These are random things that have made me happy today.

The first is that there is an ASL companion to a qualitative research methods textbook (focused on education and psychology, to boot!) I am already fascinated by the design and translation choices they have made in figuring out what it even means to have an ASL qual methods textbook... how multiple signers in the introduction switch between freezing in black and white when it's not their turn, and becoming full-color and in-motion when it is, so your eye immediately knows who it's following. How they've translated the phrase "chapter author" not as [chapter write-person], but rather as [chapter sign-person] -- "they who have signed the chapters" rather than "they who have written down text for the chapters," because the "text" is in ASL. These little subtle things that tell you that... yes, this is another culture; this is a different world. (Or in my framing: this is an alternate ontology.

Second is that I am giving my portion of a technology review lecture series (1) on ASL and (2) with a fairly decent dose of snarky humor. My topic? "Wake-up systems for DHH sleepers." I plan to cover...

  • Cheap Hacks for People With Residual Hearing: makeshift and wholly mechanical scoop and rattle amplifiers for phones (put them on big hard hollow things or in cones made of hard materials... like hotel ice buckets!) Also, reasons why these setups may not be the greatest for smartphone users and/or profoundly deaf deep sleepers like myself.
  • Sonic Alert’s Sonic Boom, which emits ear-splitting shrieks at modifiable frequencies, flashes lights (or rather, intermittently turns on and off power to an electrical outlet embedded into its side), and rumbles a bed-shaker. (And, in high school when I had it close to my CRT monitor, it degaussed my monitor. Anyone want to check out a cute little EMP source?) Also, a brief overview of the sleep cycle, and how this device, while highly effective at actually waking one up, is terrible for waking one up pleasantly.
  • Philips Wake-Up Light: awesome, but expensive-ish, and… let's talk about the usability of the physical design, shall we? (And the choice of bird sounds as the wake-up recording, which... to me, are setting options of "silence," "other silence," and "more different silence.")
  • Philips Hue system as a cheaper and more hack-ish way to replicate some of the functionality of the wake-up light

Gotta work on my content, draft, translate, and rehearse this. It'll be fun.