Daniel Greene

Author: Daniel Greene

  • Closed-Captioning on Google Video

    This is great news for deaf and hard of hearing people — and, I think, for hearing people, too! While the world of Internet video has been hurtling forward, deaf people have been thrown backward to a time when television was not captioned. Why? Because almost none of the video on the Internet is subtitled or even closed-captioned! Almost none of the content on YouTube, Google, or any of the news sites is captioned. And you know all those movies and television shows the iTunes Music Store started selling recently? Not captioned. Yeppers. It’s like the old days all over again for deaf people.

    And what about for yourself, when you’re sitting at your cubicle at work and you want to watch some Internet video but can’t turn up the volume lest you disturb your neighbor? Yes, I bet my fellow “hearing” people would like captioning on Internet videos, too!

    Just think about how closed captioning — something originally created for deaf people — has changed your life. You now can watch multiple televisions in airports, bars, at the gym– all by reading the captions that were put there ostensibly for “the hearing impaired”! Think about all the words you’ve learned to spell, all the late nights you’ve been able to sit up and watch TV without disturbing your roommates or family. And what would life be like if we didn’t learn what the words were for all those sounds we took for granted, like the “mewling” of kittens, or the “tittering” of swallows?

    I joined Google Video this evening, and made my first video. It took me about 45 minutes to caption a two-minute video; granted, it was my first attempt. I uploaded my video to Google, and I added the captions. After Google finishes processing my video, I will blog it here.

    Thanks to Jared Evans for posting the entry Google Video Has Captions Now!!!

  • Busy Rehearsing for Yom Kippur

    I haven’t had any spare time to blog this week, because I’m spending my spare time rehearsing the Kol Nidre song and the Isaiah haftarah for Yom Kippur services this Sunday evening and Monday morning.

    I first learned to read Hebrew at the age of 32, and I first learned torah and haftarah trope for my bar mitzvah at the age of 33. I read my first haftarah for Yom Kippur mincha service (Jonah) when I was 33, my second haftarah for Yom Kippur morning service (a selection from Isaiah) at 36, and my third haftarah for Yom Kippur morning service (the entire Isaiah haftarah) at 37.

    I am a bit out-of-practice since I don’t read Hebrew every day, and I haven’t seriously chanted trope since the time I chanted the Isaiah haftarah for my synagogue two years ago. This makes for a lot of cramming, and I have a tendency to put things off!

    Perhaps when I am done rehearsing and performing the Kol Nidre and Haftarah, I will publish audio or video of it, but I’m not sure whether or not that’s appropriate.

    Anyway, forgive my absence, and if you observe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I wish you L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’tehateimu!

  • Two Fathers

    Andy received a link to this YouTube video this morning, and I was so happy to see it. Our friends who got married last weekend are going to adopt, and Andy and I have talked about it. Here’s to all those kids who have two fathers, and to all those male couples with children! A marvelous Dutch video with English subtitles.

  • Gay Cowboy Wedding at Mormon Lake Lodge

    Last weekend, Andy and I photographed and videotaped a wedding of two friends of ours, a male couple who had a country-western “cowboy”-themed wedding at Mormon Lake Lodge in Mormon Lake, Arizona (about a half-hour outside of Flagstaff).

    I will post more photos later, depending on the willingness of our friends, but for now, here’s a photo I took while I was outside the cabin taking photos of the beautiful trees and flowers.

    Buxley, Andy, and Me

  • More about Transparency

    Below I quote from this Wikipedia entry about Telecommunications Relay Service:

    As much of the tele-relay system, particularly IP-Relay, is open for public use, it is possible for anyone with the proper equipment to place calls. This includes people who are not members of the original intended user group (i.e., persons who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or speech-impaired). Some such users have noted its usefulness in making long-distance or local calls free of charge and without a telephone. The accessibility even to those who are not deaf, etc. has been defended by providers as a necessary evil. This is because the principle of “transparency” – the belief that the operator and the mechanics of relay should generally go as unnoticed as possible in the call – requires that Relay be as easy to use as a normal telephone, which does not require any kind of verification for hearing people to use. This decision has been defended by leaders in the deaf community, and generally retains strong support among speech and hearing-disabled users of the service.

    One of the “necessary evils” the above quotation refers to is the use of text relay services by Nigerian scam artists. Some text relay operators actually gave up their jobs in order to stop doing what made them sick and be free to break the story to the news. Here are two of those news stories that are linked to from the aforementioned Wikipedia entry:
    Con artists target phone system for deaf – Security – MSNBC.com and Overseas crooks abuse phone service for deaf | www.azstarnet.com ®

    I feel sorry for those relay operators who lost their jobs, but (more…)