#Main downside is I'd have to work with other people for the voices

[bunnieswithknives]

New ONE stuff has got me thinking about my Object show idea again

[andhumanslovedstories]

Hello! I love your blog very much. I too am a second degree nurse. I just graduated from an ABSN program and I'm struggling to get my foot in the door anywhere despite good grades + honor society membership + in state license already secured. I live in NYC and the nursing shortage here is CRAZY but for some reason no one wants to talk to me. Would you recommend home health nursing for someone in my situation? I did my preceptorship in the ED and that's 100% where I belong, but the bills are really piling up and I have no prospects. How long did you do home health before you went bedside? Thank you for any advice you have!

(Disclaimer though for all this, I'm across the country from you and have no idea the landscape of nursing jobs in NYC.)

I worked in home health for 18 months. If my goal was to get to the hospital as quick as possible, I didn't need to be there that long. I wasn't in any particular rush to move on. Plenty of people worked less than that and got hired at a hospital, I think something like a year was the average. I know the different between sending out my new grad resume and sending out my home health nurse resume was night and day. As in: literally anyone wanted to interview me.

I'd encourage you to at least apply and see if you can interview. You get to interview the company right back, and that'll let you know the kinds of work they expect from you. There are two main types of home health: the kind where you visit a lot of patients in a day and the kind where you're with one patient for the entire shift. The first kind is doing stuff like dressing changes, medication management, or periodic assessment. The second kind is more like general caregiving with nursing related requirements. I mostly did the second one, and worked night shift. So I fed a patient dinner, I gave them a bath, I got them dressed for bed, then tucked them in and stuck around until morning for their needs in the night. But within that was trach management, seizures, G tubes, medications, central lines, ongoing assessment, all that stuff that got this person nursing hours. I'm not gonna lie--it was often very very boring. I read a lot of books.

(btw west coast disclaimer again, but if you're willing to work nights, you'll get hired more easily. Everyone everywhere in the world doesn't have enough night shift coverage. also, oops! this got long and became an essay on home health!)

For downsides, in home health you can get limited training and orientation before you're alone, responsible for a patient. And then it's all on you. I had some gut-dropping moments early on where I encountered something I didn't know how to handle and didn't know how urgent it was. There's supposed someone you can call at all times, but multiple times when I did call, no one picked up. It can be super stressful and frankly dangerous as an inexperienced nurse. Luckily, many times you have the patient's family as a resource. It's likely they've been doing this years longer than you have. Though it's worst thing in the world when you wake someone up at 3 am because you're unsure and concerned, and then have that person explain in a really supportive tone of voice that these frequent, very brief seizures were probably just hiccups. Hypothetically speaking.

You can get too entwined with the patient and family's lives. It's hard to call out sick because you know no one can cover you. It's easy to cross emotional boundaries. Imagine spending 40 hours a week with someone and their family. They'll occupy a spot in your brain.

And I don't think it's a great place for a new nurse to stay for years and years, just for like professional development reasons. You won't get exposure to a variety of patients (unless you work that other type of home health in which case enjoy seeing eight different patients a day, hope traffic doesn't suck), so it's easy to forget stuff you just learned. I never had to think about transfusion reactions until I started at the hospital and shit now it's relevant all the time. I had to completely relearn how to hang an IV piggyback. Plus, since you work alone, you don't get the chance to see how other nurses work. It's hard to figure out a profession when you practice in complete isolation. It's easy to learn bad habits and have no one ever correct you.

But there's a lot I like about home health. You really do have a perspective on patients and patient care that is unique to home health and long-term care. In the hospital, you don't always get that long-term perspective. If you work with someone for a while, you can track how they progress or decline. Why do some clients stay at home for years and others keep going back to the hospital? What's different about their conditions and cares? You see all the work it can take to keep them steady. That's perspective that easy to lose. It helps you put the patient on a timeline that extends beyond the hospital. If you click with a patient and/or family and work with them for a while, it can be very satisfying working with them because you see so clearly the impact you're having.

Also! I read so many fucking books! I listened to so many podcasts (played so so softly). I knitted and learned sudoku and practiced yoga, looked up vacation spots, put in my grocery orders, and organized my playlists. I also could research and research and research. I had time to look up everything about every condition my patient had, and once I felt more comfortable with those, I moved on to looking up whatever other disease process and patient experience seemed interesting. I'd make myself a little curriculum and, after my patient was tucked in, and be like "tonight's class is vlogs about having a trach."

There were plenty of shifts where I bustled all fuckin night, and sometimes those shifts seemed to be in one endless hellish row, but often I had a lot of time to myself that I could spend however I wanted, as long as I was still in the room with the patient, able to meaningfully hear and see them, and keeping up with the night routine. I fucked around a lot and got paid for it because the job is to be available when needed, and you're not always needed. (I'm not saying slack off! I'm just saying even colicky babies sleep peacefully now and then.)

Anyway jesus christ that got away from me, but like please know that I was in your exact place, and I know how much it sucks and how crazy it makes you feel because I THOUGHT WE WERE SHORT ON NURSES DON'T ANY OF YOU FUCKERS NEED A NURSE, and know that all the other job hunts after this should and will be easier than this.

[throne-for-queens]

i believe, if I can chime in to share my guess, If they were to FINALLY break up, he would keep dating in the industry, not necessarily only red carpet habitués but also people who work and live in adjacent industries and entertainment cities. So maybe going back to the models and even the adult stars while keeping it on the low, especially now he has a growing child he'd want to shield from the bs. But also, I don't see him going out of his way to hide them and doing the most to protect their peace. I don't think he would be totally freaking out if people knew about him and potential future promiscous partners of the moment, once it was over with his current girlfriend, ofc.

Unless these women were "Alt", if workers from the erotica world and fitness influencing were ever to be associated with him again, I don't see them struggling, they'd probably be more than fine since they appeal to the male gaze more than a 2008 Megan Fox could ever do. They'd even get some clout of it, especially if the Andrew Tates type of men (Dub & co🤣🤣) were to argue with Jennifer's Body worshippers Waif type of girls. These two groups of people always fight over anything, anyways. But hold on, isn't it crazy to see based grown men and young girls being natural keyboard enemies?

Anyways. Back to the main topic. He's a very honest dude who hates to lead girls on so, if he were to have a crazy baby fever, it's 2024, there are many other options than forcing himself to settle down! He just don't strike me as the type who would rush life for a white picket fence despite the lyrics "Even if I got a wife, she just somebody I fuck: Hollywood whore". I can only see him possibly settling down with Megan to finish what he started and that being SHORT term. Don't see them lasting, not even making it down the altar to be completely honest.

ALL OF THAT, unless he meets the one... or should I say... UNTIL he goes back with -same- one (in my best Nessa voice). It's his life and he owes me NO fan service. Having said so, from the bottom of my heart I wish him the best, and that relationship MIGHT be the best, ALLEGEDLY *wink wink* ."Why you try to run when it feel like you're the one sometimes?: Waste Love".

These are my opinions, I don't claim to be right and I don't want to be😅. So far, he still is with his Twin Flame/ Twin soul, Twin this/ Twin that, so there is that.

You are most likely right about dating someone Hollywood adjacent, even though I wish he wouldn't. But I guess there would be some downsides to someone not used to the industry. I'll settle on a dancer or touring manager 😂( I'd love to work on a tour one day, feel like it's the easiest way to see other states and countries.)

I feel like even though there are options like surrogacy, adoption, etc, I feel like he'd aspire to be romantically involved with the next mother of his child. Just because he'd want to give them the family dynamic he missed growing up. Glad his mom and him have made up now, but it really hurt him when she was away, I don't think he'd purposely sign up for that for his kid. But I do think this is a good take overall.

[lexiconne]

Dumb Writer Needs Help Writing Disability!!

So, I have this project I've been working on that has come together really nicely here lately. It's on its rewrite phase, and I really want to make sure it's exactly the way I want it to be this time.

However! I am going to be writing about several main characters with physical disabilities, and as I have no personal experience and very little other experience with their disabilities, I'd like to ask those who do for input.

I have already done research! However, it can be just as valuable if not more so to ask the source directly for personal recounts, and I tend to have trouble reading/really comprehending/remembering resources that are worded too stiffly. I have the basic terms down (I think), but I want to know: what's something that irritates you about the disability on a day to day basis? What's something you find comforting about it? Are there any positives you'd like to express? Any little neutral happenings that just go along with it? Think how glasses wearers (me) know that touching the lenses is the WORST thing to do, and rain is a MASSIVE pain in the butt. Just little things that I can perhaps include and make the characters and their experiences seem more authentic.

I currently have:

a Deaf character (can only hear very faint sounds) who has special Magic Fantasy Hearing Aids™ to help magnify existing sound to whatever degree he needs. They do have downsides and are not perfect, and he makes frequent references to being Deaf; they're not a magical way to make him un-disabled when convenient, just a disability aid that would exist in this world in their time period. He's been Deaf since birth.

a character who loses a limb (her leg) and creates her own robotic prosthetic. This has world-specific drawbacks like needing to be oiled, getting too hot or cold, etc. but I would love to include real-world ones too. (I know next to nothing about prosthetics ^.^*)

A character who has her voice sealed away via a curse, making her speech-impaired (mute? Is that offensive?) in that she cannot form words. Sounds can be made, but they cause pain. This one is more heavily tied to the fantasy aspect and while I can make up my own rules for a curse, I'd like to include some real-world similar experiences to make it seem more grounded.

(The first and third one meet and he teaches her sign language!)

Please feel free to mention any aspects you want or point out if I've said something you find odd! Plus, if you have any more resources you want to link like official articles and such, that would be so appreciated. This is a learning post. <3

Thank you for your patience, time, and energy!

_

TLDR: need help from disabled peoples! Please infodump on me!

[bamboobrat]

succession s4 e2 recap: hitman santa claus and an audition tape from hell

time for this weeks recap, you guys! i'm going into gerri withdrawal, so this feels a bit like pulling teeth, but lets get into this trauma dump of an episode, shall we?

logan is apparently still in his feelings about last episode, but like any man of a certain age, he doesn't want to talk about it.

what he wants to do: take away the kids' helicopter privileges and scrutinize a poor man writing an email.

the kids on the other hand are planning the future of their brand new, 10 billion dollar media empire.

good thing they are really in touch with the people. as we all know, the american public is notoriously famous for being interested in foreign affairs.

it's also connor's rehearsal dinner and he voices his concern his sibs won't make it in the most boomer way possible.

shiv's "taking calls and looking upset" plot line continues.

we will get you that emmy, snookie.

tom's hogged all the good divorce lawyers in new york, similarly to what logan once did to caroline. a truly specific example of generational trauma or something.

logan is at ATN, just chillin' like a villain on the floor.

tom reacts to the news as any employee would, knowing their boss is in the office:

me running back from a one hour lunch after reading on slack that the boss is coming in.

tbh i'd take shiv calling me a lil bitch boy any day.

my close captions did this, and i can't figure out if it's a mistake or tom fucking with greg craig.

also, something tells me greg's sex tape does not have late night tv potential.

and now, for the main star of the show:

kerry's audition tape.

turns out she wants to be a host at ATN. i think roman and kendall speaks for all of us when they say:

never seen kendall so happy.

clearly, logan is the biggest anti-nepotism advocate out there, so he doesn't really want to have a say in what happens to kerry.

calling cyd and tom geniuses, though... seems fishy. perhaps it is not professionalism that is driving him, after all. i guess we will never know.

shiv continues to rack up the largest phone bill ever by talking to sandi (or is it sandy? i care to little to look it up) about potentially asking mattson for more money.

upside: more money. downside: he might just walk away from the table and they'll be stuck with a 10 billion dollar bill and a legacy media company where they focus on the very narrow topics of globan and extremely local.

personally, i don't even fully understand how the stock marked works, and even i can tell that this is a bad idea. but self-destructive people are going to self-destruct i guess.

speaking of:

WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT!!!!!!

logan does a murdoch type speech on the top of printing paper and rips an ATN employee to shreds.

if you ever went to j-school, you know this is the most horrifying scenario.

numbers? i'm a journalist, i can't do math.

logan also quotes a bit of daft punk:

and is completely calm and collected the entire speech, as we have come to expect of logan.

i truly believe logan and brian cox have morphed into one person during the four seasons of succession. i can't tell you why, but i also think this scene is proof.

also, logan is getting a BUNCH of screen time these first few episodes. could they pull the rug out from under us all and kill him off by episode 5? one can only hope.

the kiddos aren't allowed to take the company helicopter to connor and willa's rehearsal dinner and kendall is calm, cool and collected.

it's certainly a long way away from him running after that town car during the first attempt at overthrowing logan in season one. how far he's come. i'd like some of whatever it is he is taking.

stewy and sandi show up to convince the sibs to renegotiate the price with mattson.

i love stewy. i really do. but the show runners don't know how to use him properly anymore, i think. please, for the love of god, give the man some lavender. give him something more to do!

willa does what any young lesbian woman would do: ditch her own rehearsal dinner to have drinks with twenty of her closest friends.

it's not like the bride is needed at that sort of event, anyway.

roman shares my coping mechanism when dealing with any sort of emotional turmoil:

and so does connor, apparently:

there's nothing chocolate and a good rendition of 'don't stop me now' can't fix.

the show runners _really_ want you to know mattson is swedish with the bilar and the julmust and being aggressive whilst also saying you're not being aggressive.

it's the scandi way.

i feel represented.

the threat doesn't work on kendall, though. on the contrary, he's got kid brain and will do anything he is told not to do, so he goes back to back shiv on renegotiating the price. once again, roman is teamed up on, even though i stg he is the only one of the sibs making any sense lately.

this is connor's best attempt at being folksy:

hoegaarden haters unite. i knew there was a reason i liked connor.

positive note: he finally gets his way and they go to karaoke. negative note: he contacts logan and it all ends in a confrontation that makes me want to set myself on fire:

screaming, crying, throwing up.

we get another logan monologue of sorts, with certain interjections from the kids. potentially the first honest encounter this show has ever seen? i'm sick of brian cox face by now, so i couldn't be fucked to screengrab.

just have him die already. he's only there because he acknowledges that the kids have "got juice" and yet he calls them "not serious people".... i guess he is right, but i don't have to like it, okay!!!

roman comes crawling back and asks logan this:

logan responds that he needs him and it's the only thing i think roman has ever wanted to hear and i'm going to go scream into a pillow now.

i guess this marks the end of the siblings teaming up (for now). rip.

i feel drained.

bonus:

gerri is still out in the cold in all the ways and is absolutely NOWHERE in this episode. i'm glad she too had the chance to smirk at kerry's audition tape, but it was with hugo.... cancels itself out.

that being said, i've seen the trailer for next week's episode, and i am ready to be hurt again.

cheers!

[potetopro]

I Used Artificial Intelligence on Japanese Voice Actor (Seiyuu) Content

TL;DR Seiyuu fansubber rambles too long about how Whisper and other AI go *BRRRR!!!!* and the future of humanity is at stake. Actual TL;DR OpenAI's Whisper gives us a sneak peek into just how much automatic transcription and translation by artificial intelligence has improved. I wouldn't say it'll completely replace human translation just yet, but it's definitely something industries will have to adapt to.

Introduction

Let's start why I even decided to make this blog. I woke up today and noticed a message on The Seiyuu Stage Discord server that had a very interesting link to a reddit post. According to OP, they used OpenAI's Whisper to create a collection of English translated subtitles on the popular TV show "Tokyo Encounter", which is hosted by the famous Japanese voice actors (seiyuu) Nakamura Yuuichi and Sugita Tomokazu. OP claims that Whisper has "quite good translation" and was "roughly ~90% accurate". That's a pretty big claim if I do say so myself.

Although the link led to one of those shady pirating sites, curiousity got the best of me and I decided to download it like an idiot. Fortunately I didn't get hit with a trojan or anything, and the file was just a zip full of .ass files (subtitle files similar to .srt files). Before I jump into the main content of this blog post, I'd like to provide some important background information that is required to understand just what I'm talking about.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in the field of artificial intelligence. I am also not a native Japanese speaker.

Background Information

Even if you've been living under a rock for the past year or so, you've probably at least heard of the crazy fast advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) within the past few months. You've probably heard of Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and many other AI that have begun to revolutionize the world. Today I'll be doing a quick review of how well OpenAI's Whisper works on a certain type of niche content. For those of who are not yet unware, OpenAI is famous for it's AI "ChatGPT". I literally asked ChatGPT to explain what ChatGPT is here below.

What is OpenAI's Whisper?

So what about Whisper? What is its purpose? According to OpenAI's official blog post,

"Whisper is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the web."

To put it simply, Whisper is like a supercharged Google Translate for videos and audio or a better YouTube auto-captions.

Like YouTube's auto-captions feature, Whisper can transcribe human speech and even translate it into other languages. The one downside is that Whisper cannot auto transcribe and auto translate in real time, so you cannot watch a video/listen to audio at the same time. That leads me to the next section of this horribly organized post.

OpenAI's Whisper Vs. Japanese Voice Actor (Seiyuu) Content

Ok, with all of the background knowledge that's required to understand is now out of the way, I can finally jump into the main purpose of this blog. The main things I'll be exploring are listed below

Just HOW GOOD is Whisper AI at transcribing and translating Japanese? More specifically, speech from professional voice actors in Japan, who are usually known for having some of the most clearest enunciation in the country.

How does Whisper compare to other machine transcribers/translators such as YouTube's Auto-Captions feature and Adobe's Speech to Text feature for Premiere Pro?

Is Whisper AI even worth using?

Whisper AI - Transcribing & Translating

Due to some issues with my PC not cooperating with them, I am currently not able to actually use Whisper myself. Therefore, I will be using Whisper outputs that I got from other people.

Let's start by looking where Whisper messes up.

CLIP 1

Nakamura: How about you set it to today? Hanae: It's the 9th.

So in the clip above, Nakamura suggests Hanae to set the date on the game to be the day the episode airs/is recorded, which is on the 9th of the month. For some reason, Whisper completely messes up the translation. This is about 1 minute and 30 seconds into the episode, and until then there were no obvious mistakes from Whisper.

CLIP 2

There are two lines in the clip above that stand out to me.

花江 「出た！懐かしい」 Hanae: I remember this 杉田 「ちょっと声が若い」 Sugita: He's a young man

While the translation for Hanae's line isn't outright wrong, it lacks some nuance. I would've translated it as, "There it is! This brings me back!"

Whisper leaves out the nuance of Hanae being surprise when it suddenly appears on screen, and also him expressing his feeling of nostalgia.

With Sugita's line, Whisper straight up incorrectly translates the line. Sugita states that the voice of speaker in the game sounds like he's young (implying that the voice of the speaker sounds a lot older in the present day).

CLIP 3

In this 3rd clip, I'd like to praise Whisper for accurately transcribing the input controls that Hanae is reading out loud. There were no mistakes in this particular clip, and it didn't make any mistakes when Hanae was reading the input controls before this scene as well.

If I had to nitpick, Whisper seems to really push back the timing of each subtitle line way too much. You can clearly see that the line appears before anyone actually says anything, and this issue persists throughout the rest of clips I'll be showing. Obviously, this is something you can manually fix and is rather simple.

Also, Whisper seems to not care about pauses within a sentence. Hanae laughs, causing him to not complete his sentence smoothly, however Whisper doesn't take that into account. This ties into the next clip.

CLIP 4

In this next clip above, there are no mistakes. I would say that Whisper did a pretty good job here correctly translating what was said, and there's not really much to complain about.

However, I would like to note that Whisper lacks a sense of "spice" to all of its outputs. I can't say, "It's almost as if a machine made this", because well... a machine basically did. Whisper lacks that special feeling that a human took their time to think about and translate each line. It is quite literally robotic at times.

CLIP 5

So in this clip above, you can clearly tell that the issues I mentioned earlier are all kind of compounded.

The timing of the subtitle line is way too early.

"He's not doing anything." is not what Nakuramura said.

Whisper completely ignored what Sugita said.

CLIP 6

In this final clip from the show, I'd like to include it because what's happening on screen is just kind of funny.

Whisper mistakes Hanae saying すね毛 (sunege), which means leg hair, for the word "sneaky".

I would like to praise Whisper for properly indentifying that Sugita is the one actually controlling the character in this clip though. Japanese is a language where simply saying a verb can be considered as gramatically correct, which means that they can leave out pronouns like "I".

PIKA CLIP

Let's look at a clip that includes both human translation and Whisper translation. This clip was made by Pika Can't Sub, a fellow seiyuu fansubber and the one who originally linked the reddit post I mentioned earlier. They set up Whisper locally on their PC and tested it out themselves.

In the clip above, the WHISPER translated subtitles are the white ones on the top, and Pika's manual translation on the bottom. You can clearly see that Whisper is REALLY GOOD. Both Whisper's and Pika's translations work really well and there's practically little to no unnatural English.

One thing to note here is that this is appears to be a Japanese news show. Narrators must speak very clearly in order to convey the informaton to the viewers, so that probably helped by making it far easier for Whisper to accurately pick up on what was said.

Comparing Whisper to Other Audio Transcribers

YouTube's Auto-Captions Feature

With my limited test of Whisper I would say it is far, FAR, more accurate compared to YouTube's auto-captions. I'm sure most of you reading this blog have at least used YouTube's auto-captions feature before. Whenever you're watching on YouTube that doesn't have manually added captions, you can turn on this feature. It will transcribe what is spoken in the video, and can even automatically translate it to your desired language.

The biggest downside is that this feature tends to make mistakes, and I mean A LOT of mistakes. In my opinion, it works pretty well for English, but for other languages such as Japanese it tends to be really iffy. Mileage may vary. When using YouTube's auto-captions feature to translate from English to Japanese or the other way around, you'll most likely get very unnatural and odd translations.

If you've ever studied a foreign language before, you'll also know that languages like English and German drastically different from languages like Japanese and Korean. I believe that's the reason why so much gets lost in translation when using machine translation like YouTube's auto-captions. Sometimes the top comment on a YouTube video is just about laughing at the mistakes that the auto-captions makes.

It's almost as if Google Translate was just slapped onto YouTube and they called it a day.

Adobe's Speech to Text for Premiere Pro

I will using the video I created above as a reference for this section~

You may have also heard of Adobe's "Speech to Text" for Premiere Pro. Like YouTube's auto-captions and OpenAI's Whisper, it uses AI technology to transcribe human speech into text. As far as I'm aware though, Adobe's version does not have any translation feature, and also has a far more limited amount of languages that it can transcribe. In my personal opinion, it is far better than YouTube's auto-captions. Since Premiere Pro is a software application for video editing, the Speech to Text integration is really nice. One major downside is that this Adobe feature, along with the rest of their suite, is not free and you have to pay a monthly subscription just to use it.

Like Whisper, you give the AI an audio file that it will read. The AI will then spend a certain amount of time, which varies depending on the length of the audio file, and then spit out the transcription of what you originally fed it. What's nice about Adobe's Speech to Text is that you can literally select it word for word and it'll start playing the timeline from the exact point the AI picked up that word. With Whisper, it only gives you a completed file with timestamps. I believe Whisper gives you an SRT file and that's about it.

My Experience With Adobe's AI

The video is a snippet that I translated and edited from the Bocchi the Radio!, which is the official radio for the TV anime Bocchi the Rock!. The speakers in this clip are the voice actresses for Gotoh Hitori and Yamada Ryou. In this particular episode, ���山吉能 (Aoyama Yoshino) AKA Yoppii, has just physically moved away from her microphone in the studio in order to grab the mail that they have received from listeners of the radio. She is now rushing back to her seat and trying to make it in time to read the segment title and explanation before the music ends. You can also hear 水野朔 (Mizuno Saku) AKA Sakupi, laughing as she is confused as to why Yoppii is frantically running around the studio.

Adobe's version is definitely not perfect by any means. Below, I have provided a small snippet of the raw output I got from it after giving it a wav file (mp3 files work just fine as well). This is about 0:10 in the YouTube video above.

If you can understand Japanese and English, you can immediately tell there are some discrepancies in what Adobe's AI outputted.

Adobe's Speech to Text Output

Yoppii 「その割合こちらの。」 "Here's the proportion."

Yoppii 「コーナーリスナーさんから用件はこういうことをしているという最新四家情報を送ってもらうコーナーです。」 This is a corner where listeners send us the latest information about the latest four houses that are doing this kind of thing.

My Manual Transcription Fix

Yoppii 「ああああ！！！！間に合え！！」 "AHHHH!!!! MAKE IT IN TIME!!!!"

Yoppii 「こちらのコーナー！リスナーさんから陽キャはこういうことをしているという最新ら陽キャ情報を送ってもらうコーナーです。」 "It's a segment~~! This is a segment where we get listeners to send us the latest extrovert information about how extroverts are doing ____."

For those who don't understand Japanese I'll try to explain some common issues I have with this feature, and elaborate more on the mistakes that the AI has made in this particular case.

One of the many issues I've had with Adobe's Speech to Text feature is that it tends to split lines at an odd place in the sentence. Not quite sure why that is, but I suspect it has to do with how this feature tends to split English speech. Sometimes the AI will spit out a line that is just a huge blob of text and you have to manually split it into multiple lines.

Sometimes Adobe's Speech to Text just leaves out entire words and/or completely transcribes the wrong word. I've noticed this happens whenever there's music that plays at the same time, and/or the audio of the speaker isn't clear. This occurs with YouTube's auto-captions as well and I can't blame it. Error 1: Yoppii is basically doing that fake "AHHHH!!!!" scream, and also yells "MAKE IT IN TIME!!!!" as she tries to get back into her seat in time. The AI obviously did not transcribe this part at all. Error 2: The slang term 陽キャ (you-kya) in Japanese refers to someone who is rather bright, cheerful, and outgoing. I translated it as extrovert in the clip. The AI picked it up as 用件 (you-ken) which means "business; things to be done; errand". It also picked it up a second time as 四家 which is literally four houses lol

In conclusion, with all the bashing I've done on Adobe's Speech to Text feature, I think it's actually really great. The particular example I showed above is usually a tough one for most AI/machine transcribers anyway. It ends to do really well, and far better than what YouTube's auto-captions usually outputs. Although I still have to manually retime all the subtitle lines and manually fix transcription errors, this AI has been an amazing tool in bringing my content creation to the next level.

I would say as a fansubber, timing all the subtitle lines is one of the most time consuming parts of the process, aside from actually translating all the lines. With Adobe's Speech to Text, it actually speeds up the process. With all the AI I've used so far, which isn't just limited to transcribing and translating AI, I've realized that they're best used as a sort of launching pad. With Adobe's Speech to Text, it gives me a rough mold (starting point) and then I can reshape it to how I want, which is a lot faster than starting with nothing at all.

Some other things that make Adobe's Speech to Text feature better than OpenAI's Whisper

You can choose whether or not to distuingish between mulitple speakers, and you can even manually rename or add more if you like.

After the trancription process is done, you can even convert all of it to captions. Since Premiere Pro 2022, Adobe has added a dedicated captions layer and other updates to make the editing process a better experience. I personally don't use this, because I tend to split each line in a very specific manner that's not possible with the current settings.

I also used Adobe's Speech to Text to help me create this video below.

Please check out the rest of my YouTube channel~

DeepL Translator

I'd like to just mention DeepL really quick. Like Google Translate, you can give it some text in one language and it will translate to one of the many other languages that are available. I would say DeepL gives far better translations than Google Translate.

DeepL also tends to do really well when translating single sentences. It is pretty good at keeping the nuances and that special human "spice" in slang. That's just my experience with Japanese to English and English to Japanese though.

Unfortunately, DeepL doesn't seem to have a video/audio transcription model or service. That means you would have to manually input each sentence if you were to do a video, and that would an absolute pain. DeepL does seem to have a feature that allows you to upload word documents and PDF files, but I have not tested that out.

Final Thoughts

If you actually read this far, you are a mad man and I truly appreciate you for taking time out of your day to do so. Thank you so much.

How should I conclude this blog...?

To put it simply, this is a game changer.

I started using Adobe's Speech to Text around the end of 2022, and at the time I thought it was an absolute game changer. I had seen some posts about OpenAI's Whisper on TikTok, but didn't think it would be better than Adobe's model. However, after doing some research and writing this blog, I think Whisper might be just as good, if not better than Adobe's. Of course, YouTube's Auto-Captions doesn't even compare. As for DeepL, I would say DeepL is way better for adding in that human "spice" and sounding naturally. Unfornatutely as of writing this blog, DeepL doesn't seem to be working on any video transcription service (that I'm aware of).

So is OpenAI's Whisper worth looking into and using it yourself? ABSOLUTELY. It's open-source, which means its free and the results it gives are without a doubt one of the best out there. AI such as Whisper aren't quite developed enough to completely replace transcribers and translators such as myself just yet, but I'm not sure how much longer until it will. As of right now, these types of AI can be used as a very powerful tool to accelerate your work and actually provide positive changes!

I can't wait to see how much further AI will improve within the next couple years!

Please check out the rest of my channel! I create japanese voice actor (seiyuu) subbed content, mainly on YouTube!

[felikatze]

Very important: The demon who adopted a grandson AITA, what story is this?? I need to read it. Or watch it. I need it please it's so cute---

That one's talking about Sullivan from Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun!

As you can tell from the AITA, the story follows fourteen year old Iruma Suzuki, after his shitty parents sell him to a demon, only for said demon to become his grandpa. Now he's going to demon school and making friends <3 It's a comedy series first and foremost, but it's got a lotof heart to it, and a lot of adorable moments.

The series has both an anime and a manga. The manga doesn't have an official english version though, so read it on mangadex

Pros of the Anime (3 seasons):

great voice acting, both sub and dub

great music

added musical numbers? (good for the idol arcs, at least)

Cons of the Anime

rather stiff animation

the battler party arc in the first season drags for SO LONG good lord

Pros of the Manga (300+ chapters)

the art gets absolutely GORGEOUS as the series goes on

extremely great expression work, great use of textures, great character design

runs longer than the anime (duh)

Cons of the Manga

rough translations until Misfit Scans take over

early art is a lil meh (but still cute!)

some lingering beta designs for some of the cast

If you read the manga on mangadex, do use Misfit Scans' translations whenever possible. They redid the first volume and take over at chapter 44, so translations from chapter 7 to 43 can get.. rough. Wicked House is not good.

Anyway, yeah! Mairuma is a super great comfort series for me. Plot kicks in later, but it's mainly about Iruma growing as a person. I'd imagine he resonates a lot with neglected or absued people - the fantasy of this poor kid getting whisked away into a new life and family that loves him. Iruma starts out as meek, as a total pushover, to his own detriment. And "Iruma can't say no to anything" is constant weakness of his, but his kindness is also his strength - his willingness to help others is what shakes the individualist society of the netherworld at its core.

The series also places a lot of focus on greed as a positive thing, which is fantastic! Iruma is confronted with his own desires, time and time again. What does he want? How will he take it? Demons are selfish creatures, and he's one of them now! So, be a demon! Fight for your desires!

It's just great okay.

We also have a canonically NB catperson (thank you Opera), the most poly subtext I've ever damn well seen in a work ever (thank you love trio), canonically lesbian pop idols (gyari my beloved).

Main downside of the cast is there is ONE obligatory pervert character but a) never actually succeeds in putting fanservice offscreen b) much less grating presence than M*neta c) at least has SOME character stuff going on outside that. My favorite arc w him has him competing with a girl to see who's the most elegant beast tamer and it's played entirely straight.

ANYWAY YEAH! Go read Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! / Mairimashita, Iruma-kun!

HAVE SOME IMAGES UNDER THE CUT

Volume 23 cover art. Iruma (middle) with his grandpa Sullivan (left), and the catbutler Opera (right) playing video games together!! They're such a cute family.

Volume 25 cover art of Iruma (middle) together with his best friends Clara (left) and Azzy (right). Love trio!! (these three have so much poly subtext oh my GOD)

choice excerpt from the volume 22 evildol games arc for you yes there are TWO idol arcs where iruma crossdresses yes they are BOTH fantastic and no there is no transmisoginy and the main joke of iruma in a dress is that he makes everybody bisexual

(featuring amelie azazel who is also in the prime running for love interest next to the love trio but tbh the harem elements do not bother me at all because iruma loves all of his friends so so much)

ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MOMENTS!!! HARVEST FESTIVAL ARC YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS!!!!

my main complaints of the series would be that despite boys getting to be gender noncomforming a lot the girls are all very. Girls. like they are Specifically Girls you know what I mean right. also using hebrew as a basis for your demon alphabet is kind of a bad look generally.

otherwise. super cute series. traumatized kid finally gets to go out of survival mode. a lot of things abt iruma as a character are shaped by that trauma and it SHOWS and the harvest festival arc in particular is my favorite because he's forced to grapple with his lasting fear of abandonment and all that good stuff, BUT HIS FRIENDS ALWAYS COME THRUUU!!! THEY'LL STICK BY HIM FOREVER!!!

i love it a lot. i'm gonna reread it now. thank you.

[thefoolsprocession]

I remember seeing a post of urs a while back about Danganronpa being lackluster when you think back on it in comparison to uchikoshi works.

It's been a while since I played dr but I remember playing it after ze & feeling let down by the mystery itself among other things

what specifically do you think didn't work for you when thinking back or was just not well written? I'd just love to hear ur thoughts ❤️

Spoilers for danganronpa, zero escape, and aitsf:

For starters, Uchikoshi puts a lot more care into his characters. None of the characters are there purely for tropes or to act purely as a ploy for the protagonist. Even Lotus and Alice, who come off as “Cunning boob lady” have a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, with Lotus potentially being a single mother of twin girls, and Alice willing to stop at nothing to avenge her father (and of course they are both insanely smart). I feel like he also puts some very deep and insightful real-world commentary with his villains (Ace being a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Dio being a religious extremist, and Saito being the spoiled son of a wealthy politician) which definitely makes them a lot more interesting to analyse. The ableism is very very unfortunate (wrt to Saito, Mira, and Ace) but that is one of the few major downsides to Uchikoshi’s writing. Emphasis on FEW.

In terms of mystery writing, a lot of the twists in dr don’t really hold a candle to the twists in zero escape and aitsf? I don’t think that’s entirely Kodaka’s fault though, considering they are very different settings. But I didn’t exactly feel shocked to hear about the timeskip in dr1. It was incredibly predictable. The simulation reveal was EXTREMELY cool in sdr2, and it’s part of the reason why sdr2 is my favourite from the main trilogy (that and Chiaki and Hajime are two of my favourite characters). As for V3, well that’s a whole other kettle of fish that I won’t get into (mostly because I’m extremely conflicted about a LOT of things that happened in that game). V3 puts quite a big damper on the rest of the series from the get-go by killing off the female protagonist for the male protagonist’s development (a move that becomes increasingly more shitty as time goes on) and really V3 just doesn’t really improve from there. In fact, up until the last trial, it really just goes downhill. The Truman Show reveal was pretty clever and it gave the series the necessary conclusion it needed (despite a fuck ton of complaints) but apart from that V3 just. Kinda sucks. A boring character who sits in the background and occasionally makes good quips or snarky comments doesn’t make for a good twist villain. Ace on the other hand, plays a pretty major role throughout the entirety of 999. He just comes off as a wise and kind old man with a quick wit at first before rapidly becoming sinister and cartoonishly evil after the reveal. Santa too is incredibly interesting after you revisit 999. Santa being smug and rude is a great way to misdirect the player. It makes us THINK he’s evil, and if you got the Coffin route on your first run like I did, it makes you think he’s the Big Bad, only to discover by the end of the game that he was actually doing all that to save his sister and punish the people who abused him. It’s upsetting that he didn’t make any sort of reappearance in zero time dilemma and he was only mentioned in one conversation between Junpei and Akane (honestly they should have swapped Carlos for Santa that would have interesting).

As for aitsf I could ramble all fucking day about that game. But for starters I think the art is just ten times better than any of the other games I mentioned (with the exception of 999 because I think the way that game is stylised is perfect) and the character writing AND voice acting is absolutely incredible. The fact that several of the voice actors had to do their voices in multiple different ways, such as Saito!Boss, Date!Boss, Date!Saito, Saito!Date, even Saito!Iris to an extent. Even though Saito was pretending to be Iris there are still noticeable differences in her demeanor, for instance Saito!Iris is a lot more reserved and doesn’t act as excited all the time as regular Iris.

I think the number one difference in character writing though which separates Uchikoshi and Kodaka’s writing is how they write children. I’m not even gonna begin to say how awful Ultra Despair Girls is (iykyk), but even when it comes to teenagers or the younger characters (Hiyoko in particular comes to mind), Uchikoshi is just so much better at writing them. Iris actually FEELS like a teenager. And even though Mizuki and Quark are both very clever and mature for their age, it’s still obvious that they are children in the way that they act. Meanwhile, while Hiyoko definitely exhibits a lot of child-like behaviour, the fact that a lot of people misconstrue that and somehow believe she’s the same age as the others, kinda shows that Kodaka kinda failed to make that more obvious (however I do agree that there’s a fuck-ton of subtext to suggest that Hiyoko is a lot younger). Mizuki and Quark are just far better handled for so many reasons. Mizuki is probably one of the best-written characters like, ever. Which is why I’m sooo excited for Nirvana Initiative

Moreover, I think Uchikoshi just does a better job at writing women, and is a bet more sensitive than Kodaka is with certain topics (for instance, although Mama isn’t perfect, she’s a damn sight better than what happened to Chihiro). Hitomi is by far one of the best written female characters I think I’ve ever seen. Boss is fantastic, Clover is fantastic, and above all else, AKANE KURASHIKI IS FUCKING FANTASTIC. Akane is DEFINITELY the quintessential “morally grey female character” and Uchikoshi did such a good job at delivering that. Our sympathy for her in 999 conflicts her coldness in VLR, and again it’s challenged in ZTD (although I disagree heavily with the way Akane was written in ZTD they had some good points). ZTD Akane and Junpei are very interesting because Junpei is resentful and nihilistic, and Akane is forced to live with the realisation that it was, for the most part, HER FAULT. She loves him, but she put him through so much trauma. ZTD kinda hit the nail in the coffin and made everyone realise that Junpei and Akane were just never meant to be together. It’s a disaster waiting to happen (DIVORCE JOKES!!!)

And finally, all three iterations of Zero are just far more interesting than Junko and Monokuma. Okay sorry that was really long but I hope this all made sense byyeeeee

[polyamorouspunk]

So I know that this isn't like strictly an advice blog or anything, but I was wondering if you could maybe give me some advice for my relationship? I'm polyam and there just aren't many blogs that'll take questions about it, so I'd appreciate a response even if it's just that you can't really answer my question.

Some background: I'm in a triad with two other guys (we're mlmlm and I love that for us) and I just absolutely adore them. They're two of the coolest people I've ever met and I kind of instantly wanted to be with them. I'm arospec, so that like literally never happens to me, and I was really surprised by how much I instantly vibed with them (the story of how we met and got together is fairly interesting, but not relevant to this). I've known I was polyam since I was a teen, but being arospec means that I haven't had many long term romantic relationships in my life, so I'm very excited to explore this new stuff.

My problem is that I'm just really insecure that I'm not good enough for them and that I'm just a third wheel that they're taking pity on. I know that's silly and it's just a combination of low self esteem and me internalizing toxic monogamy culture, but they're both so cool and have so much history that I'm just scared that I'm never gonna be as important to them as they are to me. N and H (that's what I'll call them for this) have been best friends for 12 years and have been dating for the past 3, whereas I only even met them a little under a year ago. And in terms of personality, N is so bold and confident and gregarious, and H is so witty and sarcastic and ambitious, whereas I'm just kinda... there.

I know they are attracted to me and want to be in a relationship with me, and I'm communicating with them about my insecurities, so mainly what I want help with is fighting the part of my brain that tells me that I'm just an unimportant extra to their lives. I want to figure out what of value I bring to the relationship and what makes me unique in my dynamic with each of them. I think that would help a lot, so if you have any exercises, or anything else that you think would help, I would appreciate it a lot!! Thanks so much!!

I would love to hear the story of how you met!

I also get having low self-esteem. I’m glad you’re already talking to your partners about how you feel. That’s the ideal first step.

And this totally is an advice blog! I love trying to help people: that’s why I’m here.

I look at things from a very borderline perspective. What works for me isn’t going to work for everyone else.

I have things that I consider “mine”. Like, my areas of interest, my shows, my books, etc. that I prefer others not engage in. I’m a very territorial person, but that means I’m able to bring things to the table that others I know maybe aren’t able to. However, one of the downsides to that is sometimes people aren’t interested in your interests and don’t really care to hear what you have to say about things, and would rather talk about what they like, making you feel left out. A good friend or partner will always listen and ask questions though.

You might be bringing them new relationship energy! I also know that whenever I gain an additional partner it makes me more aware of my current relationship and I end up using that new relationship energy or even new crush energy into being an even more positive partner and checking up on my main relationship. When I feel giddy from flirting with people I take that giddiness and turn it on my boyfriend and flirt with him and tell him how much I love him and how cute he is, etc. so when I’m feeling good, he feels good.

At some point in your life you’ve made a difference. We’ve all fucked up, and when you’re mentally ill it’s REALLY hard not to focus on those moments instead of all the good we’ve done. Just try to remind yourself if you can how much you’ve helped people, and how much you can help your partners by being there for them in the future.

Age old advice, but try your best to avoid self-deprecating thoughts. My mental health has been trash lately, especially the last few days, and my suicidal ideation and negative self esteem is through the roof, and I’m just constantly trashing myself and thinking about how bad of a person I am- and it’s easy because a few days ago I literally had people telling me how shitty and awful and bad I was and that I was selfish and childish- it’s not just my voice, it’s the voices of people I thought were my friends. I’m depressed, I’m in a rut, I don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t want to be alive, and every day is a fucking struggle. I’m trying my best to change things in my life to make myself even just a bit better- unfollowing certain people, remaking my discord, anything to avoid anything that’s going to make me feel even worse and try something. I know that no time soon am I going to be able to reorder my thoughts into something less self-deprecating/go over the horrible things that were said to me. But that’s an eventual goal. And even through all of that I make sure I don’t take any of it out on my partner. Because none of it is his fault and he’s been nothing but supportive to me.

Every day is a battle. Some days are good some days aren’t. I wish you the best in your mental health journey as someone who is right there fighting every day with you. Make sure you take care of other areas of your life so that those don’t weigh you down. Don’t ignore problems until they become too big to deal with, because that’s going to affect all parts of your life, including your relationship. And you are cool, I promise. Stay weird, stay sexy, and don’t get murdered.

[n5md]

Cloudwalker

In our newly relaunched "Learn more about..." interviews, we switch up the continuity slightly and focus on just one release: Gimmik's Cloudwalker. Martin kindly agreed to answer a few questions to kick off what we'll refer to as v2 of the "Learn More About..." blog.

While Entre Les Chambres was the actual return of Gimmik to the public eye, Cloudwalker is more of a return to form. It is undeniably Gimmik; however, Cloudwalker treads some new ground for you. Can you shed some light on how the creative process changed from Entre Les Chambres / Deux Nouvelles and how those two albums might have influenced Cloudwalker?

Very well observed - they did influence Cloudwalker! Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were both produced under technically limited circumstances. On top of that, I thought that no one will ever hear this material. Luckily it was not the case, and I got the chance to become a member of the n5MD family. When you produce with the idea that the material will never get released, it gives you a lot of room and space. You are not concerned about expectations. The music can flow and evolve freely. The calm nature of those albums helped that process. It was research where I experienced myself more as a witness than a composer. For me, that is a new approach. This approach was still the same when I produced Cloudwalker. That is the reason why the tracks are so diverse. Short Wave Memories and In My Family do not have anything in common, but that is the way they evolved, without me constructing anything. The most significant difference is that Cloudwalker was produced in a proper studio environment. Plus, I took a step into eurorack, which brings a very unpredictable element. And yes, that is Mutable Elements "Rings'' what you hear on In My Family. I was working on a self-generative patch with "Marbles'' when all of a sudden, the melody appeared...

I think you sent me In My Family shortly after you finished it, and it was one of the darkest days of the early pandemic; where our local government-issued curfews and such. It was the track that I needed at that moment; it brightened my day. It's very cool that the melody was a generative experiment gone right. I seem to remember you have quite a bit of the Mutable Instruments modules. Modular, to me, seems like a bit of a wormhole of experimentation. So, how do you stay focused when experimenting with new sounds and textures to bring, say, one of your Modular Nature tracks, which you have on your Youtube channel, to life.

Working with a modular system is entirely different. My approach is always a question. What will happen if I connect this with that and modulate with this? Then you start patching, and the results are entirely different from what I expected - a lot more exciting and better! In the beginning, I thought modular was about rebuilding synth voices. So I started emulating the signal-flow path of a 101 for a start. I missed the whole point of modular... A system has a life of its own and takes you to completely different places, and sometimes I do not even understand the results. (-: But that is not important. The decision to work with modular is to avoid walking down paths I have taken too many times when composing. What keeps you focused is your ear. The trick is to learn when to stop. In the beginning, I lost a lot of great patches when the result was already at 90%. When trying to reach 100%, my tweaks destroyed that patch's beauty, and I never found a way back to 90%. That happened a lot of times in the beginning. A modular system really helps to learn when to let go… (laughing). I chose Mutable Instruments because those modules are very focused on musical and harmonic results.

So, going back to Cloudwalker, how did it feel getting back to basics as far as Gimmik goes. People may not know that Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were made for very personal listening. Care to shed a little light on those two, and more importantly, what made you want to go past those themes and bring Gimmik full circle for Cloudwalker?

Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were NOT a conscious decision. Those were a necessity! The title Entre Les Chambres means "between two rooms", the space that is between two rooms. That is nowhere! It mirrors how I felt at that moment. There were many significant changes in my life, luckily nothing concerning my family, but still major changes. In order to cope with it all, I started making ambient tracks. It was the only thing that helped me to cope and focus again. The tracks happened by themselves. Listening to them and working on those albums was a calming experience. When they were finished, I played them to Chris, and he convinced me that he liked them. That led to the decision to make those first tapes. Later I sent them to you. Your reaction was very motivating because the music got released. With that motivation and getting back into a studio environment, the Cloudwalker tracks just poured out of me very quickly - it felt terrific to go back to the studio. My family gave me the time to work in my studio, and you and Chris gave very motivating feedback! From my perspective, this makes Cloudwalker my most important album so far, and I am very thankful for this chance! Another key element is that you gave me total freedom regarding artwork, choosing tracks, and their order. Just great!

Well, I knew going in that you know what you are doing. So I shouldn't have needed to step in and manage such details. For release prep, I'm available to take care of the details that an artist doesn't have access to or the working knowledge. You and Chris ran Toytronics, and you are a graphic artist as well, so I knew that you know the drill. If something was glaring or didn't work under the n5 stylistic umbrella, it is my job to say something, but I was pretty confident that wouldn't happen. I also know that after you completed the tracks, you took a great deal of time to get them to flow perfectly and also fit on four LP sides—your care in craft shows, and it's been great to work with you.

You brought up Chris, and there is an Abfahrt Hinwl remix on Cloudwalker, so; I'm going to ask. Are we going to hear some new Abfahrt Hinwl soon?

Thank you, as I said, that means a lot to me. And I still think that it is a fortunate situation. The AH RMX of Sailing Everest on Cloudwalker was just me, to be honest. That is why I used an abbreviation - AH. It is more a hint. It has a lot of the Abfahrt Hinwil ingredients. We tried to revive the project and realized that working over a distance via the internet does not work for either of us. The key of Abfahrt Hinwil was that we worked in the same room, at the same time, with the same equipment - listening to what the other one does - giving an immediate reaction. The most important point is communication, which has to happen immediately - you need to respond straight away, not with a delay. Today we find ourselves in two different life situations. We both would like to continue. After an online experiment, we realized it would be only possible when we visit each other and then work in the same studio. That is not possible at the moment, and Covid plays a significant role in that.

Ah, I see; Abfahrt Hinwil was you and Chris basically feeding off one another; also, there are cheques and balances, which is great to have. I completely understand why it would not be feasible to do it from a distance effectively. So, I'd like to pivot to these little builds I see on your Instagram. You recently sent me a pic of a peculiar little box that looks to be a synth. Assuming this is something you built (loving the stickering, by the way). What is this, and does it appear on Cloudwalker?

(laughing) That is a drone box handmade by a guy in Russia. Six oscillators, each one with a kill switch. Three standard range oscillators and 3 Sub. A very rough-sounding machine, great for drones. The filter sounds very nasty, just great. There is a little bit in the track Cloudwalker itself but washed out by Big Sky. The downside is that there is no midi, trigger gate, or voltage control. It is more of an experiment tool. The important parts of the track Cloudwalker have Mutable Instruments: Plaits and Tides 1, using the Sheep mode. Both outputs went into Warps, modulated by Stages. The little melody was played live on the Yamaha DX Reface, going into the Big Sky. It was all recorded live onto tape to 4 tracks to a Tascam 234. Then it was mixed the classic way, patchbay, fx, analog mixer main out to digital. 75% of the album was recorded to a Sound Devices MixPre-3 II.

It sounds like your Big Sky gets some action! Strymon makes some exceptional pedals. It seems like you can almost entirely make music out of the box if you needed to, which is excellent. So one last question: When we collaborated on the Cloudwalker one sheet text, you added something about the production tools "representing technology from 1958 to 2019," and I asked if 1958 was a type-o that needed to be corrected to 1985 when it was not. When people read that, I think they will be very curious as to what technology you utilized from that far back…

Yes, it is a great pedal, I love the sound and the fact that you get nice results very quickly.

1958- (laughing) There is an on oscilloscope from Russia, which can be seen in some of the videos on HIDDEN REALITY, and 2 vintage function generators. I got those old function generators from a close friend, he is an electronic engineer and professor for physics at a university. They got rid of all their old equipment, and he asked if I wanted to have something. He could not throw those old machines away, so he rescued them to his cellar. He changed the connections for me, so I can use them with the modular environment, using my standard patch cables. I used them a lot as modulation sources, as they can modulate extremely slow (like MI tides). But I have to admit that I got them for their looks in the first place…(laughing) - Those machines look like the machinery you see in Qs research center in old James Bond movies...

Order Cloudwalker now: US / UK / EU

Learn even more about Gimmik

[hostgalli19]

That Wasn't Dark

This story was inspired by: https://thegirlwhoescapedgallifrey19.tumblr.com/post/188853678488/impersonator-ahwm-theory

Note: For the sake of the story lets say Eric played through AHWM. This story and my Yancy is Eric's Oldest brother are apart of a series so come of the things mentioned in this might not make sense.

Date: 06/11/19. Time: 7:35 pm - 9:04 pm

Yancy was confused when Eric grabbed his left arm and started to make notes in a notebook, looking at his tattoo every now and then. He had no idea where it had come from even though he felt like he should.

"Matthew really out did himself this time. I wonder if the fan's have realised theu didn't actually see Dark in ending 6. I have to say being eaten by a worm things, crushed by a boulder and being shot out of a cannon was rather painful," Eric muttered jotting down a few more notes ignoring the confused looks he was getting from the main egos. Yancy found the smile on Mark's face was unsettling and creepy and made Yancy want to run and hide but he couldn't due to Eric grip on his wrist

"What do you mean Eric? Who's Matthew?" Yancy questioned starting at his little brother, he had been acting strange ever since they had walked into he had walked into the meeting room, wanting to show Yancy and Illinois the "Murder List" and they had found themselves two years in the past. In the middle of a meeting.

Dark had looked like he wanted to murder Eric for what he was saying about Celine being a cold calculating bitch you would do anything and hurt anyone to get what she wanted. Eric hadn't seemed scared or concerned.

"Matthew is the one who created us. Well done Mark, you managed to convince me and any of the fan's that you actually were Dark," Eric answered absentmindedly as he turned to look at Mark whose grin was frankly unnerving as his eyes turned black and red and his image cracked. The person standing behind him was surrounded by a red aura. Yancy shivered scared.

"Thank you. Good to know it worked. I was trying to be convincing. It was Matthew's idea," Mark answered, his two-toned voice sending shivers down Yancy and Illinois spines. There was something threatening about Mark and they weren't quite sure what it was.

"You were. I wonder if they'll notice the difference but then again. I didn't notice it. Likely due to the white suit. Your scarily good at pretending to be Dark. Its kind of alarming really," Eric replied, Yancy and Illinois shared a look wondering what Eric was talking about, they knew there were some things they hadn't been told yet.

"No, I'm just good at pretending to be Dad. Its not the first time I've had to do it. Gotta say though it was a lot of fun and it has been a long time," Mark replied, he looked incredibly pleased with himself, his double still had that unsettling grin on his face. It made Yancy's skin crawl. There was something predatory about it.

"What are you talking about Eric?" Illinois asked cautiously, Eric looked at him, blinking a few times and grabbed Ben's arm with a pleading look. Ben sighed and nodded, projecting a screen above the table and opening a video on YouTube called: A Hiest With Markiplier.

Yancy and Illinois watched in fasinatioj as they went through each video making decisions, Eric grinning when they chose "All Sneaky Like". Not saying anything, just letting them Bim, Dark, Wil, Ed, Howl, Yancy and Illinois chose which path Ben chose. It was amusing watching then react to Mark constantly insisting on splitting up, getting him and themselves killed twice.

The only time he spoke up was to tell them to chose "split up" before the sewer. He sat back and watched there reactions. It was so obvious that it wasn't Dark they were talking to now they he knew. He started to notice the subtle differences.

Mark really was a good actor. They were far to distracted by his white suit and what he was saying to really notice that something wasn't right. There was only a slight amount of blue here and there in the glitch effects but it was mostly red. If had really been Dark then they aura around him would have been red and blue.

Ben paused the video and turned to look at Mark who was watching them with that creepy predatory look and unsettling smile. A cold chill of fear ran his spine. There wasn't mu that could normally scare him but there was something very … unnerving and unsettling about that look.

Mark's double flickered before disappearing and the cold fear and tension in the room disappeared making the egos present blink, confused as to how Mark had managed to do that. Dark was staring at Mark in wonder, he had known Mark was good but he hadn't thought he was that good at pretending to be him. He had actually felt nervous and tense.

If that was what people felt when they first met him them he blame them for being a nervous suttering mess that couldn't string two sentences together let alone words. Normally he usef it to his advantage ut god it made him feel uncomfortable. Likely not as uncomfortable as the other wgos but it was an unpleasant.

"That, is what I'm talking about. That wasn't Dark in the video. Ben, search A Date With Markiplier. There are two videos in that series that should show you what I mean," Eric answered, Ben nodded and opened two more tabs quickly searching how to get to the two videos Eric was after.

It was only after Ben had played the two videos several times did they realise what Eric was getting at. That hadn't been Dark in the "Ignorance is Bliss" ending of A Hiest With Markiplier but Mark.

They knew he was an actor who particular ability was to become whatever character he was playing. So much so they wouldn't realise they were talking to Mark. They had fallen for his act. They had believed he was Dark in AHWM.

"I'd have to ask Matthew but I'm guessing AHWM is before ADWM. The reason for going on the date is because you didn't manage to steal the "box". Your wearing almost the exact same suit in AHWM as you are in a ADWM," Eric commented, Mark laughed and nodded. Matthew had told him this was before ADWM even though Mark hadn't get recorded that.

That was the strange thing about the UpsideDown, this happened out of order. They were outside of time. Time passed faster in the UpsideDown then it did in the human world.

One month in the human world was 10 years in the UpsideDown. Google had two clocks. One for the human world and one for the UpsideDown. That way they wouldn't lose track of time which was very easy.

It disorienting at times. Like now. Mark had no idea what happened in ADWM because it hadn't happened for him but it had happened for Efic but he knew it wouldn't be too long before he was caught up on things.

"I would think so. ADWM hasn't happened for me yet but it has for Eric. Its one downside of being tossed around like a pinball in an arcade machine. I can either end up in the future or the past. This is the future. ADWM hasn't happened for me or Dark yet. We'll return to our correct time soon enough. Its somethign you get used to. It happens with alarming regularity," Mark answers grinning, Dark nodded.

Eric watched as the egos continued to pay through AHWM, only offering clues when he saw they were struggling. He did them they could "go back" to the previous video if they happen to did and go the other path. It was something he greatly enjoyed.

He knew Matthew was going to be pleased when Eric told him. There was a lot more he needed to tell Yancy and Illinois but that could wait until Dark and Mark were back and completely caught up on recent events.

He couldn't help but wonder if things were always going to be this crazy or if they were going to settle down a little. He didn't really knowand that what made it so interesting.

Part 1: https://thegirlwhoescapedgallifrey19.tumblr.com/post/188814645188/yancy-is-erics-oldest-brother