User talk:Chadley99

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Contents 1 Thomas Pynchon 2 French Articles 2.1 Articles with French "loan-phrases" 2.2 Articles on French foods 2.3 Cultural, Hist. & Geo. articles 2.4 Other considerations 3 User Pages 4 Douarnenez 5 More French Involvement 6 Re: Free Will 7 Cool 8 Request for a recording

[edit] Thomas Pynchon

First of all, thanks for the kind words re: my recording. The nucular article actually sounded a bit tinny/echoey to me. I think it's b/c I overdid the noise removal stage in Audacity. I've found that it seems to work best when I slide it ALL the way over to the left.

I've only listened to a few seconds of Thomas Pynchon. What strikes me most is the quietness of the recording. I didn't really notice any remarkable tinniness.

My suggestions to try (in no particular order):

• Try moving closer to your mic (tricky, b/c you don't want breath sounds in it. It helps to have a screen to keep your "b"s and "p"s from overdoing it.
• Turn up the gain on your mic, In Audacity, I just kick the slider next to the microphone icon (just over the area that displays your recording) over to the right.
• If you're not applying gain when you normalize/compress, consider checking those boxes.
• Alternately, apply an amplify effect to your whole file...just make sure your "loud points"/loud parts don't get distorted.
• Although I'm wary of overprocessing your files (I always save a backup of the file before I've added any effects to it), you should consider using the compressor/normalization features. They may help.

Apologies if you're NOT using Audacity. It's not that I think it's better than the others...it's just that it's what I have experience with. I haven't worked with Adobe audition since before it was Cool Edit. And I have no experience with Acid/Sonic Foundry. Let me know how things go.

As a final note, you have a great reading voice! I hope you'll keep working on the project. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 09:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• I'd also like to congratulate you on the Thomas Pynchon reading. Nice work! It takes people like you who do unconventional work on Wikipedia to keep it as great as it is. Now that its on the main page I wouldn't be surprised if you recieved more comments like this... Keep it up. K-UNIT 03:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] French Articles

Here are some thoughts:

[edit] Articles with French "loan-phrases"

ex. En passant

[edit] Articles on French foods

like camembert

[edit] Cultural, Hist. & Geo. articles

info on French cities, regions, and départements.

[edit] Other considerations

Personally, I decided it would be too difficult to record articles in French Wikipédia. a) because their project would be separate from ours and pssibly run differently (and I don't want to collaborate extensively on a project in French--if only b/c my keyboard is US and Linux doesn't make typing accents easy) and b) even if my accent were fine, I still don't read like a French person with proper liason and fluidity. My mistakes would be glaring to a French listener,So I sty with English articles that happen to have French vocab in them...mostly b/c nothign irritates me more than hearing a butchered French (loan) word...and if I record them all first, I won't have to listen to that happen! (just kidding about that last bit). Ckamaeleon ((T)) 09:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Pages

A wonderful side effect of Wikipedia being free in the sense of "libre" is that you have carte blanche to steal little useful bits of formatting and code from people whose pages you like. (although it's nice to give credit to them). It took about 3 years before I created an account and really got into editing.

There's no rush. As you work with the project, you'll pick up useful things. Personally, I just sat down and created a page under my User page that I use to jot down how to do useful things like start a new section or format some of the templates I use. The Help pages are very good at giving directions--though there's so much to read. I think the key is not to feel overwhelmed by it and just do a bit at a time. Plus, there's certainly no law that says you have to have a souped-up graphically exciting User Page. Look what simplicity did for Google!

P.S.-- Meme si je n'ecris pas en Fr., je t'ai compris. Mais de temps en temps, on est trop fatigue de s'exprimer dans une langue secondiare...c'est effet est une combinaison d'une journee qui durait ET la manque d'une facon simple a taper les accents en Linux (comme je viens de dire). Ckamaeleon ((T)) 09:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Douarnenez

I find that city articles (at least for U.S. cities) can be very dry, since they have so much demographic info . and little else. But that one doesn't look bad. Plus, you can follow the links and do something on Tristan et Iseult, if you like.

I chose to record Besançon (in Franche-Comté) b/c that's where I did my study abroad in college. I did a 3-week study in Caen just before that and then a month homestay in the tiny village of Le Porge on the north of the Bassin d'Arcachon when I was in H.S. But the closest I've been to Brittany was a day trip to Mont St. Michel and St. Malo.

My favorite part of France (although there's no part that I really despise) would have to be Haute Savoie. I took a weekend trip to Annecy and had such a wonderful time hiking. The Alps are fantastic. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 09:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More French Involvement

If you enjoy translation and/or have a knack for it, there are plenty of articles that have French versions on English Wikipedia--and in most cases, I've noticed that the French version usually has LOADS more information than the English ones if the article is on a French subject. (Like Pierre Ronsard, for example)

You might get involved in reading the French articles and "bringing" information over from them into the English ones. I don't do this as much as I'd like because I'm lazy and dislike copy-editing. But I do think it's a worthy cause. I don't think the articles need to be paragraph-for-paragraph translations of each other--but I do think they should be about equally complete, if that makes sense. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 09:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

A word of caution--and then I MUST get to sleep!-- Be sure you don't incorporate original research into Phèdre. That's a no-no here. (Basically it boils down to Wikipedia's role as a tertiary source. However, as I understand it, it would be perfectly kosher to include info from your published work, so long as you cite it in the article. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 10:41, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Free Will

I don't remember if I actually got to recording that one. If I did, the recording will now be 8+ months out of date and sat on a hard drive on a computer that won't boot without me adding some hardware, in a house that's 3000 miles away and which I won't be able to get to for another 5 months. So, go ahead! Joe D (t) 05:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cool

Good to see one of your spoken articles made it to the main page! Ckamaeleon ((T)) 06:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for a recording

I would like to place a request for a recording of the Ohio Wesleyan University page. Who can I turn to? Thank you! WikiprojectOWU 03:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)