[tt] Frank Forman, Cochlear Cyborg, update for 2007.10.14
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Sun Oct 14 23:38:54 UTC 2007
Frank Forman, Cochlear Cyborg, update for 2007.10.14
Monday (September 24): Sound and Beyond: I brought in the Fone Adapter and,
as I had hoped, the often rather loud sounds that come on when nothing is
going on, mostly disappeared. And there were no fractured pure tones.
Still, my scores were not higher for the tones, but I was tired. They were
higher all but one of the six word discrimination exercises. Next time I'm
not only not going to ask for repeats but to close my eyes so I don't
eagerly listen to the sounds so as to figure out what to listen carefully
for, like "grasshopper, panther, baboon, or polar bear." I can often tell
just by the number of syllables, but sometimes I'm fooled.
I TTYed to Advanced Bionics to ask about how the Fone Adapter works. I will
be getting an e-mail from their technical department.
Art Museum: Wandered in to a talk. This time I heard very well, but only by
using my MONSTER directional microphone. Andrea said I wouldn't need it,
that the small clip-on omnidirectional microphone would work jes' fine. I
knew better, since I had been using one with my old hearing aids ever since
I got them, maybe twenty years ago, and found that a directional mike works
much better. There's no need to buy new hearing aids, since when you send
them back to the factory for repair, it usually just chucks them and gives
you brand new ones. I learned this when I worked at Vicon Instrument Co.
during two Summers between academic years in college. This was 1964 and
1965. It would often keep the old case and replace the mike or receiver, if
that the was the case, or the innards. I think I got a new case, too, with
my Oticon behind-the-ear aids. My audiologist, Carolyn Wyatt, was in on
this secret, and kept telling me that digital aids aren't powerful enough
for my hearing loss. She recommended my looking into a cochlear transplant,
and that is how you come to be reading this.
Still, I must pay attention to what the docent at the art museum is saying!
My mind does tend to wander. Discipline! Discipline!
I forgot to mention that there was actually something of interest on Jim
Lehrer last Friday. It had to do charges against a firm that made
bullet-proof vests for the military that they performed worse than those of
an competitor. Both the military and the contractor denied the charges but
neither were "available for interview." The competitors were most
available. While not philosophically acceptable, my working epistemology is
that the parties that stop arguing back have something to hide and are
wrong. This is far from infallible, else I'd have to conclude that the
Cathars were correcting in thinking that there was a divine spark within
each of us just because they were persecuted by the Roman Catholics during
the Albegensian Crusade starting in 1208? The persecution is
understandable, for the Cathars had no need of Roman Catholic priests, but
this does not make their views correct!
Thursday (September 27): No reply yet from Advanced Bionics. Nothing of
note, except more training with Sound and Beyond. The tunes are coming back
a lot in between actual sounds made by the program. I'm not sure what the
pattern is. I decided yesterday to go ahead and cover my eyes before I make
choices in the Word Discrimination and Music tests. The scores went down a
little, as expected, but I'm practically perfect on these tests now and
will probably drop them altogether. Hmmm, ten of us Echols scholars lived
together after our first year in Lile House, I put a not very flattering
photograph of myself on the bookcase in our common room. I had clipped a
newspaper headline saying, "Practically Perfect," and placed it diagonally
across the upper left hand corner of the flyer the photograph came it. No
one defaced it, but it did often get turned upside down. It was next to the
World's Most Quiet Clock I described on April 20. I also had my
contribution to modern art, a painting I did in 1960, called "Civil War."
Half was blue and half was gray. Standing alone, it makes no less sense
than many paintings in modern art museums. (I have a little essay on this,
as I do take modern art seriously.) This masterpiece is lost forever to the
world, I am afraid. It too got turned upside down a lot. One should think
that the artist himself would know the proper orientation of his works! But
then again, one would also think that a manufacturer's catalog would be the
definitive source for catalog numbers. This is just not true, as I gave an
example of a clear error in my, "Acoustic Chamber Music Sets (1899-1926): A
Discography," _Journal of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections_,
in three parts: Vol. 30, Nos. 2 and 3 (2000) and Vol. 31, No. 1 (2001), now
in the public domain, at http://www.panix.com/~checker/acch.htm. There have
been notorious cases of a modern art museum's hanging a painting upside
down, but I know of no museum, when pointed out the mistake by the artist,
insisted it was right.
After the fifteenth run through all 14 Sound and Beyond exercises, I took a
comprehensive test again for the third time. Improvements on 12,
substantially so for Environmental Sounds bzw. for picking out musical
instruments (56% -> 76% bzw. 72% -> 94%). In some cases I am "practically
perfect" and variations now are just "experimental errors," as in the case
of the engineer who declared that all odd numbers are prime: 1 is,
arguably, prime. 3,5,7,9,11,13. That proves it. What about 9? That was an
experimental error.
Now am I really, really expected to tell the difference between the sounds
of a windstorm and wind whistling? I think I'll test it out on Sarah and
Greg, since I can play these sounds myself by using a nifty file manager
called Power Desk. You can get this from http://v-com.com. I recommend even
more its System Suite, which features not only computer management clean-up
tools but various malware, adware, spyware, and virus catchers but also a
firewall.
.....
Greg came up, and we tried all the 64 syllables from the 32 spondaic words.
I can't really tell whether I'm improving, since we haven't worked out a
rigorous and standardized test. I showed him my iSong of Glenn Gould
playing back and the Sound and Beyond exercises. Even he misses some of the
items at the highest levels of difficulty. This goes to show that "normal"
hearing is quite varied, as I remarked on my entry for April 20.
I went to Rodman's drug store to getting a new WalkWoman. It's always so
hard figuring out just what went bad, but this time I determined that it my
old WalkWoman wore out. So I purchased a jwin Model no. JX832A
FM/AM/cassette for a mere $7.88. It didn't work. The button to press when
running a tape wouldn't stay down. So back to the store. I opened another
one. It didn't work either. I was about to keep opening them till I found
out one that did work, whereupon the sales lady wondered whether I had a
bad battery. This turned out to be the case! This cheap model, made in Red
China, works just as well as the much more expensive ones I have been
buying at RadioSnack. I always buy warranties for WalkWomen, figuring on
the cost per year of owning them. Otherwise, I don't get them, except on
equipment that has a blue light display. These wear out. I took in a
dual-CD stand alone burner for my stereo (not my computer) back just before
the three-year warranty was up to BestBuy and was given a fresh one,
replete with *its* three-year warranty. It cost me less than nothing, for I
chose an open floor model and got a refund. I don't know whether I'll be
able to repeat the experience in another three years. But $7.88 is so cheap
that I'll just give them the HEAVE when they wear out.
I wasn't able to hear very well on the walk from the subway to home,
though, but my hearing is so variable that I didn't think I had a defective
model.
Friday (September 28): Well, I did hear pretty well out jogging the next
morning. I was still working through my tapes of Glenn Gould's Bach and
thought a violin sonata was being played. I didn't want to look at the
label on the cassette, the better to try to tell what was being played. It
was my remembrance that a violin sonata was coming on. But it sounded like
a cello sonata, and so it was when I finished my jogg and looked.
All My Children: Zach wants to keep Fusion going for his wife, Kendall,
even though they think Greenlee won't leave. She's a self-centered pest.
Meanwhile, J.R., Adam's son, wants to start up a "beauty network."
Jim Lehrer: nothing I can remember. I didn't jot down any notes.
Tuesday (October 2): I missed telling jello apart from jelly on the food
section of the Word Discrimination module. I missed another one, too. I've
gotten all the food choices right only one. Today I got all the animals
right for the first time. I've gotten all the color items right once,
family four times, number thrice, and time five times. All this out of
sixteen sessions. I've decided to continue with these exercises, which I
now make hard by not looking at the choices until after I hear them and
never replaying them. I still want to improve on my ability to guess what
the word is before choosing one out of four. This is, after all, what
normal people do.
The choices are supposedly chosen by chance, and this is the first time
I've seen this jello vs. jelly choice. Likewise for windstorm and wind
whistling yesterday. The answers aren't so random. There is a significantly
greater chance that the answer to the next question will be in the same
place, cursor-wise, as the answer to the current one. I exploit this fact
to get a higher score. My cheating doesn't matter, since it's my own
*improvements* that count, if you discount my improved ability to cheat.
There is a fair amount of learning on these tests. I've sometimes tell
which of three is the odd woman out, not by noting different vowels or
different consonants but by noticing that one takes less (or more) time
than the other two.
Wednesday (October 3): A lot of my training hour today consisted of
listening to the files themselves. I never hear the tune "We Wish You" in
the Music Appreciation module, but it is probably followed by the word "a
merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
We went to a short ceremony at George Mason to greet the new faculty for
the law school and the economics department. There was a noticeable
improvement in my hearing over the last time I was there. Even so, there's
quite a long way to go.
Thursday (October 4): I hit two new highs, 96% for environment sounds and
88% for vowel recognition. And I decided to move up to Level 2 for
male/female identification. It was just male vs. female at level 1. Now
it's either high vs. low male or high vs. low female. The new comparisons
seem easier to me, or at least today I went through them quickly, but my
score dropped from 98% to 88%. It will pick up, I am sure.
Friday (October 5):
Jogging: I didn't have my cyber ear connected as I went jogging and hear
the opening of Beethoven's Third Sonata (Schnabel) sounding exactly right!
At last, back to how I used to be able to listen to music. Alas, it didn't
last.
All My Children: Just that the various parties are on the outlook for the
evil brother. I eschewed looking at the captions for the various other
story lines. Jim Lehrer: nothing at all memorable.
Saturday (October 6): iSong: I'm pleased to report that I can follow the
rising notes actually rising. The first half of the first measure goes like
this:
At the start: C8 (middle C), a half note, held for the entire half measure
A quarter note later: E8, a quarter note that continues to the end of the
half measure
An eighth note after that: G8 for an eighth note
An eighth note after that: C9 for an eighth note
An eighth note after that: E9 for an eighth note
An eighth note after that: G8 for an eighth note
An eighth note after that: C9 for an eighth note
An eighth note after that: E9 for an eighth note
The second half of the measure repeats the first half.
The second measure uses C8,D8,A8,D9,F9 in the same way.
The third measure goes B7,D8,G8,D9,F9
The fourth is C8,E8,G8,C9,E9, same as the first measure.
The fifth is C8,E8,A8,E9,A9.
The sixth is C8,D8,E#8,A8,D9
and on and on till the last two measures.
Sunday (October 7). I went on a 10-mile jog, listened to the Berlioz
Requiem, my third favorite vocal work (behind Brahms. German Requiem, no.
1, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, no. 2. To think, the two greatest
products of Western Christendom were written by an agnostic (Brahms) and a
sometime pantheist (Beethoven)! I heard it only poorly, though.
Tuesday (October 9). Listening to Schnabel's Beethoven this time was a
major improvement. The notes don't go up and down the scales, but I did a
good job of keeping my place in the score. I mean my memory of the music,
as I didn't have an actual score in front of me. I am getting back in
communion with the gods!
Wednesday (October 10): Not so good with Beethoven this time. Too many
tunes in my cyber-ear whenever the music got soft. These were not
countertunes so much as noise.
Sound and Beyond: I missed Cheese She's Cheese in the consonant module,
which I certainly should have gotten. (I missed another one, too.) I've
been making jokes about Cheez-Whiz to Roy for years and years now. He was
starting to be a connoisseur of cheese, and I told him that Cheez Whiz was
just as good as far I am concerned. We would joke that this substance must
have been used in Egyptian tombs, since it would never decay. We would make
up many jokes to each other about this remarkable substance. Once when
visiting him in Colorado, he had a jar waiting for him, much to the
distress of his wife, Anne, who thought it was bad for his arteries. So, we
made up new jokes about how Cheez Whiz is the best sealant ever made by
man, but we also speculated about its roll during the Big Bang. I have kept
adding such imaginary concoctions that they have been collectively dubbed
Formanisms. My children were raised on a whole bunch of them. The first, I
think, was the nasty little man. Originally, he was a tailor at a
haberdashy in Georgetown where I bought a suit, to which he claimed he was
unable to add a watch pocket for. I have resented this ever since. The
nasty little man expanded from this poor tailor to being responsible for
anything bad happening. In due course, he was supplemented by the Nice Big
Woman, who did just the opposite. It made for good humor, for whenever I
was missing something and thought one of the girls had run off with it, I
wouldn't go accusing them but asked them if they saw the nasty little man
snatch it away. Not entirely infrequently, the object would come back, and
I would thank the Nice Big Woman for returning the object in front of them.
Word Discrimination: This time I am guessing what the word is. Then I look
and choose. There are 25 questions in each section.
Animals: I correctly guessed only 10 before looking. One was chinchilla.
Now I'd never have gotten that one, had I not seen it many times on the
test. I saw llama for the first time, but I didn't guess it. I actually
missed only one after seeing the choices.
Animals: blind 10, seeing 24
Food: blind 10, seeing 22
Color: blind 9, seeing 24
Family: blind 17, seeing all 25
Number: blind 14, seeing 23
Time: blind 15, seeing all 25.
This may be tedious to read through! I had sensed that I was pretty high up
on family values, though this exercise has words like ex-wife and divorcee.
It seemed that trying to guess the word before seeing four I could choose
from had made me miss some questions. But it doesn't seem to have. I missed
only 6 out of 150 anyhow. I'll stick with this some more, to get my blind
guesses higher.
I've wondered whether I'm improving with time anyhow and that Sound and
Beyond doesn't make a difference. No. No. No. Time does not and cannot
cause anything! This is important not just to realize but to keep
uppermind. A change can only be explained by a change. Never explain, say,
the decline in morals by saying that there are immoral people out there.
This is a constant. If there has been an increase in their numbers, only
then do we have the beginning of an explanation. I can think of many
examples and am quick to jump on people by insisting that time itself is
not a causal agent.
What I mean here is that other training is doing improving my hearing or
that not even deliberate training is working but rather that my brain is
continually working to bring my hearing back into line with reality, such
that it is, but it isn't, that a normal person has. Processes I am unaware
of can be working also. But it would be very hard to measure the
effectiveness of Sound and Beyond, teevee watching, struggling to overhear,
or iSong each and separately. It is a universal problem, teasing out
separate causations. Sometimes one just has to rely on one's judgment, but
that is so often terribly flawed, even the judgment of experts (who are
very often biased). Still, I must be wary of throwing out objection after
possible objection to some conclusion I don't want to hear, whether it is
against my interests, require a major overhaul of my belief system, or
damage friendships.
One thing I was surprise to learn. We all know about paradigms and how
normal science keeps merrily grinding away in full-dress bureaucratic mode
until so many anomalies keep piling up that a new paradigm gets born that
explains the anomalies. Thus, the celebrated thesis of Thomas Kuhn's The
Structure of Scientific Revolution, which book I have not read but seem to
know by heart anyway. As it turns out, revolutions are only partial but,
moreover, anomalies are generally recognized as such only after a new
paradigm is already there. Thus, the fact that gravitational and inertial
mass measured the same wasn't regarded a serious matter until the general
theory of relativity came along to explain it. I have a great article about
this from _Science_, which I think I can dig out an e-mail to anyone
wanting it.
Thursday (October 11). I decided to watch my two programs, for I was at
home on vacation and Sarah was gone. Better to watch them today than
tomorrow, when she might be here. She disdains All My Children no end. Big
scene in the courtroom where Annie's evil brother, Richard ("Richie")
Novak, is allowed to live wherever he wants. Annie and her husband, Ryan,
are afraid he will come upset them. Jim Lehrer: some stuff about Doris
Lessing, who got the Nobel Prize for literature but whose celebrated
_Golden Notebooks_ I had never gotten around to buying to put on a stack of
unread books. I doubt I'll get around to it, ever. It was announced that my
favorite presidential candidate, Ron Paul, would be interviewed on Friday.
Friday (October 12). Sarah came back just before AMC came on, and I
suggested that I make this another teevee day and not an iSong day. I told
her about Ron Paul, and she said go ahead. Naturally, I wanted to find out
what Richie would do. I most definitely do not want to become an AMC
addict, but I had an excuse this once. Ryan packs a rod. [Commercial
break.] Did I mention that he wasn't the one, a few Fridays ago that Annie
saw was in the morgue? [Stay tuned for the next episode.] Annie tells him
to come over and talk, that Ryan will be away for the evening. He does and
they forgive each other. But later Richie threatens to take out seven years
from her life, like she did by lying on the witness stand, resulting in his
being incarcerated for seven years. (During all this, Kendall wants to see
Greenlee, who badly wants to amend their friendship, and they do so. Much
of the current shows are given over to pests who won't go away. I may act
this way myself at times. Also, Kendall is fearful about getting Sparkie a
cochlear implant, and Zach tries to reassure her. It's been eight months
since I got mine, and I'm not convinced that the operation will have
improved my hearing after all, esp. for music, but still quite hopeful.
I'll have to try to make some calculations with Sound and Beyond to see if
the *rate* of progress is keeping up, but this will not just be a matter of
using simple formulas, for reasons I ought to elaborate.) Well, Ryan comes
home early and threatens Richie. Annie grabs his pistol. Ryan takes it back
and fires it, hitting Annie. [Stay tuned for the next episode.]
Jim Lehrer: A good interview with Ron Paul, which I have downloaded from
the PBS site. Lots of stuff about Algore and his Nobel Prize. David Brooks
points out that Algore shouldn't run for the presidency, since global
warming is 13th on the list of voter concerns. I am in favor of it, since
it means few days when the roads are icy when I am out jogging. Now others
are horrified when I say this, since I should be concerned with the public
good when I think about public policy. I say I should vote my interests, on
the hopeful theory that the voting process will come to represent the
interests of the median voter. (It comes closer to representing the median
pressure group member, for whose benefits are concentrated, whereas the
costs to unorganized voters are diffused. The better solution is to limit
the scope of government, but that is too subtle an idea for the electorate.
I have just found a piece from Physorg, " Anthropologist finds cultural
emphasis on group over individual might hinder democracy," but I haven't
read it yet.
A recap on my listening to music at home just for my own enjoyment. I like
Gould playing the WTC the most, just for his staccato chirping away. One
friend remarked that all the pianists I like "sound just like Gould." I
finished that, then the 1955 Goldbergs. I reported listening to Ralph
Kirkpatrick, harpsichord, but I listened to only four discs of the eight in
the "complete" DG repackage. He can make contrasts with a double-keyboard
harpsichord that Gould can't do on a single-keyboard piano. I strongly
suspect he knew about Gunnar Johanson's 43 home produced discs of every
single Schmieder klavier work of Bach, mostly on a double-keyboard *piano*
of his own manufacture, though Gould apparently never contacted him. There
were lots of contradictions between the labels on the discs, the inserts
with each disc, and the table of contents for the whole set, but with a
copy of Wolfgang Schmieder, _Thematisches-Systematisches Verzeichnis der
Musikalisches Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach_, which I got for a mere $15
in 1965 and which is quite well worn, I was able to straighten the
contradictions out. It's good to have the works that scholars regard as
doubtful or spurious, disagreeing among themselves. Only one source credits
Bach to the Fantasy in a, S. 922, but that was enough excuse for Christiane
Wuyts to put it in her 3-CD set of "Unrecorded Works" OF JSB. I don't think
it's genuine Bach, and Schmieder and The New Grove doubt it, too. But it's
a dramatic piece and not "unrecorded," Alfred Brendel recorded it in
stereo, and Reine Gianoli, my very favorite lady pianist, recorded it in
mono for Westminster. There were quite a few other pieces in this set that
were recorded by other than Johansen, too.
Then I have relistened to the Mozart sonatas, played by Bob Silverman, two
discs at a time, interspliced with the unaccompanied violin works (Szigeti)
and the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues (Keith Jarrett, the jazz musician,
whom I prefer to any of the Russians, maybe because he "sounds like Gould."
Check out his two-CD set of Mozart Concerti, to hear them in a refreshingly
different manner. Too bad Benny Goodman insisted on being a good classical
musician when playing the Mozart works. He was okay, but boy I'd love to
hear a jazz rendition!) I did not dig into the music very well, I'm afraid
to continue to have to report and didn't even pick up the characteristic
Shostakovich often biting style. I was at the computer when Mozart's 14th
sonata ended and No. 16 (old no. 15) in C, K. 545 came one. I didn't even
notice it, though I've reported on giving it concentrated listenings
several months ago. I later pulled out the score and was able to follow it
quite well, though I didn't recognize what I was listening to very well. A
little while after that, when I sat down for a pipe and reading, I put it
on again, and now I could follow the music, albeit with the notes not
subjectively corresponding to what they used to sound like and what they
are in the score. I followed though the rhythm.
It's progress, I am convinced. Next up is the organ music of Bach (Walcha,
of course). I'll see (HEAR) how it goes, for organs are much more dense
than pianos. I'll also be trying Gould's only organ recording (Nos. 1-9 of
the Art of the Fugue). Will he "sound like Gould"? I am eager to find out,
but a good dose of Walcha first.
Sunday (October 14):
My computer is getting invaded every few minutes from 207.177.3.8 and
207.177.3.9, but I can't connect to the site to find out what it is, nor
does googling them render anything that I can understand, except the words
spyware and adware.
Between 12:05 pm and 12:55 pm I got invaded 90 times! Nothing till 1:43 pm.
Then 10 more invasions until 1:47. It started up again at 2:27 and has been
roaring since. (This is on Sunday October 19, as I am getting caught up on
my writing.) Alas, further research, using http://whois.uwhois.com reveals
that my home computer, which is provided by RCN.com, the parent company of
both Starpower and Erols, has been assigned the whole block 207.172.0.0 -
207.172.255.255 and it was kindly doing the blocking, IF it did the
blocking. I don't know where the "major" invasion came from. I'll just have
to take the word of my firewall on the V-Com systems suite [renamed
Avanquest Systems Suite, and when I started several years ago Fix-It
Utilities].
Basically, I don't understand what is going on.
iSong: I decided, instead of starting with the full score and working down
to more and more simplified versions, to do the opposite, It looks like I
just might be able to really recognize the highest version, namely Mr.
Gould himself playing and as I remember it, this way.
I been listening to the Bach organ works for pleasure (such that it is)
now, but my identification is slight. I can get into the famous Toccata and
Fugue in d, B.W.V. 565, fairly well, since I know the work esp. well. Not
very well at all for the T&F in F, S. 540, the other T&F in d ("Dorian"),
S. 538, or the F&F in g, S. 542. I listen to them on my WalkWoman once a
year, but I don't know them quite as well. I know much better the Toccata,
Adagio, and Fugue in C, S. 564, and I have reported on listening to that
with my cyber ear several times some months ago. I did it with the score
twice. Hard to follow. I used both ears, the better to hear the notes
played on the pedal. I almost always follow the score through keeping up
with the lowest notes, since that's where I used to hear the best. Now I'm
aiming at following the score in the highest notes. But, by having the
pedal notes ring in my meat ear, I can use those notes also to keep track
of the music. The toccata opens with the hands. Only in the eighth measure
is there a (single) note played on the pedal. Again a single pedal note in
the tenth and twelfth measures. Then the pedal alone for nearly nineteen
measures. Then lots of flurry with hands and feet. Then sometimes measures
with just one pedal note, a great way of keeping track. However, my cyber
ear does not register the pedal notes differently, not yet. I thought I was
following the score pretty well, except that it ran out much too soon. Same
failure to keep up in the adagio interlude. I kept track of the entrance of
the tema fugatum okay in the fugue, but still didn't keep up. Oddly, when I
unplugged my meat ear and listened with my cyber ear alone, I kept up with
the score better. Or was this only because it was a second go around.
It will be fun, and instructive and helpful to my hearing, to come back to
my favorite organ work. I plan once a week.
Still no word from Advanced Bionics on what makes the telephone adapter
eliminate most of the squeal. It sells a patch cord for $30 that is to be
used between an audio source and the behind-the-ear models of the sound
processor. I think it's the same as this, which I spotted at RadioSnack on
Thursday:
RadioSnack: 6.56-Ft. Attenuating Dubbing Cord with 1/8" Phone Plugs
Model: 42-2152 | Catalog #: 42-2152
$4.99
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?parentPage=search&summary=summary&techSpecs=techSpecs¤tTab=techSpecs&cp=&custRatings=custRatings&features=features&accessories=accessories&productId=2103841&support=support&tab=summary
Record from a line-level output with our 6.56-foot attenuating dubbing
cord. It connects the earphone jack from a radio, cassette or CD player to
a recorder's input or mic jack via 1/8" phone plugs on each end.
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