My voice hurts

I recorded quite a bit tonight. I stopped at about 2:30 this morning. I might have ticked off my roommates who were trying to sleep. But that's okay. I don't like them very much. They're inconsiderate.

I didn't record for very long. Only about an hour or so. But my throat hurts now, so I decided to take a break. I wonder why that happened. I used to record for six or seven hours in a row without feeling so much as tired. I wonder if I have throat cancer from drinking too much aspartame. Or it might be just fatigue.

But it was fun. I'm glad to be back.

Utensil worry

Unpacking, I just discovered that I own two spoons, two forks, two cups, two bowls, two plates, but only one knife. This discovery just ruined my whole day. Now whenever I eat with a knife, I'll have to do dishes afterwards. And what happens if I ever have over a dinner guest with a compulsion to cut her food into manageable chunks before eating it? I'll have to filter out any potentially unsuitable guests, but how the hell am I supposed to work that casually into a conversation?

"Hi, my name is Daniel. Is that your real hair color? By the way, when you're out eating in a fine restaurant, do you prefer to use utensils, or are you the kind of girl who tears at her food with her teeth like a jaguar on the Serengeti ripping out the hamstring of a geriatric wildebeest? Hypothetically speaking."

She would most likely respond by pointing out that jaguars are indigenous to North America, not Africa. As if I didn't have enough anxieties in my life already.

Have you seen me?

The LibriVox Wikipedia article, bowdlerized

This blog is supposed to be about LibriVox, but I haven't had much time for recording lately, being wholly preoccupied with driving across the country, and now with the whole "trying to find a job" thing. So for your convenience, I am posting the Wikipedia article "LibriVox", but with all links replaced with the word "PANTS".

LibriVox is a PANTS of free PANTS PANTS, read by PANTS. The project started in August 2005, and as of PANTS had a catalog of over 1000 full-length, unabridged PANTS and shorter works. LibriVox recordings are mostly in PANTS, followed by German, and then French, however recordings are available in over twenty-one languages.

LibriVox is a totally volunteer, PANTS, free content, public domain project. LibriVox volunteers record Public Domain books, sometimes just a few chapters, and sometimes the full book. They agree for their recording to be in the Public Domain. About half of LibriVox's recordings are solo efforts by one reader, while the other half are collaborations among many readers. Then the audiobook is released to the public on their Web site, and through other venues, such as PANTS. Their goal is to make all public domain books available, for free, in audio format on the Internet.

LibriVox has become the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world, producing 60-70 books a month. About 1,500 volunteers have contributed audio recordings to the project; and a catalog that includes classics, such as PANTS's PANTS, PANTS, PANTS, PANTS's PANTS, PANTS, PANTS's PANTS, PANTS's PANTS, and many other well-known works.

My favorite line: "Then the audiobook is released to the public on their Web site, and through other venues, such as PANTS."

Volkswagen parks itself

I want this.

Arrived in New Hampshire

I arrived safely in Manchester, New Hampshire on Sunday. I left Buffalo very early in the morning and drove across New York on the turnpike. New York and Vermont are gorgeous states, and New Hampshire is bigger than it looks. When I got to my house, my friends helped me unload my car, and then we had some hamburgers and beer and talked over various movies.

Downtown Manchester, NH.

Regarding road trips, if I had to give one piece of advice to prospective drivers, it would be this: fly. Road trips suck. They are romanticized in movies, but in reality they are expensive and boring and uncomfortable. And I learned that I hate truckers. They always have some kind of smart-ass sticker on the back like "passing side/suicide" or "without trucks, America stops". They always speed, but since truck speed limits are usually about 10 mph slower than car speed limits, speeding trucks tend to drive just a few mph slower than me, which means that driving on the Interstate consists of passing trucks, waiting for speeding cars to pass me so I can pass trucks, and watching out for unmarked cops. Why don't we move more products by rail? I would think it would be cheaper.

Satan.

I wrote a number of blog posts while I was driving. I dictated them to the MP3 player with the idea of having my computer transcribe them at the hotels. But of course, the signal-to-noise ratio was very poor, so the voice recognition ability of the computer is hampered. My voice is very clear in the recordings, so I'll be able to transcribe them manually, but it'll be a while, and I don't recall any of them being particularly interesting. After ten hours on the road with nothing but rest stops, trucks, and fruited plains, minor things start to become horribly interesting. "Hey! I'm in Iowa, and there is a car with a Nebraska license plate!!! Where's my MP3 player? I need to blog this." It really was interesting at the time, which goes to show that driving a lot can make you dumb.

America, Day Three: Aliment

Believe it or not, they have Wendy's in America, only here they call it Wendy's.

Artist's impression of a Wendy's

America, Day Two: The Great Salt Lake

I pass on my journeys through the land of the Great Salt Lake, a region inhabited by a religious sect known as "Latter Day Saints".

View Larger Map

They worship a deity known as Jesus, the god of poverty. Here is a picture of their temple to the god of poverty.

A Shrine To Poverty

I spent some time trying to communicate with the acolytes of this faith, but their speech was peppered with great quantities of metaphor.

They believe that all of mankind is sinful because a woman 6,000 years ago listened to a talking snake and ate an apple. Almost 4,000 years later, the god of poverty came to earth in the form of Jesus, a telepathic and cannibalistic Jewish zombie, to save me of my sin of, apparently, being distantly related to a woman who listened to a talking snake and ate an apple. He saved me by being executed for his crime of breaking the law, and then he came back to life as zombies tend to do.

I have to believe they were speaking metaphorically.

America, Day One: The Gas Pump

Ah, my old nemesis: the gas pump.

Evil Incarnate

In Oregon, we're not allowed to pump our own gas. They have a special SWAT team that drives around and looks for untrained people pumping their own gas. And if they see you, they'll shoot you on the spot. It's for your own safety.

So, except for a brief but tumultuous stop at White Salmon, Washington, I haven't pumped my own gas in about eight years. Certainly not with my current vehicle. It's a lot harder than it looks.

My travels through America: Introduction

I'm American. Coincidentally, my sister is, too. But she lives in Africa, and she has a blog wherein she relates all of her amusing musings about her attempts to interact with the local cultures. I find myself jealous because I don't get to live in a foreign country.

But it occurs to me that America is a foreign country to well over half the world's population. So any local cultures that I interact with should be foreign to you, assuming you are not, like me, American.

Photo of average Americans

Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to be documenting my travels from the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic Northeast. Below is a picture of the vehicle I'll use. It's an auto voiture known to the locals as "a car". This particular one was made by a Japanese artisan named "Honda" from the exotic lands of "Ohio".

A car (pronounced "kär").

moving to new hampshire

brb

How to pay for roads, Oregon-style!

The State of Oregon needs more money. No surprise. Specifically, they're having trouble paying for new road-construction boondoggles. This should worry you because boondoggles are how the American economy is fueled, ever since James J. Hill created the first and only private railroad, which pissed off Congress and their rail-road buddies.

Figure 1: James J. Hill

In this case, the State of Oregon is complaining because cars are becoming too fuel efficient. Cars with high fuel economy like the Prius are paying less gas tax than cars like my 1997 Smog Belcher 2000 SE. To be fair, though, I think the Prius gets such good gas mileage because it is made out of largely plastic and Styrofoam, where as my car is made out of steel and ferroconcrete. So the Prius probably tears up the road less than my car. But in a head-on collision, a Prius wouldn't even dent my bumper. So I win on that front.

Figure 2: The Prius: Too damned environmentally
friendly for the government roads.

The solution that the State of Oregon came up with was to install GPS tracking devices in all Oregonians' cars, and then bill drivers based on how much they drive. (All out-of-state cars would be stopped at the border and have their odometers checked coming and leaving, and then they'd be sent a bill.) This plan of installing tracking devices in every car was, unsurprisingly, met with huge opposition from the people who are worried that their choice of grocery stores is of a huge concern to the black ops division of the FBI that is undoubtedly watching everything we do from the invisible black helicopters.

Figure 3: Invisible black helicopter

What makes this idea laughable (I'm talking about the per-mile tax, not the black helicopters) is that government owns all of the roads in the United States because of the Good Roads Act of 1895. In the late part of the 19th century and the early 20th century, governments decided that it was unseemly for private companies to be charging tolls to the motorists, so they used the power of eminent domain abuse and took all of the roads.

So private tolls are bad. But government tolls are good? I don't get it. Does the government have a magic wand that turns evil actions into moral actions?

Figure 4: Agent of Government aiming his 5.56x45mm NATO Assault Magic Wand

I personally would like to see all roads---yes, all roads---privatized. And I'll tell you why. Below is a video made by Disney in 1958. It is an excerpt from an episode of Disneyland called "Magic Highway USA". It is a prediction about what roads and cars would be like in the future. Most of their predictions about cars were spot on. Most of their predictions about roads were woefully off. The difference? The automobile industry is largely market-based. The roads industry is largely government-based.



But short of privatizing all of the roads, how about this for leveling the playing field with regard to gas tax for fuel efficient vehicles: why not charge different amounts of gas tax at the pump depending on the EPA estimated fuel economy of the vehicle being fueled? So an 80 mile per gallon Prius would have to pay, say, 20 cents per gallon tax, whereas my 12 miles per gallon car would pay 10 cents.

How about having companies in the automobile industry sponsoring roads? "Interstate 5, brought to you by Toyota"?

How about leasing exclusivity rights of rest stop locations to various companies? For example, only McDonalds can put restaurants at rest stops along this road.

How about advertising? Though billboards may be a bit distracting, if you consider the amount of distraction of current road signs, it may not be a big deal. In fact, there is a growing trend in Europe and parts of Asia to reduce or remove all road signs. Alternately, ads could be played over the radio or transmitted to an in-car console. I'd hate that, though, and I think so would most people. How about painting the ads on the road?

How about tolls? Nothing wrong with paying for what you use. Private toll roads are photographing license plates on entrance and exit ramps and using that data to bill the customer. Fast, transparent, convenient, cheap, scalable. Government toll roads are using toll gates. Slow, expensive, prone to traffic jams, inconvenient, ugly.

How about having the area businesses and residents paying for the roads in their neighborhoods? If you have a business, you want roads so your customers can reach you. If you have a home, you want roads so the pizza delivery guy can reach you. This would be similar to a property tax, but probably more akin to renting a space in a mall.

How about getting rid of the FAA so we can have flying cars? Or at least hovercrafts, a la The Probability Broach.

What do you think? How do you think road funding could be improved?

An air-powered car

A car fueled by compressed air? A hybrid gas/air car that can get 3,000 miles per tank?

Yup.



(And read the Wikipedia article "Compressed-air car" for more information.)

Oh, and I heard on the radio about recent developments in electric cars. Fast charging batteries combined with extended life batteries means newer electric cars are getting 200 to 400 miles on a charge, which is just about the same as my gas-powered sedan.

Meanwhile, they have discovered that anywhere from three to "several hundred" billion barrels of oil may be under the northern United States/southern Canada area. (For example, here is a New York Times article.)

And in other news, pets are now being cloned commercially. Next year, a New You---literally---for only $50,000. The ultimate "cure all"? Or too Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom for comfort?

Way cool. I am quite excited about the future. Things are looking nothing but bright.

Okay, you may carry on.

A new drug that may help cure cancer and put Star Trek criticizers in their places

From MedHeadlines, New Drug Prevents Radiation Damage:

Andrei Gudkov, affiliated with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, has developed CBLB502, the code name for his new drug that protects healthy cells from the damage caused by radiation even while killing off the cancerous cells. The eureka moment came when he got the idea to put one of cancer’s own sneaky little tricks to work against it.

Basically, the idea is to make healthy cells invulnerable to radiation that will kill off cancer cells. They may also use it to protect people who live and work in areas with high radiation, like nuclear power stations and probably the medical imaging industry.

They then administered their flagellin-based experimental drug on rhesus monkeys and mice before exposing the animals to full-body, lethal doses of radiation, similar to what might be received during a widespread nuclear emergency. The drug was administered 15 minutes to one hour before radiation exposure.

The remarkable result of this experimental trickery was protection of the animals’ bone marrow and GI tracts from destruction typically caused by radiation, and with no no observable side effects. What is even more exciting is that the cancerous tumors were killed, as desired, by the radiation treatment.

My favorite part of this article is that, if true, it vindicates Star Trek writers. For years now, when some member of the Enterprise crew wants to go on an away mission to a planet with a lot of radiation, the doctor administers an injection of some anti-radiation drug. The pedantic criticizers of Star Trek point out that what you would need is something akin to sunscreen to block radiation, not an injection. I guess they were wrong! And that's the cool part, not the whole 'cure for cancer' thing. I think we all saw that coming.

The Big Bang Theory

Lately, I've been watching a TV show called The Big Bang Theory. It is about a pair of socially inept geniuses and their attractive female next door neighbor.

It's smart. I like these kinds of sitcoms. Most sitcoms predicate their comedy around social pressures and bullying. Watch Still Standing or The King of Queens or pretty much any other such sitcom, and you'll see what I mean. The entire premise is that one of the main characters is being pressured into doing something that he or she does not want to do and so he or she much develop odd and cooky ways to avoid doing said activity.

This can be entertaining, and at times these shows can be funny. But at most I'll chuckle a little bit. Whereas The Big Bang Theory is a show that I have had to pause numerous times while watching because I'm laughing so hard. How I Met Your Mother is another show like that. It's smart, quirky, and over all quite well done, without being above the occasional bathroom joke.

On another note, I've noticed a pattern to sitcoms that do very well. Seinfeld, Friends, and The Drew Carey Show all had runs above 9 years. And if you look at the make-up of the cast, it consists of at least three single guys and one single female, and the comedy is based around being single, careers, and finding relationships. (There are other examples of this, too, but they are escaping me right now.) I wonder why this formula works so well in the sitcom format.

Washington Monument

I visited Wikipedia the other day to read about Evgeny Baratynsky. Eight hours and a thousand browser tabs later, I ended up reading about the Washington Monument. That's just how Wikipedia works.



The Washington Monument is a monument to, presumably, George Washington, the first President of the United States federal government. It is the shape of an obelisk, which is a tall, pointy building. This doesn't make much sense to me. The Lincoln Memorial (which is a monument to, presumably, Abraham Lincoln) looks a bit like Lincoln.



"Obelisk" is a Greek word meaning "tall, pointy tower", but the ancient Egyptians were first to build one, a tribute to their god named "Min", the god of fertility. Every single picture of Min depicts him with a huge, throbbing obelisk of his own.

Photograph of Min

Also, let us not forget our favorite Bible verse regarding the Egyptians, Ezekiel 23:19-20:

Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of donkies, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

I think it may be safe to say that the ancient Egyptians had a bit of a reputation.

All this to say that erecting an obelisk as a monument to George Washington might have been their way of saying that they think Washington is a real obelisk. As Thomas Jefferson said, "His temper was naturally high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath", and that Washington had a passion in which he could not command himself (The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia). In fact, the Indians gave Washington the nickname "Town Destroyer". That's not cool.

But I think the coup de grâce is that the Washington Monument is next to a reflecting pool.



Only a guy would come up with the idea of putting a giant mirror next to his granite tower so he could view it from multiple angles simultaneously.

I love Wikipedia.

First person from an arbitrary part of the earth in space

Yi So-yeon just got herself launched into space. The various news articles are pointing out that she is the first person from Korea to fly in space. They also point out that she is the second person from Asia to fly in space. Those are statistics for two arbitrary geographical regions on Earth: Asia and Korea (South Korea, specifically).

Why am I supposed to care about this? Why do the media feel the need to inform me of the astronaut stats about every arbitrary geographical region on earth? Do these stats have to change when the government changes? For example, when the Soviet Union fell, do Russia's stats start over? And what about North Korea? Do they count as "Korean"? What if Korea is unified again? Would the first North Korean or the first South Korean count as the first Korean in space?

And how narrow can these arbitrary regions go? Do they talk about the first person from Ohio in space? What about the first person from the Toronto metropolitan area? The first person north of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi, but whose last name starts with the same letter as their first name and who speaks with a vaguely Californian accent despite living east of the Mississippi to fly in space? Well, maybe not that last one, but only because it wouldn't make a pithy headline.

Edit your recordings as you record

Over on the LibriVox forum, we're brainstorming an Audacity feature wish-list. Besides small things (eg, a "save" button on the tool bar) and impossible things (eg, an "unsuck" button on the tool bar), the best idea, I think, is adding the ability to set cues in your recording that you can jump back to at the touch of a button.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Record.
• Press a button to set a cue before each sentence or paragraph.
• If you make a mistake:
• Press another button to jump back to the most recent cue.
• Recording is paused and restarted at the cue.

This way, your mistakes are automatically edited out. Other thoughts include:

• Adding virtual cues at the beginning of each silence longer than 500 milliseconds.
• Pausing for a few seconds prior to re-starting the recording to allow the reader to catch his breath.
• Asking for confirmation if the last cue is more than a minute ago (to prevent accidentally deleting too much recording).
• Playing back approx. five seconds before the cue before recording starts again, to help remind the reader where he is and what his tone should be.
• The sound of pressing a key to set a cue will be a problem. Maybe these can be edited out some how? Automatically deleting 50 milliseconds back when a cue is set?

If you have any ideas, head on over to the LV forum (see the link at the top of this post) and let me know.

How to speak English with a Sicilian accent

Recently, I posted about my attempt to read a character's dialog with a Sicilian accent. That post has been a huge disappointment to Google searchers everywhere who are trying to learn how to speak English with a Sicilian accent.

So, here's how to do that:

The Sicilian and Italian languages have rules that say that words cannot end with consonants. Therefore, many speakers will want to put a shwa on the end of English words that end with hard consonants. For example, "Please call-uh Stella. Ask-uh her to bring-uh doz tingz wit-uh her from-uh duh store".

Terminating consonants will be devocalized (unless a shwa is added). For example, "big" will be pronounced as "bik" (or "big-uh").

"Th" is pronounced as "d" or "t". For example, "This" becomes "dis", and "with" becomes "wit".

"R" is trilled.

Vowels are shortened (i.e. diphthongs are turned into monophthongs). For example, "please" becomes "plis".

Vowels are raised. Look at the chart below for the English vowel sound, and move it slightly up and to the left to make it sound more Sicilian.



Sentences seem to be frequently ended with "huh?" or "eh?" or some bastard child of the two.

Here is a YouTube video of Mustafa Sandal speaking in a supposedly Sicilian accent (pay special attention to his sentence structure and word order):



I don't know how accurate it is, but it sounds good to me. Also, the Speech Accent Archive has one Sicilian recording, as of this post.

There you go. If you do that, you'll sound just foolish enough for LibriVox. If you want more authenticity, I can't help you. I'm just some random guy on the Internet; I'm not a linguist. Good luck.

Wireless moniter and keyboard == Very quiet computer

My laptop is the worst noise maker in my recording environment. The fan noise it makes is not only loud, but ugly. (That said, my laptop fan did become the airplane noise in one of my recordings of PI, though amplified by 50 db or so.) I've tried a number of tricks to quiet it, including cleaning out the fan intake (worked very well) and resting the laptop on an icepack (caused the computer to under-cool and shutdown). But it seems like the best thing to do is to put the computer in another room, or across the room and surrounded by acoustic absorbing tiles.

The problem with that is you lose a lot of control of the recording session. You have to start the recording at the computer, walk to the microphone, record, and walk back to the computer. There is no editing, pausing, reading from the computer screen, looking things up. You can gain back some control by using a wireless keyboard. With a wireless keyboard, you can at least start and stop the recording remotely.

But now, they're coming out with wireless monitors! From Wi-Fi Planet, 2008: The Year of the Wireless Monitor:

Wireless monitors will be available in two basic configurations: adapter sets that let customers transform their existing displays will be available first, sometime in the spring; then, computers and monitors with wireless connectivity built-in will debut in the middle of 2008.

There will be a premium for wireless monitors. The adapter set should cost from $150 to $250, said Crespo, while a display with wireless capability will cost around $150 more than an equivalent non-wireless model.

Not a perfect solution for everything. It's bad for fast-paced games and for hacking the BIOS. But for recording and reading, it should be perfect. They estimate about a three-meter range, so perfect for sitting your laptop right outside the door, or inside the desk drawer or something. This is so cool.

1-900-shut-the-hell-up!

People like to talk to me. I guess I have one of those faces or something. But people feel the uncontrollable urge to pester me with whatever petty minutiae pops into their heads. "What's going on?" "What do you want for lunch?" "Why is the cat on fire again?"

I've been brainstorming solutions on how to prevent people from talking to me, and the best idea I could come up with that doesn't involve nudity or risking a felony is to get a toll number. In America, these are called "1-900" numbers. I was thinking 1-900-shut-the-hell-up might be appropriate.

"Hi! Welcome to Taco Bell. How are you today?"
"Why don't you dial 1-900-shut-the-hell-up and find out?"

I would even use it when talking to people face to face. Cell phones really make this possible nowadays!

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"Why don't you dial 1-900-shut-the-hell-up and find out?"

It's a win-win scenario. If they talk to me, I at least get paid for my time. If not, great. Less sound pollution for everybody.

"How do you plead?"

... well, I think you get the idea.