Welcome apophenia!

[FBM]

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Isaac Newton.

[Adenosine]

Welcome apophenia. A pleasure to meet you.

[charlou]

Welcome again, apophenia.

[charlou]

oops, double post.

[maiforpeace]

Hi there and welcome apophenia!

[Ronja]

Do you use Dragon Naturally Speaking or something like that for speech-to-text, have you been lucky enough to get (some) prosthetic fingers or do you manage to type with one finger? Any which way, I take my hat off for you.

[apophenia]

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Isaac Newton.

Oh dear, I truly love you. I looked for half an hour for a definitive source for that quote several weeks back, apparently settling on a citation which was wrong. You have restored order and coherence to my database of loose thoughts. I owe you.

I have nothing to repay you with, but perhaps I can entertain you with an actual Franklin quote that is rather fun.

"Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults." -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1756)

[borealis]

Hello and welcome!

It will be hard to add anything here that would make me look as profound.






I have to think about something deep and wise to say. Don't hold your breath.

[FBM]

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Isaac Newton.

Oh dear, I truly love you. I looked for half an hour for a definitive source for that quote several weeks back, apparently settling on a citation which was wrong. You have restored order and coherence to my database of loose thoughts. I owe you.

No biggie. It was in a book I'm reading. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers.

I have nothing to repay you with, but perhaps I can entertain you with an actual Franklin quote that is rather fun.

"Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults." -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1756)

I like it.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

So... is that not a picture of you? Or does it pre-date your losing fingers? There seem to be at least 3 in view there. Unless, of course, you started from a position of polydactlyly?

I am also curious as to how you manage so many words in so short a time with so few digits.

Sorry if I'm being nosy.

[tattuchu]

I think most people are curious to know if that you in the avatar picture because, if that's you, you're awfully pretty.

I hope you stick around. We joke around a lot here. But some of the folks here, when given the chance, can be terribly clever. I'm not one of those people. But it's the simpletons like me that make the others stand out by stark contrast. So, as you see, we all serve a purpose here

[Woodbutcher]

Hi, Apophenia, we're practically neighbours. Welcome to the forum, and don't take things too seriously here. Unless they are meant to be serious, of course. I'll go now.

[apophenia]

Do you use Dragon Naturally Speaking or something like that for speech-to-text, have you been lucky enough to get (some) prosthetic fingers or do you manage to type with one finger? Any which way, I take my hat off for you.

Well, first off, the one finger is a thumb -- which is far more useful than any other ordinary finger. (Though thinking back, I had a friend who used to occasionally break out and sing a little ditty known as the Opposable Thumb Song, much to my chagrin and annoyance.)

I have Dragon, but the machine I'm on isn't sufficiently fast to use it. (I have a faster machine, but it hasn't left the workbench in 2 years.)
I'm verbose by nature, but seeing as I was a fairly accomplished touch typist prior to losing my fingers, my "body" knows where the letters are without having to think where they are or look for them -- kind of like a word is a choreographed dance of hand movements, the word comes to mind and the hand is already off to the races, zig-zagging this way and that, knocking down the proper keys along the way.

I've occasionally joked that I speak two languages, English, and Polysyllabic. I grew up with a big vocabulary, which took me many years to learn to tone down. It still comes out though. Before I lost my fingers, on irc, the average line length of posters was in the 40s; I regularly averaged about 89 characters per line.

Anyway, I'm babbling again. Thank you all for the warm welcome.

Oh, I missed one q: No, I haven't pursued prosthetic fingers; while I've heard both pro and con, I've largely accepted the judgment of my first physical therapist that while they can improve quality of life, that don't really improve function, as the grip strength of the fingers, by necessity, is not particularly strong (the human hand can put an enormously wide range of pressures and with miraculous precision. Think of holding an egg or other fragile object -- you must apply enough pressure to maintain a firm hold, yet not too firm so as to break the egg. Undoubtedly a complex feedback between the sense of touch and the musclers; in catching a ball, their is a type of mathematical map known as a tensor in the visual cortex which takes changes in position of the ball and mathematically transforms them into changes in muscle excitation -- no doubt the same type of thing is going on with touch.).

[apophenia]

So... is that not a picture of you? Or does it pre-date your losing fingers? There seem to be at least 3 in view there. Unless, of course, you started from a position of polydactlyly?

I am also curious as to how you manage so many words in so short a time with so few digits.

Sorry if I'm being nosy.

Actually I'm a velociraptor with a human prosthesis.

You should see the moo moos I wear to hide my big butt.

[charlou]

Do you use Dragon Naturally Speaking or something like that for speech-to-text, have you been lucky enough to get (some) prosthetic fingers or do you manage to type with one finger? Any which way, I take my hat off for you.

Well, first off, the one finger is a thumb -- which is far more useful than any other ordinary finger. (Though thinking back, I had a friend who used to occasionally break out and sing a little ditty known as the Opposable Thumb Song, much to my chagrin and annoyance.)

I have Dragon, but the machine I'm on isn't sufficiently fast to use it. (I have a faster machine, but it hasn't left the workbench in 2 years.)
I'm verbose by nature, but seeing as I was a fairly accomplished touch typist prior to losing my fingers, my "body" knows where the letters are without having to think where they are or look for them -- kind of like a word is a choreographed dance of hand movements, the word comes to mind and the hand is already off to the races, zig-zagging this way and that, knocking down the proper keys along the way.

I've occasionally joked that I speak two languages, English, and Polysyllabic. I grew up with a big vocabulary, which took me many years to learn to tone down. It still comes out though. Before I lost my fingers, on irc, the average line length of posters was in the 40s; I regularly averaged about 89 characters per line.

Anyway, I'm babbling again. Thank you all for the warm welcome.

Oh, I missed one q: No, I haven't pursued prosthetic fingers; while I've heard both pro and con, I've largely accepted the judgment of my first physical therapist that while they can improve quality of life, that don't really improve function, as the grip strength of the fingers, by necessity, is not particularly strong (the human hand can put an enormously wide range of pressures and with miraculous precision. Think of holding an egg or other fragile object -- you must apply enough pressure to maintain a firm hold, yet not too firm so as to break the egg. Undoubtedly a complex feedback between the sense of touch and the musclers; in catching a ball, their is a type of mathematical map known as a tensor in the visual cortex which takes changes in position of the ball and mathematically transforms them into changes in muscle excitation -- no doubt the same type of thing is going on with touch.).

I'd have thought a thumb is pretty useless without opposable fingers? If I had to choose any one finger to keep, I think it would be my right index.

Touch typing (I do this) requires the use of all fingers dancing upon the keyboard in coordination in such a practiced way as to not even need any focus on the mechanics of the task ... Reducing that down to a single thumb ... well, I'd think that the previously practiced coordination of touch typing with eight fingers and thumb (in my case, being right handed, the right thumb) is rendered useless, and I can imagine that single digit touch typing must take some brain retraining?