Man builds planetarium in back yard.
What a #LifeTold!
LifeTold speaks your language!
How will you have your #LifeTold?
Here is a sample of the moments we help you create for your family. We give you free time to hold your memories with us, to develop your family tree. Our sample site is live now, and we are working on the new platform as we speak. We aim to deliver the highest quality family interviews right from your home to save for family and friends forever! Sign up and be the first to have your LIFETOLD!
#NotAtRootsTech 2017
Datasets for Dead Languages
Neat article where someone takes a corpus of recordings of people speaking in a nearly-dead language, and feeds it to a Deep Learning system to see if the machine will generate new speech that resembles the dead language (somewhat similar to this, but with audio instead of text: https://github.com/robbiebarrat/rapping-neural-network ).
Projects like this could help people practice potential future-learners of the language proper pronunciation, especially for sounds that are uncommon in other languages (think the "click" consonants in Xhosa and related languages). Re-treading the same recordings endlessly can just lead to rote memorization instead of proper practice, and so a machine learning system that can generate novel combinations could be quite useful.
Would be awesome to use LifeTold to help people curate recording sets like these in the future.
Tools for Oral History
Studs Terkel, the legendary oral historian, recently bequeathed another gift of data to us. Terkel recorded hours upon hours of interviews in order to provide the material for his 1974 bestseller Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day And How They Feel About What They Do. The audio itself had been stored and forgotten for about 40 years. While transcripts can be fascinating to read, there’s nothing quite like hearing people describe their own lives in their own words and with their own voices.
Recording equipment was bulky and expensive in Terkel’s day, and out of the reach of most people. And the storage format - reels of magnetic tape - was fragile and decidedly non-portable. But, technology marches on - just about any citizen of a developed nation has the means to record, store, and access audio. Indeed, a modern First Worlder can do all these with audio than a person could do with text in the 1970s.
But, just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s easy. Here at LifeTold, we want to equip people with the tools to easily record, securely store, and access video interviews. We’re looking to develop a platform where people with production backgrounds can create templates that let anyone with a camera make a great-looking video, where skilled interviewers can share sets of questions that will get your elderly relatives talking about fascinating aspects of their lives that you never would have thought to ask them about, where anyone and everyone can create their own private video archive of their family’s histories.
Travels to Tonsai
How will you have your LifeTold?
Mine? I want filled with stories of travel and solutions to everyday travel worries. Tips, tricks, and advise to go by when traveling the world along with stories of wonderment about the spaces I get to visit! Holiday Harriet gets to be a traveling power player with a million different names. So feel free to contribute your story and have your LifeTold!
My story starts out flying into the Krabi International airport finding a man who is coming from Canada to meet his wife and kids. He sat next to me on the plane and told me how he lives his life in Thailand. He boasts about the cheaper lifestyle and meager earnings that allowed him to retire here and live like a king. I was excited to hear his happiness as it sank right through as if he had found a new heaven from his previous life. Now I was more excited to see this town that he couldn’t stop boasting about.
First stop Krabi Town – So the area you want to fly into is Krabi to get to Tonsai. It’s more commonly associated with Aonang Beach, but I decided to stay in town to hit the night markets. This was a more relaxed area, much different than the Phuket or Bangkok vibe. The accommodations are more for travel groups and couples looking to explore a more locals view than the touristy areas. After a week in Thailand you have seen just about everything they could sell you, because they have already tried. So after a night I realized that this wasn’t for me and moved on to my Bungalow in Tonsai that I was so excited about.
Tonsai – Not so easy to get to, especially if you have luggage. First from Krabi town you must venture to Aonang to get to another boat. The boat will take you to Railay beach which is right next to Tonsai, but you have to rock climb a bit to get to that island… That’s right you literally have to climb rocks and venture along the beach to get there. When traveling, the story is half the win. Adventure comes in different forms and not always welcome when you need to get there before sundown. It’s half as bad as you might think and even a novice could handle it decently but I wouldn’t recommend it for Grandma or Uncle Bob with the bad knee he always tells you about…
The Village of Tonsai is a U shaped with a walk path that leads to the beach. The dense group of trees in the center of the beach making it hard to see the bungalows or anything late at night. This is a crowd of younger travelers, vagabonds, backpackers, and interesting characters. The people you will meet come from most parts of the world, especially Australia and Canada. I came alone but never felt alone here, someone was always trying to get me to join them. Especially in the morning when they are booking private tours, but most of the time you can just hang back and rock climb with a crew. In the mornings it seems as if the walls are sometimes moving from the early bird climbers, scaling walls for a morning wake up. I would recommend the trip to the adventurous travelers looking for something different.
ROCK CLIMBING : BEACH RESORTS : TIGER CAVE : TROPICAL JUNGLES : ATV RACING : ROCK JUMPING : HOSTELS : TRAVELER ENVIRONMENT
