Contextless

Sorry, I have been sick this week, and I haven't remembered to come and post any update. The doctor's actually put me on work leave for a couple days, so as to not spread whatever it is I have, and had me take some cold medicine too so I've been a little out of it. I've spent the last couple days watching episodes of an old 80's Nickelodeon comedy show "You Can't Do That On Television", for which I found a site that had some episodes for download. They're only semi-humorous, but its mainly the matter of nostalgia. Plus a few have some really funky old commercials on them too, I'm thinking of chopping them out and uploading them onto Youtube.

A couple days ago I was listening through Pink Floyd's The Wall. I came upon the song Nobody Home, and came across something unusual that I hadn't noticed before. One line in the first verse is as follows: "[I've] got those swollen hand blues". It's just something said in passing as he describes all sorts of visuals about his current status, but if you pay some more attention then you realize it's out of place. He doesn't talk about swollen hands until three songs later in Comfortably Numb, where he mentions a time when he was a kid and got sick (presumably from the Plague according to the imagery of the movie) and his most significant memory of that was his hands swelling up. It's not referred to any earlier in the song, yet the way he words the sentence, particularly calling them "those", implies that he is referring to a similar feeling that has already happened in the past, which, listening to the album linearly, we do not yet know about at that point.

After I made this discovery, I spent about half an hour debating the line's out of place point with a friend on MSN, who didn't notice the exact wording of the line until the end and didn't understand why I thought it was out of place. He didn't pick up that it was a line requiring a missing context up until that point, he thought it was just a self-contained line like the rest of the one-off lines in that song. Which it can be, but it stands very weakly as a stand -alone song, when it is specifically meant to refer to the childhood incident. Interestingly enough, the song is completely missing from the leaked demo tapes of the album that are the internet (under the album codename "Under Construction"). I'm presuming, though, that it was still meant to follow the previous song to it, Hey You ("Is There Anybody Out There?" is just a bridge song), and that originally came after Comfortably Numb in the demo, so that may be the reason for the misplaced line.

Close, But No Cigar

I've mentioned a couple times things about Vista's Voice Recognition and Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and some of their quirks. I haven't actually shown a direct comparison of them, so I decided to do that.

I decided to take a recording that was almost all speech, and play it with the microphone set to loopback, to compare the two. I got the assistance of Krayzie for this since he uses Dragon, and I did the Vista. I chose as my test file one of the Woot podcasts that I had saved. So here are the results:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Is.com by Kathryn at Wednesday November that he and his bypass is brought to you by him and would eat eat eat eat in a day or a.com in time and reaching on an a voicemail comes from Boston at a caller to say I don't or ordered him to a what I do and you will need to own their own Kerry followed her back to him and you are writing their own thing I think is they are taking a guess as to how is also available as a voicemail state now as you see how you can use the same house you are going and they shot at him and asked the product you are or what is in can't Park is a habit that is due on your phone to extend anyone actually order over the phone while you're that's available to all you have to do is going to get better than to read it all yet it was written by Jim iTunes, iPhoto to answer the things that are a eating anything on them even like the photo blog about you now they are certainly less of it that is you have any discretionary funds left a budget after having bought her a so that's what you do in that didn't want you to pay phones are into is if you have a question or comment for a podcast you can had not yet.com or leave a voice message saying that you should phone homo.

Vista Speech Recognition

The produce detailed icon by guesstimates Wednesday, November 8 inning as likely as not to buy while the TV Town seat on the FBI was down to the team had not scored as someone beats time once again reach into the blindness in a nineties was now comes from Austin Massachusetts caller who wants a job I know you have a lot of workers are Maria and local version 1 to 1,000,800 E91, all of the great for all the other night and Michael of men living recall thinking on stage, just as they are surging bond * Jamal is also available is a voicemail stores say now as you obviously are now having used a man to leave us you're very kind message indicating each contest Minister Andreas monitored for example of this and do nothing has been sound alarms may have these women on your phone to resume 91 actually more over the farm well you're in luck that's available to all you have to do is no longer than a pencil ready all U.S. team's first.

Not close to each other, and, frankly, not close to the original. But quite interesting nonetheless, to see what the different engines could get. For comparison, luckily the original podcast is still available for download.

Tired

Had a run out to Wendover for a friends birthday last night, and didn't get home until 5 AM. Got little sleep, so I am very tired.

I went and saw Sweeney Todd over the weekend, a film starring Jonny Depp adapating a musical about a serial killer barber and her accomplice Mrs. Lovett who would use the bodies as meat for her meat pie shop. The visuals of the film weren't overly impressive to me, but I liked the music very much, I had bought the soundtrack later that evening.

One of the things I've found particularly interesting is Mrs. Lovett's character compared to Sweeney. When I was in Elementary school I was involved in a couple of musicals put on my my school, playing an extra in the chorus for My Fair Lady, and then playing Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. One of the things that had to be done is to emulate their accents, and in particular of My Fair Lady, which focuses on linguistics, both the Cockney accents of the street patrons and the proper English accents of the higher societies at the races and the ball. As they're played, Sweeney has a much more proper English accent, consistent throughout, but Mrs. Lovett's got a Cockney accent, and it seems to vary from act to act how much of it the actress is using.

Broken

I don't really have much to say today. I got stupider from reading the circular, schizophrenic logic of an old man talking about a backwards concept he calls the time cube.

Wikipedia link about the Time Cube

Time Cube site

Absorbed

Since I work in a technical support field, I have to talk to people. Not an inherently bad thing in itself, but there is a problem to it. Something I haven't had to deal with for a while, and had somewhat forgotten.

Possibly due to my interest in linguistics, or possibly due to something else, I have a problem talking to people with relatively thick accents. The problem is I will tend to absorb them in my speech with them, and my accent will shift to mimic theirs. This happens completely against my control, I have to be paying careful attention to what I say when I'm speaking to someone. I can literally feel my throat and tongue shifting positions to speak in the new accent. This happens most often in speaking with British people, but any accent I will absorb without notice.

I'm sure it may offend someone eventually, which is why I have to try hard not to do it.