Gotta say, I appreciate PayPal. Getting an email both when Walmart debits the initial charge for grocery delivery as well as when they inevitably refund me for items which the store doesn't have adds a certain piece of mind that all is as it should be. It's perhaps superficial, but still greatly appreciated nevertheless.
In future, I will never, ever, ever, ever again by anything from Western Digital or any of its subsidiaries/brands. Just had a year-old top-of-the-line NVMe SSD die for no good reason. Honestly, I have no idea how much data I’ve lost. In future, I will also be much more militant about taking off-line backups.
@menelion@NoahCarver I also worry that we're too dependent on storage media we cannot access without an Internet connection, but there's only so much I can do about that using just my phone.
@lynnskyi@NoahCarver You can buy an external hard drive and use a USB connection to your phone. However, iPhone being a super closed environment, it's a pain in the back to copy anything from and to it.
whenever using sirens and lights, emergency vehicles (ambulances, fire apparatuses, etc.) ALWAYS have the right-of-way. Be hypervigilant when crossing streets. PAY ATTENTION! Do NOT cross when sirens are barreling towards you. They likely cannot stop/swerve in time to avoid hitting you. Do NOT be the person who learns this fact the hard way.
PS: I am physically fine. Deeply shaken, but am not hurt. I have no idea how, but I somehow tuned out the siren coming at me until someone yelled for me to stop crossing. Had I not heard the person yelling, I likely would have been hit and at the verry least seriously injured. In other words, I made a serious mistake that could have killed me. I still don't know how I did it. I am posting this in the hope that this does not happen to someone else. Please, learn from my mistake.
@NoahCarver@podcast I've seen other blind people have similar experiences. I think it has something to do with the fact they don't always know which way the vehicle is coming or the sense to cross overrides the noise of the emergency vehicle. My rule of thumb is if I hear an emergency vehicle I stay put until I can identify it's gone or going the other way.
@andrew@NoahCarver@podcast Yup, me too. I've had to wait like 2 extra minutes when crossing because of this before, even when I wouldn't have been in danger, but it's worth it.
IF there was just one thing which I could tell my younger self, it would be read more #Braille and get your reading speed up. #Blind Braille learners, practice makes better. Don't put it off. Read with both hands, and get that speed up. You will thank yourself later.
@miki@BrailleScreen@TheQuinbox@NoahCarver No. So, most people interpret braille with one hand. But the old braille reading technique I was taught was to also have a guiding hand as well. So, I read braille with my left hand. My guiding hand is my right. Now, it sounds silly when a sighted teacher is saying to you, use your guiding hand. At least, it did to me as a child. But, here's the thing. Your guiding hand reenforces what your reading hand is reading so you can read faster. So, if I read with just my left hand, I'm really getting what I'm reading. But, I'm reading more slowly. Add my right hand in and my reading speed increases dramatically. So, it depends on what my goal is when reading. If I'm aiming for efficiency, I use both hands. If I'm looking for a slow stroll kind of reading experience, I use only one hand. Does that make sense y'all?
@singingnala@miki@BrailleScreen@NoahCarver Yup, and it's the exact same thing I do. I read with my left hand, and use my right as my guiding hand. When I broke my left hand though I very quickly learned that actually reading with just my right hand alone is impossibly slow, the braille actually feels backwards!
It has taken me 4 or so hours of studying to rid myself of the notion that the German word for towel, "das Handtuch," is neuter (das) rather than masculin...
@ppatel@TheQuinbox Fantastic news. How is table support in Libre Office Writer? When I used it as primary word processer during Freshman year of high school (before I discovered that my school offered free Office) it was not exposing table headers to NVDA. That was a huge problem at the time and one of the many reasons why I dumped it in favor of Office, though I don't remember the other reasons at the moment as it's been so long. Wish I had kept a journal back then... ah well.
Woke up this morning and called congressman Mike Johnson as well as my own senator Susan collins regarding the border deal and how it’s killing will have disastrous consequences for America and the western world. If y’all have a few free minutes, it might be worth it to do the same.
Every time I pull out my BrailleNote Touch Plus, I'm reminded of how pitifully stagnated blindness-related products are compared to mainstream systems. Turns out I can no longer install Box because HumanWare has backed themselves into a corner and will not be updating past Android 8.1. This would not be a big deal... except for the fact that it's the only #Braille display I have at the moment, and literally every BRF file I need at Eastman is stored in Box. Way to keep up with the times, guys. /s
@NoahCarver@mastoblind@main Wait, it doesn't support XFAT? Why not? Android 4.4+ supports XFAT. I guess they block them at an OEM level, but that still begs the question, why? KeyWord and such should never have to directly interface with those drivers. The more and more time that goes on, the more tempted I am to attempt to flash a custom rom on mine.
@TheQuinbox@mastoblind@main Unfortunately, I do not have the answers. All I know is that I cannot plug-in an exfat drive. When I plug it in, I’m prompted to format it as fat 32.
I'm consistently sending emails containing lengthy lists of my free time for meeting scheduling purposes, and creating said lists drives me irrationally batty. Someone has to have created software which will connect to my personal and work/school Google Calendars, extrapolate times when I have nothing scheduled, and present those blocks of free time in a reasonable format, yet I have searched the Web and came up empty. If such software does indeed exist, I would love to know about it. Any help is greatly appreciated.
PS: Please feel free to boost for reach.
PPS: If you know of hashtags/groups where I can post this, please let me know so I can add them.
Having a negative opinion of AI is perfectly fine, but if you use that opinion as justification to call disabled designers, engineers, testers, etc. of image description tools based off of AI that they are ableist, I will set you straight extremely quickly. Folks'' ignorance and willingness to talk to disabled people as if we're deeply naive fools who need saving from the big bad AI machine that's taking advantage of us when our community was deeply involved in creating said AI machine has to be the height of entitlement, hubris, ignorance, and assumption.
#BlindMasto / #BlindMastodon / #BlindFedi / @mastoblind peeps, if you're going to write multiple sequential replies to a post (i.e. write a reply thread), please reply to your own reply so that it actually threads and others can read both of your replies.