Friday, May 25, 2007

Pencast Round Two






Hope everyone can read this. Lots of thanks to Mandarine and Ian for their help with this.



9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was fun. I have a voice that sounds like a kid too. It doesn't sound that way to me, when I hear myself talking my voice sounds perfectly fine, but when I hear a recording of my voice, I think there must be some mistake. As much as I might want to do a podcast, I never will for the very same reasons as you. Yay for pencasts!

Anonymous said...

Loved your story. I like the pencast thing. I may even do one if I can discipline myself enough to produce something that is legible.

I will never do a podcast. I spend enough time on the internet reading and writing in blogs without going into broadcasting as well. I do not listen to podcasts either, the time element being the reason.

I don't sound like a little girl, but I don't really like the way I sound either.

mandarine said...

This is awesome (the pencast, the story, the handwriting)!

I do not like hearing my own voice either because it sounds exactly the same as my brother's. As a matter of fact, I even mistook a message I had left on my own answering machine for a call from my brother's and almost called him 'back'.

PS: and next time I want to hang up on a telemarketer, I'll answer that my father's not at home. Not that my voice is still a kid's, but the split-second hesitation on the other side of the line will give me time to say goodbye and hang up.

PPS: you should probably increase the resolution of the scanned pages (not the thumbnails, but the real images). I had to squint to read. The width is 465 pix, but if you remove the white margins, the useful width is somewhere near 350 pix. I think this is not enough. Apparently, your handwriting is smaller than mine, so 800 pix for the total page width (600 for the text) would be a better choice.

Thanks for pioneering pencasting with me. I am looking forward to your next pencast.

Emily Barton said...

Stef, yes, yay for pencasts! And glad to hear I'm not the only one with a child's voice.

Hmh, good for you: stick to your guns (although, of course, one can listen to podcasts while doing other things. Or maybe I shouldn't point that out?).

Mandarine, oh no, I don't want to cause blindness! Next go-around I'll try to increase the size. But if you knew what a HUGE effort it was just to get this much done (I'm still patting myself on the back), you'd understand "one step at a time." I just zoomed up the page online to something like 125%in order to be able to read it.

mandarine said...

Your one step at a time strategy seems to bear fruit. Congratulations. You deserve a pat on the back (try not to dislocate your shoulder).

Note that zooming digital images beyond 100% makes them bigger, but never sharper (except in movies, where apparently, they can reinvent pixels on-the-fly).

Rebecca said...

I'm all in favour of the pencasts, but I can safely say that you don't sound like a child!

Froshty said...

When my voice is recorded, it sounds so much more southern than it sounds in my head. In my career, in some cases, that southern accent has been hugely helpful--like when I had to train the dispatchers for truck lines in New Orleans to use a web-based application and these folks thought that faxing stuff was complicated. However, over time, the accent has led to the assumption that because I have such an accent, I am an imbecile. So, unless I want to create a podcast for New Orleans truckers, I think I'll eschew the concept.

Anonymous said...

Nope, I haven't got used to the sound of my voice in the podcasts yet (and try not to listen to them), but I know that no one will ever, ever get used to my handwriting, and for that reason I couldn't produce a beautiful pencast like yours, Emily!

Emily Barton said...

Mandarine, yes I did notice that they weren't sharper (as a matter of fact, zooming seemed to make it worse. But that might just be my own bad eyes at work).

Becky, hmmm, maybe you're so distracted by my American accent you don't hear it?

Froshty, I have friends who tell me the only time they can catch a hint of a Southern accent is when they hear me on the phone or on tape. And that "imbecile" assumption is why I felt the need to get rid of all traces of my accent, if I could, when I moved to Connecticut.

Thank you, Litlove, and don't worry. If I had a voice like yours, I'd be doing pencasts left, right, and center.