Last week I decided to help out The Command Line Podcast by volunteering some transcription work. Thomas Gideon, a.k.a. cmdln, has collected some recordings of his "Inner Chapters" segments from his podcast, on the practice and art of computer programming, and has compiled a podiobook from them. He then asked listeners to help out with the effort of transcribing those chapters in order to make an unbook out of them.
If that whole paragraph didn't make sense to you, don't feel bad. I tried to explain it this morning to someone who does not listen to podcasts, is not interested in programming, has never heard of a podiobook, and certainly does not know what an unbook is. That was tough. But if you want to know more, follow the links.
I discovered The Command Line Podcast after he featured some of the chapters of Cory Doctorow's work "Content", and have listened to him ever since. Although my experience and knowledge of the profession is far inferior to his, my extremely amateur dabbling in hacking dates back far enough (about 20 years) that I can understand on a lot of the material on an intuitive level, even if I don't understand all of the details.
As a professional transcriber, or I guess I should say a "former" professional transcriber since my work with NPR has come to an end and I have moved on to greener pastures, I decided to pitch in with this project, keeping my skills fresh and learning a lot about the subject at the same time. (I love this kind of cooperative model because it means everybody wins.)
In yesterday's podcast he mentioned me by name (well, the handle I use), so I thought it was worth mentioning here. Furthermore, if anything I have said in this entry was not only comprehensible to you but also interesting, feel free to join in on the TCLP unbook transcription project, or at least see his blog and listen to the show.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment