Reading in the dark
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kestrell" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:37 am
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Speeding up my laptop+Jaws-friendly registry cleaners
I ended up doing a lot of this on Christmas, because I had just backed up my files to my external hard drive on Christmas Eve, and I figured I would not be using the laptop all day.
Decluttering and organizing my files recovered about 1 1/2-2G of memory, and I also uninstalled a number of programs, such as Open Office, which is never as accessible as I want it to be, and most notably I uninstalled the Google desktop, which had been perceptibly slowing down my computer.
I then followed the tips in this article
5 ways to speed up your PC
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/speed.aspx
( details and links below cut )
Tags: registry cleaners-accessible, speeding up computers
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07:29 am
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Best Christmas ever+best Internet radio station ever+best present ever
The company was witty, gracious, and, at the table at which I sat, spent about half the time it took to consume the amazing feast talking about books. My friends know how to keep Christmas if anybody ever did.
I mentioned that I had been listening to the best Internet radio station ever, and it had been playing the best holiday music ever, and a couple of people asked for me to mention the URL so here it is: http://wwoz.com WWOZ out of New Orleans. It's a jazz and blues station, community supported there is only a quick mention of sponsors. And the N.O. definition of blues and jazz includes all flavors of both genres, plus, amongst other things, funk, Cajun, regga, Brazilian, and on occasion, burlesque, with gospel on Sunday mornings--a true gumbo. This is the place to be in a couple of months for Mardi Gras.
I received many warm black sweaters/polar fleece, and many many books.
The big present was the BookSense that LJ user alexx_kay gave me. This is the cutting-edge accessible ebook reader for blind users. I actually got the BookSense XT, which is the more deluxe model and has 4GB of built-in storage space (to allow data, music, and other files to be saved without using an external memory card), built-in FM radio, and the option of using wireless Bluetooth headphones.
The BookSense can read these Formats: digital audiobooks, text files, brl and brf (digital braille), doc, docx, html, rtf, xml, and Daisy (an accessible format with XML tags for increased functionality), .
There is also a digital recorder and a media player which plays MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, OGG, MP4, and M4A, podcasts, and files recorded from the FM radio.
Note: It does not play PDF or any proprietary ebook formats, and to play the audiobooks from the libraries for the blind such as RFBD, one must install the proper patch/DRM, although I have no intention of installing any DRM on my BookSense.
Size: 4.25 in (L) x 1.85 in (W) x 0.75 in (H)
Weight: 0.25 lbs.
It has a 12-hour continuous use of battery charge
2) 2 -hour charging time using AC adapter, 5-hour charging time using USB
I've decided to name the BookSense Alexandria, Lexi for short (Alexx would just be too confusing, plus lexi has the Greek for book or "of words" or "to speak").
BooksI received for Christmas:
Grimoires by Owen Davies (Oxford University Press, 2009) - a cultural history of grimoires
The Edgar Allan Poe Collection: 20 of Poe's chilling stories and poems
Caedmon unabridged 5 CDs 6 hours performed by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone
Anne Rice Angel Time read by Paul Michael unabridged 7 discs 9 hours
Shakespeare Stories edited by Giles Gordon (1982) - stories based on Shakespeare works incl stories by Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, and Kingsley Amis
The Friar and the Cipher : Roger Bacon and the unsolved mystery of the most unusual manuscript in the world by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone (2005)
The Paper Thunderbolt by Michael Innes
But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame! The Amazing History of the World's Favorite Madcap Aunt by Richard Tyler Jordan
Tags: accessible ebook readers, booksense, cthulhumas, kestrell's library
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10:23 am
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I have a voice again!
And it even seems to be my own voice, not that of a dirty old man, hurray!
Special thanks go to the givers fo the magic pralines and my sweetie, who spent a week interpreting my whispers and gestures.
Tags: health
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06:01 pm
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Real pralines
Thank you to L and R. for the real pralines--I had one last night and by this morning, I could speak at about volume 2, and by lunchtime today I could speak a little louder, so I think the pralines actually are making me better. And they are tremendously yummy.
I can't exactly say that *my* voice is coming back, though, as it seems to be the voice of a dirty old man. Christmas dinner could be very entertaining. (I once went to a "Come as you aren't" party as a dirty old man and it was lots of fun.)
What makes these pralines different from the Trader Joe's pralines: Trader Joe pralines are whole nuts covered in brown sugar and heated at a high temperature until the sugar candies, like the honey-roasted nuts one gets from the Mr. Nuts truck in Boston Commons.
Real pralines look kind of like peanut brittle, squares a couple of inches across with chopped nuts in them. The squares are not brittle, though, but gooey and creamy, not quite as dense as fudge.
Here is the place the real pralines came from
http://countrystore.tabasco.com/
Tags: cthulhumas, health
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06:32 pm
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Whispering, cross-referencing, zombies
I still have very little voice: I can whisper at level 1 and, for short bursts, at volume 2, like if I need to check my voice mail on my cell phone (the irony of a cell phone with voice recognition commands). The thing about whispering is that it's like yawning: occasionally people automatically start doing it too. I don't sound as scary as Whispering Wendy, though. Whispering Wendy is this evil-sounding synthetic voice. You may wonder, how evil can a female voice named Wendy sound? Well, the way I've always imagined the backstory is that Tinkerbell succeeded in offing Wendy, leaving Wendy this disembodied ghost that acts as a sort of psycho-dorm mother for the Lost Boys. I like to contemplate Whispering Wendy and Coraline's mommy in a smackdown.
But you can check out Whispering Wendy for yourself
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/rhythmsp/ASA/AUfiles/35e.AU
Today I cross-referenced and decluttered my laptop hard drive and backed up all my ebooks. For the curious, my ebook directories are Drivers, Fantasy, Horror, Nonfiction, Media & Cultural Studies, Science Fiction, and Writing, with appropriate subdirectories. Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction get their own directories due to size.
This morning I finished scanning Wade Davis's _Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie_ (1988), which is, basically, a more academic version of his _The Serpent and the Rainbow_ (1985), which is one of my favorite books. There is a lot of good material for untold zombie stories, mostly in how Davis proposes the theory that the process of creating a zombie cannot be separated from the culture and the community, that the medical ingredients of the zombification powder are basically inert without belief, and that making a person into a zombie was a form of social punishment against someone who had betrayed or exploited his community (in a Haitian community, for instance, Scrooge could have been turned into a zombie, and wouldn't that be a creepy sight, all those poor street urchins and starving mothers silently watching Scrooge shamble through the foggy streets of London?).
Another good zombie story: "The Dead One" (2007), a film featuring a Day of the Dead narrative based on the graphic novel "El Muerto" by Javier Hernandez, although I've had no luck finding a copy of the comic to purchase. There is some really wonderful imagery, and the story delivers a few surprises along with a rich mythology.
And here's another cool comic which Alexx read to me last night: Volume 2, Issue 1 of "Locke and Key" written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. No zombies but there are ghosts, and a spooky house, and many many strange keys. This issue also answers the immortal question: what does a ghost bring to a knife fight? An ectoplasmic chainsaw.
I need to say that again: an ectoplasmic chainsaw.
Tags: comics, horror, kestrell's library, synthetic speech
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09:33 am
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Orson Welles's show to broadcast on BBC 4+Pictorial dictionary
The Guardian film blog has an interesting post about Welles's work with television
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/dec/17/orson-welles-television#box
to help announce the broadcast of
Orson Welles' Sketchbook series, which will start on BBC Four on 18 December at 7:30 pm and be available online
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pgv42/The_Orson_Welles_Sketchbook_Episode_1/
soon after. Can anyone tell me what time that will be EST?
Also, I read about this book on Boltype
http://flavorwire.com/53407/holiday-gift-guide-books-for-nonreaders
and thought it might appeal to some of my friends, especially as it is produced by a local (Waltham) printer:
block quote start
Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities
Do you love dictionaries but hate words? Then this book is for you. It is exactly what it says on the cover — a collection of all the wonderful old engraved
illustrations from the Webster’s of the 19th century. We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether the book “acts as a visual Finnegan’s Wake of 19th Century
America” as its compilers claim. We’re still busy just getting lost in its pages. Samples
here.
http://www.quercuspress.com/webstergallery.htm
block quote end
Tags: media studies, orson welles
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04:01 pm
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Virus+transplant rejection
I started the new cycle of Prednisone and antibiotics yesterday but, while the inflammation around the eye began to clear up almost immediately, there was no effect on the sweats or the headache (it's actually eye pain but I experience it as a headache focused approximately behind the brow bone of my right eye), and I woke up at 12:30 a.m. this morning and was unable to get back to sleep with the headache, although I kept popping Ibuprofen. After Alex left for work, the headache seemed to get worse and I started to lose my voice, which made trying to contact my GP kind of challenging (my eye surgeon has gone on vacation, and is in Burlington, and she said for any furhter issues I should contact my GP).
It was about this time that I realized that the level of eye pain was beginning to bring back memories of my glaucoma days. It wasn't quite as bad as an acute angle glaucoma episode but, short of having blunt iron spikes driven into your forebrain through your eye sockets, what is? So I made the decision to stop telling myself it wasn't that bad and went over to Urgent Care.
It was my lucky day: there was a floorshow of hyper preschooler boy children and their dads who were stepping up to do their best to keep the high-level explosives contained. We were there for about two hours and the floorshow never let up. I was also pretty impressed by the boy who kept doing something that made him go "Ow!" pause, and then do it again with the accompanying "Ow!" Yes, I feel certain that this child will grow up to be someone who says things like "I knew the gasoline fight had gone wrong when..."
So I got into triage and they initially tried to tell me that I should go to Burlington to see my surgeon, and I got to explain at volume 2 with occasional drops to 1 that she had gone on vacation, she told me if I had any issues to go to my GP, and what I didn't say was that I had no intention of spending 2 hours each way on the MBTA while in pain. More waiting, more doctors, more explaining about how my surgeon was pretty certain my symptoms were not part of a systemic infection, and I got a diagnosis of some sort of virus and a script for Vicodin plus a lecture about how the Prednisone seriously lowered my immune system and I should just stay home as long as I was on it. It's also no good for me to get the swine flu vaccine because my system is already working hard, but I should gthink about getting the next round in the spring. For sheer information and an amazingly consistent pleasant attitude, the Codman Square health clinic is pretty outstadning.
I came home, had a round of drugs, and am now going to try to find a zombie movie to stream on NetFlix (as far as I am concerned, a year's subscription to NetFlix justifies itself just for being around on those days when you're really too sick to even read). I don't even like zombie movies usually, but today I feel zombies are just my speed. Zombieland is not available on DVD yet but maybe Quarantine?
Tags: health, prosthetics
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03:53 pm
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Randall Munroe xkcd volume 0: The Signing!
DAY: Thursday
DATE: December 17, 2009
TIME: 6:00 pm
ROOM: MIT 26-100, access via 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
MAP: http://whereis.mit.edu/?selection=26
Please join us as Randall Munroe, creator of the wildly popular web-comic
"xkcd," visits MIT to give a mini-talk about his new book and the school
it's funding in Laos. Plus, he'll answer some of your questions. Books will
be available for sale afterward and he'll be doing a signing!
Books are also available now at The MIT Press Bookstore.
Thanks to Breadpig <http://www.breadpig.org>, the Berkman Center at Harvard,
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/>, and the folks behind ROFLCon
<http://roflcon.org> for their help making this event possible.
For more information call (617) 253-5249 or email books@mit.edu.
Tags: books, comics
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01:18 pm
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Better than ibuprofen
One of the things I've been doinglately to keep my spirits up --aside from reading lots of horror fiction and munching on Trader Joe goodies-- is listening to WWOZ from New Orleans
http://www.wwoz.com .
It's a blues and jazz radio station, incredibly eclectic, and the DJs don't talk too much except to tell you about the music.
Tags: music, new orleans, wwoz
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12:36 pm
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More drugs, sclera transplant a bust, and amazing tissue transplant wizardry
My third round of steroids and antibiotics ended this weekend and all of my post-op infection issues pretty much immediately returned, but now more noticeably because for ten days I felt better than I had for a couple of months. Nothing is working on the headache and I am also running a fever.
My surgeon called me back a little while ago and put me on the same Prednisone and antibiotics combo that I was most recently taking for the next couple of weeks, and then said what we pretty much already figured out, that the sclera transplant was probably being rejected and that the entire orbital sphere--which is where these issues originally started--would probably have to be removed. That would leave two options. One is that the original sphere would be replaced by a much larger prosthetic, not the little bit of half-shell plastic which I have always had.
There is, however, a second option, and I want to say up front that my original reaction was that there was no way I was going to tell everyone this. I want my readers to know, however, that I am seriously committed to documenting the ins and outs of the prosthetic/cyborg lifestyle, even when it pains me to do so.
So the second option is that the surgeon takes some of the patient's own tissue and uses it for the orbital transplant. This tissue is typically taken from the patient's buttock. I'm a bit vague about the rest of the details because the surgeon was calling me from between surgeries and didn't have time to say more, but it does give one a lot to ponder.
And in case one craves more medical wizardry and tales of body parts scrambled interchangeably, here's a post about a blind man whose vision was restored using what I refer to as his "eye-tooth."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529946,00.html
Yes, indeed, I should have some really good material about disability and technology for those Arisia panels I am going to be on. I wonder if I can find someone to turn my old prosthetic eye into a steampunk keychain?
Tags: health, prosthetics
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10:26 am
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Tactile described tour of Arisia art show rescheduled for Sat. noon-1
Due to some schedule tweaking, the tactile and described tour of the Arisia art show has been rescheduled for that Saturday of the con, from noon to one. We'll meet at the art show and I will distribute cotton gloves to anyone who wishes to participate int he tactile aspect of the tour. A number of the artists are planning on being present to describe their work so I'm very excited.
Current Location: aerye
Tags: accessible art, arisia
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07:28 am
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Stevie Wonder pleads for game accessibility during Spike Awards
Kes: I'm not finding much on this story beyond the short description such as that made to The Lost Gamer
http://www.thelostgamer.com/2009/12/13/stevie-wonder-pleads-for-disabled-accessiblity/
in which the author scratches his ehad and mentions that hey, no one really thought about that before, but I am a bit boggled that seemingly no one thought it at all ironic that Stevie Wonder was asked to bestow an award for a game to which he has no access.
Sometimes righteous indignation fails you and you have to go straight to helpless giggling.
Also, I love Stevie Wonder.
Tags: accessible games
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12:25 pm
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Father Cthulhu has eyes everywhere
http://theanticraft.com/archive/samhain08/heseesyou.htm
Tags: dark arts, eyes
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10:50 am
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Kindle to have talking menus, larger fonts, more accessibility
Posted to the Daisy Talking Books mailing list
Amazon's Kindle to get audible menus, bigger font
By Jessica Mintz
Associated Press
Posted: 12/07/2009 01:55:11 PM PST
Updated: 12/07/2009 03:47:24 PM PST
SEATTLE <http://amazon.com>Amazon.com will add
two features to the Kindle e-book reader to make
the gadget more accessible to blind and vision-impaired users.
Monday's announcement comes a month after
Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., and the
University of Wisconsin-Madison said they would
not consider widely deploying the device as an
alternative to paper textbooks until Amazon makes
it easier for blind students to use. Both
universities bought some Kindles to test this fall.
The Kindle has a read-aloud feature that could be
a boon to blind students and those with other
disabilities including dyslexia, but turning it
on requires navigating through screens of text menus.
Amazon said Monday it is working on audible
menus, which would let the Kindle speak menu
options out loud. It's also working on an
extra-large font for people with impaired vision.
The additions should reach the Kindle next summer, Amazon said.
Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National
Federation of the Blind, said Monday that the
organization doesn't know enough about the new
features to say whether they adequately address
concerns of the blind community. But, he said,
it's a good sign Amazon is expressing commitment to improve the Kindle.
( continued below cut )
Tags: kindle access
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10:42 am
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New dual screen ereader device offers both e-paper and LCD
plus a bunch of other whizbang features which make me think of a science fiction film
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06novel.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
Tags: ebboks, ereaders
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03:38 pm
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Not getting a new prosthetic for Christmas
For the past couple of weeks I've caught myself occasionally singing "All I want for Christmas is my right eyeball" (yes, I *know* it doesn't scan, get over it) but, after spending yesterday at the Lahey Clinic, it seems that is not going to happen. The surgeon did not do that little procedure
(squicky details in this post http://kestrell.livejournal.com/541426.html ) but I am on antibiotics and the steroid Prednisone
Prednisone has some of these side effects (I was already experiencing the side effects before I looked them up and confirmed them):
• sleep problems (insomnia)
• dizziness or lightheadedness
• flushing of face or cheeks
• increased sweating
• sensation of spinning
The silver lining here is that I am not overly worried about
• problems with your vision .
I do feel like thinking is kind of hard though, so I'm really glad I finished most of my holiday shopping earlier this week so I won't be stressing about that (and perhaps Father Cthulhu will bring me some cool eyepatches for Christmas). Also, LJ user issendai was kind enough to give us a ride to the clinic, which made the day a lot less gloomy, and the weather! I spent most of the time outside just repeating, "Wow!" and I really felt like it was a small mercy considering the monsoon that was going on yesterday morning.
After the appointment, issendai and Alexx took me to Trader Joe's, my first time, and yes, I believe that baked goods are the world's best pick-me-up, along with people who will spend an hour describing all the goodies at Trader Joe's (thank you to the incredibly nice employee who works at Trader Joe's and seemed dedicated to trying to find me all sorts of delicacies to tempt me). Let me just say, prahlines are kestrell crack (but, although the Trader Joe variety is really good, I think real pralines still need to be made by someone who has lived in the South).
The non-silver lining aspect of yesterday's visit is that the eye issues are not going to be resolved before Arisia, and at my next appointment I will, at the very least, be having another in-office procedure, and possibly have to discuss more drastic measures, like whether my immune system is rejecting the sklera transplant http://kestrell.livejournal.com/515040.html .
Also, I'm less certain that I will be up for attending Arisia and won't have a clear idea until my appt. on Jan. 7.
Now I need to go eat something so I can take another pill.
Tags: health, prosthetics
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09:19 am
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Make your own scarey snow globes
Via the Art of Darkness blog, this how to on making your own horror-theme snow globes
http://naughtysecretaryclub.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-love-to-create-halloween-snow-globes.html
--I can definitely see a creepy arctic wasteland with giant (to scale) albino penguines, a la Lovecraft, or even a creepy snowman with a shiny knife and a Freddy Kruger pattern scarf, sort of "Calvin & Hobbes" meets "A Nightmare on Elm Street."
Tags: dark arts, horror
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09:27 am
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Arisia '10 Access: Physical assistants + accessible art show
1. People with disabilities attending Arisia who wish to bring a
physical assistant may request a ribbon which will allow the assistant
to go anywhere the attendee goes. If the physical assistant never
leaves the side of the person with the paid membership that they're
assisting, they can get a free "adult-in-tow" membership, otherwise if
they wish to occasionally explore the convention on their own, they
should get a paid membership
Note: An "adult-in-tow" option has been added to the online reg form.
2. The accessible art tour is scheduled for Saturday from 4-5 p.m. Arisia will be providing cotton gloves for anyone wishing to touch artwork which has been specifically designated by the artists. Artists are also welcome to be present to describe their work. We'll try to keep descriptions short so we can get to as much of the art show as possible.
Both of these announcements have also been posted to the Arisia '10 Access Services Web page http://2010.arisia.org/Access .
Tags: arisia access
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08:42 am
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Colonial Gothic
I had to read quite a bit before it became clear that this is an RPG and not some mad history professor's interpretatioin of the American Revolution; I would definitely have bought it if it was the second one, but I thought perhaps one of my friends would find this cool.
http://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Gothic-Rulebook-Richard-Iorio/dp/0979636108/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259847413&sr=1-17
Tags: horror
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01:48 pm
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Tactile books and an ebook reader for kids
First, this announcement from National Braille Press about a couple of holiday specials on tactile board books for little kids
http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/BB-MONKEY.html
which has me wondering why there aren't any such books for the gothling child, perhaps _10 Cranky Crows_? It could start something like "Ten cranky crows (that's sixty scratchy toes) took a walk on a cloudy day..." Already I like it better than cutesy chicks and monkeys.
Second, ScrollMotion is going to be releasing the Iceberg Reader for kids: this
Publishers Weekly article
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6708308.html?industryid=47139 .
says a lot more about the new format for the iPhone, but what I thought was notable was the ability for people to create audio recordings of readings. That and some of the other features could make this a nice format for readers with print disabilities, although the true accessibility of this format and other apps on the iPhone is still somewhat dubious.
Tags: accessible books, ebooks
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