h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It sounds like a hit. I'll drawl for y'all.

Jodan, don't worry timewise, there is no massive hurry - the internet will still be here tomorrow.

Other thread members, anyone got any ideas for the text we should use to compare accents? It kinda needs to be short enough to play once, then play again and remember differences, but long enough to include a variety of sounds...

sadly, all my favourite HHGTTG quotes fail the first criteria...eg:

"If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliway’s, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!"

I'm going to come down from my lofty perch and give you some advice from an old hand

'The Explained mode will split the map into the sections outlined in Jodan's project, clicking on a particular area will zoom in on that region, and an audio summary of the h2g2 entry (preferably read by a suitably accent-endowed US researcher) will start up.'

Great idea, but it has problems. The length of the Entries means that a straight audio reading is going to take about ten minutes and, unless you get background music and a version rewritten for audio, it's going to be really dull. That sounds blunt, but I've tried it with other Entries and it doesn't work. I've come to realise that, when Aviating, we have to 'base' our clips on the Entries rather than repeat them. A good piece of writing doesn't make a good radio piece.

So strip it back. Pick out a few key points from each and rewrite them almost as bullet points. So for the Southern Drawl, you might pick out the drawl and just have a 'narrator' say:

'The Southern accent is often referred to as the Southern 'drawl' because the words come out a bit slower from a Southerner's mouth. This is how a southerner might say "My pet hen's been laying eggs"...' and get your Southerner to repeat the phrase.

Get three or four of those for each Entry and you're laughing. Maybe the people from the regions could help by picking out the points that they think are most pertinent for their own area, and writing something appropriate?

You could even dispense with the idea of two modes, you know. If you get each bullet point right, it would serve as a comparison as well. I'm just thinking of the ease of producing it here, really - if it works just as well by keeping it simple, then why not?

Have you got someone in mind to read the 'neutral' bits? If not, could I suggest EMR? She has the kind of professional-sounding voice you need, I think, and she's Aviated a few times already.

If this sounds like a goer, test it. Get one sorted out, do the readings and put them together in a bit of audio (I can do this if you like, or Roymondo is becoming a bit of an audio specialist and will probably do a funky intro and background music). If the audio sounds good to everyone, you've got your plan sorted

Does this help?

Send me things to read and I will read them.

Ok, it's late at night on a Post week - you know what that's like, eh? - but if we have you and Psychocandy here and ready to go, let's give it a try. It's easier with this one as both you guys already have an email address for me

So we're looking at A30541835. We can change this at a later date, but let's go for this just for now to see how it sounds:

01emr (EMR): The Northern Cities Vowel shift changes the way that vowel sounds are pronounced, so that some vowels sound like they are combined with other vowels - or diphthongised. Here are some of the major changes caused by the NCVS:

02emr: The short 'e' sound in 'red' replaces the 'u' in the word 'bud', so that it sounds like 'bed'.

03pc (Psychocandy): Buddy, that bum's bugging me!

04emr: The 'uh' sound in 'bud' replaces the 'aw' sound in 'jawed', so that it becomes 'jud'. The 'uh' sound also replaces the 'eh' sound in 'desk', so that it sounds like 'dusk'.

05pc: At dawn, that lawman's desk is grotesque!

06emr: The 'ah' sound in 'crack' replaces the 'o' in 'block', so that 'block' sounds like 'black', or more accurately, 'blaahck'.

07pc: I lost my sock just across the block, down by the dock.

08emr: The 'o' sound in 'rod' replaces the 'a' sound in 'sad', so that it's more like 'sod'.

09pc: That lad Brad - he's mad and sad.

10emr: The 'ah' sound in 'sad' replaces the 'o' in 'socks', so it comes out as 'sacks' or 'sax'.

11pc: Those jocks couldn't outfox an ox.


I'm sure there are better lines, but they'll do for a trial.

EMR and PC, have a read of A35017201, which will tell you how to get decent audio really easily. Record each of the lines separately and save them with the appropriate filename (ie, you'd save 'At dawn, that lawman's desk is grotesque!' as 'pc05.xxx'). Email them to me and I'll stitch them together. If VP likes the result and you guys are all happy too, you can start to produce the real thing

Good morning!

I'm anxious to get started on my part ... but I can't promise I'll have time to get to it before Friday evening. Hopefully we're not in a humongous rush and I won't be impeding progress. I'll definitely work on it Friday evening if not sooner.

I'll also add just one last time that I in no way pronounce any of the words in the phrases "assigned" me in the way they sound like they're described in the EMR bits, nor have I ever heard anyone else do so. We shall see.

Hi guys - I was certainly still running under the assumption that abridged versions of each entry would be used for the Explained section, so why not just read out the bits-you-like-best / bits-which-seem-to-apply-to-your-accent from the entry correspinding to your accent and send them on as Skanky suggests.

IN my mind, ideally, a multi-zoomable multi-layered map would be how the browse section of the Universe section of h2g2 would look like - just like in a GIS system for displaying different types of geographical data, we would have different data layers on a GoogleEarth type thing - a "Geography" layer, a "History" layer, "Recreation", "Famous People", "Sports" etc etc.

Imagine zooming onto the map of London, toggling 'History' or 'Famous Landmarks', and being able to click on Tower Bridge to get to A559, then toggling 'Food and Drink' to overlay the restaurant and pub entries to find a watering hole to visit after your tour of Tower Bridge.

Sadly, that would require key words / tags for each edited entry, and a huge huge change to the site, but it would still be cool.

Thjat's fine, PC. I won't be able to put it together until Saturdayish anyway. I already have EMR's parts

Vp, that's a fantastic idea. The great thing about having an Aviators website is that, instead of going straight to the Eds with ideas like this, we can write the scripts ourselves and then show the Eds what it is, how it works and how it could be added onsite. If they don't like it or can't use it, we have have the facility offsite. I'm sure we could come up with something using Microsoft Virtual Earth, so if you'd be interesting in taking the idea further, let me know

I am pretty sure it would need a complete update to many of the edited entries to work properly - somewhere outside the body of the entry, they would need the geographical location, and a list of which data layers they belong to.

Whilst the GIS approach is relatively easy to implement for entries about specific places, it would be most at its most powerful if all the historic stuff, famous people stuff and more esoteric stuff with a place associated with them were included as well.

I almost never Browse in fact - its almost easier to find the entry I am looking for using <./>RandomEditedEntry</.>.

Browse The Universe / The Earth / Europe / United Kingdom / England / London / General London will find you black cabs (A630) but not private minicabs (A721144), whereas a Search for "London transport" does not return either entry on the first page of hits.

Ric, I spent hours trying to work out why my recordings had no sound over this past weekend. It's going to have to wait till I will have time to remove Audacity and sort out what my default options were previously. I'm almost positive I had a program that worked, previously.

(wonder if it's the Audacity thing that screwed up my video conversion software's audio levels... surely it can't be coincidence)

Don't worry Hope you manage to get the problem sorted out.

If anyone else does want to have a go at jotting a few lines as I did above and recording them, I'm happy to make a start as soon as I have something to work with.

My computer is being very odd today. I definitely typed a bit more than that. You got the gist, anyway

I'm hoping I'll have a chance this weekend. K's got a band thing tonight, but he's leaving around bedtime so I can't try then.

<?>

I'm back from camps and free whenever anyone else is

Ugh, sorting the audio files slipped my mind... since Skankyrich was away I figured I could give other things (like work) higher priority for a bit. Might not have time to work on it this week, as I've just got back from vacation time myself and might have a lot of catchup work to do...

So are we doing this? I would still like to - but due to having been rather insanely occupied in RL, I have let this project run out of whatever steam it once had .

I reckon we should get to it. The project is cool, and deserves the respekt... only problem is I am still 2 weeks away from my own computer and the flash software dooberies I need...

How about we get people to post here their suggestions for the abridged scripts of each accent, to get the ball rolling?

I was wondering about this. Since I bumped into someone with a Brooklyn accent.

So, what's the ideas?

I'm still here, too, and ready to record. I have just reread the entire thread from Day One, and can't seem to locate what it is we are supposed to read and record. Please point - I promise not to take offense.

How about I gesture with my elbow? Thats what we used to do in our drinking games...not sure why mind...

I too will re-read thread, and then do best to come up with cunning and daring plan for AV progress on this project, at somepoint soonish - currently technically on holiday in a foreign country (well, the UK, but it feels foreign these days, to me at leasy) with lots of travelling to do, but as soon as home, progress shall be made.

In meantime, stay cool guys