Sense of Adventure » Adventure

Talk like a pirate

Victor — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:02:46 +0000

“You dog! You speckled-shirt dog! Why did you not come on board with the boat, you son of a bitch? I will drub you, you dog, within an inch of your life, and that inch too. Ay, you dog, and I will teach you better manners.” – Pirate talk from a real pirate, quoted in The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730

It be a mighty fine read, arrh.

If we’re going to talk like pirates, shouldn’t we be speaking Somali, Malay, or Chinese? Arrh?

Talk Like a Pirate Day gives me a handy excuse for a long-deferred review of a book I vastly enjoyed.

Author Benerson Little is a former Navy SEAL who put his considerable knowledge of seamanship and small-unit naval tactics, along with substantial research skills, to good and mightily entertaining use by writing a history on a a key but seldom seriously discussed area: the actual tactics, as well as weapons and other equipment (such as, say, boats). He even serves up hearty helpings of authentic pirate speech and recipes. Including one for original-style barbecue, which was given to us by the boucaniers - the same people, obviously, who gave us the word buccaneers.

As for pirate tactics, such as finding prey, stalking it, and running it down – not so easy a task, given the wind’s vagaries, and the fact it would allow you to sail only in certain directions – ship-to-ship combat, and boarding actions, we find not so much that Hollywood got it wrong (as of course it often has), but that Hollywood and conventional histories haven’t told us the whole story. One thing, for example, I never knew was the preference of many pirates to attack with one or a number of small craft, such as the piragua, basically a large canoe which could be sailed as well as rowed.

It also fascinated me to learn how popular and prevalent grenades were. Even conventional military histories of the period, primarily the 16^th and 17^th centuries, tend to treat grenades as peripheral curiosities, too unreliable and ineffectual to be of much use.

But judging from the many original sources quoted by Little, they were used enthusiastically and to great effect by pirates, as well as pirate-hunters, and merchants who weren’t ready to turn ships, cargoes, or selves over to the tender mercies of armed robbers of the sea. Grenades took a variety of forms, from firebombs (in everyday quantities, black powder acts a lot like gasoline) to antipersonnel bombs like Claymores, which could be fastened to bulkheads as you dove into cover and locked the hatches behind you, to sweep the decks of boarders with flame, broken glass, shot, and nails.

Take that, Jack Sparrow.

He also presents us, as might be expected, some utterly fascinating characters. Not so much the usual suspects, either, like Blackbeard or Captain Kidd, or even the lesser known but remarkable Bartholomew Roberts. Rather we get the Indiana Jones-esque likes of Captain William Dampier, a naval officer and naturalist as well as privateer and outright pirate, the positively Bondian Jean Doublet, and the frightful L’Ollonois, a SPECTRE-worthy sadistic supervillain who got what he had coming good and hard, courtesy of irate Central American Indians. Then there’s my favorite, Father Jean Baptiste Labat, who was of all things a Dominican priest. Labat, who could only be described as a pirate groupie (or maybe a pirate George Plimpton), not only sailed with freebooters and buccaneers of various nations but on at least one occasion fought alongside them.

And speaking of pirate talk – Labat despaired of the rough language used not just by pirates, but by regular seamen as well. He especially deplored the Spaniards and Portuguese for their favorite blasphemy of swearing on “an entire boatload of hosts.” Which tickled the, um, Hell out of me. (Don’t worry if you don’t get it; it’s a Catholic thing.)

It’s not flawless. In his enthusiasm the author sometimes gets infected by his sources with archaic speech styles that don’t always work. Sometimes that makes him a bit hard to understand. And sometimes he seems to forget to finish paragraphs, leaving us wondering what the Hell he was getting at. (Arrh.)

Also, after quite effectively whetting our appetites, he could have given us fuller biographies of some of his remarkable characters. And I was surprised not to find more detailed examinations of pirate battles, although the book’s thoroughly strewn with snippets of descriptions of them, by way of illustrating his points.

But those are quibbles. Especially, I admit, the points about the characters and battles: he wrote the book he intended to write, not entirely the book I found I wanted him to write.

That’s one of those fine-line author/reader conflicts. As an author it annoys me when people complain I didn’t write the book they wanted. And I see such reviews all the time on Amazon. At the same time, as a reader, sometimes I’m disappointed in that way. But those cases are usually ones in which I felt the author failed to deliver on promises made. As I said, it’s a tight call, and a subjective one.

It also looks as if Little might just have filled those unsatiated appetites of mine by writing other books he wanted to write, given his 2007 release The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674-1688, plus the forthcoming Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present. Both of which I strongly suspect I must have. (Hint†.)

Make no mistake: my criticisms are spits in the Seven Seas. I love this book, and recommend it highly. If you’ve any interest in the subject I give it five bullets out of five. If you have no particular interest in the subject (wait, did you read this? Pirates!) it’s still four bullets out of five. Little may go into a bit more technical detail than suits you; just skip those parts. You will find ample awesomeness here.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me mateys!

“Mort Dieu, les Espagnols me le payeront!” – L’Ollonois (“God’s death, the Spaniards will pay me for this!”)

*I see that Amazon has made it impossible to download a decent-sized cover image. Thanks for making it harder for me to advertise your site! You do a lot of things right, but this time you appear to have erred on the Stupid, Greedy Bastards side of thing. What do you think you are, Google?

And speaking of greedy – but I hope not stupid – remember, you can support this site, my lovable pets Emma, TJ, and Squeak†, and me by clicking through the linked image and buying the book! Buy some for all your friends. Christmas isn’t that far away…

†Shame? None for me, thanks!

Min-Pin Adventure!

Victor — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:37:35 +0000

Okay, this would more accurately be called “Min-Pin Encounter.” But “Min-Pin Adventure” sounds like either a Seventies Disney flick or a deeply, deeply wrong porno. Of such dichotomies are made the cheap amusements on which I thrive. So there.

Anyway, Emma Dog is doing better. Her Uncle Joe suggested she might be bored and depressed, and maybe even suffering Seasonal Affective Disorder. So I determined to start getting out to walk with her every day, rather than, well, sporadically, as we’d been doing. Okay, I’d been doing.

The key turns out to be to walk half the distance I was aiming for: a mile and a quarter, oir a little over, as opposed to 2.5 miles and up. I’d noticed that Emma tended to get footsore when we walked the longer distance. Me too. Which discouraged us from going out often enough to get tightened up for the distance.

So far, so good. The 1.25 mile walk participates in the same principle as my old Five Words model: set goals that make it easier, or at least less embarrassing, to succeed than to fail. Plus less wear and tear on the organism makes it easier to do it daily – thereby building up endurance.

So this morning, since I want to spend it watching football games (which have just commenced), writing, and taking breaks to bring in the Christmas stuff from the shed and decorate my little “tree,” I resolved to get us out first thing. Lo, by 9:15 we were heading out the door.

Not to the car but straightaway to the walk: south a block to Freeman, and then crossing Fourth to go to the ditch between 5^th and 6^th Streets. Which it turns out is called the “Harwood Lateral.” (There’s a sign. Your tax dollars at work, under the Federal “No Ditch Left Unnamed” program.)

I’ve been walking that ditch for upwards of thirty years. Haven’t been out on it for a while because they didn’t let water into it regularly, as they used to, over the summer, and Emma needs water, especially in the Spring and Summer. I was prepared with a bottle for her and a little bowl for her to drink from, but she didn’t need it.

Anyway, we enjoyed getting back to the ditch. One thing that hit me, especially when we turned north on the ditch itself: I’d been wondering, walking down near the Nature Center, which in turn lies near the river, where all the crows were? They’re our harbingers of winter and the holiday season; they usually congregate in vast cawing armies in that part of town. But I was seeing little evidence of them.

Well, there were plenty of them down by our ditch, as it turns out. Big, black birds, sitting magisterially in branches or flapping slowly overhead. And of course raising a huge outcry at our passage.

The walk itself was pleasant and uneventful. It was a bright, bracing day, calm, the sky lightly brushed with high clouds and cross-hatched with diffusing contrails (or chemtrails, as some of my friends would have it; I’m skeptical on that score.) I wore my jacket open and was fine.

Our eponymous encounter, or adventure, occurred when we were returning. As we approached Fourth Street here suddenly appeared a miniature Dobermann. It wasn’t a tiny teacup version, like the one I get such a huge kick out of over by Bear’s Ditch near the RGNC. It was more, I don’t know, terrier sized, and wispy.

(Thanks to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, we learn this one was a proper-sized Min-Pin; I’m guessing the bitty one’s a Chihuahua/Min-Pin cross. Gods preserve us.)

Despite my efforts to tell it no – usually works with dogs if you say it sharply – it trotted right up to Emma and sniffed her nose to nose.

And she did not slay it.

One thing about Emma: she’s not one of these scary dogs who strikes without warning. She’s one of these scary dogs who lets you know in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t like you. And in the past she’s tended not to like other dogs. To put it mildly.

Then again,. since she’s been a member in good standing of the Milán Pack, Emma’s grown more and more tolerant of the presence of other dogs. Then, too, it’s long been unclear to me whether she realizes these Hot Wheels sized creatures are actually adult dogs, as opposed to puppies. Like most domestic animals I’ve known, she seems tolerant of baby animals, even of other species.

So though I watched her keenly she did not bristle, nor show her teeth, nor growl. She sniffed back with apparent friendliness. She and the Min-Pin sniffed each other’s crotches, like polite dogs. The little critter then turned and jumped up to put its forefeet on my leg, so that I could scratch its head. I did this thing. It then jumped up in similar wise on Emma’s head, which seemed to be pushing it. But Emma endured this without hostility.

It then trotted off west along Freeman about its business.

I was a little concerned to have it run about loose on the streets. It had a collar and tags. I just was in no position, with Emma in tow, to deal with it; I didn’t even want to protract the encounter by trying to check the tags for an owner address. Despite Emma’s behaving wonderfully, I didn’t want to push my luck, even if the little dog did.

So we came home. Emma drank like a racehorse, I fed her, made my breakfast cocoa, took a bath. And now I’m ready to write!

In which the cranes awaken me

Victor — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:19:18 +0000

This morning I slept later than I originally intended to because, hey, I felt as if I needed the extra sleep.

And I was jolted awake by what I believed to be the cry of a flying crane or Canada goose. That was enough to levitate me out of bed, into my robe, and out the front door for a look.

Didn’t see anything unusual that time. I changed into my clothes to put Emma out back. As I did I heard a distinct trill, confirming that I wasn’t imagining what I’d heard, and that I’d heard cranes.

Both the wild geese and the cranes have a special emotional resonance for me. The sounds of their migrating formations in flight serves for me as sign and symbol of the changing of seasons. There is that about them which I find both haunting and untamed.

When I first moved into my house (on Jupiter) over 21 years ago it was the geese that overflew the house, autumn and spring. Then to my sorrow their flight path shifted and I didn’t hear or see them anymore. From my house, that is: they’re certainly abundant throughout my usual North Valley haunts. I just didn’t get the special thrill of being awakened by them any more.

Then a few years ago the cranes started coming over. Even better.

This time I didn’t see them either. I did see crows flying pretty high; I associate them with the coming of winter, just over a month off. But I was certain I had heard the cranes flying.

Originally I’d intended to take Emma Dog to the Vineyard, just ’cause we haven’t been there much in too long. I decided now to go to Bear’s Ditch, which is closer to the river – runs right along the east edge of the Rio Grande Nature Center. It’s a good place to see migrating cranes, which tend to follow the river.

So this afternoon, when I needed a break to think about something in my new Rogue Angel yarn (my title for it is Skinwalker; we’ll see what comes out), I took the Em out to the ditch. And sure enough, just moments after getting out of the car, I heard the cry and then the trill. They’re both very distinctive, very penetrating. Which makes sense; they’re how the birds formate on each other in flight, I presume. They need to carry.

When I got to a spot along the south fence of the RGNC preserve where no trees obscured my view I saw them: a vee of maybe a dozen to the north, high up and circling. I got my Simmons on them enough to confirm, yep, they were cranes. They were far enough that even in the glass I couldn’t make out anything beyond that. Indeed, when I looked again with my unaided eye they’d vanished against the blue sky.

ut it’s always good to see them. And hear them, of course.

The parliament of the birds

Victor — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:30:09 +0000

Not the Sufi classic of that name, nor yet the Chaucerian tale, but my own backyard. See what I mean? Not only can you find adventure in your own backyard, but enlightenment too. Such a deal!

So around 2 PM I wandered into the kitchen. It’s cloudy and not hot outside today, although humid, and while it hasn’t rained yet there’s been enough thunder to discourage me from cinching Emma up in her harness and taking her for a walk. For light I opened the blinds.

And was astonished to see the backyard full of birds. There were dozens of them, perched picturesquely on stumps and the bushy dead treelimb I left for that very purpose by the galvanized tub of water set out as a birdbath, or wandering around pecking assiduously at something. They ranged from mourning doves through chickadees, a few pretty red-headed house finches, and a horde of what birders call LBJs, for “little brown jobs.” Who are what they sound like, little dust-colored guys, weavers and finches and sparrows, oh my. There was also a big bird – by which I mean robin-sized – that hopped around aggressively. From its size and its long, sharply curved beak, and the fact that my NatGeo bird guide says they live here, I’m surmising it was a curve-billed thrasher:

Not pictured: thrashing

I don’t really know what they were after. I dared hope they were scavenging goatheads, the nasty little natural mini-caltrops that so torment poor Emma. And me, when she tracks them inside. This seems unlikely; they’re so hard and savagely spiked that it’d take a mighty beak indeed to crush them into a form that would slide safely down an avian throat.

It hasn’t yet begun to rain regularly here, but the last few days we’ve had a couple brief, exceedingly intense rains. That’s bringing up a profusion of new weeds sprouting. In fact I went out and spent some time uprooting some of the more egregious goathead plants. Which I learn are also called puncture vines, appropriately enough. And when the weeds get a bit larger and make themselves better target it’ll probably be time to sharpen up the scuffle hoe and hold an old-style Weed Massacree.

I’m still hoping to get a lawn in. Which also entails hoping the rainy season isn’t passing me by. But I’m really going to have to go into overdrive on writing, so we’ll see what I can do by way of landscaping.

At any rate, my honeysuckles are flourishing like mad things, and the spearmint I put in a month or so ago, having spread out some horizontally, is getting some good height on it. looks as if some’s getting ready for ice tea.

Sadly I find few decent xeriscaping resources online. There’re lots of files available but not many places I can find where questions can be asked and answered. The Albuquerque Master Gardeners’ site seems to be seldom updated and little use. Plants of the Southwest, which as I say I like, misses what seems to me an obvious and valuable bet by not having a forum or ask the experts feature.

So what the hey, I’ll toss some questions up and see if someone, please, will kindly answer. Ann Sasahara, who flies by sometimes (usually to see what adventures Emma’s had recently) is a certified Southwestern Gardening Goddess, so maybe she can offer sage advice.

Specifically: first, how to get rid of goatheads. Not the plants (which actually uproot pretty readily) but the thorns. These so far successfully resist our best brute-force efforts, which consist largely in Emma and I picking them up on our feet. Fortunately I do more of that; my feet are much bigger; Emma’s smart enough to stick to paths that are pretty free of the fiendish things; and when I venture out I wear shoes or sandals, the soles of which usually come back encrusted with the damned things, which I then flick off into a wastebasket with a knife. But despite the fact I seem to be eradicating the plants before they produce more, the residues of past years seem nigh inexhaustible.

Also: a good friend recently assured me that a horticulturalist told her bluegrass, though it takes a lot more water to get established than native grasses (such as the buffalograss/blue grama mix I intend planting), takes no more water to maintain. This strikes me as odd. Judith Phillips, author of the magisterial New Mexico Gardener’s Guide, says that bluegrass is “poorly adapted to the heat” – less an issue this year than usual, since it’s the coolest summer by far I can remember here – and that “bluegrass lawns use more water than any other landscape feature in New Mexico.” (pp. 362-3 of the older version; I couldn’t find my newer, more profusely illustrated and colorful edition.) Which is odd since I thought Phillips did the landscaping for my friend’s old house.

Anyway, what’s the scoop here? I’m actually still intending to put in native grass mixes front and back, but curiosity is biting at my fanny. As it’s so wont to do.

In which a frog vaults Emma

Victor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:05:55 +0000

That’s basically it.

We went out to walk the bike path and trail that follow the clear ditch that run past the RGNC. It was hot; I was hoping to beat the days’ worst heat by getting out and back before it peaked around 5-6. I reckoned without our high desert sun, which even when the air is cold can heat you up pretty quickly.

Emma usually goes into the ditch right before we head onto the bridge that leads from the Nature Center gate to the bike path on the levee. There’s a notch in the bank there which makes it convenient to get to the water. Today was no exception: she piled right in, slurped up some water, then walked a few feet back along the bank and for some reason nosed back toward it.

As she reached the bank here came this frog out of the grass, flying high in the air. Cleared Emma like Evel Knievel jumping a schoolbus lengthwise, plopped into the water behind her, and was seen no more.

Not sure what kind of frog it was. I’m familiar with leopard frogs and bullfrogs. This one, like the others I’ve been seeing around the ditches lately, looked dark for a leopard. Whereas I’m used to bullfrogs looking like, to be blunt, extra-thick cowflops with eyes, and this frog was definitely not in that size class. Then again, logically even bullfrogs must go through some kind of intermediate state between cure little tadpole and Big Fat Wad. Rather like the rest of us.

Anyway, Emma seemed to be the least startled of all of us. I was certainly taken by surprise. And for the frog, not happening to notice the splashing, utterly overt approach of a big black predator certainly constituted an Awareness Fail.

Oh – happy Fourth of July, everybody. I suppose it’s a good time to remember, nostalgically, the freedoms we’ve lost.

Hummingbird Shadows and a Confused Seagull

Victor — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:06:52 +0000

Aren’t hummingbird shadows on the ground a hoot? At first you think they come from something just floating in the air, like the cottonwood cotton that’s starting to drift like snow in the Valley now and give my allergic friends the fits. Then you realize they don’t just drift with the wind, but pause and dart.

I saw that happening as Emma and I were walking on the ditch east of the RGNC this afternoon. I never did see that particular hummingbird. Saw plenty more.

So, how did that story get started that hummingbirds never, and possibly can’t, stop and perch? Somebody mentioned that to me in the last month or so, and I thought about it right off the bat today, as we walked through the leafy tree corridor to the ditch entrance. A hummingbird lit on a branch right over the trail, although it didn’t linger long.

On the surface the belief makes sense: clearly the little bastards have to move around a lot in order to eat vast amounts to keep their furious little metabolisms blazing. And if you spend any time actually watching them, you see fairly quickly that, regardless, it ain’t true. You see them take time outs all the time: on feeders, on tree limbs, on bushes, on wires.

I guess this once again shows we tend not to see what we don’t expect to.

Also, driving the short block from Candy to Veranda to park, I saw a big white bird flying over the RGNC fields. It looked too big and not quite right to be a white pigeon – rock dove – such as you see flying around here a fair amount. I thought maybe it might be a cattle egret, which I have seen in that area, albeit it seems a bit late in the season. It went away to the north.

As we walked north along the ditch it (I’m presuming it was the same big, white bird, since we don’t get them here all that often) flew back over heading south. This time I thought fairly sure it was a gull. It was almost entirely white, with maybe a bit of black at tail and wing tips. This was surprising: we get gulls here, which most people don’t know, so that it startles hell out of ‘em when they do happen to spot the birds. Or make people think they’re crazy, as several have remarked to me.

While I won’t say they’re not crazy the fact is we do get gulls here. But it’s usually in late winter, like mid-February. And they don’t stay long. Most people don’t see them because, big surprise, they tend to stay close to the river. And when they move away it’s generally to congregate at dumps and landfills, also a mighty shock. Mostly, I suspect that on the rare occasions folks spot them they pass them off as hallucinations, or anyway white doves. Sea gulls are associated with the sea, right? Albuquerque is high desert, which is associated with not-sea, right? About the opposite of sea. Ergo, no seagulls here. QED.

See above on what people don’t tend to see.

So then as we headed back south, here it came north again. The wings didn’t look quite right for a gull: they seemed broader and rounder and not so distinctly angled. Yet the bird was close enough I could see it didn’t seem to have a long neck tucked against its body, nor was it trailing conspicuous long legs, which seems to let out a heron or egret or other wading bird. So I have to say a gull it probably was.

Avoiding, for once, the obvious labored pun about “see gulls” – you can thank me later – I’ll point out that it was a very pleasant summer day here in Burque. It was hot but not terribly hot, especially in the shade. By some mad coincidence, that particular route is fairly plentifully equipped with shade. Also there was a touch of a breeze, which helped. And the humidity’s been way low – like 4-9% up where they actually measure it, and not too much higher right down here by the RG. Which of course makes it less oppressive.

But it turned out not to be as hot as I expected. I came home and Weatherscan claimed it was 84°. It’s usually a few degrees higher down here in the Valley in summertime, as it’s a few degrees lower in the winter.

But they’ve been claiming for days it was going to be verging upon brutal: 96° for a high. Even though I was out from about 2 to 3 in the afternoon that seems unlikely to happen by the time temps max out around 5 or 6. I doubt it’ll crack 90. Once again the predictors appear to’ve messed up.

But they can predict climate patterns perfectly fifty years in the future. Also, pigs fly.

Another delightful thing I saw was big ruby dragonflies skimming right along the ditch, just above the water’s surface. They seem to come out for a very short time: I first noticed them about, ahem, twenty years ago – a year after I moved into the house, if I recall correctly – when a lady friend came to visit and we went down to frolic in the river. then as now it wasn’t much of a river, but she wasn’t wearing much of a bikini, either, so it had its compensations. Anyway, we had these big bright red dragonflies zooming all around us. They were astonishing: shiny scarlet all over, wings, eyes, bodies, everything. I hadn’t seen them before.

Until today I hadn’t seen them since. I apparently haven’t been in the right place during what I can only guess is the two to three week window they’re active. I see lots of dragonflies in the course of a summer. There are some that I seem to recall appear mostly in later summer that have drab bodies but red wings. I had about talked myself into believing these were really what we saw, in spite of the fact, we’d gotten pretty close and prolonged looks at the incredible ruby dragonflies, until I saw some again at last today.

So that’s pretty special, right there. Living ruby dragonflies. Indeed do many things come to pass.

Emma meets a caped crusader

Victor — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:59:12 +0000

Emma and I were walking back down the ditch on the return leg of our walk this afternoon when on the far bank I saw an older Latino guy in a white straw cowboy hat, jeans and a Western shirt coming the other way. That type isn’t superabundant here in the central RGV, but up in northern New Mexico everybody’s grand-dad looks like that. Behind him tottered a four-year-old boy in red shirt and blue shorts – and also a black cape, a Batman mask, and, somewhat inexplicably, carrying a plastic sword.

I did a double-take. It ws so incongruous at first I thought the kid was wearing a black devil mask. Then the older guy said, “I found this caped crusader wandering behind me along the ditch.”

That was so splendid I had to laugh with delight. I’m afraid the lad misinterpreted that as showing disrespect, for he held high his sword and declared, with fierce conviction, “I’m Batman!”

Yes. Yes, you are. Emma stared at him as if he were Ziggy Stardust complete with the Spiders from Mars. I had to hustle her along lest the caped crusader wreak dreadful retribution on us.

A little farther on I tawt I taw a Harrier flying over the ditch. Not this:

But this:

Not pictured: Gamera

Nature actually put in an appearance early in our walk in the form of a dead mourning dove lying by the path along the southern fence of the Río Grande Nature Center. Fortunately Emma evinced no interest in it. I couldn’t tell what killed it; as common as fat, complacent doves have become around here the last few years I’m amazed the skies above aren’t black with fat, complacent hawks at the all-you-can-eat dove bar. Or maybe the ground thick with fat, complacent hawks dining like azhdarchids, those scary ground-feeding giant pterosaurs who’re so much in the news lately.

Emma frequently took to the water. I was surprised at an early stop to see her disappear to her neck, which she apparently accomplished by the simple expedient of sitting down. She’s getting braver about immersion. Maybe someday she’ll actually dare to swim.

At one point we encountered a strong but very pleasant smell like garlic, or maybe onions. Perhaps somebody’s growing some of those in the area. Or maybe there was just a horrid chemical spill nearby that will presently turn my lungs to bubbling yellow goo. I guess we’ll have to see what comes out my nose later.

Also, just before we encountered the caped crusader and his grandpa, I saw a couple of big swallows wheeling maybe 30-40 feet over the ditch. They were so big I should probably even call them “gulps.”

By the way – there’s actually a Pterosaur Database online. How excellent is that?

All in all, an eventual outing. As the late, great Roberts Shea and Anton Wilson wrote in their wonderful Illuminatus! Trilogy, “Indeed do many things come to pass.”

In which I ramble as I amble

Victor — Sat, 03 May 2008 07:06:44 +0000

A bit of an experiment today – take that as yesterday, Friday, May 2^nd, the day before this nominally posts.

As I mentioned in our last thrilling episode (and, yes, I’m easily thrilled) I’ve got both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and my DVR up and running. So today when I took Emma Dog for a walk down by the Nature Center, I decided to try my hand at an audio diary. I keep a journal of our walks anyway, and it’s struck me several times just how convenient it’d be to be able to record interesting events, sights, impressions, and suchlike, just by speaking. I do carry my beloved Pilot T/X religiously, but writing into it’s … not so efficient. Especially since Graffiti 2, their writing interface software, basically sucks. Although in truth I’ve never been terribly accurate at writing on my PDA.

But talking, obviously, is pretty easy.

Also, of course, it’s my intent to dictate my fiction on the go, implementing what I’ve long thought of as my “Man in Motion” concept. So I reckoned this’d be a prime opportunity to test several things at once.

What follows, therefore, is my transcript of the day’s session. It runs 1006 words. It’s proofread, but not edited – I’m proud I only said “um” once. It’s as close to word-by-word as I could make it.

Feel free to skip this one. If not – here goes:

===

Okay this is me, down on the covered trail by the Río Grande Nature Center, and once I got to the levee path it wasn’t a bad day. The wind’s mostly blocked off, so it’s mostly cool and pleasant, and I’m glad I’m in the shorts. Just heard a woodpecker going off; there’re many swallows curveting around, many, many, and the Nature Center fields here right by the bridge back east across from the bike path are flooded into such an extent we actually have Canada geese swimming in some of it, which means it’s flooded pretty deep. I guess that’s the way our government saves our precious water resources, although in truth the runoff this year is liable to be high. Anyway, it’s about 4:37 p.m. if I didn’t mention that. I’m gonna try keeping an audio diary here some, and just see how this works. We’ve got the machine set up so that it’ll transcribe into Dragon on the notebook computer, so good for us.

My God! Couple minutes later – I saw my first hummingbird of the year hovering up here by a tree and while I was at it I saw another one – there’s two of them! Hooray for that. A flicker just went by. Actually saw the first swallows a couple weeks ago when we were out here. And as I say, they’re really going to town down here now. . . .

You know, it really is so beautiful down here – I sat as the wind starts to mount, fortunately mostly over my head – that as always after I’ve laid off a few days I wonder why I’m not out here every day and possibly all day every day.

My God, here’s a dead tree to the side of the road, that looks as if it’s been pretty recently gnawed on by beavers – it’s not actually the road; it’s the foot trail still – along the east side of the clear ditch, but, wasn’t that way when we were last here. Actually haven’t been this way in a few weeks, plus the wood is still kind of yellow, almost orange, meaning it’s fresh. Haven’t seen beavers down here in years and years, but evidently they’re still here. The color of the wood is actually a lot like the color of the bellies of some of the swallows that we have; I can never remember if they’re barn or cave swallows whose bellies range from yellow to an orange that’s almost red, with very shiny blue backs. We have some of those as well as some of the white-bellied ones skimming along not for above the water. I guess there’s bugs down there.

We’re a few yards in the past where the beavers were, and something big just went into the water, although oddly enough it kind of seems as if it went into the water from a low-hanging branch, which doesn’t make sense, so I’m wondering if instead something big such as, well, possibly a beaver disturbed the branch as we passed. And now we have kind of a shrike-y looking bird, sitting up here on a branch as we approach the cut-out where Emma’s gonna go get water and I’m going to turn back.

Now, also the last time we were down here we saw a couple o’ muskrats gamboling right down by the cut-out where we’re now heading down . . . don’t see ‘em today. Here comes a mallard. . . .

It occurs to me in my vanity that regardless of how well this turns out transcribing in Dragon, I’m going to save it off as an MP3 and then save it to CD, in my vanity, as an audio diary, so there. I’m, in fact I’m so vain I may decide to put some of these up on my blog for download, and, as a play on “podcasts” call them “oddcasts.”

Okay, I noticed that every time I stop and start again, I start a new audio file, which doesn’t really break anything. However, um, I’ll go ahead and hit “Pause” from now on until I’m done for the day to simplify things. I’m, I’m guessing that using Audacity I can go ahead and join these files together if it really is important to me to do so, and it probably won’t hurt with the transcribing at all.

Okay, we’re back on the levee bike path now approaching the bridge back to the Nature Center, and Emma just found something down in the bosque to our right that was really interesting to her, and she really wanted to go and see and I wouldn’t let her, pursuant to our rule that I don’t want her making any . . . ooh, wait, Emma! Huh. I wonder if there’s lizards out, she just did it again. I don’t want her making any little friends I can’t see, and the corollary’s, I don’t want her making any little friends that I can see. I basically don’t want her sticking her nose in any place and coming out with something clinging to it. So . . . the poor child has had to cope with frustration here.

I also note as we approach it again that the sign by the entry to the Bosque Loop path says that the fire danger today is “very high,” which I don’t recall seeing before. I don’t know what the difference is between that and “extreme!” Here’s Emma peering out in the, out in the leaves again. I don’t know if it’s just wind rustling or there’s really something out there. Anyway, what I figure is that they had some extra money for their sign budget that they had to spend.

Okay, we’re back in the car. We did 3 miles straight up. Hadn’t intended to go that far. It’s 5:13 PM. We did 5295 steps, 4664 aerobic steps, 48 aerobic minutes – that’s pretty good – 361 kilocalories, and – that’s it, this is Victor, signing off his very first audio diary for May the Second of 2008.

===

And there you have it. And I did: I did save the files as MP3s, although I’ve not yet burned them to CD. Reckon I’ll wait till I have more.

On the whole I’d have to call it a successful experiment. It took me a while, maybe an hour, to proof it against the MP3s played in WinAmp, so it wasn’t real efficient. This time.

But I expect there’s a learning curve, in dictation as well as transcription. For that matter I dictated a mess o’ Annja earlier today, and discovered again how I can get frustrated with DNS; sometimes it just seems obtuse in transcribing what I say. And of course a fair amount of that is my simply not e-nun-ci-ating clearly enough. Practice will fix a lot of that, especially since the program also learns from my corrections.

On the whole the recording came across pretty clear and the transcription was reasonably accurate. One complicating factor was the aforementioned wind: there were times, especially when we were on the elevated bike path, that the wind boomed loud enough to register as attempted words when I did the voice recognition thing.

In any event, there’s a lot of what I was up to today (as I said, technically yesterday; but to me the day don’t change until I’ve been to sleep. Or decided not to go to sleep.) Both personally and professionally.