it that way yet.
Finally, another big list of all the word endings
I went through and added asterisks to: –rat, -lator, -seen, -lent, -tor,
-clear, -tha, -sell, -cell, -mist, -gan, -trick, -dance, -phone, ax-, -con, -YOU, -el, -tel,
-tal, -don, -lop, -ger, -yam, -mat, –ture, -tin, -ten, -ron, -ster, -band,
-kate, -nate, -yum, -date, -late, -tize, and -ual (yule).
StenEd: Y U No Be Conflict-Free?
I've hit a major roadblock in my speedbuilding, and it's really starting to become aggravating. I haven't made any progress in a whole year. I'm supposed to have been "graduated" by now! Ugh. All I can do is keep plugging away at it, I guess. I don't know what the big problem is with this 2-minute section, though. It's really starting to lose all meaning at this point.
I did finally accomplish something, though: I made it through the list of conflict-finding sentences! At first I was just going through it and if the sentence didn't produce a conflict, I moved on. But sometimes that was just because of a particular brief I had. So I took a closer look at what the sentence was trying to show me (that you shouldn't have the same outline for PER-, -PER and PER, for example) and made sure I wouldn't have any conflicts in any situation, not just the one presented by the sentence.
I discovered a lot of flaws in my own personal theory, and in StenEd, the above example being one of them. At the end of the exercise, I had a problem with: -con, -ran, -less, -fin, -den, -mine, -lean, -net, -lent, -rise, -set, -let, -size, -sit, -stance, -ate, -wait, -pal, -lay, -nut, -plain, -lies, -man, -jer, -win, est-, -til, -mit, Ron-, and -ster. A lot of them are easy fixes, like adding an asterisk to the word part and leaving the actual words as they are, and I didn't have to change a huge amount of entries. However, there were some word parts that took more work. They were, with number of entries I had to fix: -tic/tic/tick (200), -cal/cal/-cal (345), ter/-ter (277), -rate (113), -ton (115), and -ship (92).
Tick/tic/-tic was particularly problematic. TIK for tick, obviously, and T*IK for tic, but I couldn't do T-K for -tic because that's my "it can." So I went with T*K. The real problem is going to be remembering my resolutions for all of this stuff. Why couldn't StenEd have just actually been a conflict-free realtime theory, instead of being one "most of the time"?
With all the stuff I had to fix, I was beginning to think I should've just left the asterisks in all of my ending word parts, because now I have to try to remember which ones have asterisks and which ones don't. I tried to delete the vowels or do something other than just add an asterisk to make it easier to remember. Hopefully the number of ones I wound up just doing asterisks for is going to be small enough that I can learn them without inducing massive amounts of hesitation.
I also spent about half an hour going through all of my capitalized entries and forcing literal case on names like "De Niro." I already had most of them done, but I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed any and it would all be consistent.
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