Brian Jay Jones

The Next Voice You Hear Will…Oh, Forget It.

March 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment

My plans for voice recognition software were thwarted.

As Jane Smith —  from How Publishing Really Works — pointed out in the comments section, voice recognition software is fairly voice specific.  You have to “train” it to recognize your own voice, at which point you can play your own recorded voice back to it (or speak through a microphone) and the program will recognize your own words well enough to come up with a reasonable transcription.

My problem, however, is that that’s not really what I needed.  I wanted to be able to play back an interview between two people, and have the VRS system be able to transcribe it.  That, alas, is beyond the capability of most VRS systems.

The literature for MacSpeech didn’t really make that clear – I thought it was going to be a technological wunderkind, capable of transcribing whatever I might play through it (“Revolution 9″ from The Beatles might have been fun), no questions asked.  That wasn’t the case — and since I don’t work by dictating into the computer, Scribe is pretty much a useless program for me.

Unfortunately, when I called customer service at MacSpeech to see if I could get a refund on the program — since it really didn’t do what I needed it to do — they told me no dice, since the program “was working as it was supposed to.”  Rats.

So I’ve gone back to Plan B — having the conversation transcribed.  I did learn, however, that if your transcription doesn’t have to carry a standard of  ”legal weight” — meaning it won’t be scrutinized in a courtroom — you can have things transcribed for a much more reasonable rate.  I’m supposed to have my transcript back soon.  I’ll let you know how they did — and if it looks good, I’ll let you know who I used.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: MacBook Scribe · Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain · works in progress · writing
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Sleep, Pretty Darling, Do Not Cry

March 10, 2010 · 2 Comments

Back in late January, Barb and I took our dog Abbey to a specialist to see if they could determine what was causing the rapid deterioration of her back legs.  Initially, we thought she had developed hip dysplasia — a bane to large dog owners everywhere — but Abbey seemed to be getting more and more hobbled as the weeks went on.  She went from dragging her left leg last June, to teetering on her feet by Thanksgiving, to barely walking by Christmas.  Clearly, something else was going on.

Back in January, I promised to give you the rest of the story, once we knew what was happening.  Here’s the rest of the story.

Abbey was subjected to several X-rays and MRIs to see if, perhaps, she had a tumor on her spine that was causing paralysis.  Both the X-rays and the MRIs came back clean — no sign of any trouble — and the vet put Abbey on prednisone as a preemptive strike, just to see if the drug might have any effect on whatever was going on in her system.  But there was one other thing he wanted to check out.

Abbey was showing textbook signs of a new but relatively rare genetic disorder, a disease known as degenerative myelopathy (DM), a progressive and always fatal disease of the spinal cord.  In general, a dog can begin showing signs of the disease anywhere from eight to fifteen years old.  That put Abbey on the left end of the bell curve — she’s only barely eight — but her symptoms were shudderingly precise: dragging of the rear legs, lack of balance, and incontinence.  While the disease can only be definitively confirmed by an autopsy, the vet wanted us to submit saliva samples to the University of Missouri, where most of the leading research has been undertaken, to see if she was, indeed, genetically predisposed to the disorder.

While we waited for the results, Abbey continued to grow increasingly worse.  The prednisone had no effect, apart from making her horribly thirsty — which made her drink more and, in her condition, wet herself without realizing it — so we took her off the drug altogether.  Moving became difficult, and she was eventually confined to our living room, where its concrete floor and easy access to the backyard made it easier for us to clean up after her and help her outside.  But soon, she could only walk with the help of a sling under her back end — I would walk her outside the way a parent plays wheelbarrow with a child — holding her back legs slightly off the ground while she pulled herself with her front legs.

Despite her deteriorating physical condition, she was as spirited, social, and loving as ever.  When we sat in the living room to watch television or read, she would drag herself across the floor so she could lay in the middle of things.  When the enormous snowstorm crashed through the area, she would lay for hours in the spot we had cleared in the back yard, eating snow and watching the birds dive at the birdseed we had thrown out.  As the sun melted the snow and warmed the ground, we would look out the kitchen window and see her sleeping contentedly in the sun, sprawled out full length.

Still, she was showing signs of unhappiness.  More and more evenings, after the lights were out, she would continue her habit of softly barking until I came downstairs and slept near her on the living room couch.  She was having accidents with greater frequency, which seemed to embarrass her — she would bark until someone came to clean her up, and then would drag herself away from the mess, ears down with humiliation.

Late last week, she began to eat less and less.  It was clear she was continuing to decay — and sure enough, several days ago, we received the test results from the lab in Missouri confirming what we already knew: she has the genetic defect that causes DM on both genes.  She wasn’t just a carrier, she was doomed from the start.

On Monday night, we took Abbey to our wonderful local veterinarian who helped us lovingly and painlessly send our dog onto her next adventure.  She died peacefully as Barb and I patted and spoke to her softly.  One deep breath and she was gone, still looking as if she were sleeping.

And I cried. Oh, how I cried.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Abbey · dogs
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The Next Voice You Hear Will Be Your Own

March 8, 2010 · 2 Comments

I’m in the process of getting the interview I conducted the last week in February transcribed — or, rather, I’m in the process of trying to get it transcribed.   I’ve got four hours of conversation to convert, and initially, I was planning on doing it myself.  I’ve transcribed interviews before, but nothing quite this long – and after taking 20 minutes or so to transcribe about five minutes of conversation . . . well, that’s an unimpressive effort-to-product ratio.  Clearly, I need another system.

For Plan B, I checked with a few professional transcription services, but the per-page costs of transcribing were a bit jaw-dropping.  Probably nothing your average law firm can’t soak up, but for a company of one, it was gonna leave a mark. 

That left Plan C.  I’m in the process of loading voice-recognition software onto my laptop to see how well it does. I chose the Scribe program from MacSpeech, mainly because it allows you to open a sound file directly through the program.  Now the only problem is the operating system on my MacBook.  It runs Leopard, and I need Snow Leopard.  So I had to order the upgrade from Apple (for some reason, they won’t let you download it from their site) and my package is still enroute with the FedEx man.  Or woman.

Anyhow, I’ll let you know how it works.  Anyone else have experience with a similar program?

→ 2 CommentsCategories: MacBook Scribe · Project Blue Harvest · how in the heck?

The Devil You Say!

February 25, 2010 · 1 Comment

Washington Irving — and “The Devil and Tom Walker” — causes heartburn in an Illinois classroom.

(For your reference, here’s Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker,” which first appeared in his 1824 book Tales of a Traveller. Go get it.)

→ 1 CommentCategories: Washington Irving
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Tomorrow Never Knows

February 23, 2010 · 3 Comments

I’m heading back to New York tomorrow — armed with my laptop, notes, and tape recorder — to have a chat with Someone Wonderful related to Project Blue Harvest.  It’ll be a quick day — up on the train in the morning, interviewing in the afternoon, then back that evening — but I’m so excited about it that the day will probably seem to go by even faster. I even made sure to book myself a reserved seat on the train on the way home so I’m certain of a spot where I can plug in the computer, plunk on the headphones, and transcribe everything immediately. Yeah, it’s fun — and, I’ll admit, a bit nerve wracking.

Given my increasingly frequent back and forthing lately, Barb saw fit to give me a good laptop case — something a little unusual that doesn’t look like anything else out there.  So tell me, how cool is this?

Yeah, that’s my MacBook, tucked away inside there between two hardback leather covers. Pretty neat, eh?

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Project Blue Harvest · laptops · stuff i dig

A Dose of Reality in High School Reading

February 22, 2010 · 3 Comments

Over in The Washington Post, crack education writer Jay Mathews laments the absence of non-fiction on high school “required reading” lists.  “I am not dismissing the delights of Twain, Crane, Buck, Saroyan and Wilder,” Mathews writes. “But I think I would also have enjoyed Theodore H. White, John Hersey, Barbara Tuchman and Bruce Catton if they had been assigned.”

He’s right.  I can’t remember ever being assigned any non-fiction in high school, apart from in a journalism class where a wise teacher made us read any number of books of our choice by journalists (I chose Harry Reasoner’s Before The Colors Fade and Barbara Walters’s How To Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything, both of which are long out of print.)

Independently, I read my share of non-fiction — usually books on pop culture, such as the history of films, television, theater, or comics (I remember drawing audible laughter from a biology teacher of mine when he turned over the book I had laid face-down on my desk to reveal The History of Little Orphan Annie) — but as far as required reading went . . . not so much.

Mathews isn’t certain what to make of this. Perhaps, he offers

…high school English departments’ allegiance to novels leads impressionable students to think, incorrectly, that non-fiction is a bore. That in turn makes them prefer fiction writing assignments to anything that could be described by that dreaded word “research.”

Could be.  Non-fiction, on the face of it, seems a bit too much like doing research for a term paper — which is about the only time students are required to pick up anything beyond the fiction shelves. Non-fiction seems intimidating, academic, and boring.  (True, sometimes it is — except most of the time, when it isn’t.)

Mathews closes by asking for suggestions on non-fiction books that high school students might like.  I think I’d try to keep things short — John Adams, for example, is one of the finest books out there, but at 750 pages, its length probably makes it unwieldly for your average class — and point students toward books like Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild or Stephen King’s On Writing.

What books would you recommend?

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Washington Post · books · what do you think

Pulitzer Priceless

February 17, 2010 · 1 Comment

Joseph Pulitzer

Last night, I had the great pleasure of attending a reception and book talk for James McGrath Morris’s Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power down at American University (which, as it turns out, is also McGrath’s alma mater).

If you have the opportunity to see Jamie talk about Pulitzer, jump at it.  Last night, he gave a presentation that encompassed his research (which included the kind of tale biographers love — that of finding The Source That No One Else Has), Pulitzer’s longtime feud with Teddy Roosevelt, his treatment in and by the very press he had created, and the challenges of dealing with that early 20th century e-mail device known as the telegraph. Jamie puts on a show, working without notes, and talking so animatedly that it’s impossible not to get caught up in his excitement for his subject.

Jamie’s on a bit of a whirlwind tour right now (last night, even as he was finishing signing books, he was already getting ready to make the sprint to the airport to get to Connecticut), but there are plenty of places you can catch him.  If you’re interested in learning more about an icon whose name is more familiar that his face or life story — and hearing the story told well — go see James McGrath Morris. His tour schedule is right here.

→ 1 CommentCategories: James McGrath Morris · book signings · friends of the blog
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(Snow)Driftin’

February 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

The gynormous Blizzard of 2010 has officially been clear of the region for a little less than a week — gone, but not by a long shot forgotten.  Roads are relatively clear — unless you live in the District of Columbia or an isolated cul-de-sac — grocery stores are restocked, and mail delivery has resumed (an overnight mail package I took the Post Office on Tuesday the 9th finally made it to its destination on Friday the 12th — it was stuck on the East Coast for two days while mail delivery ground to a halt).  But it’s still a mess, and temperatures in the low 30s are making sure that none of the enormous drifts will thaw until April.

Here’s a quick look at the storm as it moved through our region the week of February 8.  First, here’s a look out our back door as the blizzard really started to kick into overdrive (you can juuuust see the Jeep poking up behind a drift in the center of the photo).  We deliberately left the storm door open so the drifts wouldn’t pile up against it and make it impossible to open:

Here’s the same view a day or so later, after we spent the better part of the morning shovelling our way out to the Jeep:

While we got the Jeep uncovered, it wasn’t going anywhere fast.  It took us another day to get our long sloping driveway cleared. High winds and drifts as high as eight feet made it difficult to dig into.  We eventually settled on a system where Madi climbed the drifts and knocked them down with a shovel while I ran a snowblower right behind her.

Here’s the driveway now — and it’s hard to get a grasp of scale here.  The side drifts run from about two to six feet high as you move down toward the street.  Steering down our driveway is like making a Death Star trench run in an X-wing fighter:

Here’s a look back the other way, toward the rear of the house, glittering with icicles.  Sliding snow and heavy icicles actually tore the gutters right off of one part of the house.  Right after we took this, Madi and I spent some time slinging snowballs at the icicles on the upper level, trying to break them off.  We mostly just left snowy splatters on the windows and walls:

Finally, I’ve gotta run an Abbey photo (yeah, she’s still hobbling around, but loves the snow).  Here she is poking happily around in the dog run we keep digging out just off the back patio:

I love the snow, but even I’m a bit snow-weary.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Abbey · snow
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Trip Report, Part 2: Hi, Society!

February 12, 2010 · 2 Comments

When I last left you — at least for the purposes of this particular narrative — I was in the lobby of the Roosevelt hotel, monitoring text messages from Barb and Madi as they made their way up from Maryland on the train.  They were running only slightly behind schedule (as I said earlier, “on time” for the Northeast Regional seems to mean about ten minutes late), so I arrived in plenty of time to meet them, even after walking the mile or so to Penn Station.  A short cab ride back to the hotel (when did New York cabs start taking debit cards? Brilliant) and we went into a bit of decompression mode until it was time to leave for the St. Nicholas Society Event at 6:30.

The Maxfield Parrish bulletin board at the Coffee House Club.

The dinner was being held at the Coffee House Club over on West 44th, only a block or so from the hotel, and an easy walk in the brisk February air.  The Coffee House Club is considered a private New York club, but it’s got  an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek outlook that I love. (Its Constitution consists of a half-dozen “commandments”: “No officers, no charge accounts, no liveries, no tips, no set speeches, no rules.”)  It’s also a comfortably unassuming place, just two large rooms — one a reception area, the other a cozy dining hall.

Just inside the door, I met Jill Spiller, the Executive Director of the St. Nicholas Society, who worked hard over the past few months leading up to the evening to take good care of me. True to form, she escorted us into the reception room and put off to one side a nice gift from the St. Nicolas Society, a set of glasses etched with their logo.  Very nice.

The reception was a very classy affair, yet also laid back — St. Nicholas members are genuinely interested in telling and listening to stories, and a well-told story will usually cause an eruption of laughter.  And people had so many different interests that moving from one small circle to another was like entering a live encyclopedia.  Over here, you could talk about astronauts and one man’s collection of space memorabilia.  In this corner, it was about children’s songs.  Over here, people chatted about medicine.  I even found one gentleman who had in his private collection one of my Holy Grails of Washington Irving portraits: a photograph of a painting of Irving’s best friend, Henry Brevoort.  I had scoured the planet looking for a portrait of Brevoort back when I was working on Irving and had no luck — and now here was someone who had one.  It’s wonderful when things like that happen.

After an hour or so at the reception (the hosts had done a good job taking care of Madi, ensuring there was plenty of teen-friendly food and drink), we were gently herded into the main dining hall.  The President of the St. Nicholas Society, Dr. Billick — who is class and charm personified — had gone to great lengths to seat Madi on his left, with me on his right, and Barb right across from us at the horseshoe of tables.  I smiled as Dr. Billick made certain to engage Madi in conversation throughout the meal, offering up history questions, chatting about the European Union (!) and generally making her feel at ease as the only young person in the room.  Not that Madi can’t hold her own in almost any conversation (at one point, someone came up to me, laughing, and said, “After talking with your daughter, I asked her  what she was majoring in.  She told me ‘eighth grade’!”), but it was a lovely gesture on his part, and I so appreciated his effort.

We were still enjoying our dinners when it was time to conduct some business.  Two new members of the St. Nicholas Society were introduced and initiated to much applause.  I was then introduced by longtime member (and fellow New Mexican!) Mr. Hilliard, with Dr. Billick at his side, who stepped to the mike and presented me with their award.

I promised everyone who wrote to me with their good wishes that I would put up a picture of the medal.  Here it is — and it’s a beauty:

I spoke for about twenty minutes, telling one of my all-time favorite Irving stories: the hoax that Irving pulled off to launch his mock history of New York City, and the Dutch reaction to it (someone threatened to horsewhip him). Given the St. Nicholas Society’s mission to preserve and perpetuate New York’s history, I thought such a talk would be appropriate — and I was delighted that it went over so well.  I took questions for about twenty more minutes, then spent the rest of the evening signing books, talking with members, and generally having a terrific time. It was one of the nicest evenings I’ve ever had — and having Barb and Madi there with me to share in it made it that much more special.

It was cold as we stepped out onto 44th for the walk back to our hotel — we had already changed our travel plans to leave early the next morning, in hopes of getting back to Maryland in front of the advancing snowstorm — but we walked slowly, trying to make the evening last even longer.  Our thanks to the St. Nicholas Society for such a remarkable night.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Lobos · New York · St. Nicholas Society · Washington Irving · awards
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Happy Launch Day! (One Day Late, But What Can You Do…)

February 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment

In all the fuss over the major snowstorm here, I nearly forgot to wish a Happy Launch Day to my colleague James McGrath Morris, whose biography of Pulitzer hit bookstores on February 9.

Know Pulitzer only because of the name of the prize?  Well, then, this book’s for you.  McGrath’s Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power

traces the epic story of this Jewish Hungarian immigrant’s rise through American politics and into journalism where he accumulated immense power and wealth, only to fall blind and become a lonely, tormented recluse wandering the globe.

I preordered mine from Amazon ages ago, but with the weather — and the post office officially closed since Friday — my book hasn’t made it here yet.  But I’ll be attending Jamie’s book talk and signing at American University on February 16.

You can order Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power here, and James McGrath Morris’ homepage is right here.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: James McGrath Morris · Uncategorized
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