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!

“The learning process never ends, even on vacation.” by Megan Bode.

“My most important experience, however, had nothing to do with personal adaptation to an unfamiliar environment. On our first day in the hotel, we met a group of deaf kids across the hall. One of them, David, had some hearing, and was able to tell us that they were college students at Gallaudet, a school for the hearing-impaired. He taught us the American Sign Language alphabet, so that we had a rudimentary means of communicating. Clumsily using our hands, we made friends with the kids across the hall — inviting them over for drinks, playing games, and hanging out at clubs.”

It’s interesting that hearing people would have misconceptions about deaf people having some difficulty time to co-exist with their world. Of course we would find ways to get along, just a little patience and some open-mindedness are all it takes.

I was just reading a book and to take some break from being on a computer 24/7. Then it occurred to me that it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m constantly reading—be it on signs, closed captioning, my pager, bytes on computer displays, fine print in magazines, instructions on food packages, everywhere.

I remember one conversation I once had with a girl. We were talking about how much we like to read that it was almost a must. Especially a must for people like us who couldn’t hear a word and where else could we get information? Reading, of course.

We would get so bored if we don’t have something to read. Like one time she explained to me that while she was waiting in a car, she and her mind got so bored that she was just dying to read something, anything. Guess what she ended up reading? the car owner’s manual that she found in the glove box. She also told me that each time she went to a grocery store with his mom, she would always take a magazine and read it while pushing a cart around and being engrossed in it with her elbows resting on top of handles and didn’t care what was being thrown into the cart. She would make sure that the shopping took long enough or she would pace it down so she could finish the whole magazine and put it back into the stands where she got it and quickly went back to the aisle to help her not-too-pleasant mom to load food items onto the belt. On every Sunday, she would steal her dad’s favorite newspapers subscription, the New York Times. Needless to say, she’s one helluva of a smart girl. All of those reading paid off for her.

I always thought that was a cool story and I did the exact same thing too. My dad liked the coffee at Starbucks so each time we went to Barnes and Noble, I would go straight to the bestseller aisle or new paperbacks to see what’s new. Ofc, I love magazines too and would take a few and bring to the table where my dad is enjoying his coffee. Even though my dad isn’t big of a reader himself, he was always willing to buy them for me and I would be happily reading in the car on way to home.

Whenever I’m going out with friends on some kind of a trip, I like to sit in the back, not in the shotgun seat, so I would have less distractions reading a book. One of the things about myself is that I kinda have this habit that I cannot go to a bathroom without something to read. Luckily I have a blackberry now so in case I couldn’t find anything to take with me, I can browse on my blackberry. So I make sure my bathroom has some variety of magazines and books, ha.

Now, it seems that I spend a lot of reading on the Internet. I guess it’s more convenient, free, and doesn’t take up any space but from time to time, I like to take a book and sit in a comfy chair and just read.

Ok, time for me to get back to my book. :-)

I’ve added Flickr images section to the Deafpulse.com. They all are automatically taken from Flickr that are tagged with ‘Deaf’.

I’ve also fixed Google News to show bubble tooltips and replaced MSNBC News with Technorati since there was something funny with MSNBC’s news feed.

After working on the website for about a week and receiving emails/comments from all of you, I decided that the emphasis will be on the news services such as Google, BBC, and Yahoo. I realize there is too many Deaf blogs out there now and I don’t feel right to decide what should be on the page or shouldn’t. So, there will be some changes to DeafPulse.com.

Something BIG is coming soon that is going to knock your eyes out.

Stay tuned!!

And apparently, this is my first ASL vlog, hehe. I also talked about why I made DeafPulse.com

Teri Sentelle’s vlog on DeafPulse.com