Wishing everybody a peaceful Christmas and a happy new year!
Just in time for Christmas Talktalk eventualLy gave me my compensation for the
late installation of my Fibre services some 14 months after installation,
just the building repairs to cover now.
Trying to get my accounts details so I can setup a new VOIP phone and having
absolutely no luck. Tried calling on the phone, their voice system could not
answer a basic question; tried going into a chat session after logging
into my Talktalk account with the same results; now in a lengthy text message
game which is going round and round.
Add to this that I'm still waiting for them to pay for the damage to my drive and
brickwork that they did during the installation of my fibre service over a year
ago.
I really can nolonger recommend Talktalk as their support service is useless,
hours of talking, loads of text m,essagesand dodging the issues all the
way - hoping I'll not have to take legal action but it's looking that way more
and more.
Hands up! I have to confess that the upgrade to the image display routines
used on these pages is not going as smoothly as I would have hoped.
Thanks to various AI tools I've been updating and attempting to improve
the routines that display images on these pages, I've learnt a lot but also
been very fustrated - on the surface the tools are very good but the last
few finishing steps are not so clear - watch this space and I'll try and explain
more when I understand more!
To allow me to use my windows computers for a variety of tasks I use the following
two accessibility software packages backed up by a selection of main stream items:-
Accessibility:-
* NVDA 2025.3.2;
* BRLTTY 6.4.1 (6.8 works on Android but not on my Windows 11 machine yet, being researched);
and tend to use :-
* Brave 1.82.166;
* Firefox 146.0.1;
* Thunderbird 146.0 (64 bit);
* LibreOffice 2025.8.2.2;
The combined effect of these products is to offer a fast and effective
computer access suite for your Windows version 10 or 11 machines which is
all free of charge! although please do make donations to the products if you can
to keep the development of future releases possible.
Please note that version 6.7 of BRLTTY has been released in October 2024 but I'm
still unable to install it successfully on my Windows machines using an Alva
terminal running via serial and/or usb to serial adaptor port.
My Android devices are using:-
* Android 16.0 1ui 8.0;
* Talkback 16.0;
* brltty 6.8;
Please note photos may come and go over the next few days while I'm working
in this area...
Now the weather has turned for a few days I've come in from the garden railway
and done some further work on handling pictures on these pages.
The work has involved adjustments to HTML and javascript - along the way I've been
using Google Gemini to check and enhance my code - she gave me a right telling
off for some of the style of the old stuff!!
Anyway over the next month or so I'll try and add more pictures and provide
more details about each image hopefully making for more interest.
If you are still running windows 10 on your PC you may have noticed a message
popping up saying that patches for this operating system are ending on the
14 October 2025 - Dont Panic! it will keep working but there will be no further
updates to the operating system.
My thoughts here are that everybody should double check that their virus protection
is up to date, dont rely on the inbuilt microsoft security features.
Is it time to move to windows 11? quite possibly, although there is no absolute
rush it's probably time to start looking for a new machine that will support
more up to date working - two out of my three current machines are not updateable
and when I checked are close to ten years old.
Only startted using this update today so not much to say yet, the AI based
features are mentioned a lot and will take a while to see how well they work.
Lots of talking about how things look but I wonder how many supposed new
features will actually get used?
Watch this space for more as I get time to play properly.
Now two years since Kraken (my guide dog) and I last went out as a working
team and over a year since he lost his battle with cancer still no sign of a
new dog.
Am I angry that guide dogs and their staff have let so many of us down?
YES I BLOODY WELL AM!
When many talk about stress in their lives they want to spare a minute for
what guide dog owners are going through - in my case after 40 years of being
able to have considerable independance I'm stuck, for all you car drivers
reading this imagine how you would feel if someone took your keys away and said
no driving for two or more years through no fault of your own?
Well there is fault here, although not perfect (which organisation is?) guide dogs
for many years had provided a wonderful service and now they simply dont.
The organisation will use Covid as the cause of all their problems but it isn't.
The organisation started a steady decline several years ago with changes in training
techniques and management who were more interested in self advancement rather
than providing a working service stretching themselves and their operations
beyond the organisations objectives as defined and outlined in documents
held by the charity commition.
According to a Google gemini search this morning :-
In September 2025 the organisation employs around 1,600 staff backed up by
approximately 15,000 volunteers, the organisation has a published income of
£156 million for 2024.
So if we say there are approximately 3,200 working dogs + 1,000 waiting giving
a rough total of 4,200 - so £156 million divided by 4,200 give a figure
somewhere aroung £37,000 each per annum per dog!
Now £37,000 multiplied by the expected working life of each dog of 8 years gives a grand
total of £296,000! To me this figure suggests something dreadfully wrong
or corrupt with the organisation.
If this article sounds alarm bells with you please consider approaching your
MP or the charity commition directly.
Finally before taking any action do check my figures and be comfortable
that it's not just the ranting of a very angry, and yes, scared person who is
wondering how the rest of his life will map out.
Continuing to work on the gallery facilities on these pages, better display and
loads of information now increasingly available on each picture.
Click on a thumbnail to reveal a larger image along with details ofthe picture
taken from personal knowledge and AI image describing software.
Now click on the image on theat page to see a full screen version of the image!
You'll probably notice photos coming and going for a week or so while I work
behind the scenes.
We had my garden railway open to the public sunday 14 September, it was supposed
to be the complete weekend but the rain stopped us this time!
Still managed a little run round with a few people and topped up the charity
pot for the year to &poung1,760 which will be split between three animal welfare
charities:-
* The fox project;
* The barn owl trust;
* British hedgehog society;
A large project wwhich seems to be moving on nicely now, I've introduced
new code to display images and linked to that more details of the photos
themselves so now when you see an image you can click on it to see more
details of that image, clicking on the image in this detail page will bring up
a full screen version of the picture.
Lots more to do here but we are off the ground! Next to do is:-
* display several images on one line;
* see if I can automatically extract more useful bits from the exif data held
in the image file;
* Add more photos!;
Over the next few hours, days and weeks picturs may come and go while I start
to introduce some new features - normal service will resume shortly....
Hopefully!
The updates to the display of thumbnails and other pictures should ,ale tjomgs
a lot clearer and smoother - there's larger thumbnails with links to a full
description of the image and a further link to a full screen display of the
original image.
As I've been playing more with image describers I thought it would be a good idea
to visit all my photos and get them presented in the best way possible
with as much detail as is available so when you see an image on these
pages rather than seeing a large version of it when you click on the link
you now see a page with a much better description and a medium size version
of the image.
With that in mind I've started working through hundreds of images on this site
upgrading the thumb nails and adding a really detailed description combining
AI content and my personal knowledge of the image.
It's going to take ages to do them but I think it will be worth the effort,
it's certainly bringing back a lot of memories for me.
Try clicking on the link below for an example of what is coming and bare with
me as I work my way through all of them:-
Only of interest to those using the NVDA screen reader is this amazing
addon that uses AI to describe all sorts of images - it's quick and very powerful
offering a selection of AI engines to describe your images whether they be
an icon or a large .jpg file.
Been using it with the Google pro vision 2 engine for the last couple of weeks
and still amazed at the brilliant job it makes, could I say life changing?
do you know I think it might well be.
There is so much going on in this field with such products as Meta Ray-ban
smart glasses, the soon to be released Android XR system and various AI
tools the world is moving really fast.
I've added two pages giving more details on these products and what they can and
might well be able to do in the future:-
Using google pro vision 2 with the AI content describer addon you get this
description:-
Close-up view of a German Shepherd dog sitting on a windowsill, gazing
out of a window.
Here's a breakdown of the details:
•
The Dog: A German Shepherd, predominantly brown and black in color, is the
central focus. It's positioned sideways, its body mostly visible, and its paws
resting on the windowsill. Its expression appears pensive or watchful,
as if looking intently at something outside.
•
The Window: A white window frame surrounds a glass pane, which reveals
a glimpse of an exterior scene – what appears to be a brick building
and some greenery in the distance. The window is somewhat bright, indicating daylight
outside.
•
The Setting: The dog is positioned within a room, where part of a beige curtain
and a section of a darker wall or furniture are visible. A white radiator
is partially visible beneath the windowsill. The overall lighting suggests
an indoor setting with natural light from the window.
The image has a slightly dark and moody atmosphere, emphasizing the dog's
contemplative pose. The background is out of focus, directing all attention
towards the dog.
** end of generated description **
?? The image captures a German Shepherd mid-curiosity, standing on
its hind legs with front paws perched on a windowsill. It's indoors, with a
radiator below the window and a curtain partially drawn to the side. The dog
gazes intently outside—possibly watching for a returning friend or
surveying its domain - while the view reveals a brick wall and part of the
building’s exterior.
There’s a kind of quiet loyalty in the moment, isn’t there?
Like the dog’s watchful stance tells a story of connection and anticipation.
Do you know what might’ve caught its attention out there, Martin?
** end of description **
Note the slight differences such as 'sitting on the window cil' or 'front
paws on the window cil'
Impressed? I am!
My garden railway was open to the public again on the 5 & 6 July, There has
been a lot of work done over the previous couple of months to make the
railway look and work more smoothly plus some further landscaping activity
so well worth a visit!
This year we are raising funds for animal welfare charities and have already
got £1,540 in the pot!
We'll be doing it all again in mid september too.
For those of you with visual problems or just interested in technology
you might be interested in this new page which looks at using AI to describe
images or add audio description to videos.
It is amazing the details these applications reveal so worth a look and a play.
Today is international guide dog day round the world - a celebration of what
these dogs do for so many people and recognition of the hard work and dedication
of so many involved with their training.
Sadly in the UK things are not so good, fom a peak of 5,000 working partnerships
(dog and owner) to a current level of 3,200 and very long waiting lists
for replacement dogs, in many cases over 2 years..
What has gone wrong in the UK with what was once a superb organisation?
have they got too big for their boots? have they spread their wings to far?
Should they be looking at their new training techniques? should they be looking
at the quality of dog breeding?
Does anyone out there use an external Blu Ray player on their PC or Mac and
if so have you found any software that works along side screen reading
software?
So far I've tried several with no luck! Can play CD,s DVD's with VLC and
windoes media player but not Blu ray.
Looking further into VLC add ons and soem other packages so what thisspace
for mor details.
With all the talk of AI at the moment I thought it worth mentioning an app
called Seeing AI which assists people with limited vision. Taking a picture
on my phone of my living room with Seeing AI the app described in great
detail what was there from pictures on the wall, cabinets with china, what was on my
coffee table etc. all within a few seconds. Details even included the brand
of my girlfriends trained which she had on. It's going to take some playing
with to find the full extend of what it can do.
Had this annual fight to find the best price for home and contents insurance
for the next year. There's clearly a balance between quality of cover and
price but allowing for that the price difference was amazing and the cover not
that much different when it came down to it!
I was with Santander but their renewl quote was 20% up on the year so I started
looking round.
So many companies now want you to fill in online forms to get a quote which is
fine for some but I still prefer talking to someone who can make any points
you get stuck on hopefully clearer.
I eventually settled for £486 policy I was directed to via a broker
on the Coventry building society web site - the highest quote I found on this
lengthy journey was from the Nationwide building society which asked for a
staggering £1,022.
I cannot understand how any company can try to justify the huge difference
in premiums, in some cases they must be earning so much money I presume
they dont want any more business or maybe their customers are so stupid with
money they are happy to throw it away on over priced products.
After not hearing anything from guide dogs directly regarding a replacement
for Kraken since his retirement 16 months ago at the end of September 2023
I received a call out of the blue offering me a potential match.
Sadly after a discussion with the dogs trainer I felt that this one was not
for me, an extremely difficult decision to make as there can be no idea of
when another match may become available.
But I hope the dog I team up with will be my close companion for possibly
the next ten to twelve years so it has to be right.
Here we go with another year - fingers crossed it's a bit nicerthan the
last one!
Over the next few days I'll be working through these pages reviewing their
contents and checking for erros, please do let me know if you see a problem
or can think of anything useful I could try to add.
This is always a good time of year to check you are using the latest versions
of software and looking at the latest web sites so for example at the bottom
of all pages I produce you will see a copyright message including 2025
or later, if it doesn't try refreshing it by pressing F5 or Ctrl F5;
To check your browser is up to date pull up the help menu - there may well
be an option to check for updates or look under the 'About' option.
In the media today I noticed an article about the death of the barcode,
that little strip of lines and numbers which we see on all sorts of products
has reached the end of the line after 50 years and will be replaced with the
QR code which can hold much more information about the product.
What the article didn't go into is if these QR codes will have all the
facilities of the Navilens system which I first came across in early 2024,
basically it's a QR code but much more powerful and easier to find!
At the top of this article there is an example of a Navilens code which
has a link to my garden railway page in it - my smart phone will read it from
over 600mm away from the screen picking it out from text and other images.
Please do take a look at my Navilens page (link in the heading above) for more
details and updates.
Another busy year on The Blatchington branch, my garden railway. The usual range
of updates and repairs and two public running weekends.
Thanks to all that helped out over the year to keep the track going and working
on the locos. We managed to raise &1,720 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation (JDRF) as well as having a lot of fun in the process.
There's more details to on the railway pages along with an increasing amount
of photos which I'm slowly getting round to publishing.
Hope to see lots of you during 2025 when we hope to open the line so you
can enjoy a ride round and raise more funds for charity, keep an eye on the
railways web page for more details.
Also in the technology area I've added a page detailing my Fibre optics
installation story which has run somewhat less than smoothly.
It all started on the 22 July 2024 when I received an email from Talktalk
asking if I was intersted in having Fibre to the house, now at the end of
2024 there are a few things still to sort with Talktalk.
Considering that the roll out of fibre is supposed to be a national project
that should be completed by the end of 2027 the whole thing is an utter mess.
There seems to be no plans at all; cables being taken to individual houses in
a street rather than to all houses while the teams are in the area, installation
surveys ignored by installation teams, teams not completing work fully,
engineers arriving that are not equiped for the job and so on and on...
My system went live on 28 October and is working fine to a point but does
require the use of an access point to get total WiFi coverage all over the house.
Click on the link above to read more!
Came across the Jieshuo screen reader recently, also known as Commentary
screen reader, it offers similar facilities as Googles Talkback but appears to
be much more comprehensive - more of that as I get the chance to explore.
There are two versions, a free basic and a pay to use more advanced, the pay to use seems to be charged at£18 a year (28/11/24).
Was looking for an alternative to Talkback as I was encountering problems with
controlling sliders on an app I use, so far no luck with Jieshuo either.
Many will have tried and used the google assistant avvailable on many smart
phones and tablets but have you tried playing with Gemini and Gemini live
which are the updated assistant?
Gemini Live is a AI assistant that can do a wide range of tasks for you and
I suspecct is only going to get much better!
Ask it a question and the answer will be spoken to you in a very clear
voice within seconds, you can then ask it subsequent questions depending
on the first answer.
The answer given may not be what you think so challenge it.
For example I asked 'What do you know about Bazil William Last" (my great uncle)
the answer gave a birth date and a date of death etc. these did not match
what I know to be true so I said 'Are you sure?' the answer was then updated
to what I know to be true from death certificates.
Try asking 'Which stations are on the London underground between Victoria
andPaddington?' to get the list - first time it used a strange root and I
had to say 'Using the circle line' so not without it's faults but a great tool.
Do have a play with the system as it is a great tool which although not perfect
is going to only get better and will be very useful.
Gemini is available from the Google play store.
Today marks the one year anniversary of Kraken, my last guide dogs, retirement
and still no sign of a dog to take up the harness.
The guide dogs for the blind association are currently letting 1,200 guide dog
owners down by not having dogs redy to take up duties when our previous
dog retires.
Well time for me to start work on trying to repair this once wonderful
but now sadly damaged organisation before it reaches a point from which it
will never recover.
Please take a look at the following page and continue to watch here for more
progress.
or by scanning the QR code above. More about these new colourfulcodes
later!
It's been a dreadful day which we know will happen at some point but we all hope
will not happen for years. But I had to have Kraken, my fourth guide dog put down
earlier today when he lost his battle with stomach cancer. I cant put into words how
I feel right now, nearly 10 years of loyal companionship with a brilliant
dog who won the hearts of so many as well as being a superb guide
dog - Thankyou my loyal friend.
Just received my latest bill from GoDaddy who host these pages and provide
domain and email for me and think I'm on the move due to price.
So if this page vanishes for a few days don't be surprised! Back with updated details soon.
As many of you will know Kraken my guide dog retired at the end of last September
and is now enjoying a well deserved and relaxing time with me and an ever growing
collection of toys.
People keep asking how long it will likely be before I get another dog which
I'm sad to say will still be a good while. Latest Guide dog official figures
report in February 2024 that there are around 1,200 people waiting for a dog, a
rise of aprroximately 200 since Peter Osborne's, chief operations manager, May 2023 statement.
With 469 partnerships successfully trained in 2023 the maths don't look good
especially for those just joined the list.
Where has guide dogs gone wrong? we know that covid had an impact on so many
things but I feel/know that there is more to the problems with the guide
dog operation, have they diversified into too many areas of blind welfare and taken
their eye off the dog training target? are they not listening to staff
with years of knowledge such as Alan Brooks who is recognised internationally
for his work with guide dogs over many decades.
So much damage being done to so many people now, not only the dog owners
but their families, work colleagues and friends. I just hope the situation
can be recovered before it totally falls apart.
And what can be done? Listen to the hundreds of guide dog owners and GDBA staff who
are saying the new techniques are not working, remind senior managers and directors
that what they are controlling is not a business but an organisation that provides
a very valuable service without which thousands of people will have their lives
damaged or in some cases destroyed.
The names and figures mentioned above can be found via Google searches.
Although the weather did it's best last year to stop us playing trains on my
garden railway we did manage to open the line to the public on a couple of very
successful weekends when, with the help of my brilliant friends, we managed to
not only have a great few days with the trains but also raised £1,400 for
charity.
We're hoping this year we'll manage three public running weekends when we'll
be once again playing trains and raising funds for the Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation (JDRF) which was brought to my attention by one of my
brilliant team of helpers.
Before all that can happen there's lots of work to do on the line including
installing a new section of track which should make the journey round the house
a bit more interesting. We started this work last year but the weather
and supply of parts held us back.
I've been caught, hands up! Was looking for memory sticks to use as backup devices
and found a real bargain on Ebay - 2Tb for under £6 - too good to be true I hear
you say and you are righht it's a con.
Got the two sticks which work to an extent, they appear to work but when you try
to add large amounts of files they vanish as soon as you remove the stick from
the computer. They appear to format and handle correctly but they dont. The
device has been hacked, a smaller memory capacity being altered to show a
large capacity.
Researching this on the net further there are articles about this scam, large
memory sticks are available but at a much higher price.
I've reported this to Ebay. Lucky for me it was on a few quid, lesson learnt.
As many of you will know I have a railway round my house which requires
regular work on it to keep it up and running. To help me do this I have
a variety of tools to which I've added two more recently.
Sold by Machine Dro in the UK the spirit level and pretractor are produced
by wixy.com and are speech enabled via an app on your smart phone.
Gone are the days of a various pitch tone telling you the level now you get
a reading in degrees likewise with the pretractor as you move the arms apart
your are given the angle - a real bonus to these devices is that they are good and
designed for the sighted and still fully accessible.
I'll add links to these products and more details on a wixey page shortly, for
the time being if you'd like to find out more about the wr300bt spirit level
or the wr41bt pretractor visit the web site below:-
I found the staff very helpful and there's a phone sales desk if you prefer.
After 9 years of hard and magnificent team work Kraken, my guide dog, will hang up
his harness for the last time today and start a well deserved retirement
staying with me as a much loved and wanted pet.
So many fond memories of nearly 40 years out and about feeling safe and proud of
Bruce, Nelson, Trent and Krakan covering 100,000's of miles right across the
UK and sadly to say the fear of what is to come in an uncertain future.
Earlier in the year I undertook three very unpleasant and humiliating
interviews from guide dogs where my 40 years record with and experience of
working dogs was more or less totally ignored and threats were made that if I
did not agree with everything that guide dogs stipulated I would never get
another dog.
Questions like 'Why do I want a dog?' and 'Why dont you use a stick?' were
asked; as if I'd commit to many years for the fun of it!
Anyway I got through all this and am now on the waiting list but with around a two
year wait for a replacement guide dog from an organisation who I, like many other
guide dog owners, can nolonger be confident in leaves me feeling dreadful.
They seemed to have lost their way with new training techniques introduced
over the last few years also a massive widening of their scope of operation
into other spheres of sight loss welfare - try calling there contact number shown
on their website (0800 781 1444) and you findthat the first option on the main menu
is not for guide dogs! Chuck into the mix a woke agenda and? well probably
enough said for the time being.
I'm now setting out on my last walk with Kraken as a working guide dog with
a very heavy heart, teers in my eyes and thoughts of going out the first time
on my own with Bruce my first dog all those years ago - it's safe to say they've
have kept me sane - thanks boys.
This is going to be a dog week, a dog week I hear you ask? The weeks starts with
the anniversary with the 25 September being the birthday of my first guide dog
Bruce who I teamed up with in the mid 1980's and the 30 September being the
birthday and retirement day of my current working dog Kraken.
So many fond memories of years out and about with Bruce, Nelson, Trent and
Krakan covering 1,000's of miles right across the UK and sadly to say the fear of
what is to come in the future with around a two year waiting list for a replacement
guide dog from an organisation who I'm no longer totally confident in.
They seemed to have lost their way with new training techniques introduced
over the last few years also a massive widening of their scope of operation
into other spheres of sight loss welfare - try calling there contact number shown
on their website (0800 781 1444) and you findthat the first option on the main menu
is not for guide dogs - probably enough said for the time being.
Another two years gone by and time again to sort out a new mobile phone and
contract. This year sees me leaving EE and moving to Three, after more than
25 years with Orange and then EE they could not offer me anything close to
many other suppliers £83 from EE and £53 from Affordable mobiles and as far as
I can see an identical product. Do spend time searching for contracts,
you can save £100's over the contract term doing this but it will take some
time to work your way through the dozens of offerings from dozens ofproviders.
So anyway I'm now busy setting up my new Samsung galaxy S23 Ultra 256gb - so far so good!
A bit of a hitch trying to move my EE number to Three, the web site via my PC
was not accessible and I had a very difficult time sorting it out until I
found the Three disabled assistance phone number, after about 30 minutes on
the phone things were setup and hpefully running.
If you have accessibility issues with Three try calling their dedicated
accessibility help line on 0333 338 1012.
I'll add details to various pages and make comments here shortly.
One of those strange dates in life that makes you reflect on times gone by, the
2nd July would have been my mothers 100th birthday - how the world has changed
over those years from her living in a cottage in rural Suffok lit by oil
lamps to are mobile phone technology of today.
Had my first play with Chatty GPT that you'll have heard about on the news recently,
not too difficult to sign up to and yes impressive but as articles have
mentioned the results can be off the mark. For example I asked it about my
garden railway and it did tell me some things about it like there are bridges,
tunnels and landsape gardens (landscape is a little over the top) and then it mentioned
going through fields! I wish.
A new web site allows patients to get access to medical records, test results and
letters about their health care direct to them or does it?
I signed up for this service which sounded like a good idea but sadly, you guesed it'
it's not truely accessible! The first copy of a letter I received was a PDF containing
a graphic representation of a text docuemnt so for me to readd it
with a screen reader I had to:-
* download the pdf to my pc;
* find a web service that would perform OCR on the document;
* Download the resulting .txt file;
* And then read it!
Certainly not happy that I had to upload what might have been a very personal file
to an unknown third party for them to read it. Needless to say it was nothing that
intimate in this case.
I've contacted the web site and pointed out their legal duty to make material
accessible to all - we wati to see what they say.
I'll also make my local surgery and GP aware of the situation.
As a screen reader user on my PC and other digital devices I rely on synthetic voice
to provide feedback from these devices. Long gone are the scratchy robotic noises we
had we now get near human quality speech, think of the satnavc in cars or
the announcements on trains and buses.
For the main stream computer user these voices can be helpful too, having long documents
read to you or monitoring a process without having to keep an eye on a
screen can be very useful.
Over the last week or so I've been revisiting these 'Text to speech' (TTS) systems and
have added to several pages on this site - highlights to be added here shortly and
lots more to add as technology moves quickly.
While doing these various edits I've also found several pages that needed bringing
up to date so you should find things working a lot better now!
After watching several reviews on YouTube I finally decided to order a Geekom
it11 mini PC - so far not impressed, infact bloody cross, as they claimed
delivery within 2 to 3 business days within the UK when I placed the
order on 16 January; Now on 31 January it finally arrived.
There was no method of contacting the company during this time, emails got an
out of office message saying they were on holiday likewise with phone calls.
When I got an email saying it was on its way even the tracking link did not
work and pointed me to a link asking if I wanted to be an Amazon delivery
driver.
Needless to say my credit card was debited on the 16 January for the full
amount.
Not good for a world wide company so I ask myself:-
* Caution:- Have Geekom ceased trading?' or on the rocks?
* Is Geekom a one man band working from a 'shed' in China?
* What is their technical support and after sales service like?
Strongly recommend before placing an order with them do call to see that
there is actually someone in the office and that they are not on holiday again!
Several people have commented on the lack of quality of the thumbnail images
on the various picturs on these pages so I've had a look round and found a
utility that should help this situation although it will take a good while to
work through the hundreds of images here.
While I was thinking about this my friend Marc Tiltman came across a very
interesting site that colourises black and white images, it's free and
easy to use.
Below you will see two images, the original photograph was taken around 1890;
|I've used the thumbnail and colouriser tools to get these results:-
Coming soon!
To try to keep things tidy I've started a new page with photography links,
may not come to anything but it's interesting what can be done.
Only seems such a short time since Kraken bounced into my life to take over
from Trent my previous guide dog and now here we are starting to plan for
his retirement.
Before we go any further I'll be keeping him as a pet like I've done with my
other 3 dogs, I just could not part with them after such long and loyal
service.
I'll be documenting the journey on these pages as we progress through the
time till a replacement can be found. At the moment Guide dogs have a very
long waiting list which is put down to the effects of Covid but there is more
to it than that I feel, this looks like it's going to be a long, stressful and
hard journey.
Turned my Android smart phone on this morning to find it had gone mad! the
speech rate was so fast.... anyway after a struggle I found the following
voice command that helps:-
Start voice command
1. On your device, one-finger swipe right then up.
2. Listen for the confirmation sound.
3. Speak your command.
To slow the voice rate say:-
"Decrease speech rate"
There are many other Talkback voice commands that are listed on the link
below:-
We all know that you've got to look at several online shops and retailors to
find the best price but it was only recently I came across another thing to
look for.
When buying my new DVD player a few days ago I found that the price at the
same shop varied by £10 depending on the device I used to access the internet,
using a smart phone the price was £199 whilst on my windows desktop computer
the price was £189 - same item, same retailor but 5% difference on the price.
Will be double checking in a few days and then talking to trading standards.
A number of my friends recently have mentioned that they are increasingly being
worried by the effects of tinnitus and as such have been looking for ways to
ease the problem. One technique is to use a white noise generator, to cut
things short the Soundscape project that I'm working on might do the trick too.
So if you or one of your friends is effected by tinnitus why not point them
in the direction of the Soundscape project and see if it helps.
Below ar two links the first to the British tinnitus association and the second
to the Soundscape project:-
Is it just me or do people find it annoying and somewhat worrying when business
websites are not willing to clearly provide an address or phone number?
The lack of full contact details puts me off using such companies as I feel
that they don't trust their own product or abilities to provide a service. Also
if there are further details of a product you require a string of emails starts,
plus consider that not all web pages are accessible to some computer users
so this lack of contact could actually be a form of discrimination.
So if you feel the same let's stop using such businesses and where possible
drop them an email to let them know that they have lost your business in the
process.
Not that I'm much good at it but over the last few months I've been playing a
lot more with my guitars and added a couple of new ones too. None of them are
high value instruments but all play nicely and are fun! The latest to enter
the collection are a Revelation RTE54 which is a very close run thing to a
Fender Telecaster, a Vintage V100 which is similar to a Gibson Les Paul, a
Vintage v6 Stratocaster style and finally (for this year) a Vintage VSA500
which heads towards the design of a Gibson 335.
This week I lost a very good friend to cancer, Tom Cunliffe who I first met
when working in Hastings 30 years ago lost his battle with cancer last
week. Tom was always very supportive to me in many ways especially when it
came to music, a excellent guitarist and mandolin player he gave me the push
I needed to keep playing and to try new things.
In the YouTube link above you can see him performing one of his own songs which
is, in my mind, brilliant and is part of a lovely legacy - please do give it a
listen and also please do search for his many other musical clips on YouTube.
There are now several text to speech services that you can plug into your web
site to get them 'talking' to you but so far few sites take advantage of this
facility.
I've recently been playing with such systems to get the Tannoy working on my
soundscape project and as a result of this work have added some new features to
the feedback form on the contact details page listed in the contents section above.
Now if you miss a field in the feedback form and try and submit it you will be
told which field is missing or if there is a problem with the email address,
please try it and let me know if it is useful or annoying! I certainly think
that the technique would be very useful on large forms where it can be quite
tricky to spot where you've gone wrong.
Went to my good friend Mike gold's 50th a few days ago & Jan managed to catch
this picture of St. Paul's church Chigwell - hope you like it.
Thanks to John Squire I was lucky enough to get a trip to the Lynton &
Barnstaple railway in his 1931 Rolls Royce to attend the lines gala weekend at
the end of September. Pictured above is the car with Sid, one of the locos
that was in steam for the weekend - a boys dream too, I had the chance to drive
the loco for a couple of minutes! Many thanks to Tony Nicholson for the copy
of the picture - my camera decided to play up at the vital moment!
Just to show the world my mum was not the only person with green fingers in
this family, mind you it does help that it is the sort of plant you can
forget for up to a month without the bloody thing dying on you!
There are several reasons for why I started to build these pages, firstly it
gives me some practical purpose to play with HTML & Javascript, secondly it
will eventually, hopefully, provide examples of both attractive and accessible
web page design which can be used as an outline reference for others involved
in web page creation - who knows, the contents might even be useful!
This site is constantly being tested with a variety of screen readers & access
devices running on Windows 11 and 10 machines including:-
* NVDA 2025.3 with Acapela, Espeak, Vocalizer and BRLTTY 6.4.1 (6.5 still not working
for me))
* Various Alva Braille terminals, mainly Alva satelite 584 pro,
* Mozilla Firefox 146.0.1 (64 bit), Brave 1.82.166, Google Chrome 138.0.7204,
Opera, Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi,
* Firefox on Samsung galaxy S23 ultra running Android 16.0 (Accessibility suite
version ?.?) and BRLTTY 6.5;
I'm no longer testing with:-
* Jaws screen reader due to lack of Braille support on 64 bit systems and
price;
* Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.0 or 8.1. Windows 8.1 and beyond should not have any
problems. NVDA users must now be using windows 8.1 or later for full
support.
The upshot of all this testing is that these pages should be fully accessible
by the blind & many of those using speech recognition systems.
I will be adding more detailed notes on design considerations with examples
of small HTML changes that will make all the difference to disabled
users being able to access your web pages easily.
The contents of these pages are always changing so please do visit frequently
to find updates.
If you have noticed any bugs on these pages or have found a broken link please
do let me know via the feedback form which can be found along with my contact
details.
I'm always looking for bits to add so let me have links I should include
especially if they use fancy HTML that is still accessible.
Just a small bit of legal stuff here, although most of the material contained
in these pages is largely in the public domain please do contact me before
using any text, photos or videos to double check that they are free to use.