Fintan Ramblings

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”

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.

BuddyPing is one of those services which you look at and think “that’s useful”
So what does it do? It tells you where your friends are by locating their mobile phones.
It tells them where I am. See the BuddyPing widget map over on the bottom right of my blog? Click on dot on the map and it tells you I’m at work. Click on it later and it’ll tell you where I’m spending my evening in a pub somewhere

In their own words:
If you’re out on the town and want to find your friends, use buddyPing and your mobile phone (or the internet) to broadcast your whereabouts and to receive notification of your friends in the same area.
Just log into buddyPing (either via text message or using the “Your Location” feature once you have logged in via the web site) and we will scan your designated local area for friends and notify you of their location. We’ll also notify them of your location so all your friends can find out what you’re up to and where they can join you. This all happens in real time, and will continue until you logout of buddyPing

The number of times I’ve been a few feet away from close friends and only found out about it later are ridiculous - the number of times it must have happened unbeknown to any of us I can’t imagine.

So those that know me sign up and add me Fgaughan

Had forgot to say that BuddyPing only works at the UK thanks for remind me Tony

I read about Twitter when it first came out but didn’t get the point of twitter.
Website does not explain very well.
Then I saw Alisons blog and still didn’t see the point of it so in my mind is exactly the same as Tonys see his post here.

I commented on his blog that I still don’t get it and his reply was
Sign up for an account, add me, Alison, Jo or Rob as a friend, make sure you have your mobile details in your profile.
Once you done, let us know and we will do a message!
And make sure you select, SEND NOTIFICATIONS TO PHONE button.

Having added Tony,Alison to start with.. It wasn’t until I entered my mobile details, and tested the service with Tony and Alison that it hit me.
“Of course. I get it now!”

I had a right laugh reading some of the messages Tony sending a text while sitting on toilet Alison replied to my text as I said I couldn’t sleep and Rob trying to figure out what’s been said and JGJones is keeping us up to date on his adventure in USA.

I came across dotSUB.com and Project Readon from reading this blog so here are my thoughts as a viewer
Project readon is good and the subtitles are readable and the captions shows on each side of the screen so you know which person is speaking
The down side is the subtitles are held at different server so when viewing YouTube and the video is buffering the subtitles tend to be ahead of the film itself.
DotSUB is brilliant the subtitles are embedded to the film only down side is that it does take up a lot of space but then again if it was any smaller its would be harder to read.

dotSUB is my preference but if Project Readon becomes more popular then I cant complain as beggers cant be choosers!

I watched the south bank show on 29/04/2007 And it was about a Shane Meadows a film director text in bold below was taken from the ITV South Bank Show website.

Shane Meadows is one of Britain’s leading independent film directors. His films are often set in Staffordshire, his hometown, and are described as ‘kitchen sink’ dramas with a post-modern twist. His films have included Once Upon A Time in the Midlands, TwentyFourSeven, A Room For Romeo Brass and the phenomenal hit, Dead Man’s Shoes, which won numerous prizes including Best Film at The South Bank Show Awards in 2005. Few directors have tapped into their damaged roots as consistently or as brilliantly as Meadows. His ability to make an original screenplay from the tiniest of budgets has made him one of Britain’s finest guerrilla film-makers. In Spring 2007, he is releasing his next feature This Is England which is a rites of passage story based on an 11-year old boy growing up in Uttoxeter in the North of England, in the early 80s, joining a gang of skinheads who all become involved in the rise of the National Front. Through Meadows, the film will give an insight into what life is like for British independent film-makers, and the state of the British film industry.

I don’t normally watch the South Bank Show but was hooked and seeing the film clips that he made looks brilliant. The film called This is England is out in the cinema’s right now. Trouble with British films they are not in every cinema because of Hollywood heavy control. When I do find a cinema nearest to me that shows the film to my dismay it doesn’t carry subtitles. Undeterred thought id look it up on the Internet to find DVDs of his films to my annoyance all his films does not carry subtitles. Film4 was showing Dead mans shoes and I was pleased that it showed subtitles and it’s a brilliant film best film I ever saw for a very long time despite having to put up with adverts breaks. I logged on meadows Forum to express my annoyance Shane Meadows fans were surprised etc. I had mentioned about dotSUB.com and Project Readon One guy on the forum thribb (paul) have subtitled the This is England film trailer. It was his first attempt and what a good job he did. Take note that the film don’t show till after 6 second.. I am not complaining since he did it voluntarily and it was his first go. Paul has promised to post all Shane meadows film trailers and I can’t wait.

But knowing I am not likely to see any of his films on DVD with subtitles you see how frustrating it is. On the forum another guy pointed me to a dvd distributor that is licenced to dvd press Shane Meadows films. I have emailed them and yet wait for a reply. Why do I go through the torture and why did I watch the south bank show? And why did the South Bank Show bother subtitling the programme when I cant watch the film it self.

While i was writing this and got round to posting this Paul (thribb) picture below

and his myspace profile http://www.myspace.com/thribb

sent me a message

Hi,
I’ve subtitled the South Bank vodcast, which is an edited version of the South Bank Show that was available for download from the ITV website.

Well what can I say but thank you Paul you did a good job I appreciate that you took time out and subtitling this and I have watched it three times now.
So all you Deafies see what sort of Film your missing

Reading this blog reminded me of the time I used to get weird texts and when you say your not interested they usually go away .

But as the last few years cameras are now on mobile phones as standard and of course my friends get new phones from their wives/girlfriends for xmas present
they will be transferring phone book onto new phone and when I get a text from them it comes up as a new number.

Usually straight after xmas I get odd pictures of places that I cant work out but most worryingly of all they send pictures of their cocks, well from what I see they are having a pee in toilet. Horribly they send a picture of their turds!!

And I get odd random pictures of places, usually pubs or what they are drinking saying, “bet your in the house watching tv we are getting a life etc.”

Id be texting back asking who they are as I knew it be my friends playing a trick but they wouldn’t say.. so what I said was if you don’t tell me who you are I will ignore the text..
By the end of January they have given up and reveal them selves (not literally) .

When we first moved in the area on my street I noticed our house was the only one with a new outside ariel. The television reception is awful but once the tv was plugged in my wife (who is not deaf) was able to watch tv. It was a bit snowy and she could only watch 2 channels. Us deaf people need clear tv reception to receive subtitles other wise it will be ransom asterisks or letters.
I asked next door what their TV reception like and it was slightly better than mine although they use booster kit but I know subtitles will still be rubbish. She said that everyone in this street has an indoor Ariel in the attic.
So I climbed into my attic could not find an indoor ariel but saw a cable leading to outside ariel but cut in 2 pieces (as far as I can see) and a broken hack saw blade.
Obviously the people who lived here before had spent some money improving their viewing pleasure and did not want us to benefit from it.
We called a TV shop to fix the problem we were quoted £100.
We decided to go with sky and the deal is that if we go with a cheapest package it would work out £100 and after 12-month contract we cancel it and watch the free to air channels with clear reception.

Fast forward 4 years and now the sky digital box stopped working. It would cost us more than £50 for them to look at it.
So now we have 2 options we could pay £150 upfront where you have free to air TV or subscribe to Sky TV and get the cheapest package for 12 months and after that you either carry on subscribing or switch to free to air the total cost of that will be £170 so we might as well subscribe to Sky TV and get the extra channels for £20 more