Author Archives

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Budcast #3: Random Musings And A Walk To Harbor Freight

In BudCast #3, take a walk with me to Harbor Freight to exchange an air pump. On the way (and on the way home), we meet neighbors and friends, stop in at Radio Shack, and of course, exchange the air pump. Today, we discuss lots of things in brief:

Also, it’s out! The new album from Those Who Dig, “Little Bitty Barley House”, recorded live this past fall, is out. Go andget your Mitochondria fix now, and tell ’em I sent you. OK?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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BudCast #2: Alena Drops the Puck

In this edition of the BudCast, join us as we venture across the Erie Civic Center and Alena drops the puck at the Erie Otters hockey game on Saturday, March 13. We were able to participate in this event because the game also was a fundraiser for the Lemieux Family Center, a facility where Alena spent a lot of time in 2007 and 2008 from complications after her brain surgery. Thanks for having us out, guys!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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BudCast #1: Intro and IBill Review

In this,my first podcast (that I’m posting,not that I’ve been on),I introduce myself and my family,talk a little about what we might be doing here,and review the IBill from Orbit Research. Podcasts will be posted somewhat irregularly, and I’ll do pretty much anything from technology reviews to sound seeing things with my family and friends. Feel free to Email me with any suggestions, ideas, or whatever. Thanks for stopping by!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Planes–and Not News

This morning, I saw a “news report” on Good Morning America concerning Sarah Palin and her book tour. Apparently, the fact that she’s seen with a tour bus, but actually flies to her book tour stops is considered news.

This is news??

The report seems to imply that there’s some hypocrisy here: Goernor Palin puts on this folksy hockey mom persona, but in reality, she’s just putting on. In fact, she doesn’t take a bus. She doesn’t shop at the consignment store anymore. She takes advantage of the expensive trappings of a celeb, complete with the private plane. This, says the report, from someone who sold the Alaska state governor’s private jet, purportedly as a cost-cutting measure.

So what?

This is news?

OK. Is the news media forgetting one important fact here? The celebrity trappings, the plane, the bus, the whatever, is not being paid for from taxpayer dollars. (Did the media forget that she resigned from office last year? Not bloody likely.) The government plane from the previous Alaska administration was being paid for with taxpayer dollars. There’s the difference. Isn’t it interesting that what former Governor Palin and/or her publisher and publicity staff do with private funds, as private citizens, is deemed “newsworthy”, perhaps even hypocritical, perhaps somehow tainted, yet our President can go gallivanting all over the world, on the taxpayers’ dime, for every possible photo op, to do things he could as easily do at home, virtually, at a fraction of the cost to the taxpayer–and no one says anything about that. What’s wrong with this picture?

I don’t care who’s in charge. The way taxpayer dollars are spent deserves scrutiny. The way people choose to spend private funds is no one else’s business.

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Review: On The Go Sport Guide Dog Harness

Introduction

Back in February, I ordered an On The Go harness from Julie Johnson. As these are individually made and she had some backlog, it took some time to arrive, but arrive it did, and I’ve had my new harness for about three weeks now. That should be plenty of time to give it a fair evaluation, I thought.

First, if you didn’t already know, Julie has sold livingblind.com and, separately, her harness making business. These harnesses, now from Pawpower Creations, can be purchased from (interestingly enough) Pawpower Creations. Email pawpower@cox.net for latest info and pricing.

Find information on these at the LivingBlind.com guide dog harness page.

So what’s the deal with these harnesses, anyway?

First, to avoid confusion, I will henceforth refer to the harness company by its new name. Meaning no slight to Julie and her excellent work, naturally.

Pawpower Creations harnesses are a great alternative for the owner trainer or anyone who, for whatever reason, wants another harness than the one the school provides. Some people just want a generic harness with no school names on it. Others want features that their school harnesses do not provide. Others may want a harness that’s easy to clean and care for. In all these cases, the Pawpower Creations harnesses fill the bill nicely. Being made of nylon instead of leather, they are easy to clean (machine washable, I’m told), and lightweight. Take them to the beach and get them all wet and icky and it isn’t really a problem. Moreover, the harness is made to fit your dog with measurements you provide as instructed on the harness Web page. Also, and my main reason for buying, the handle is easily removable. No more wrenches! You see, I’ve been wanting an easy to remove handle for ages. It’s especially been a problem with Chet. I have two harnesses from my school, and both of them, from getting in and out of cars and getting stuck or bumped or whatever under the dash of too many cars, have the leather coming unstitched and raggedy lookin’. This is a problem, since the handle sticks out roughly another inch off Chet’s rear end. So I really wanted something I could pop off easily without removing the whole harness.

They are inexpensive, costing around $100 for one with all the extras (extra padding and reflective tape).

Description

I chose the sport harness. I understand this is a more european design. Unlike the traditional American harness, the handle does not pass through loops on the back, instead moving freely. This can be a disadvantage if you’re not careful. The handle can literally swing over your dog’s nose! Not in the course of regular work you understand, but it really does have complete freedom of movement. You could, potentially, more easily overstep your dog, but by then you would notice your handle at a very odd angle. Anyway, the handle attaches pretty well right at the dog’s shoulders. Where the harness you’re used to has a strap that goes around your dog’s middle with another one going from there all the way around his chest and perhaps a martingale coming off that down between his front legs, this sport harness has the girth strap around the dog as you would expect, but then has two straps coming off the back strap, over the dog’s shoulders, meeting then in the middle of the dog’s chest with the martingale between his front legs, in the shape of a print letter Y. The handle attaches to these two straps by means of plastic backpck fasteners, the sort of thing that snaps together and that you squeeze to release. A similar fastener buckles the harness closed. If you want a more traditional American style harness, Pawpower Creations makes those as well, with or without a martingale. Actually, they can custom make something if you need. Rox’e (and Julie before her) will work with you to design the harness you need.

Going For A Walk

Putting the harness on goes about as you might expect, with one small bit of challenge. Since there are no loops to hold the handle down, you’d better keep ahold of it along with the back strap as you put the harness on, or you could turn it inside out! This isn’t a huge deal, since it just flips right way round again very easily, but it is something to be aware of. You put it on as one would expect, by putting your dog’s head through the open part of the Y, then threading the girth strap through the martingale and snapping shut on the right side of the dog. You’ll note that the shoulder straps fit nicely over your dog’s shoulders. Some adjustment of the martingale and girth straps may be necessary. Both are threaded through a buckle, and feel a bit stiff. That’s OK, though; once they’re adjusted, they’ll pretty much stay put. Remember that these buckles make the straps infinitely adjustable; there are no holes, so you really can make the adjustments very fine if you need to and they should stay put. The handle lays flat along your dog’s back. At least, right at first. You may find at times, depending on how your dog moves sometime or how it’s put down, that it lolls off to the side, a consequence of the total freedom of movement in the handle. I may sound like I don’t like this, but really I do. having that much freedom of movement also means your dog can really make a very tight turn without any real discomfort either to you or to him.

Now here’s what I really like about this harness. Chet is mostly very bored with my neighborhood. This means that, as he walks, he has almost no pull. With my school harness, the handle would feel just slack and as though we were crawling instead of walking. With this harness, you can really feel your dog’s shoulders moving as he walks, and even with a light pull, you feel a very steady pressure in the handle, and it’s very easy to detect even the smallest change in speed, whether it’s more pull or a slackening of speed. I felt that I was getting a quicker response and could more easily tell when a distraction was coming; feedback felt more immediate. The handle always felt “engaged”, even with the lightest of pull, instead of feeling slack. This was an unexpected and welcome surprise.

Is having a removable handle really that handy? I’d have to say that it is. There’s nothing like having a handle stick into your shins! Nuff said. Just pop the handle off and put it somewhere handy, then pop it back on when you get out of the car. No more re-threading martingales, and you only need to stick something over your dog’s head once.

Construction

These harnesses are very well made. I don’t feel like they’ll come unstitched any time soon. Seams are double stitched and sturdy. I got extra padding, which was very nicely stitchd in foam, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon. the handle is similarly stitched. It’s obvious that real care and time were taken to make sure these harnesses were put together right the first time. Also, high quality buckles and fasteners were used throughout. I don’t think we’ll be in danger of losing a handle clip or something like that, and I don’t think the adjustments of girth strap or martingale length will slip when you don’t want them to.

I give this harness a definite 11 out of 10. You really can’t go wrong with this one if you have a need for a new harness for your guide dog, or even just want one. I don’t think you’ll find one better.

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SMA, RIP: Significant To the AT Industry, Not a Huge Change For Serotek

Today at the ATIA Conference, Mike Calvo, CEO of Serotek, announced that, as of today, “the Software Maintenance Agreement (SMA) is dead.” Apparently, Serotek had tombstones at their exhibit to mark their passing.

So what’s the big deal, you ask?

For years, the major players in the AT space–the people who make the screen readers for, generally, Windows-based computers, have sold “software maintenance agreements” (SMA’s), to their customers who wish to keep their screen readers up to date with the latest updates, features, and operating system and software application changes. These agreements differ somewhat in how they’re constructed, whether lasting for a year or a certain number of major version upgrades, and they cost somewhere between $150 and $350. Users are encouraged to buy a new agreement shortly before the old one expires, and not doing so usually means one has to pay for all the intervening upgrades from the one he owns to the current one. This could cost several hundreds of dollars. In any case, the SMA has been a pain in the ass for many a user of assistive technology.

So, Serotek’s announcement that they have dropped their SMA is significant, if only symbolically significant. More on that in a minute. Mike Calvo stated in an interview on their new Internet radio station that other companies may see the SMA as their bread and butter, but Serotek does not. Serotek seeks to add value in other ways, in ways that they believe their users will find relevant, useful, or at least enough fun to keep paying for (my words, not his, but, generally, his idea as I understand it).

Had Serotek done this a year or two ago, it may not have had the impact that I believe it will have now. Serotek is doing innovative things an really catching up and in some cases surpassing the more established players. System Access worked on 64-bit Windows before the “big guns” did. And let’s not even talk about the free web-based version of System Access, System Access To Go.

Now, they’ve laid down the gauntlet. They’ve issued the challenge. What will the other players in this space do? Will they drop their SMA’s and seek to keep their customers’ loyalty (and buying dollars) in other ways? Or will they continue to do what they are doing now?

I said earlier this was a significant statement, if only a symbolic one. While it’s true that Serotek had a software maintenance fee ($60/year, if memory serves), it’s also true that owners of the System Access software got their upgrades free as long as they were also members of the System Access Mobile Network, a $129/year subscription. Also, the software as a service offerings included software upgrades at no additional cost (not to mention access to the network). So there were a couple ways to not pay a software maintenance fee, and I suspect the number of people who just owned the software and not the network was a very small number. So in real terms, I doubt the SMA was a very small issue in Serotek’s real world dealings. Taking it away completely was, I suspect, no huge loss to them. As they said, the SMA isn’t (and wasn’t) their bread and butter. Rather, offering compelling reasons to use their other offerings and pay for them is what keeps them going. It’s what we in the rest of the world call capitalism. And clearly, they’re offering compelling products and services: easy remote control of your home PC’s, a completely portable and non-disruptive screen reader that does what most people want to do with their computers, an easy service with all the stuff you want right at your fingertips (great for the computer neophite), and all pretty inexpensively. I find it noteworthy that there are Web sites that don’t work with the big name screen readers, yet they work fine with System Access. That’s worth something in itself.

I’ll say it again. The AT space is changing rapidly. It’s changing for the better, as far as the average blind consumer is concerned. New companies are doing interesting, innovative things, and the prices are falling. You can now get a fully functioning machine, with a screen reader that will do most of what most people want to do (Email, surf the web, talk to their friends, write a letter, and so on), for under $500 if you look hard, under $600 if you don’t but are OK with putting all the software in yourself (or know someone who is), or under $800 if you want it to just work when you turn it on. Considering that the big boys charge more just for the software, this is even more significant than the death of the SMA, and it’s been a reality now for a little bit longer. Sure, you could get Linux running with Orca, let’s say, using Ubuntu, or Windows with NVDA, but you’d better be pretty comfortable with computers already. The price breakthrough is as significant, in its way, as Voiceover making any Mac not only usable, but eyes-free installable, without modification. This is the kind of development that’s changing this space, and the established players had better stay on their toes.

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Easy-Peasy Activism: Petition Opposing Jerry Lewis’s “Humanitarian Oscar”

I received the below in my Email today, and I hope you will consider signing.

Hi,

If you don’t normally receive emails from me, don’t worry, you’re not “on my list” now; this is an exception.

In fact, I haven’t really been doing activism for quite a while because of how sick I’ve been and other things I’m dealing with; however, this feels important to me, it’s easy for you to do, and numbers will count, so I’m making the effort to get the word out.
Please join me in asking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences not to give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009.

Please do these two simple things:
1. Go to http://www.petitiononline.com/jlno2009/petition.html and sign the petition, and then,
2. Send copies of this email to your friends, family, and colleagues.

Why? Because Lewis is an anti-humanitarian. He has c onsistently made remarks that are offensive, demeaning, and dehumanizing to and about disabled people and gay people as well as promoting sexist and antifeminist attitudes about women.

You might think that his efforts on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) which promote the idea of people with disabilities as pitiful are simply misguided, but well-intentioned, but this is not the case. For decades, disability rights advocates — including former MDA poster children who appeared in his telethons — have tried every conceivable tactic to engage Lewis in dialogue about a more empowering and respectful way to help people with disabilities, one that focuses on rights, not pity. Lewis, with his considerable international fame, fortune, and clout, has responded with personal attacks and slurs.

A few examples:

– In 1990, Lewis wrote that if he had muscular dystrophy and had to use a wheelchair, he would “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person.”
– During the 1992 Telethon, he said that people with MD, whom he always insists on calling “my kids,” “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do.”
– During a 2001 television interview, Lewis responded to telethon protesters: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

Jerry Lewis has also made derogatory comments about women and gay men. His outdated attitudes and crude remarks are dehumanizing, not humanitarian. If you want more details, see below. Otherwise, please sign the petition.
Thank you,
Sharon Wachsler
P.S. In addition to what’s below, if you read the comments some posted with their signatures, you’ll see that some former “poster children” who had personal experiences of Lewis’s telethons were hurt by his actions.

More on Lewis’s Lack of Humanity. . . .

– During the September 2007 MDA telethon, Lewis called a member of the TV crew an “illiterate faggot.” In October 2008, during a Sydney press conference, according to the Aussie newspaper Sx: “‘Oh, cricket? It’s a fag game. What are you, nuts?’ Lewis replied before camply brandishing an imaginary cricket bat.”

– I happened to catch Lewis on a TV entertainment news program talking about the candidates during Democratic primaries. Lewis said Hillary Clinton should not be considered a viable candidate because it was not a woman’s place to run the country, that the US “isn’t ready for a woman President.” He defended this statement by pointing to the (frivolous, “cute”) ac tivities of his young daughter as the more appropriate interests for women.

From Barb Bechdol of Chicago Disability Pride: He said publicly that people with disabilities live half-lives, and if people in wheelchairs don’t want pity, they should stay home. Whether or not you have disabilities, please join the protest of a person who used his considerable influence in a most inhumane way!
www.disabilityprideparade.org

From Valerie Brew-Parrish:

– I urge all of you to watch Mike Ervin’s DVD, “The Kids Are All Right,” a documentary about Mike & his sister Cris being former poster kids. Mr. Lewis has done grave harm to our rights. He has maliciously attacked Mike Ervin in the press and tried to sue Mike & his sister for questioning MDA.

– Mr. Lewis also attacked Evan Kemp for questioning where the MDA monies went & actually requested the first President Bush to fire Kemp from his position as chairperson of EEOC.

– Lewis also got Diane Piastro, a wonderful syndicated disability columnist thrown out of many newspapers when she questioned MDA tactics.

– One more tirade: For a long time MDA refused to purchase vents for people & their camps discriminated against two former campers with MD. See past issues of the Ragged Edge. Anyway, this is our opportunity to say we don’t approve of Jerry Lewis!

From Lawrence Carter-Long:

This petition has been launched to object to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement that it will give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 2 2, 2009.

During his decades of hosting the Labor Day Telethon, Jerry Lewis has helped to perpetuate negative, stereotypical attitudes toward people with muscular dystrophy and other disabilities. Jerry Lewis and the Telethon actively promote pity as a fundraising strategy. Disabled people want RESPECT and RIGHTS, not pity and charity.

In 1990, Lewis wrote that if he had muscular dystrophy and had to use a wheelchair, he would “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person.” During the 1992 Telethon, he said that people with MD, whom he always insists on calling “my kids,” “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do.” Comments like these have led disability activists and our allies to protest against Jerry Lewis. We’ve argued that he uses the Telethon to promote pity, a counterproductive emotion which undermines our social equality. Here’s how Lewis responded to the Telethon protesters during a 2001 television interview: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

Jerry Lewis has also made derogatory comments about women and gay men. His outdated attitudes and crude remarks are dehumanizing, not humanitarian.

Therefore, we the undersigned support the actions and arguments of the coalition group The Trouble with Jerry. We protest the Academy’s characterization of Jerry Lewis as a “humanitarian.” And we ask that the Academy cancel its plans to give Lewis the Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Sincerely,

YOU

Sign here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/jlno2009/petition.html

Posted by:
Lawrence Carter-Long
Director of Advocacy Disabilities Network of NYC
548 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10012
Lawrence@dnnyc.net
http://dnnyc.net

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PETA’s Vice President: We don’t want to take your dog away | L.A. Unleashed | Los Angeles Times

PETA’s Vice President: We don’t want to take your dog away | L.A. Unleashed | Los Angeles Times

This, in particular, makes me unspeakably angry:

There will never be a perfect world, but in the world we’re in now, we support some working dog situations and decry others. Hearing dog programs that pull dogs from animal shelters and ensure that they are in safe and loving homes have our stamp of approval; they live with the family for their entire life, they learn interesting things, enjoy life, and love helping. On the other hand, we oppose most seeing-eye-dog programs because the dogs are bred as if there are no equally intelligent dogs literally dying for homes in shelters, they are kept in harnesses almost 24/7, people are prohibited from petting or playing with them and they cannot romp and run and interact with other dogs; and their lives are repeatedly disrupted (they are trained for months in one home and bond, then sent to a second, and after years of bonding with the person they have “served,” they are whisked away again because they are old and no longer “useful”). We have a member who is blind who actually moved states to avoid “returning” her beloved dog. We feel that the human community should do more to support blind people, and give dogs a break. A deaf person can see if a dog has a medical issue such as blood in her urine, a blind person living alone cannot, and so on.

Excuse me?

How about you actually know what you’re talking about before you spew?

Thank you.

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Building a Wifi Radio Out of a Cheap Router

For a long time, I’ve been interested in those Internet radios. You know, looks like a radio, tunes stations from the Internet using your wifi Internet connection, acts like a radio, ostensibly to allow one to listen to streaming content without tying up/sitting in front of a computer. There were only two real problems I had: 1) they cost more than I really wanted to pay, and 2) even if I did want to pay the freight ($150 to $300) for one, rumblings are that the things are fairly inaccessible. Well, that’s a shame, since many of them, such as the ones based on Reciva’s platform, are GNU/Linux underneath with proprietary bits added. So it’s conceivable that it could be made accessible if someone wanted to bother, though not easily owing to the aforementioned proprietary bits. But then, there’s the Sharpfin project. Great idea, but it’s moving slowly, due to lack of smart programmer types interested in the project. I’m interested, just not smart. And besides, I want to spend less. Or at least, feel like I have.

So I did some more searching and found two similar projects. This one is very detailed, detailed enough for me to follow it even, so that’s where I started. Although, I found this one first. I expect I’ll borrow from it as well.

But there’s one little thing. Being blind, and, more pressing, all thumbs, I wasn’t about to tackle adding a serial port to my Asus WL-520GU router. Not only do I not need or want an LCD, I’m sure I’d toast something, and I didn’t have anyone nearby that would like to tackle it either, I’m sure. So, I’ll have an uglier box with more junk on the USB connection. No matter.

So, I didn’t tackle the hardware mods, nor did I do anything about the LCD display. Which meant I had to telnet in and do everything over the network. When I goofed up the channel assignment, that set me back a little bit, but not for long. Thank god for spare ethernet cables. So, a couple of speedbumps later, I actually have something that plays music! It isn’t pretty, but if I add things to the playlist, they play. Ultimately, here’s what I want to do:

  • Control the player from a USB numeric keypad
  • Have a speech synthesizer announce the current stream or song when asked (via the numeric keypad, using espeak
  • Possibly use vlc or mplayer with no output (just the bits that play the audio) in order to get Windows Media streams as well as MP3/ogg/etc.

Obviously, this will all take some time, and I’m sure I have a lot to learn to make it work, but it should be a fun diversion. Anyone wanna play with this with me?

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A Talking Laptop For Under $500!

OK, so actually, a talking laptop for under $500 isn’t impossible. It isn’t even really new. It can be done even cheaper than I did it, if you don’t mind fooling with a bunch of stuff and doing nerdy things. I don’t know how usable NVDA is, or how easy to install or learn with no prior computer or screen reader knowledge. That may be a project for another time. Also, GNU/Linux with the Orca screen reader is still not really for the computer newbie, although I see this changing with efforts like Vibuntu. Still, there’s a substantial learning curve here as well, not to mention the install can be a little intimidating if you’re not comfortable with it.

But one of the new netbooks is a great start for such a system. Melanie has been needing a new computer for some time, and I just got her an Acer Aspire One for Christmas. For $349 at Radio Shack (cheaper elsewhere, no doubt, or right around with a bigger battery some places), it’s not a half bad deal. Because she has physical problems, she really needs something very lightweight, and this fills the bill nicely.

I’ve also set her up with Serotek’s System Access, a screen reader that’s really made great leaps forward in power and usability. It’s flexible, does what most people need it to do, has some interesting features, and is relatively inexpensive, especially with the software as a service offering (the route I went with), which costs $25 a month over four years. I’ve run the numbers, and what you get with this plan would cost only slightly less if you were to buy it all outright as opposed to this monthly plan. I even set up a U3-enabled smart drive so Melanie can use System Access on any other machine in case she doesn’t have her spiffy new notebook along for some reason. Total initial cost was $420 give or take a couple bucks. And it could have been less if I opted for a smaller U3-enabled drive (I got the 8 GB one), bought from an online retailer like Amazon, and so on. This price includes the $25 System Access account activation fee and the first month of service.

Melanie’s already been playing with System Access and has already found she likes it. It takes very little time to learn just a few commands to get practical use out of it, and there’s plenty of online help available.

I’m really excited to have her get started with the new system in just a few days.