Dept. of Mostly Awesome

[kaffyr]

Life Has Been (Mostly) Good

I have had quite a remarkable few days and they have, for the most part, been pleasant.

Quick unpleasantness out of the way first: the skin on my face appears to be giving me problems which I hope to not have to do with the scleroderma. BB noticed a small patchy spot on my right cheek about three days ago; it looks like nothing so much as an enlarged version of the pityriasis rosea that I suffered once or twice decades ago. While keeping an eye on that, I noticed areas of red and roughened skin around my mouth, and — this may be too much information — an increase in the inability to close my mouth enough to keep from having moisture constantly at its corners.

All of these symptoms, with the unfortunate exception of the last one,may simply be due to dry winter weather. However  that seems rather unlikely, given the warm temperatures and our relatively successful efforts at maintaining humidity in the house. If the patch on my cheek doesn't fade in the next day or so, I will call my doctor go to see her and find out what the fuck it is. I am so tired of this /end rant.

On to the nicer things.

In the "don't these things happen to other people, and not me or mine" department, First Born is going to London, England, two weekends from now, to see the premiere of Daniel Radcliffe's new movie — his lady love won first prize in a Facebook contest! I don't believe I have ever met anyone who has won something like that. He is still somewhat croggled, as am I and his father. Still, despite my envy, I am tickled for him. He is becoming quite the traveler; next weekend he travels to Portland Oregon, to visit some of the girlfriend's family. The next weekend? Is London, making him the first person in my family, for at least the past three generations, to use his passport twice in one year on trans Atlantic journeys.

I have told him to take lots of pictures. And I have a question and request for those of my Dreamwidth and LJ friends; are any of you in the London area, and if you are, would you be interested in meeting my handsome, brilliant, charming, funny son and his very charming lady love, and possibly spending part of an evening with them? I may have forgotten to say that he is a lifelong geek, skiffy fan, and — and this is very important — almost as rabid a Dr. Who fan as I am. Actually, he's as much a fan as I am; we love to sit and watch and squee together.

If you are interested, send me a PM, and I'll get you more information. Thanks!

And finally, I have had three wonderful evenings with BB, as he decided he wanted to re-watch all of S06. It's not something I might have expected of him, but gift horse, mouth, you get the idea. We just finished watching "A Good Man Goes to War" last night, after having watched the first two Thursday night, the second two Friday night, and the last three in a marathon last night.

It's been wonderful. I have a much better feel for the overall story arc; it's much clearer to me now, and makes much more sense. I also like a couple of the episodes much better than I did when I first saw them, specifically "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People." More on that in a separate post, perhaps.

By the way, this entire post was created by voice command, BB installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my laptop and I have been getting used to it — and it to me — for the last two days. It's about a gazillion times better than the Microsoft word recognition program, which means I am much more likely to use it. In this case I created the post in WordPad and cut and pasted it to post here. Perhaps as I become more proficient, I will actually employ the program directly. I already know that it does work in the browser.
That's quite enough babble or one post. (Which is why I put the bulk of it under a cut.)

Comments

[yamx]

Tell your son they MUST go see the Doctor Who Experience. And it's cheaper if he books tickets online ahead of time.

[kaffyr]

OOoo! Definitely! For some reason, I thought it was a Cardiff thing. I'll send him the URL post-haste. Thanks!

[yamx]

There used to be a Doctor Who exhibit in Cardiff, right across from the Millennium Centre, and I LOVED that one, but it closed when the new, and admittedly much more advanced, one opened in London. Eventually, that one will migrate to Cardiff, but for now it's still in London, and definitely worth seeing. :)

[canaan]

If you have any Dragon questions always feel free to ask. :-)

[kaffyr]

Thanks; I know you had talked about being able to learn how to apply html when DNS is in command mode. Once I've climbed the learning curve on straight dictation and editing, I may talk to you about that.

[scarfman]

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

This explains the one for won in the paragraph about the offspring's trip to London.

[kaffyr]

Oh durrrrr. Thanks for giving me the heads up!

*goes off to fix sentence*

[thette.livejournal.com]

I got to watch the first half of S06 with my father during the Christmas break, and it was great. I agree that very much of the overall story was more obvious. Unfortunately, some of the plot holes were, too.

[kaffyr]

The wonderful (or horrible, depending on how one looks at it) thing about being a fic writer is that one automatically starts to fill in the plot holes with plot bunniies as one watches. It's lucky for Moffat that I do that a lot. Heh.

[thette.livejournal.com]

And backgrounds for characters acting weird. (I have pretty much the whole story of Sally Donovan mapped out in my head, at least from her university years.)

[kaffyr]

Oh, indeed! "Oh, well,she did that because ..." or "If I imagine that he was actually dealing with this trauma, then it explains why he chopped his tuxedo into little bits after being a clothes horse for 20 years."

Fanfic writers; the show-runner's failsafe. Heh.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

By the way, this entire post was created by voice command, BB installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my laptop and I have been getting used to it — and it to me

Talk to meeee! As in plz to be giving an idea of purchase price. because I want this so very, very hard, but always assumed it cost a royal ransom so never investigated...

[kaffyr]

It's available from Nuance, the developer, for $100, or $200 (American) if you want the premier version. American dollars. I also found it going for between $50 and $60 on Amazon, although I'm not sure those are the most current versions. My Best Beloved acquired it elsewhere; to be specific he went out on Bit Torrent and downloaded a free and pirated copy. I should feel a bit guilty, but I'm afraid I don't.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Holy frak, that is DEAD CHEAP! And I'm including the 'premier version'! ~faints~

ATM your dollars and our dollars are pretty much equal (there's been a vast amount of USA goods bought online by Australians in recent months for this very reason). And as my 'puter is about to get a brain transplant again - going back from Fedora to Debian since Debian has finally become less sucky - I'm now off to bother the internets for info about running Dragon NaturallySpeaking thataway.

Re ripping copies, I'm usually fine with that, e.g. when I used to be stuck running Windoze there was no way I was going to give the Evil Empire a penny. But Dragon have done the world a huge, huge, HUGE favour, so I'm willing to hit my painstakingly scraped together medical fund for it :-) Many thanks!

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Damn, cancel that excitement. I'd need a sandbox. I've had nowt but grief with sandboxes, and anyway, my current machine is (deliberately) too weak to cope with one anyway.

Sigh. Back to the scribble pad...

[kaffyr]

Que?

I know that DNS has versions for both PC and Mac, so I'm not sure what the obstacle might be. I'm ever-so-vaguely familiar with the concept of sandbox in terms of computer use, but it doesn't seem as if you'd need it.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Erm. From Nuance themselves: "At this time, Dragon NaturallySpeaking does not install and run on the Linux operating system."

This is an obstacle-y an obstacle as obstacles get o_0

"Sandbox" as I was using it means Wine, a Linux-based Windows emulator. I've had only disappointment (poor performance, locking up, etc.) with Wine in the past, and neither being nor wishing to be an actual computer geek I don't have sufficient fu to tinker with Wine anyway. Hence no joy :-(

[kaffyr]

Ah; it becomes clear now. I have Linux on my laptop, since we wanted to try it out. I eventually had BB re-install Windows on it, because the Linux system was grouchy and arbitrary too often, even with Wine for the occasions when I needed Windows emulation. And I'm sorry Nuance hasn't gotten around to developing a Linux-friendly version of DNS.

[viomisehunt.livejournal.com]

I hope things get better with the first part. Congrats to your son.

[kaffyr]

Thanks; and I have been extraordinarily remiss in getting back to you. My sincere and abashed apologies.

[mack-the-spoon.livejournal.com]

That is extremely awesome for your son and his lady love! I hope they have a blast - I'm sure they will.

[kaffyr]

Thanks; they're looking forward to a romantic getaway in addition to the premiere. I'm going to give them information on the Dr. Who Experience, in hopes that it might be open on one of the days they're there, and free. They're both Whofen, so they'll be interested.

But it's not quite as exciting as going to Thailand. *g*

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Contact EVO directly with your London fen question, I suggest. Marvelous for him and her! You be well.

K.

[kaffyr]

EVO? Inquiring minds do indeed want to know.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Our mutual Mr. Olson, resident of your city, and oft times traveler to fair Albion.

K.

[kaffyr]

Ah. My thanks. It's turning out that FB and his lady love are wanting nothing more than a romantic getaway, with other humans the furthest thing from their minds, but if I give them some contact information, they'll have it if their minds change.

[marence.livejournal.com]

Do you find the dictation aspect of Dragon weird at all? The husband bought it for me for Xmas, and I'm not used to trying to speak my thoughts to the page - it feels like I'm trying to read narration from a script in my head, and I start thinking about what I'm going to say instead of just saying it, if that makes any sense. Or maybe it's just me. Sigh.
I want to like it, because my typing never exceeded the 35wpm realm, and my fingers don't always cooperate with me these days.

[kaffyr]

I'm not used to trying to speak my thoughts to the page - it feels like I'm trying to read narration from a script in my head, and I start thinking about what I'm going to say instead of just saying it, if that makes any sense.

Bingo! No, it's not just you! I was trying to explain to my BB about the difficulty in actually creating something with DNS; I told him that for 40 years, ever since I started to type, I've partly "thought with my fingers" and that removing my fingers from the process forces a lot of it to go on in my head. What I meant by that was that I became used to seeing something come out on the page, and seeing it was what sparked the next thought, or allowed me to see that what I'd just created wasn't quite what I wanted, and therefore enabled on the spot revision. It was as if the typewriter, and the feel of my fingers working, became part of the sense memory that informed my thoughts and creativity.

I have had experience in dictating stories over the phone, but only rarely, during election nights and such - and these days, with laptops and smartphones, I haven't practiced the skill much. I imagine live dictation is becoming a thing of the past for reporters, and certainly for the general public.

But the good news is that if you keep pushing, the feeling of reading narration starts to fade and thinking about what you're going to say/write - while it never goes away - becomes more smooth. It helps that DNS is so amazingly accurate. Unlike other voice recognition programs, you're not having your already-halting thought process broken up by weird misspellings.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

London
facebook contest
My brain didn't precisely freeze up so much as simply halt. And I must be jaded because I don't consider travel to the left Coast to be a big deal. Even in my depleted state, I manage it once or twice most years.

By more private channel, I'll point you to the Designated Expat in London. And come to think of it, the other person who tells the story of how Lafferty fixed the sun for us is somewhere around there, too.

[kaffyr]

Thanks for any contact possibilities. Listening to FB and his LL, I'm guessing they're looking at this time as a romantic getaway, which means they will probably spend most of their time on their own. Still, having contact information for others if they happen to want to change their mind might be a good thing.

I once traveled far more frequently than I do now, but even then, the farthest I ever went east of my then-home was Brighton and London in '79, and the farthest west I ever went were two trips to LA.

Nowadays, I'm like the majority of folks around the world; we don't travel much beyond a small area around our home base. My regular travel radius may be bigger than that of a farmer in Rumania or northern China, or a shopkeeper in Mombassa or Aceh, but it is just as truncated in the long run. FB is similar, but he has gotten the chance this year to change that.