Ice Cream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

Ice cream! Memories of warm spring Sunday afternoons and hot summer days come flooding back. I recall the smell of the rock salt as it was layered between ice and the noise the hand cranked ice cream freezer made while we took turns seeing who could work the handle longest. I remember a peach ice cream made with fresh Ruston peaches that turned hard as rocks when the ice cream froze. (I later read somewhere, you should soak the peach slices in a sugar water solution so they don't freez as hard.)

I loved a great-aunt's banana ice cream. She cooked a mixture of milk, Pet milk, beaten eggs (or was that egg yolks only?) with sugar and vanilla to make a custard or pap as she called it. This was then placed along with banana slices into the cylindrical container that belonged to her electric freezer. I used to sit and listen to the sounds the machine made--secretly hoping that the sounds would change. This meant the rotating container had encountered an obstacle and my great-aunt would have to come and dislodge the ice chunk blessing it with a bit of choice Cajun reparte. Often after the ice cream was made, it was scooped out, put into a Tupperware container and put in the freezer compartment of the fridge. That made it so hard!

Now I love exotic ice cream flavors. I have had blackberry, apple pie, pumpkin, green tea, Thai tea, mango sorbet, and hope to try a new sherbet produced by Schwann that is called pina colata. I hope it is as good as there sherbet that combines tangerine with punch flavors. Now if only I could taste that ice cream I read about once in an up-market food zine: Bourbon flavored ice cream with candied Sichuan peppercorns. Or that ice cream produced by The Stinking Rose restaurant in San Fran--they use garlic in everything! Tres formidable.

Captchas and the blind

From the Captchas campaign:

Ways to contact Google:

1. Send feedback to blogger support:

http://www.blogger.com/problem.g?skiplogin=yes

2. Send feedback to Google Accounts support (signing up for an account requires passing the captcha test):

accounts-support@google.com

3. Send feedback to Google labs about My Search History, the latest (and highly-publicized) Google tool that requires a Google Account):

labs+hist-feedback@google.com

4. Write, call, fax Google Headquarters:

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043

phone: 650-623-4000, fax: 650-618-1499

Hotspur: A book review

Rita Mae Brown returns to the Jefferson Hunt Club and its master, Jane Arnold, in this mystery. The world of fox hunting is revealed through the eyes of the members of the hunt club and the animals themselves. I liked the interactions between a black fox, Inky, and a hound, Diana. The animals comment on the strange behavior of the humans in their midst. An interesting read by an author who can be a little out there and rather different.

RSA: Part II

The Blind, the RSA, and the Bush Administration: Part I

The RSA head announced her resignation effective March 1, 2005, to protest prospective changes that the Bush Administration wishes to make to the system of rehabilitation which she feels will be detrimental to the blind. I have often wondered if privatization, tried in other areas of the public sector, would be of any use to getting the blind of working age out of their slough of unemployment.

High-tech gizmos vs. the blind: The problems and a group to help address them

An Associated Press story discusses the difficulties that blind people are having with high-tech gadgetry.

In separate news, the Open Source Access Technology (OSAT) Project has been started to lower the cost of accessible tech for the blind, and I'll provide email-list instructions at the end of this note. The group even plans an open source screen reader for Microsoft's Longhorn operating system.

But back to the AP story. Here's the lead:

The Blind Struggle As Gadgets Proliferate
Sat Apr 23, 8:38 PM ET

By VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Writer

As technology has evolved, it's become lighter, smaller and more portable. For most people, that makes it more convenient. For millions of blind and vision-impaired people, it's anything but.

Jay Leventhal, who is blind, still fumbles with the tiny controls on his iPod but has given up on the kiosk in his New York office building that lists all the tenants.

For Leventhal, even laundry has become a task requiring the help of a sighted person. The washers he uses now take smart cards instead of quarters, issuing instructions on a digital screen that he can't read.

"The biggest barrier for blind people is access to information, and more and more information is being made available through different machines that aren't designed for people who can't see," says Leventhal, editor in chief of AccessWorld: Technology and People with Visual Impairments.

Blind people need a way to communicate with the machines that surround them, he says, from automated tellers to ticketing machines at train stations and airports.

Meanwhile the Open Source Access Technology Project has been started and I'll reproduce information below, including an email list address at the end of this post. Sorry--I don't have a Web address handy right now.

Today marks the public launch of the Open Source Access Technology (OSAT) Project, a project that aims to advance access technology research, and ownership by those who are currently unable to financially afford the benefits access technology brings.

What is the OSAT Project?

The OSAT Project is a group of people who believe in advancing the state of the art in access technology for people with a disability, and delivering access technology to those who would not otherwise be able to afford it.

We're a group of former members of the access technology industry, members of the software industry, academic researchers working in the fields of accessibility and human computer interaction, as well as the most important group, the end users of access technology. Membership is free and is open to all.

What are the aims of the OSAT Project?

The project has two core principles: to deliver access technology to those who may not otherwise be able to afford it, and to increase the pace of access technology research and development, and it's transfer to the products used by people with disabilities. These two principles are fundamental in guiding the activities of the OSAT Project.

At the time of writing, access technologies remain relatively expensive to the income received by the majority of people with disabilities. This is true for the developed world, where people with disabilities commonly receive a low income relative to other groups of society, and the developing world, where people with disabilities often receive little or no income. This places access technologies, which could vastly improve the abilities of people with disabilities, beyond the reach of the majority of intended worldwide consumers. To try and address this issue, and in doing so increase the available range of abilities for people with disabilities, the OSAT Project aims to deliver at least it's core products for little or no cost to the consumer. It is hoped that by increasing the availability of access technologies, that more people will gain a greater ability to participate in the aspects of society from which they are currently excluded or where they face overwhelming difficulties in participation.

The abilities access technologies afford their users are largely driven by progress in research and development, spanning both industry and academia.

In view of this, the OSAT Project will seek to implement cutting edge research into it's products from research centres around the world, where it is both practical and complimentary to the product to do so. Additionally the OSAT Project will seek to undertake it's own research where opportunity arises, in order to actively advance the state of the art in access technology techniques and practices. One key aspect to the research undertaken by the OSAT Project will be sharing of it's findings with the access technology research community and commercial access technology vendors, in order to ensure the widest possible spectrum of users benefit from the results.

Is the project a profit making venture?

No. Any funds received by the project will be used to cover the costs incurred by the project, either in it's running and administration, or in procuring third party components such as text to speech (TTS) synthesisers.

Any surplus funds will be invested into the project, allowing it to further meet its goals.

Is the project in competition with the commercial vendors?

No. It is not the intention of the OSAT Project to compete with commercial access technology vendors, but to provide a supplementary and complimentary service. As a community project the OSAT Project is without the fiscal requirements found within the commercial access technology industry, and therefore can undertake activities that are not viable options for commercial vendors. However, the commercial vendors, through their network of distributors, trainers and technical support staff provide services that community based projects cannot provide. Therefore the two groups are seen as complimentary to each other. To further promote this complimentary nature, the OSAT Project is willing to licence it's output to the commercial access technology industry for a nominal fee, relative to the output the vendor wishes to licence, and all proceeds from this licensing scheme will be used to offset any costs incurred by the OSAT Project in undertaking its work.

What will the first software project be that the OSAT Project will undertake?

Presently, the first piece of software that the project plans to build is an open source screen reader for Windows 'Longhorn', which is planned to be released by Microsoft Corporation next year, according to published press releases. Windows 'Longhorn' affords the opportunities for some cutting edge research to be done into the accessibility of computer interfaces and computer based documents for the blind. At present the plan is to investigate an interface for a screen reader based on speech, Braille and non-speech audio, and for this interface to allow the user to operate a GUI based interface in much the same way as a sighted user would. Another exciting prospect is semantic based trnsformation of images into textual descriptions, something made possible through Longhorn's use of vectors to draw its images.

Can you get involved in the project?

Yes, the project is open to all, not just those with expertise in software development, human computer interaction, or another technical skill.

Input from end users on the problems they face, what problems are important to them, and what the project should be doing to try and address these is important to the OSAT Project. In view of this, anyone can participate regardless of their background or expertise in a technical area.

How do I get more information?

The project has set up an email list to discuss the direction the project should be heading in, what sort of things should be in the screen reader for Windows 'Longhorn', etc. You can sign up to this email forum by sending an email to:

ossrp-control-request@freelists.org

and including "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the subject field of the email.

As we start to gear up for development we'll be recruiting for the more technical areas, but everyone is welcome to join the project right now.

Update: Here's an archive page for the email list. Looks promising. The word from Will Pearson, involved with the project, is that "the original five people, myself included, who originally came up with this project are all screen reader users..."

Pope Benedict XVI

Have you ever wondered what the sonorous Latin phrases uttered when a new Pope is announced mean? I did. But on Tuesday, I caught an NPR broadcast that explained this. I have included a portion of it for your reference. I was told by a Classics professor, William Clark, at LSU, when I was there in the 1980s, that Latin during the Roman Republic and even Empire was not spoken as slowly and formally as the Church does today. Clark told me that Cicero had to have spoken with a rapidity and fluidity indicative of modern Italian. We know this because we know how long one certain of his speeches took to deliver. Most interesting.

The Kennedy Curse: Book review

Few families have had such a place in the American imagination as the Kennedies. The Camelot fantasy, the grieving widow Jackie, and the death of the crown prince, JFK, Jr., at such a young age have only served to fuel the idea that they are American royalty.

I once brushed past a Kennedy. It was not in Lafayette, the home port of Ted's wife, Victoria, but rather in a New York City deli, Eats, on the upper East Side. A friend and I were traveling in NYC, and we were eating at this interesting deli, and JFK's sister came in with her two girls who had Jell-o and cake. It was the Wednesday before Mother's Day of 1997, and Caroline gave my friend a drop-dead look. Interesting. I think Caroline should consider doing a dual biography of her famous mother and her almost-as-famous aunt, Lee. I'll hope.

Making Robert Bennett's GPS sci-fi mystery come true

David Faucheux interviewed Robert Bennett recently about his sci-fi mystery with a blind hero who gets around via GPS. Could Real Life imitate the novel's plot? Read up on an interesting Irish project to enhance blind people's enjoyment of the Net--and investigate the use of tech for navigation through shopping malls and other areas, even when GPS isn't available. (Thanks, Alev.)

Blind could benefit from free service that instantly speeds up the Web

Have sight problems and use a speech synthesizer? Live in a place with slow Internet service? Own an underpowered PDA with a poky browser? Or are you just tired of piggyish Web sites that take forever to pop up on your machine? Loband speeds up your Web experience by stripping out wasteful graphics and other trimmings. I tried it on TeleRead's main page and the TeleRead blog. Worked great! And, yes, I know--certain parts of the TeleRead site could load faster.

More on help for the disabled: I've added TeleRead-specific Loband links on a blind- and VI-related page--to make it easier for blind people to use their speech synthesizers with the TeleRead site, which is about e-books and related topics. Thanks to Aidworld for the terrific Loband service. I just hope that the Loband servers are up to the demand.

(Found via Slashdot.)

National Braille Press

Blind Chance is vanishing--but we'll be back

We're Carolina-bound--virtually, that is. We'll be leaving 1and1.com and moving to the ibiblio servers at the University of North Carolina. Both Blind Chance and the main TeleRead site will vanish during the transition, which could take a few days. Questions? Email me at davidrothman@pobox.com. - David Rothman for himself and David Faucheux

The Presidential IPod: Are You Your IPod? (With samples of my favorites)

Rap: Part II

Rap music and the functions of art: Part I

The Victorian Internet: Book review

Trans-Atlantic Cable: Linking two continents in the mid 19th-century was a major conquest of time. It shrunk the distance between Europe and American from weeks to mere minutes. In The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage discusses the rapid changes made by the development of the telegraph

Another Blogger in the Family

My younger brother, Coldbrew, has decided to give blogging a go. Visit the link below

http://coldbrew71.blogspot.com/

By David Faucheux

Telephones and the blind

Sample voice mail message

If I Live to Be a Hundred

The very old fascinate. Their astounding longevity amazes and makes us think what it might be like to live another 50 or 60 years or yet even longer. Personally, I can't imagine life 60 years from now. Will blindness be cured? Will blind people have it better or not? Will technology make things better for all of us? Will slavery be ended everywhere? Will nano-technology be commonplace? Will the U.S. still be the world's most powerful nation? What about China? Will alternative medicine be so alternative? Will we have a trillionaire? Will the asteroids be mined for iron or platinum?

Escape from Slavery: A book review

Think slavery ended in the late 19th century or early 20th? Read on. Unbelievably, sadly, it's alive and well in Sudan and some other countries.

Related: www.IAbolish.com

David on young adult lit: Part II

"The Poetry of U.S. Presidents" (April 12) and David Faucheux's look at young adult literature (April 13) are among the chatcasts from OPAL this month. Plus, you'll get Tom Peters' recap (April 15) of the OeBF conference on e-books in education.

Diabetes book reviewed

Robert Bennett's sci-fi novel with a blind hero

Robert Bennett's Web site

A Pontiff passes: Reflections by an American Catholic

His Holiness departed this world on Saturday, April 2, 2005 ending one of the longest pontificates in the 2,000 year history of the Roman Catholic Church. I wonder what the next 25 years will bring: women allowed to become deacons (Phoebe, a deacon, is mentioned in the New Testament and the Byzantine Rite has them) or allowing priests to marry (perhaps, parish priests may be allowed to marry provided they do so prior to ordination and do not remarry if their wife dies and maybe orders priests such as Jesuits could decide the matter for themselves). One never knows where the world will be in a quarter century.

Copyright vs. parody

Stolen time

Wings of Madness: Part II

Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight: A book review, Part I

Details from Amazon.