A most rewarding evening

Last night, I was the guest speaker on a show called Tuesday Topics which is heard on ACB Radio. Paul Edwards did his customary excellent job as host. It was a terrific opportunity to spread the word about Personal Power. I had gone in expecting all that and wasn't disappointed in the least. What I didn't expect was to have a living example of the effectiveness of my guide appear on the show. He wanted to thank me for giving him hope and purpose in life again. He showed a good deal more courage and determination than many novices. Not only was it his first venture into an online chat room. He also hung in there when a technical difficulty presented itself. I was absolutely blown away by his words. A woman in the audience had just asked whether I had any incidents where my guide had helped older people. I had no idea that such a definitive answer was going to present himself. I hope that people in charge of funding for access technology will hear Bill Morgan's words and think twice before dismissing what falls outside education and employment related skills. There's so much untapped potential beyond those things that goes to waste in people like Bill who aren't lucky enough to find similar resources. There isn't much that can eclipse such a powerful sense of the good one's work has achieved. However, complementing that praise for my efforts, I learned from the show host Paul Edwards that my guide is now required reading in a college course concerning access technology. I never would have expected that to happen. Not in a million years.

Earlier this morning, I looked up an article Bill wrote about himself. It's in the November 2006 issue of the Braille Monitor at:
www.nfb.org
This gentleman has lived quite an eventful life and come a long way. As a young boy, he would help guide his blind mother around to beg on street corners with what little sight he had before it was lost. He eventually overcame alcoholism, became a business man, and ended up meeting President Reagan in the white house. And he thanked me for inspiring him?

Knowing at such a fundamental level that my efforts have well and truly hit their mark is a tremendous reward and inspiration to me as I embark on my next project. It's been quite a while since I've had such a powerful and unexpected moment of triumph. That kind of vindication is absolutely beyond price. For once in my life, I had a lover, friend and partner present for that moment of personal success. My parents have been there for most of my achievements. However, close friends haven't typically been there to share such moments with me. I didn't exchange a word with any of my fellow students during or after graduating. We all just went our separate ways. My ex-wife wouldn't have understood why I put so much effort into the project and probably would have chalked last night up to another ego-boosting experience I didn't need or deserve. It meant a great deal to me that Janene took the time to attend. She actually understands and respects what makes me tick. That makes a more profound difference than I can express in words other than two. True love. I'm a very fortunate man in many ways.

I've been shot!

Hello everyone. I bet that entry title got your attention. Fear not, Reader. I've just gotten back from a dentist appointment and getting my flu shot for this year. It was one of the most painless needles I believe I've ever had. Dentist appointments are never all that comfortable with all that scraping and poking at one's mouth going on. However, My dental higenist and dentist are quite nice and engaging people. I'm not usually bored while it's all going on. Besides, I'm now safe until April. yay!

Things have been going very well these days. Lately, I've been once again contacting people and organisations regarding my computer guide. I just hope I haven't accidentally contacted anybody more than once about it. I don't believe I have. It looks like I'm going to be on Tuesday Topics next week on ACB Radio. That will probably result in even more email activity. I very much appreciate receiving emails particularly from people who have found my guide to be helpful. When you're working on as large projects as I am, you've got to guard against Ivory Tower sindrome. My social life has certainly been given a very nice boost ever since Janene and I found each other. It's not such a severe danger as it once was. Still, I've got to keep my guard up against it. Particularly with the accessible game, it would do major damage were I to let that isolated stuffiness creap back in. I'm actually hopeful of finding something to counterbalance all that creative writing with. A couple of the organisations I contacted this week about the guide may yield completely different benefits. I ought to know in a few days or so.

It's damned good to be fully healthy and back in territory like this again. With the holidays getting closer and my Christmas shopping basically done, there's that terrific sense of new possibilities in the air. Thanks to a very generous man, I'm also soon going to be in posession of a Trekker Breeze. Just a couple of weeks ago, I never dreamed I'd even have a chance to look at any of these GPS devices let alone own one. I don't have any illusions that it will completely solve my mobility troubles. However, it'll increase my confidence so that I can explore a little without worrying so much about getting lost. This Spring may turn out to be somewhat more active for me than prior ones.

Janene and I are doing well. We'll be going over to see two new friends this Sunday. Hopefully, Ron will also be able to join us. He's been going through some pretty painful stuff lately. He and Sylve have officially separated. Ron's going to remain a good friend of mine for life but I don't think I'll ever hear another peep from Sylve again. She's gotten so volatile that it's probably just as well.

It looks like the release candidate for Topspeed 2.1 is getting more popular these days. Perhaps, I'll be able to join in a few races if somebody sets up a server at a good time for me. I'm not the expert I once was at the game. When you turn, the car slows down so you lose more speed for a sharper turn. I'm still getting used to not whipping around those corners at full speed. It adds a lot more strategy to things.

Later tonight, there's a nifty documentary on CBC called Web Warriors. It's all about the battle between spammers and hackers and those who try to protect us from them. I've been looking forward to this all week. It starts at 9 o'clock.

Well folks, I guess that pretty much gets everyone up to date. The next while could get pretty interesting with all this going on. Keep well, everyone.

bumps in the road

Hello everyone. This is the first writing I've done in days not counting the odd email. I'm just recovering from an illness which struck just after my birthday. Before my birthday, I went to a presentation where a group of forty interested blind people and some mobility instructors had an opportunity to try out four of the GPS devices made for blind people. The woman who I've been teaching learned about it and thought I would find it interesting to go. Yet another reason to be glad I took the time to write the guide. The day wasn't exactly made to order for such a presentation which necessitated outdoor travel. The wind made it hard to hear what was broadcast to the fm transmitter we each carried. Wearing an earpiece in order to hear what we could also effectively robbed us of half our hearing so I was glad someone sighted was there to act as sighted guide. Trying to keep up with a group navigating with one ear only in an unfamiliar environment just isn't very smart. Still, despite all this, I was able to get a good first impression of the kind of information each of the alternative devices would present one with while in use. Ironically, the only one of the devices which truly impressed me was the Trekker Breeze, the cheepest option available unless you already needed or owned a cell phone and special screen reader for it. That was the real problem with most of the other options. They were either too bulky, costly, or required you to get a ton of extras when all you truly wanted was something to help you get around. I don't yet see much use in my getting a cell phone. Even if that changes, the only thing I want it to be able to do is act as a damned portable phone. The only time I want to pay for it is on the exceedingly rare occasion that I choose to use it. If you go the cell phone route with this talking GPS stuff, you then also need to pay for internet connectivity. The Trekker Breeze can't do everything that more expensive solutions can. You can't browse different cities with it or anything like that. It's for right around wherever you happen to be. As you travel through an area, it can help you explore it by telling you points of interest within a given range. You can also save points of interest as possible destinations and record your own landmarks. Updates to its maps and software are free for the life of the product. You pay for the unit and that's that. No further costs other than additional maps if you need these are forthcoming. I've arranged to have a more extended chance to examine the Breeze in a couple of weeks. This is one kind of product where you truly need hands-on experience to figure out whether it's worth the cost. I want to try out most of its features first-hand on the route I've been learning and in my neighborhood. Even with some financial help, it's still quite a major expense for me. Taking the long-term view, I believe it would be worth it as it would make me more able to walk around independantly in whatever new area Janene and I end up in after we marry. The directions I heard it give as we went around the block of the hotel where the workshop took place were quite good and precisely what I would need to know. However, I don't know how much was a pre-recorded route, recorded landmarks, or coming from its initial map and database of the area. Getting to try it out in my own area will help me be a far better judge of whether now is the time to jump on the GPS band-wagon as I suspect it might be. I came into the workshop somewhat doubtful that I'd find anything which would be of immediate interest. Less wind and warmer conditions would have made the whole experience somewhat more attractive. However, I've certainly left with a new respect for what a liberating change this technology can be for blind people.

My birthday was quite a good one this year. I relaxed during most of it and finally got around to hearing a nifty horror podcast called Psudopod which I had wanted to check out for quite some time. I also listened to some of the terrific Sherlock Holmes stories that I was able to purchase thanks to birthday money from my parents. It's definitely a posession I'll want to hang on to for life. The BBC has done wonders bringing the whole collection of stories and novels to audio life. Later, I went out to the Keg with Janene and my parents for an excellent meal. Nothing beets a Keg steak. All of us enjoyed ourselves. We went back home afterwards for cake and watched some TV. Unfortunately for me, my birthday happened to coinside with the final game of the World Series. Baseball just isn't something I have any interest in at all. I believe we saw the last four innings of the game. Conversation was pretty much brought to a stand-still as everyone else watched the game. Time just seemed to drag like dead weight. A floor up, I had plenty of interesting audio to listen to, games to play and/or TV to watch assuming that something more interesting was actually on air at the time. However, I knew Janene was interested in seeing the game ending and I felt somewhat socially obligated to stay there with her and my parents. It was an unfortunate sour note ending off an otherwise excellent thirty-fourth birthday. The kind of thing I take pains to avoid. In normal circumstances, I realise that there will be occasions where I'm with a group of people who will take an interest in things that I won't share. In those circumstances, I tend to take the longer view and willingly go along with or sit through whatever everyone's up to which doesn't appeal to me. It's just part of the give and take of being social and outgoing even when you're not dealing with a sighted person's world. Not taking an interest in sports puts me even more in line for this sort of drag time. There are countless blind baseball and hockey fans. I understand, while attending a party, that it doesn't revolve around me. There's bound to be some down time. However, on my birthday, I don't think I ask too much not to be put in such a situation of boredom. Everything necessary was there already. I hinted a couple of times that we should go off and do something else. However, all I could think of at the time were the audio dramas I had at hand. Janene tipically doesn't want to listen to those particularly at the end of a long day. Eye candy always wins in such circumstances where fatigue is involved. That is, I think it fair to say, true of sighted people as a general rule. I was sitting down there bored out of my tree with literally two days worth of fresh new never-heard-before adventures just waiting for me. None of which, however, would have appealed to Janene just then. I would have loved to share my gift with her but she was in no frame of mind to appreciate it. Had I suggested we go up and watch a movie or, more appropriately given the hour, a shorter show of some kind before she headed back home, I would likely have had better luck. Because I watch so little TV, however, I had no alternative suggestions to offer. I don't tend to look over the TV Guide anymore and would doubtless have to search out an accessible site again unless Zap2it.com hasn't changed for the worse since I last used it.

Later, I tried to explain this to Janene. I wanted to avoid that relationship deathtrap of withholding discontentment until well past when expression of it is at all rellevent. I saw it as a pretty simple small fix to avoid similar things happening on future birthdays. She saw it as an indictment of her and thought I was also tired of being bored when we spent Sunday nights watching TV with my parents. That experience, although sometimes boring in part for me, is what I regard as part of family routine. It gives my parents some time with Janene and I as a couple. Also, we normally end it with a show that Janene and I are interested in. Mythbusters is a nice and engaging way to see a weekend out. Something I can get my mind into. It's a lot more balanced and doesn't leave me as completely in my own world of boredom as that World Sieries baseball did. Also, they're just ordinary days for me. It took around three tries for me to be certain she properly understood this and wouldn't go off feeling overly guilty or thinking that everything had to change. I was pretty tired by that point and very well may have been already coming down with the illness which I'm still recovering from.

The next morning began with a slightly sore throat and a stuffed head. I was feeling more tired than usual and figured I'd better warn Janene. What I had hoped would be a 24-hour thing proved far worse than I expected. Basically, I lost most of thursday and Friday completely. Janene and I were going to go down town and watch the Rick Mercer show live. It would have made a great evening out. We also had planned a lunch with a couple of friends for the next day. Thankfully, I was actually up to having lunch but it ended up being with Janene only. That was probably for the best as I don't think I was anywhere close to being at my best. I seriously couldn't have navigated sonically to save my life. Everything sounded puffy and misplaced around me. I'm finding that Dayquil and Niquil are helping out quite a lot. They don't completely eliminate the symptoms but definitely reduce them to more manageable proportions. Hopefully, I'll be rid of whatever this bug is by the end of the week. I'm finding I have more energy now which is a good sign I think.

On Sunday, I got to meet Adam's new girlfriend for the first time. They certainly seem smitten with each other. We all got a long quite well. She seems prepared to cope with Adam's being a gamer in much the same way Janene copes with me being into games and audio stuff. She's willing to tollerate it and dip her toes in on her own terms. I hope things work out for them over the longer term when the work of relationship maintenance starts and the novelty and some of their physical passion wares off. I can't say that I'm convinced that they actually have enough in common. That kind of thinking strikes me as being damned jaded even as I so naturally think it. I hope I don't wake up one day to find that I'm a grouchy old bastard who wouldn't recognise goodness if it thwacked me with my own cane. You'd think first-time loves never lasted at all. I catch myself thinking more cinically more often and it's certainly given me pause given the drastic improvement of life I've enjoyed over this past year. It was amusing to hear how their overt displays of affection impacted Janene. She doesn't think we were ever that physical with each other in public. Perhaps she's right, but I can't help wondering what the staff at our favorite restaurants would conclude having seen us in our days fresh in love. Youch! Does love go sour? That sounds aweful! If handled with care and attention, I believe love ages gracefully and becomes better much like wine is supposed to.

That whole area of having separate major interests is something both Janene and I have certainly given some thought to in the past. Despite the growing popularity of podcasts and audio books for sighted people, when the chips are down, they just flat out prefer to see things while being entertained or stimulated. They tipically listen to these podcasts and audiobooks when they're either commuting on busses or while they're hurtling down the road in control of a thousand pounds of their own personal steel in order to stave off boredom. At best, they're doing dishes or something which won't result in carnage should they get too engrossed in what they're hearing. Eyes dominate in a truly different way. When I used to read books in Braille, I would always do it in silence even when that was purely optional. My ears didn't start jumping around for lack of things to focus on. Eyes do that though. They need things to look at most of the time.

Both of us have aspects to contend with like that. For her, it's pictures and visual art of all kinds or sights in nature wile we're driving around that she wishes I could see. I'll be able to read her writing since she tends to do that on a computer. However, her drawings will never amount to more than words when they're described to me. They strike her emotionally but are merely points of a moment's conversation for me. The real trick is finding things to enjoy together to keep a relationship going and fresh while satisfying both our separate needs. She can enjoy the scenery and presumeably some interesting sights on the road during a long drive somewhere. On that same trip, I enjoy conversations or hearing something interesting on the radio or merely being with her. I also tend to enjoy wherever we end up going. We both get a lot out of going places together. We can also add some different observations to each other's interests when we talk about them. We both enjoy good food and good conversation. We have a shared interest in language and words. Our overall moral outlook on life is very similar. We talk a lot about our friends and their lives. Both of us share an interest in keeping up with world news and discussing it. There's enough drawing us together that our different worlds give us more to tell each other about and spark conversations. While it can indeed be frustrating when your lover isn't as thrilled with what you care about, it's far easier to keep things fresh than when both people share all the same interests and have had too much life experience in common. Janene has said on more than one occasion that she wouldn't have been ready for me if she hadn't gone through her failed marriage and subsequent experiences first. I can see more clearly after thinking all of this through that I wouldn't have been ready for our life together had I not gone through my own lesson in what lasting love has to be based upon. I simply wouldn't have had enough of a sense of the give and take of life. One of our real strengths as a couple is going to be how important our friends are. Both of us share a keen desire to help where we can and to share our blessings with good friends. They'll keep us two from becoming too inactive and give us places to go to paired with good reasons to go there. We can also relax together while doing our own things.

It's tuesday now and things are going alright again. Janene and I went through a little tention over a fairly substantial paper of hers last night. She occasionally gets into a panic over things outside of her control. The only thing you can do is just hunker down, shut up and wait for the storm to pass when circumstances prove conclusively that her worst fears aren't going to come true. That's an extremely tough thing for a guy to do. I hope I get better at dealing with that over time. I seem to have the majority of my energy back now. The head, however, is still a little stuffy. My ears are ever so slowly returning to normal. Perhaps, in a couple more days, I can play a sound-based game with some hope of doing well at it again. I got a bit more work on the game design document done today. It was good to get back to that. It'll be my main focus for this week. The week after, I have another teaching cession as well as a mobility lesson. A delicious sign of the times comes in the form of those small holiday oranges. I had a couple today and they were quite good. It seems that the instant Halloween's over, thoughts turn to Christmas. There is no pause for a collective breath. The impact of the holiday season on retailers was all over the news this afternoon. Would people still be interested in gadgets despite the economic uncertainty, etc, etc. I'm all for the holidays, but might I have a moment to get the gore makeup cleaned off before people think it's the result of running into a Christmas tree?

switching gears

In most respects, this past while has certainly gone smoothly enough. I've certainly been able to stave off boredom easily. There have been plenty of interesting things to listen to particularly from the BBC. They're getting close to concluding the Sherlok Holmes series of dramatisations. I'll very much miss hearing those. They've been absolutely splendid in all respects. I've also at last learned something of the whole Amnityville Horror business. I had never bothered to delve into that small nagging curiocity but a pretty good documentary happened to be on the Discovery channel last night. It certainly passed the time in a most satisfactory way. I can't say I've been at all convinced of the reality of hauntings and such. However, I suppose it's possible that such trama leaves some sort of residual impression in a place. That wouldn't surprise me too greatly if such energy were eventually scientifically proven. I'm somewhat more suspicious of claims of spirits and demons. I can't prove they don't exist but would need some major-league convincing to believe in them as they're often depicted. I believe the true demons are the ones we carry inside of us every day. Our selfish desires, dastardly impulses, short-term thinking and so-forth. I don't believe we'll ever be rid of them. However, we've got to do our best to turn as much of this as possible to the increase of good in the world.

The election certainly didn't go the way I had hoped. In fact, for all intents and purposes, it may as well never have happened at all. Nothing substantial has changed. Harper still has a minority government. It's just a smigeon stronger than it was. I hope that after this pointless schoolyard scrap over very little of real substance, our leaders are at last ready to start treating each other civilly and get some honest work done. That three hundred million, much of it wasted on negative ads, could have done a ton of good if it were spent on affordable housing, police officers, or any number of far more worth-while uses. I think we wouldn't get these embarrasingly low voter turn-outs if they just outlawed negative campaign ads altogether. Personally, I would have been very interested to see what a liberal government would have or could have done at this juncture. The NDP may also have proved interesting. However, we're in for another stretch with the rather dull status quo. Oh well.

A friend of Janene's has a podcast that I was briefly on last night. He was under the impression that I didn't like him. Had I not been so preoccupied with that documentary I was watching, I might have had some devilish good fun with that misperception on his part before setting him straight. Skype and/or his phone setup made it rather hard to understand him and presumeably a friend or guest who was also on the show. I could hear Janene perfectly though. He's a part of what is for some reason called "the scene". This seems to consist of a bunch of guys who are trying to become better at picking up women as far as I can determine. It smacks of being a club for those unfortunate souls damned forever to social hell. Their talk can be so crude that I'd think it would turn off most if not all women. It seems like the main objectives of these people are casual good times and/or sex rather than a more solid lasting commitment. Talk on the show alternately strikes me as juvenile, shallow, or outright crass. It frankly isn't something I'd normally listen to. However, Janene finds it quite entertaining especially when juxtaposed against her working day. I was asked whether I'd concent to having oral sex with a guy if I knew that it would solve Etheopia's hunger problem among other things. As crass as it was, it got me thinking about universal justice. There was a movie called Indecent Proposal which looked at this sort of thing. It's the same kind of simple shortcut to happiness that invariably bites one's ass in the end. You snatch a cookie from the cookie jar and enjoy it without anybody finding out. That's all well and good until the pimples pop out which cause you more social grief down the road. A moment's undeserved happiness brings a month's grief. Life just seems to always work like that given a long enough viewpoint. They aptly call it universal justice. That's why I try not to take such shortcuts particularly where relationships and people are concerned. I'd rather know for certain that I'd spend the rest of life single than have a relationship built on lies. True love does exist. It's the kind of love which is based on honesty right from the start. I'm profoundly glad that I've come across the jenuine article in Janene.

B, as Janene seems to call him in her blog, is one of life's quirky characters. I think of him very much like my best friend Adam. They're the type of people who come up with that priceless joke that you desperately needed just then. They're fun-loving to what is at times a painful extreme. They're that class clown who comes up with some witty line or prank which makes a week's worth of hard work worth slogging through just to have been there for those precious ten seconds of merth. Behind all the crassness and seeming selfishness, there lies a sharp mind and caring heart that many people will likely never notice. I have no doubt many people have wondered what keeps us together as friends. Why would I hang out with somebody who once let a girlfriend pay for his speeding ticket simply because she had money to spare? That story certainly got a rise of moral indignation out of me as I'm certain he was delighted to see. He doubtless finds me amusingly victorian and somewhat self-defeating in my life outlook. He thought I should be less forthcoming in my online dating profile so that I'd at least hear from more women who wouldn't automatically pass me up due to my unemployment and/or blindness. The theory being that they'd get to know enough of me that they wouldn't then dismiss me so easily. In his outlook, quantity of experience is quality of life. Because I wasn't willing to hide any of my cards, I would therefore have no experience at all and be no further ahead. He, on the other hand, had a chance of eventually finding quality while having a far more exciting time of it over the short term. As things turned out, I did indeed go through quite a lonely stretch. However, when Janene came upon my profile, she found there all my cards laid out on the table. The rest has been very happy history. Our love was built on the best foundation possible.

I think Janene and I have been very fortunate to have foumd someone similarly predisposed to boundless fun in our lives. Both of us have found that one person who despite being completely different from our other friends, is just as valueable because of that difference. Even as I cringe to hear of Adam's latest exploits, I can't help but be fascinated at the same time. He goes places in that sphere of life which I wouldn't ever have thought to go. Both Adam and B are loose cannons. They're liable to say the completely unexpected or take some conversational tak which others will find shocking. There's a part of me that hopes Adam will eventually find that special person who really takes him to a whole new level and shows him on a gut level why I tried as hard as I did to keep a failing marriage going. There's an attraction to being a part of something larger than yourself and a stability in a serious loving relationship that adds so much meaning to life. Sometimes, you want to shake him and say "Wake up!". I have no doubt Janene has similar thoughts regarding B. However, unlike a whole lot of people on this earth, I think Janene and I have learned how to appreciate the goodness in people and like them just the way they are. I like to think I'm jently prauding Adam in the so-called "right" direction. Ultimately though, it doesn't matter. He's been a good friend long enough now that I can't see myself ever walking away. Short of him turning into a completely self-absorbed murderous ruffian, he'll be welcome as far as I'm concerned. B isn't someone I would naturally have been drawn to. However, I have no doubt we'll have some more fun times and interesting conversations over the years to come. He's been there for Janene at work and added much-needed spice to her often dull days. I'll always appreciate him in that light.

Unfortunately, this week has shown me that I'm just not cut out to be a gamebook author. The deadline for the Arborell Gamebook competition is just too close. Also, even small exparaments trying to keep numbered paragraphs straight showed me how daunting a task that would be even for a relatively small gamebook. Flowcharting just isn't something I'd be able to pull off very well. With my accessible game idea, I won't have to do that. I hate having to turn away from the competition but this just isn't going to fly. Tomorrow, it's back to the accessible game design document among other things. I'll also be going out to Hamilton with my parents to see my brother's family. The last visit went quite well. Being a good uncle is certainly something I aspire to be having had such good examples to follow in that regard. When Ava and Amia get a little older, I want them to have a sense that I'm there to help and to talk to if they need me. Building that relationship starts right now, even as they start learning to talk.

It's getting late so I'd best get this posted. Poor Janene has had a pretty long day of it and will be busy with school work this weekend. There are some online events I'll likely partake in. I'll also be reading Robert J. Sawyer's Iterations. I've just found that the CNIB library had that short story collection in electronic Braille. Kurzweil1000 can translate that back into plain text for me so I can at last read his forst short story collection. I hope they get his most recent one, Identity Theft and other stories as well as some other books of his that they're still missing soon. The more Robert J. Sawyer, the better. He's the best Canadian science fiction writer bar none.

let's pounce on what we haven't seen, shal we?

As a blind person, I can't help but cringe at the stupidity of these organisations of the blind who presume they represent my point of view. They're up in arms over this Blindness movie. Surely, there are more constructive ways of dealing with it than telling people not to even see it! You'd think they'd have learned something after what happened when people protested The Exorcist among other things. Protesting a film with objectionable portrayals of us only serves to give the movy and these portrayals yet more publicity. In addition, it increases the fear many sighted people have about offending us by accidentally saying or asking the wrong thing. That fear of accidental offence is often more a cause of isolation and disengagement with the world than the actual disability. There are days when I'd pay real money for people to just relax around me and not be afraid to bring up whatever it is that they're curious about, makes them uncomfortable, etc. Thanks to folks like the NFB, those shields are going to go up more. It'll be harder to get people to see me as a whole person worthy of friendship rather than just a charity case or ticking timebomb ready to explode at the slightest provocation. These organisations would have done so much better if they had quickly organised an informational campaign addressing said negative portrayals. Art should never be stifle but should be engaged with reasonably. They did the same thing when Mr. Ma goo came out. All they really acomplish is demonstrate what a narrow-minded bunch of idiots they are. Would they recognise a metaphor if it kicked them where it counted? In my experience, movies such as these are very helpful in the long run as they at least get sighted people to start thinking about us and usually lead to their being more apt to ask questions rather than assume their preconceptions are correct. Yes, I went through some uncomfortable moments after Scent of a Woman came out. People figured I could recognise them via their perfume or were interested in what their faces felt like. Sadly, nobody arranged for me to drive their sports car. I'm very thankful that people didn't take Daredevil as anything but the fantasy it was. I'm just not capable of dodging bullets, knives, and other deadly flying objects or besting hardened criminals in combat particularly in unfamiliar environments. In general, my experience is that people's innate common sense tends to prevail when it comes to what they take away from a work of art. While I'm tired of hearing that poem about the blind men and the elephant, I recognise it for the metaphor that it is and am not offended by it. Nore do I flip out whenever people sing Amazing Grace. I'm more concerned with CNIB pamphlets which inform people that they should avoid seating us at round tables.[Good grief, King Arthur! Look what you've done!] The same pamphlet exhorts people to strap us in themselves as if we wouldn't have the intellect to know how to belt up.

I expect I'll see Blindness so to speak when it's available on DVD. I can then play it in my talking computer as it has speech output and most DVD players are harder to use with the same degree of control. The extras will doubtless be more interesting than the main feature. I've just begun reading the book which is available in mp3 format from the CNIB library. Thank goodness they get core services like that right. So far, I've encountered nothing all that unreasonable. Suddenly going blind is far more devastating than living that way one's whole life. The author has done justice to that as far as I can tell. I've heard that people are depicted as incapable of dressing themselves once they've gone blind in the movie. That certainly annoys me. However, so does hearing endlessly about Helen Keller, Louis Braille, and that sightless bane to all of us self-respecting couch potato's who decided to go and climb Mount Everest for a lark. Go figure. Most people are going to realise that they aren't suddenly going to forget how to physically dress themselves, eat, and so-forth just because they can no longer see. I'd much rather deal with that misconception when necessary than have people afraid to get rid of it by asking me. The whole objection about blind people portrayed as monsters is so outright stupid as to barely even be worth addressing. You're dealing with a whole city of freshly blinded folks. There are definitely going to be some bad apples. Also, you've got the complete breakdown of society to contend with in addition to a lot of human tragedy which would result if people just began suddenly and inexplicably losing their sight in the middle of normal activity. I tend to be pretty optimistic about people's motives. However, even I recognise that when times get desperate, people will take advantage of others and do terrible things when the general consequences of criminal actions have been removed.

This past week hasn't been a terrific one for writing. I seem to be going through another stretch of poor sleeping. I go to sleep quickly enough but then tend to awaken extremely early in the morning before I've had more than four or five hours at best. I finally caved in and had a sleeping pill last night and feel very well rested today. Hope that lasts into this week. I'm taking up orientation and mobility lessons after around five weeks and am also going to begin training a woman wanting to know more about how to use her computer. Thanks to having written my guide, I'll actually get to meet one of the people who it has helpped. That's quite a nice change from all the emails I've received although I certainly enjoy those. A new version of that Klango Player is going to be released this week as well. I look forward to examining the changes made. It's a good initiative with a lot of long-term potential. Yesterday's episode of DNTO on CBC Radio1 was very nifty. Their subject was night time and all of its surrounding psychological ramifications. Very interesting indeed. On the Discovery Channel, I also took in a show about exterminating vermin. Somewhat disgusting but nonetheless of interest. I wouldn't mind feeling what one of the T-Rex traps they talked about felt like, safely held open and preferably sans rat.

Tonight, I'll be having dinner out with Janene. We'll do our usual thing at Symposium. Hard to beet two deserttes for the price of one plus overall excelent food and friendly staff. It makes for a very nice end to a quiet weekend.

recent happenings

Good morning, everyone. It's a little after ten o'clock and I figured it was past time I got another entry up seeing as I've actually gotten around to moving to Blogspot recently. Quite a bit has happened over the last while. My father celebrated his sixtieth birthday last week. It was basically split over two days. On his birthday, we had a nice dinner with a couple who have been excellent neighbours for well over a decade. Afterwards, another family arrived to share in some cake and add to the fun. Last Sunday, it was all about family. Janene joined us for a splendid dinner. My brother and his family were also present. It was good to see Ava and Amya, my two nieces. Over the past months, I've spent most weekends with Janene and been busy writing so I hadn't seen them for a stretch. They're getting very active and love to explore everything. They're getting more comfortable with Janene as well and Ava knows that we're a couple. Dan's sounding healthy and in excellent spirits despite the busy life he leads. I can't help thinking of what a paradoxical change he's gone through from when we were growing up. We get along splendidly now. It certainly wasn't always that way.

Janene and I have enjoyed a splendid evening with a good friend on his way out of province to start his life fresh. Despite the sad circumstances surrounding this, we had an excellent dinner of chicken wings. With some people, you can just tell that they're going to be good and true friends for life. I wish him every success in starting over down east. He's one of two good friends in relationship difficulties. I haven't heard from the other in a while and don't know if he's moved back to Oakville yet. I know he'll give me a shout when he's ready. He's got a lot of good friends and family backing him up and it's nice to know he's in good hands.

Work on the design document for Enchantment's Twilight continues slowly and sporadically. I'd pay real money for the character summarries and plot outlines that were thrown out on that CD back when I first came home after separating from Rebecca a year and a half ago. Constructing everything all over again is proving to be more frustrating than I ever could have expected. It does provide more mental opportunity for considering different courses to take with the overall story. I've resolved that board-game versus story-game crux and am going with story-game. The board-game element will still be felt mainly when exploring ancient ruins and other more randomly generated locales. Overall, the game will feel like a glorrified gamebook with some strategy, board-game and risk/resource management thrown in. I know the overarching story. The real trick is planting the seeds in the forms of characters and places which will grow as easily as possible into that garden. I hope to be done with the design document by Christmas.

Spoonbill Software has announced the release of a new accessible Chess game. I've put in a request for a copy and am looking forward to giving it a spin. Chess has never been a strong point with me. I know how all the pieces move but have never played the game seriously. If Ian has done his usual splendid job with implementation and ease of use, it ought to be fun to dabble with from time to time. He's going to get flooded with requests this time as people have to email him for a copy. Everyone will want one as it's such a universally known game. Another new game called Entombed is being worked on which sounds very promising indeed. It's apparently a sound-based roguelike game. That ought to be quite nifty. Not too much is known about it just yet. I'll be watching for those details. A while ago, I emailed the developer of Windowsfrotz with a request to make his interactive fiction game interpreter accessible to people using screen readers. Winfrotztts just doesn't cut the mustard as you can't properly review built-in hints and help among other things. I've long hoped that somebody would create an interpreter for Windows which was as easy to access as those for Dos used to be. Having text-based games harder to play now thanks to sighted peoples' desire for more esthetically pleasing eye experience is very frustrating. You'd think they'd stick to graphical adventures if they felt the need to gawk. That genre isn't dead I don't think but doesn't seem as robust as far as I can gather.

The latest incarnation of Jaws for Windows appears to have absolutely no new features I'm actually keen to try. It's stunning actually. They've released a couple of very nice podcasts detailing the major changes and new features. None of them appeal at all to my usually enthusiastic mind. I'm hoping I can get at least a couple more years out of my equipment before I have to upgrade anything. I'm quite happy with XP and Jaws version 9 at present. Even with my 400-gb backup drive, I don't relish the thought of installing everything on a new system any time soon. Janene seems to be enjoying her Vista system and it hasn't been giving her any grief lately.

Sherlock Holmes rounds out the current crop of news. I've been listening to a series on the BBC where they've dramatised the complete set of Holmes stories. I found it just in time to hear The Final Problem where Holmes confronts Professor Morriarty. It's definitely going to be a collection I'd like to own eventually but it's quite large and expensive. Sixty-four CDs apparently. It must be a pretty big box. I believe the BBC is going to continue with the series and there's still quite a lot to hear before everything comes to a close presumeably with "His Last Bow". I've never been a tremendous fan of misteries but have always enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories. Well, I guess that pretty much covers everything. I'll be working more exclusively on the game design document this afternoon.

A New Beginning

Hello, everyone. For some time now, I've been maintaining a blog at a site set up specifically for blind people. I started the blog partly in order to help test the Blindspots site. Prior to that, I wasn't at all inclined to start one of these things. The more insulated community who are allowed to comment on that site was also a good way to get my digital feet wet. The prior entry of this blog is basically an archive of all my postings to Blindspots since I started. It will certainly bring folks up to speed with how life has been going over the past while. I couldn't find a way of more neatly importing all the entries so they're all in one huge posting. This site, I suspect, will put me much more out there into the digital mainstream.

I'm very much hoping I can leave things open for everyone to be able to comment. That was one of the things I couldn't do with the old blog. Despite limiting comments to registered community members only, it seems that Blindspots is not as immune to spam postings as I had previously assumed. Should I find it necessary to institute safety measures, I'm reasonably happy with the audio captcha system offered by Blogspot. It won't automatically lock out blind users. I may be going more deeply into the sighted world these days but am determined never to produce anything which is inaccessible to blind people

Things are fairly quiet today. I've been following the BBC as they've been covering developments in Cern where it seems things are off to a cracking good start. Technology has always fascinated me. So has history. It'll be interesting to see the outflow from work done at this new accelerator. Nobody quite knows what to expect when these particle collisions begin. There's a nifty sense of audacious wonder about the whole thing which I deeply appreciate. I think that sense of exploration is a fundamental need. It excites us, keeps us humble, and prevents us from becoming so trodden down with everyday life that we can no longer look beyond it. Through my creative writing, I hope to help other people in a similar fashion when my next projects are finally ready for release.

Things are going quite well with Janene and I. She's started her classes and things don't seem like they're too stressful for her just yet. We'll be getting together this weekend. Precisely what we end up doing hinges on a couple of things. One of which is a good friend of mine whose marriage to another friend seems to have hit rock bottom. If he's ready to come back home and break the absurd stalemate matters have hung in for the past month and a bit, we've offered to help him return home. At least then, his wife will have to actually talk to him. Despite his many attempts to contact her via email, she's given him no indication of where she's at mentally. Unfortunately, she doesn't want to face up to what her depression has influenced her to do and how that has impacted those of us who have tried to help her. In an earlier attempt to get them communicating again and help her to see that, I removed myself from those who she feels she can trust. That's what happens when you expose facts which don't conform to her interpretation of people and events. It doesn't matter that I've known her since grade school and have been long-standing good friends to them both. Depressed people seem to want to distance themselves from people who try to help them see reason. My ex-wife certainly did. Unless she's had a substantial change of heart over the past period of silence, it'll all happen again. All that effort and good will from friends and families, all the expense, all the idealism that dies when you have to walk away from a marriage. Once you've experienced it first-hand, it's ... haunting to have two friends go through it. There's no better word to describe the feeling. It's almost like a painful after echo. It's a final nail hammered into the coffin containing a chunk of my formerly largely unlimited optimism about people. When you see what such thoughts as: "Everyone deserves a chance." can truly cost to implement, you begin to truly appreciate the courage of people who live by such ideals. As much as I'm able to, I hope to continue helping everyone I can and show why it pays to be an optimist in this world.

I've been working on the design document of the accessible game I've begun to develop. For the past little while, I've been at a bit of a crux. I can try to create either a text-driven board game with story elements dependent on piece placement or do it as essentially a game book with board-game aspects being secondary. I actually laid out a game board over the Summer but am now leaning very heavily towards the game book approach. This would be somewhat closer to the original game concept. My problem lies with how to have location and distance meaningful within the game without requiring a map. I'm toying with having an internal map with actual routes plotted out but would rather not go through the trouble if there's another way. Searching the Internet for games which have perhaps tackled this problem hasn't yet proved inspirational.

Well, I guess that pretty much covers things for a first entry. If you want to see some of my writing elsewhere online, check out:
www.blind-planet.com/content/personal-power
and to get to know me better as a person:
http://www.blind-planet.com/content/life-word-and-sound