I have never had such a device and there was a time when
it seemed like a very neat thing to have, but I am not sure that
Braille note takers are as necessary as they used to be, given
their rather high prices and specialized application.
How responsive is the iPad with a
I just spoke to some coworkers of mine who use Windows
on notebooks and they suggest you look in your device manager at
comm and LPT ports. You'll probably find it there. It also does
kind of a neat thing depending on your point of view. If it is a
RS-232 device, it will assign it a comm
to the
printer rather than the port and it worked. But that was ages ago.
Gordon
On 13 Jul 2012, at 17:44, Martin McCormick mar...@x.it.okstate.edu
wrote:
I just spoke to some coworkers of mine who use Windows
on notebooks and they suggest you look in your device manager at
comm
I love stories like this. I read it in a book about how
people respond to life's annoyances.
There was this group of college boys in which one always
went away for the weekend to see his girlfriend. Nothing wrong
with that, but he would forget to turn off his alarm clock and
his
Hello, Gordon
What you are describing when talking about the tingle
you get from touching the MacBook Pro and Braille display may be
what's called a ground loop. You may already know all about
this, but it boils down to Earth is all relative. Some Earth
terminals are better
Gordon Smith writes:
Does anybody know of a way to copy-protect s
CD/DVD/BlueRay disk? I've been asked by a client to produce a DVD with
copy protection so that his employees cannot just replicate it. I don't
know if that is possible.
I wouldn't waste my time or give the client
Hello Lynne,
There are a number of cranky aspects to that device,
assuming it works at all. The idea of having to put something in my
mouth to see something is fraught with unpleasant possibilities.
Yes, the tongue is loaded with nerve endings so it
makes sense they would design it this
Please let us know how they work out.
I would think that branches or cables might be difficult
as they do not reflect much but the idea is sound, no pun
intended, well maybe a little.
Sometimes I wish I was taller than the 5-foot 8 I am,
but the message from David
Hello Gordon and Sarah,
It is a slow Friday afternoon at work so I just had to
look this up on Google.
I'll be darned but this thing exists and I can see how
eye glasses and one's tongue got in to the discussion.
The Brain Port is an experimental device that
supposedly
I came as close to watching the transit of Venus as I
ever will to watching anything last night. The first Tuesday of
every month is the meeting date of the Stillwater Amateur Radio
Club and we meet at the Salvation Army Church building here in
town. The fellow I ride to work with is a big
One thing people have tried that worked was to see if
the company in question has a twitter account. Some do monitor
twitter and FaceBook and they have live people who will get in
touch with you if you are being reasonable which I am sure you
are.
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
A lot of people are concerned about U.S. Patent law in
that it is too easy to own an idea these days so basically,
everybody becomes a thief at some time or other. Hopefully, the
pendulum will swing back in the other direction one of these
days. Did you know, for example, that Kodak holds
The Science Show is a weekly program and podcast from
Radio Australia narrated by Robbin Williams, no connection to
the American actor of the same name.
On occasion, it is as dull as paint drying but other
times, it is utterly fascinating. This week is one of those
times.
Chris Moore writes:
Hi Gordon,
The currah was a speech synth and spoke everything you typed and of
course could be included within applications that supported it. From
memory I think some text based adventures supported it.
At the time I was sighted and had never heard of a screen
I figured at the time that a person could write an
interrupt service routine or an extra patch of code just as you
described.
The Apple II had an interrupt but nothing on board used
it, not even the keyboard. I had a Mountain Hardware
clock/calendar board plugged in to the mother
Some hobbyists have built CC decoders to do other
things. Back in the nineties when O. J. Simpson was so much in
the news, somebody on the PIC microcontroller list built an O.
J. muter. Every time that name came up, it triggered the mute
function on the TV via the IR remote. I imagine this
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
Hello Martin
I'm not going to quote all of your post because I only need to reply to a
small portion of it. I did, however, read it all.
That is quite okay. I tend to ramble on too long, anyway.
Thank you for the explanation. I guess it's just a case of
What I have read about them would emply that they are as
accessible as you set them up to be.
They run Linux and use SD cards for their hard drives so
one would need to build a drive with the ARM processor version
of Debian wheezy Linux as that is the first kernel with the
speakup
Gordon Smith writes:
Isn't that a problem inherent to most radio amateurs? Perhaps that's why
I dislike rubber-stamp QSOs. :)
I hate those, also. I am a real wet blanket when it
comes to contests and paper chasing. I couldn't care less. When
I get on ten meters and the first thing I
Here is roughly what you find in the US on VHF:
VHF starts at 30 MHZ and extends up to 300MHZ or ten
meters down to 1 meter.
In all the Americas, 30-50 MHZ is public mobile radio of
all types. This includes lots of commercial two-way radio and
paging applications,
A lot of professional mixers use balanced line inputs
and outputs so I hope you are aware of that and ready because I
don't think anybody wants to listen to the hum that will result
when attempting to connect unbalanced lines to inputs and
outputs that were supposed to be balanced. I am
Hello Lynne and others,
You say,
But yes I do remember a TV we had where you had to wait about 30 to
40 seconds after powering on the machine for the sound to pop up. Then
the picture about 20 seconds later.
Ah, yes. That definitely was all-valve design. Some
trivia you might
I got curious and looked up UK television history on
wikipedia.org.
After the original 405-line system in 1936, the UK got a
new UHF 625-line system in 1964. This would have been totally
immune to the trans-Atlantic interference I was talking about.
It also had FM sound making it
A few comments.
Gordon Smith writes:
Any of Ethernet, USB or over the air. There are data channels
transmitted as part of every multiplex service which carry all sorts of
information and network service data. The BBC, for instance, transmits
firmware patches for quite a range of popular
What method does one use to apply the firmware patch?
Gordon Smith writes:
I'd just like to make you aware of one important factor if you are
thinking of buying one of these devices. Well actually, 2 factors.
Firstly, I see the DTR-500HD as a big step in the right direction.
If we ever have a Solar flare like the one described in
this article, a lot of the things we use today will stop
working. Some temporarily during the disturbance and others will
be fried such as parts of the electrical power distribution
system. It won't be the end of civilization but it
.
Gordon
On 8 May 2012, at 16:45, Martin McCormick mar...@x.it.okstate.edu wrote:
What was the full domain name?
===
The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan,
virus and worm-free
To modify your subscription options
Hello Lynne and the list,
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
Our Sky Digital box also has a lot of
connectivity options which are, we think, disabled currently. For
instance, there are 2 type A USB connectors which we are lead to believe
are intended to allow the use of an external hard
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
Just one query there though; I was under the impression that
7.1 was the latest and current standard rather than 5.1.
I just read the April-May Sound and Vision magazine
yesterday and they mentioned 7.1, 9.1 and 11.1 surround-sound
systems. I doubt
One other thing I thought of after posting, of course.
There are now systems that make the surround-sound
implementation a bit easier with a bit of acoustical magic. Some
receivers have what is called a sound bar which simulates the
five channels without actually having you set up 3
Hello Lynne,
Firstly, the thought of Gordon being able to come home
is the best news.
I think what you are going to find as far as the
surround sound world is probably going to be that of too much
information and too many choices but that is always better than
game over; Go
This is a continuation of a message I wrote on just-chat
regarding George Orwell's book 1984 and totalitarian technology.
While cable television systems as we know them today did
not exist in 1948 when Orwell penned 1984, there was something
that one could call the precursor of
Have you tried tftp or its more common file transfer
agent known as ftp?
You can access both of those applications on your Mac by
something like ftp 192.168.1.1 or
tftp 192.168.1.1
If it is ftp, you will actually be prompted for a
user ID and password. You normally
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
We'd have to see whether his health would let him, not to mention finding
a station which he could use. I don't pretend to understand how they
work; but I wonder whether it would be possible for us to set up his own
equipment so that he could somehow use
I just talked with a coworker who is a new radio amateur and
does belong to echolink. Our Stillwater node is down but may
rise again some day and it only costs you money to join if you
use a credit card to validate your registration. Otherwise, it
is free. You provide a copy of your amateur radio
The speech jamming gun is a clever package but delayed audio
feedback has been with us for many decades.
Speech therapists can use it to treat stuttering because
it temporarily disrupts the broken feedback mechanism that makes
some people stutter.
If you have ever been startled
letter e, by the way. ;-)
On 4 Apr 2012, at 20:20, Martin McCormick mar...@x.it.okstate.edu wrote:
I promise not to go in to tons of details, but radio
antennas share something in common with musical instruments.
While the physics of air don't seem to have a lot in common
Lynn,
I promise not to go in to tons of details, but radio
antennas share something in common with musical instruments.
While the physics of air don't seem to have a lot in common with
electrons, they do create resonances which are based on the size
of the paths that the electrons or air
It is certainly another way of doing things. Here, we
more or less went from cassettes to downloads and USB cartridges
over night. The lending libraries in the US as part of the
national Library of Congress Talking Book program all distribute
pretty much the same media all over the
Dane Trethowan writes:
of a rubber membrane type so yep, they will wear out very quickly indeed!
I wonder when manufacturers will stop using this rubbish.
They'll stop when somebody comes out with something better and
cheaper. That's what drives technology advancement. Nobody
deliberately
Those are good questions. I have been using the standard white
cane since around 1967 and there really are some ways that
electronics could enhance it but I haven't heard of anything yet
that sounds like what we call a killer application.
Here's the problem. The cane is an extension of
The way these things should work is that Microsoft
licenses let's say JAWS or WE as their official screen reader.
It comes with every version of WindowsXYZ sold. The company
doing the actual screen reader work is treated as a contractor
and gets so much per copy of Windows sold as
Dane trethowan writes:
So given what you've written then perhaps - even though I don't doubt
Lynne's word - there may be other explanations for the problems Lynne is
having with her Desktop audio system?
It sounds like a quality control issue to me and it
appears that the company is
That is interesting. I would be interested in knowing what
frequencies are used as some of them could, at times make it to
North America but it would be very rare.
For anybody else reading, the DRM Dane is speaking about
is not Digital Right Management although one might be able to
Dane Trethowan writes:
I purchased a Sangean ATS909X World Band receiver quite some time ago
and I'm now only putting the set through its paces.
I could write pages and pages about this unit and I'll do that on my blog
in the future I'm sure but I do feel that this set deserves praise for
This is a suggestion which I cooked up very quickly but which
will let you build a log file. What it produces is a single line
per entry containing three pieces of information separated by a
,. It is a unix shell script and you can run it on a Macintosh.
The file it writes to is called logfile
LCD screens would look like a stained glass window if not for
the back lighting pannel. What we have are two sheets of glass
or plastic that are treated with a coating that if viewed under
a microscope would look like slots or bars. The front sheet and
the back sheet are placed so that one of them
I'll comment on your post, here, which has some very
good points.
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
Hello Martin and all
As I said, I think, Martin, that you may not be aware of the fact that we
have to pay a license fee to watch this sort of stuff. That license is
rigorously
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
In the case of the BBC, I am very strongly in favour of this ban to be
honest because we have to pay a license fee; why should others be able to
get in through the back door so to speak?
I am a believer of the statement that information wants
to be
I don't yet own a HD radio mostly because what is available on
AM and FM, here, ranges from positively rotten to barely
tolerable, in my opinion, but that truly is just one person's
opinion.
The AM stereo that Lynn mentioned in a previous message
is kind of an interesting story. I am too
Lynn and anybody else who is interested,
The United States, Canada and Mexico as well as most of the
Central American countries all use the same power supply hookup
hardware and voltages so I can't think of a single good reason
why gear made for the North American market would have to be
Two comments.
I bet the sound systems come from Yamaha's factory and
the power supplies come from other places depending upon who
Yamaha contracts to build their power supplies for all the
various world markets. Even if that's not the case, they may
ship the correct power supplies all
As we say in amateur radio, fine business or FB over
CW.
Hello, Gordon.
I can't brag that much as I believed I have successfully
failed each class of license exam at least once in my life and
had to take it again.
We also used to have what was called a conditional class
Now that the Solar Flux is climbing, those with a Technician
license can get on ten meters and talk to Europe and Africa in
the mornings and Australia, New Zealand and Japan after dark
just to mention a few possibilities.
Those on the West Coast of North America will have
better luck with
Way to go! I can relate to all of that. I didn't do what
you did, but when I got an Apple II of my own, I built a decoder
that used a NE565 Phase-locked loop and was able to decode
300-baud ASCII. There were some radio amateurs in the area who
used it like RTTY and would send messages back
Well, let's try this from another angle.
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
What we need I think is some sort of diagnostics software. Or some way of
forcing data to be sent to a serial line. We know of the command line
syntax to dump a file to the serial port under DOS but whether that
First, I am sorry I have taken so long to respond with more of
my no help, but I have been busy with work today
I just googled the following link:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.zytrax.com/tech/layer_1/c
There is almost an endless list of ways things can go
wrong regarding serial ports. Do you have any way to break the
problem in to smaller pieces such as verify that
A. The serial port really is sending and receiving?
B. The embosser works when conected with another known-good system.
Do
I never met him, but he indirectly is the reason why I
do what I do today.
I was still looking for a teaching job in 1979 and the
economy was not doing well so nobody was hiring. Not as bad as
now, but not good, either.
I knew what computers did but not how they did it
It looks like the great techno- Geniuses wake up in a new world
every day. This press release was Emailed to two lists I am on
so you can probably find it if you want to read it, but the
American Counsel for the Blind (ACB) has raised the issue that
the new Kindle Fire appliance has no
I finally had a chance to listen to the recording I made
of two VHF radio frequencies that could help indicate if
anything big fell in to the Earth's atmosphere a week ago
Saturday. A person I know in town, here, said that he had been
outside at about 3:30 to 3:45 in the morning US-Central
For anybody interested in amateur radio or short wave
radio listening, Solar activity is finally starting to pick up
as the belated Solar Cycle appears to be finally occurring.
This is supposed to be a roughly 22-year cycle in which
the Sun begins to show spots on its surface. The
Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes:
it's also worth pointing out that you can configure the band/channel that
the TC uses.
That helps even more so if you can keep the wireless
keyboard from using the channels that the TC uses.
I've got a pair of bluetooth headphones, however,
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