Output.

First, I’m going to share a little story I learned in a math class that led me to the idea of outputting. I remember one of the beautiful things about mathematics was this concept called a function.

One time I was sitting in a math class and the teacher was explaining what does a function mean and that we will start using f(x), not y anymore. He drew this simple picture on the blackboard. It looked somewhat like a bin that you put something into it (input) and something would come out (output). So, the bin is like a function. You insert a number into the “bin” and it undergoes some kind of transformation, actually a function, and a new number comes out. Isn’t that wonderful? It can go backwards too, so you can go either way. I thought that was the most simple thing about mathematics and make the problem appear less complicated. This process concept can be applied to many things, for instance, like ourselves.

We especially as deaf people need to OUTPUT more. It doesn’t matter what that might be. Writing, blogging, vlogging, signing, coding, painting, drawing, publishing papers, building websites, so on. There could never be enough output. It doesn’t do any good if you’re doing nothing or making no output. If you have something to share, tell. Don’t be keeping things to yourself because uh how could other people know? It’s even better if you could put on some kind of medium like papers, blogs, pictures, or vlogs because they are reusable and you don’t have to be telling stories over and over. That’s old. In the past, it costs some money to publish stories. Now? it’s nearly free! Anyone can publish.

It is my prediction that in the next few years, we will possibly see the greatest growth in the deaf community ever. No longer do we have to depend on someone to produce media for us like major newspapers. We can make our own news now. We finally have a way to share ASL vlogs easily and it’s spreading like a wildfire. A person doesn’t have to find a deaf person to learn ASL. S/he can look at ASL videos and learn. It’s a little strange to meet a person who has learned some ASL but never met a single deaf person before! Of course, the best way to learn is to hang out with deaf people. The more people learn ASL, the better it will be for us. They will be more likely to support us and respect us as a linguistic culture. They will seek ways to help improve education for deaf kids, bring better accessibility and build more technology.

The only way for people to know more about us is by outputting. Go write something, make vlogs, arts, publish research papers, anything. That is how we advance as a society.

Thought I’d post this to help spread the word out.

Finally, Caption Playback on Google Video

“…however, this is exactly the same problem faced by the early proponents of CC, and it is this very issue which has compelled us to start with baby mis-steps sooner, rather than a giant leap of perfection later. Now that viewers can see the results, we hope that more people will be inspired to caption more videos, and that other services will be encouraged to support similar capabilities. The potential applications here for search quality, automatic translation, and speech recognition should also become more obvious.

Every time I watch TV I’m thankful to all of the many people who first developed and brought closed-captioning to fruition, and wish I could have helped them. So it’s enormously gratifying that Google Video has given me an opportunity to help carry on their work into new domains.” –Ken Harrenstien

I’m seriously thinking about selling my WRX and get this Insight. Gas prices have gone up and it’s become too expensive to own the WRX. :-(

Woot, NBA Playoffs begin now. Go Chicago Bulls!

Man, this video is cool. I’m gonna learn how to dance like him.

You know, we’re all alike. We have a life to live and for that, there are times that we wonder what is the meaning of life and our purpose within.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and what I want to get out of life. One of my friends wrote this, “Well, there comes a time in every man’s life when he must sit up and realize that things are going to change. And today is that day for me.” I think that moment has come for me too. For the past two or three years, I feel like I’ve been floating through life like I’m behind smoked windows or through a long mist without really knowing where I want to go.

Also I’ve been figuring out what is my passion and that’s one big thing I learned about work or things that you do. You must have passion. If you don’t have that, everything pretty much goes sour. I think I’ve found my passion and that is building websites. I’m not that good at photoshop; I always drool at someone’s graphic design skill but I’m not gonna give up. I just gotta play with PS a bit more often and use tutorials. What am I seem to be good at is having an eye and a feel for what makes a good working website. I’m a big believer in “one-page” sites. You don’t want to make a person to waste too much time clicking on pages or for the page to be finally loaded (more than 10 seconds is too long). That’s why I’m using a cache to reduce load time. I’m also not very good at programming like I cannot make a working calculator off a scratch but I’m pretty good at looking at codes, figuring out what they do, and then patch them up together.

I feel I’m at a point where I either act now or it’s never going to happen. The opportunity is there. It’s up to me to take it. If not, well, I’m gonna end up like one of those guys who would go straight to a bar after work and rant about how much he dislikes his manager, how bad his day was, and talk about how he should have done this or that some 10, 15 years ago but didn’t because he was either afraid or just did nothing. I don’t want to become that person. So, I’m going to stop bullshitting around and do something. Be productive. Time doesn’t wait for anyone.

It’s now or never.

Wow, guess there’s no need to download the documentary off the Net as it’s on Google Video now.

Damn, I’m drooling at these pictures. I shall find a place like that someday. Especially with a cement floor and bricked walls.

Damn, I’m jealous of his swing. At least my driving swing has been improving. Did hit once that went almost 300 yards and laid 50 yards from the green. :-)

I’ve just released a newer version of Deafpulse.com.

One big new feature is the added functionality of collapsing sections. Click on any white headings or “more” links, it’ll expand to show more news. By default, current deaf news/blogs, youtube, and flickr sections are laid open but they all can be collapsed if so desired.

I’ve also added some new feeds and categories. Check them out!

I’m in the middle of developing a database that will hold all of the RSS news so I’ll have more control over them and to create a directory for all blogs. There will be another big new feature coming soon.

I’ve taken painful steps to ensure that it is cross-compatible in both browsers—IE and Firefox—and three platforms: PC, Mac, and Linux. For best results, use Firefox. :-)

Working on something like this website takes a lot of my time but I thoroughly enjoy it. I was reminded by a quote from Ben Franklin. He said “Sometimes it’s better to do 1,001 small things right than only one large thing right.” There’s a lot of things I want to see to happen and that it takes many small steps to get there, not in one big step.

More to come!

Saw this from DeafPulse.com.

Roy Talyer’s blog: a New World called Deafness.

Living life as a hearing person with all of the sounds of our world and then being faced with the transitions from the hearing world to total silence in the Deaf world is an overwhelming challenge.

As I said in part nine The reality is that I need to deal with and handle the mix of concerns I have of feelings of isolation, frustration and despair, being cautious and alert to any changes and feelings again of being alone in a very silent world. I suspect that in some way these concerns will always be with me. There is a very important area that should never be overlooked.

That important area is the level of support from family and friends. My wife has been a great source of support and is in the ASL course learning ASL with me. The following is from a letter I received from my wife’s sister, my sister in-law. She continues on with how fortunate I am.
“Although you cannot “fix” the deafness problem, you can adapt to it and that is what you are doing now. While you are unfortunate in your deafness, you are fortunate that this is 2007 and not 1907 or even l957 when you would have been without the computer and other advanced hearing-assistance devices. As studied by psychologists. The first stage of this type problem is denial, where you don’t acknowledge, or minimize or ignore what is happening. The second stage is anger/depression. Then comes acceptance and resolution.”

I am very fortunate to have family and friends so supportive.

With this kind of support I believe I have begun the process of acceptance, though this is not easy to do. So many times I have asked again WHY? Why me? My answer is of course, why not? there are many other people in the silent world and if they can survive so can I. So I think that keeping an important record of my journey helps me to be focused and seriously move forward to overcome my fears and concerns of not hearing.
And when the day comes that I write a book it hopefully can help others cope and overcome similar problems. Please read more in part eleven of….

Interesting blog!