Fintan Ramblings

As you may have read in here and here about Shane Meadows films not being subtitled on DVD
This helpful forum Shane Meadows Forum pointed me to the right place on company that has the license and rights to put his films onto DVD.

Optimum Releasing
The website boast of film releases and also to buy online but no information on if any films carry subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

First email I sent was 1st of May asking if there is any likelihood of subtitling the film called This is England I also set the emails to return receipt so I know they have read it
Also I sent another on Fri, 22 Jun 2007 and it was read 15 minutes later but no acknowledgment or an answer so what is the matter with these people?

I get emails sent to me who read my blog asking if I have any answer if the films will carry subtitles.

So now I have put names address of the company for all of you to see so bombard them with calls fax or email and please let me know if you get any answer from them

Address

Optimum Releasing
22 Newman Street
London
W1T 1PH

T: 020 7637 5403
F: 020 7637 5408
email: info@optimumreleasing.com

Alison Meese
alison@optimumreleasing.com

All images taken from official website This Is England

Teletext

When I was growing up in the 70’s the only TV Programme we could watch was non-talkie movies.. such as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and early Laurel and Hardy films.
I couldn’t watch cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, Captain Pugwash and Magic Roundabout.

The 80’s came and Teletext or Ceefax came along and subtitles were available when you press 888.

Ceefax was actually invented in 1974 see below taken from Wikipedia :
Ceefax (phonetic for “See Facts”) is the BBC’s Teletext information service.
The system was announced in October 1972 and following test transmissions in 1973-1974 the Ceefax system went live on the 23 September 1974 with thirty pages. Developed by BBC engineers who were working on ways of providing televisual subtitles for the deaf, it was the first teletext system in the world.

Now, to get a box would cost up to £400 in the 70’s.
Check out this link http://finllfixit.co.uk/01/12/2006/why-i-watch-less-tv/ on how I came across Ceefax.

It went live in 1974 but one of the early problems was its expense. Decoders cost more than £300 while Teletext-enabled TV sets would set consumers back £700.

Ceefax was the Google of its day. You type 101 and it brings up the headline news and also brings up a news flash: (could not use newsflash when watching a programme using subtitles)

Anyone remember the no need to shout weekly news for the Deaf?

Very un PC

We were all excited that programmes would show subtitles and it was intended for deaf people.
The problem was that only certain programmes showed subtitles and you had to look on Ceefax or newspaper TV listings to find out if the programme you wanted to watch will carry subtitles. Also it was not on 24 /7.

Subtitles were not always on 888. At first they were on 170 (BBC1), 270 (BBC2) and 199 (ITV). Can you imagine how confusing that was but thankfully all channels subtitles are on 888

Nowadays 98 % of BBC programmes carry subtitles but the analogue TV’s are being switched off so all programmes will be shown in digital format.
So you either have free Freeview, Sky or Cable in order to watch digital programmes but what about Ceefax?

Subtitles
BBC subtitles provide a transcript of the TV soundtrack, helping deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to follow programmes. They have been available since the early 1980s.
No other UK broadcaster matches the proportion of programmes subtitled by the BBC. It is committed to subtitling 100% of BBC TV programmes from April 2008.
95% of BBC One and BBC Two is already subtitled, and 80% of BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies and BBC News 24.
On analogue TV you need Teletext to see subtitles. Press Text on your remote control and type 888. Subtitles appear straight away or whenever a subtitled programme begins.
If you have digital TV, select Subtitles from the set-up menu and follow the instructions for your set-top box or set. Subtitles will appear whenever you switch on.
Now as you see BBC committed to subtitling 100 % of BBC TV programmes 34 years after it first started!
But once British broadcasting becomes fully digital and the analogue signal is switched off, Ceefax will be succeeded by its already flourishing little brother digital text – accessed by the now familiar red button.

Digital text is always slow and pressing the red button during a programme or shortly after it has finished to watch more of it (like a extended programme) carry’s no subtitles so its no use to us.
So yes you might say we have the Internet so why bother with interactive text but to think that they are spending money on it you would have thought of ways of including subtitles for us?

All images taken from this site http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/ with permission

I went for a barium scan at Scarborough hospital.
Where I got changed you could not swing a cat in there .. so anyway my wife could not resist taking a snap as I looked ridiculous as the gown were tight!

Good job my wife came with me as I could not understand what the staff was saying at reception as they talked too fast.
Although once inside for an x-ray scan the Indian lady and her assistant I could easily understand what they was saying in all it took 10 minutes

I went to Ikea Leeds yesterday to spend our wedding vouchers; as usual we palmed our other 2 kids off in a play barn full of child minders , so I and my wife can shop in peace along with baby Caleb.
Fortunately the kids weren’t in there long as children can only be in play barn for half an hour so we had to rush back to claim our children muttering “where did the time go?”

We got some food and carried on doing the rest of shopping we got loads of things till we came across a cot and on the ticket see staff
The counter was 10 people queuing up and 2 staff tapping away on computer and answering phones.
Wife said forget it we will pay for these and go because baby getting hungry.

I said just hand the baby over and I will queue up, I stood in the queue and of course baby started to cry with hunger and there I was shh shh him.
People in queue was getting stressed and the staff was unable to talk on phone due to loud wailing noise .
After about 1 minute they said would you like to come to front!! So I did and then got the baby’s dummy and stuck it in his mouth he was quiet when they were dealing with my queries.

So take a tip from me if you want to jump a queue bring a wailing baby,
To be honest if I was standing there more than 2 minutes I would have left the queue as I wouldn’t let him be hungry that long and we were literally minutes from the car for his feed.

Thought id do a vlog using my mobile camera seeing that everyone doing it theses days.

But I got shy so my son volunteered

A woman approached me at the bar and said I can sign.
I pretended to look impressed /fascinated when she then onto alphabetical order A,B,C by the time she got to the letter Z ,I have ordered a pint of Guinness  and told her it was wrong.
So she proceed to do it all again when she got to letter G ,  I interrupted and said wrong again
She  looked at her hand puzzled and said is it this finger or that finger?

She looked at me puzzled and I said to her you learnt all that at the Brownies or Girl Guide didn’t you?
She replied yes at the brownies .

Unlearn what you learnt at the brownies then because I can tell you that’s finger spelling but you told me that you know sign language.
She was red faced when I said can you sign “I would like to buy a pint of Guinness for my friend as an apology “

She doesn’t know sign language only finger spelling and I know it’s very rude of me to talk like this but this sort of thing happens every time when I am out with my deaf friends,
You know when you get a lot of people staring and that and then the approach you at the bar with a blonde bimbo look “hi I can sign”
Usually women but never men so I guess you don’t get to learn finger spelling at the scouts then.

I was very disappointed with the programme this week on Internet section

Probably the worst I have seen on See Hear and if this is the new See Hear then I am turning off.
So to think I have told everyone and their dogs about see hear and their comments makes me cringe

First of all See Hear did not explain what Social Networking is properly and it heavily focused on Bebo ( I thought the BBC not allowed to advertise).
72 year old guy who was interviewed said he was looking for lady friend, I think he should joined a dating agency and not Bebo as I am not sure if he knew what Bebo is?

And as for the DUK (Deaf UK) section, on national TV I was seen looking at the computer but not DUK I may add.
So the inaccurate reporting it said on Deaf-UK was it first social networking site
Deaf-UK is not a social networking site and secondly it’s not the first either
It’s just a name owned by Yahoo and its held on yahoo server.
So yes John set it up and it requires no effort at all…
It was popular when it first started when there was more than 1 moderator and having more than one moderator will ensure its not bias.
Was very popular in its time but sadly its not due to rise of other forums and social networking MSN etc.

It was said that it has over 2500 members and postings a day..
2500 postings a day? I knew it was heavily moderated so where are my other 2400 posts ?

I am not going to bore you how bad DUK is at the moment, you can find that out for yourself, but what annoys me is the inaccurate reporting and the BBC thinks it’s biggest deaf forum to which it isn’t.
Did they do their research properly? – I think no.
Do you really want the BBC to be endorsing a forum that encourages bullying?
Do you want to be in a forum where the moderator is paranoid and able to modify and delete/bounce message back to you if he doesn’t agree with you?
He asked me outside the BBC studios what I said on Camera, doesn’t that tell you he is paranoid? What was he afraid of? Of course my reply was watch the show.

And last of all the deaf couple who didn’t get internet access for 3 months well that happens to a lot of people regardless if they deaf or not but why was that shown? Does not make sense to me to “what happens if you lose all your Internet connection”…. Erm die of boredom?
So what are they trying to say are the incapable of getting it sorted out

And next week we will dedicate a half hour show to Miss Deaf-UK in this day and age do we really need to see this?

So what did my friends and family think of my 5 second acting debut
“Blink and you would have missed it”

“what is that shit? Are deaf people mentally incapable of doing things themselves”
“and now something new the internet” blimey the internet been going over 15 years!”
“I often wondered what dumb means and now I know”

See how I spent my Fathers Day, setting up a basket ball hoop stand also when that was done I set up the trampoline to bad its for ages up to 6

As you can see I was getting pissed off as the instructions were awful.

We have never had it so good in keeping in touch with friends, especially when you’re deaf and unable to use the telephone.

1988 to year 2000 (picked 1988 as I was 18 then)
In the past, we all met at deaf clubs. We had to remember or write down where we would meet next in pubs and the likes..
We also could keep in contact via the post, but I hardly ever wrote a letter, apart from sending birthday cards.
When I was living at home and I needed to contact my friend, I had to ask my mum to ring my friend’s mum to find out the date or time to meet, then our mums would be chatting for ages talking about the weather and gawd knows what. A call that should last 5 min ended up being an hour!

Then Typetalk came along, but not all of us had Typetalk. (I got it for free, because I was working.) However, my male friends were lazy, and they were quite happy for their mums to do all the phone calls etc. And when I did use Typetalk, my parents could hear someone at the other end saying,
“Hello, hello? Who is it? Maureen, it sounds like a fax machine. I will hang up as we can’t talk to a fax machine. We haven’t got a fax machine, have we?….”

Pagers came along, and what an excellent device it was. The only downside at that time was that you had to ring and leave a message and then relay it onto a pager.
I had software where you could type in a message on your home pc. The modem would dial the pager’s server and leave the message. The only trouble was, at that time, none of my friends had a pager and my mum only used it to tell me that dinner was on the table!!

Then, along came mobile phones. Most of my friends took a long time to get a mobile. It was great to get in contact via sms, but it took a long time coming. I don’t need to tell you how useful this device was and still is today.

Between 1988 and now, the PC came along. Now I don’t need to tell you how useful it is, do I?

Today – 2007
Just to remind you that I have taken names from the Deaf-uk-chat mailing list. I don’t know where they live ( I could have asked, but then I’d never get this blog written) so I have inserted some random area .

I announced on Deaf-uk-chat that we meet in Chester in a pub. Name of street and postcode of pub provided for sat-nav users.

Alison is leaving London with Kyle after staying with some friends.
Rob, who was in area, got his mobile out and texted “ping me” using buddyping that he found on his mobile. Alison and Kyle were nearby, and he asked for a lift to save train fare.

After travelling so far, they decided to have a break and found a pub. Meanwhile, in another car, Nellie and Pauline requested a message from their TomTom sat-nav to see how far others travelled and discovered that Alison Jen were nearby and that Rob was in the pub. Their TomTom directed them to the pub so that they could join them..
(This is very useful if you are in a convoy of cars and you don’t want to lose each other.)

Meanwhile, Tony flew from Aussie land and had sent a message through Twitter on his laptop that he will be at the Manchester airport and will be taking a train to Chester.
Jones responded on his mobile via text to twitter that he is in area and tells him not to waste money on train fare, because he is in the area and can pick him up.

I text onto twitter that there is change of venue and that the pub can be found within the roman walls…..and so on, As you can see, be it mobiles or laptops, we are able to never lose touch with each other

So why aren’t us deafies using all the software that’s provided on the internet??
I have only tested Buddyping with Kyle, and so few of us are using twitter. Why are people afraid to test things out??

Oh, and if you want to know how the story ends …

We all arrive at the pub having a good time and MM was sitting at the bar only drinking coke thinking that there is some conspiracy going on regarding the change of venue and watching anyone walking in the pub with a longbow.

Charlotte asked why MM looked worried, to which I replied,
“Apparently it’s legal to kill a Welshman within the roman walls with a longbow.”
At that point, Tony’s eyes lit up……

Reading this blog Stores commit active discrimination on Funny old Life

Reminds me when I was travelling from Chester to ( I cant remember where)on a virgin train.
I was pleased to find a mobile free zone carriage pulled up as it drove me nuts, when people using the phone when sat in front or behind me ,I get the whinny and crackly noise every time they use the phone and on top of that they are shouting “ HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? YES I AM ON THE TRAIN!!!”

So here I sat in seat feeling pleased with myself but I hadn’t bargained that everyone be sending text every 5 seconds. Arrrrggghh They set the phone beep messages to off when receiving messages
Sending a message makes bzzzzz crack bzzzzzz.
Receiving message gives a bzzzzzz crackl bzzzzzz

ARRGGGH

Complained to the staff  ,but the mobile phone free carriage states that they can’t use the phone talking as it annoys other passengers but it  does not apply to text messages!!!

Glad the digital hearing aids don’t pick anything like that up.