RE: reading books
- From: "pamdrake" <pamdrake@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 10:23:45 -0800
The first book I read was "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." What a trip to be
reading something in print with such unique concepts for its time...but not
as unique as the newspaper I picked up from a booth at a coffee shop in
January, 1978, and took home. It was a copy of "The New York Post" and my
fingers started perceiving this stuff about a child having been cloned!
What?
Yes, it was the first report of the cloning of a human baby boy! It also
turned out to be a hoax, but the published article launched the first
public discussion of such a possibility. Anybody remember that? <smile>
Oh yes, let me not forget the novel I was reading when I read the following:
"She shook her heads..." Sheesh! <smile>
-----Original Message-----Pam
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Kaye Kipp
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 8:54 AM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: reading books
Oh gee. No fair lol.
The first book I read with the Optacon was Go Ask Alice.
Kaye
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Ellen Earls" <meearls@xxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 5:53 AM
Subject: Re: reading books
> Well guess what the first book I read with the Optacon was? _HARRY _S.
> _TRUMAN by his daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel. That book was about as
> thick as a pocket size bible.
> I also read lots of biographies and have tons of print cookbooks because
> not
> one talking reading machine can read fractions properly
> It was interesting when I first brought the optacon home from TSI, we were
> having a family party for my Mother's birthday. Mother asked me to bring
> the
> optacon to the party and show it to my siblings. My Brother-in-law had
> been
> a Lion and had seen a demonstration of the Optacon when it first came out
> so
> he knew quite a bit more about it than the rest of the family. Anyway we
> had
> birthday and them Mother asked my Brother, Dan to go get a book so I could
> read a passage.
> Do you know what that big twerp of a brother did? He brought me a book and
> I
> read and I read and I couldn't figure out the text so I turned the book
> around to a chorus of "No! You had it right/!" Well I struggled and
> finally
> there was a chorus of giggles. My Brother had grabbed a fourth year latin
> book from the shelf.
> How's that for having to eat humble pie?
> Mary Ellen Earls
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <maryemerson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:58 AM
> Subject: reading books
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've read full-length books, and when I was a technical writer, I was
> responsible for writing a couple manuals that included pictures of command
> syntax, and a few flow charts, and a couple books that had pages and pages
> of computer screen shots. I had to go through these books and manually
> read
> the syntax diagrams and other stuff to be sure all the lines connected.
> But
> I missed a couple places, and I remember a couple errors that I didn't
> know
> about until the book was printed, and sighted colleagues overlooked when
> they glanced through the book before sending the camera-ready copy to the
> printers across the country in Mechanicsburg. I never would have been able
> to work on these books without the optacon.
>
> I had at least one interview with an individual who applied for a
> technical
> writing job; he was recently blinded, didn't know braille, and although he
> had a scientific background, couldn't answer when I asked him how he would
> proof read his books, since he relied only on speech synthesizers. At the
> time, the optacon was still in production, and he had just obtained one
> and
> was working with it. I urged him to increase his proficiency because he
> wouldn't be able to do quality work without at least some optacon skill.
> I've noticed that people who work with braille or the optacon can write
> much
> better and spell much better than those who rely only on speech. In fact,
> we
> seem to be much more careful than many sighted people.
>
> For example, I recall the final version of IBM's version of DOS, in which
> one of the manuals included a poorly written note from an employee to the
> technical writer; the note was written by somebody who hadn't learned
> English very well, and the content could have been summarized in one
> concise
> sentence, but it was overlooked in the final draft. More recently: A few
> months ago, I found quite a few errors in a recently published book, and
> it
> had supposedly been proof-read quite thoroughly. I notice this more and
> more
> as people rely on spell checkers and less on human effort.
>
> Mary
>
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