AddaptAbilities » motor dysgraphia

More fun with google voice

Addy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:13:58 +0000

Once again, I need to say that Google Voice rocks. I love getting transcripts of voice mail as e-mail and SMS. I hate answering the phone, because it’s such an interruption, and because if I need to write anything down I have to find my computer and type it up somewhere … so it’s ten times easier to just get it as a transcript anyway.

Google’s voice recognition isn’t perfect though. Here’s a portion of a message I received earlier:

This is Katie calling from city told. It’s about 12:30 on Friday 13 7 november, Call let you know that you do your prison is ready for pickup.

I’m sorry, my WHAT?

OK, the guy who was handling my car goes by his initials, “KD”, and I can see how that gets turned into “Katie”. He was calling from a place called City Toyota. I’m a little surprised that “Toyota” isn’t a word Google Voice recognizes. But the funniest thing in this transcript is that it turned “Prizm”, as in Geo Prizm, the 12 year old car that needed over a thousand dollars of repairs thanks to some incompetent would-be car thieves, into “prison”.

We got a good chuckle out of that.

drawing and breathing

Addy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:25:02 +0000

I did more drawing yesterday with my watercolor pastels. Every so often, I stopped with the pastel on the paper and checked to see if my hand and wrist were relaxed. I made sure I wasn’t pressing too hard (which is a problem, since you have to press hard with watercolor crayons if you want good coverage). It was much less painful than Monday night.

The joys of motor dysgraphia

Addy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:36:23 +0000

Of my various learning disabilities, dysgraphia probably messes me up the least. Sure, I can’t write reminders for myself, or write grocery lists, or any of that good stuff, but I have computers and SMS for that sort of thing. Technology is my friend. It keeps my hands from falling off when I need to write.

But maybe it’s better to say that dysgraphia messes me up in the least obvious ways. I’ve realized that certain types of dysgraphia can actually be kind of a bummer for a visual artist. You see, there are three subtypes of dysgraphia — dyslexic, spatial, and motor. Dyslexic dysgraphia manifests as language expression problems with normal finger tapping speed. Spatial dysgraphia creates difficulties staying within lines or boxes on a piece of paper but finger tapping speed is also normal. Motor dysgraphia (that’s me!) causes problems in letter formation and size, and writing is often painful; finger tapping speed is slow, which indicates neuro-muscular problems.

Yup. I’m a visual artist with “low finger tapping speed”, and all the challenges to dexterity implied therein. Did I mention I’m also a musician? I play piano and harpsichord. Not enough for me to make use of my low tapping speed to play one voice; no, I gotta use it to juggle three or four voices! In counterpoint, too, so they’re all independent of each other! Good times.

I started an art class on Monday night, and to warm ourselves up for the term we did a drawing exercise. Now usually I paint instead of draw, and I’ve learned the hard way that I need to paint on hard surfaces instead of stretched canvas, otherwise my hands will cramp something fierce with the effort of controlling my brush on a springy surface. Monday night reminded me of why I don’t draw much. Pressing against a hard surface for color saturation … trying to achieve fine detail with a stubby drawing implement … Ouch.

The problem is that I wound up starting a project that I’d really like to see through — but at this point, alas, I’m committed to drawing the rest of the series of images. Another problem is that in order to keep my hands from killing me, I need to work slowly … which gives me time to over-think. $#&*(@! dysgraphia.