google live transcribe app

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Here is a UK nurse demonstrating the use of Google Live Transcribe so that those who usually depend on lip-reading can read the transcription on his phone.

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July 9, Henry Ford, transportation

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As you would expect, the Henry Ford museum is heavy on transportation.

I knew that this was called "the iron horse."





When I saw this (something I don't remember ever seeing before), I had an "aHAH!" moment.

Of COURSE the first train cars would tend to look like this -- this is how people had moved themselves over long distances for centuries. And given that the engine above was pulling these, of COURSE it would be called the iron horse.......

Several of these stage-coach-like carriages were hitched behind the iron horse.....





Once people got used to the "train" concept, the shift to a more rectangular train car was fairly quick, I think. (I was so busy thinking aHAH! that I didn't read any of the explanatory materials that would have given me dates.....)

Here is something we'd think of as shaped like a train car, but how fancy! Not only with paintings of scenery, but there was gold leaf on the lettering and other decoration.





Here's something else with a lot of fancy in addition to function.





And here's one that is appealing in its minimalist functionality.





I hadn't thought about the degree to which Ford was involved in aviation.












We have had a little politics in each of these Henry Ford posts. (Speculating that Henry would not have approved......)

Last August I visited this museum, and I showed you the very bus in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. Her action was one of the sparks of the modern equal rights movement.

The last thing we did before leaving, this time, was visit the bus again.





You may sit in Rosa's seat.







Still fitting into the "transportation" theme.

Going home from the museum, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. We are right by Detroit Metro airport here, but the plane I was hoping for in my pic didn't materialize at the right time. One had flown over just a moment before, when the camera was turned off and stowed, alas......

I like the repeating shape of the lights, the shiny road, and the pinky-blue monochromaticity.......



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July 9, Henry Ford, manufacturing

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On July 9, we visited the Henry Ford museum.

It is very large, and has a wide and varied collection. On the 9th, we began in a section that describes early industrial manufacturing. Apparently when mass production began, the item being produced would sit in one place, and a few people would work on it. Henry Ford's innovation was to have the object move, while people specializing in different tasks worked on it at different times.





They have an interesting display of a model T, with all the parts disassembled, but near where they would go in the final product. (This is two pics, one on top of the other, which is why there are disconnects here and there....)



Right by the area above, they actually build a model T, using tourist labor. (We were assured that, back in the day, child labor wasn't illegal, so it was ok for kids to be in there tightening bolts, etc. :-) ) Unfortunately my attempts at pics of the assembly are more tourists than car. I should have focused in tight on the bolt being tightened, or something similar.....



The collection includes all sorts of manufactured items. We know these were dangerous, but gotta love the shapes, shadows, golden shine......





Hmmm. Wondering about the definition of "safe".......





More shapes and shadows and golden shine.





A bit of a look into a manufacturing process.....







Wondering what their families' lives were like, that making horsehair cloth all day was an improvement.....





A cobbler's shop was in the same area. Seems less like "mass production".... I liked the shapes of these lasts.

You can't tell the scale from this pic, but these were tiny. Shoes for little kids....



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something new

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I've been thinking about how different communication is, now, compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

When my brother and sister-in-law were in Sweden for two years in the mid-80s, phone calls were a dollar a minute, and there was no email, no IM, no blogging. Many (many!) letters went back and forth across the Atlantic while my bro and sil were gone. Those letters flew (usually arriving in Ann Arbor faster than letters from Kansas City!), which was an improvement over earlier times when everything went on ships..................... (Not to mention even earlier times when ships were few and far between and powered by wind.........)

Now there are email, IM, blogs, and phone calls are free on Skype.

In addition to allowing us vastly better communication with our galivanting relatives, all of this improved communication allows for huge improvements in other aspects of life. I blogged one example, about shopping directly at Amazon.FR vs Amazon.USA.

Here's something else that is better than the mid-80s, made possible by our excellent modern communication......



Access to your home checking account, wherever you may go......


I love the story about my brother-in-law putting his card in an ATM (in Dubai, was it?). The ATM was speaking Arabic, as you would expect. Until he stuck his card in. The ATM recognized his card (recognized him, financially speaking), and immediately switched to English. The ability to easily, instantly, access your money at home, from wherever, is a vast improvement over olden times........


Another vast improvement is the ability to look at the Eiffel Tower webcam any time I want to see what the day looks like, in Paris (button on the right, for easy access). I can also check http://wunderground.com and see what the temp and humidity are. Any time I want.

Excellent. Modern communication rocks.



(Thinking about how the word "modern" is very short-lived indeed, in a context like this one! Wonder what we'll be able to do in five or ten years that I've never imagined.....)

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victorious!

Our "new" computer, which is three years old, has a 160-gig hard drive.

Me and Alaska, we have filled it up. I am making digital scrapbook pages, and those photoshop files are biiiiiiiig.......

Yesterday I bought a new drive, and today I installed it as an additional drive. I had advice from some pc mavens about which connections to get (SATA). I opened up the computer, and installed the drive, but when I rebooted, the computer didn't find it. Sigh. I went to seagate.com, and looked up support/drives/SATA, and saw that I had to talk to the BIOS.

Okayfine.

I had to restart twice to get there, because I didn't know which key to push the first time (f2!).

The BIOS menu offered me a "drives" option. Luckily I'd been paying attention to which SATA plug I plugged the new drive into (#1, as the hard drive that came with the machine was plugged into #0), because I had to turn it on in the BIOS menu.... So I did that, and saved when offered that choice on my way out of the BIOS menu.

Still not all the way there -- then I ran the disk wizard program that came with the drive, and set the drive up, and now it's apparently working like a champ.

Yay.

It turns out that my subdirectory has about 57 gigs worth of (mostly pics). Deleting that off the C drive will free up some much-needed space.

A Good Thing.

Dontcha love when you can buy yourself more than three times the storage you already had for $100, and it doesn't take up any more space than you already had (as the new drive fit into empty space inside the computer)????

Yet another thing I love about digital. My thousands (and thousands) of pics don't take up any physical space at all, to speak of........