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.
Showing posts with label Translation Magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Translation Magic. Show all posts
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.
Learn Your Software
I've learned some pretty cool stuff from the Eclipse FB group. I strongly recommend checking it out if you're on Eclipse. I also watched the full 8 hours of Eclipse basic training tutorials (bo-ring!). It was mostly about title pages and auto indexing and stuff I don't use, or stuff I already know how to do, but I did pick up a couple ideas.
I have a stroke that takes me to the bottom of my realtime feed/has me follow it, and it was always bad when I forgot to hit that after I scrolled up to look at something. But I found out about the "follow always" checkbox in the realtime tab, and now that's not a problem anymore.
I learned that you can make conflicts if you want a certain thing to happen after a number. I use P-KT for % and PER/KRENT for percent, but sometimes it's so much easier to hit P-KT, that I just don't get PER/KRENT in there. I think I've got it set up now that I can write "a large P-KT" or something and it will come up "a large percent," so that's cool. I've been trying to see new opportunities for conflicts overall. Sometimes I miss the F in I've (AO*IV) and get "aye," but why not make it a conflict with the first choice being "aye"? Just today I changed YO*U from ewe to \ewe\you're, because I miss that R so often.
The best idea I got from the FB group was about suffixes. I think someone just said something about their suffix rules table, and it reminded me about how I keep getting things like "organizationtion" when I accidentally drag an extra G into ORGS/S, making it ORGS/GS. So I made a rule that when the word ends in -tion, the suffix should delete the -tion and add an -s, and voila! ORGS/GS is organizations now, and I won't get orientationtion or objectiontion or anything like that, either.
I've come up with tons of applications for that now that I've realized I can do it. No more defectiveive if I already tucked the V and forgot about it (DE/F*EFKT/IV), no more passageage if I got confused and did PAJ/AJ, no more strategicically, or longerer if I didn't realize I tucked the R (LORNG/ER). I don't think -tor was in there as a real suffix; it was in my dictionary, but it wasn't in the suffix table, so it didn't have any suffix rules. I kept getting things like compacttor and reacttor because instead of RE/AK/TOR, I'd write RAEKT/TOR.
But I fixed that rule, so it works for -tor and -tors. And I was getting things like "humorral," so I told it if you're going to add -ral and the word already ends in "r," delete the first "r." I feel like someone who does realtime already has all these suffixes in their suffix table and suffix spelling rules, and I must've missed out on them in an update or something. I should ask on depoman or the FB group for someone's tables, but I'm afraid it might mess things up. I don't see how it could, though, really; it would only change the suffixes in English. It wouldn't have anything to do with my steno outlines. I guess I'd just have to make sure all the things I've changed were still in there.
I also changed my background color from white to gray. Someone on the FB group said it's easier on the eyes. I've heard stuff like that before, but I never really thought about actually changing it until I saw it there. I really do like it better.
I have a ton of different settings files I use for different companies, so it's a pain to change suffix tables or whatever in all of them. I asked about it on FB, and Dave Stanley said that I could just have a global.set that all settings would use for certain things. It seemed like a great idea, except that it overwrites your realtime settings if you let it change your translation settings. It also overwrites your job dictionaries no matter what you do, which is a drag.
I learned how to finally get TM to stop messing with my stroke for "a," which is awesome. I told it to stop pulling "an" and "everyone" into other words, too. I actually turned TM up a bit. The new sliders are kind of confusing, but I understand them now. My main problem was that TM wasn't being aggressive enough; there were tons of words it just left alone. So I unchecked "require an untran," and I bumped it up from whatever it was at (it might've been as low as 1%) to 30%, and I think it's doing better now.
I found out there's a dictionary entry you can use to reject the last AB suggestion and get a new one all at once, and I also found a macro for requesting a brief for the last word, which I think will come in handy.
I have a stroke that takes me to the bottom of my realtime feed/has me follow it, and it was always bad when I forgot to hit that after I scrolled up to look at something. But I found out about the "follow always" checkbox in the realtime tab, and now that's not a problem anymore.
I learned that you can make conflicts if you want a certain thing to happen after a number. I use P-KT for % and PER/KRENT for percent, but sometimes it's so much easier to hit P-KT, that I just don't get PER/KRENT in there. I think I've got it set up now that I can write "a large P-KT" or something and it will come up "a large percent," so that's cool. I've been trying to see new opportunities for conflicts overall. Sometimes I miss the F in I've (AO*IV) and get "aye," but why not make it a conflict with the first choice being "aye"? Just today I changed YO*U from ewe to \ewe\you're, because I miss that R so often.
The best idea I got from the FB group was about suffixes. I think someone just said something about their suffix rules table, and it reminded me about how I keep getting things like "organizationtion" when I accidentally drag an extra G into ORGS/S, making it ORGS/GS. So I made a rule that when the word ends in -tion, the suffix should delete the -tion and add an -s, and voila! ORGS/GS is organizations now, and I won't get orientationtion or objectiontion or anything like that, either.
I've come up with tons of applications for that now that I've realized I can do it. No more defectiveive if I already tucked the V and forgot about it (DE/F*EFKT/IV), no more passageage if I got confused and did PAJ/AJ, no more strategicically, or longerer if I didn't realize I tucked the R (LORNG/ER). I don't think -tor was in there as a real suffix; it was in my dictionary, but it wasn't in the suffix table, so it didn't have any suffix rules. I kept getting things like compacttor and reacttor because instead of RE/AK/TOR, I'd write RAEKT/TOR.
But I fixed that rule, so it works for -tor and -tors. And I was getting things like "humorral," so I told it if you're going to add -ral and the word already ends in "r," delete the first "r." I feel like someone who does realtime already has all these suffixes in their suffix table and suffix spelling rules, and I must've missed out on them in an update or something. I should ask on depoman or the FB group for someone's tables, but I'm afraid it might mess things up. I don't see how it could, though, really; it would only change the suffixes in English. It wouldn't have anything to do with my steno outlines. I guess I'd just have to make sure all the things I've changed were still in there.
I also changed my background color from white to gray. Someone on the FB group said it's easier on the eyes. I've heard stuff like that before, but I never really thought about actually changing it until I saw it there. I really do like it better.
I have a ton of different settings files I use for different companies, so it's a pain to change suffix tables or whatever in all of them. I asked about it on FB, and Dave Stanley said that I could just have a global.set that all settings would use for certain things. It seemed like a great idea, except that it overwrites your realtime settings if you let it change your translation settings. It also overwrites your job dictionaries no matter what you do, which is a drag.
I learned how to finally get TM to stop messing with my stroke for "a," which is awesome. I told it to stop pulling "an" and "everyone" into other words, too. I actually turned TM up a bit. The new sliders are kind of confusing, but I understand them now. My main problem was that TM wasn't being aggressive enough; there were tons of words it just left alone. So I unchecked "require an untran," and I bumped it up from whatever it was at (it might've been as low as 1%) to 30%, and I think it's doing better now.
I found out there's a dictionary entry you can use to reject the last AB suggestion and get a new one all at once, and I also found a macro for requesting a brief for the last word, which I think will come in handy.
4.30.13
I finally got to do some CART work. My first day, I wound up covering four events. Two classes, one bidder's meeting that ran short, and one council meeting that I covered the last hour of because it ran long. I wound up working from about 8 in the morning until 11 at night, trying to get all the transcripts out. It was a crazy day.
I was supposed to cover a class the next day, but it got cancelled. I did a couple the day after that, and that was last week. I did another one this morning. I haven't officially checked my accuracy, but it's looking good. I didn't have any drops, and everything made sense. I think the semester's about to end, though. There might not be any classes to cover after this week.
It took me less than the length of the class to edit my transcript today. It probably shouldn't take as long as it does, but I like to go through and global everything, and make the transcript look perfect. It'll take less time the more practice I get.
I'm also trying to focus on practicing for the CBC. That's been going well. The 180 takes are a lot easier this time around than they were in January. I'm just trying to focus on staying calm. Lots of times I've written a take for the first time, and thought I didn't get it, but I did. So that's giving me confidence to just keep focusing, keep going, and know that there's a real possibility that even though it doesn't feel like it, I might pass the take.
I finished -i endings, and I'm working on 1765 for -o now. I don't remember why I wrote down that I need to work on -o. I write it "OE," which hasn't changed. But it doesn't hurt to write a bunch of words; lots of them aren't defined the way I'm writing them.
I found a bizarre dictionary hole. "Pens" wasn't in my dictionary as PENZ, and it translated as "ends." I also discovered, during CBC practice, that I need to take out my glue stroke when I take the test. I have it in as DRA*ES, since I use it before a web address. DRAES is just "address." I wrote DRA*ES in a take without realizing it, and glued the entire rest of the take together! That would've been an instant fail.
I'm still working on positioning. My left arm still isn't cooperating. I can almost never seem to get it in a position that's comfortable. I don't know what the problem is, but I wish I knew what to do about it, because it makes it really hard to write for more than about 10 minutes at a time. It's supposed to be so much better to write on the LS, but it's just not working.
It didn't work on the Stentura, either, so it's not the LS' fault, but I know I would write a lot better if I could ever get the positioning down. It's gotten to the point where I dread having to CART a class because I know it's going to hurt. It shouldn't be that way, but I just don't know how to fix it. It only hurts when I write, so it's got to be something about the way I sit or hold that arm when I write. I don't have any problem at all with the right arm. If only I could figure it out!
I was supposed to cover a class the next day, but it got cancelled. I did a couple the day after that, and that was last week. I did another one this morning. I haven't officially checked my accuracy, but it's looking good. I didn't have any drops, and everything made sense. I think the semester's about to end, though. There might not be any classes to cover after this week.
It took me less than the length of the class to edit my transcript today. It probably shouldn't take as long as it does, but I like to go through and global everything, and make the transcript look perfect. It'll take less time the more practice I get.
I'm also trying to focus on practicing for the CBC. That's been going well. The 180 takes are a lot easier this time around than they were in January. I'm just trying to focus on staying calm. Lots of times I've written a take for the first time, and thought I didn't get it, but I did. So that's giving me confidence to just keep focusing, keep going, and know that there's a real possibility that even though it doesn't feel like it, I might pass the take.
I finished -i endings, and I'm working on 1765 for -o now. I don't remember why I wrote down that I need to work on -o. I write it "OE," which hasn't changed. But it doesn't hurt to write a bunch of words; lots of them aren't defined the way I'm writing them.
I found a bizarre dictionary hole. "Pens" wasn't in my dictionary as PENZ, and it translated as "ends." I also discovered, during CBC practice, that I need to take out my glue stroke when I take the test. I have it in as DRA*ES, since I use it before a web address. DRAES is just "address." I wrote DRA*ES in a take without realizing it, and glued the entire rest of the take together! That would've been an instant fail.
I'm still working on positioning. My left arm still isn't cooperating. I can almost never seem to get it in a position that's comfortable. I don't know what the problem is, but I wish I knew what to do about it, because it makes it really hard to write for more than about 10 minutes at a time. It's supposed to be so much better to write on the LS, but it's just not working.
It didn't work on the Stentura, either, so it's not the LS' fault, but I know I would write a lot better if I could ever get the positioning down. It's gotten to the point where I dread having to CART a class because I know it's going to hurt. It shouldn't be that way, but I just don't know how to fix it. It only hurts when I write, so it's got to be something about the way I sit or hold that arm when I write. I don't have any problem at all with the right arm. If only I could figure it out!
8.11
I finished my whole entire piece on Tuesday. It only took five weeks, which is good, and much better than the 14 weeks I spent on the one before it. Unfortunately, it was the last one that RTC labeled as 220 wpm, so now I have to move up to 225. That wouldn’t be so bad except that the first piece at "225" is actually 250 wpm for the first minute. :(
I’ve been working on it for a couple of days, and I’m not ready to give up yet, but it’s definitely difficult. I actually hit 214 at the end of it today. I misstroked "windowsills," and what I actually wrote was "vindowsills." TM translated it to "veindo Simms."
6.22
I got up to 250 on the new minute a few times today. With my current setup, I don't have anything under the LS - no case, no paper, nothing. I hope it stays that way when I get something permanent down. I felt like it was worth noting that when I do the Phoenix drills, anything I misstroke for the first time counts as a mistake, and I don't get to move on to the next speed. If it's already in my dictionary because I misstroked it last time, I don't count it as a misstroke. I decided today that if Translation Magic translates it properly even though it's a first-time misstroke, I'm not going to count that as a misstroke, either.
I moved up to 60 wpm on SKW (from 45), and 70 WPM on SHR (from 50), which I was happy with. I was not happy that it took me over half an hour to do it, but I'm committing to doing two drills every day. After I made it through all 107 drills (actually, I somehow missed a couple somewhere before #66, and I have no idea which ones, so I need to figure that out someday), my average speed was exactly 115 wpm. It was down to 110 before I got to the "strength-building drills," so I was happy enough to see it go back up to 115. Now after re-doing 3 drills, it's up to 116. Not exactly impressive, but I'll get there.
5.15
I got my minute today! I practiced writing it for about half an hour, and then on the very last runthrough before I was going to take a break, I decided to loosen up a little and not be so strict about accuracy, and I got it at 250 wpm (at the end, anyway) and 96% accuracy! It took me exactly a week, which isn’t bad at all. I think it was easier material than the rest of the piece has been, though.
I realized that I really like writing to a metronome. It’s almost calming, knowing that everything is going to happen at exactly the same speed. I also like how there’s not really any pressure, at least not right now when I’m just seeing what my top speed is on all the exercises. Yesterday my average speed actually went up from 125 to 129, but today it went back down to 127. I had to record something at 75 wpm, which is insanely slow. It had to do with PL-, which I’m apparently very bad at. “Fruit” was thrown in, too, though, and I guess all of those PL- words with an FR- word in the middle really threw me off. I think I have problems with F- in general.
The Phoenix book talks about how important keyboard position is, so you’re able to reach all the keys easily. I decided to try lowering my machine a bit. I use the plastic case it came in as a lap desk, so to lower it, I opened the case and started writing on just the thicker half. It looks weird and I don’t know if I could do it if I had a desk in front of my legs, but it seems to feel a lot better. I should probably buy a real lap desk, but I like the idea of not having to bring it with me or spend money on it.
I think the new position has helped, though, because ever since I got the LS, I’ve had to actually put my fingers on the home row to figure out where the machine is every time I take my hands off it, which I never had to do with the SRT. I had to define 150 null strokes because I would of course never hit the home row, but it would still help me know where I was. I created my last one on the 6th. I can’t really be sure if I’m using the null strokes less, but it seems like I am.
I don’t know if it was inspired by the Phoenix book or not, but I also decided to file my nails extremely short. I always kept them short to help me write, but I was never truly writing with my fingertips like you’re supposed to. I filed them down yesterday after my practice, as low as I could go without hurting myself. They look really pathetic now and it’s actually rather depressing. I like writing with them short, though. It feels like being barefoot. I can feel the keys a lot better. I’d like to say that’s why I got my minute today, but I don’t think that was it. I’ve been feeling more confident about it for the past couple of days, and I think I was successful in focusing on being slow and accurate with this minute.
I started incorporating endings into my root words about nine months ago. I went crazy with it and added everything you could. It turns out that it wasn’t quicker for me to write that way, at least not right now, so I’ve backed off of some of it. I added -L as an option for –l and –ly, but it created this problem where it would suggest it for both things on the same word, and I just now got around to taking it out of the integral prefixes and suffixes option. I went ahead and added it as an option with an asterisk, although sometimes I do write it without one, like SLOEL for slowly. I always get things like that popping up as suggestions, and I’ve started declining them when I think I won’t use them, to leave them open for Translation Magic to do something else with. I wonder if I should just take them out of the table altogether?
I found out yesterday that all the spots for the Caption Masters program in July are full. I was going to re-test at some point before July, and I checked the status every day, and it magically went from three seats open to none, so I guess they weren’t updating it, because I doubt all three filled up in the same day. That kind of pulled the rug out from under me, but maybe I can change the way I practice on my own. I want to get a copy of the VITAC book because it deals with how to change your writing and your dictionary to get ready for realtime, and that’s definitely something I’ve been trying to work on (and struggling with) recently. The only problem is you can’t buy the book anywhere!
5.9
Another nice thing about Translation Magic is not seeing un-translates when I'm doing my speedbuilding work. It's so much nicer just to see a word in purple and add it to my dictionary than to see an un-translate. I found a lot of words today that it didn't pick up on, but they were pretty hard ones. I also discovered that it has no idea how to fix stacking.
I'm starting to pick up on my new minute, which is bad because that's when I start thinking I know how to write all the words and try to go faster, and then I lose accuracy and ultimately, speed. I got up to 223 wpm on the last couple of sentences today. I only spent about 15 minutes on dictionary work, but I got through about 98 entries. I have to go back through about 2,000 entries I made and didn't think about making plurals or other inflected endings for. Only 1900 left!
Present Day
I just got the Phoenix Fast Track to Machine Shorthand Speed book. A couple of days ago, I spent some time reading through the introduction. I agree with a lot of the principles and ideas, even though I learned StenEd writing theory, not Phoenix. The author, Carol, talks about how important it is to have accuracy before speed so that you can build your muscle memory and rely on your fingers to write strokes accurately without having to consciously tell your fingers where to go. I don't agree with Mark's strategy of getting something down for every word no matter how unreadable it is. Like Carol says, when you do that, you're just training yourself to write things incorrectly. You have to write them properly to build muscle memory.
Carol also advises "trailing," or staying about four words behind the speaker so you can pick up on phrases you might have briefs for, and also so you can keep a steady rhythm. She says students often incorrectly have bursts of high speed and then slow down. I've noticed myself that I have that problem. I write fast when I can, and then it throws everything else off, even though I try to keep a steady rhythm. It's so hard not to try to keep up with the speaker and write as fast as I can, or to take advantage of places where I can speed up. It's really interesting that Carol says the exact opposite thing that Mark does. Mark says, "write fast, faster than you can, and accuracy at lower speeds will follow." Carol says that speed is a natural outcome of accuracy, but accuracy is not a natural result of increased speed.
That's how I've always felt. I can't just write things as fast as I can, or it all comes out as slop, and I've always felt there wasn't any point in teaching myself to write slop. I think Mark can do that because he's more of a court reporter. I know he does, or has done, captioning, too, but I also know that out of all 5 years of results of the NCRA Realtime Contest that are listed on their website, he hasn't won a single one. He usually finishes around 5th or 7th, although he did tie for first in one literary portion of the contest.
The purpose of the Phoenix book is to eliminate hesitation, and I think it's going to be very helpful for me. You practice columns of similar words, with unrelated words interspersed throughout so you can work on transitions, writing each word to the beat of a metronome. I used that strategy before in school when the professor gave us a list of the thousand most frequently used words and had us practice them that way. It did seem to help a bit with speed, and of course I got better at writing those words. I'm excited to start improving my speeds on the words in the book, but there are 107 single-stroke exercises to go through.
The first day I spent a lot of time on it and made it through the first nine exercises, but the second day I only got through five. The book says to spend half an hour a day on it, but I don't have that kind of practice time, and Erik from depoman says 10-15 minutes a day is good, so I'm going to go with that. In 10 minutes today, I only made it through two of the exercises. At that rate, it would take me a month and half just to figure out what speed to start at on these exercises, and which ones I need to work on the most. Maybe I'll have some extra time for it sometime.
After the first day, I averaged all of my top speeds, and it was about 155. I don't get to write a speed down unless I got that exercise with 100% accuracy. Basically, I guess that means my realtime speed on new material is 155. I knew that already, though. I figured it was at about 160. That sucks. It makes me feel like I'm never going to get to 225, not any time soon, anyway. This will be a good gauge for where it is, though, since I don't take tests, so I'm excited to see that start improving, too.
I took the test to get into Caption Masters program, in January I think it was, and one of the suggestions the instructor had was that I add asterisks to all of my prefixes and suffixes. That's great idea, but it makes me also want to add asterisks to word parts that aren't really suffixes, like the "mers" in "customers." So I basically have to go through and re-define all 92,000 entries in my dictionary. I'm trying to fix things as they come up, but unfortunately, when something like "-ry" comes up, and there's 1,000 entries I have to fix, it takes me a while to do it, and then all these other things like "-mon" come up and I just have this massive list that I feel like I'm never going to get to, and I use about half an hour of my practice time a day on it, when I should probably be actually practicing, but I don't have time for everything.
Yesterday, instead of working on that, I decided to investigate the phonetics table. I thought I would have to add a bunch of things to make it work, but I couldn't really think of anything I do fundamentally different from the StenEd theory, so I just tried to add a few helpful things that I tuck now, and then I turned on Translation Magic. I had tried it a while ago, and it never really got anything right, so I turned it off until I could fiddle with it. Today was the first time I did my speedbuilding practice with it turned on, and I love it! I haven't had it come up with anything that I needed to alter my table for. It doesn't always know what I was trying to write, but about 90% of the time it does. The biggest problem I have is that it doesn't really catch things that I have briefs for, that I've misstroked. But I guess you can't expect to to know about those, because they don't really follow the to phonetics rules.
When I do my speedbuilding, I take a piece at 230 wpm, and I try to get it one minute at a time at speed. I practice the minute until I can write it at 95% accuracy, and then move on to the next minute, and then I write both minutes together at 95% accuracy, then move on to the third minute. It takes forever to go through a piece that way. Maybe too long. Maybe I should knock it back down a speed. But I was getting things at 214 really easily, so I don't know.
I've been working on this particular piece since March 27th, and I just started on the third minute today. I'm focusing especially hard this time on writing everything slowly and accurately, without trying to keep up with the speaker. I want to get my accuracy down pat and establish a rhythm. I got up to 187 wpm on it today. I think it took me two weeks for the first minute, three weeks for the third, and one week to get them both, so we'll see what kind of progress I can make, if I can keep up with this strategy.
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