TED Talk on Cochlear Implants and Music

By Sara on December 1, 2011

I have a lot of work to do this time of year, but wanted to post my first thoughts on this TED video.

First – no captions yet! gah! I can understand the main speaker, but the video clips aren’t clear enough to hear.

Second – I’m entirely happy with my two CIs. It’s been almost 2 years since the second one was activated and this is definitely my new normal and I wouldn’t go back to hearing aids if given a chance.

Third – I’m still playing saxophone in the sax sextet and in the band. We often play music in the house from Pandora, usually classical or jazz. Music I know well sounds the same as I remember it (because I’m remembering it), music that’s new to me starts out a bit muddled but becomes clearer with repeat listening (kind of like band, but there I’d expect it’s people learning their parts instead). I hear different things than I did with just hearing aids. I hear less of myself, and a little less of the people on either side of me. More of the trumpets, much more of the percussion, and Piccolos! There are definitely moments of beauty and emotion.

That said, you’ll see in this TED Talk video that cochlear implants are designed for speech and don’t do a very good job with music.

Embed code not working, so here’s a link to the video:
 http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_building_the_musical_muscle.html

As happy as I am with my CIs, I really do agree with this video.

If you watched the video you’re probably wondering what I thought of the sound clips.

There are some sound clips in the video that portray music which sounds badly if you have normal hearing… I can’t really tell it sounds bad, in fact, the first clip of the MIDI file with pitches moved a semi-tone – sounds the same to me as the original. The trumpet clip vs violin – very similar, the violin had more vibrato, both sound a bit synthetic to me still – like the trumpet sound on electronic keyboards from the early 1990s. The clips of the Usher song, well, I can tell the difference between those… not sure either one sounds great, the second lacked percussion which seems more like a hearing aid issue than a CI issue.

I’m curious to hear what others think and encourage those with CIs to watch the video and then share here or in the comments on the TED page.

Posted in About Me, Hearing, Music | 4 Responses

Stolen Photos and Copyrighting or The Internet is Not the Wild, Wild West

By Sara on July 15, 2011

A week ago a potential iPad Engraving customer of mine expressed concern at sending me his expensive electronics. He wanted to know if I had a way to reassure him that everything about my company is legit. I was just a tiny bit annoyed, but this has happen before, so I knew what to send him. Even though my business website is professional looking and full of photos and testimonials, some people are still suspicious… and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, as you’ll see.

After this happen I decided to make a media page for the website – one place to highlight all the articles about the company. So I set off googling my company to see what I could find. I have a google alert set up so most of it was not new to me. Then I decided to google iPad Engraving and see how the competition is doing. Nothing really new and exciting there. Down about eight pages in the search results I found a link to a site that focuses on engraving electronics for individuals. I clicked through and noticed they were using a web-to-print service I hadn’t seen before so I poked around some more. Somewhere on their site I found a link to their ‘corporate orders’ site. I clicked that. Imagine my surprise when I discover that this site is full of photos that I took myself.

Yes, that’s right. A business in the exact same industry as mine was using photos I had taken of my engraving work to promote their business. Not a “splog” site that just ripped my content, but a supposedly legitimate business. And not just one photo – but dozens. After a closer look I recognized work in other photos that was done by various engravers I know of.

If you share photos on the web, this has probably happen to you at some point in time. I even had a young deaf girl steal photos of me to put on her Facebook page once. This is why most photographers watermark their images with their name and copyright notice.

So this past week was a learning experience for me. Here’s a summary:

    • A lot of people are ignorant of even the most basic concept of copyright laws and how they work. Some are ignorant to the point of declaring that as long as you give credit it’s okay to use a photo you find online. One guy actually said that that’s “what books and magazines do”. Really? No! That’s not what they do. They license (receive permission to use) every photo they use either directly or through a license agency. Every Photo. There is a special case here, if you see a photo on the web that says it is released under a Creative Commons license that may mean that you may be able to use it and only have to give permission. There are different levels of Creative Commons licenses, so be sure to check that your use is included. My photos were licensed this way, but they were tagged Non-Commercial. If a blog had used them and given me credit I’d be perfectly happy. But since another business (commercial!) used them and didn’t even give credit… I was really not happy.

  • Sending a DMCA takedown notice usually works. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act means that the internet really is not the Wild, Wild West that some people claim it is. There are procedures to follow to sent a notice to the host of the site that took your content that you want it removed. The host then starts by warning their customer and if that doesn’t work then they go in and remove the files themselves.

  • It’s very easy to register your work with the US Copyright office. You don’t have to register your photos/work with the copyright office, but if you do it makes your case much easier to defend. Some photographers say that pursuing settlements for copyright infringements is a second income stream for them.

  • Watermarks don’t have to be huge. Watermarking images is a way to tell people that they are yours. The objection has been that a small mark in the corner is easy to just crop away and a big watermark across the center really distracts or takes away from the experience of viewing the image. It turns out that the small one will protect you greatly because there are laws in place to say that removing the watermark is illegal too.

  • Taking it further would require a lawyer. So far I haven’t found a copyright lawyer to work with, and since the photos have been removed from the site (though are stitll saved in the host directories) I probably won’t be filing any lawsuits this time. I’m just this much more ready in case it happens again.

Posted in Work | Leave a response

This would have totally changed school for me…

By Sara on May 13, 2011

The most difficult part of high school and even college for me was group discussions. I remember in English class when we would break into small groups my group was allowed to go work across the hall where there would be less background noise. It made it easier for me to hear but it was still difficult. And it was hard for anyone to understand just how much I missed because I always did fine in a one-on-one situation.

These days kids grow up being on the internet and conversing by typed communication. It’s second nature to them, just like it became second nature to me when I first joined online discussions in 1996. I only knew 2 or 3 people who were online then who lived in the same city as me, not counting the chemistry teacher. :) In college we used email and chat socially and it began to replace the phone for some people.

Right now, Don is grading reviews of wikis done by college students. The equivalent for me would have been to write a review of someone’s oral presentation.

Anyway, this article in the NY Times struck a chord with me.

Instead of being a distraction — an electronic version of note-passing — the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing.

“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”

The students communicate by typing during the class. It’s a text-based class group discussion! Not being in school anymore myself, I’ve only considered this type of thing for work meetings. Of course I was told that no one would want to type instead of talk on and listen to a conference call. I can see that changing with time though as the phone-loving generation is replaced by the email/IM/web crowd.

But I wonder… will the ease of video calls and even newer technology push the text-only communication out again over time?

Posted in About Me, Hearing | 1 Response

Great customer service without the phone

By Sara on February 10, 2011

Whenever I write about not using the phone people invariably ask me “can’t you hear on the phone with your CI?” or “Why not use VRS?” Honestly, it’s a habit I fell into years ago and haven’t gotten around to breaking yet because I prefer to be phone-less. That’s just me. Moving on…

The curb in a parking lot decided to play tug-of-war with my car’s bumper today and pulled it right off. I figured I should try to get it put back on ASAP since it looks crazy and feels noisy and exposed without it.

I was looking up the phone number for Don to call the car place and noticed a ‘live chat’ button on their site. That’s new. I was skeptical though, as in the past whenever I used their ‘make an appointment form’ someone would email me back requesting that I call (don’t you think I would have called in the first place if I wanted to communicate that way?).

The chat auto-answered but no one was there… fair enough, I wander away from my own chat sometimes. So I left it open until someone came back. He first asked for my phone to have someone call me. Figures. I told him I’m deaf and don’t use the phone. He said, “Okay. Well, in that case, let’s avoid the phone. I’ll call up our service department and relay the info to you.” That’s definitely a first! I figured he’d be easier to work with than a relay operator who has to follow strict standards and wouldn’t even explain why I had to have things relayed through them.

Things went smoothly, as any chat / IM conversation can when one person isn’t trapped inside a script.
At one point he said “They seem to be having trouble wrapping their heads around the difficulty in speaking to you by phone… Okay, found someone with some sense.” Boy do I know that feeling.

Long story short – my appointment is set up for tomorrow morning and I even got directions to the collision center since I hadn’t been there before, and he gave me his email in case I needed anything.

Posted in Hearing | 4 Responses

They’ve caught up! … to where I was Last year.

By Sara on January 20, 2011

In the late 90s when DVD players proliferated the homes of my friends it became possible for me to watch movies with subtitles at the press of a button. Before that you were dependent on them to have a newish TV set (1993) and for the VHS tape to have captions that worked. Netflix made renting movies something you could do from your computer and the DVDs showed up in the mail a day or two later. Then a few years ago Netflix introduced instant streaming for some titles…. but there were no captions. Now, after hearing protests from people who need captions and subtitles and promising to deliver, there are quite a few movies on Netflix that have subtitles and captions. I only just realized this though myself. Why? Because I have an iPad and the Netflix iPad app doesn’t support captions! They’ve caught up to where I was last year.

Netflix also doesn’t provide a great way to search for movies that ARE captioned. For that, I just learned about http://feedfliks.com

Feedfliks displays stats about how many movies you’ve rented, how much you pay for each movie, how long you keep a disk at home before sending it back (ouch, I always do this!). It also has a search where one of the options is “Instant Watch – with Subtitles”! How useful! I’ll have to switch back to the computer to watch things, but at least now I can branch out from the foreign movies I’ve been focusing on lately.

And hopefully they’ll add captioning support for all of their other viewing devices ASAP.

Posted in About Me, Hearing | 1 Response

Can you read lips?

By Sara on January 12, 2011

All hard of hearing and deaf people learn to read lips. Or more accurately, we learn to take advantage of any and all visual cues to understand what we’re hearing. When I was in high school I had speech reading lessons once a week. A Teacher of the Deaf came to my school. She gave me a list of one syllable words that all had the same core sound. I remember ‘Ah as in father’ was one of the first ones. Then she would silently mouth a sentence that used one of those words. I didn’t have to tell her the whole sentence, I only had to guess which word I saw. As time went on I was getting the whole sentence almost half the time. She could always tell when I did because my face would light up with comprehension.

I just came across this as part of the HLAA newsletter yesterday:

Volunteers are needed to test run a new audiovisual speech perception training program called ReadMyQuips. In the program, the noise in the audio portion is varied adaptively depending on the person’s answer. The sentences are quips taken from people as varied as Winston Churchill and Groucho Marx. Using a crossword puzzle format, the subject simply fills in the answers in the designated boxes. In the trial run, the intent is to identify and correct any software bugs that may still be remaining.

Prospective users can download a trial version at:

http://www.sensesynergy.com/

The only thing asked of people taking the trial run is that they report any problems with the software, and submit a brief survey (included in the program) telling the company he or she thinks.

I’ve never seen a self-study lip-reading program before, though I’m sure there was something on DVD somewhere. This one seems great though. And free to try out. With the CIs I work more on trying to listen without visual cues, but this program gives you a lot of flexibility in how you use it. You can control the amount of noise added to the speech in the video, or turn the sound of entirely. To not have visual cues, just close your eyes and only listen.

I may end up concluding that the quips give too much help and aren’t random enough to really trip up a linguistically-adept brain… but it’s still good practice.

Posted in Hearing | 2 Responses

A year with bilateral cochlear implants

By Sara on January 11, 2011

So now it’s 2011. I received my first CI in April 2009 and the second in late December 09 – so I’m officially over a year being bilateral. It’s been great. Life is good and pretty much what I’d call normal. I can hear a lot better in many situations. I find myself having one-on-one conversations in very noisy places (a Wine Guild holiday party with about 80 people in a small space – Don had a headache when we left from the noise!). I still participate a lot more if someone’s talking to ME specifically. One-on-one conversation guarantees this, but I’m finding that it happens more often now as a side conversation than it used to. For example, at lunch with a group of five people, I can switch between the main conversation and talking to someone next to me and usually not be too lost when I go back to the group. I catch enough so that I can be filled in with a quick ‘what was that?’ or ‘who were you talking about?’ It used to be a lot harder to catch up to a conversation like that.

I’ve discovered a lot of new things in some of the songs I’ve listened to for years. Usually it’s a high-frequency solo filling in what used to seem to me to be just a boring spot. A harmonica in Billy Joel’s Piano Man… Some kind of flute or pipe in Moxy Fruvous’s Johnny Saucep’n… Hey I bet I can hear those tinkling things at the end of Dreamed A Dream… haven’t given that a good listen yet, but they were one of the things I remember feeling the loss of when I first lost my hearing in 1993. (Time for new music?)

I’m still playing in the 90-piece concert band and the 6-member saxophone ensemble. It took a few CI mappings before the trumpets playing too loud stopped making my face twitch from the first CI. Speaking of mappings, I haven’t been to UNC for an appointment since last year, I think mid or late March. I could probably use one, but don’t have anything specific that needs tweaking.

Another thing that’s amazingly easier than it used to be: having a conversation in the car in the dark. At least with Don, I don’t get many opportunities to test this with other people.

So all is going really well, and there’s generally not a lot that seems exciting enough to bother blogging about. That’s a pretty good testimonial!

HLAA Convention 2011I just saw that the HLAA convention is in Washington, DC this year. I’ve never been but it always seemed interesting, so I’m going to plan to attend since I’m only 2 hours away. (I used to work in Crystal City and we always walked for coffee at the Starbucks in the Hyatt that’s hosting the conference.) I know it’s way out in June, but let me know if you’re going.

Posted in Hearing | 2 Responses

Gizmodo’s iPad Etching Contest and what happened 6 months later…

By Sara on November 9, 2010

This post feels very ironic to write.  I started it on the business site but decided it was too non-businessy to put over there.

So I have a laser engraving business. I have two domain names that go to the same place, InAFlashLaser.com and iPadLaserEngraving.com The idea for iPadLaserEngraving.com came to me back in March (2010). At the time I knew we were investing in a laser cutter for In A Flash, LLC, and I was a little bit beyond wondering what the heck we would do it with (1. buy laser. 2………  3. profit), but I never imagined that things would be quite as great as they have been so far.

I’ve engraved a lot of different things, but the iPads have been numerous and consistent and I predominantly have this country’s businesses to thank for that. They love the iPad and love to give them to everyone.  I’ve done work for Dos Equis (my 1st iPad quote), Nike, Golf Digest, McAfee, Infinity, Do-It-Best, a couple of banks, and a few dozen other companies I hadn’t heard of or can’t remember off hand.  I’ve also engraved about 15 iPads on two separate occasions for a well-known political commentator that I won’t name, (but I’ll say the only thing we have in common is the way we hear sound).

So the ironic part is that the idea to purchase iPadLaserEngraving.com came from a contest that Gizmodo.com ran back in March.  I thought that a contest like that would be a cool thing to do locally to promote my service once I got the laser set up.  Then some domain-name-buying desire flipped on and I impulsively spent $10. Now, I’m not saying a domain name alone will get you these results, of course not.  But with that domain name I created a niche website. I decided to post a few pages that attracted attention from google using a wordpress site that was really easy to update, and the rest is history. Before I had a laser, before the iPad had even come out let alone been etched.

Early on I started looking for artists that would let me sell their artwork as laser engravings on the site.  I was getting a lot of search engine traffic, but people weren’t buying.  We thought maybe it was because they didn’t know what they wanted to engrave (don’s iPad is still un-etched for this reason!).  I started leaving random messages with the people who entered cool things into the Gizmodo contest.  I didn’t hear back from very many – only one or two.  Then a few days ago I got an email from the guy who won the contest outright.  Of course I had contacted him before about selling his artwork, it’s awesome.

He explained that his experience didn’t turn out to be a positive one and he never did get his artwork etched successfully onto iPad.  Until today!

Isn’t that awesome?

I have some guesses as to why it didn’t come out well for the other company, but after 150 or more iPads I didn’t have a problem. :)  He’s also given me the rights to use it in the Artist Series.  Our artists earn 10% of all sales.

Posted in Work | 1 Response

I voted. Did you?!

By Sara on November 2, 2010

Posted in Activities | Leave a response

How NOT to take care of your customers…

By Sara on October 29, 2010

So as a business owner I’m learning a lot about customer service. I may occasionally express my frustration about some of my customers to my very very close friends (hi mom), but I ALWAYS try to do everything in my power to help them have a good experience dealing with me and my businesses.

Having this be a big part of my life makes me even more sensitive to companies that don’t do the same in return when I am (or trying to be) their customer.

Case in point – DiscountMugs.com

They’re a manufacturer located in the US that does (and brags about doing) factory direct sales on drinkware and other products. Their website has a minimum order quantity generally of about 12 items. My laser business has ordered from them twice. The first time we ordered 12 of two different colors and styles of water bottles, undecorated since I want to laser engrave them. I used the website to order and they arrived when expected (but took a long time considering they were blank items).

The second time I decided to try to find out if they would let me mix and match colors to get to the minimum order number. I tried using their Live Chat form on their website. No response. I tried again making sure it was during business hours on a week day. No response. Both times I filled out the offline contact, leave a message form and got nothing back. I decided to place a ‘trouble ticket’ with their customer service system to ask my question. Nothing. I decided I’d have to call them. I used the relay service and after being on hold reached Janielle who immediately asked for my email address to access my account. (Ironic since they can’t seem to respond to emails.) I asked her my question and she said that if I ordered 50 bottles she could give me two colors for the 50 bottle price instead of the 25 bottle price. Yeah, not quite what I was thinking, but at least it’s something? She said she would email me the information and that I could reply. I told her how I hadn’t had any luck with the chat or emails before and she said she was very prompt at replying to emails. Turned out she was. We emailed back and forth, I ended up ordering samples of 4 items. I had to call again to give my credit card info since their online system doesn’t work for samples. The order was placed. About this time I got an email from another person in response to my ticket from 2 days before.

I got a tracking number two days later (wow fast!) but Fedex didn’t have any information for it. The original order summary said the 28th was the delivery date. Nothing came yesterday and the tracking number still showed up as invalid. This morning I emailed Janielle. Her out of office message said she was out but would be IN the office on the 29th (today). Got no reply. I called them again.

Since I have it, I’ll post the transcript.

12:28 PM
me: 1-800-569-1980
attrelay: Calling 1-800-569-1980.
Type SKSK and press [ENTER] at any time to end the call.
Connected to Relay Center
thank you .. dialing .. ca 6617 (F) (ca here … if recording would you like complete msg typed or hold for specific department or live rep q) ga
me: live rep or sales ga
attrelay: (recorded msg)
hello and thank you for calling discount mugs(dot)com (holding for a live rep)
(holding to music)
one moment please (holding)
(female)
discounts mugs this is ashley how can i help you ga
me: Hi there, I was wondering if yo u could check on an order for me? ga
attrelay: whats the order number ga
me: it is DM423615 ga
attrelay: theya re all shipped these are for samples correct ga
me: That’s right. They were shpiped 7 days ago and the tracking number I have shows up as invalid ga
attrelay: ok let me see if i can get you the correct tracking number you will have to track via fed ex the tracking number is 218910930029729 ga
me: Not Found
No information for the following shipments/FedEx Office orders has been received by our system yet. Please try again later or contact Customer Service. ga
attrelay: ok where did you get that from ga
me: fedex website ga
attrelay: what you will have to do is place a ticket to customer service on our website ga
me: I really needed these in yesterday. Is there any way to get them overnighted for deliver tomorrow? ga
attrelay: no ga
me: great. thank you so much. ga
attrelay: once you place your ticket a manager will contact you regarding what is going on with the order ga
me: this is messed up. your company is horrible to do business with. thanks for your time. sksk
attrelay: no it s just because you maybe horrible (hung up) ga or sk

Yeah… I don’t even have any comments for that… except maybe she thought I had already hung up… I usually try hard not to vent my frustration on customer service, but it’s part of their job to ignore it.

So I submitted my ticket… which I thought about doing before but figured calling would be faster. I thought it was ironic (or telling) again that they have a specific field for “Did not receive sample or blank/unprinted mug order“. I guess I’m jaded now, because that’s actually not a bad way to get things to the right department quickly.

I did get a reply a few hours later:

Response : Hello

The order was scaned and out of our warehouse 10/22 but fedex have not done any other scaned after that.
Pherhaps we have contacted FeDex and thay have told us they do have the package and that the system will updated today.
Please allow untill the end of the day so you can see the tracking information on Fedex.com.
Your order should be delivery by Tuesday.

We apologize for this inconvinience.

Sincerely
Customer Svc.Dept

Comment By : lily

I almost felt bad about it… maybe fedex did lose it. But then I checked the tracking number, hey it’s been updated!

Date/Time Activity Location Details
Oct 29, 2010 1:32 PM
Picked up
MIAMI, FL

Sorry, FedEx. I should have known you weren’t to blame. That’s about 30 minutes after I sent the ticket. If they shipped them that fast why couldn’t they overnight them?

I guess it’ll be straightened out in the end… but what a pain.

Posted in Work | 4 Responses

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Welcome

Photo of Sara Looking out a Window

I'm a 30-something year old girl originally from upstate NY and now living in central Virginia. My background is in mechanical engineering and I worked full time as an engineer for 8 years. In 2010 I quit my job and started a laser engraving business.

I lost my hearing at age 14 and have been using hearing aids since then. In April 2009 I received my first cochlear implant. That went really well so in December 2009 I got the second. The CIs are what prompted me to start writing publicly - but I try to cover other things as well.

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A little music…