Just a little news that applies to both my old job and to the Deaf community at large:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html
I think we all knew this would happen sooner or later, and it’s still not here 100%, but now a small subset of Youtube videos have the option of displaying Closed Captions based on some behind-the-scenes speech recognition. I haven’t seen any examples of this used over difficult material, but it’s a start.
These six cans were sitting on a shelf in Nakumatt, across the Nyali Bridge to my north. Now they’re sitting in my refrigerator. This Nakumatt also has Président brand brie, is open 24 hours, and it neighbors a movie theater multiplex AND a bowling alley! Not to mention the nearby Tamarind restaurant where today, for lunch, I had some amazing sashimi. The area stinks of nice hotels and money, but I will definitely be returning. It’s nice to have an escape. Every day so far I’ve walked around exploring my new home, Mombasa island, wading through people and goats and trash at every turn, inhaling smoke from diesel engines and from burning garbage, dodging cars with sand in my eyes and attracting unwanted attention with my big hair and bright red face. I must say that I love that I’ve found a place where I can sit down with a nice ocean view, eat sashimi, read my Lonely Planet guidebook shamelessly, and then pick up some Dr. Peppers.
That’s all I’ll say on that topic for now, although a lot of emotions are brewing there: I’m still formulating how I feel about money here in the Peace Corps.
In any case, I won’t be walking around Mombasa quite as much for the foreseeable future because I think I have Miliaria.
No, not Malaria, Miliaria. It’s a prickly rash that babies usually get in very hot and humid areas. Don’t worry, you can click that link with no fear of seeing any disgusting medical pictures, but if you do any of your own searching and you see scary pictures, don’t worry for me; mine is very mild. For the past few days I thought maybe I just had bedbugs. Miliaria goes away on its own from what I read, although it’s best to basically avoid sweating, which means less adventuring for me.
Anyhow, health issues aside, the strike continues. As I have been instructed to avoid the school during this time, I have had little interaction with the teachers or the students, the exception being last night, when I joined the children in the cafeteria to watch the Obama inauguration because I don’t have a TV. Here are the kids in the front row:
If they don’t look captivated, it’s possibly because they’re deaf, and there were no captions on the broadcast in Kenya. Kenya is a country that was colonized by the British, who brought with them their gigantic electrical outlets and 50Hz power grid, which means that their TVs use the PAL system, which means they don’t have closed captioning. So the only feasible way to do captions is to have a completely separate channel, otherwise with the same content, but with always-on captions. And they don’t do that. I did my best to tune into the live stream on my laptop, which did have captioning, but even with Safaricom 3G, it stuttered way too much to be useful for the kids.
My favorite quote from the speech:
…there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
I agree with the part about it being defining, I just hope that the satisfying part is true, too. Two years in the Peace Corps is not a long time, and I won’t be satisfied unless I do some really good work while I’m here.