- I shaved my beard. Why? I was bored. I wanted to remember what I looked like clean-shaven. I think I look pretty cute - from the front anyway. Profile views are a bevy of double chins, but what can ya do.
- I had excruciating hiccups the other day. After a few minutes of torture, I decided to try my standard remedy: drinking water upside down. This entails holding a cup or bottle of water in my hand, bending forward at the waist and placing my mouth on the opposite side of the cup, and drinking the water by tilting my head forward. Normally this works like a charm. This time, it succeeded in getting rid of my hiccups, but there was an unexpected hiccup: I GOT WATER INSIDE MY HEAD. Yes, I'm serious. It seemed to go through an opening up by my sinuses, and ended up in the post-nasal-drip area. And it wouldn't leave. Whenever I shook my head, I heard sloshing, like the ocean. (Okay, that last part isn't true, but my head did feel oddly filled with liquid.) That night, it was very difficult to fall asleep, and in the morning, I awoke with a bad sore throat from where the water had irritated me. Luckily, things are starting to get better now as the water -- mercifully -- is draining away somewhere. But yesterday, I didn't know if the water would ever go away, so to urge it along, I purchased a...
- Neti Pot! See Wikipedia for details. I had been terrified of trying this thing ever since I first learned about it from a hippie heath store worker friend last year. But I finally took the plunge and did it. And ya know what? I didn't accidentally waterboard myself! VIDEO COMING SOON. Hahahaha, that will gross so many people out.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Out of the Ordinary
Some quick updates:
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Software review: iListen voice recognition program by MacSpeech
I have been using a voice recognition program called iListen for several weeks. Overall, I am satisfied but it can be extremely frustrating at times.
First, the good part: it allows me to effectuate one of the main rules espoused by my legal writing instructor during the first year of law school. That rule is as follows: start writing. Just get something on paper. You see, my first year writing instructor was very similar to me. That is, he was a major procrastinator. And if there is one thing we procrastinators are good at, it is not starting to write when we should. The solution to that ailment is simply to start writing, even if you know nothing about the topic. This will accomplish two things: first, you learn that you did know something about the topic - more than you thought you knew. Second, more importantly, you will have started. And starting is half the battle. Procrastinators - chronic procrastinators - get that way because they become paralyzed by a feeling of dread.And has the deadline approaches, and nothing has yet been written, the dread only increases, as does the paralysis. By getting something on paper, even if you have to, as my instructors so colorfully put it, "vomit eight pages onto the screen," you now have something to work with. You now have a first draft. And it is much easier to revise and start tweaking when you have something already written. Even if it sucks.
Take, for instance, the letter that I wrote to the commissioners of the FCC. For the last two months, since my indecency paper was published, I had been intending to send a copy to each of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission, along with a brief introductory letter explaining what this paper was about. Yes, I intended to write this letter every week. But the blank screen was staring at me, and even though I had just written and gotten published a 15,000 word essay, this simple 200 word letter was eluding me. There's something about hands on a keyboard, with a flashing cursor staring at me, that simply serves to clear my mind, like some sort of Zen-like trance.
The voice recognition software solves that problem. Yes, it makes simple mistakes, because it misunderstands the easiest words. But it gets most of the thought onto the screen. And I have found that speaking something aloud is far more natural and quick than trying to force my fingers to type the same thoughts. (I now see the appeal in dictating memos and letters!)
So, where it had taken two months and I had not written anything, with the help of the voice recognition software I now had a complete letter - personalized for each Commissioner - written in the time span of approximately half an hour. As I speak this entry, five copies of my article are sitting in a mail truck somewhere, and tomorrow they will be sitting on the desk of the commissioner (or at least the commissioner's assistant).
Now for the most frustrating part (other than the constant incorrect words): the vocabulary of this software program is simply not large enough. Friends, my vocabulary is not that sophisticated. I don't think I should have to teach the software what the word sneeze is. Or what all the derivations of the word are - sneeze, sneezed, sneezing, etc. This problem happens so frequently that I continue to spend several minutes during each dictation session teaching the software words that it simply has no excuse for not knowing. The programmers say that if they included all possible words, it would be harder to dictate correctly, because the computer we have so many more choices - so many more words to choose from. But folks, honestly, this is too much. Below is a list of the words that I have had to teach the computer during this blog entry alone:
And there is the fact that sometimes the program will be almost 100 percent accurate, and sometimes the accuracy will offer somewhere around 60 or 70 percent. The biggest variables that determine how accurate the software is all our position of the microphone, and background noise. Surprisingly, the program is still fairly accurate even when there is light music playing in the background. But move the microphone one inch away from the proper position, and watch out!
And then there are the smaller annoyances (edit: I just had to add the word "annoyances" to the dictionary! how ironic!) -- this software uses a special correct mode in order to fix incorrect transcriptions (edit: I just had to add the word "transcriptions" -- it had the singular but not the plural!).
It gives you a list of words to choose from - alternate possibilities - and use select the correct word, and you hit done. Now, the way this software actually makes those corrections is by constantly keeping track of where the cursor is on the screen. However, this method does not work very well. Help files that come with the software remind us not to manually reposition the cursor at any point during the transcription or else problems will occur. However, I have been very careful to not manually move the cursor, and I still see frequent incorrect placements of the cursor when coming out of correct mode - either one space too far off, or one space too far back. The end result in is odd spacing on the final product, such as too many spaces or too few spaces between words or sometimes even inadvertently cutting off some leading or trailing characters.Simply put, you have to be very careful and attentive when using the transcription software. It is tempting to simply close your eyes and lean back and let out a stream of consciousness. But you may not be pleasantly surprised at the end of your beautiful stream.
Even with all of those caveats, I have found the voice transcription software very useful. I may just have to take the precaution that one of my communications law professors took: include as part of my e-mail signature a line that sense, "please excuse any odd errors caused by voice recognition software."
Now, if you will excuse me, I have been sitting here talking long enough. I am sorry for the inordinately long post, but voice recognition will tend to do that!
First, the good part: it allows me to effectuate one of the main rules espoused by my legal writing instructor during the first year of law school. That rule is as follows: start writing. Just get something on paper. You see, my first year writing instructor was very similar to me. That is, he was a major procrastinator. And if there is one thing we procrastinators are good at, it is not starting to write when we should. The solution to that ailment is simply to start writing, even if you know nothing about the topic. This will accomplish two things: first, you learn that you did know something about the topic - more than you thought you knew. Second, more importantly, you will have started. And starting is half the battle. Procrastinators - chronic procrastinators - get that way because they become paralyzed by a feeling of dread.And has the deadline approaches, and nothing has yet been written, the dread only increases, as does the paralysis. By getting something on paper, even if you have to, as my instructors so colorfully put it, "vomit eight pages onto the screen," you now have something to work with. You now have a first draft. And it is much easier to revise and start tweaking when you have something already written. Even if it sucks.
Take, for instance, the letter that I wrote to the commissioners of the FCC. For the last two months, since my indecency paper was published, I had been intending to send a copy to each of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission, along with a brief introductory letter explaining what this paper was about. Yes, I intended to write this letter every week. But the blank screen was staring at me, and even though I had just written and gotten published a 15,000 word essay, this simple 200 word letter was eluding me. There's something about hands on a keyboard, with a flashing cursor staring at me, that simply serves to clear my mind, like some sort of Zen-like trance.
The voice recognition software solves that problem. Yes, it makes simple mistakes, because it misunderstands the easiest words. But it gets most of the thought onto the screen. And I have found that speaking something aloud is far more natural and quick than trying to force my fingers to type the same thoughts. (I now see the appeal in dictating memos and letters!)
So, where it had taken two months and I had not written anything, with the help of the voice recognition software I now had a complete letter - personalized for each Commissioner - written in the time span of approximately half an hour. As I speak this entry, five copies of my article are sitting in a mail truck somewhere, and tomorrow they will be sitting on the desk of the commissioner (or at least the commissioner's assistant).
Now for the most frustrating part (other than the constant incorrect words): the vocabulary of this software program is simply not large enough. Friends, my vocabulary is not that sophisticated. I don't think I should have to teach the software what the word sneeze is. Or what all the derivations of the word are - sneeze, sneezed, sneezing, etc. This problem happens so frequently that I continue to spend several minutes during each dictation session teaching the software words that it simply has no excuse for not knowing. The programmers say that if they included all possible words, it would be harder to dictate correctly, because the computer we have so many more choices - so many more words to choose from. But folks, honestly, this is too much. Below is a list of the words that I have had to teach the computer during this blog entry alone:- espoused
- procrastinators
- colorfully
- vomit
- eluding
- Zen-like (okay, this one I can understand not including in the Standard dictionary)
- misunderstands
- aloud
- sneeze
- sneezing
And there is the fact that sometimes the program will be almost 100 percent accurate, and sometimes the accuracy will offer somewhere around 60 or 70 percent. The biggest variables that determine how accurate the software is all our position of the microphone, and background noise. Surprisingly, the program is still fairly accurate even when there is light music playing in the background. But move the microphone one inch away from the proper position, and watch out!
And then there are the smaller annoyances (edit: I just had to add the word "annoyances" to the dictionary! how ironic!) -- this software uses a special correct mode in order to fix incorrect transcriptions (edit: I just had to add the word "transcriptions" -- it had the singular but not the plural!).
It gives you a list of words to choose from - alternate possibilities - and use select the correct word, and you hit done. Now, the way this software actually makes those corrections is by constantly keeping track of where the cursor is on the screen. However, this method does not work very well. Help files that come with the software remind us not to manually reposition the cursor at any point during the transcription or else problems will occur. However, I have been very careful to not manually move the cursor, and I still see frequent incorrect placements of the cursor when coming out of correct mode - either one space too far off, or one space too far back. The end result in is odd spacing on the final product, such as too many spaces or too few spaces between words or sometimes even inadvertently cutting off some leading or trailing characters.Simply put, you have to be very careful and attentive when using the transcription software. It is tempting to simply close your eyes and lean back and let out a stream of consciousness. But you may not be pleasantly surprised at the end of your beautiful stream.Even with all of those caveats, I have found the voice transcription software very useful. I may just have to take the precaution that one of my communications law professors took: include as part of my e-mail signature a line that sense, "please excuse any odd errors caused by voice recognition software."
Now, if you will excuse me, I have been sitting here talking long enough. I am sorry for the inordinately long post, but voice recognition will tend to do that!
Warning: Escaped prisoner on the loose!
So, funny story: I wake up, take Rudy out of his cage, play with him for awhile, and put him back in his cage so that I can leave and go to Starbucks. So far so good. Here's the funny part: three hours later, when I return and open the door, I hear Rudy screaming at me like usual. Only he is not screaming from the right, where his cage is located. No, he is screaming from the left, where my bedroom is located.That's right - he had escaped! It seems the little goof ball had pushed out his food door, flown around looking for me, and when he couldn't find me, decided to spend the day in my bedroom on my chair looking out the window. He was so pleasantly happy to see me, I simply couldn't be angry. But I have learned my lesson: secure the food door!
Rudy is indeed a handful. I recently took several videos of his refusing to go to bed at night. That will be up soon.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Re-Introducing Matt's Fitness Blog!
Many of my visitors are not aware of the row of links of the very top of the page. I encourage you to peruse them at your leisure. There, you will find links to basically all of the videos that I have put up, either on Google or YouTube. You will find thousands of pictures going back several years. You will find an outdated page of music links -- which will be updated soon. You will find an "about me" section, which links to my Wikipedia biography. And, the newest edition to the list, "fitness," which I would like to discuss right now.
Fitness has been important to me for several years. I was a chunky youth but in high school my body grew, and I flattened out. When I graduated from high school, I weighed around 166 pounds. Unfortunately, college was not friendly to my waist line. Meal plans included dessert, and seconds were fair game. After the first few years of college, I had gained 40 pounds. Yes, my "freshman 15" did not end after the first year of college.
The Freshman 15 would have continued indefinitely were it not for high school chum Ian. Ian, a fatty by no one's definition, had taken it upon himself to participate in a "body for life" challenge. After losing a bit of weight, becoming even skinnier, Ian did me a favor and sent me an Amazon link to the book. After a couple of failed tries, I successfully lost about 25 pounds in a three-month period.
That was six years ago. Since that time, I have longed to get back to my svelte look of yesteryear. The past several years have been an uphill battle, as the graph shows... but recently I have been making some gains. Er, losses. :-) For several years, I regularly documented my exercise and fitness progress in a sister blog, "primal eloquence". I told few people about this blog, because weight loss is a fairly personal journey. For several years, I regularly documented my exercise and fitness progress in a sister blog, "primal eloquence" I told few people about this blog, because weight loss is a fairly personal journey. But every now and then, when I would get on a fitness kick, I would update it regularly and remind my closest friends to visit every now and then for an inspirational story or a tale of despair - whichever feeling was more prevalent on that date.
Well, I am at it again. My exercise tendencies have resurfaced, and I am eager to share my before and after pictures with the world yet again. :-) It is with that long introduction that I had formally and officially introduce the newest link at the top of the page. Feel free to visit it -- or ignore it -- at your leisure.
Fitness has been important to me for several years. I was a chunky youth but in high school my body grew, and I flattened out. When I graduated from high school, I weighed around 166 pounds. Unfortunately, college was not friendly to my waist line. Meal plans included dessert, and seconds were fair game. After the first few years of college, I had gained 40 pounds. Yes, my "freshman 15" did not end after the first year of college.
The Freshman 15 would have continued indefinitely were it not for high school chum Ian. Ian, a fatty by no one's definition, had taken it upon himself to participate in a "body for life" challenge. After losing a bit of weight, becoming even skinnier, Ian did me a favor and sent me an Amazon link to the book. After a couple of failed tries, I successfully lost about 25 pounds in a three-month period.
That was six years ago. Since that time, I have longed to get back to my svelte look of yesteryear. The past several years have been an uphill battle, as the graph shows... but recently I have been making some gains. Er, losses. :-) For several years, I regularly documented my exercise and fitness progress in a sister blog, "primal eloquence". I told few people about this blog, because weight loss is a fairly personal journey. For several years, I regularly documented my exercise and fitness progress in a sister blog, "primal eloquence" I told few people about this blog, because weight loss is a fairly personal journey. But every now and then, when I would get on a fitness kick, I would update it regularly and remind my closest friends to visit every now and then for an inspirational story or a tale of despair - whichever feeling was more prevalent on that date.
Well, I am at it again. My exercise tendencies have resurfaced, and I am eager to share my before and after pictures with the world yet again. :-) It is with that long introduction that I had formally and officially introduce the newest link at the top of the page. Feel free to visit it -- or ignore it -- at your leisure.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Our Father, Our King
In honor of Yom Kippur, the church I sing at performed a bunch of Jewish music this morning. I sang the solo in Avinu Malkeynu, which is a plea for forgiveness and compassion for our transgressions. Here's the rough translation:
Our Father, our King! Hear our voiceI am relatively pleased with how it went, although I must make sure that in my quest to infuse the piece with emotion, I do not sacrifice musicality. I was singing my little heart out, but in focusing on the words, I let my technique slip a bit, especially up high. BAD MATT! Still, it's acceptable so here ya go. :-)
Our Father, our King! We have sinned before You
Our Father, our King! Have compassion for us and for our children and our infants
Our Father, our King! Of pestilence, and sword, and famine rid us
Our Father, our King! Of every oppressor and adversary rid us
Our Father, our King! Our Father, our King! Inscribe us in the book of good life
Our Father, our King! Anew for us, Anew for us a good year
Hear our voice, Hear our voice, Hear our voice
Our Father, our King! Our Father, our King! Anew for us, a good year
Our Father, our King! Hear our voice, Hear our voice, Hear our voice, Hear our voice
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)