Grrl Power #1315 – Gotta caption ’em all
Happy almost Xmas! For those of you who partake.
I guess I jumped the gun talking about subtitles under the last page. Oh well. I do personally find it almost impossible not to read subtitles… or just captioning really, when they’re on the screen. When I’m at my parent’s house, the captioning is always on, cause my dad had a cochlear implant, and my mom needs hearing aids now too. So does my sister. I seemed to dodge the worst of it. My hearing seems to be about average for my age, with one or two frequencies being weaker than others. I kind of want to go get hearing aids though. I’ve been wearing glasses since early high school, so why not add to my gear. Plus I’m an audiophile in the sense that I appreciate really good audio, but refuse to be a twat about the supposed superiority of vinyl and am also unwilling to spend proper audiophile money on gear. The problem with audio gear, and probably literally any gear oriented hobby is that there’s cheap gear that gets the job done but is obviously inferior but costs like $8-20, good gear that lacks any obvious drawbacks that usually lands in the $40-$90 range, “pro” gear that’s quite good and jumps up to the $250-400 area, and then there’s a vast gulf to the “phile” gear, that starts costing like $8,000 up to, and let’s be honest, there’s virtually no upper limit. I saw an audio setup for listening to computer audio that was around $45,000 dollars. The thing is, most people can tell the difference between the $40 pair of headphones and the $250. Fewer people can tell the difference between the $250 and the $400. Sure, maybe the build quality is nicer, but I’m talking about just the audio. Above that, you have to spend excessively to really, actually tell the difference, and some of that is just going to be placebo. Diminishing returns and all that. I once got a subscription to Tidal, which is basically Spotify, but they offer studio master quality uncompressed audio, and whether it was my admittedly quite nice gaming headphones (but not $4,000 headphones running through a $10,000 DAC) or my Mark 1 earballs, I just couldn’t hear the difference.
What the hell was I talking about. Oh, hearing aids. I might look into a pair, because honestly it’s hard to know what you’re missing.
I’m positive you could make a shirt with modern doodads that did what Dabbler’s do. They’ve invented pretty flexible screens. I don’t think it’d look like fabric, but maybe some ziplock pouch on the front of the shirt with a removable screen for easy washing? Hook that up to a smartphone listening and doing text to speech? I’ve also seen hats and shirts that have led lights on them. I don’t mean flashlights, but low res screens. Or just general illumination, like this. Easy. The trick would be making it only TtS the person wearing the shirt, so you don’t have a jumble of overlapping nonsense on the shirt or people sneaking up behind the person and saying stuff like “I planned 9/11.” or “My dad can molest your dad.” or whatever. Restricting it to the wearer probably wouldn’t be too hard, really. If they have AI that can kind of blandly imitate voices, someone should be able to rig up an AI that can filter and identify voices pretty well. Failing that, some sort of mouth bilocation tracking could work. I think most smartphones only have one mic, but speakers and mics are basically the same thing. I’d be surprised if someone couldn’t figure out a way to use the speakers and mic in concert to echolocate. And failing that, the shirt could have a built in lavalier mic that plugs into the phone via the same cable that runs the screen. It’d be great if you had a friend who was hard of hearing and always forgot to put in his hearing aids. But then you could much more easily just have a hand gesture that meant “Put in your ears, Steve.”
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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There a 6 fingers on peggy’s hand
It’s waving.
Pretty sure that’s meant to be her wiggling her fingers in a wave.
Pretty sure you, Dave, know this because of your family’s, but for the non-knowers, hearing aids (especially in America) are very reminiscent of all these cyberpunk games we’ve been playing from tabletop to computers for the last many years. Body augmentations meant to cover for a lack, but then many remain company property and they have the right to shutter it. Some depend on updates and connections and they can cut all support to them, bricking them immediately. Some can be retrieved if the company gets bought – yes, including fucking implants. You’ll be forced to go through surgery and get it removed. It’s happened.
Anyway, fuck healthcare for profit.
About the subtitles: I don’t think you need AI, just a tracheal microphone? Shield it well and you’re golden. You can give the shirt a turtleneck to make it work, turtlenecks that are ungodly body-tight have caught the internet’s attention for longer than “pirates vs ninjas” and so are probably safe forever
*looks confused*
ok, maybe high end aids are that way. I’ve been wearing aids since I was 4 and I’m fairly certain i saw Star Wars on its first run (I was young). and ive had them die but the pair i have is the only ones that have any kind of network stuff and I just extended the warranty on them because in the 3 years I’ve had them, I’ve had to send them in for warranty work at least three times. usually one at a time. i.e. one fails then the next.
hearing aids are weird. mine were 4k for the pair. this is only my second pair I’ve gotten. I grew up with a bilateral loss but only one aid during my childhood and early adulthood.. when I was a teen they were still analog they tried to fit two. it didn’t work.
my loss starts at 30 decibels and gets down t0 60 at the high and low end. since i was so ‘functional’ I was not a candidate for a Cholera implant. one of the steps of that surgery involves removing the eardrum and bones so I can understand.. but the aids only put out about 1/2 my loss so 15 decibels or so. they really only give you aids if the comprehension starts to fail. this is the test where you repeat back the word list (baseball… cowboy…)
this is one of many reasons I’m salty. they recently changed the definition of SSI disability to remove consideration of whether the individual can speak or understand English. that’s how my disability is functionally measured when they put the aids in they test my ability to hear and understand English they don’t test tones again. there isn’t even a place on the chart for before and after tones there’s a before and after comprehension score. both senators from Texas praised that decision in an op-ed.
im so used to watching subtitles on everything on my pc, movies anime, etc. that when i go to the actually movies i now get disappointed that there is no subtitles :O except for godzilla minus one :D
Dave, be VERY careful about the good hearing aids. Mine are top of the line and cost me $5,000 for both. The problem is due to the Analog to digital converts do not handle Music well at all they convert frequencies to lower of higher in the areas you have trouble hearing. It makes music sound like it has Autotune on all the time. its really bad. let me know if you need more information and we can talk/chat if you want.
Thank you, I saw it also and it bothers me.
Sub-Titties was *right* *there*
Came to say this one lol.
Speaking of subtitles, I too reflexively read them when they’re on-screen, which usually helps (given the poor audio mixing of a lot of shows these days), but I’d like to file a formal complaint to the subtitle people of the anime series DanDaDan — the English audio dub and the English subtitles are often so different that’s it’s mentally distracting and I have a hard time following either.
Episode 10
Audio: “I figured out what happened!” “Tell it girl…”
Subtitles: “All the mysteries have been unraveled.” “Whoa, amazeballs!”
“given the poor audio mixing of a lot of shows these days”
Some of it is deliberate. Yes, Christopher Nolan *wants* his audience not to understand half what the actors are saying. I’m not sure I understand why, but he has said this.
It is so you have to watch the movie 2 or 3 times to understand what is going on thus increasing the box office sales. Same goes for the fight sequences with horrible lighting that are 90% jump cuts so you can’t tell who is winning
There’s also another thing with high quality audio gear, and it probably translates to high quality graphics. It depends on what you’re playing on them. For example, if you’re playing a 16 bit WAV file or a 128 bit MP3 file, you really aren’t going to be able to get any real benefit out of the $8000 system because the detail is not in the sound source to make it out to the speakers. Ok, sure, you might have some filtering in the expensive setup that’s noticeable that might not be in the cheap setup. However, it *might* be in the cheap system, because that filter costs less than $5. Considering that it’s something that can be miniaturized, it probably costs a lot less than $5 these days.
Not really. 16-bit 44.1kHz sampling rate (which is what the WAV file on a CD corresponds to) will capture all detail up to 20kHz frequencies. Which is apparently the highest frequency humans can hear.
So unless you’re a dog, you’d have to make the argument that those ultrasonic frequencies cause some sort of harmonics in things we can hear. Even then, you’d have to have speakers capable of vibrating at those frequencies. Those do exist, but they’re installed in medical equipment and they tend to produce single frequencies or a small number of them.
High quality graphics are another matter because our eyes are capable of receiving a lot more than our ears. Even there though, we have small displays on e.g. our phones that are “retina displays”. Which means that they show enough detail that our retinas cannot discern the individual pixels, no matter how close you get to it. Eventually we’ll get to large screen “retina displays”, but that’s a ways off.
Your terminology is confused. There are no 128 bit MP3 files. You’re thinking of 128 kbit bitrate, which has nothing to do with 128 bit quantization (which doesn’t exist anyway, except theoretically). Also no, you’re not going to hear the difference between the master and 16 bit audio. The difference is basically imperceptible noise unless you turn the volume unrealistically high.
Max being vague about the leg, then being angry at Dabs not having her crystal ball of mind reading activated, is maybe 20% of why I just left my last job, and need to come up with a new name/tag for commenting here.
There’s a dirty joke in that job title somewhere, but that’s too classy for this time of year.
If you’re talking about me/my name/title, fire away.
Can’t be worse than what I’ve seen, smelled, and done over the last few years… and if it is, I want to hear it, I love messed up humour.
from the personality we’ve seen from you so far, you could’ve gotten away with SheepDip
;P
Sorry, we don’t do sheep dip any more.
We do have acid baths though.
Can I offer you a relaxing acid bath in these trying times?
Well, the punchline is, “You won’t have to tangle my head in the fence first.” I’ll let you figure out the rest of the joke.
Hah. Never heard that version of the joke, despite all the times I’ve had to wrestle with livestock with their heads stuck in fences, and all the times I’ve been near elbow deep inside various ewes.
What Maxima said: “No one does need an excuse to stare at your boobs!”
What Maxima meant: “No one should be staring at your boobs.”
What Dabbler heard: “Everyone can stare at your boobs for no reason.”
And so the battle continues. When Maxima said only two individuals have ever fought her to a standstill, she was talking about more than just fisticuffs.
There ARE, in fact, kick-based high fives! I did ’em with my students during Covid. I called ’em Foot Fives
Since I went deaf in one ear a couple of years ago, I’ve wished people had subtitles, especially while playing D&D.
When does Dabbler start selling those shirts so I can buy them as Christmas gifts?
Since I went deaf in one ear a couple of years ago, I’ve wished people had subtitles, especially while playing D&D.
When does Dabbler start selling those shirts so I can buy them as Christmas gifts?
Oh hell, now I want a subtitles t-shirt.
Zach Freedman made a hoodie that automatically subtitles what he says – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTK8dIBJIqg
There’s something wholesome about how the succubus thinks Max means some kind of special low-five rather than a sex thing.
That mischivious smile in panel 7 on Dabbler… adorable.
Not gonna lie, I’d wear a shirt that does that.
As someone who has a compulsive need to read writing I can see, that shirt is troubling. On the other hand, at least it’s somehow magically not hidden in the under-boob.
That, and those of us who unconsciously read things. A word or phrase will pop unbidden into my head. It’s usually just something in the background. I haven’t caught a genuine fnord yet.
I know Max has a standing order nobody on the team gets succubus’d. I would assume that it’s mostly to do with maintaining a level of readiness. But what if you had a weekend pass? Like you knew you weren’t going on duty for a few days. Could you then… you know? I mean it obviously isn’t going to be a relationship thing, so no feelings. But if you are aware, and are just in it for a good time, could you then…?
subtitle shirts wood actually be easy with a bit of tech skill. an in ear Bluetooth earpiece connected to your phone. A voice to text app. An app on the phone controlling a scrolling oled display, a small power supply. You could probably run it on raspberry pi. I don’t have the skills but I have seen much more complex builds done.
I have literally never commented on this comic before despite having read it since 2019. But I felt compelled because Dave FINALLY, FINALLY brought back cute, impish Dabbler mouth from early comic days instead of her exaggerated sexy pout.
Dave, I’m begging you. It balances her out and gives her some dimension as a character, on top of, I think, being a fun stylistic choice. I didn’t realize how much I had missed it until I saw its return.
Possible alternate title: Clothes Captioned
At first glance I thought the tag line was, “Maxima’s secret super power: wiggling super-powered ears.”
I can attest to automatically reading any text in my view.
Needless to say, Explosive Runes are my mortal enemy, or would be if they existed in this world…
Speaking of which, one night I was at the bar my wife was playing pool at. I was mostly doing college homework, and there was another lady playing who’s tshirt had writing on it, but part of it was folded over and I couldn’t make out what it said. I couldn’t help but keep looking up trying to read it. Eventually she noticed, came over and yelled at me for staring at her boobs! I yelled back that I wasn’t staring at her boobs, I was trying to read her shirt!
She looked a bit taken back, and she pulled the shirt flat so I could read the whole thing. I don’t remember what it said, this was years ago, but it was worth a chuckle at the time.
Oddly enough, after that she was rather friendly to me and would come over and talk between matches.
To be totally honest, even though I was really just trying to read the shirt, she did have nice boobs, and a very attractive face, but hey, I was married, and was mostly trying to do my homework.
Yes, some earplugs if it gets too noisy, headphones over that playing music, laptop in front of me, working on programming assignments. The endless diet soda was a total mega-plus to the whole thing for me. (Thank you designated drivers programs!) It was easier to work on stuff in that environment than at home for me. Also, the occasional interruptions with people to chat helped me keep focused instead of zoning out. Except for that one strange person who kept trying to convince me to load porn. Other people started to run interference to keep him away after they saw how much he was annoying me.
That’s enough old stories and sillyness for now, thanks for reading.
I’d wear a subtitle shirt if they existed. Dudes are gonna stare anyway so I get the logic, at least this way they might read what I had to say.
Jennible: “Hey guys, let’s go to The Lizard Lounge. They have really good food there, and they’re doing an ’80’s night.”
Guy: “You know, I think we should go to the Lizard Lounge. I think I recently read somewhere that they have good food. ”
Group: “Yeah that sounds good.”
Jennible: (simmering resentment intensifies)
Hah it happens more often then you’d likely think when your sporting Dabblers size.