Comfort Reads discussion
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Chit Chat
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Daily Chat
Jeannette wrote: "We're going to have to chip in and buy you one of those Life-line buttons, so we'll be able to find you, Gundula! lolGood morning everyone! I hope you all enjoy a beautiful Fall or Spring day, t..."
Like, I've tripped over my books, or my books have buried me and I can't get up. Today, the sun is shining and the fall colours are great.
I wish we had the sun..alas we are getting over the bad thunderstorms and flooding that has left some streets not safe to pass through. I really need an amphibious vehicle.
Brenda wrote: "I wish we had the sun..alas we are getting over the bad thunderstorms and flooding that has left some streets not safe to pass through. I really need an amphibious vehicle."
The East Coast is getting hammered right now, isn't it? A good excuse to stay home with a book! Hope the weather stays dry for a few days.
The East Coast is getting hammered right now, isn't it? A good excuse to stay home with a book! Hope the weather stays dry for a few days.
Hi! I'm making cupcakes today for the cross country team's pasta party. The house smells all cakey.
I am still not reading. I can't pick anything. I'm reading magazines (my new Publishers Weekly just got here so maybe there will be something to inspire me).
I am still not reading. I can't pick anything. I'm reading magazines (my new Publishers Weekly just got here so maybe there will be something to inspire me).
Hey Cupcake lady! I am going to toss you a few suggestions of books I really enjoyed:
The Last Chinese Chef food, romance, exotic location
Cloud of Sparrows samurai, historical, funny at times
The Painted Veil love affairs, disease, more exotic locations
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History I think everybody should read this book
Cheaper by the Dozen the true story -- not the Steve Martin garbage! Get this on audiobook.
Okay, those are some of my favorites. :)
The Last Chinese Chef food, romance, exotic location
Cloud of Sparrows samurai, historical, funny at times
The Painted Veil love affairs, disease, more exotic locations
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History I think everybody should read this book
Cheaper by the Dozen the true story -- not the Steve Martin garbage! Get this on audiobook.
Okay, those are some of my favorites. :)
I read Isaac's Storm before, and it was really good, wasn't it? Thanks for the other ideas! I'll look them up.
Yes, it was a great book. I picked it up as a Christmas present for my husband and had to read it before I put it under the tree. How embarrassing. ;)
Good luck finding something!
Good luck finding something!
Time to hit the hay! My two kids have their taekwondo belt test tomorrow. They will go from orange to green. They'll be breaking boards by kicking them.
I hope you found a book Christine. I picked up a few at the library, but don't know what I'll read tonight.
See you all in the morning!
I hope you found a book Christine. I picked up a few at the library, but don't know what I'll read tonight.
See you all in the morning!
We're off to a meet. Good luck to your daughter and hubby today, Jeannette!
Good luck staying awake! Hope the meet goes well! :)
Does anybody knows about Project Gutenberg? If so, please take a look at Distributed Proofreaders. Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.
During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.
Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.
I am already a volunteer in this project and I am helping to make the proofreading of Story of My Life by George Sand.
Thanks for mentioning this, Laura. It is something I am thinking about doing when my daughter goes off to college next year. How much time do you spend each week volunteering?
great Jeannette!! You can spend 1h/week, 1h/a day, it doesn't matter, the important thing is to give little free time to this huge project. Please let me know if you have any questions. I started to make the proofreading in the first level in order to get used of the rules, the way we have to work and so on. Quite interesting, believe me.
You may just convince me to do this sooner, rather than waiting for next year. I read a little bit of Udolpho this year and I'm impressed by Project Gutenberg and what they are trying to do.
Laura wrote: "I am already a volunteer in this project and I am helping to make the proofreading of Story of My Life by George Sand. "Laura, That's wonderful that you're working on this!!!
thanks Lisa. I started the proofreading of another book also.
Laura wrote: "thanks Lisa. I started the proofreading of another book also."That's such an important contribution! Kudos to you, Laura. I love this project!
Lisa, you could join us.......take a look at least.
Laura wrote: "Lisa, you could join us.......take a look at least."Laura, Maybe I will. I'm crazy busy for the next week but maybe I'll take a look next weekend.
Hi Laura. I have been a volunteer too. (Haven't been working for a while, but plan to get back to it.)
Lisa and everyone else: They try to convince people to do "one page a day", which should take about 15 or 20 minutes, depending on the length, etc. If you're very good at it it can take as little as 5 or 10 minutes.
It's a lot of fun, actually.
Lisa and everyone else: They try to convince people to do "one page a day", which should take about 15 or 20 minutes, depending on the length, etc. If you're very good at it it can take as little as 5 or 10 minutes.
It's a lot of fun, actually.
Thanks, Hayes and Laura. I will definitely consider participating.
I'll have to think about this as well. It's not the proofreading itself that scares me, it's the technology. I don't have a scanner, my printer does not work at the moment etc. So, I will probably need to get some information about the technical requirements before I am able to start doing this (and how to do manage the technical requirements, I'm generally much better proofreading hard copies than reading text on the computer).
Gundula, we don't have to scan any documents all the books are already in an OCR format (image) which allows us to edit by comparison with the original image. It's very simple indeed. As Hayes said, one you get used, it could take 5-10 minutes per day since each file contains 2 paragraphs at most.
It's true Gundula. You don't need a scanner.
You open the pages on the site and your computer screen is divided in to two halves (you can decide if it's up and down, or right and left). On the top (or the left) is one scanned page, on the bottom (or the right) is the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) text. Sometimes the OCR is not completely accurate, confusing letters (the most common 'rn' becomes 'm', or 'd' becomes 'o') because the scanner can't see the spaces or there is dirt on the original page. Your job is just to make sure that the text shows exactly what's on the original image.
Easy peasy!
You open the pages on the site and your computer screen is divided in to two halves (you can decide if it's up and down, or right and left). On the top (or the left) is one scanned page, on the bottom (or the right) is the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) text. Sometimes the OCR is not completely accurate, confusing letters (the most common 'rn' becomes 'm', or 'd' becomes 'o') because the scanner can't see the spaces or there is dirt on the original page. Your job is just to make sure that the text shows exactly what's on the original image.
Easy peasy!
Hayes wrote: "It's true Gundula. You don't need a scanner.You open the pages on the site and your computer screen is divided in to two halves (you can decide if it's up and down, or right and left). On the top..."
I will probably try that, it not only sounds interesting, it's something to put into a resume and a CV. One more question, though (sorry). Living in a rural area, my email connection is not high-speed, but dial-up at the moment (high speed is supposed to be arriving, but it's been slow, lol). Would being on a dial-up connection be a problem? I ask because downloading text is a slow and tedious job on a dial-up account.
I'm not sure. We have really good broadband here, so that's not a problem for me. Maybe Laura knows.
Hayes wrote: "I'm not sure. We have really good broadband here, so that's not a problem for me. Maybe Laura knows."Thanks, I'll have to check it out with Laura and do a bit of research. No use doing the proofreading thing if it takes three days to download a file. I'm not kidding, that is how long it recently took to download some essential software upgrades, what a pain.
Gundula wrote: "Hayes wrote: "I'm not sure. We have really good broadband here, so that's not a problem for me. Maybe Laura knows."Thanks, I'll have to check it out with Laura and do a bit of research. No use d..."
Gundula, don't worry about your internet connection since normally we make the proofreading of a couple of paragraphs. You don't have to download a big file, on the contrary.
I will suggest to start with Proofreading Round 1: Available (The page-texts are the output from OCR software and need to have the text carefully compared to the image.)
Thanks for all the detailed explanations of how this works! It sounds pretty easy! :)
Gundula, there are some German and juvenile texts to be proofreading.....
Laura wrote: "Gundula, there are some German and juvenile texts to be proofreading....."I should definitely check it out, and check which German texts are available online. Many of the vintage texts I would like to read are either not available or way too expensive.
Mod
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Take care of each other comfy readers while I'm gone and of course our lovely Lisa is here to smooth any ruffled feathers. No cupcake fights while mama is away, I don't want to miss the party!
Hugs to you all and thanks for the kind and encouraging words. I hope to not be in Goodreads withdrawal because I will be too busy!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Cupcake fight, Christine!! Lee will be away and we are free to play! I think I feel a haiku coming on for the occasion. :D
Good luck with the move, Lee.
xoxo
Good luck with the move, Lee.
xoxo
Lee, We'll miss you. I'm not worried too much about ruffled feathers as we have such a wonderful group of people here, but we'll miss you. I hope you get settled in quickly so that you can enjoy the new house asap.
Jeannette wrote: "Cupcake fight, Christine!!
I'm frosting as we speak! Good luck, Lee!
I'm frosting as we speak! Good luck, Lee!
chocolate! chocolate! chocolate! *with sprinkles*
Jeannette wrote: "chocolate! chocolate! chocolate! *with sprinkles*"I have a chocolate tart in my fridge and I'm trying to resist the urge to eat it, not very likely, though (and this is making my willpower disappear completely).
Brownies for me..think I will go get one YUM!
*bummer* I've only got virtual cupcakes. I did just scarf down some Ritter sport with whole hazelnuts! Yum!
Yea... me too Laura! (Ha!!)
Morning girls. Lee, let us know how you're doing.
Morning girls. Lee, let us know how you're doing.
Jeannette wrote: "chocolate! chocolate! chocolate! *with sprinkles*"
But if you smack someone with sprinkles, that could hurt.
But if you smack someone with sprinkles, that could hurt.
I just remembered, I have book club tonight. Maybe whatever is picked next will push me out of my current slump.
I'm starting my new food plan today, too, Laura (good luck to you!) So, I'll cut back on the chocolate and have to start flinging veggies at Christine.
Let's get back to our walking plan, too, shall we? It is no fun living with the stick people..... :(
Good luck with the book club, Christine.
Have a fun day, everybody! :)
Let's get back to our walking plan, too, shall we? It is no fun living with the stick people..... :(
Good luck with the book club, Christine.
Have a fun day, everybody! :)
I haven't been reporting my walking, but I've actually been doing it almost every day...about 40 minutes in the morning.
Christine wrote: "I haven't been reporting my walking, but I've actually been doing it almost every day...about 40 minutes in the morning."
Good for you! I am happy for you, that you stuck with it. :) Got to get inspired....
Good for you! I am happy for you, that you stuck with it. :) Got to get inspired....
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Comfort Reads
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Good morning everyone! I hope you all enjoy a beautiful Fall or Spring day, today. One more day until the weekend. :D