Ketchup

[rolanni]

A couple things have been happening around other things.  I shall sum up.

1.  A Gift of Magic, Writing Neep, Barnburner, and Gunshy have been epubbed and are now available ( in addition to previously existing Kindle and Nook editions) at Kobo, iBooks, Oyster, Scribd, and Tolino.  If you use any of these sites, those books ought to be available to you now.

1A.  Because D2D offers this service, I've been considering pubbing paperbacks of Barnburner and Gunshy through CreateSpace. Still thinking about it; what's holding me up at the moment is needing to find art in an appropriate size and dpi, as well as the realization that, given CreateSpace's costs, I'd have to charge $8.99 per book -- for books that each come in under 60,000 words -- in order to make anything for myself.

2.  100 copies (5 cartons) of A Liaden Universe® Constellation Volume III arrived at the Confusion Factory today via UPS.  Steve and I signed and personalized them this afternoon, and In Beautiful Theory, UPS will pick up the boxes tomorrow and carry them all the way to Minneapolis, where the Uncle lets us know that he has spent much of the day taping together the boxes that will protect them from the vagaries of the US and even International Mail, until the come to rest with you.

3.  Hearing loss is a strange and unsettling thing.  Apparently, I really depend on rhythm cues nowadays.  For women's voices in the higher ranges -- and especially voices that are musical, or accented in non-USian ways -- I'm really struggling for sense in the sentences in  phone conversations.  That's. . .frightening.  But what's dangerous is that -- for USian accents, I depend on the rhythm and on what I assume will/have been said, which is -- wow, oh wow, have I got to watch that.  Note to self:  Practice saying, "Would you please repeat that?"

4.  It was really hot today (by which I mean 89F/32C) and it's going to be hot for the next couple days.  For some reason, I'm not being as zen about this as I probably should.

5.  Tomorrow, need to get with Droi.

6.  There is no 6.

Comments

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Plant-mister squirty-bottles can squirt *people*as well as plants, you know.
I myself find them quite helpful in this fashion

Hearing loss is a strange and unsettling thing.

[bookmobiler.livejournal.com]

As somebody with a long term hearing loss I can tell the problem is not the necessity of asking for repetitions. It's when you think you DID understand what was said, but got it wrong.
In my case I new i needed help when somebody asked me if the store had jock straps and I heard duck stamps. Just a little confusion there.

Hearing Loss

[susan beaty (from livejournal.com)]

I got hearing aids 3 years ago (at 62) because I didn't want to end up like my mother - responding to questions that people hadn't asked because she didn't understand them. And that's the real problem with hearing loss; it's the ability to understand what the other person is saying. My loss is worse in the higher frequencies which makes understanding young women and small children quite difficult. And even with hearing aids, sometimes foreign accents are still next to impossible to make out. I try to do whatever I can by email; after several jobs where answering the phone was part of my duties, I developed a real aversion to phone calls.
Hearing aids are NOT cheap, but now when I take them out in the evening it sounds like someone has put cotton in my ears. Since the brain has to be "trained" to interpret what the hearing aids are sending to the eardrums, they say that getting them while the hearing loss is moderate gives a better outcome than waiting until the hearing loss has become profound like my mom did.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

One of the weird things with hearing loss, Wife and I are losing different frequencies. So when we're out for our walks, I can hear nuthatches and she can hear cedar waxwings, and the other goes "Huh?"

Unfortunately, we both can still hear the Harley that lives a couple of houses up the block.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I'm told that the Harley's are the last to go. . .

[gareth griffiths (from livejournal.com)]

Hearing loss is very annoying - started with hearing aids last year mainly to get boost on higher frequencies - tend to find a lot of things very boomy otherwise and hard to discriminate. It does get embarrassing when you 'hear' something totally different to what the person actually said. Unfortunately I also do water sports and have to take them out for that which makes everything seem very flat. Growing older sucks but we fight it as long as we can. Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light - I take that to mean we're allowed to complain - rage is OK.

Water sports & hearing aids

[susan beaty (from livejournal.com)]

I sail a racing dinghy with a friend of mine on Thursday evenings and since dinghies can be tippy and prone to capsize, I don't wear my aids when racing with her. I can totally relate to participating in a sport without being able to hear at my best. My female relatives on my mom's side of the family may have all been deaf as posts, but to their credit they lived into their '90s, so there's that going for me at least.

Re PoD paperbacks

[jessara40k.livejournal.com]

There's no reason not to if you can source artwork for a reasonable cost (in time, money, frustration or whatever). Anyone who buys PoD paperbacks knows that they cost more because the author doesn't have the option of printing a large run and taking advantage of economies of scale.

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Harley's ARE the last to go (and SOME cause the hearing loss in the first place.) My dealer is always asking me if I want to pull one or more of the baffles on my HD trike. the answer is always "No, to the h--l no"

I really worry about today's children, always being plugged into the (i)pod (mp3 player of choice) when I am 5 ft away and can hear the music (so called).
Car stereos are next.

The PRIME killer in my family for upper register hearing loss is the USAF. They grew up on AF bases around the world with jets taking off many times a day. NOTHING is louder than a BUFF (B-52) with all 8 engines maxed out and JATOs (Jet Assisted Take Off units) added to the mix 3/4 of a mile or less from the home or base schools.
Add in a base flush of 24 BUFFs and 36 fighters + 2 707 size tankers 2 - 3 times a year and Sheesh doesn't cover it.

[thewol.livejournal.com]

Telephone receivers typically filter out all sound frequencies below 340 Hz and above 3400 Hz. because it was originally thought they were unnecessary for speech comprehension -- which is why people can't tell my mom and me apart over the telephone even though she's an alto and I'm a soprano -- the telephone cuts out the higher frequency overtones that makes my voice sound different than hers. So on top of any high-frequency hearing loss you've already got, you've got a telephone-induced high-frequency hearing loss, which makes it even more difficult to understand women and children over the phone.

You might try getting a phone with "high definition" audio to see if this helps, since they have a much wider frequency response than standard (legacy) phones. The HD audio phones have a frequency range of 50 Hz to 7000 Hz versus 340 Hz to 3400 Hz of a standard phone. I know AT&T makes a cordless phone with HD audio. Other companies may, too. You can also get cell phones with HD audio. (--And you may be able to write it off on your taxes as medical and/or business expense if you have a medically-documented hearing loss.)

My mom, who has a fairly severe hearing loss, also puts her phone on "speaker phone" because even cranked up to maximum volume, a phone receiver doesn't put out enough volume for her to hear.

[thewol.livejournal.com]

Most age-related hearing loss starts in the high frequencies and works its way down. Telephone receivers typically filter out all sound frequencies below 340 Hz and above 3400 Hz. because it was originally thought they were unnecessary for speech comprehension -- which is why people can't tell my mom and me apart over the telephone even though she's an alto and I'm a soprano -- the telephone cuts out the higher frequency overtones that makes my voice sound different than hers. So on top of any high-frequency hearing loss you've already got, you've got a telephone-induced high-frequency hearing loss, which makes it even more difficult than it already is to understand women and children over the phone.

You might try getting a phone with "high definition" audio to see if this helps, since they have a much wider frequency response than standard (legacy) phones. The HD audio phones have a frequency range of 50 Hz to 7000 Hz versus 340 Hz to 3400 Hz of a standard phone. I know AT&T makes a cordless phone with HD audio. Other companies may, too. You can also get cell phones with HD audio. (--And you may be able to write it off on your taxes as medical and/or business expense if you have a medically-documented hearing loss.)

$8.99 ain't half bad

[aska-kettlingur.livejournal.com]

Sharon, Considering that 'Barnburner' sells on AbeBooks for between $34 used and $343 new, and the only copy of 'Gunshy' is listed at over $1,000 used, I don't think charging $8.99 for a new paperback copy would be untoward.