[optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
- From: "DAVID PLUMLEE" <knobman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:49:16 -0500
yES, i AM THE ONE WHO DID THE RECORDING OF after all. i USED A MULTITRACK
RECORDER AND SANG ALL FOUR PARTS AND PLAYED ALL THE INSTRUMENTS. i HAVE
DONE A GOODLY NUMBER OF HYMNS, GOSPEL SONGS, AND OTHER SELECTIONS OF COUNTRY
AND '50'S ROCK.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marie Rudys" <mrudys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 12:35 AM
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
> David, that is marvelous. Are you the one who did a song called After
> All?
> If you are, I was blown away by the harmony and the arrangement. To the
> rest of you, please forgive me for veering a little bit off topic; I just
> had to ask David this question. Back to the Optacon, it is quite a
> delight
> when I can read titles to songs in German and I have a French album by
> Edith
> Piaf somewhere. I never had a chance to use it in math or in school at
> all,
> since I learned it so late in life.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "DAVID PLUMLEE" <knobman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 9:09 PM
> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
>
>
>> Hi, Marie,
>>
>> I used my Optacon quite a bit a few years ago when I was dabbling in
>> Latin
>> church music of the Renaissance. I even did a rendition of a French
>> Christmas carol on which I used the Optacon to read the French text,
>> dictated some of it on cassette, then wrote in braille a "lyric" sheet
>> which
>> was a hybrid between the French text and my phonetic representation of
>> some
>> words so that I would get some of the tricky pronunciations correct. I
>> suppose I could have listened to the track and brailled a totally
>> phonetic
>> representation of each syllable I wanted to pronounce; but reading the
>> actual French text along with the English translation gave me a better
>> feel
>> of how I should sing the parts (I sang a quartet with myself).
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Marie Rudys" <mrudys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 6:07 PM
>> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
>>
>>
>>> Hear, hear!!! I feel the same way you do, Diane. Oh, scanners are
>>> nice,
>>> but nothing beats being able to read in realtime and know what words
>>> look
>>> like in print if names and words, especially foreign ones, are so
>>> unusual
>>> in
>>> their spelling and all. I use my good old Optacon to read record
>>> sleeves
>>> (Oh, yes, I do have a small vinyl collection and it is old, but I love
>>> it
>>> and sadly, none of it is on CD);, and I use it to read German song
>>> titles,
>>> and Italian titles and whatever I have around here on vinyl and CD and
>>> cassettes. You bet it is very indespensable. Scanners cannot come
>>> close
>>> for me; it has to be the Optacon. It helped me through those long,
>>> lonely
>>> nights when I could not sleep too well in the battered women's shelter
>>> in
>>> 1995 and 1997; whenever I was not running the dishwasher or writing
>>> something on my Braille 'N Speak which has since died, I was always
>>> reading
>>> something with my Optacon. I found a way to muffle some of the
>>> vibrations
>>> so people would be less bothered by it. Crazy thing is when sometimes
>>> my
>>> roomie worked nights at the shelter, and didn't come home until much
>>> later,
>>> I took the Optacon to bed with me and read. It was the closest I could
>>> come
>>> to reading with a flashlight.
>>>
>>> Marie
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Dianne B. Phelps" <d.bphelps@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 1:46 PM
>>> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
>>>
>>>
>>>>I agree with you on this. I must say that I was thrilled when I acquired
>>>>my
>>>> first Kurzweil Personal Reader for which I scrimped and saved and got a
>>>> bank
>>>> loan to have. But I remember vividly thinking that there were still
>>>> things
>>>> I
>>>> needed and wanted to see with my fingers and kind of wanted both
>>>> elements
>>>> within the same device. To this day, I find it more difficult to learn
>>>> to
>>>> do
>>>> something via just hearing it unless I slow it down and listen line by
>>>> line
>>>> to the steps I need to take. There was just something about that put
>>>> your
>>>> hands on it in real time that made total sense to me along with the
>>>> help
>>>> of
>>>> the OCR. The optacon is where I can really "SEE" it and where it really
>>>> gets
>>>> to my stunted brain.
>>>>
>>>> Dianne
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>>>> On Behalf Of John Huffman
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:51 AM
>>>> To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
>>>>
>>>> Hi, Catherine and All,
>>>>
>>>> It's fine to "think outside the box" in terms of developing a NEW
>>>> Optacon.
>>>> After all, technology has advanced much since 1970, and it may be
>>>> possible
>>>> to devise new ways to accomplish old tasks which would never occur to
>>>> us
>>>> non-wizards.
>>>>
>>>> But I feel very strongly that in doing this the Optacon's primary
>>>> purpose,
>>>> READING print in real time, should remain the primary goal of all such
>>>> redesign projects. That is a niche that critically needs to be kept
>>>> filled
>>>> by an Optacon or something very much like it.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, JH
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Catherine Thomas" <braille@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>> To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 5:40 AM
>>>> Subject: [optacon-l] Re: new optacon design
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Just as with scanners, there are some excellent braille translation
>>>>> programs. If you need to read print documents and covert them to
>>>>> braille
>>>>> that is the method to use.
>>>>> The Optacon reads print as print--no re-interpretation. Because the
>>>>> Optacon reads print as print, we can read all sorts of non-standard
>>>>> things
>>>>> including lettering imposed on pictures. Lots of mail these days comes
>>>>> with logos. We may not know all the details of what the logo contains
>>>>> but
>>>>> we can often if we encounter the same thing a few times, recognize the
>>>>> shape. Again, reading print as print in real time is the Optacon's
>>>>> primary
>>>>> purpose.
>>>>> Catherine
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> --
>>>>> -Catherine Thomas
>>>>> braille@xxxxxxxxx /
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ---
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>>>>
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>>>
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>>
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