There was a post on the Eclipse FB group about being able to search the transcript for times when multiple words had been deleted, in order to help find things that needed to be globalled/worked on. It hadn't ever occurred to me before, but Julie pointed out that you could just search for the steno **. Duh! I started doing it a couple days ago, and it's been absolutely amazing.
It takes me five or six times longer to scan through a transcript now, but I'm also finding (and fixing) five or six times more mistakes than before, so it's worth it. It makes it really easy to see mistakes that you make repeatedly, and it's also easier to pick out patterns with stacking or splitting. I'm getting a *lot* more splitting than I was aware of. When I was writing and something would come out wrong, I wouldn't necessarily know why at the time, but I figured the most likely reason was that I stroked or missed an extra key. It turns out a lot of it is splitting!
I think there are lots of settings I can adjust on the IE to address splitting. One that I know about is minLR. I had tried to adjust it down to fix stacking, but it never worked, and I started getting noticeable splitting. I've been gradually turning it up every time I recognize splitting, but it turns out there were tons of times when I didn't know it was happening. I've been turning it up more over the past few days, and I think it might be causing more stacking.
I'm interested to really look into all the things I can tweak for splitting and stacking, but I'm going to wait until I get the Gen O. Then I'll call support and have them help me out.
Tons of other things are also coming from searching for double-deletes. It reminds me about words I knew I was consistently misstroking, but never seriously thought about changing, like TEPD. It should be "tend," but it translates as "tepid." Whenever I've seen it before, I thought, "well, it's a valid outline for tepid, so I'm going to leave it." But the odds are good that I would write "tepid" as TEP/ID, anyway, and I know it's come out wrong over and over again when I meant to right "tend," so I finally changed TEPD to "tend" and made T*EPD "tepid."
Another one I did it with was APS for "Annapolis." It's a great brief, and I do IPS for Indianapolis, too, but I frequently get "Annapolis" when I was trying to write "answer." When it happens, I just think "that darn Annapolist again" and delete it, so it doesn't show up in the transcript and I don't think about changing it. But when I found it this time, it didn't take long for me to realize that I should make A*PS "Annapolist" so that APS can just be "answer."
That's the real beauty of it. There are so many mistakes that I erase, so the consumer never sees them, but that means I don't see them to fix them in my dictionary, either. And I certainly don't remember any of them by the time I'm done writing. Another "hidden" thing that I can see now is briefs that I tried, but hadn't entered into my dictionary yet. I knew I had a brief for "Boca Raton," and BO*EK/RA*T made perfect sense, so I stroked it, but that wasn't right. I wrote out "Boca Raton" instead, and I would normally have no way of remembering I should go ahead and enter in BO*EK/RA*T, too. But this way I can see things like that and enter them.
And it's not just for briefs - it works for new ways of writing things that haven't been assigned to all the words yet, like SAIRBL for the "-sational" in sensational. I had really stopped trying to write things the short way, because they never came out right. But now at least if I write them and they're not in my dictionary yet, I'll know I can catch them later and put them in.
I'm also finding tons more words to add to my practice list. It's mostly not words that were difficult to stroke, because I often misstroked those and am able to add the misstroke to my dictionary. But what I am getting is reminders about words that I forget how to write, like "upwards." I could write it as *UP/WARDZ, UP/WA*RDZ, or *UP/WA*RDZ, but because it takes more effort to include the asterisk, the last time I wrote it, I just did UP/WARDZ, which is "up wards." So I put it on my practice list, and hopefully the week of reinforcement will be enough that I reflexively include the asterisk next time. Even though I know it needs to be there, the fact that I didn't put it in and had to back up to re-write it means it needs to be reinforced.
I've already recognized some misstrokes that I make a lot, but always erase, so I never fixed them, and I just keep writing them and having to delete and re-write them all the time, like REP/SHIP for relationship. I found that twice in one transcript, and then REG/SHIP in the next one. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was one that I get wrong all the time, but it never stuck with me long enough to define it.
So now when I edit a transcript for my own improvement (which I do with every event that I write), I follow these steps:
-Do separate searches for glued A and E to find most fingerspelled words
-Search for */*
-Search for untrans and unresolved conflicts
-Spellcheck in Eclipse
-Spellcheck in Word
I could also just search for * and I'm sure I would find even more strokes to fix, but I think correcting things that really tripped me up and forced me to delete multiple strokes is a good starting place for now. I've made 404 entries in three days using that technique!
Showing posts with label Problem Areas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Problem Areas. Show all posts
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.
Finessing
The only major problem I'm having with my writing right now seems to be stacking "and." I stack it with everything. People really advise against writing APBD, so I decided to change it to SKP-P. It's super easy to stroke, but the problem is I never do it, and I stack like three things with "and" on every single job. It's really annoying. Whenever I notice myself stack it, though, I'm trying to erase the mistake and force myself to write SKP-P instead. It doesn't seem to be working yet, but I remember when I felt like it was going to be absolutely impossible to write punctuation with both hands, so I guess I'll make it happen eventually.
I also randomly stroke the initial S sometimes, or maybe it's the initial and final Ss. I'm hoping that will stop with the new machine, though. And a lot of time, I'll accidentally stroke initial T when I mean to stroke S, and then I try to erase it but I stack the S and the asterisk, so I wind up with "it S." I haven't even trade to think of a plan for fixing that one. The obvious answer would be to change the definition for S*, but then I'd have to change the entire alphabet, and it seems to work all right for the most part, so I don't really want to do that. I have used things like S-PG for that alphabet before, but I seemed to get tripped up. I also get tripped up a lot with the asterisk alphabet, so maybe it doesn't matter which one I use. It is a lot easier to fingerspell when you're captioning and you don't have to worry about upper and lower case.
I'm pretty much guaranteed to stack "can you" at the beginning of a sentence, too. I haven't been able to train myself to be cognizant of that and stop doing it yet.
I found a huge issue with my awesome "speaker IDs in slop strokes" strategy. I wound up getting words like "bliss" coming up as crazy words because I had PWHREUS as a possible misstroke for TKPWHREUS. Of course, if it's something like TKPWHR-D, which could be misstroked as PWHR-D (BL-D), then it's not a problem, because I don't want that to be a word, anyway. At first I thought I would just deal with the words as they popped up, but then they started getting embarrassing. I was on air trying to write about a "fly ball," and the only way to keep it from coming out as "glioball" was to fingerspell it. Every time I wrote TPHRAOEU, it got auto-corrected to TKPWHRAOEU, which is apparently my prefix for glio-, not that I ever use it.
So I looked at the possible misstrokes, and identified anything like fl-, bl-, gr-, etc. that could actually combine with things to form a word, and then I looked at all my final bank combinations with those, and got rid of any words like fleck, Greg, etc. Then I bolded those initial combinations in my master list, and now whenever I add a secondary bank combination to the slop strokes, I check first to make sure it's not a word and get rid of it if it is. I'd rather have "fly" come out when I was going for the speaker ID for "Brian" than not be able to write fly at all.
I also randomly stroke the initial S sometimes, or maybe it's the initial and final Ss. I'm hoping that will stop with the new machine, though. And a lot of time, I'll accidentally stroke initial T when I mean to stroke S, and then I try to erase it but I stack the S and the asterisk, so I wind up with "it S." I haven't even trade to think of a plan for fixing that one. The obvious answer would be to change the definition for S*, but then I'd have to change the entire alphabet, and it seems to work all right for the most part, so I don't really want to do that. I have used things like S-PG for that alphabet before, but I seemed to get tripped up. I also get tripped up a lot with the asterisk alphabet, so maybe it doesn't matter which one I use. It is a lot easier to fingerspell when you're captioning and you don't have to worry about upper and lower case.
I'm pretty much guaranteed to stack "can you" at the beginning of a sentence, too. I haven't been able to train myself to be cognizant of that and stop doing it yet.
I found a huge issue with my awesome "speaker IDs in slop strokes" strategy. I wound up getting words like "bliss" coming up as crazy words because I had PWHREUS as a possible misstroke for TKPWHREUS. Of course, if it's something like TKPWHR-D, which could be misstroked as PWHR-D (BL-D), then it's not a problem, because I don't want that to be a word, anyway. At first I thought I would just deal with the words as they popped up, but then they started getting embarrassing. I was on air trying to write about a "fly ball," and the only way to keep it from coming out as "glioball" was to fingerspell it. Every time I wrote TPHRAOEU, it got auto-corrected to TKPWHRAOEU, which is apparently my prefix for glio-, not that I ever use it.
So I looked at the possible misstrokes, and identified anything like fl-, bl-, gr-, etc. that could actually combine with things to form a word, and then I looked at all my final bank combinations with those, and got rid of any words like fleck, Greg, etc. Then I bolded those initial combinations in my master list, and now whenever I add a secondary bank combination to the slop strokes, I check first to make sure it's not a word and get rid of it if it is. I'd rather have "fly" come out when I was going for the speaker ID for "Brian" than not be able to write fly at all.
Bits and Bobs
I've been covering a lot of techy stuff. People are always talking about Drupal, Java, Linux, servlets, HTML, RSS feeds, you name it. I feel like the fact that I know a tiny bit of HTML and tech-type stuff has helped me out. I'm always proud of myself when I get something like JSON right and think, "I bet some other CART providers wouldn't know what that is." The more teleconferences I listen to, the more wonky words I can get in there like syslog, nav, dev, etc.
Alan Peacock had a great article in the JCR about getting things like @ and # in your dictionary. I have @ in there, so that's not a problem, but I don't have anything for # yet. It never comes up in CART, but when I start captioning, it's going to be important.
I've been doing my speaker IDs as GL-[first initial of name] forever, and it was really becoming a problem when I had to do 5-30 new speaker IDs for every event, because each meeting has different speakers. The main problem was not only did I define all the IDs, I also had to define all the misstrokes for them. I thought there might be something I could do with the speaker ID table, but I wasn't really sure.
Then someone on the Eclipse FB group posted something about inflected endings and slop strokes, which was totally unrelated, but it reminded me: slop strokes! So I put all the misstrokes in as slop strokes, and now they physically *can't* come out wrong. All I have to do is define each misstroke for each initial once, and that's it! They're all set for every meeting I write after that. I'm still adding initials as they come up, but I have 36 so far.
A professor rattled off "Minneapolis, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, and even Moscow" the other day, and I was pretty relieved when they all came out perfectly. I have a great brief for Minneapolis (MIPS, which goes with IPS for Indianapolis), but the rest were just in there. I stroked out "heteronormative" the way I thought it should be and that came out perfectly, too.
I've been doing a lot of stroking things out the long way and hoping that helps them translate better. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Lots of times I think the short way was in there, but whatever crazy way I decided to do the long way didn't work. I did have to put "youse" in my dictionary the other day because it wasn't in there at all.
I turned my TM slider up to about 50%, but it was being too aggressive, so I dialed it back down to 29% based on some things I didn't want it to mess with. It does pretty well. I don't like it when it takes a word like "overly," which is just over + -ly and decides that was an untran because it wasn't in my dictionary. But that's not really a big deal.
As I go through transcripts, I still pick out words that I shouldn't have gotten wrong and add them to my practice list. It only has 12 words on it, but I'm at least that many transcripts behind on editing. I'm working on hitting "logical" with an asterisk for words like methodological and genealogical. It's really tough fingering for me, but there's got to be a distinction between "methodological" and "was the method logical."
I like to do my Phoenix speed drills every day, too. It's not even a "have to" at this point; I just like to do it. It keeps me grounded. And it's a little bit like a game. It's one way I can really see progress, and it helps me work on stuff I have problems with. I've even gotten a couple drills maxed out at 220 wpm, which is as fast as the free metronome program I use goes. I'm up to 185 wpm or higher on all the drills, and my average right now is 191 wpm.
Alan Peacock had a great article in the JCR about getting things like @ and # in your dictionary. I have @ in there, so that's not a problem, but I don't have anything for # yet. It never comes up in CART, but when I start captioning, it's going to be important.
I've been doing my speaker IDs as GL-[first initial of name] forever, and it was really becoming a problem when I had to do 5-30 new speaker IDs for every event, because each meeting has different speakers. The main problem was not only did I define all the IDs, I also had to define all the misstrokes for them. I thought there might be something I could do with the speaker ID table, but I wasn't really sure.
Then someone on the Eclipse FB group posted something about inflected endings and slop strokes, which was totally unrelated, but it reminded me: slop strokes! So I put all the misstrokes in as slop strokes, and now they physically *can't* come out wrong. All I have to do is define each misstroke for each initial once, and that's it! They're all set for every meeting I write after that. I'm still adding initials as they come up, but I have 36 so far.
A professor rattled off "Minneapolis, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, and even Moscow" the other day, and I was pretty relieved when they all came out perfectly. I have a great brief for Minneapolis (MIPS, which goes with IPS for Indianapolis), but the rest were just in there. I stroked out "heteronormative" the way I thought it should be and that came out perfectly, too.
I've been doing a lot of stroking things out the long way and hoping that helps them translate better. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Lots of times I think the short way was in there, but whatever crazy way I decided to do the long way didn't work. I did have to put "youse" in my dictionary the other day because it wasn't in there at all.
I turned my TM slider up to about 50%, but it was being too aggressive, so I dialed it back down to 29% based on some things I didn't want it to mess with. It does pretty well. I don't like it when it takes a word like "overly," which is just over + -ly and decides that was an untran because it wasn't in my dictionary. But that's not really a big deal.
As I go through transcripts, I still pick out words that I shouldn't have gotten wrong and add them to my practice list. It only has 12 words on it, but I'm at least that many transcripts behind on editing. I'm working on hitting "logical" with an asterisk for words like methodological and genealogical. It's really tough fingering for me, but there's got to be a distinction between "methodological" and "was the method logical."
I like to do my Phoenix speed drills every day, too. It's not even a "have to" at this point; I just like to do it. It keeps me grounded. And it's a little bit like a game. It's one way I can really see progress, and it helps me work on stuff I have problems with. I've even gotten a couple drills maxed out at 220 wpm, which is as fast as the free metronome program I use goes. I'm up to 185 wpm or higher on all the drills, and my average right now is 191 wpm.
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.
10.19.13
I'm still enjoying CART, although sometimes it can be pretty boring, and I look forward to classes where the instructors say more/faster so I don't have any downtime. And sometimes I have to shower after lunch, which kind of bugs me. But I think it's worth it. I wish I had more work. I don't have any classes at all on Fridays. But I'm only working for one company, so I haven't exactly run out of options on that front yet. I'm waiting until after the CBC/CCP exam on 11/1 so I can see how I feel about that before I reach out to more companies.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
PT: So Far So Not So Good
I decided not to try the Topamax. I don't really want to mess with any more meds, especially if it's not likely they're going to help, anyway. The physical therapist recommended some posture changes (don't arch my back so much; put my shoulders back more; tilt my head down) and some exercises to do to relax my neck and chest muscles, and strengthen my upper back muscles. She did some muscle work on my neck for a couple sessions, but she said I "wasn't responding like a normal case," since that wound up not helping at all. Last time I went I saw a different practitioner, and she said I have thoracic output problems, which is making my arm go numb.
She did some stuff that made my shoulder hurt, and suggested I do nerve flossing twice a day. That was a couple days ago, and my shoulder still hurts. So, so far, all I've managed to do is add an additional problem. Go physical therapy. But I'll keep going and see how it pans out.
It's kind of tough to adjust to my new writing posture. I have good days and bad days. I have lots of weird misstrokes. I was looking at my averages for my last 5 rounds of 8 shows, though, starting back on 4/24, and it goes 98.28, 98.31, 98.40, 98.6, 98.61. So that's got to signify some kind of improvement. I've been trying to slow down and really go for accuracy, and I felt like it might be leading to more paraphrasing, or leaving out an unimportant sentence here or there, but I'm actually writing 400+ more words per show than I used to, which just seems crazy.
When I stroked out RAOE/YOE/DAI/JE/NAIR/ROE the other day, I was pretty surprised to find that it translated perfectly. Guess I've written it that way before. It's nice when things like that happen. I used to not be able to remember to write "aide" at all. It would always come out aid, without thinking. But I'm actually writing "aide" now, so that's cool.
One thing that's not so cool is I've developed a problem with coming back for -G for -ing. At least once or twice a practice session, I hit -D instead of -G. I guess it's just easier, but it really messes with the transcript. I add that word to my "words to practice" list every time I catch it, though, so hopefully that will reinforce the -G.
I also tend to write "OFT T" (of the the) a lot. I've started defining phrases that way whenever I misstroke them like that, so I decided to be proactive, and I'm going through my dictionary, finding any "the" phrases, and defining them appropriately so there won't be a double "the" if I stroke it after the phrase.
She did some stuff that made my shoulder hurt, and suggested I do nerve flossing twice a day. That was a couple days ago, and my shoulder still hurts. So, so far, all I've managed to do is add an additional problem. Go physical therapy. But I'll keep going and see how it pans out.
It's kind of tough to adjust to my new writing posture. I have good days and bad days. I have lots of weird misstrokes. I was looking at my averages for my last 5 rounds of 8 shows, though, starting back on 4/24, and it goes 98.28, 98.31, 98.40, 98.6, 98.61. So that's got to signify some kind of improvement. I've been trying to slow down and really go for accuracy, and I felt like it might be leading to more paraphrasing, or leaving out an unimportant sentence here or there, but I'm actually writing 400+ more words per show than I used to, which just seems crazy.
When I stroked out RAOE/YOE/DAI/JE/NAIR/ROE the other day, I was pretty surprised to find that it translated perfectly. Guess I've written it that way before. It's nice when things like that happen. I used to not be able to remember to write "aide" at all. It would always come out aid, without thinking. But I'm actually writing "aide" now, so that's cool.
One thing that's not so cool is I've developed a problem with coming back for -G for -ing. At least once or twice a practice session, I hit -D instead of -G. I guess it's just easier, but it really messes with the transcript. I add that word to my "words to practice" list every time I catch it, though, so hopefully that will reinforce the -G.
I also tend to write "OFT T" (of the the) a lot. I've started defining phrases that way whenever I misstroke them like that, so I decided to be proactive, and I'm going through my dictionary, finding any "the" phrases, and defining them appropriately so there won't be a double "the" if I stroke it after the phrase.
7.28.13
I struck out at the EMG test, which I guess was a good thing. The neurologist doesn't think it's carpal tunnel or a pinched nerve. He said he'd "think about it" and I should wear the wrist brace at night for three weeks and then come back and see if he came up with any new ideas. I don't think I'm going to pay to make that happen. I scheduled a PT appointment for this week, so we'll see how that goes. The neurologist also wrote me a prescription to try Topamax, but I haven't gotten it filled yet.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
7.21.13
I did wind up calling the doctor about my arm, because it was really starting to be a problem. I got the runaround for a few days, and then they suggested I stop taking gabapentin and try Elavil. The first day I tried it was a disaster; the pain was so bad I went back to gabapentin right away. But after a week of that I was right back where I started before I took anything at all, and I decided to give the Elavil another shot.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
I had NALGS for national, which should've just been NARBL (NASHL). Nation is NAGS or NAIGS, but that doesn't really translate to national. I was trying to smush RB (PRAOERBGS) into "appreciation," I guess because it has a similar sound to precious, gracious, etc. which I write as RBS. It's not necessary, though, and it's a lot easier to just write PRAOEGS than worry about what fingers are supposed to be where on that bank. And I was also doing deposit as SDPOZ because of words like disappoint, destroy, etc. which start with SD. It's not necessary at all, though. DPOZ works just fine. It's a good thing I review takes and make note of things that are hard to write; sometimes they're only hard because I've been trying to write them incorrectly.
I decided I should write all consonant + ize endings with an asterisk, which the AI couldn't figure out at all, so I went through and re-wrote all 720 entries that end in -ize, consonant + or not. I also decided there was no reason not to end words in -IT, so I updated 488 of those entries; and I made sure all 161 -ca entries work properly with C*A.
7.6.13
I have a real problem with joined words like northward and
checkpoint. My brain just can't process fast enough that they're
supposed to be two words. All I have to do is write "ward" with an
asterisk and it will join with "north" no problem, but I just don't even
think about it. And then I have weird things where I think maybe it
should be "safe-guard" and I write it that way. I know it's safeguard,
but in the moment of trying to keep up with so many things, that's just
what happens. Every time I make either mistake, I add the word to my
practice list, so hopefully that'll start having an impact soon.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
Struggle
I wound up doing a lot of CART/captioning work for the first three weeks. I got to cover a lot of the floor sessions for a state House of Representatives, so that was really cool. Now that it's summer, though, there's basically nothing. I also learned that writing for hours at a time sucks. Even just going for an hour, I couldn't find a comfortable position.
I think there's definitely something wrong with my left arm. I've been trying all kinds of stuff, and it's driving me crazy. I can barely write it hurts so much. I went to a Relax the Back store and checked out some chairs. They were nice chairs, but they didn't help with the pain at all. I was able to pivot the armrests to pretty much anywhere I wanted, and using one just made it worse. So a good chair isn't going to solve the problem.
I found a nice adjustable chair for $13 at Goodwill, and it beats the folding chair with pillows I was using before, even though it's not terribly comfortable. The seat is actually short enough that I can use my tripod with it, so I've been trying that out. It's nice to be able to vary the height of the machine so easily, although it doesn't seem to be helping much with the pain.
I always feel like I'm really struggling when I write these days, and so many errors could be avoided if I could just get comfortable. I'm still practicing to the news, and I'm always surprised that my accuracy is still above 98%.
The whole thing is frustrating though, because it's really holding me back. I'm not ready to apply for more places until I have it figured out, and I'm so close to being able to make a living with this! I got a taste of it, and it was great, and now it sucks going back to low-paying ways of making money.
I've been working on "sub-" words, trying to get myself to remember that I want to write them as S*UB. My instinct is to put the asterisk in the attached word, but that usually doesn't work out very well. I actually wrote "subculture" properly during a job because of it, so that was a good moment.
I found out that "loon" wasn't in my dictionary at all. Crazy (no pun intended). I've been making good progress with the dictionary maintenance. 227 -ma entries corrected to MA*, 404 -ler as L*ER, 319 -gy which I guess I just needed to enter even though I haven't changed the way I write it, and the same for 2512 -ation. That last one was a project for a while.
I think there's definitely something wrong with my left arm. I've been trying all kinds of stuff, and it's driving me crazy. I can barely write it hurts so much. I went to a Relax the Back store and checked out some chairs. They were nice chairs, but they didn't help with the pain at all. I was able to pivot the armrests to pretty much anywhere I wanted, and using one just made it worse. So a good chair isn't going to solve the problem.
I found a nice adjustable chair for $13 at Goodwill, and it beats the folding chair with pillows I was using before, even though it's not terribly comfortable. The seat is actually short enough that I can use my tripod with it, so I've been trying that out. It's nice to be able to vary the height of the machine so easily, although it doesn't seem to be helping much with the pain.
I always feel like I'm really struggling when I write these days, and so many errors could be avoided if I could just get comfortable. I'm still practicing to the news, and I'm always surprised that my accuracy is still above 98%.
The whole thing is frustrating though, because it's really holding me back. I'm not ready to apply for more places until I have it figured out, and I'm so close to being able to make a living with this! I got a taste of it, and it was great, and now it sucks going back to low-paying ways of making money.
I've been working on "sub-" words, trying to get myself to remember that I want to write them as S*UB. My instinct is to put the asterisk in the attached word, but that usually doesn't work out very well. I actually wrote "subculture" properly during a job because of it, so that was a good moment.
I found out that "loon" wasn't in my dictionary at all. Crazy (no pun intended). I've been making good progress with the dictionary maintenance. 227 -ma entries corrected to MA*, 404 -ler as L*ER, 319 -gy which I guess I just needed to enter even though I haven't changed the way I write it, and the same for 2512 -ation. That last one was a project for a while.
2.19.13
I've developed a couple of new habits recently. Writing the same 10 minutes of a news show has allowed me to more easily identify words that give me trouble. I'm being a lot more "lenient" in terms of admitting that I have trouble with a word, and adding it to my practice list. It also gives me a chance to see lots of sentences where I wrote "an" as AN, even though I'm trying (unsuccessfully at this point) to write A*N.
I keep a record of every setence in which I wrote AN, and gradually add them to my daily practice. I write the whole sentence once, and then the phrase (i.e., "an extraordinary") five times. I'm finding that I never, ever get used to writing "A*N." It just doesn't feel comfortable. But I'm determined to do it. It's important to have a distinction between an, an-, and -en a. Once I'm comfortable with both the sentence and the phrase, I take it off the list and replace it with a new one. I have a mandatory 5-session minimum requirement on all the sentences, too.
It's really fun when names translate properly. I use NAO*EP for a "-ney" suffix, and I was able to write "Rodney" on the fly the other day, and have it come up even though it wasn't in my dictionary.
I finished re-writing/entering all the proper names in my dictionary. There were about 10,000, and it took me almost three months. Hopefully that will help them translate better now, though. I decided, rather than going through the rest of the dictionary, it would be more beneficial to go back to focusing on groups of words that I know I write differently than the way they're defined right now, so that's another thing I have to watch out for when I review the 10-minute takes.
In just 10 minutes of audio, I found issues with -lous, -rous, "yore" sounds (meteor, senior, etc.), and -mic. In fact, I discovered I had no idea how to write -mic. I have Mick, -mic, mic, Mc-, and mechanic, so it's tricky, but I think I'll remember -mic now. There aren't that many words with it, anyway; most words that end in -mic are written with a final IK.
I was able to go through those four sets pretty quickly, rewriting every word in the group to make sure it was defined the way I'm most likely to write it. That will be my first priority next time I find words like that, but until then, I think I'm going to go back to my pass through the theory book. I'll probably hit on some good word groups that way, and it's really beneficial to go back and see what fingering is tripping me up. The only problem is I've been writing with my steno machine on top of my theory book, so I'll have to find another book to write on.
I keep a record of every setence in which I wrote AN, and gradually add them to my daily practice. I write the whole sentence once, and then the phrase (i.e., "an extraordinary") five times. I'm finding that I never, ever get used to writing "A*N." It just doesn't feel comfortable. But I'm determined to do it. It's important to have a distinction between an, an-, and -en a. Once I'm comfortable with both the sentence and the phrase, I take it off the list and replace it with a new one. I have a mandatory 5-session minimum requirement on all the sentences, too.
It's really fun when names translate properly. I use NAO*EP for a "-ney" suffix, and I was able to write "Rodney" on the fly the other day, and have it come up even though it wasn't in my dictionary.
I finished re-writing/entering all the proper names in my dictionary. There were about 10,000, and it took me almost three months. Hopefully that will help them translate better now, though. I decided, rather than going through the rest of the dictionary, it would be more beneficial to go back to focusing on groups of words that I know I write differently than the way they're defined right now, so that's another thing I have to watch out for when I review the 10-minute takes.
In just 10 minutes of audio, I found issues with -lous, -rous, "yore" sounds (meteor, senior, etc.), and -mic. In fact, I discovered I had no idea how to write -mic. I have Mick, -mic, mic, Mc-, and mechanic, so it's tricky, but I think I'll remember -mic now. There aren't that many words with it, anyway; most words that end in -mic are written with a final IK.
I was able to go through those four sets pretty quickly, rewriting every word in the group to make sure it was defined the way I'm most likely to write it. That will be my first priority next time I find words like that, but until then, I think I'm going to go back to my pass through the theory book. I'll probably hit on some good word groups that way, and it's really beneficial to go back and see what fingering is tripping me up. The only problem is I've been writing with my steno machine on top of my theory book, so I'll have to find another book to write on.
New Focus
It seems like I haven't done anything drastic since September. I finished out the Caption Masters Series. I found it to be helpful in two major ways. First, it got me in the habit of striving for a stricter accuracy rate. I had been happy with 95% previously (why?), and the class made me realize 98.5% is a much more beneficial goal. And, as I mentioned before, the idea of "smart writing" was totally new to me. It's definitely the way you have to go with CART or captioning, so I'm glad I'm transitioning over to it now.
I responded to an ad advertising work for students at 185 wpm or better. I'm definitely in that category. It turned out to be a CART opportunity. I got to "shadow" a couple classes and turn in an unedited transcript. The speaker was very slow, and I knocked it out of the park. I barely had any drops, and certainly none that were vital to the content. I got better than 99% accuracy on what I wrote. I never heard back from the company after I sent in my transcripts, which I was pretty disappointed about, but there are plenty of companies out there to apply with when I feel like I've got a product worth selling.
However, that experience was also greatly beneficial in that it gave me an opportunity to feel like I was writing for a viewer, not just for practice. I realized that when I write for a viewer, I've got to look at what I'm writing. I can't just have mistakes going out willy-nilly, even if my accuracy rate is 98% or better. And I've got to practice fingerspelling, not just in general, but specifically while I'm writing. I had never tried to do it before. If I heard a proper name, I'd just stroke it out however I thought best, then during review I'd count it as an error and enter it in my dictionary.
That's not going to fly on air, or with a student. I need to be able to fingerspell things when I hear them, and not just that, but keep paying attention to what's being said as I'm fingerspelling so I can write that, too. One of my main focuses in practice now is to watch the screen, catch mistakes as I make them, dash, and fingerspell. I have a huge hangup with seeing a word that didn't translate (either because I stroked it incorrectly, or because it's just not in my dictionary the way I just decided it should be written), and stopping and completely ignoring what's said after it so I can write it 2-3 more times and see if I can get it to come up right.
So very wrong! The client doesn't want to see 3-4 weird, wrong versions of a word someone said. At best, I need to dash it, fingerspell it, and move on - at worst, I need to just move on. It's tough stuff, though. Just watching the screen alone is a challenge. It slows me down mentally. It's taxing to think about how to write things when I'm also reading what I just wrote and listening to what I need to write next.
The third thing I'm focusing on right now is drops. I have a couple of problem areas. Often when a person's name and title are given, I completely lose it and write only their first name. That's not acceptable. The client needs to know who that person is.
I also have hangups every now and then where I'll get lost, frustrated, and just completely stop writing for about a sentence. I feel like I just need to focus on composure. Aside from that, though, my accuracy's usually pretty good. I've been practicing to a rotation of 30 minutes each of ABC World News, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, and a local news show. I'm only dropping one or two important titles/facts per show, and my accuracy is almost always above 98%. I feel like I am getting close to having a marketable product.
Whew, that took forever! About three hours, if you can believe it. I really shouldn't go such a long time without updating!
I responded to an ad advertising work for students at 185 wpm or better. I'm definitely in that category. It turned out to be a CART opportunity. I got to "shadow" a couple classes and turn in an unedited transcript. The speaker was very slow, and I knocked it out of the park. I barely had any drops, and certainly none that were vital to the content. I got better than 99% accuracy on what I wrote. I never heard back from the company after I sent in my transcripts, which I was pretty disappointed about, but there are plenty of companies out there to apply with when I feel like I've got a product worth selling.
However, that experience was also greatly beneficial in that it gave me an opportunity to feel like I was writing for a viewer, not just for practice. I realized that when I write for a viewer, I've got to look at what I'm writing. I can't just have mistakes going out willy-nilly, even if my accuracy rate is 98% or better. And I've got to practice fingerspelling, not just in general, but specifically while I'm writing. I had never tried to do it before. If I heard a proper name, I'd just stroke it out however I thought best, then during review I'd count it as an error and enter it in my dictionary.
That's not going to fly on air, or with a student. I need to be able to fingerspell things when I hear them, and not just that, but keep paying attention to what's being said as I'm fingerspelling so I can write that, too. One of my main focuses in practice now is to watch the screen, catch mistakes as I make them, dash, and fingerspell. I have a huge hangup with seeing a word that didn't translate (either because I stroked it incorrectly, or because it's just not in my dictionary the way I just decided it should be written), and stopping and completely ignoring what's said after it so I can write it 2-3 more times and see if I can get it to come up right.
So very wrong! The client doesn't want to see 3-4 weird, wrong versions of a word someone said. At best, I need to dash it, fingerspell it, and move on - at worst, I need to just move on. It's tough stuff, though. Just watching the screen alone is a challenge. It slows me down mentally. It's taxing to think about how to write things when I'm also reading what I just wrote and listening to what I need to write next.
The third thing I'm focusing on right now is drops. I have a couple of problem areas. Often when a person's name and title are given, I completely lose it and write only their first name. That's not acceptable. The client needs to know who that person is.
I also have hangups every now and then where I'll get lost, frustrated, and just completely stop writing for about a sentence. I feel like I just need to focus on composure. Aside from that, though, my accuracy's usually pretty good. I've been practicing to a rotation of 30 minutes each of ABC World News, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, and a local news show. I'm only dropping one or two important titles/facts per show, and my accuracy is almost always above 98%. I feel like I am getting close to having a marketable product.
Whew, that took forever! About three hours, if you can believe it. I really shouldn't go such a long time without updating!
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).
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