Nora and Bob talked at the College of William and Mary?

[guskant]

I happened to see a notice of the event:
https://events.wm.edu/event/view/wm/22966

.a'u Is there any record of the session?

[la gleki]

mi si'a pu kucli lonu xukau lo nunpenmi pu fasnu gi'e ko'a casnu makau

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

Just got my computer up after a memory failure.

lojbab and Nora were invited to speak at a question and answer session
at William and Mary last Friday afternoon (April 19), for the
"Artificial Languages" class in the Linguistics department there. With
our encouragement, the professor opened the meeting to others not in the
class, and my daughter and daughter-in-law attended along with at least
one student who was not in the class. The class was about an hour long.
I'd guess 20 odd people were there, but I wasn't counting (I'm not a
practiced public speaker, and the last college talk I gave was in Russia
in 1992, so I was doing my best to stay calm and focused on the talk).

The class had submitted some questions in advance, and I mostly worked
from those questions, though some students asked questions from the
floor. Afterwards, several students joined us for dinner and continued
discussions.

If someone with access to the Lojban home page wants to turn my above
explanation into a news item, it would probably be worthwhile, since
there hasn't been any news posted recently. (There should also be a
report posted on the January 25th anniversary celebration that we held,
but I had thought someone else would have done that by now. banseljaj
was the primary organizer and took most of the photos.)

Since my kids now live in the Williamsburg area, I am hoping to get down
there sometime next school year, possibly for a repeat session, or
perhaps for a minilesson with those students interested in learning the
language. If others are in that area and wish to be kept informed of my
visits, since I will likely be going down there every couple of months
to see the kids.

My daughter recorded the session with her phone camera, so the video
isn't the highest quality; the sound is soft but audible. I can
probably make it available, though Nora was of the opinion that no one
would want to sit through an hour of watching me stand there and talk.
(An audio-only might be more useful, but I don't know how to get that.)
The entire .MOV file is somewhat over 8 gigabytes.

lojbab


--
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

[v4hn]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 05:44:38PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG wrote:
> My daughter recorded the session with her phone camera, so the video
> isn't the highest quality; the sound is soft but audible. I can
> probably make it available, though Nora was of the opinion that no
> one would want to sit through an hour of watching me stand there and
> talk. (An audio-only might be more useful, but I don't know how to
> get that.) The entire .MOV file is somewhat over 8 gigabytes.

That's pretty big, still I'm really interested in watching that video.. and I'm rather
sure I'm not the only one. Any chance of getting it (maybe in worse quality) online?


v4hn

[Robin Lee Powell]

We have all sorts of places available that can store that much data,
I just have no idea what sorts of transfer methods Bob can use.

-Robin

--
http://intelligence.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
.i ko na cpedu lo nu stidi vau loi jbopre .i danfu lu na go'i li'u .e
lu go'i li'u .i ji'a go'i lu na'e go'i li'u .e lu go'i na'i li'u .e
lu no'e go'i li'u .e lu to'e go'i li'u .e lu lo mamta be do cu sofybakni li'u

[ianek]

I don't think that storing 8GB .MOV file makes sense. I think it should be first recoded to divx/xvid or something, probably without a big loss in quality. Extracting audio also makes sense and it's easy with proper tools (I'd use mplayer or avidemux).

mu'o mi'e ianek

[Robert LeChevalier]

Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 02:48:10AM +0200, v4hn wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 05:44:38PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG wrote:
>>> My daughter recorded the session with her phone camera, so the
>>> video isn't the highest quality; the sound is soft but audible.
>>> I can probably make it available, though Nora was of the opinion
>>> that no one would want to sit through an hour of watching me
>>> stand there and talk. (An audio-only might be more useful, but I
>>> don't know how to get that.) The entire .MOV file is somewhat
>>> over 8 gigabytes.
>>
>> That's pretty big, still I'm really interested in watching that
>> video.. and I'm rather sure I'm not the only one. Any chance of
>> getting it (maybe in worse quality) online?
>
> We have all sorts of places available that can store that much data,
> I just have no idea what sorts of transfer methods Bob can use.

I don't know which ones I can use, either. (remember that I am still
stuck in the 20th century, technologically zo'o)

To transfer files, I normally use Google Drive which I know you are
familiar with, but their free usage is only up to 5 gigs. But the
policy seems a bit confusing - it suggests that I can upload a single
file up to 10 gig without paying, but then couldn't upload any more as
long as I was over the limit. Since I would delete the file as soon as
you (or whoever) had received it, that wouldn't be a problem - I rarely
upload anything.
> http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2736257&topic=2375005&ctx=topic

I can try that format change that ianek suggested, though I've never
heard of the software mentioned (indeed, I've never done anything with
video). The software we used to view it is called VLC. and it
supposedly does conversions, but when I tried what looked like the DIVX
conversion: profile "video - DIV3 + MP3 ASF", it seems to produce a file
with audio only. There are a variety of parameters I can tweak, but I
have no idea what they do. Maybe the other programs are more obvious in
how to use them.

Or if necessary, I could drop a flash drive in the mail to you (or
whoever is handling the storage). Not the cheapest solution, I am sure.
But it would get the job done.

lojbab

[Robin Lee Powell]

The point was that if someone gets me the MOV, I can do things with
it. Or some other lojbanist can.

Bob can't.

-Robin

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[Robin Lee Powell]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 01:02:29PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>
> To transfer files, I normally use Google Drive which I know you
> are familiar with, but their free usage is only up to 5 gigs. But
> the policy seems a bit confusing - it suggests that I can upload a
> single file up to 10 gig without paying, but then couldn't upload
> any more as long as I was over the limit. Since I would delete
> the file as soon as you (or whoever) had received it, that
> wouldn't be a problem - I rarely upload anything.

Yes, let's do that.

> I can try that format change that ianek suggested,

Please don't, I'll do it.

> Or if necessary, I could drop a flash drive in the mail to you (or
> whoever is handling the storage). Not the cheapest solution, I am
> sure. But it would get the job done.

That would be fine too.

-Robin

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 01:02:29PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>>
>> To transfer files, I normally use Google Drive which I know you
>> are familiar with, but their free usage is only up to 5 gigs. But
>> the policy seems a bit confusing - it suggests that I can upload a
>> single file up to 10 gig without paying, but then couldn't upload
>> any more as long as I was over the limit. Since I would delete
>> the file as soon as you (or whoever) had received it, that
>> wouldn't be a problem - I rarely upload anything.
>
> Yes, let's do that.
>
>> I can try that format change that ianek suggested,
>
> Please don't, I'll do it.

We tried anyway, before you posted.

Nora did manage to get VLC to convert it to what I presume is a DIVX,
which reduced the file size to 2 gig, with image quality retained. I'm
not sure of the proper file extension for the conversion, though. With
a .divx extension, many players seem to reject it (including VLC
itself). Using an .avi extension (since DIVX is apparently an extension
of AVI), VLC and Windows Media Player were able to play it, but
Quicktime couldn't play any of the formats with a variety of file
extensions. Except for VLC, none were able to drag the slider to the
middle of the playback, so if you can't watch it in one sitting, you
have to start over. I don't know if this is an artifact of the
conversion, or a limitation of the players we tried, but not having to
watch my talking head for a full hour all at once would probably enhance
its usability.

Because the "DIVX/AVI" is uncertain in usability, I will try putting up
the original 8 gig MOV tomorrow AM so you can play with it, per your
above. I'll let you know when it is up and you can tell me when you've
grabbed it so I get my Google space back.

Be forewarned - the sound is very soft, and you have to turn it to full
volume to hear me clearly. Perhaps your tweaking can increase the
volume. There are also a few glitches in the (original) video in the
first several seconds, but it settles down thereafter.

[Robin Lee Powell]

Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg0pK-8zXA0

My description probably sucks, as I haven't actually watched it,
feel free to suggest.

If someone wants to do a better job at the audio, I can give you a
download link for that video at 700MiB, or I can make a version
that's only resized and has no audio changes that should be about
the same size.

-Robin