Zachary Brown's online steno textbook, will always be available on the website for free. But several people requested a print version, so it's now available for purchase!It will also be available as a Kindle ebook in the near future.He's also been working on a new -style orthographic chording system, called, which he thinks might have an easier learning curve than Plover. It's not yet compatible with any software, so he doesn't have videos of it in action, but it should be pretty simple to implement. If this sounds like your kind of text entry system,! Second: The demo is complete! We currently offer four Jonathan Coulton songs, with permission:I'm Your MoonMandelbrot SetThat Spells DNAI Feel FantasticIn the full game we'll offer many more Creative Commons-licensed songs, as well as a song editor to allow you to make levels out of your own music library!
Donations of code, documentation, artwork, and signal boosting are also very welcome. We're also looking for ideas on revenue-raising merchandise such as various objects emblazoned with the Plover logo. Very soon we'll be launching the campaign to raise funds for Steno Arcade. Steam Workshop: Greenlight. Steno Arcade is a suite of four arcade games designed to teach and drill steno and keyboarding fundamentals in an immersive, addictive, responsive, and interactive way. Steno Arcade is 100% free and o.
We'll also make the graphics a little bit splashier (and screen reader accessible!), and of course, the more money we raise, the more games we're going to be able to develop. We're hoping to launch the campaign in early January, so stay tuned!(Demo link is Windows only, but I believe it will be cross-platform via Steam very soon.).
!Anyone who's played video games on their PC no doubt knows about Steam, the comprehensive platform that supports a dizzying array of both commercial and indie games. Since I'm currently on winter break, I've spent a ton of time this week with my Steam Link and Steam Controller, playing and on my six-foot-wide projector screen, and I love the idea of being able to have Steno Arcade parties on it someday as well.
Just add steno machine!, the studio that's been developing Steno Arcade, were able to get, their previous screen reader accessible game, up on Steam, and now we're trying again with the Steno Hero demo, via the system. If you have a Steam account or know anyone who does, please vote for us! It would be amazing to have such a massive platform to help get the word out about gamified steno.! If you follow the, you already got these updates several days ago, but just in case you don't, have some beautiful pictures of the first fully assembled test unit!Josh writes:Obviously, I missed my stated goal of launching in 2015. I'm trying to find the right sauce with which to eat my hat.
I'm also carving out more time to work on Stenosaurus. My new goal is to launch this month, which I think is realistic so long as we don't run into any unexpected hiccups. If we do, I'll detail them on the blog (hiccups are at least as interesting as good news) and I'll provide an updated estimated timeline right away.Pretty exciting!
Can't wait to see more! The crowdfunding campaign site is extremely close to launching, so stay tuned for that!As you can see from the video above, I only managed to get 77% accuracy on Jonathan Coulton's I Feel Fantastic. Can you beat my score? If so, send me a screencast, and I'll post it!
It's a doozy.Also, The Open Steno Project server (a Slack-style alternative to IRC), which you can access for free via browser or mobile app. There have been some great discussions on there (I try to pop in at least once a day), and there's some talk about forming a beginning steno learner's group, so sign on if you're interested in that sort of thing.Also also, the! Thanks again, tthurman! Ted's got a conversation going about updating the tired old Plover 'P', which was a bit of placeholder art that somehow never got updated when Plover first got going over six years ago. Here are some possible options:Ted's been rocking the commits lately, and a new version is imminent (I've been working with a development build for the last three months and loving it - especially the ability to output Greek letters to for the physics class I'm captioning!). So we've got to hammer down the art issue as soon as possible.
If you've got any opinions on what color to paint this particular bike shed, or if you've got art ideas - or actual art - of your own to offer, please speak up! The more input we can get, the better. !It's just 14 questions, and should take you no more than a minute or two. Because we're about to launch the Steno Arcade crowdfunding campaign (stay tuned for that!), I wanted to get some demographic data to show new people who are curious about the makeup of our community. We're particularly interested in how many Plover users have exceeded their regular typing speed and how long it took, since that's always the first question people tend to ask.
Real quick, and please feel free to give us any comments you might have about our software, hardware, or community resources. It's always so amazing to hear from all of you. Many, many thanks! The most exciting thing here is that a third of respondents have already exceeded their regular typing speed, and it took at least half of them less than six months! Those are some pretty great stats, I have to say. Selected comments from respondents: Qwerty typing was hurting my hands and it was too slow.
I Googled ways to increase my speed, found out about stenography and court reporting, then found out about the Open Steno project. One day I decided that there had to be a better system for typing. I then wanted to learn how a steno machine works and that led me to you.
Thank you, by the way, for your generosity and incredible guidance. After investigating colemak I discovered that it would not boost my speed or to any great extent save my hands from RSI. I chose steno because of my loathing of QWERTY and colemak's inability to provide higher speeds or truly improved ergonomics. I want to see if steno helps my dyslexia. Video games led to mechanical keyboards led to typing led to steno.
Practice material in the form a la Duo Lingo (start with whole sentences from the start) would be great. The Discourse chat system has been wonderful. I feel a lot more connected to the few brave souls trying to learn steno than before.:) I wish plover would use a more rapid release schedule; having only a few small features in each new release rather than waiting years for a big one seems to work well for other FOSS projects who are adopting the strategy. That last user will be very happy to learn that we're on the brink of a major new release, and that our release schedule will be far more rapid after that point.
But more on that as it develops! Also stay tuned for exciting new Steno Arcade and Stenosaurus news, coming in the next few weeks!
Thanks, everyone, for answering the survey! It was really cool to see all your responses. The incomparable Ted, the redoubtable Benoit, and many other people have been working tremendously hard to create the first new version of Plover for over two years, and they've finally come out with a pre-release candidate for testing!!!!Ted says:With this new 'weekly' build of Plover, we hope to start a trend of rapid releases.
We'll try to push a new weekly every time there's a new feature, so you might see weekly builds on a daily or biweekly basis, depending on how much actual development gets done. One thing is for sure, though: We won't wait another 2 years (!!!) before getting improvements into your hands. This is a 'pre-release', not quite a version 3.0.0 just yet. It had been falling into desuetude, so I recently gave the page on the Wiki a bit of an update. I took off keyboards that were no longer available, put on some new ones like the Keyboardio and the Ergodox, and rearranged them in order of current price.
The whole Wiki really needs some work, honestly; it's been quite a while since its last thorough revision. But this is probably the most important page currently on it, so I'm glad that at least it's up to date again, especially since we're on the brink of launching the Steno Arcade crowfunding campaign!
If anyone wants to add additional user-tested keyboards or comments (or, indeed, feels like revising other pages on the Wiki), the help would be very much appreciated! From: We've had printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) for the Stenosaurus for several months, but I've only recently been able to begin properly testing it.
Here are the tests I've run so far:Apply power. Nothing started smoking or even heating up. Success!Program the Stenosaurus to monotonously blink its LEDs. This took a horrendously long time, not because the program was difficult to write or because something was broken, but because the development tool chain for actually compiling and then loading the code onto the Stenosaurus took a long time to get right. Nothing was particularly difficult, but I ended up going through four different laptops, at least as many operating systems for those laptops, and a few combinations of various compilers, linkers, debuggers, and programmers.
I'm happy to report that I now have a setup that works and is reasonably easy to replicate so that others can also start developing on Stenosaurus. (Of course, there is only one assembled PCB in existence, but that will hopefully change soon.) What's more, the LEDs blink as expected. Success!Program the Stenosaurus to blink the LEDs anytime a key is pressed. This was relatively straightforward and worked as expected for all keys. Success!In short, everything is going well, though there's a lot more testing yet to do. Hope to see even more new developments soon! !Our base funding level lets us finish Steno Hero with screen reader support and 12 playable songs, but our first stretch goal, which I'm REALLY excited about, lets us build an in-game song editor that will allow you to play Steno Hero using any game in your music library.
Seriously, how amazing would that be?! And any money we get after that will go toward the development of other games in the Steno Arcade series, like the chord-hopping Stenogger, the single-stroke platformer Stenobolt, and the dictionary crunching Stenografius!If you want to be a Steno Hero and help save the future of stenographic technology, contribute at the $35 level and get the T-shirt to prove it!
Or if you want to kick in a little more, you could get your name included in the lyrics of a special Steno Hero song level that we'll be composing just for the game. There's even a level where you can get a little custom-built pixelated version of yourself getting funky in the Steno Hero crowd!, and if you've got a bit of cash to kick in, that would be amazing. Also many thanks for signal boosting this as much as possible, both online and off! When complete, the game itself will be 100% free for anyone to play, but the more funding we get, the more games we can build.
Okay, it took a lot less time to get from 0% to 50% than it did to get from 50% to 60%, but that's the nature of the crowdfunding beast. The important thing is that we're still edging upward. The team is working hard on getting out an update of Steno Arcade featuring three slower songs that will be easier for qwerty typists and steno beginners. Speaking of which, I can't condone any of the language; much of it is NSFW, in languages ranging from Thai to Italian to Russian, and it's all uncaptioned, so watch at your own risk. But I have to admit it's pretty hilarious to watch people ragequitting over the difficulty of our game, especially since they all seemed to be having a pretty good time with it.
Why don't you all just learn steno already? (';The other exciting thing I've been up to lately is playing with the gorgeous new that built and graciously sent to me.This thing is by far the best steno input device I've ever tried, apart from my Infinity Ergonomic. Smooth, lightweight, extremely compact and portable, with lovely flat keytoppers and a very low actuation force. I absolutely adore it. Some people on Reddit asked if I'd make a video writing steno on, so I gave it a shot:on about the virtues of steno, and that led to the creator of the Planck, which is really exciting! I had to go through a whole process of downloading a custom firmware remapper to get Plover working on my Planck, but the new batch of Plancks will ship out with Plover already baked in. I seriously cannot emphasize enough how great a machine this is for the amateur or hobbyist Plover user.
There are only two major downsides:1) The Planck is sold unassembled, requiring and a fair amount of time and patience to put together, which is pretty intimidating for most users.2) The manufacturer doesn't keep a steady inventory of Planck kits; he waits for orders to accumulate on Massdrop and then sends them out in batches.The good news is that Scott is considering selling assembled Plancks alongside his SOFT/HRUFs. Even with a markup for his labor, they'd still be pretty affordable, and if he was able to keep a fair number in stock at a time, people wouldn't have to wait on Massdrop releases to get theirs. Fingers crossed it works out! I think this could be a huge help in filling the gap between the $40 Zalman solution and the $500 lever-based proprietary machine option.Next time I post, we'll hopefully have a new release of Steno Arcade up and running, and with any luck we'll have edged closer to our goal.
I'm still really hoping we'll hit that $10,500 stretch goal so that anyone who wants to make a Steno Hero level with a song from their own music library will be able to do it. Fingers crossed! Even if you don't have the means to contribute financially, in our last few weeks would be massively appreciated. Many thanks for all your help so far! From our amazing lead developer Ted Morin:So much work and love went into this, and we're looking forward to much more frequent releases in the future.
Full text of 'IThe Sonnet IAvon High School IAvon, MassachusettsVolume VI,1967Dedication 4Administration andFaculty 6ClassesSeniors 14Personalities 25Prom. 28Play 30Banquet 32Graduation 34Juniors 36Sophomores 39Freshmen 42Activities 45Athletics.55Advertising 67ForewordofContentsThe stopping of time, the revisiting of thepast, causes men to pause and consider theirachievements, and to remember the joys andsorrows of forgotten times and events. But thesereminiscences also brighten the future and allowmen to look forward with confidence.The editors of this yearbook have tried tobring back many of these reminiscences thatwe may always keep these memories as anintegral part of our youth and as an indicationto our future.Dr. Hart: A man who gave a part of himself to the improvement of the school system and com-munity.Dr.
Hart: A man with the vision to foresee the problems of the future and the determination toplan and provide for them. A man whose foresight and planning insured an excellent edu-cation for us.Dr. Hart: A man interested enough to involve himself with the concerns of the students, theteachers, and the citizens.Dr. Hart: A man who continues to serve the area’s students as Director of the Blue Hills TitleIII Project.We, the Class of 1967, are honored to dedicate our yearbook toDr. HartSuperintendent of Schools1957-19664In AppreciationWe the studentsof the Class of1967 saluteMr.
Arnold Gerson.We appreciatehis guidance,his friendship,and above allhis true concernfor each andevery one of usas individuals.We know thathis counsellingwill be of asmuch value tothe students ofWinthrop HighSchool as itwas to us.Mr. Arnold GersonSponsored byHERMITITE CORPAvon, Mass.5PrincipalAdministratorsMR. JOSEPH LETORNEY, on l1 Vi( 111d 1f /SI 1/a lil iWWr n‘ J mM 1 1. / / iwm L Wmm ' I » /lift1!■lm3jRow 1: J. Marobella, P.
McCarroll, MissH. DiBattista, C.Landry, B.
Kallenberg, R. Vaillencourt, R. Conrad, R.Peterson, S. Smith.50Row 1: A. Kelley.Row 2: M. Sylvester.Row 3: D. Nicholson, T.
DiBattista, J. Brennan, D.Gorman. Propas.Chorus'Somewhere'Gilbert Madrigal'You Can’t Live Crooked'Design For Dedication” 'Up With People' 'Freedom Isn't Free'51'Don't you think you've had enough?'
MacLean'sPride and JoyNancy, Miss Braden, Janet87 more pages to go.Seated: D. Goodfinger, D. Sylvester, J. Hansen, Standing: P.
O'Donnell, MPillerella, W. Kallenberg, S.
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