Monthly Archives: June 2009

Ear Candy and Subtitling Music Videos

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The more and more I listen to music the more I love it.

I have no idea what the instruments are and I have no idea what the lyrics are…but yet somehow I love music.

It’s like candy for my ears.

I usually listen to music before I go to bed and it takes me forever to go to bed because I get distracted by the music…and I don’t want to stop listening to it 😉

I have a couple of friends (Seth and Dennis) who are also CI users…they love music. They recently started subtitling music videos through overstream.net and I decided to take a shot at it. Of course I have to look up the lyrics and attempt to lipread the singers on music videos (which is difficult considering you can’t always see their lips). A lot of it is guesswork on my part.

I’ve found that I enjoy this challenge. It forces me to work on my lipreading and auditory skills in a fun way. Of course the timing isn’t perfect just because that’s how subtitling works. I have one music video completed (Great DJ by the Ting Tings) and am working on 2 other videos (Boom Boom Pow and We Walk).

Enjoy! Check every once in a while for new videos.

Mine: http://www.overstream.net/profile.php?username=Kelly09
Dennis: http://www.overstream.net/profile.php?username=getdennis
Seth: http://www.overstream.net/profile.php?username=magus831

Three Month Mapping, 23 Programs, and Bikes Whizzing By

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I had my 3 month mapping yesterday even though it has not been 3 months yet (it will be next week). My audiologist got confused and forgot to request an interpreter. She felt really badly about it but it was no problem. She’s one of the easiest people to lipread….only if everyone was that easy to lipread. I could follow her most of the time and I only had to ask her to repeat or fingerspell a word a few times.

Why is she so easy to lipread?
–she looks directly at me
–if I miss something she knows the ABCs in sign language and will fingerspell a word that needs to be clarified
–she speaks clearly but normally
–most importantly…she makes SURE I’m looking at her BEFORE she starts talking

It seems like my mapping hasn’t changed that much except for an increase in volume but the pattern itself is pretty much the same. She said it will take much longer for me to continue getting used to the CI than most people because of my hearing loss background. She did want me to come in again in 2 weeks for another booth test and another mapping. However I’ll be in Colorado so I have another mapping scheduled in 3 weeks. (Btw, I have decided to go ahead and take the CI with me to Colorado after all).

I have had 23 different programs so far…..lol. Talk about having to adapt and readjust a few times. 😉

I went to the park with a friend yesterday to do some walking in preparation for our Colorado camping/hiking trip. I heard a couple of new sounds.
–People on bicycles whizzing by!
–Walking through water/mud

As for audio rehab things haven’t changed that much in the past month. Hopefully it’s just my brain trying to catch up. At least I’m still hearing new sounds and I’m able to recognize more and more sounds without any visual clues. Slowwwww processssssss…….

Finally, There’s THAT Sound!

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You know the noise a car makes when you lock it with a remote key?

I didn’t know for years that it even made a noise until I started driving a car that had a remote key. I just never made the connection until I realized I was hearing something whenever I pushed the lock button. It was so nice once I realized that because then I didn’t have to check and make sure it was locked. I could just lock it as I walked off and know that it was locked.

This was with my hearing aids.

It’s also a good example of how sometimes people don’t always think about little things that can make a difference.

Well that changed when I got the CI. I could NOT hear that sound for 2 months at all. It was driving me up the wall that I was not hearing something I could hear with hearing aids. I could not figure out why. I finally started hearing it 2 weeks ago!

Turns out I was actually hearing it but wasn’t making the connection. I always thought it made a sort of beep, beep, beep sound whenever I locked it because that was way I heard it with hearing aids. So I kept trying to listen for that pattern of sound with the CI and it just wasn’t happening.

It took 2 months of me blaming it on the wind and other outside noises before I realized that it actually made a constant sound. I asked someone to listen to it to verify that it made one long constant sound rather than a broken sound. Sure enough. Apparently there’s a certain frequency/pitch or something in the middle of that constant noise my hearing aid wasn’t picking up hence the reason why I kept trying to listen for something that was broken up (___, ____, _____) vs a constant sound (__________________).

I still do miss it every once in a while due to other outside noises but it is so nice to finally be able to walk off and know when it’s being locked…instead of pulling on the car door handle to verify that the car has been locked.

Expensive Taste

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Hearing is costing me money.

I’m not referring to the CI device itself, batteries, appointments, etc….even though they do add up :-/

I’m referring to music.

I’m buying more songs from iTunes and on top of that I’m starting to notice how the same thing can sound differently with different speakers/sound systems. I can tell there’s a difference in the quality of music on my laptop vs iPod. I can tell there’s a difference between other people’s computer speakers.

I used to be perfectly fine with cheap speakers because I couldn’t notice a difference in sound quality. Now I’m starting to get a bit whinny about my laptop’s speakers, lol.

I could never understand why hearing people were so willing to blow hundreds of dollars on speaker systems. Now I know.

Seriously. This whole hearing thing is taking a toll on my checking account. 😉