Entries from November 2006

Wireless MIDI for the DS for homebrew DS software…

http://dsmidiwifi.tobw.net/

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.

Judge James Robertson, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, ordered the Treasury to devise a method to tell bills apart.

The judge wrote that the current configuration of paper money violates the Rehabilitation Act’s guarantee of “meaningful access.”

“It can no longer be successfully argued that a blind person has ‘meaningful access’ to currency if she cannot accurately identify paper money without assistance,” Robertson wrote in his ruling.

He further ruled that finding a solution to the problem would not be an “undue burden” on the government and ordered the Treasury Department to begin working on a solution within 30 days.

The American Council for the Blind has submitted several alternatives, including embossing, holes punched in the paper or using different-sized bills for different denominations.

The Treasury Department had no comment on the ruling.

Interesting looking book on text adventure and interactive fiction.

Library or Amazon.

Interactive fiction — the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure — has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages (the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction) is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it.

Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors (including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragons), and follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the 1990s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration.

Dakota Alert WPT-3000

We’re very pleased with it. No false alarms, no misses either. We no longer need a doorbell.

Installed 31 July 2006. Batteries appear to last about 9 months.

Replaced east side battery on 26 January 2007 because of battery defect.
Replaced both batteries on 7 May 2007. Alarm was still working but sounds twice for a single car when the battery is weak.
Replaced east side battery on 2 Feb 2008, was sounding twice.

Replaced with GE GXWH20F to get the mounting bracket on 10 January 2006
New cartridge on:

• 12 March 2006
• 08 June 2006 (too long, filter was failing)
• 13 August 2006 (no sign of failure)
• 22 October 2006
• 20 December 2006
• 3 March 2007
• 5 May 2007
• 15 July 2007 (much less silt than usual)
• 30 September 2007
• 22 December 2007
• 16 March 2008
• 6 June 2008
• 29 July 2008 (pressure switch failed, pump running continuously, probably stirred up extra silt)
• 13 December 2008
• March 2009
• 16 May 2009

This is my modification of the recipe found at Sourdough Home.

Makes 1 loaf.

• 1 cup walnut pieces toasted 7 minutes at 325 convection stir once
• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 9 ounces water
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yeast

Put 3/8 cup of the toasted walnuts into a food processor with 1 TBSP of whole wheat flour. Pulse the nuts and flour in the processor until they are finely ground.

Put all ingredients into mixer bowl with bread hook. Mix 1 minute on 1 and then 5 minutes on 2.

The dough was a bit sticky. Perhaps another tablespoon of flour?

Remove the dough from the mixer bowl, oil the bowl and return the dough. Allow to rise until double, about 40 minutes at 100 degrees.

Punch down, shape, put in a loaf pan. Allow to rise. Bake at 325 convection for 40 minutes.

A twist on a basic sourdough.

• 3/4 cup sourdough starter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1/3 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Modified from the Bread Machine Cookbook IV by Donna Rathmell German.

Bapin talked about not being able to students while they are wearing “FM” headsets. Why not run the audio through the computer using the microphone in?

What can we do to help adults (esp. seniors) learn Braille? Is there a game format that would motivate?

What kind of info-technology jobs could we imagine for the deaf-blind?

Why not Morse code?

Is it nuts to try to port LSR to windows?

How do we control the reading cursor one letter at a time?

How can we make giant magnification easier to use? Scanning? Automatic movement from letter to letter? Pack more information into the screen?

Is there a free-ware screen magnifier?

SSP = Sighted Support Person

While listening to Anindya Bhattacharyya (Bapin) at “The Magic of Technology for the Deaf-Blind Population” workshop in Raleigh today I starting thinking again about Morse code. Bapin was lamenting the high cost of Braille displays. The problem, as with most assistive technology, is low volume. You can buy a great laptop for less than $1k but a Braille display to go with it is going to cost several thousand. He told about students they train at Helen Keller National Center for the Deaf-Blind having to wait for years to get the equipment they need.

Why not Morse code for display?

• Even completely deaf individuals could hold a commodity earphone plugged in to the headphone jack on a laptop; the user should easily feel the headphone vibrate. The speakers on many laptops likely produce enough vibration to be felt as well.
• Software could display on-screen text as Morse code. I think it would be easy to extend the free Linux Screen reader or to adapt JAWS or Window Eyes to display Morse much like they do Braille.
• With a little software, many cell phones could be used for text messaging by displaying the text in Morse on the built-in vibrator. This would allow deaf-blind individuals to communicate using cheap commodity phones.
• Lots of PDAs could be similarly adapted.
• Morse is easy to learn.
• Morse is reasonably fast. Old-time radio operators commonly transcribed Morse at 70 words per minute.
• Older adults with poor sensitivity in their finger tips have great difficulty reading Braille, but could easily feel the vibrations of Morse.
• Using the common stereo sound card we could place the vibrations for dots and dashes in different places which might make them easier to distinguish for beginners.
• Using a refreshable Braille display requires moving one hand back and forth between the display and the keyboard. With a speaker/vibrator placed on the back of the hand or wrist you could type with both hands while reading.

Refreshable Braille displays might well be faster than Morse and better in other ways but Morse is FREE! Its mighty hard to beat that price performance.

Generac Guardian 15kW/H

Installed 31 October 2005.

• Changed oil, oil filter, air filter 11 November 2006. 19 hours on meter.
• Changed oil, oil filter, air filter, checked plugs, on 17 November 2007. 34 hours on meter after running 4 hours during an outage.
• Changed oil, oil filter, air filter on 15 November 2008. Need to check the plugs. 44 hours on the meter.

Oil filter is Fram PH4967
Air filter is Fram CA101 (not available in stores)
Plugs are RC12YC (2) gap 0.020 inch
Oil is 1.7 quarts of 5W-30 synthetic