"Transcription" Updated and Improved

If you've been using the transcription freeware I mentioned here, and would like an updated/improved version (also free), shoot me an email...or leave a comment.

Disclaimers: I make no guarantees. Your computer could blow up and life as we know it might end. I'm not only not responsible, but I'll even come snicker darkly amid the smoking cinders of your domicile.

Gabby Giffords' New Gun Violence Movement

In my article "Empathizing With Pro-Gun People", I noted that the paranoia toward gun regulation shown by many conservative gun owners is understandable. Gun violence activism needs to convincingly show itself not to hide an outspoken agenda of outlawing handguns outright. It must be constantly noted that hunters and other responsible gun owners ought to have well-controlled access to a reasonable number of non-assault firearms. Per the link above, to understand their skittishness, consider the level of assurance you'd need before you'd stomach the deliberation of reasonable abortion regulations.

It's not easy to cede ground after spending decades in a defensive crouch, even if one happens to agree with such proposals. Those who want to utterly revoke gun rights must be kept far away from any effort to regulate those rights.

Shortly after the Newtown shootings, I recommended the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. But there's a new development. Courtesy of Andrew Tobias' blog:

Gabby Giffords, the terrific Tucson Congresswoman (and gun owner) who got shot in the head by a lunatic, and her terrific astronaut husband Mark Kelly (also a gun owner), have launched Americans for Responsible Solutions to help blunt the power of the NRA — most of whose members agree its positions are too extreme. If you think you might want to help, click the link to learn more.

I'm not sure Ms. Giffords is the best person for this effort. Yes, she's a gun-owner, and yes, she's a moderate Democrat who sought compromise with conservatives. And, yes, the country admires her tenaciousness. But I'm not sure this fight ought to be led by a Democrat. In the push-me/pull-you environment of modern American politics, her affiliation launches this particular pendulum with considerable momentum. I'd have loved to see this done by a breakaway group of disaffected NRA conservatives, but the fact that none have stepped up to the plate grieves me. It not only displays a lack of courageous initiative, but a lack of political imagination, because any conservative helming such an effort would quickly draw immense admiration from independents and find themselves positioned to lead a viable pragmatic conservative movement).

But I'm hoping Giffords' new organization can be effective, and will consider donating. Have a look at their mission statement.


P.S. - I was back in Newtown last week for the first time since the shootings. I was expecting a heavy, apocalyptic atmosphere, similar to NYC shortly after 9/11. But while the town's a bit subdued, it's also surprisingly normal. There are, no doubt, people still in profound shock and grief hidden out of view in their houses, but the mainstream seems to be moving on. People are a little softer and kinder (a fellow I know only moderately well shook my hand hello and goodbye with an intense heartfulness that would have seemed eerie under any other circumstances), but nobody's focusing on the catastrophe. Nor is it the five hundred pound gorilla in the room no one wants to talk about. Small towns are resilient; maybe even more so than large cities. Read Brian Schwartz's fantastic "A World of Villages" for a convincing argument that villages are where humanity does best (it's also a great read).

Making Transcription Pleasurable

Do you ever need to transcribe speech? I often dictate into the "voice memos" app on my smartphone, but typing stuff out's such a drag that it rarely sees the light of day.

Until now! I just found an obscure little open source program for OS X that makes transcription so much easier that it's almost fun. It's called Transcriptions, and you can download the latest version (from 2008) here.

The interface is minimal, and there are no instructions, but it's beautifully simple. Open a window, drag a sound file to the upper right corner, and hit the play button. While the audio plays, you can type away into the text field on the left. It's easy to stop the audio, or back it up a few seconds.

The coolest thing is that every time you type a line break, the program inserts a time stamp showing where that part resides on the recording, and you can hit a stamp to be taken directly to that point in the audio. Genius! You can turn this off by deselecting "auto timestamp" in the "Media" menu, and still insert time stamps with a "control T" anytime you'd like.

With a little configuration, you can really soup things up. Go to System Preferences/Keyboard/Application Shortcuts, and hit the "+" icon. Choose "Transcriptions" on top, then type next to Menu Title "Play" (without the quotation marks, and capitalization counts). Then click in "keyboard shortcut" and hit the control and right-arrow keys. Add that shortcut, then repeat the process for the following Menu Titles:

Repeat RePlay (control left-arrow)
Goto End (control command right-arrow)
Goto Beginning (control command left-arrow)
Pause (control down-arrow)
and...
Show Ruler (command R)

You can now control the audio entirely with keyboard shortcuts as you type...plus easily kill (or restore) the ruler which appears atop each window whether you want it or not. It takes a little while to get the hang of these controls, but, once you do, you can really fly. The application's own preferences page offers customized shortcuts, but "Play" isn't configurable. Plus I couldn't get these prefs to work. Better to do it via System Preferences!

I hope a developer adds a visual sound wave, so users can easily advance through silent parts. Also, I believe OS X includes the ability to play audio at higher or lower speeds without affecting pitch. That'd be great. Oh, and fix "Goto End", which is broken!

Charlie's Jam Session

Today is my friend Charlie's 93rd birthday. Charlie hosts a weekly jam session in his pre-war apartment, at which I'm a regular.

Here's Charlie, genteelly greeting a guest at his 91st birthday party:

For years, Charlie led Lester Lanin's famous society band. The difference between a society band and your garden-variety event band is that while the latter performs amid towers of chopped liver at catering halls, society bands would play stuffy affairs like Charles and Diana's wedding reception (one of Charlie's gigs). And rather than "Eye of the Tiger" and "Celebrate Good Times", society bands would play "Cheek to Cheek" or "The Night They Invented Champagne". You know the scene: guys with toupees in tuxedos, playing seated. A bit bloodless. But their sound was the sound of a generation for a certain class of person.

Charlie was widely recognized as the most kind-hearted, least apoplectic leader in the business, renowned for treating everyone with respect and dignity. He was also, I understand, a good trumpet player. But I wouldn't know. I came into the story only recently, after Charlie had retired from the business and put his horn away. At the jam, he contributes via spirited chorusus of scat singing, and he gives it his all, applying such energy and intensity that he often cracks himself (and the rest of us) up.

Here's how the jam session came about: Charlie lost his wife, a minor 1940's theater star (there's an eye-popping black and white glossy of her on his wall, and another with her and Louis Armstrong giggling together), and he was feeling blue. So some of his old bandmates began dropping by to play and hang out. Strangely, even though they'd worked together for many years, none of them had ever played jazz together.

Our drummer, Bobby, was a show drummer all his life. Last week, after we played "C'est Si Bon", Bobby wistfully recalled playing the tune every night with Eartha Kitt (here's a video of Kitt, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's Bobby on the soundtrack). It's only lately that he's even tried to play much jazz....but he plays great and swings hard. It comes naturally, because that music flowered during his time, even if he wasn't directly involved.

Our pianist is my old trombone teacher, Ephie. At age 81, Ephie's teeth became too loose to keep playing, forcing him to abandon his lifelong obsessive quest for the quality that had always eluded him: consistency (the same quest has driven more than a few brass players mad, human beings never having been designed to buzz lips into metal). Ephie resourcefully switched to piano, where he makes himself just as obsessively crazy - and plays just as beautifully.

They say we lose the ability to master new skills after age 30, but Ephie has transformed over the last five years from a (legendary) trombonist who noodles a little on piano to a terrific and distinctive pianist. You can hear Ephie's trombone at its glorious peak as the soundtrack to this bittersweet slideshow showing the buckets of food I was forced to eat when the genius installed in charge of Chowhound after it was sold to CNET commanded me to eat, nonstop and solo, across America for two solid months.

I just called Charlie to wish him 93 more happy years. Charlie - who's still sharp as a tack and who speaks in the nearly extinct tones of the sort of guys who used to carry around The New York Review of Books under their arms - wished me, in turn, another fifty. I demurred, replying that another twelve or so would probably suffice.

I agree with Jerry Seinfeld's insistence that life's not too short, it's too long. We do the same crap over and over for decades; it's mind-numbingly repetitive. While some people are comforted by familiar routines, I'm not wired that way. And I'm surprised less and less often as I get older, compelling me to try harder and harder to seek out fresh surprise.

And I also try to "be the change", by being as surprising as I can, for example via my trombone playing, though I fall back to the familiar way too often. Same for this blog, though I'm more repetitive here than I'd prefer, as well. As anyone with a grandparent can attest, people grow more repetitious as they get older. So I'm figuring the curve of diminishing results will dry up my ability to be surprised at around the same point where I, myself, become largely unsurprising. Hence the twelve year outlook I expressed to Charlie.

On the other hand, Charlie - who was my current age during Woodstock, who was 65 when I graduated college, and who is of a previous and forgotten generation even for present-day 75-year-olds - can still surprise with his scat singing, as well as with his overall joie de vivre (however hesitantly it may occasionally flow). So I can only hope I'll be like Charlie when I grow up.

iOs Tip: "Reader" and "Reading List"

Here's an iOs 6 tip I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:

If you receive an email on your iPhone or iPad which contains lots of interesting web links (such as the wonderful weekly digests from Quora, which are a must...email me if you need an invitation to their site), and you don't want to keep switching from Mail to browser to read them, you can touch and hold a link, and you'll be invited to add the link to your "Reading List", which can be accessed from the topmost folder in your Safari bookmarks. You can also send web links to your Reading List straight from Safari.

Along the same lines, "Reader" is a seldom-discussed feature of Safari where the text of a web page is reformatted into comfortably readable form. This is particularly useful if you're reading a busy page on the go, and your finger keeps accidentally hitting links or ads - or the page keeps updating. Just send the article to Reader and you'll have it all rendered in nice stable comfy text (you can also add stuff to your Reading List directly from Reader).

Reader appears to overlap some of the function of Instapaper, but I remain a loyal user of the former (for those who don't know, Instapaper lets you quickly mark articles you find on the web and want to read later; it downloads and formats the text and stores it for later reading on your smart phone, even if you don't have an Internet connection). But both have their uses: Instapaper's the serious industrial-strength tool to store my entire backlog of web article reading, waiting for me to get to it. Safari's "Reader" feature is more of a stop-gap for the stuff I'm reading more or less right now.

It may sound like overkill, but I also use Pinboard to bookmark and archive web pages I may need to refer back to (more detail here). Listen, we all spend lots of time on the web, and the days when your browser's bookmark feature were all you needed to keep track of stuff are long gone. I couldn't manage without all four of these tools: Instapaper, Pinboard, Safari Reader and Reading List.

No One Owns Grammar, No One Owns Usage

A Facebook friend just reposted the following:

...and I figured I'd share my response here.

The problem is that no one owns language. Usage rules are written after a language develops, to explain conventions that have arisen via natural processes. And then, backwardsly, the people who've mocked up those rules feel proprietary about them, and bray indignantly at those who dare break them.

The problem is that language is always changing. Only dead languages stand still. And, as they change, the people who devised the ex post facto rules find their contrivances crumbling and tend to lash out, telling people they're speaking incorrectly. Of course, it's like shouting at the tide. Because language is not "owned" by the rule-makers, who daftly figure this natural process ought to freeze upon their command. Language is, again, a natural process owned by no one.

But the real underbelly of this dynamic is classism. There are always way more plebes than elites, so the plebes exert the most influence on language usage, while the elites are the ones who mock up the rules. So after the masses, doing what they do in human social communities, have dynamically developed a language, elites try to codify it, and get nasty/snobby/indignant when language declines to freeze for them. As they see it, it's all about the vulgarity of the lower classes, bastardizing this beautiful frozen thing (which they themselves built!), ruining everything. Nasty unwashed swine!

This photo speaks to that. It's snobbery, pure and simple.

I'm friends with the guy who edits the Oxford American dictionary. I used to email him to ask whether a given construction is a "real" word (ala "backwardsly", above). He'd gasp in exasperation and inform me that as an adult native English speaker, anything I say, which has the ability to effectively communicate, is a word. What he, or anyone else, deems "proper" is laughably irrelevant. So even among academics - the supposed gatekeepers of linguistic propriety - the Victorian-era "prescriptive" approach is discredited. They understand their role is descriptive, not prescriptive, because, as I said at the start, no one owns language, and all the rules come after, explaining conventions naturally established. Those very conventions will likely find themselves overturned, and the cycle will begin anew.

We must teach children to effectively communicate within the conventions of the moment, as a utilitarian skill. And we produce reference books to catalog those ever-changing conventions. But the people who ply those trades don't own grammar. They don't own spelling. They don't own usage. And once kids leave school, more or less aware of contemporary conventions, whichever way they wish to speak or write is fair game. You may tsk at them, but that's your problem, not theirs, because, even if they're poorer or less educated or more slovenly-appearing, you have no higher claim to language use. Language is a last bastion of freedom.

One can command the tide not to come in, but it's not going to pay attention. One can then curse the tide for its vulgarity, but it's going to continue to flow. And one can rue how the world's been shot all to hell by these unruly tides, but one would just look like a crackpot.

Here's that same lexicographer friend's classic article on the subject, from The Atlantic. Forward it to all your grammar snob/usage snob/spelling snob friends!

A Really Transportive Tour of the Int'l Space Station

We've all seen videos of astronauts conducting video tours of spacecraft from orbit. They're usually cramped, grainy, awkward, and presented in a neutral military tone which only adds to the unreality.

But this video's different. First, the International Space Station is more spacious than, say, the space shuttle, so people can really move around. And the recording quality is much better than usual. And affable guide Sunita Williams somehow manages to convey the feeling of being there. Plus, it's quite touching to hear her unaffected tone of respect for the Russian space pioneers (the station's half staffed by Russians), whose accomplishments "remind us of our roots". Our roots (Williams is American). Right on.

The end result is the most vicarious experience of space I've ever seen. I started watching casually, but was held in rapt, slack-jawed attention for the entire 25 minutes. And the same's true for lots of viewers, judging by the comments.

I realize the Internet's full of people urging you to check out this or that video link, but this one's different. If you watch it, you'll be glad you did. I promise!

The First Big Chowhound Press Piece

One of the things I learned from running Chowhound was just how titanic an echo chamber the media is. Reading through pull-quotes from Chowhound's press reports would leave people flabbergasted by the blinding repetition.

The first full-length national article about the site was carried by Associated Press thirteen years ago. It was written by the great Bob Tanner who, thankfully, not only understood the Chowhound ethos but embodied it. In fact, Bob and I agree that this article was unique, in that the reporter and the subject could have switched places; he could just as easily have run the site, and I could just as easily have written the profile.

Anyway, the incessant media meme started there, with this line: "Spirited conversations about tortillas in Mexico, an Iranian spice called khah shir, the merits of various Korean dumplings." And since I just noticed that the article's still available online, I thought I'd link to it.

Yet More iPhone Stuff

The first Microsoft product I've ever loved: recently released for iPhone, Wordament (which works perfectly well on iPad, too) is awesome. It's a word game much like Boggle - sort of like lightning-round Scrabble - and, like all great games, an enormous amount of subtle fine-tuning has yielded an incredible, and incredibly addictive, playing experience.

If you try Wordament, some things to bear in mind: the top scorers, with their seemingly impossible numbers, are not cheating. And Wordament allows contractions (they've, c'mon, tick-tock, etc). And if you try to sign in but it's not working, read this.

In the more-clever-than-useful department: Cycloramic, an app that takes panoramic videos unaided....by spinning your iPhone around via the "vibrate" feature.

And, at last, an app with realtime NYC subway arrival info (for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 trains plus 42nd Street shuttle, at least to start).

On second thought, maybe don't break your iPhone out on that subway platform. A significant portion of all city-wide thefts involves iPhones. It's a bona-fide crime wave, so never forget that when you display your phone you're essentially flashing several hundred dollar bills.

If you're more Zsa-Zsa Gabor than Jimmy Breslin, Uber efficiently sends you the closest nice black town car on their massive computerized grid, and charges you a fair price(plus stiff surcharge). It's considerably more than a taxi, but provides a much better and faster experience. Even if you're not Zsa-Sza, it's great in the rain, in the boonies, or when you simply need to get the hell out of where you are (I think of it as my seldom-used hyperspace button).

Lots of people know about Uber, but did you know that, starting in February, you'll be able to hail NYC yellow cabs via smartphones? Here's info, and go here to pre-register.

Explaining Absent-Minded Professors (and the re-defining of "arrogance")

If you're a plumber, or teacher, or graphic designer, you may be terrific at what you do, but that doesn't carry much weight with family or friends, or with people you meet at parties. And so you must pretend to be flawless. If you reveal a flaw, you risk looking like a shmuck. And to look like a shmuck is to be a shmuck. So people learn to mask, pose and bluff.

Not academics, though. If you're professor of astrophysics at Dartmouth, that may not make you better than anyone else, but you have a free pass out of shmuckdom. You don't need to be awesome at anything else, because people know, beyond doubt, that you're awesome at at least one thing - because academia is one of the few realms where accreditation holds sway with general society.

If a stock analyst stutters or limps...if he spills stuff or forgets your name, it might seem natural to feel a certain condescension. That's why stock analysts try hard not to stutter, limp, spill, or forget. But if a molecular biologist does those things, well...you know how those scientists are! It's wonderfully freeing, and allows specialized people to concentrate on their specialties, rather than waste effort creating the illusion of seamless well-roundedness. And, conversely, it gives them the self-confidence to publicly and unabashedly pursue activities in which they're inept.

I came out of the closet years ago as a flawed human being. I'll happily admit that I read painfully slowly, and that I have trouble filling out forms or following instructions. I can't always follow plots in novels or films, and have trouble remembering both names and faces. I'm graceful when relaxed, but clumsy when anxious, and painfully slow at learning physical moves. My memory's awful unless my attention's engaged, and I'm constantly pausing to think of words (as a writer, I can stare at my screen all day until the right one dislodges). I was a "B" student, and once spent several days trying to saw through the thick plastic bolts securing my toilet seat before a friend kindly showed me they simply unscrew. Lots of people take one look at me and assume I'm a driveling lunatic.

But that's ok, because at some point I decided that the things I'm good at make me worthwhile. So I don't sweat the rest. It's freeing. By contrast, my dad, like much of his generation, lived in a constant state of desperately needing to appear right. It was obviously exhausting, and I'll politely defer comment on his success rate.

Academics are seen as quirky and absent-minded, but the other adjective is "arrogant". If you - as I do - draw confidence from your competence, it will strike less secure people as arrogance. But it's not necessarily so. The characteristic which distinguishes confidence from arrogance is condescension. "I know something you don't, and that makes me better than you!" is a very different stance from "I know something you don't, so let me fill you in!"

The distinction has been lost, however, as egocentric modern people have come to reflexively conflate superiority with superciliousness. As a result, it's become fashionable to feign uncertainty. Knowing has become a faux-pas, but knowing you know is downright inexcusable. This is a reaction to pressures from both the right (with its visceral distrust of "elitism") and from the left (with its fervid relativism).

But the problem with modesty is that it requires a deep and condescending conviction that the quality being veiled is intimidatingly awesome. Whenever modesty's on display, you're always in the presence of great arrogance (in the original sense of the word!).

Me? I take the Richard Scarry approach. It takes all kinds, and by contributing our respective expertise, we create a utopian whole (and juice the free market). We're each holding up one end or another of it all, experienced at some things, and pathetically helpless in most others. By pretending not to know the few things I know, or not to be good at the few things I'm good at, I'd be depriving the hive. I sure don't want you to pretend not to know stuff that might help me! I, like you, need all the help I can get!