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!

Task List: July

• Delete all entries that include -TD for words like "edited"
• Do 8 sections of the VITAC book
• Re-do the NJCaptions list of prefixes and suffixes
• Write through the conflict-finding sentences on the Phoenix site
• Delete unused briefs from my dictionary
• Global words/note errors in broadcast transcripts

6.15

     I am starting to show some progress on my piece again, although I don’t really feel any better about it.  I'm consistently getting to 250 wpm at the end, and I have even hit six strokes per minute a couple of times.  Both times were when I was trying very hard to go as slowly and write as cleanly as possible.  It’s so weird how I always wind up going fastest when I’m trying to write the slowest, and I write the slowest when I’m trying to go faster.

     I had time for about two more hours of dictionary maintenance today. I started by going back to the suffixes.  The general consensus on depoman was that I should have as many prefixes and suffixes as I could use, but I decided that I hadn’t done all of that work in vain.  I finished weeding out all the suffixes that needed to keep their asterisks, like the ones that are just words like "woods,"  and also ones that included –th and –v. I put all of those back in my dictionary.  Then I deleted all of the suffixes that started with DL- that I made when I went through the NJCaptions list.

     Then, I went through all 780 suffixes that were left and took the asterisks out of them.  Then I had about 800 suffixes that needed to be reintroduced into my dictionary, now sans asterisks.  As I put them back in, if there were any conflicts I mostly just didn’t enter the suffix.  I know a lot of them came from Mark’s dictionary, and those aren’t exactly vital for me to have.
     My plan now is that after I go through the VITAC book, I’ll go back through the NJCaptions list again and make suffixes and prefixes again, because I’ll probably want to make them differently than the first time around.  After I’ve done that I’ll have to go through the big list of conflict-finding sentences on the Phoenix site.

     After that I went through my dictionary and found all of the words that start with RI or TI or anything like that and either changed them or got rid of them.  The one problem I didn’t fix was that fact that StenEd teaches that DI should be used for di- and –dy, which doesn’t seem like a good idea.  But I’m not going to worry about that for now.

     Then I discovered that I don’t have to worry about the next four concepts in the VITAC book, because they’re already accounted for in my theory.  The last concept halfway was.  Since I use EN to start words, I’m not supposed to use it in the middle of words, but I do, so I had to go through about 250 entries that were in my dictionary and either delete them because I wouldn’t write them that way anyway, or change the EN to just N.
     The next thing I had to fix was the fact that I both started and ended words with EL, so I had to fix/delete 113 entries for that. I didn't have to worry about the next concept, but the last one in the "word boundary errors" section is a doozy. The book says to use ER for -er and -or, and to that end, gives you a list of 268 -or words that you should make sure translate properly in your dictionary. Based on how I break up words, it turns out most of these would involve a tucked R - activator, for example, is just ACT/VAIRT.
      Now that I think about it, actually, I'll probably just come back to the list another time. I want to go through the book and figure out what things I need to change in my writing before I go back to just dictionary-building. So that's the first section of the book "done." It took me 6 hours, and I still have 8 sections left.

6.13

     I am getting really good at fingerspelling "mastectomy."  I’ve got it defined 16 different ways in my dictionary.  I’ve done about 4 hours of dictionary maintenance today.  First I went through and fixed all the "-y" suffixes that had asterisks in them, like –ty, -ly, etc.  That was 2500 entries.  There were another 1200 I didn’t have to fix because I never got around to adding the asterisks to them in the first place.  That took up most of the time.  I was going to delete all the asterisks I added, but I couldn’t figure out a way to find them for anything else, so I guess I’ll just have to do those as I find them.

     Then I decided I ought to get the rest of my prefixes and suffixes in order before I went through more of the book.  According to the book, you’re only supposed to have "true" prefixes and suffixes defined as such, that is, ones that attach to root words that can stand alone.  Using the example from the book, stuff like "URE" isn’t supposed to get defined as a suffix because it's really just a word part and it might mess up other stuff. 
     I decided I should delete all those extra prefixes and suffixes I have in there.  I spent about an hour and a half going through the suffixes.  I decided to keep all the ones that are words, like "field" and "land" and whatnot, because that's how I make compound words, by adding asterisks to them, and I’m going to keep doing that.  That’s how I’ve always done it.

     I also decided to keep my special alphabets. I have a different way to write –by, -bi, -bee, -be, -bey, etc. for all the consonants.  That'll help with proper names and whatnot.  So, after I got through about 1300 of the suffixes, it occurred to me that I really do use a lot of those "word parts," and I think real captioners do, too, so despite what the VITAC book says, I might want to leave them in.  And I might have just wasted all of that time.
     Ever since one of my theory classes, I’ve had a table of 50 briefs I want to learn that I practice every day, either to memorize them (which usually doesn’t take long) or to get the fingering down.  For a while now, I haven’t been adding any new ones to the list because I wanted to incorporate the ways I’ve been changing my writing into the table so I could start actually learning them.
    I guess it’s a good thing I never got around to it, since I decided to unlearn that stuff anyaway.  Today I finally added a couple of of the "-y" suffixes to it: ten words each from –dy and –ry.  Then I remembered that I wanted to put the Phoenix-inspired changes I made to integrated endings in there first, so I had to figure out what to put in.  I wound up doing ten words each that end with –ling and –ned, since I have to remember to stroke the endings on those separately now.

Wishlist

This is the list of things I need to get done, roughly in the order in which I plan to do them.

• Go back and add inflections for -ty/-fy/-vy/-ny (only 1800 entries left!)
• Change how -rate, -dor, -mon, -lish, -gree, -ple, -thor, -nate, and all words starting with ex- are defined
• Write through the Phoenix website's Conflict Finder Sentences and fix all instances of word boundary issues
• Delete any entries where -d is defined as TD
• Re-write/global all 92k dictionary entries to catch inflections and match my current writing style
• Delete briefs I don't use that came from the StenEd dictionary
• Edit some broadcast transcripts and global words/note errors
• Investigate drag/drop options in Eclipse

Present Day

     I just got the Phoenix Fast Track to Machine Shorthand Speed book.  A couple of days ago, I spent some time reading through the introduction.  I agree with a lot of the principles and ideas, even though I learned StenEd writing theory, not Phoenix.  The author, Carol, talks about how important it is to have accuracy before speed so that you can build your muscle memory and rely on your fingers to write strokes accurately without having to consciously tell your fingers where to go.  I don't agree with Mark's strategy of getting something down for every word no matter how unreadable it is.  Like Carol says, when you do that, you're just training yourself to write things incorrectly.  You have to write them properly to build muscle memory.

     Carol also advises "trailing," or staying about four words behind the speaker so you can pick up on phrases you might have briefs for, and also so you can keep a steady rhythm.  She says students often incorrectly have bursts of high speed and then slow down.  I've noticed myself that I have that problem.  I write fast when I can, and then it throws everything else off, even though I try to keep a steady rhythm.  It's so hard not to try to keep up with the speaker and write as fast as I can, or to take advantage of places where I can speed up.  It's really interesting that Carol says the exact opposite thing that Mark does.  Mark says, "write fast, faster than you can, and accuracy at lower speeds will follow."  Carol says that speed is a natural outcome of accuracy, but accuracy is not a natural result of increased speed.

     That's how I've always felt.  I can't just write things as fast as I can, or it all comes out as slop, and I've always felt there wasn't any point in teaching myself to write slop.  I think Mark can do that because he's more of a court reporter.  I know he does, or has done, captioning, too, but I also know that out of all 5 years of results of the NCRA Realtime Contest that are listed on their website, he hasn't won a single one.  He usually finishes around 5th or 7th, although he did tie for first in one literary portion of the contest.

     The purpose of the Phoenix book is to eliminate hesitation, and I think it's going to be very helpful for me.  You practice columns of similar words, with unrelated words interspersed throughout so you can work on transitions, writing each word to the beat of a metronome.  I used that strategy before in school when the professor gave us a list of the thousand most frequently used words and had us practice them that way.  It did seem to help a bit with speed, and of course I got better at writing those words.  I'm excited to start improving my speeds on the words in the book, but there are 107 single-stroke exercises to go through.

     The first day I spent a lot of time on it and made it through the first nine exercises, but the second day I only got through five.  The book says to spend half an hour a day on it, but I don't have that kind of practice time, and Erik from depoman says 10-15 minutes a day is good, so I'm going to go with that.  In 10 minutes today, I only made it through two of the exercises.  At that rate, it would take me a month and half just to figure out what speed to start at on these exercises, and which ones I need to work on the most.  Maybe I'll have some extra time for it sometime.

     After the first day, I averaged all of my top speeds, and it was about 155.  I don't get to write a speed down unless I got that exercise with 100% accuracy.  Basically, I guess that means my realtime speed on new material is 155.  I knew that already, though.  I figured it was at about 160.  That sucks.  It makes me feel like I'm never going to get to 225, not any time soon, anyway.  This will be a good gauge for where it is, though, since I don't take tests, so I'm excited to see that start improving, too.

     I took the test to get into Caption Masters program, in January I think it was, and one of the suggestions the instructor had was that I add asterisks to all of my prefixes and suffixes.  That's great idea, but it makes me also want to add asterisks to word parts that aren't really suffixes, like the "mers" in "customers."  So I basically have to go through and re-define all 92,000 entries in my dictionary.  I'm trying to fix things as they come up, but unfortunately, when something like "-ry" comes up, and there's 1,000 entries I have to fix, it takes me a while to do it, and then all these other things like "-mon" come up and I just have this massive list that I feel like I'm never going to get to, and I use about half an hour of my practice time a day on it, when I should probably be actually practicing, but I don't have time for everything.

     Yesterday, instead of working on that, I decided to investigate the phonetics table.  I thought I would have to add a bunch of things to make it work, but I couldn't really think of anything I do fundamentally different from the StenEd theory, so I just tried to add a few helpful things that I tuck now, and then I turned on Translation Magic.  I had tried it a while ago, and it never really got anything right, so I turned it off until I could fiddle with it.  Today was the first time I did my speedbuilding practice with it turned on, and I love it!  I haven't had it come up with anything that I needed to alter my table for.  It doesn't always know what I was trying to write, but about 90% of the time it does.  The biggest problem I have is that it doesn't really catch things that I have briefs for, that I've misstroked.  But I guess you can't expect to to know about those, because they don't really follow the to phonetics rules.

     When I do my speedbuilding, I take a piece at 230 wpm, and I try to get it one minute at a time at speed.  I practice the minute until I can write it at 95% accuracy, and then move on to the next minute, and then I write both minutes together at 95% accuracy, then move on to the third minute.  It takes forever to go through a piece that way.  Maybe too long.  Maybe I should knock it back down a speed.  But I was getting things at 214 really easily, so I don't know.

     I've been working on this particular piece since March 27th, and I just started on the third minute today.  I'm focusing especially hard this time on writing everything slowly and accurately, without trying to keep up with the speaker.  I want to get my accuracy down pat and establish a rhythm.  I got up to 187 wpm on it today. I think it took me two weeks for the first minute, three weeks for the third, and one week to get them both, so we'll see what kind of progress I can make, if I can keep up with this strategy.