Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

beelinereader.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 273 posts

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#251

Post by kingmanaz »

DanBC wrote: post #222
corin_ wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the Bible above all?

Because the King James bible had considerable effort to translate original texts into best possible English, preserving meaning but also creating a suitably "glorious" text. Very many concepts, words, metaphors, etc come from the King James translation. Ignoring any religious stuff - it's a good read. EDIT: corrected my st / king error!

Try the Knox bible, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox's_Translation_of_the_Vulga... ):

"It was my resolve to live watchfully, and never use my tongue amiss; still, while I was in the presence of sinners, I kept my mouth gagged, dumb and patient, impotent for good. But indignation came back, and my heart burned within me, the fire kindled by my thoughts, so that at last I kept silence no longer.

"Lord, warn me of my end, and how few my days are; teach me to know my own insufficiency. See how thou hast measured my years with a brief span, how my life is nothing in thy reckoning! Nay, what is any man living but a breath that passes? Truly man walks the world like a shadow; with what vain anxiety he hoards up riches, when he cannot tell who will have the counting of them! What hopes then is mine, Lord? In thee alone I trust. Clear me of that manifold guilt which makes me the laughing-stock of fools, tongue-tied and uncomplaining, because I know that my troubles come from thee; spare me this punishment; I faint under thy powerful hand. When thou dost chasten man to punish his sins, gone is all he loved, as if the moth had fretted it away; a breath that passes, and no more. Listen, Lord to my prayer, let my cry reach thy hearing, and my tears win answer. What am I in thy sight but a passer-by, a wanderer, as all my fathers were? Thy frown relax, give me some breath of comfort, before I go away and am known no more."

-Psalm 38 (39) from Knox's Translation of the Vulgate.

Knox's translation is lucid when compared with the "correct" and dead modern translations of the bible. Try it if King James does not speak to you.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#252

Post by innguest »

jol wrote: post #205
bvi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What techniques do you use? I read at around 600wpm, and increasing it by 50-100% seems pretty daunting.

I trained a bit speed reading when I was in higschool from some book that was translated from Russian (sorry, no idea what was the book) the main idea there was to: 1) not saying words with inner voice 2) not reading letter by letter (seeing whole word at once) 3) reading by connected words not only word by word 4) there was eye training exercise, the idea was that you had to train vision a bit to be able to read mor…

"1) not saying words with inner voice"

That's been debunked a while ago. There's no such thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#253

Post by cbsmith »

tomkarlo wrote: post #147
cbsmith wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.

There's an existing, broadly used method for solving the line transition errors - you background color every two lines in an alternating set of colors. There used to be ribbon-feed printer paper pre-colored with this for certain applications that involve reading across lines a lot (like database output.) Seems like that is a more practical solution. Here's what I mean: http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big…

I thought it was every three lines, but yeah.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#254

Post by thehomie »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #160
gnicholas wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the positive feedback—glad to hear that it works for you! Follow us on twitter to keep apprised of new content/product integrations. There are a couple deals in the works now.

Oh you're the creator? cool. A word of advice: work out a way to sell this to doctors and other people who need to keep appraised of massive amounts of info. They have the money and the motivation to be your primary customer base.

He is. Also, I'm his friend and the original coder of the bookmarklets.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#255

Post by gnicholas »

therealunreal wrote: post #226
josho wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took their test and came out 2% faster (likely statistical noise more than actual improvement). Regardless, I attribute the improvement to the obscure content in the non beeline reading passage. I'm curious what others experienced?

The first time it showed me 15% improvement and I got suspicious because I thought I had read the black text at about the same time. Then I took it again with a different subject but I timed it. It took me ~81 sec to read the colored, ~92 to read the black. It said I read 23% faster with BeeLine. What gives?

The passages do not have the same number of words, so just looking at the number of seconds isn't sufficient. You have to use the word counts for each in order to get the words/min.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#257

Post by calinet6 »

kingmanaz wrote: post #251
DanBC wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the King James bible had considerable effort to translate original texts into best possible English, preserving meaning but also creating a suitably "glorious" text. Very many concepts, words, metaphors, etc come from the King James translation. Ignoring any religious stuff - it's a good read. EDIT: corrected my st / king error!

Try the Knox bible, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox's_Translation_of_the_Vulga... ): "It was my resolve to live watchfully, and never use my tongue amiss; still, while I was in the presence of sinners, I kept my mouth gagged, dumb and patient, impotent for good. But indignation came back, and my heart burned within me, the fire kindled by my thoughts, so that at last I kept silence no longer. "Lord, warn me of my…

That verse is perhaps the clearest explanation I have ever read of why religion exists. Thank you.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#258

Post by calinet6 »

inovator wrote: post #200
graeme wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like spreeder: http://www.spreeder.com/ Set the chunk size to three for best effect. Just gradually increase it each time, and also try using it occasionally with the speed far too fast. You'll get used to subvocalizing less, and reading multiple words at once. Of course, for complex texts like the ones you read, it's natural to read much slower. I read 600 WPM for most internet articles, but I'm sure I wouldn't re…

maybe it's just me but I feel like I have a stutter thought when I read using that. It's just doesnt feel right; I think books/articles reading will be less enjoyable if I'd have to use it.

The duration needs to be based on syllables, otherwise the rhythm is totally off.

Has anyone made a syllabic RSVP reader before? Might be interesting to see how much more natural it would be (my hunch is "a lot").

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#259

Post by loceng »

3pt14159 wrote: post #106
crazygringo wrote: post #39

Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...) It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" -- I scan content to find the relevant parts, and the color chan…

I normally read around 600 to 1000 wpm (depending on how dense or vapid it is). This speeds up my reading wayyyyy past that. 1500 wpm? And I was barely trying. It does look super fucking ugly, but it totally works for me. They need to bring in an army of designers and make software geared towards legal assistants / lawyers because they need this desperately.

I wasn't skeptical at you saying the increase was this big, and then I went to try it for myself. Wow. This definitely allows my eyes to track better. I'm a bit dizzy now, too ... Reading felt as fluent as my own thoughts.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#260

Post by loceng »

saraid216 wrote: post #135
crazygringo wrote: post #39

Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...) It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" -- I scan content to find the relevant parts, and the color chan…

I suspect that there's a threshold effect going on: if you naturally read faster than a certain speed, certain design tricks will actually make you read even faster. If you naturally read slower, then those same tricks slow you down. Would love to see it confirmed or falsified. (As a note, I am probably under this hypothetical threshold; I'm not a slow reader, but I find that efforts to speed up my reading speed gene…

I think it depends how close the text is too, and how long the sentences are on a single line. If it's heavy reading then you don't necessarily want to be or able to read as quickly, though might be good for skimming it.
Post reply on HN