Celebrate Creativity
This podcast is a deep dive into the world of creativity - from Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman to understanding the use of basic AI principles in a fun and practical way.
Dictation
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https://macmost.com/printable-mac-enhanced-dictation-cheat-sheet.html
By the way, the first time you might want to turn voice control off as you go through the sentences, and then later turn voice control on.
There are several sections, so without further ado, let's start with text selection
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When Sounds Compete
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In this episode, I wanna talk about another side of voice control - it may be ab and work with scroll or go to sleep well and individual files in a folder le to do some wonderful things, but there are some programs where voice control it's not able to do a really good job - not because it is inefficient - far from it - but voice control deals with the human voice and doesn't play well with such programs that emphasize sound such as YouTube and GarageBand.
S...
The Power of the Grid
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https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh40719/mac
I certainly am going to talk about a few areas that I want to address in the next two or three episodes, but right now I'm gonna state the obvious–the best way to learn voice control is to use it.
Use the Apple support page that I previously mentioned, and if necessary, go over and over and over the commands and what they mean, until it almost becomes automatic. Stick with it, and eventually you will come to th...
Painful Hands
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"For the next month or so, I'm going to take a break from podcasting. My sleep schedule has become seriously disrupted, and I've also been dealing with pain in my hands and arms. Before I continue creating new episodes, I need to focus on my health, work with my doctor, and become more proficient with Voice Control and some other accessibility tools. I have an appointment with my doctor the beginning of next week, and I look forward to zeroing in on solving some of the problems that have made it all b...
Lesson Plan Interrupted
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This podcast episode is an example of dictation. In the next few episodes, I will talk specifically about using dictation in voice control, as well as some of the commands. As for now, do not forget to use enter THAT! - with an emphasis on the THAT!
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Drag and AI Graphics
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About two weeks ago, I apologized for not doing an episode for a month. Actually, I did not do an episode for two weeks, but it seemed like a month. I like to think that this episode has some very important uses and organizing your files and folders - how to organize a messy desktop rather than just demonstrate commands. And later, will get into the use of voice control into doing some fascinating graphics with artificial intelligence.
So, - I am keeping this episode about half the length of...
Enter THAT!
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Do not say enter! Always say enter THAT! And emphasize the THAT!
And for dictation, speak clearly and naturally.
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Returning
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Commands
Wake up
Go to sleep
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Turning It On!
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Hello, and welcome to Celebrate Creativity. I’m George Bartley.
In the last few episodes, I have been talking about Voice Control in a broader way — my own background, some of the reasons I care about it, and some of the larger philosophical questions behind it. What does it mean to use your voice to deal with a machine? What does it mean in terms of independence, creativity, and accessibility?
But now it is time to move a little closer to the ground.
Today, I want to t...
Looking from Both Sides
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Looking at Life from Both Sides
Hello, and welcome to Celebrate Creativity. I’m George Bartley. And I promise that starting in the next episode, I'm going to begin to teach you how to use voice control.
But today, I want to talk about accessibility, disability, voice control, and something even larger than all of those: what it means to look at life from more than one side.
There is a phrase that has stayed with me for years from a song by Joni Mitchell: I’ve l...
What It Feels Like
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Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and the second part of Voice Control on the Macintosh: Why It Matters, and What It Feels Like to Learn It.
I hope you realize by now that this podcast has been talking about the importance of voice control and some of the human elements involved in mastering the skills. So rest assured that in a few days, I will deal into the mechanics of voice control - in other words HOW use it. My philosophy of education it's not to try to dazzle you with...
Voice Control on the Mac
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Hello - welcome back to How to Talk to Your Mac. And this is part one of Voice Control on the Macintosh: Why It Matters, and What It Feels Like to Learn It - in this and the following episode I want to talk about the philosophy behind voice control, and then we'll get into the specifics in future episodes.
However, first, I'd like to apologize for the weeks this month when I have been unable to do an episode. For the first time in years, I think I have had co...
Voice Control - Promo Two
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Now I believe I mentioned that at one time I was doing up to two and three podcasts episodes a day. As a teenager I had a series of epileptic seizures, and was told that I should not swim - but after I started taking a new medication at that time - Depakote - my seizures became a thing of the past. And I'll talk about a little bit more about that later. I also started interpreting for the deaf, especially Shakespearean plays. And when I realized that I could swim safely, I...
Voice Control - Promo One
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Hello this is George Bartley. And no, I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. In fact, my podcast Celebrate Creativity - with its current emphasis on William Shakespeare was in high gear - at one point I was doing two and even three episodes a day. Currently Celebrate Creativity has over 32,000 episodes globally. But that rate of output really couldn't continue very long and I started experiencing excruciating pain in my wrists and hands.
As a result, I became fascinated with a way of communicating with a Ma...
The Mouse Trap
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Up to now, Hamlet has lived inside questions.
“Did my uncle really do it?”
“Can I trust the Ghost?”
“Am I being manipulated?”
“Am I losing my mind—or pretending to?”
Act 3 Scene 2 is the moment Hamlet says, in effect:
“I’m done being uncertain. I’m going to test the truth.”
In other words, Hamlet creates a situation where Claudius either sits calmly… or cracks.
What makes this scene so powerful is that Hamlet is doing two things at once.
One: He wants evidence.
...
Get Thee to a Notary!
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Master Shakespeare, are you ready?
SHAKESPEARE:
As ready as any man may be, entering a room where love is examined like evidence.
GEORGE:
That’s exactly it. Because what happens here is not romance. It’s a controlled experiment—and Ophelia is the instrument.
GEORGE:
Let’s start with the setup. Claudius and Polonius plan to spy. They stage-manage Ophelia. They put a book in her hands. They position her.
What’s the moral temperature of this plan?
SHAKESPEARE:
Cold. And...
Spies and Players
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GEORGE:
So right away: the scene begins with the king and queen acting like concerned parents. But it feels… staged.
SHAKESPEARE:
Because it is staged.
Mark their language: they crave a cause, a label, a tidy diagnosis — “What ails him?”
Yet their hands are already in the plot. They have hired watchers.
Concern and control wear the same cloak here.
GEORGE:
And the watchers are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — Hamlet’s old friends.
Let me ask bluntly: are they villains?
SHAKESPEARE:<...
Short But Loaded
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Part 1 — Polonius coaches surveillance (Polonius + Reynaldo)
Polonius sends Reynaldo to Paris with money and messages for Laertes.
But Polonius doesn’t say, “Go check on my son like a normal person.”
He says—basically—“Go investigate my son.”
Here’s the tactic, and it’s nasty in a very realistic way:
Polonius tells Reynaldo:
Don’t ask directly, “How is Laertes behaving?”
Instead, casually drop mild accusations and see what sticks.
Not monstrous lies.
Little “reasonable” hints.
He’s teaching Reynaldo to do t...
The Ghost Speaks
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Today we’re in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 — the scene where the ghost finally speaks.
And I want to emphasize something from the start:
The ghost’s message doesn’t just give Hamlet information.
It changes Hamlet’s operating system.
It changes what Hamlet thinks the world is.
It changes what Hamlet thinks he must do.
And it changes what kind of person Hamlet is allowed to be from this moment on.
[Music sting]
Segment 1 — What happens in the scene (plot, slowly and c...
Follow It!
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Today we’re in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4.
Act 1, Scene 2 gave us the court saying, “Get over it.”
Act 1, Scene 3 gave us family advice that’s really control.
Now Scene 4 takes us back to the battlements — the cold night air — where the play asks a different question:
When truth appears in an unsettling form…
Do you follow it?
GEORGE:
Master Shakespeare, we’ve moved from court politics and family warnings back to the night watch. Why return to the battlements now?
SHAKESPEARE:
Because the...
Advice That’s Really Control
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GEORGE:
Master Shakespeare, why do we go from the public court scene into this private household scene?
SHAKESPEARE:
Because the disease is not only in the crown.
It is in the rooms of the home.
GEORGE:
Let me paraphrase that in three ways so it lands:
Paraphrase #1 (simple):
You’re showing us that Denmark’s problems aren’t only political. They’re personal.
Paraphrase #2 (blunt):
The same habits that make a court dishonest can show up in a family.<...
Get Over It!
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The scene begins with the king saying -
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Now If Act 1...
The Ghost Arrives
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MASTER SHAKESPEARE:
Good even, sir. I come where questions are sharp and nights are sharper.
MR. BARTLEY:
And the first question is simple:
Why begin Hamlet with guards on watch instead of opening with court life, or the prince, or a grand speech?
MASTER SHAKESPEARE:
Because the world must feel unsafe before you know why. The audience must stand in the dark with common men—those whose work is to keep danger out. And yet danger comes in anyway.
MR. BARTLEY:
So...
Rhetoric as Wildfire
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Tonight is Antony— the man who takes grief, wraps it in poetry, and lights Rome on fire.
And the terrifying part is that he does it while sounding… respectful.
The conspirators imagine a clean reset.
They kill Caesar and they expect:
the crowd to applaud their courage
the republic to breathe again
the story to land exactly as they explain it
But the moment Caesar’s body hits the ground, the conspiracy inherits a problem it cannot solve:
A...
Cassius the Manipulator
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The audience sees this manipulation in terms of Cassius’s treatment of Brutus and his use of flattery and reassurance to bring Brutus into the conspiracy to kill Caesar. Later, the audience learns that Cassius is willing to gain money by means that Brutus finds dishonorable and unacceptable, though the specifics are not fully revealed. Cassius is at various times petty, foolish, cowardly, and shortsighted. On the other hand, Cassius offers Brutus the correct advice that Brutus should not allow Antony to talk to the Roman citizens after Caesar’s death. Had Brut...
The Falling Sickness?
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What we honestly have is ancient testimony, not “medical proof.
What the ancient sources actually say
Two major biographers written well after Caesar’s death report episodes that sound like seizures:
Suetonius (writing ~150 years later) says Caesar was “twice attacked by the falling sickness” during his campaigns, and also mentions fainting fits and nightmares later in life.
Plutarch also describes Caesar as having episodes of illness and uses them at times to explain his behavior in public life (though Plutarch’s descriptions are not clinical “c...
Man, Myth, and Problem
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The Caesar Shakespeare gives us is not a cardboard tyrant. That’s important. If Caesar were obviously monstrous, the play would become an easy sermon: “Kill the tyrant and save the republic.” But Shakespeare refuses the easy version. He makes Caesar impressive, admired, and also irritating. He makes Caesar popular, and also proud. He makes Caesar capable of generosity, and also capable of dismissing people. He makes Caesar a public figure, and still a man who likes being told he is exceptional. That mixed portrait is the point, because political violence is almost...
Macbeth Is Not Hard
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Macbeth is not hard. It’s human.
Here’s the whole play in one simple truth:
Macbeth made Macbeth.
Let me say that again:
The witches tempt. Lady Macbeth pressures. But Macbeth chooses.
They light matches all around him—but Macbeth decides to set the house on fire.
This story is not fate winning. This story is choice repeated until it becomes character.
HOST:
Here is Macbeth in five easy steps.
Temptation — an idea enters.
Choice — a line is crossed.
Habit — vi...
Macbeth’s Last Days
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Macbeth’s tragedy ends when fear disappears—not because he becomes brave, but because he becomes numb and falsely certain.
Now let’s locate ourselves.
HOST:
We’re in the final stretch.
Act 4 Scene 1: Macbeth returns to the witches for more prophecy.
Act 5: the kingdom turns, the signs pile up, the “impossible” begins to happen, and Macbeth faces the end.
This is the arc:
uncertainty → prophecy → false certainty → collapse.
And that’s exactly what happens to a human mind when it starts feedi...
Hell Is Murky!
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HOST (George):
In Macbeth, evil rarely arrives waving a pitchfork; it arrives wearing a suit and offering a reasonable argument that elections are no longer necessary.
That’s how it works in public life—and it’s how it works in this play.
And Lady Macbeth is the clearest example.
Here’s the main idea of this episode.
Lady Melania - I mean lady macbeth -doesn’t begin as a monster. She begins as a person who treats conscience like a problem to solve.
L...
Macbeth's Morality
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Macbeth does not become evil because he’s confused. He becomes evil because he learns to call evil “reasonable.”
Let me repeat that, because that’s the whole episode:
He starts using good logic for a bad purpose.
That’s how a smart person goes wrong.
Shakespeare makes Macbeth understandable on purpose. He shows you the self-talk.
We’re picking up right after the witches in Act 1 Scene 3. Macbeth has heard “king hereafter,” and now his mind is buzzing.
Then:
Act 1 Scene...
Macbeth and the Witches
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People call Macbeth a monster. But Shakespeare’s trick is sharper than that: he shows you a man who can still choose—and then shows you the exact moment he starts outsourcing his choices to ambition, marriage, and prophecy.
Macbeth—thane, hero, newly honored… and about to discover that wanting something is not the same as deserving it.
Now to most of you in the United States, the word THANE might be unfamiliar. It simply means a basically a Scottish noble—a trusted local lord who holds land from the k...
Romeo and Juliet in New York
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Today I’m taking that same Shakespearean blueprint and placing it in a new world: the 1961 film West Side Story. I’m going to do this in the simplest and clearest way possible:
I’m going to tell the film’s story in a straight line.
As we go, I’ll point out the matching Shakespeare “parts” — not as trivia, but as the engine that makes both stories run.
And one clear rule: no lyrics, no musical quotations. I don't wanna get in trouble, and besides We don’t need th...
The Accelerants
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Welcome back. Verona is split by a feud. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love, marry in secret, and attempt to outrun a culture trained for violence.
Then comes the turning point: Tybalt confronts Romeo, Mercutio fights, Mercutio falls, Romeo kills Tybalt, and Romeo is banished. Juliet faces a forced marriage to Paris. A desperate plan depends on a message. The message fails. Tragedy follows.
Tonight we interview three figures who did not cause the feud—but who, in different ways, accelerate the catastrophe:
Mercutio: wit as...
A Conversation with Romeo
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Welcome back. But first, If you’re joining us now for the first time, here is what you must know.
Verona is split by a feud between two houses: Montague and Capulet. Romeo Montague meets Juliet Capulet at a feast, and they fall in love with reckless sincerity. They marry in secret—hoping, perhaps, that love might stitch together what hatred tore.
However the city runs on pride and sudden violence. A street fight ends in death. Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished. Juliet faces a forced marriage. A me...
Story of Woe
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JULIET (calm, surprising firmness):
They call me a child because I am young.
But children don’t usually bury their own futures with their own hands.
George (gentle):
Then let us speak plainly, Juliet.
Not as an emblem. Not as a tragic ornament.
But as a mind at work inside a storm.
George
If you’re joining us now: Verona is split by a feud between Montagues and Capulets. At a Capulet feast, Romeo Montague meets Juliet Capulet. They fall in love at s...
Romeo, Romeo
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A large National Council of Teachers of English teacher survey reported by Education Week lists Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet among the most frequently assigned texts in U.S. And Folger Shakespeare Library notes its edition sales (a good “what schools buy” proxy) had Romeo and Juliet first, followed by Hamlet, Macbeth, then A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, and Julius Caesar.
But before I start talking about British school subject matter, I better describe one certificate and one assessment of skills that are more or less standard in the Un...
Shakespeare 3
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Mr. Shakespeare, in our previous episode, you were talking about your life and your literary career. Could you briefly remark on the uniqueness of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, as well as their importance to literature.
Shakespeare
Now I could not speak to this assemblage without addressing the subject of my play Hamlet. Many individuals have called it my greatest play. Here is a prince torn between revenge, morality, and his own inaction. With the simple, yet profound, words ‘To be, or not to be…,’ I attempted to capture...
Shakespeare 2
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You see, by 1582, when I was only eighteen, I married a lady by the name of Anne Hathaway, Some scholars Believe that my wive's name was actually Agnes. In any case, our first daughter, Susanna, was born the following year. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, followed in 1585. Unfortunately my dear son Hamnet later died.
And then comes the mystery: the so-called “lost years.” Between 1585 and 1592, I completely disappear from the historical record. No plays, no mentions, no documents, but what we do know is that by 1592, I was in the city of Lond...
Shakespeare 1
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Greetings Mr. Bartley. Let me begin by saying that if you visit the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in England today, the first thing you’ll probably hear is that I was born in 1564. We don’t actually know the exact day, but we do know that I was baptized on April 26th at Holy Trinity Church. Since baptisms usually happened a few days after birth, tradition has settled on April 23rd — St. George’s Day — as my birthday. A fitting coincidence, since St. George is England’s patron saint and many individuals said during an af...
