macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis A Brisket Ankle – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

A Brisket Ankle

Lin reminded me I needed to finish talking about my writing process. Apparently a couple of people have asked.

I already addressed the topic of how I get ideas. They just pop up from life or some comment someone has made. Sometimes I go looking for them online.

I subscribe to healio.com and a few other eye sites. I can ‘zoom’ them on my iPad to read and see if it is an article I could use. If it is something I want, I print it out.

Once it is printed out, I put it on my CCTV to re-read and underline what I consider are the important points. From there I start to write.

I bought a Verizon tablet soon after I ‘lost’ my second eye. It is about twice the size of my iPad mini (which I love and goes just about everywhere with me). I can zoom the font up to around 28 points or maybe more on the tablet. Very easy to see. I type with one finger. I can touch type and did put a keyboard on the Verizon tablet but I somehow never got it connected right so it doesn’t work. Doesn’t matter. So far my process works.

Why do I not use speech recognition? Speech rec, which autocorrect turns into recognition just about every time, is possibly more annoying than autocorrect, with which I have a true love/ hate relationship. Speech rec works best when you follow proper conventions, use one syllables words and pretty much don’t stray from the beaten path. In case you haven’t noticed, I “don’t talk too good” when I write. Training a speech recognition – there it goes again! – program to ‘follow along’ would be incredibly frustrating. And not only would it be hard to train it to my goofy style, I would also have to train it on the specialized vocabulary of psychology, ophthalmology, genetics, what have you. Oy. Oh, and Yiddish, Spanish and several other languages from which I know a half a dozen words max and occasionally like to use.

Lin can tell you about my failed forays into the world of speech recognition. Also my yogini. I often use speech recognition when texting her. What my yogini usually gets ends with “…no, I didn’t say that! …no, I did not say that either! Oh hell! You knew what I meant!” She finds my attempts to be very entertaining. [Lin/Linda: wish I’d saved some of her best goofs! There were 2 memorable ones…I had to figure out that ‘a brisket ankle’ meant a ‘broken ankle’ and that ‘toxo plus Moses’ was ‘toxoplasmosis’.  Great entertainment sometimes!]

There is another problem with using speech recognition. If I have been doing a lot of it, when I go to leave a ‘regular’ voice message I will say something like “Got your message period. Looking forward to seeing you explanation point.” Makes me sound a little strange.

Reading back what have written, I use a technique I read about. It works pretty well when you are using eccentric viewing. Hold your head still and move the text. It is easy to do on a tablet.

Once it is written, I send it along to Lin who authenticates what I said, puts in the links, corrects any grammar or spelling errors she sees, formats it and sends it back for final proof. The rest, as they say, is history.  [If you’d like to read more about this part, go to About Our Project.]

Hope that answers some of your questions! Caio!

written October 8th, 2017

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