giles the cute librarian

My nephew Jeffrey.


In my dream last night, I was sitting in a classroom. Allison was sitting at the desk next to me. At the front of the class, Giles (the cute librarian from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was asking everyone to hand in their homework. I panicked because I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked Allison, but her reply was complete gibberish. I asked her to repeat her answer, and she told me, looking somewhat amused, completely different gibberish. Then I woke up.

I have no idea what this means, except that I've been watching a lot of Buffy lately and was always stressed out about tests and marks in school. Funny how a dream always seems super-fascinating just after you've woken up, but when you're telling it to someone else, you realize how incredibly dull it really is.

Buffy spoilers later in this Blathering, by the way.

It rained yesterday in Toronto. I didn't care; I still went walking. First outdoors, then, when it began pouring rain, underground through the mysterious series of hallways, shopping malls, and subway stations that comprise the Toronto PATH system. Walked/ran 6 miles today after my physio appointment (yay! Nick The Physiotherapist is back from Greece!) . I'm currently listening to "Oh ok LA", which is Ookla The Mok's new CD. REALLY love this album. A more coherent and detailed raving coming in a Blathering very soon.

I started watching season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is the last DVD season set that my friend Michelle was kind enough to lend me. I'm realizing that these episodes won't last me nearly as long as I had hoped. Maybe I can find a movie rental place that carries the other seasons on DVD.

I watched the last 15 minutes of the final Buffy episode on tv last night because I couldn't resist. I notice that Cordelia is nowhere to be seen; I'm theorizing that she must have been killed between season three and season 8. A shock to see Buffy tells Spike that she loves him, since they seem to be mortal enemies in the season I'm currently watching. what happened to Angel? And Drusilla? Where's Principal Snyder/Quark? And who the heck is (or was) Anya? No, don't tell me any of these answers. I'm sure I'll find out eventually. Quite a few characters that I didn't recognize, but I'm glad to see the librarian survive until the end of the series.

On the way home from my walk, I stopped in briefly to visit Michelle in Bakka to thank her for lending me her Buffy DVDs and to curse her getting me hooked on a series that is already over.

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

May/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

fireworks

Me with a sparkler and a tiara (the latter on loan from my niece Brittany).
Photo by Jeff. (click image for larger version)


So we are now home, but just barely. A jammed parking brake when we loaded up to go home nearly stymied our plans for a Monday night return, but a nice man from Mazda fixed the problem with the aid of a blowtorch and a large hammer.

It was JBR's 67th birthday yesterday, and we celebrated the event as well as Victoria Day at my mom-in-law's place with a fine meal and fireworks. The whole Ridpath clan was there; Jeff and his brother Case were in charge of setting up the fireworks while the rest of us applauded and cheered and shivered, wrapped in blankets and fleece.

It brought back memories of when my father used to do a mini fireworks show when we kids were very young, back in the days when we lived on O'Connor Street in Toronto. My second-favorite firework was the burning schoolhouse, which was always the last one. I remember one year making little paper figures with smiling faces to stick in the schoolhouse before my father set it on fire. Sicko kid, I know.

My favorite was always the sparklers. Like regular fireworks, the magic of the display is extremely short-lived, but a sparkler was something I could hold in my hand. I also loved the after-image that sparklers made while you waved them around, in the darkness.

So I was secretly delighted when my nieces and nephew call out to me last night, asking if I wanted to light a sparkler with them. Ok, so maybe not so secretly. :-)

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

May/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

My nephew Garrison, holding a sparkler last night.
(click image for larger version)

moose!

Sunrise this morning, shortly before the moose came to visit.


On the way back from the outhouse around 6:00 this morning, I noticed a pretty sunrise peeking through the trees on the path, so quietly sneaked inside our sleeping cabin to grab my camera. I took a few shots, went back inside.

A few minutes after I crawled under the covers, I heard some cracking of twigs behind our cabin. The sound (or more likely my return to the cabin) had woken Jeff, and he peeked out the window.

"It's a moose!" he whispered. "Quick, come look!" I leaned over just in time to see a large dark shape disappear to the left.

I leaped out of bed and, clad only in a red T-shirt and my trusty Birkenstocks, I ran outside and behind the cabin. The leaves were damp with morning dew, so I was able to make my approach quietly.

And there she was! A small female moose, slowly ambling past the outdoor shower, her hide mottled with gray and brown and black. She paused by the woodpile, raised her head to look one way, then the other. I held my breath, watching her; moose have terrible eyesight, but very good hearing.

After a moment, the moose seemed to lose interest and ambled away. I could hear the snapping of twigs and branches as she moved up the hill into the forest.

A very cool way to start the morning. :-)

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

May/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

ViaVoice, too

Jeff took this picture of lichen with his new camera.


Yay, we had some sun this afternoon! After doing a Snoopy dance, I sat on the dock with Jeff's iPod, listening to the Grateful Dead, Ookla the Mok, Jim Boggia, Hawksley Workman, and Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff (I never ever get tired of listening to their "Manhattan Sleeps" album). Looking forward to getting my copy of Ookla The Mok's CD, "OH OK L.A.", which will hopefully be waiting for me when I get home next week. Allison has already posted her comments in her Livejournal, for those interested. I WANT!!

ViaVoice example

Some of you may be interested in the nuts and bolts of the editing process using ViaVoice. Others of you may not be, but I am going to force you to read through the incredibly tedious process anyway because you are my friends. Ok, some of you may not be my friends. Even Jeff will probably skip the rest of this Blathering since I know listening to my ViaVoice sessions drives him crazy ("agonizing" is the word he used).

Anyway, here is a brief real-life example (though not so brief explanation).

The goal sentence: "I'm glad it worked, too."

What ViaVoice first typed out according to my dictation:

I'm glad it worked, 2.

I say: "Correct '2'".

Unfortunately I use slightly incorrect intonation, and ViaVoice does not realize I am giving it a command rather than dictating, so it changes the sentence to:

I'm glad it worked, correct 2.

There is an option in ViaVoice where you can force ViaVoice to interpret everything as dictation unless you insert a certain command word at the front of your sentence, like "Computer". I might eventually resort to this, but I think it would drive me crazy eventually.

So I say: "Scratch that." This is supposed to be like the "Undo" command, and in this case it works. I find that it often seems cruelly random in its decision on how much of your mistake it wants to fix. Fortunately, it seems to cooperate in this case this time. So we're at our original sentence again:

I'm glad it worked, 2.

I say: "Correct '2'". This time I make sure not to pause between the two words, which seems to do the trick.

ViaVoice pauses, then highlights the word '2'. If there are any other words sounding like '2' earlier in the paragraph, it highlights them first, and I have to repeat the command until it highlights the word I want to correct.

ViaVoice opens a Correction Window after another pause. Ordinarily, this window should contain possible alternatives to the word '2' (two, too, to etc.). Sometimes, like this time, something goes wrong and the correction window is blank. I've told the support people at ViaVoice about this. After initially suggesting that this scenario could not possibly happen, they gave me suggestions on what to do, none of which worked. Since my 1 month of free support has expired, I'm hesitant to contact them again since I don't want to have to pay for advice that won't work.

I try saying "too" again in vain hope. This time, ViaVoice changes '2' to 'to'. I say "Correct 'to'" in hopes that this time the correction window will function correctly.

I'm glad it worked, to.

My hope is in vain, and the correction window remains blank.

At this point, to avoid using my arms, I have to go into spell mode by saying, "Begin Spell", and then spelling out each letter. I can't go too fast because if I do and ViaVoice screws up, editing is even more of a pain. So I say each letter and then paused until the letter actually appears: "T" (pause) "O" (pause) "O" (pause) "End Spell" (pause).

As you can imagine, it's often too easy to give in to the impulse to just use the keyboard for editing. Sometimes using the keyboard is unavoidable anyway, because of instances when ViaVoice inexplicably quits without warning, or the microphone stops working, or the correction window will close despite repeated requests to "close correction window".

In this example, ViaVoice only went spastic once during the editing process, and it ends up taking me about 3 minutes, 20 seconds to finally end up with the sentence:

I'm glad it worked, too.

I'm learning a lot of patience using ViaVoice. My friends are also learning to accept bizarre typos in my personal e-mail messages. :-)

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

May/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

enough with the rain, already!

Another rainy day at the cottage.


What earth was I going on about, awhile ago, saying how much I loved gray days? Enough of the rain already. I want some sun! Of the ten days we've been here, two have been sunny.

While I wouldn't normally mind this so much, it's a bit more of an annoyance right now. Ordinarily I would be content to hide myself in a cozy cabin with a crackling fire and a good book. Right now, however, I can read about 10 or 15 minutes at a time before my arms need a break, and I'm finding that there's not a heck of a lot I can do while I'm resting my arms except watch episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my laptop. Speaking of Buffy, there are some season one and season two spoilers later in this Blathering.

Yesterday there were a few hours of patchy sunshine. Feeling like a desert island survivor suddenly spotting a small box of jelly bellies washing up on shore, I immediately grabbed a pillow and blanket and sat in a deck chair with my book. As much as I'm enjoying Buffy, I'd rather rest my arms watching whitecaps on a windblown lake then a vampire chewing on someone's head.

For a few hours, it was my favorite kind of day. Blustery wind, sunshine, cool, with clouds scudding across a brilliant blue sky. I finished reading "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain, a book I started the day before. Loved this book, must find more about this author. Some of the real-life stories in this book were horrifying. What was I thinking, having Sunday brunch? Ordering seafood on any other day other than Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday? I loved the author's description of his experience in Japan; some of it sounded so familiar to the trip that Jeff and I took several years ago. Some really clever writing, wonderful descriptions in this book. I don't think I would enjoy hanging out with the author as a person, though.



Jeff with his new camera, on a rare sunny day.


But back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am completely hooked. Nearly at the end of Season Two. It's an interesting experience, watching two years' worth of episodes in about a week or so. You really get a sense of how the characters are developing, and it's the characters that are keeping me hooked, even the nasty ones. I love Spike and Drusilla. Cried when Jenny Calendar was killed (saw that one today). And I agonize for Willow and Oz, because one of the only Buffy episodes I've seen on television was the one where Oz left Willow, heartbroken and confused.

Work on my column for Moira is going well; encouraging, since it is my first "article"-type of writing project since my arm problems began. I'm using a combination of ViaVoice and AppleScript to write the piece. Slow going, but at least I'm writing the column again.

As you may have guessed. It was too cloudy last night to check out the lunar eclipse. Very frustrating, since the cloud cover was thin enough that we could see the light of the moon shining through. We kept hoping for the wind to clear the clouds just for a few minutes, but it never happened. Ah well. There are supposed to be some more this year, so perhaps the weather will cooperate then.

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

May/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ