Now that I actually have time to update, I seem to be more interested in making notes about things I want to include. I was starting to feel like it was pointless because I never had time to write about anything. Maybe I'm just noticing more things now that I'm able to see more mistakes.
I picked up a cool tip from Kosmo's Korner, and it wasn't even the feature of the vlog. During one of the videos, he mentioned hitting "H" twice to mark two words next to each other, and it's an awesome hyperkey. Before when I wanted to global something, I had to navigate to the last word in the phrase, and sometimes I had to use Ctrl + left arrow to get there, and it was a huge pain.
Plus, even if I was at the beginning and I pressed "G" to global, sometimes it would only pick up the first stroke, even though it had combined two strokes into one word, and I had to hit escape and navigate to the end of the word, G, and then up arrow to pick up the first stroke. But now I can just type H, and it picks up the entire word; and if I hit it again, it picks up the next word, for as many words as I need! It's so much easier.
I had a weird problem where I couldn't get re-present (as in present again) to come out because "represent" is also a word. I tried manually writing the hyphen, so of course that didn't work. So I had to define RE/H-F/PRENT as "re-present." I also realized as I was going through a transcript that someone said "and you, Tara," and I thought they said a name I had never heard before, "Utara." There are so many names I haven't heard, and there are a lot of international students in that class. I didn't bat an eye fingerspelling "Utara," but I was so embarrassed when I figured it out later!
I learned A*B as "Alabama," but I changed it a long time ago to "an," with A*EB for Alabama. For some reason, I always think of Alabama as BA*EM, but that's not defined as anything, so when I'm writing I just have to delete it and write A*EB. And it finally dawned on me - why don't I just define BA*EM as "Alabama"? There wasn't anything strategic about using A*EB, so if it didn't work, there's no reason not to change it.
One of the things Word spellcheck catches that Eclipse spellcheck doesn't (probably because I don't have it set to) is repeated words. Sometimes I'll stroke my brief for "of the" and then I'll also stroke "the," and I don't write it when people repeat words like that, so there's no reason not to just define OF-T/T as "of the." After doing that for a long time, I finally thought, why not take it a step further? Because then I wind up writing "are the the," and I have to define "R-T/T" as "are the," but I could take all that out of the equation by just adding the the=the to my autoreplacements table, or making a text global for I I = I, both of which I did (because for some reason the I I=I didn't work in the table).
I come up with a lot of briefs, and they seem like a great idea, but then I totally forget about them, and down the line I think I need to come up with a brief for something, and stroke my idea, only to find out that I already made it. Sometimes I would put a new brief on my "to practice" list, but I never made it a routine, so I'm working on doing that now. I think it will help things "stick" a lot better.
Speaking of briefs, I learned DAOIGS for "diagnosis" in school, and I stroke it pretty much every single time when I try to write "diagnose," which comes up a lot more often than "diganosis." I decided to leave DAOIGS as "diagnosis" since that's what I was taught, thinking maybe it's ingrained somewhere, but I finally made "diagnose" DAO*IGS, and it's so nice not worrying about what's going to happen when I write DAOIGS anymore.
I also put in KPAOUNGS for communication and THAO*IVG for Thanksgiving. I have 30 different outlines for Thanksgiving, and I'm still writing it in ways that don't come out right. I put THA*FG in as a brief for it last year (and wrote it exactly 0 times), and that obviously didn't stick, so I'm trying THAO*IVG. We'll see if it conflicts with THAO*EVG for "thieving."
I had to change N-G from "inning" to -ing in, because I was stacking it like crazy. I think it might have something to do with gradually turning that minLR up, because I only just started noticing it. I still have it set below the default, though. I'm also stacking THAS a lot, but I'm not changing it from "that is" because I've written that about 15,000 times. I'm actually purposefully not making a lot of splitting-related entries, because I'm hoping to be able to reduce the splitting with the Gen O.
Showing posts with label Stacking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stacking. Show all posts
Revolutionary
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!
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!
Including the Final P
I have two things I'm focusing on with my writing right now: -P and commas. I'm still working on that "stacking SKP" business, but I got it nailed down once classes started. I put SKP in as a conflict - with "and" as both choices - just so it would show up in green every time I stroked it to remind me to stop stroking it.
For some reason it didn't help much when I was mainly doing captioning, but almost the first day I switched to more CART, I got myself doing SKP-P at least 90% of the time. Maybe it's because I don't have much time to think during captioning, and even having just a few times during CART where I got to really think about it before I wrote it allowed it to become reflexive.
I completed my project of entering conflicts for "words that typically have commas after them." I had a list of 35, and I experimented with one a day until I had gone through the whole list. Some worked with two, three, or four options, and some I could tell weren't even going to work with two. Now the problem is that I never remember they're in there, and I just write the comma anyway. They come up in green, though, which reminds me that I'm supposed to be not putting the comma in.
I actually had myself pretty well trained with "so" and "okay," until I came into a bunch of instances where the AI wasn't picking correctly and I had to delete them. I'm doing the best with "well" and "all right"; I'm pretty sure none of the others have stuck at all. I seem to write "therefore," "however," and "in other words" the most, though.
Speaking of conflicts, I have an awesome one that works great: day to day versus day-to-day. The software is really good at knowing which is which, probably since one is just some words and the other is an adjective. I bet there are other things I could do that with (once-in-a-lifetime maybe?), but for now I'm just happy with "day to day."
Another thing I'm working on is waiting until the new sentence starts to put punctuation for the last one, so I can avoid when I think they're done, and I put a period, but then the next thing they say isn't a sentence on its own. It's hard to wait, though. Lots of times I can delete the period that turns out not to belong, but also lots of times I don't have time.
I also had to change my outline for a question mark. I think the S- key is stiff on this IE. It won't matter since I'm getting a new one, but I was almost never hitting the S- in STPH* for my question mark, and it kept coming out as N. I had the probablem occasionally with the LS, but it started to get really bad with the IE. I initially made a conflict, but the software wasn't choosing correctly often enough, and I would erase the N and re-write it three times and still get N, so I had to do something. It was getting bad! I wound up just making my question mark STPH*P, and I was so relieved to have a way to actually get a question mark to come out that I picked it up almost instantly.
The strange thing is that I drag the S in weird places on the IE, too, probably because I have the sensitivity set low since the key is stiff. Maybe it's not so strange, after all. The worst is when I think I've written "he," but it actually came out "she," and I don't notice it until it's too late. I keep getting "snot" for "not," too. I hope it's all better on the new machine!
For some reason it didn't help much when I was mainly doing captioning, but almost the first day I switched to more CART, I got myself doing SKP-P at least 90% of the time. Maybe it's because I don't have much time to think during captioning, and even having just a few times during CART where I got to really think about it before I wrote it allowed it to become reflexive.
I completed my project of entering conflicts for "words that typically have commas after them." I had a list of 35, and I experimented with one a day until I had gone through the whole list. Some worked with two, three, or four options, and some I could tell weren't even going to work with two. Now the problem is that I never remember they're in there, and I just write the comma anyway. They come up in green, though, which reminds me that I'm supposed to be not putting the comma in.
I actually had myself pretty well trained with "so" and "okay," until I came into a bunch of instances where the AI wasn't picking correctly and I had to delete them. I'm doing the best with "well" and "all right"; I'm pretty sure none of the others have stuck at all. I seem to write "therefore," "however," and "in other words" the most, though.
Speaking of conflicts, I have an awesome one that works great: day to day versus day-to-day. The software is really good at knowing which is which, probably since one is just some words and the other is an adjective. I bet there are other things I could do that with (once-in-a-lifetime maybe?), but for now I'm just happy with "day to day."
Another thing I'm working on is waiting until the new sentence starts to put punctuation for the last one, so I can avoid when I think they're done, and I put a period, but then the next thing they say isn't a sentence on its own. It's hard to wait, though. Lots of times I can delete the period that turns out not to belong, but also lots of times I don't have time.
I also had to change my outline for a question mark. I think the S- key is stiff on this IE. It won't matter since I'm getting a new one, but I was almost never hitting the S- in STPH* for my question mark, and it kept coming out as N. I had the probablem occasionally with the LS, but it started to get really bad with the IE. I initially made a conflict, but the software wasn't choosing correctly often enough, and I would erase the N and re-write it three times and still get N, so I had to do something. It was getting bad! I wound up just making my question mark STPH*P, and I was so relieved to have a way to actually get a question mark to come out that I picked it up almost instantly.
The strange thing is that I drag the S in weird places on the IE, too, probably because I have the sensitivity set low since the key is stiff. Maybe it's not so strange, after all. The worst is when I think I've written "he," but it actually came out "she," and I don't notice it until it's too late. I keep getting "snot" for "not," too. I hope it's all better on the new machine!
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.
Step Back
I don't know why stenography has to be such a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Every time I think I'm getting somewhere, there's a setback. I felt like I was making real progress with my realtime. I was becoming more aware of what I wrote as I was writing it. FREX, I wrote "BLOGD," and it didn't tran, so I wrote BLOG/D, easy as pie, during realtime. I felt like I was understanding better, as I wrote, why things weren't translating them, and I was getting better at fixing them without getting tripped up.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
5.18
I ordered the VITAC book. I had the bright idea to e-mail VITAC directly and see if they knew where I could get one, and someone e-mailed me back the next day saying I could call and order from them. It’s a good thing I had poked around the VITAC site a bit, because the e-mail simply came from the author of the book and had no subject! I discovered this morning that there are actually still three seats open in the Caption Masters class. I guess the other display was an error. So I might still be able to take that in July, and all the information in the VITAC book might be discussed in the class, but that’s all right. You can never have too many steno books, I guess.
Yesterday I was on depoman searching for posts about something or other, and I came across the suggestion that one should add dictionary entries from the machine to practice fingerspelling. And it’s a useful thing to be able to do, anyway. So I spent a good hour yesterday getting that all set up. I’m still trying to figure out my alphabets, though. I need to have a way to fingerspell in capital and lowercase in realtime and in the global window, so that’s four alphabets. I spent some time on it today and I think I have it worked out.
I got my two minutes together today, and I also managed to stack three words, although not on that final take. "Here and staying" came out as STKPHAOEURG. I got to record a drill exercise at 120, which is better than I’ve done for the past 2 days, but I also had to record one at 50. Apparently, I have a really, really hard time with "fr-" words, which is weird because FR is my brief for from, which I write all the time.
It’s really fun to be able to do things from the machine. After every take, I go back and write any mis-strokes five times, along with the words before and after them. It was always a hassle to take my hands off the machine to scroll down through the take, but now I don’t have to!
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