Re: Need help about texting on iphone
Re: Need help about texting on iphone Agreeing with Afrim here. I'll try to give helpful responses to all of your points Thunderfist, but not sure how good I'll do Thunderfist799 wrote:Basically I haen't really used a touch screen phone that much - I used to huse a nokia n73 but talks is now gone, and the other version I have, wel suffice it to say it is broken. So I decided to switch to an iphone because it's apparently very good.Going by this and the other posts you've put on this thread, it sounds like you really have no experience at all with touch screens and I think this is your biggest problem right now. This is unfortunate; I would always recommend your introduction to touch screens be planned using a device which is not yours, with someone guiding you through the ropes. A friend of mine showed me his phone before I got mine, and that helped me a ton, and made learning to use the IPhone pretty easy for me. Within a few days I could never have gone back to the track phone I used to use. Having a friend or even a teacher help you out is still an option now if you feel you need it, though.As for typing, pretty much everything mastodont said. Use touch typing. It drives me nuts when people just don't. No real reason, they just don't use it, and when they do type they resort to standard typing. I mean, if it works for you, go for it, but it's going to slow you down tremendously; dictation is better than that imho.Perhaps direct touch typing is an option too? I haven't actually tried that, but I have heard that if you're good at touch typing, it's better to stick with that. Opinions on this are welcome, though! Maybe it's a good intermediate for people who need it?With touch typing, the hardest part is keeping your finger steady enough on the screen (more on that later). And the trick to that is practice. Some people naturally are better at it than others. Overall I'd say I'm pretty good, but practice helped me a lot too. I've heard people claim they can reach epic touch typing speeds but I don't see how (fastest I usually go is like 30 words a minute or something), but for typing short messages of a few words it's fast enough for me.If I need to type a long message, braille screen input is definitely my friend. I'm not sure if it's faster than a sighted person, but it's definitely a lot closer at any rate. By default it'll use UEB code I believe, but some prefer grade 1 and others like me prefer the good 'ol grade 2 system. I forget exactly where you change that, but it's possible to change.As for feeling the dots, no the dots don't give you any tactile feedback. However, there's a wonderful feature of Braille Screen Input nobody has mentioned which is the dot calibration. Using this, you don't need to find the dots, the phone finds your fingers instead.I'll explain: When you enter braille screen input, Voice Over should tell you how to calibrate it. But basically you press dots 4 5 6 together then release them, then press dots 1 2 3 together and release. Then the phone will learn where your fingers naturally fall when you type braille. It will remember this positioning too so if you later leave Braille screen Input and come back, chances are you won't need to recalibrate if your hands naturally fall on a certain place on the screen. You can, though, if needed, recalibrate again, and occasionally I have to do this, though with my new phone and later IOS versions I have to calibrate far less often than I used to. Either I'm better at it now, or they've improved it. Come to think of it, I think I've only had to calibrate my IPhone XS once. I do, however, keep typing echo turned on and will adjust my fingers ever so slightly if I seem to be vertically displacing things (often I type dot 1 instead of dot 2 for example).Again, though, braille screen input requires both hands be steady, and some people I've heard just can't make headway with it. I never had a problem with it, but maybe you're one of the unlucky ones who do. Also, it's worth noting that in braille screen input, you can either set the phone flat on a table to type, or hold it vertically with the screen facing away from you. I have never, ever used the flat orientation though, it's always been easier for me to hold it in my hands.Finally you mentioned that when you try to keep your finger steady, it moves on you. First off I think you'll get better at steadiness with time. Touch typing especially will help with that if you practice.Other than that, though, there is a huge trick which hasn't been mentioned yet. When you're first starting out with IOS or a new app and you just want to see what's in it, I wouldn't worry about the screen layout so much. Instead, just touch the top left hand corner of the screen to get VoiceOver near the top (don't aim for the status bar, but slightly below it), and then simply swipe to move Voice Over through the items. Swiping basically means flicking or swiping your finger quickly to the right or left.
Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
Re: I am affronted by the presence of god So, oddly enough I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about a similar topic. I wasn't thinking of this thread when this came up btw, but after the conversation my mind did jump back here and made me think of GCW's grandma.The person I was talking to is at least somewhat religious. I don't know her well enough to know exactly how she practices, but I know she feels God is very important and worship is a big part of her life. I didn't outright come out and say I don't believe in such a thing, though I'm sure by the way I have spoken in the past, or how I didn't respond to her comments about worship, she could figure my stance out.Anyway, she told me that she believes life is fair, you just have to understand the purpose of events and adjust your thoughts. Which goes against all of my beliefs. Life had a nasty way of being unpredictable, and i don't believe we as human beings should have our powers of interpretation stretched to such a degree that we justify anything cruel that is out of our hands, in the name of faith. For me, a death is always cruel, whether committed by murder or by natural cause. Even predictable death has an element of unfairness to it for those who are close to the deceased.An example of my feelings on the matter: A few years ago we had to put down a lovely dog we had. Not because he was dying, but because his back was irreparably out of whack and couldn't be fixed. As a result, he could barely walk. Our vet was surprised he was able to remain on his feet for as long as he had. It would've cost thousands of dollars to attempt major back surgery, and since he was so old, it just wasn't worth it (he was 15 or 16). So, he lived a good life, and we didn't think it was worth having him suffer through the remainder of it.Now, I'm not a big dog person, but I do respect animal lives, and for a while, I couldn't get past the fact that this of all things was what had to kill him. He was healthy otherwise; had his back been better, he would've still been running around, barking way too much at the neighbor's dogs and generally being annoying, but that's what made him who he was. Maybe i'm being optimistic, but until the very end, I feel like he had the desire to be his old self. He still had some drive left. During the last weeks of his life though, he could hardly walk. He'd still bark halfheartedly when he heard other dogs, but he couldn't run and provoke them like he usually did. Therefore I thought the decision to put him down was a bit premature; I didn't think the dog was quite ready yet. But my mom saw more than I did, so maybe she could see he was giving up. I wasn't there when he was put down, but apparently my mom could tell that he somehow knew his death was coming, and he seemed ready for it. So, maybe he had given up after all but was just being a trooper. It wouldn't have surprised me.For a while, I felt like we gave up on the animal more than it gave up on us. I mean in the end it probably doesn't matter, his life would either have been cut short by something else eventually, probably sooner rather than later. And it's very possible that if we had waited a week or two, he would've given up on his own anyway. That in fact was very likely, given how quickly his ability to walk had deteriorated. These facts helped me accept the decision when it was made, but it did bother me that his death was deliberate.The strange part of this is that deliberately inducing death wasn't what bothered me most at the time. That's only part of it. What was hardest for me to take was that his life was cut short by a non-lethal issue. I suppose that's because I have a selfish curiosity. When people or animals die, I want to know the cause of death, because I like medical knowledge, and am a bit morbid sometimes. So, if he died of heart complications, I would've been satisfied. If he had given up and stopped eating, I would've said "Sure, makes sense." But a bad back? That doesn't kill, it doesn't make sense medically. It only makes sense if you put the emotional element in there, the thing that activates our compassion and sympathies. Maybe it's an autism thing, but as much as I'm able to understand the deciion and agree with it, there's still some sort of gap in there I have to step over in order to get firm footing if that makes sense. I haven't quite worded it like that before, but I'm also a little more confident at the keyboard than I am speaking, so yeah. I imagine most people will find me at least a little strange for thinking of it that way, if not heartless.In the case of GCW's grandma, it's different. Not only is she mercilessly left hanging on through pain, but her mind is even caught halfway between being able to or not being able to decide if she's ready for death. The flip side of this, though, is that intervention or not, she will eventually die of her ailments. Dimentia and cancer are both ruthless killers and one will eventually
Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
Re: I am affronted by the presence of god @GrannyCheeseWheel I can only begin to imagine what you're going through. Personally, if I was in your shoes I honestly don't think I could do it. So you have my respect! I really hope the remainder of your grandma's life is spent in relative comfort, that she passes peacefully and serenely when the time comes, and that she ends up in heaven or wherever she believes she is destined to go, if anywhere.As for the whole religious discussion, I think I'm a bit too simpleminded to argue the absolute truths/falsehoods, but I'll do my best.As a kid my grandpa tried to get me into religion, I think I wrote about that way back in another thread. He is a strong believer in Christianity.The big sticking point which kept me from accepting religion was that I couldn't understand what God actually was.My grandfather tried to explain this to me quoting the Bible, at least the Bible he learned from. But I had trouble understanding what he was on about. It sounded like a random story that was fun to imagine, but hard to believe. God could be so powerful, so all-knowing, so pure, yet so elusive. The more I heard about him, the more I didn't understand him.As a teenager, I used to find peace by telling myself that if our God is all-knowing, it will know I have trouble believing in it, it will see that in my aura or whatever emanates from me. But, because God is pure and God forgives, it will show me once and for all that it exists when the time is right, and if the chance never arises before my death, God will still see the love in my heart of skepticism. But something about that just didn't sit right; religious people's faith seems to go deeper than that. They don't have this mentality that God must prove its existence. They respect and worship God with unwavering devotion. And I'm sorry, but that is just not me.It's time for one of my stupid analogies. It would be like me bragging about a new computer and claiming I can do whatever I want with ease. I can play epic games. I can write documents. I can talk to people online. I can do research. If you knew nothing about computers, you'd think it was the most amazing thing ever since sliced bread.But then let's say I tell you that computers do have limits: I can't watch these HD videos because my Internet connection isn't fast enough, I can't have a discussion with my computer about how much it is crippled because the hard drive went out, and I certainly can't depend on it to get me a soda when I'm thirsty. A skeptic might, when presented with this, want to know why these pros and cons exist. But a non-skeptic, someone who accepts that the world works a certain way due to higher powers they can't control, might possibly just shake their head and live with the limitations, the caveats, and the annoyances.In a weird disjointed way, that's how I always felt when people tried to talk religion with me. Religious people seemed to not want to question things, they wanted to accept that the world worked a certain way which was out of their hands. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who is religious is not a skeptic or vice versa, but it's something I've been pondering as of late.Every time I asked a simple but hard question, I was not given a straightforward answer, because they could not give one. If I asked "Why can't the computer get me a soda?" I was not told computers aren't mobile. I would instead be told something like "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't want you to use it for that." And if I followed that up with a further query, they would get frustrated and tell me they could see I wasn't going to get it, and to forget the conversation took place.Okay, throwing the computer analogy out because it was stupid, but yeah... maybe it explains my angle? I dunno. Religion felt like a mold that I could never really feel out. I wanted to, though, because it seemed to calm people, give them something to look up to, but I couldn't get it. It bothered me for a while, made me feel like I was the ignorant idiot and everyone else was smarter than me, but after a while, I just said I don't really care, and lost most of my interest in it.Recently I became aware of the possibility that some people treat religion and church as sort of a social gathering. A friend of mine tried to encourage me to go to church once because I would meet nice people there. "You don't have to be euber religious to go to church," he said. "Many churches around here are extremely gentle with it."To this, I argue what's the point? If you're going to be religious and go to church, isn't your goal to feel God's divine presence? I dunno, maybe I am distorting the purpose of a church and overestimating what churches were designed to do, but I always thought if you're gonna go, take the whole hog. Don't put your toe in the water and tell me you're wet. But a lot of people around here treat it like that, and I've even heard a few stories where people were encouraged to go to
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With?
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With? Yeah I remember another thread about this too.I only read braille with my right hand, which doesn't seem so common at least on this thread. When I was in middle school, I switched teachers and the new one I got wanted me to practice reading with both hands. She made it very deliberate, which made me even less willing to do it. I think that's why I don't. It was forced on me well after it would've felt natural for me to work on it, and I didn't see the need for it. I still am not quite sure I would need it tbh. I don't read braille enough to need to speed read. As it is, I can read braille at a fairly normal speaking pace I think, though I'm a bit rusty now.I can totally relate to the feeling backwards thing though. The weird thing is, mentally I know it's not backwards, and physically I can recognize the shapes of the letters even if I read with my left (unpracticed) hand. But for some reason the shapes feel, I dunno, backwards? Inverted? Something, I can't pinpoint it, but it definitely feels like some sort of spatial conflict is going on. F feels like D, J feels like H, stuff like that. I could almost consciously feel my brain going "No, that's not D, check again, really feel the pattern, yeah that's F. Are you sure? Yep. Okay... please let the next letter be an a, or a q, or a g, something that's harder to distort." That was almost a conscious thing like I said, it wasn't quite that vivid but yeah. I powered through it when I was made to practice, but it was tough. Add that to my being insanely out of practice just discerning the dots with that hand in the first place, and yeah. I didn't like it.I'm still legit curious as to why that backwards feeling was there, like why does my brain have to go through this sort of remapping process to flip the shapes? If my left hand was simply out of practice distinguishing the dots, I probably could've dealt, but the spatial stuff, and having no explanation for it, just drew me away.I haven't gone out of my way to test this with other things, but when I was bored and messing around, I could play the same melody with either hand on piano, or type on a braille or computer keyboard with either hand individually. I'd never do any of that without good reason, but it was something I could manage. It was insanely awkward and uncoordinated, but I don't remember feeling like my sense of finger space was spinning like that.I guess it just comes down to the fact that playing piano and typing doesn't require you to sense multiple things under each finger, it requires you to change your hand positions instead, which my brain grew used to early on because of typing and or playing piano as a kid. But when it comes to fine tactile perceptions, the neural paths for each side are going to work a little differently especially when doing something as complex as feeling the shapes and patterns of fine braille dots on a page. Unlike typing, reading braille is more about fine tactile sensation rather than distinguishing finger-sized keys from one another. I guess since I didn't practice that, my brain never learned to deal with it fluently. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/619167/#p619167 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With?
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With? Yeah I remember another thread about this too.I only read braille with my right hand, which doesn't seem so common at least on this thread. When I was in middle school, I switched teachers and the new one I got wanted me to practice reading with both hands. She made it very deliberate, which made me even less willing to do it. I think that's why I don't. It was forced on me well after it would've felt natural for me to work on it, and I didn't see the need for it. I still am not quite sure I would need it tbh. I don't read braille enough to need to speed read. As it is, I can read braille at a fairly normal speaking pace I think, though I'm a bit rusty now.I can totally relate to the feeling backwards thing though. The weird thing is, mentally I know it's not backwards, and physically I can recognize the shapes of the letters even if I read with my left (unpracticed) hand. But for some reason the shapes feel, I dunno, backwards? Inverted? Something, I can't pinpoint it, but it definitely feels like some sort of spatial conflict is going on. F feels like D, J feels like H, stuff like that. I could almost consciously feel my brain going "No, that's not D, check again, really feel the pattern, yeah that's F. Are you sure? Yep. Okay... please let the next letter be an a, or a q, or a g, something that's harder to distort." That was almost a conscious thing like I said, it wasn't quite that vivid but yeah. I powered through it when I was made to practice, but it was tough. Add that to my being insanely out of practice just discerning the dots with that hand in the first place, and yeah. I didn't like it.I'm still legit curious as to why that backwards feeling was there, like why does my brain have to go through this sort of remapping process to flip the shapes? If my left hand was simply out of practice distinguishing the dots, I probably could've dealt, but the spatial stuff, and having no explanation for it, just drew me away.I haven't gone out of my way to test this with other things, but when I was bored and messing around, I could play the same melody with either hand on piano, or type on a braille or computer keyboard with either hand individually. I'd never do any of that without good reason, but it was something I could manage. It was insanely awkward and uncoordinated, but I don't remember feeling like my sense of finger space was spinning like that.I guess it just comes down to the fact that playing piano and typing doesn't require you to sense multiple things under each finger, it requires you to change your hand positions instead, which my brain grew used to early on because of typing and or playing piano as a kid. But when it comes to fine tactile perceptions, the neural paths for each side are going to work a little differently especially when doing something as complex as feeling the shapes and patterns of fine braille dots on a page. UNlike typing, reading braille is more about fine tactile sensation rather than distinguishig finger-sized keys from one another. I guess since I didn't practice that, my brain never learned to deal with it fluently. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/619167/#p619167 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With?
Re: What Hand Do You Read Braille With? Yeah I remember another thread about this too.I only read braille with my right hand, which doesn't seem so common at least on this thread. When I was in middle school, I switched teachers and the new one I got wanted me ot practice reading with both hands. She made it very deliberate, which made me even less willing to do it. I think that's why I don't. It was forced on me well after it would've felt natural for me to work on it, and I didn't see the need for it. I still am not quite sure I do. I don't read braillle enough to need to speed read. As it is, I can read braille at a fairly normal speaking pace I think, though I'm a bit rusty now.I can totally relate to the feeling backwards thing though. The weird thing is, mentally I know it's not backwards, and physically I can recognize the shapes of the letters even if I read with my left (unpracticed) hand. But for some reason the shapes feel, I dunno, backwards? Inverted? Something, I can't pinpoint it, but it definitely feels like some sort of spatial conflict is going on. F feels like D, J feels like H, stuff like that. I could almost consciously feel my brain going "No, that's not D, check again, really feel the pattern, yeah that's F. Are you sure? Yep. Okay... please let the next leter be an a, or a q, or a g, something that's harder to distort." hat was almost a conscious thing like I said, it wasn't quite that vivid but yeah. I powered through it when I was made to practice, but it was tough. Add that to my being insanely out of practice just discerning the dots with that hand in the first place, and yeah. I didn't like it.I'm still legit curious as to why that backwards feeling was there, like why does my brain have to go through this sort of remapping process to flip the shapes? If my left hand was simply out of practice distinguishing the dots, I probably could've dealt, but the spatial stuff, and having no explanation for it, just drew me away.I haven't gone out of my way to test this with other things, but when I was bored and messing around, I could play the same melody with either hand on piano, or type on a braille or computer keyboard with either hand individually. I'd never do any of that without good reason, but it was something I could manage. It was insanely awkward and uncoordinated, but I don't remember feeling like my sense of finger space was spinning like that.I guess it just comes down to the fact that playing piano and typing doesn't require you to sense multiple things under each finger, it requires you to move your arms instead, which your brain is used to, even if you switch things up. But when it comes to fine tactile perceptions, the neural paths for each side are going to work a little differently especially when doing something as complex as feeling the shapes and patterns of fine braille dots on a page. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/619167/#p619167 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Lol with the Yanny Laurel debate I always heard laurel. I oculd only vaguely hear yanny with eqing and other things, but even so I had to force it if that makes sense. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618892/#p618892 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Considering getting a new laptop, but I have a question
Re: Considering getting a new laptop, but I have a question Mitch wrote:I don't want to make the same mistake that I did last time by purchasing a Dell. (Waves Maxx just irritates me to this day) What laptop companies leaveheadphone audio alone?Ugh I hate Max Audio too. Fortunately there are ways to disable it; I had to deal with precisely this when I got my new Dell machine last June.I reformatted the machine practically the moment I received it. Windows 10 makes this easy, iirc in settings you just go to reset your PC and you can reinstall Windows from there. I can't remember the exact steps, but I installed Windows from an iso image so it's a clean installation. If your machine is anything like mine, the product key will already be set up for you from the factory, and if you reinstall Windows from within Windows itself, your key should carry over. It's a nice quick way to get the bloatware off, then you can get rid of Max Audio if you like.On my Dell desktop, I was able to install older Realtek drivers from my previous Realtek sound card. I've been using it like that for months, and apart from some minor hiccups I had while trying to get it to work the way I wanted, it went smoothly to my utter amazement. I'm using it like that right now and I couldn't ask for anything better.If you can't find comparable drivers to replace Max audio with, there's always the option of just using the generic HD audio driver which comes with all machines. That does leave headphone audio alone, but will keep you from accessing any special features of your sound card like Stereo mix, microphone boost, audio enhancements, extended bit depth/sampling rates etc. so far as I know. If you don't need any of that, then you can use the generic audio driver, but I have heard on some laptops it makes the sound very quiet especially on speakers, as some sound cards apply processing on speakers to attempt to get the tinniness out and amplify the sound. I've seen laptops do it.Of course, fussing about with your sound drivers does require you to mess around with device manager and modify stuff that you shouldn't take lightly. Screw up and you'll have no sound. So if you're going to do that, make doubly sure you have a working USB sound card or headset that you can use until your main sound card is sorted out. That said, you shouldn't break things too badly. If worse comes to worst, you can uninstall sound drivers and have Windows Update repair them. This should happen automatically if needed, at least it did on my desktop. It gave me Max Audio back in that case, but at least I had sound and I could start over with trying to get it off.So, while I'd do my research if I were you, I wouldn't avoid Dells or anything else which come with Max Audio. Sadly I think it's sort of becoming more common. How common I don't really know, but if push comes to shove, it's going to be easier to get the physical specs you want and get Max Audio off of there than it will be to go the other way around I think.Admittedly I haven't looked much into laptops or alternate brand pcs or anything like that, though, so perhaps most people do find success just avoiding Max Audio entirely and getting something from a different brand? I honestly don't know, so yeah, do your research before you purchase, and let us know what you find. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618658/#p618658 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? @19, interesting, I'll have to listen to that and see what I notice! I haven't heard it yet as of right now.@20, the results are almost evenly split as you said. Since more and more people are having trouble telling, I'm starting to think that the clips aren't all that good at revealing anything haha URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618563/#p618563 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Okay, all will be revealed in this post. If you intend to take the test without any bias, skip this post please, and probably don't read the rest of this thread for that matter, until you're done the test. The pole and files will remain up indefinitely so that newcomers can still participate if they choose.My basic idea with this test was to see how strongly people were affected by the missing fundamental concept. The wikipedia article linked to above gives a pretty nice explanation of the idea. If that article is complete gibberish to you but you are still curious about what is actually going on, this audio file I recorded will explain everything and show examples. The file is almost 22 minutes in length and goes through the test, as well as why different people may perceive different things when they hear the files.If you heard file 1 as being the same notes, you've fallen for the missing fundamental illusion. Don't worry, I fell for it too. all it means is that your brain is doing something which is well-documented: it is perceiving a fundamental frequency which isn't actually there. For the rest of this post, I'm going to refer to you as a fundamental hearer, since your brain more easily fills in missing fundamental frequencies.If you voted for file 2, you technically heard the sounds as they were notated, as drums61999 pointed out. If you were going purely by the notation, file 2's notes were exactly the same. For the rest of this post, I'll be referring to you file 2 voters as overtone hearers, since you have a slightly better ability to hear individual overtones and not be so easily fooled by a missing fundamental. But don't be too smug. Just because you saw through this one doesn't really mean much. At some point, everyone will perceive a missing fundamental in some way, we just have different thresholds for it. Hopefully the audio I linked to above will show that clearly.Some people here said they couldn't tell which to vote for because the two instruments sounded out of tune. There are a number of explanations as to why this could be. Timpanis and pianos both have a bit of a weird harmonic series which can make things sound a bit out of tune. It's actually pretty wild that certain instruments fit together as well as they do, because their harmonics are far from perfectly in tune with each other. When listening intently to the files in this test, I can totally see how some people could perceive that the files aren't perfectly in tune. Perhaps the tuning could've been improved on my part, I haven't actually tried.Perhaps a more fair test would have been to generate two very different test files with a synthesizer. That would eliminate prior knowledge of the instruments and their notation/midi counterparts as an influence, and would also avoid tuning problems. I didn't want to take that approach, though, since setting up such deliberate tests means that someone subjectively has to decide what the choices should be. Me, being a fundamental hearer, would probably set up such a test in a different way from an overtone hearer.So at the end of the day, what does it matter? To be honest, I don't have an idea, but I do have weird speculations. First off though, I do not believe that the way you heard this test or any other similar test will dictate much in your day-to-day life, even if you're a super geeky audio professional. The music and sounds we usually hear are normally not so wildly different when it comes to perception. People will naturally notice different things in certain sounds, but few cases will be this drastic. Even when perceptions do differ, it doesn't really affect the enjoyment of the music. If it does, there's probably a bigger issue needing addressed.But the phenomenon does rear its head sometimes. If you have perfect pitch, it can make things, uh, interesting from time to time. And if you frequently engage in critical listening, it might be useful to know how you naturally hear things to inform your focus. For example, me being a fundamental hearer means I am less sensitive to what goes on in the mid and high frequencies of a sound. For instance, I really enjoy sounds with certain harmonics which stand out. Even if the fundamental is comparatively soft, I tend to hear it pretty clearly anyway. Unless I have a reason to work out the harmonics, I will hear them as the extention of a fundamental, so effectively I'm turning distinct harmonics into a sort of unique seasoning. I can only speculate, but I hypothesize that an overtone hearer might find it harder to choose which way to hear certain sounds. As a result, they may be more careful and picky about the instrument tones they like, especially in certain cases.On the opposite line, I absolutely hate making subtle frequency corrections. I focus so much on the bass tones, that listening for peaks and dips in the harmonics feels unnatural, like I have to break through the wall of
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Okay, all will be revealed in this post. If you intend to take the test without any bias, skip this post please, and probably don't read the rest of this thread for that matter. The pole and files will remain up indefinitely so that newcomers can still participate if they choose.My basic idea with this test was to see how strongly people were affected by the missing fundamental concept. The wikipedia article linked to above gives a pretty nice explanation of the idea. If that article is complete gibberish to you but you are still curious about what is actually going on, this audio file I recorded will explain everything and show examples. The file is almost 22 minutes in length and goes through the test, as well as why different people may perceive different things when they hear the files.If you heard file 1 as being the same notes, you've fallen for the missing fundamental illusion. Don't worry, I fell for it too. all it means is that your brain is doing something which is well-documented: it is perceiving a fundamental frequency which isn't actually there. For the rest of this post, I'm going to refer to you as a fundamental hearer, since your brain more easily fills in missing fundamental frequencies.If you voted for file 2, you technically heard the sounds as they were notated, as drums61999 pointed out. If you were going purely by the notation, file 2's notes were exactly the same. For the rest of this post, I'll be referring to you file 2 voters as overtone hearers, since you have a slightly better ability to hear individual overtones and not be so easily fooled by a missing fundamental. But don't be too smug. Just because you saw through this one doesn't really mean much. At some point, everyone will perceive a missing fundamental in some way, we just have different thresholds for it. Hopefully the audio I linked to above will show that clearly.Some people here said they couldn't tell which to vote for because the two instruments sounded out of tune. There are a number of explanations as to why this could be. Timpanis and pianos both have a bit of a weird harmonic series which can make things sound a bit out of tune. It's actually pretty wild that certain instruments fit together as well as they do, because their harmonics are far from perfectly in tune with each other. When listening intently to the files in this test, I can totally see how some people could perceive that the files aren't perfectly in tune. Perhaps the tuning could've been improved on my part, I haven't actually tried.Perhaps a more fair test would have been to generate two very different test files with a synthesizer. That would eliminate prior knowledge of the instruments and their notation/midi counterparts as an influence, and would also avoid tuning problems. I didn't want to take that approach, though, since setting up such deliberate tests means that someone subjectively has to decide what the choices should be. Me, being a fundamental hearer, would probably set up such a test in a different way from an overtone hearer.So at the end of the day, what does it matter? To be honest, I don't have an idea, but I do have weird speculations. First off though, I do not believe that the way you heard this test or any other similar test will dictate much in your day-to-day life, even if you're a super geeky audio professional. The music and sounds we usually hear are normally not so wildly different when it comes to perception. People will naturally notice different things in certain sounds, but few cases will be this drastic. Even when perceptions do differ, it doesn't really affect the enjoyment of the music. If it does, there's probably a bigger issue needing addressed.But the phenomenon does rear its head sometimes. If you have perfect pitch, it can make things, uh, interesting from time to time. And if you frequently engage in critical listening, it might be useful to know how you naturally hear things to inform your focus. For example, me being a fundamental hearer means I am less sensitive to what goes on in the mid and high frequencies of a sound. For instance, I really enjoy sounds with certain harmonics which stand out. Even if the fundamental is comparatively soft, I tend to hear it pretty clearly anyway. Unless I have a reason to work out the harmonics, I will hear them as the extention of a fundamental, so effectively I'm turning distinct harmonics into a sort of unique seasoning. I can only speculate, but I hypothesize that an overtone hearer might find it harder to choose which way to hear certain sounds. As a result, they may be more careful and picky about the instrument tones they like, especially in certain cases.On the opposite line, I absolutely hate making subtle frequency corrections. I focus so much on the bass tones, that listening for peaks and dips in the harmonics feels unnatural, like I have to break through the wall of fundamental to get at the
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Nice to see this is getting attention! I'll keep the pole open and the files up indefinitely so this can continue.The results are pretty much trending the way I and probably most researchers would anticipate. However I'll confess that they're a bit more evenly distributed than I thought they would be. That's good, it means both camps have fair representation.One interesting thing I forgot to include in my initial post is that perfect pitch or absolute pitch offers you no advantage. All it does is let you precisely identify which notes you hear, which is not required for this test. In fact, I'd argue that having perfect pitch just cements your immediate perceptions even more, making it especially hard to get out of that and justify how the alternative could make any sense. That is exactly what happened to me and my friend.@MayanaExtremely interesting find. That suggests to me one of two things: either you aren't so good at picking up differences in octaves at least in that bass range, or the timpani sound is straddling a threshold in your brain for lack of a better word. I'll lean toward the latter because you say you waver depending on which part of the sound you listen to. I've experienced that myself, but not on this. If I was doing actual research, your find would probably make me consider adding an addendum to the paper @GrannyCheeseWheelHaha classic reaction. How could there be any debate indeed!And don't worry, this is not a dirty trick which relies on bias or messing with your head.@AaronYou've done what I hoped you wouldn't and overthought it . No worries though, you're actually onto something!The objective of this test has nothing to do with midi, it is fully based on your perception of the sounds. However, the midi theory has merit and brings us to how the timpani is notated. Midi seems to mirror the notation so far as I know, that's why if you play a mmiddle c while scrolling through sounds on a keyboard, some sounds will appear to jump to a different octave.For example, if you're playing a synthesizer which follows the midi spec correctly, organs will often appear to be an octave lower than most other sounds. This is because the largest pipes and or the lowest drawbars in an organ are tuned to sound an octave lower than written. However the timpani is not such a clear-cut case; depending on how you heard this test, you may or may not hear an octave drop when switching to the timpani. In any case, midi does seem to be accurate to timpani notation, so whether sheet music or synthesizers are your reference, you're getting the same data.I've purposefully been avoiding going into the nitty gritty because it's fun reading how people speculate. When do you guys think I should reveal all? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618283/#p618283 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
Re: audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Nice to see this is getting attention! I'll keep the pole open and the files up indefinitely so this can continue.The results are pretty much trending the way I and probably most researchers would anticipate. However I'll confess that they're a bit more evenly distributed than I thought they would be. That's good, it means both camps have fair representation.One interesting thing I forgot to include in my initial post is that perfect pitch or absolute pitch offers you no advantage. All it does is let you precisely identify which notes you hear, which is not required for this test. In fact, I'd argue that having perfect pitch just cements your immediate perceptions even more, making it especially hard to get out of that and justify how the alternative could make any sense. That is exactly what happened to me and my friend.@MayanaExtremely interesting find. That suggests to me one of two things: either you aren't so good at picking up differences in octaves at least in that bass range, or the timpani sound is straddling a threshold in your brain for lack of a better word. I'll lean toward the latter because you say you waver depending on which part of the sound you listen to. I've experienced that myself, but not on this. If I was doing actual research, your find would probably make me consider adding an addendum to the paper @GrannyCheeseWheelHaha classic reaction. How could there be any debate indeed!And don't worry, this is not a dirty trick which relies on bias or messing with your head.@AaronYou've done what I hoped you wouldn't and overthought it . No worries though, you're actually onto something!The objective of this test has nothing to do with midi, it is fully based on your perception of the sounds. However, the midi theory has merit and brings us to how the timpani is notated. Midi seems to mirror the notation so far as I know, that's why if you play a mmiddle c while scrolling through sounds on a keyboard, some sounds will appear to jump to a different octave.For example, if you're playing a synthesizer which follows the midi spec correctly, the recorder sound will always appear to be an octave higher than most other sounds. This is because the soprano recorder is deliberately notated an octave lower than heard. However the timpani is not such a clear-cut case; depending on how you heard this test, you may or may not hear an octave drop when switching to the timpani. In any case, midi does seem to be accurate to timpani notation, so whether sheet music or synthesizers are your reference, you're getting the same data.I've purposefully been avoiding going into the nitty gritty because it's fun reading how people speculate. When do you guys think I should reveal all? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618283/#p618283 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Hi all,This has been on my agenda for posting here, but due to laziness I just haven't done it.This is an audio experiment, and while it is musical in nature, you don't have to be a musician to take part. I've left out all the technical jargon to keep this accessible to a wider audience. This may result in things sounding vague, but in order to understand what the test is really checking, I'd have to go into a lot of technical details. I'll probably do that later on in the thread if it generates interest, but for now I'll keep it simple, and let you guys speculate on the true nature of the test.The idea for this came up during a very interesting debate I had with a friend concerning how we hear various sounds. In short, if we voted on the pole in this thread, I would vote one way and he would vote the opposite. Neither of us thought such differences in perception would be this easily exposed, but yet here they are. That lead to me developing a strong fascination about how humans perceive sound, and the tricks our auditory system can play on us.Now, you bunch of gamers and nerds here on the audiogames forum can test yourselves, and potentially tell who you would've sided with if you had been present during our debate Test Instructions:Download and listen to these two files: file 1file 2.Preferably use high quality headphones or speakers if you can. Volume level doesn't matter, so long as it's comfortable and you can hear the sounds clearly.Try to listen on something which has at least a little bit of bass; a lack of bass could bias the results. What I'm curious about here is how you perceive the full sound, not what you can make out on your cheap 50 cent speakers!Performing the test itself is very simple. Each file contains two instrument sounds. Your job is simply to decide which file has both instruments playing the same note. Surprisingly, the conclusion may well vary from person to person!Things to keep in mind:This is not a formal test, it's just for fun. I'm not using this for research or any serious purpose. That said, please don't give troll votes, I do want actual test runs being reflected in the pole.Don't be afraid or ashamed of your vote. I deliberately set the options up so that one doesn't look more superior or more tempting than the other. In truth, there really isn't a right or a wrong answer to this question. The right choice depends entirely on what your brain and your ear subscribe to.If you are undecided, go with your first instinct. This isn't meant to take 10 minutes to work through, you should instantly come to a decision based on your immediate perception. If you really can't tell, though, go ahead and use the "can't tell" option. I'll be looking at replies, so if you're leaning toward one option but aren't confident enough to vote, I'll still see it and would be interested to read what you have to say!This test is not meant to give indications about your hearing or listening skills. Rather it tests how different brains process certain sounds. Picking file 1 or file 2 just indicates your default way of aural processing, if you will. But it is by no means black and white. In fact, if you're good at noticing details, your perception could very well sway with careful listening to both files, but that is not what I'm testing for.If you like these sorts of things, I have a few more I could share, so if you want to see them, let me know!Okay, that'll do it for now. Let's see where this goes!Edit: removed a stray h from the title, and put a blank line between the file links and the rest of the post. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618183/#p618183 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
audio experiment - how do you perceive this?
audio experiment - how do you perceive this? Hi all,This has been on my agenda for posting here, but due to laziness I just haven't done it.This is an audio experiment, and while it is musical in nature, you don't have to be a musician to take part. I've left out all the technical jargon to keep this accessible to a wider audience. This may result in things sounding vague, but in order to understand what the test is really checking, I'd have to go into a lot of technical details. I'll probably do that later on in the thread if it generates interest, but for now I'll keep it simple, and let you guys speculate on the true nature of the test.The idea for this came up during a very interesting debate I had with a friend concerning how we hear various sounds. In short, if we voted on the pole in this thread, I would vote one way and he would vote the opposite. Neither of us thought such differences in perception would be this easily exposed, but yet here they are. That lead to me developing a strong fascination about how humans perceive sound, and the tricks our auditory system can play on us.Now, you bunch of gamers and nerds here on the audiogames forum can test yourselves, and potentially tell who you would've sided with if you had been present during our debate Test Instructions:Download and listen to these two files: file 1file 2. Preferably use high quality headphones or speakers if you can. Volume level doesn't matter, so long as it's comfortable and you can hear the sounds clearly.Try to listen on something which has at least a little bit of bass; a lack of bass could bias the results. What I'm curious about here is how you perceive the full sound, not what you can make out on your cheap 50 cent speakers!Performing the test itself is very simple. Each file contains two instrument sounds. Your job is simply to decide which file has both instruments playing the same note. Surprisingly, the conclusion may well vary from person to person!Things to keep in mind:This is not a formal test, it's just for fun. I'm not using this for research or any serious purpose. That said, please don't give troll votes, I do want actual test runs being reflected in the pole.Don't be afraid or ashamed of your vote. I deliberately set the options up so that one doesn't look more superior or more tempting than the other. In truth, there really isn't a right or a wrong answer to this question. The right choice depends entirely on what your brain and your ear subscribe to.If you are undecided, go with your first instinct. This isn't meant to take 10 minutes to work through, you should instantly come to a decision based on your immediate perception. If you really can't tell, though, go ahead and use the "can't tell" option. I'll be looking at replies, so if you're leaning toward one option but aren't confident enough to vote, I'll still see it and would be interested to read what you have to say!This test is not meant to give indications about your hearing or listening skills. Rather it tests how different brains process certain sounds. Picking file 1 or file 2 just indicates your default way of aural processing, if you will. But it is by no means black and white. In fact, if you're good at noticing details, your perception could very well sway with careful listening to both files, but that is not what I'm testing for.If you like these sorts of things, I have a few more I could share, so if you want to see them, let me know!Okay, that'll do it for now. Let's see where this goes! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618183/#p618183 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? bryant wrote:There is a feature supposedly in audio members that is something like "Control on Lock Screen." I cannot get this to work properly. What I want to be able to do is to control recordings even when I am not in the app. I currently cannot do this unless I am inside of the app. The same thing applies to Just Press REcord. I would love the ability to control it when not inside of the app.Even though I mainly use Just Press Record, there are some things I really like about Audio Memos. One of those is the bookmark capibilities. From what I can tell, Just Press Record does not yet have this. Audio Memos allows yoiu to set markers when you are playing recordings and come back to that spot later. This may also work when you are recording.Unfortunately, I don't use those settings enough to give you any idea as to why they're not working; I'm so much of an audio nut that the audio quality is most important to me, and often nothing else matters, so long as I can easily record, adjust settings and transfer files. I'm the type of person who often tries multiple apps to check for one feature, while leaving the other features alone until I really need them. Not always the best strategy I know, and certainly limits the amount of help I can provide at times!All I can say is that if both Audio Memos and Just Press Record are having trouble, maybe something is up with your device? I wouldn't know though.As a third option, Dictaphone might be able to do what you want, I think it has that lock screen setting and it can also do bookmarks, though I can't speak as to how elegant they are. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/614962/#p614962 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? First I'll respond to some posts, then I'll put down a bit of my own finds.afrim wrote:Ferite studio or whatever it is called records in stereo and I like the quality.When I tried that, it does a load of processing on the microphones like all other apps I've messed with which can record in stereo. It doesn't sound bad, but it doesn't sound clean either with the compression and noise reduction it puts on.Maranatà wrote:So, it seems to me that the new line of iphone 12 is even capable of recording 3D audio. Is it there? And if so, is there a recorder capable of doing this? Thank you...I only have the IPhone XS, so I can't test that. However, if that is indeed a new thing and if history repeats itself, I predict Apple is probably only allowing that feature in their own apps on the latest versions of IOS, and it will be a bit of time before we see third-party apps having access to it.So, I finally found a nice app which I think I'll be coming back to for recording! Turns out I should've tried the suggested apps here a while ago; Dictaphone actually has everything I want and is pretty darn accessible too, even supporting the magic tap gesture. It can disable the audio processing, switch between mono/stereo, use a configurable recording quality, supporting some custom naming of files, do file sharing etc. It can even pick the stereo orientation when recording, though I haven't really tried this feature yet.One thing it can't seem to do is record in stereo with the processing off; I guess IOS just can't do that But yeah, I'm happy I found this app. Best part is the basic functionality is free, and from there you can either buy what you need, or if I'm not mistaken, you can buy a pro version of the app for $4.99 which will give you all the extentions. I ended up just getting the free app and buying the functionality I needed (advanced audio settings for $0.99 and file sharing for $1.99, so less than 3 bucks to get what I wanted). So I'm not complaining lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/614460/#p614460 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Use Windows microphone as iPhone microphone
Re: Use Windows microphone as iPhone microphone I don't know much about this. My guess is that you'd somehow have to take the audio input from Windows, use Wifi or Bluetooth or something like that, and somehow route that to IOS as an external microphone? I have no idea how to do that though, but if it can be done, it'd be pretty cool. This is a longshot, but maybe I could use it to have an external microphone on Facetime or something like that! LolAs an aside, what workflows did you find to do the reverse i.e. use your IPhone microphone on Windows? I was looking for a way to do that a while back, but I didn't have much success. I think this was back in the days of IOS 7 or 8 though, so this was almost eons ago, and I didn't look as hard as I could have. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613880/#p613880 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? Sorry to revive this old thread, but I have more information. Not much, but some.In my continuing quest of insanity to round up all the apps which let you record while turning off the microphone processing, I finally decided to e-mail the dev of Audio Memos about it. In post 7, I mentioned that I still get the audio filters on/off switch in audio Memos, but other people do not.In their response, they said that the audio filters setting is only available if you have a pro+ subscription. If you bought the app before the subscription model was introduced, you still have it, but otherwise you need the subscription. So, if you're like me and don't like subscription apps but are a purist, Audio Memos is sadly not it. It's a good app though, so if you just want a nice recorder and don't like the stokc Voice Memos app, it is still one of many excellent alternatives.Also, stereo recording will be coming in the next version of Audio Memos, according to the e-mail. However, stereo recording will only be available if the microphone processing is left on.I also was bored and tried the IOS version of Gold Wave, since I use the Windows version on a very regular basis. It has some accessibility issues in dialogs (I haven't tried editing yet), but I am very hopeful that it will be useful to me. Unfortunately it hasn't seemed to roll out across all app stores yet; a friend of mine from South Africa doesn't yet see it in his app store.When I tried recording, it also leaves microphone processing on, and switches the speaker to the earpiece. That switching to the earpiece thing is a real peeve of mine, because then I can't record in loud situations unless I bring headphones with me, and I rarely do that.Anyway, I sent a message yesterday to the Gold Wave forums asking if the earpiece thing could be adjusted, and if settings could be added to expose all of the microphone settings of the device. After all, Gold Wave is well-suited to a diverse range of audio tasks, so exposing all microphone settings wouldn't really feel out of place if it's feasible to set up. As of 24 hours after I wrote that post, I haven't seen a reply yet, but I'm pretty confident that if the Gold Wave dev sees it, he'll get back to me; in the past Chris has been wonderful about getting back to me about things.I may also e-mail him directly using the contact form, but i'm still debating on that. I'll give it a few weeks to see what happens.I haven't tried all the apps suggested here yet either, so I'll soon be doing that. I know I said that before... or at least I think I did, but I do actually intend to get to it. Eventually URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613819/#p613819 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? Sorry to revive this old thread, but I have more information. Not much, but some.In my continuing quest of insanity to round up all the apps which let you record while turning off the microphone processing, I finally decided to e-mail the dev of Audio Memos about it. In post 7, I mentioned that I still get the audio filters on/off switch in audio Memos, but other people do not.In their response, they said that the audio filters setting is only available if you have a pro+ subscription. If you bought the app before the subscription model was introduced, you still have it, but otherwise you need the subscription. So, if you're like me and don't like subscription apps but are a purist, Audio Memos is sadly not it. It's a good app though, so if you just want a nice recorder and don't like the stokc Voice Memos app, it is still one of many excellent alternatives.Also, stereo recording will be coming in the next version of Audio Memos, according to the e-mail. However, stereo recording will only be available if the microphone processing is left on.I also was bored and tried the IOS version of Gold Wave, since I use the Windows version on a very regular basis. It has some accessibility issues in dialogs (I haven't tried editing yet), but I am very hopeful that it will be useful to me. Unfortunately it hasn't seemed to roll out across all app stores yet; a friend of mine from South Africa doesn't yet see it in his app store.When I tried recording, it also leaves microphone processing on, and switches the speaker to the earpiece. That switching to the earpiece thing is a real peeve of mine, because then I can't record in loud situations unless I bring headphones with me, and I rarely do that.Anyway, I sent a message yesterday to the Gold Wave forums asking if the earpiece thing could be adjusted, and if settings could be added to expose all of the microphone settings of the device. After all, Gold Wave is well-suited to a diverse range of audio tasks, so exposing all microphone settings wouldn't really feel out of place if it's feasible to set up. As of 24 hours after I wrote that post, I haven't seen a reply yet, but I'm pretty confident that if the Gold Wave dev sees it, he'll get back to me; in the past Chris has been wonderful about getting back to me about things.I may also e-mail him directly using the contact form, but i'm still debating on that. I'll give it a few weeks to see what happens.I haven't tried all the apps suggested here yet either, so I'll soon be doing that. I know I said that before... or at least I think i did, but I do actually intend to do it eventually URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613819/#p613819 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Keyscape accessibility?
Re: Keyscape accessibility? Hmm, I don't remember needing OCR to use it. Iirc you just use screen review to get your mouse into the interface, then press up/down arrow keys to browse through the sounds. The category filters are also doable too, as well as setting parameters to automation, but it's been a while since I've done it. It's a bit tricky but doable.My favorite piano in Keyscape is the Vintage Vibe I believe it's called, it's basically a really modern rhodes. But tehre are other good ones. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/612202/#p612202 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Getting my data taken down from this site?
Re: Getting my data taken down from this site? A few points here:Zarvox wrote:I wish I would stop overestimating people. A lot of the time, I think that they are doing something because of a positive reason, or that they are trying to be better. But fuck it. I need to stop being an idiot and giving people too much credit or sympathy. So with that, get the hell out!Don't worry, I'm the same way, I look for the positive side in everything and always favor sympathy over blunt words. I'd say you're fine, so long as you're not putting yourself in harmful situations, or becoming a toxic enabler type who will never acknowledge a fault or the downsides of an idea or strategy. In this case, though, whether you take up for Brad or not, it really doesn't mattter much, unless you're friends or something, so I say don't worry about it Brad, I don't think you're going to care about any of this, and you may not even consider my words. You seem to be uninterested in what people say if they disagree with you. Which I completely understand, I'm kinda bad about that too. But at this point I am starting to become legitimately worried for your psyche, or at least as worried as I can get when it comes to a stranger on the Internet, but yeah. I'd just like to say some things which may come off as harsh, but I'm only trying to do some good. I fear you are going down a potentially bad road. So hear me out, or don't. It's your choice of course. And if you've actually left before I posted this, then I will concede I've stupidly wasted a lot of time.brad wrote:Alright, I'm out. I understand that my posts won't be removed as that's the way it is here.I hate to say it for fear of being wrong, but that isn't just the way it is here. Many other sites work like that. If I found one which doesn't, I'd consider myself lucky.brad wrote:I'm going to use a password genirator and won't be back.You've said this before so I honestly don't believe you. You obviously aren't serious about not coming back. If you were, you would have left a long time ago.Please stop saying things you don't mean; that's what lead to your ban in the first place. It's one thing to want to leave, it's one thing to say you're going to use a password generator to bar yourself from coming back. But you've done it, what, 4 or 5 times now? And now you want to be forgotten.I sympathize with you to a degree, nobody wants negative things on their record, but there's nothing you can do about it now. Even in real life people don't easily forget the past. Some will, but many don't. While it's a little disconcerting perhaps to have all of your posts visible to everyone, even the horrible ones, it's just how things work, and gives you an extra sense of responsibility for your actions. If nothing else, it's good preparation for professional situations outside these forums where you do have a record which people can look at.Imho, the only way to move forward when it concerns this community is to just let the past go. Otherwise, you can truly leave so it stops feeding into your boredom and conscience. At this point, I honestly don't believe you'll ever leave unless someone gives you a push, but hey. Prove us wrong if you wish.Boredom is not a good excuse for your behavior. If anything, boredom is leading to problems. Being bored is literally a state of having nothing to get your attention. Thus, being bored could make you an attention seeker if it gets bad enough. I believe, anyway, that the reason you keep leaving, coming back, leaving, coming back etc. is because eventually your boredom, curiosity etc. gets the better of you, and you just can't let the community go.This community has probably helped you a lot with your boredom especially in the past, and no doubt you have many fond memories from this place. Keep them with you for sure, they are wonderful to have. No doubt you've made friends. Keep them with you as well, they will understand more than anyone what you go through when you've had enough of these forums. But I feel like your boredom could potentially lead to a dependence or an addiction, if it hasn't already come to that. The only way to get rid of that is to stop fueling it. Stop coming here when you're super bored. If you sense anger or other negative emotions getting the better of you, just press control w, alt f4 etc. and move on. Take a quiet break.Hell, I have to do that all the time... I don't have the energy to sustain myself here 24/7, and even if I could do that, I still need frequent, long breaks from anything, since I like to shift focus a lot. That's why I don't post every day or every week, I often do leave for months at a time sometimes. After all, to my knowledge nobody ever got banned from here after not signing into their account for a while. So far as I know, you probably can leave your account inactive for an eternity but still come back to it whenever you like. Some sites will delete your account after 90 days or some other amount of
Re: A youtube-dl tip.
Re: A youtube-dl tip. Ehh I don't see the point in arguing about which method is better with something like this. Brad's method catches stuff in playlists, livrobo's catches videos. Two totally different things. Use the one you like better, but be aware of the differences.Livrobo have you tested to make sure adding/videos to the end does make it download all videos from a channel? Just want to be sure that method actually works. If it does, that would be awesome, since I've had issues downloading the entirety of a channel recently. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/606433/#p606433 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: what the F is this?
Re: what the F is this? Agreeing with Camlorn here. You should check the codecs of the original video file with your player of choice (most should tell you what codecs are being used). If the original is using lossy codecs and Reaper is saving in lossless, that's your reason right there.I highly doubt the issue is Reaper just happening to forget to downgrade the file from 64 bit fp to the target resolution. It's possible though that 64 fp wav is selected as the output format in the render settings. You can render to that if you really want. even then, though, since audio is normally stored at 16 or 24 bit, increasing to 64 bit would at most quadruple the file size. Meaning that 1 gb would possibly expand to 3 or 4 gb, not 34 gb.The situation might be different for video content. I have no idea, but I do remember reading that lossless video was often stored as 24 bit? So even then, the 64 fp thing wouldn't explain much, at least not on its own. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604855/#p604855 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: what the F is this?
Re: what the F is this? Agreeing with Camlorn here. You should check the codec of the original video with your player of choice (most should tell you what it is). If the original is using lossy codecs and Reaper is saving in lossless formats, that's your reason right there.I highly doubt the issue is Reaper just happening to forget to downgrade the file from 64 bit fp to the target resolution. It's possible though that 64 fp wav is selected as the output format in the render settings. You can render to that if you really want. even then, though, since audio is normally stored at 16 or 24 bit, increasing to 64 bit would at most quadruple the file size. Meaning that 1 gb would possibly expand to 3 or 4 gb, not 34 gb. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604855/#p604855 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: A song I've written yesterday, "happy new decade".
Re: A song I've written yesterday, "happy new decade". Hey, this is cool.Out of curiosity, what keyboard/other gear did you use to make this? I recognize some of the sounds and a bit of autotune (which I think is kinda cool tbh). URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603728/#p603728 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: reCAPTCHA Blocking Screen Readers
Re: reCAPTCHA Blocking Screen Readers I don't know much at all about Brave, but I've heard it's very privacy oriented or something, and maybe recaptcha doesn't like it? Only a guess, but perhaps the issue is less related to the audio captcha, and more related to Brave doing something weird. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603726/#p603726 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127, being in the US and learning grade 2 literary braille code as a kid, the only symbol I was made aware of was dots 4-6. At first I was told this indicated italics. But later, I was told this was a catch-all symbol for any special type i.e. bold, italics, underline etc.Even with the existence of such a symbol, skimming for bold text and the like isn't one of those things I would consider easy to do, without reading everything linearly and looking for it. When I asked my vision support teacher if sighted people can skim for that text without reading every word, she said yes. It was just another thing I felt I had to come to terms with, given my low self-confidence about my blindness.I won't touch on how much braille helps you with formatting because I don't really know. By the time I started having to care about that, I was transitioning to the computer, where immediate access to braille, especially my own, wasn't an easy option for me as I didn't always have a braille display handy. Besides, speech and typing on a qwerty keyboard felt more natural for me. I admit I could've used my Braille Note more to learn formatting, but since the instructors saw I could follow well enough with just speech, nobody made a big issue of it. And at the time, I didn't think you could even convey formatting with braille anyway, so I didn't see the point of trying.To this day, I still don't quite get bold, italics and underline. I know they exist and that braille might accommodate them, but I never quite understood what they are or how useful they are, other than perhaps drawing your attention briefly to text. I guess that bold makes the text larger, underline has a line under it? Italics I have no idea, and then you get into different fonts, sizes, indents, hanging indents, and while some of them make sense, my brain still doesn't get how I could personally find them useful. To me, they feel like things which mainly benefit the sighted, and can only be approximated in the blind world.I'm good with spelling and basic word usage, though. That is something braille helped me out with, so I will agree that braille should be learned by every blind student. You don't get literacy without it. Ever since I stopped reading braille as much as I used to, my spelling has tanked. I remember old words well but new words are considerably harder for me to remember, and most of the time I have to imagine the word in braille a hundred times or come up with a crazy mnemonic, which I almost never had to do before.And math braille I was pretty good with too. Well at least nemeth code. I haven't needed math braille since UEB became a thing though, so I'd have to catch up. I feel a little bad for some of the kids caught in the transition period, having to juggle two braille codes at the same time while trying to learn algebra and stuff. Maybe it's not that bad, but I was terrible at the advanced math I had to take. That's one reason I wasn't in support of changing the system at first, but I know there are advantages. Hey, maybe UEB has better support for bold/italic/underline? So I'll at least know what that darned special symbol actually means, instead of saying "there's that weird 4-6 again..."I should go look.Edit: fix typos. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603723/#p603723 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127, being in the US and learning grade 2 literary braille code as a kid, the only symbol I was made aware of was dots 4-6. At first I was told this indicated italics. But later, I was told this was a catch-all symbol for any special type i.e. bold, italics, underline etc.Even with the existence of such a symbol, skimming for bold text and the like isn't one of those things I would consider easy to do, without reading everything linearly and looking for it. When I asked my vision support teacher if sighted people can skim for that text without reading every word, she said yes. It was just another thing I felt I had to come to terms with, given my low self-confidence about my blindness.I won't touch on how much braille helps you with formatting because I don't really know. By the time I started having to care about that, I was transitioning to the computer, where immediate access to braille, especially my own, wasn't an easy option for me. Besides, speech and typing on a qwerty keyboard felt more natural for me. I admit I could've used my Braille Note more ot learn braille formatting, but since the instructors saw I could follow well enough with just speech, nobody made a big issue of it. And at the time, I didn't think you could even convey formatting with braille anyway, so I didn't see the point of trying.To this day, I don't quite get the usefulness of bold, italics and underline. I know they exist and that braille might make them clear, but I never quite understood what they are or how they are useful, other than perhaps drawing your attentoin briefly to text. I guess that bold makes the text larger, underline has a line under it? Italics I have no idea, and then you get into different fonts, sizes, indents, hanging indents, and while some of them make sense, my brain still doesn't get how I could personally find them useful. It feels like one of those things which mainly benefits the sighted, and can only be approximated in the blind world.I'm good with spelling and basic word usage, though. That is something braille helped me out with, so I will agree that braille should be learned by every blind student. You don't get literacy without it. Every since I stopped reading braille as much as i used to, my spelling has tanked. I remember old words well but new words are considerably harder for me to remember, and most of the time I have to imagine the word in braille a hundred times or come up with a crazy mnemonic, which I almost never had to do before.And math braille I was pretty good with too. Well at least nemeth code. I haven't needed math braille since UEB became a thing though, so I'd have to catch up. I feel a little bad for some of the kids caught in the transition period, where old books were circulating with nemeth, while new books use UEB. That's one reason I wasn't in support of changing the system at first, but I know there are advantages. Hey, maybe UEB has better support for bold/italic/underline? So I'll at least know what that darned special symbol actually means, instead of saying "there's that weird 4-6 again..."I should go look. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603723/#p603723 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efficient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what I want, or if I'm playing a game where messages go by very quickly.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. I know that's slow for some, but yeah. At that point, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that status. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the navigator object, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why I would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I'm far too adept musically to let those things impress me, but I still do. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, (well I might if the song is not meant to be sped up). But I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. I can appreciate the effort if you're just barreling through it to set a new world record, even at the expense of a good controlled performance. But I can't tolerate that on a synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality isn't mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon, if at all. Given the speed at which I'm learning to code or lack thereof, I wouldn't get my hopes up lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efficient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what I want, or if I'm playing a game where messages go by very quickly.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. I know that's slow for some, but yeah. At that point, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that status. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the system focus and using object nav, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why I would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I'm far too adept musically to let those things impress me, but I still do. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, (well I might if the song is not meant to be sped up). But I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. I can appreciate the effort if you're just barreling through it to set a new world record, even at the expense of a good controlled performance. But I can't tolerate that on a synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality isn't mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon, if at all. Given the speed at which I'm learning to code or lack thereof, I wouldn't get my hopes up lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efificient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what i want.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. At tha tpoint, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that all-important status on each one. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the system focus and using object nav, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why you would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I have the skills to be more critical than that. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, but I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. So if it sounds like the musician is barreling through it just to set a new world record at the expense of a good controlled performance, then I can't tolerate it, especially in my speech synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality is mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Interesting stuff. Yeah, non-english speakers wasn't something I was particularly focusing on, but I find it interesting to see what their take is.Good to know that I'm actually saying things which make sense to people URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603301/#p603301 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Wait... 70 percent with rate boost? That's insane!I guess if you really get into those rates, Eloquence and ESpeak are your only options. Would be interested to hear if there are others which can do that, though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603278/#p603278 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) It s'funny, I get where Enes is coming from; at least on the learning unnecessary skills part and feeling like certain skills are just not your calling. I can't speak on the multiple disabilities front, but will only say that i'm fortunate enough not to have experience with it, at least not that I know of. I mean, I might have Aspergers or something like that, in fact i'm almost sure I have, but I don't put that high up on my list of challenges to deal with. I know some are not so lucky though, and indeed, this topic wasn't even made with that in mind.I am familiar with the ideas of feeling singled out/unfairly treated because you are made to learn things the rest of the world, so to speak, doesn't seem to need to comfortably live their lives. That's why my girlfriend and I both think what we do about the GPs thing.On the other hand, I do see what jayde and Camlorn are saying. I would've fought it, or at least quietly rebelled against it when I was younger, but my maturity has finally caught up enough with me to allow me to see the other side, and to be grateful for some of the stuff I previously would never have given two shits about.I think the only substantive thing I can add at this point is that both sides of this can be interpreted good or bad. A certain amount of stubbornness, defensiveness etc. is natural and often warranted; it allows us to throw out options we don't even want to consider. A certain amount of acceptance of your differences is necessary, and some people truly embrace those differences for better or for worse. But I think both can easily coexist. Everyone has their own personal balance of beliefs about this sort of thing. I'm a firm believer in the idea that your beliefs are molded and shaped by experience and what you personally take away from it, and that no set of beliefs is right or wrong so long as you can live with the predictable consequences of your actions without intense discomfort. If there is intense discomfort, it's on you to figure out why it happened, and if you can change it. Of course then we get into the issue of some people always thinking their problems are someone else's fault... but I'm not going there.For me, the hardest part of life so far has been trying to find my own self. Growing up, I let instructors dictate, not suggest, ways of thinking about things. I had my own opinions of course, but those were locked up, never to be revealed, because of poor self-confidence. And while doing what I was told when I was told to do it made me feel more secure and gave me a sense of validation in a way, I didn't often feel understood or worthy of much on my own. Now that I'm getting a bit better on that front, I feel a lot better being comfortable with myself and, to an extent, saying "Wow I was stupid,now I can see where these other people Iinitially intensely disagreed with are coming from."Not trying to be passive aggressive and or accuse anyone of doing anything btw. The discussion couldn't be more civil or interesting to read, in fact. I'm just giving one last rant on it I guess, and saying that when these sorts of discussions come up, I can see both sides. My own opinions are probably at least relatively clear by now, but I choose not to publicly defend one or the other side too strongly. In other words I'm a pacifist, and I think that's the only way to really be, when it comes to blindness issues which don't have a perfect solution yet. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603270/#p603270 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hi all,So this interesting thought came to me earlier. Admittedly I've been musing on it for some time.As a perfectionist/audiophile, I pay attention to details most people would either find unnoticeable or nitpicky, and what's worse, I often let said details bother me to no end.So here's where I am currently. I use Eloquence full time. Right now i'm using IBMTTS for NVDA. I personally think Eloquence is great. It's been my main synth exclusively for the past 20 ish years. I tend to use a wide range of rates. I always have rate boost on, but I will change the speed a lot.I stick to around 20-25 percent when reading without any real concentration. This is a rate many sighted people consider quite fast. For me, it's just above natural speech rate. For messaging or general computer use, I hang around 30 to 40, depending on how alert I am, and I can go up to around 50-55 for skimming if I concentrate. It might not sound like a wide range, but every 20 percent doubles the speed pretty much, so 55 is roughly 3.5x the speed of 20.But my goal here isn't to slobber on Eloquence and revive the "We must have Eloquence in our lives" discussions. Actually I'm more wondering what I would do if I lost it tomorrow. I'm not necessarily preparing to stop using it, but I'm just idly curious. I have not been able to, with confidence anyway, find a synthesizer that can nicely accommodate the rates I would like to use, and i'm wondering if this is a common thing.I've tried ESpeak with rate boost and, while I could certainly get used to it, it really does bother me. Around 10-15 percent with rate boost is my comfortable reading speed, and I could get used to that no problem if I had to. I have fairly weird ESpeak settings which only sound nice to me on my favorite headphones (Klat4 with american English), but that's beside the point. Anyway, 10-15 is comfortable reading, 25-30 is normal casual rate for messaging/computer use, and skimming would be maybe 50? I'm not really used to it enough to say for sure, but it's something like that. I know some people crank it up into the 60s, maybe 70s though, so people are going faster than me and are doing it regularly by the sound of it. So yeah, their requirements would be even firmer than mine.My problem with ESpeak though is that after around 15 percent with rate boost on, male voices especially have this horrible croaky quality. Even with rate boost off, 100 percent starts to show it a little. Others have told me this doesn't bother them, so I'm sort of wondering if I've been majorly spoiled by Eloquence. Also, ESpeaks' consonants aren't quite right to me. The speech either sounds jerky to me because they're too long, or because they're too short. Or maybe it's not so much the length but the transitions. In all fairness, it sort of balances out for me after the rate speeds up a bit, but there's a point right in the middle of my comfortable reading rate range where consonants and croakiness really bug me. Admittedly, for really fast rates, all of my qualms with it might possibly be imperceptible but still. I don't routinely use those rates.The Windows OneCore voices aren't too bad either. I feel like their pauses are too long for me, so I'd have to get used to that. And they sound a bit odd when speeding up to extremes, but I could make them work if I had to. I think personally I would be switching back and forth between ESpeak and OneCore. When I got tired of one I'd switch to the other most likely, not really feeling satisfied, at least not at first.All three of the above synthesizers can go faster than I need (OneCore's fastest is on the outer limits of what I can skim through so I can understand it, only just). Still, I commend them all for going as fast as they do. Most other synths I've tried don't seem to be able to do that. I've tried Vocalizer, especially on IOS, and demos of Ivona and Infovox. They didn't seem to go fast enough, I was routinely pushing them to 70 or 80 or something like that, and some really sounded bad when I did that. Admittedly, for normal reading they'd work just fine, and for moderate speed-up they work too, at least some of them, but for skimming and quick responsiveness, I know they would slow me down, some more than others, if I had to rely on them.The best I've found is, oddly enough, on IOS. Not Fred... he's insanely responsive but is possibly the worst speeding up voice when trying to use the rates I like. Instead, I go to the US Siri male voice. It sounds smooth to me when speeding up. I sometimes hear artifacts, but rarely notice them. No croaky sound either, I love it! So, that is what I use on IOS now. People have made fun of me for using the gay gymnast voice, and I can see sort of where they're coming from, but the Siri female voice is outright cringy for me personally so I can't stand it. But at 70 percent I think the Siri male is crisp and clear and is what I routinely use. It
nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hi all,So this interesting thought came to me earlier. Admittedly I've been musing on it for some time.As a perfectionist/audiophile, I pay attention to details most people would either find unnoticeable or nitpicky, and what's worse, I often let said details bother me to no end.So here's where I am currently. I use Eloquence full time. Right now i'm using IBMTTS for NVDA. I personally think Eloquence is great. It's been my main synth exclusively for the past 20 ish years. I tend to use a wide range of rates. I always have rate boost on, but I will change the speed a lot.I stick to around 20-25 percent when reading without any real concentration. This is a rate many sighted people consider quite fast. For me, it's just above natural speech rate. For messaging or general computer use, I hang around 30 to 40, depending on how alert I am, and I can go up to around 50-55 for skimming if I concentrate. It might not sound like a wide range, but every 20 percent doubles the speed pretty much, so 55 is roughly 3.5x the speed of 2.But my goal here isn't to slobber on Eloquence and revive the "We must have Eloquence in our lives" discussions. Actually I'm more wondering what I would do if I lost it tomorrow. I'm not necessarily preparing to stop using it, but I'm just idly curious. I have not been able to, with confidence anyway, find a synthesizer that can nicely accommodate the rates I would like to use, and i'm wondering if this is a common thing.I've tried ESpeak with rate boost and, while I could certainly get used to it, it really does bother me. Around 10-15 percent with rate boost is my comfortable reading speed, and I could get used to that no problem if I had to. I have fairly weird ESpeak settings which only sound nice to me on my favorite headphones (Klat4 with american English), but that's beside the point. Anyway, 10-15 is comfortable reading, 25-30 is normal casual rate for messaging/computer use, and skimming would be maybe 50? I'm not really used to it enough to say for sure, but it's something like that. I know some poeple crank it up into the 60s, maybe 70s though, so people are going faster than me and are doing it regularly by the sound of it. So yeah, their requirements would be even firmer than mine.My problem with ESpeak though is that after around 15 percent with rate boost on, male voices especially have this horrible croaky quality. Even with rate boost off, 100 percent starts to show it a little. Others have told me this doesn't bother them, so I'm sort of wondering if I've been majorly spoiled by Eloquence. Also, ESpeaks' consonants aren't quite right to me. So the speech either sounds jerky to me because they're too long, or because they're too short. Or maybe it's not so much the length but the transitions. In all fairness, it sort of balances out for me after the rate speeds up a bit, but there's a point right in the middle of my comfortable reading rate range where consonants and croakiness really bug me. Admittedly, for really fast rates, all of my qualms with it might possibly be imperceptible but still. I don't routinely use those rates.The Windows OneCore voices aren't too bad either. I feel like their pauses are too long for me, so I'd have to get used to that. And they sound a bit odd when speeding up to extremes, but I could make them work if I had to. I think personally I would be switching back and forth between ESpeak and OneCore. When I got tired of one I'd switch to the other most likely, not really feeling satisfied, at least not at first.All three of the above synthesizers can go faster than I need (OneCore's fastest is on the outer limits of what I can skim through so I can understand it, only just). I commend them all for that. Other synths can't claim that though. I've tried Vocalizer, especially on IOS, and demos of Ivona and Infovox. They didn't seem to go fast enough, I was routinely pushing them to 70 or 80 or something like that, and some really sounded bad when I did that. Admittedly, for normal reading they'd work just fine, and for moderate speed-up they work too, at least some of them, but for skimming and quick responsiveness, I know they would slow me down, some more than others, if I had to rely on them.The best I've found is, oddly enough, on IOS. Not Fred... he's insanely responsive but is possibly the worst speeding up voice when trying to use the rates I like. Instead, I go to the US Siri male voice. It sounds smooth to me when speeding up. I sometimes hear artifacts, but rarely notice them. No croaky sound either, I love it! So, that is what I use on IOS now. People have made fun of me for using the gay gymnast voice, and I can see sort of where they're coming from, but the Siri female voice is outright cringy for me personally so I can't stand it. But at 70 percent I think the Siri male is crisp and clear and is what I routinely use. It can't get to my full steam skimming rates, but 100
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) camlorn wrote:I don't know where you're getting 6 weeks learning the same route from. This probably just comes from practice, but it only takes me and my brother a day or two at most. When I was in college, we'd spend all of 2-3 hours finding all my classes. My point being that if it's taking you 6 weeks you should probably work on that even though it's frustrating, where work on it mostly just means find places to walk to even if it's something stupid like Mcdonalds once a week or even going around the block and coming straight back home.Hmm. I wasn't aware that people could be that efficient.I'm probably biased though. I disliked mobility so much that I had to force myself to even comply and do it. Even the knowledge that I'd need it one day when I'm on my own wasn't enough to really motivate me to make it sink in. I was awkward, immature and I complained incessantly, and my instructor wasn't having any of it. I of course know I needed it and I'm grateful for it, but the word mobility is like an emotional trigger word. I know that's not any reason for me to start making excuses about anything, but yeah.I did find indoor routes easier, especially when learning my college routes. I could learn class routes in a week or less iirc, and if it was in a building I sort of knew, I'd work them out myself on free time. I hardly ever got lost on campus either, at least not in areas I sort of knew. Even outdoor routes weren't bad at that point, since there were landmarks and by that point I did have a firmer grasp of orientation. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603076/#p603076 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, without even a GPS, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because I don't think sighted people do that. And even if the primary goal was to teach blind people safe street travel, a GPs isn't going to get you exempt from that. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, orientation stuff didn't really click with me until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost, but won't bring on the sinking feeling of being stranded without help. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with orientation. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occasion I will, but it's not a regular thing. For me, it helps a lot if I treat
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, without even a GPS, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because I don't think sighted people do that. And even if the primary goal was to teach blind people safe street travel, a GPs isn't going to get you exempt from that. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, orientation stuff didn't really click with me until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost, but won't bring on the sinking feeling of being stranded without help. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with orientation. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occasion I will, but it's not a regular thing. For me, it helps a lot if I treat
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because sighted people don't do that. Now, if the primary goal was blind people to learn safe street travel, then maybe I could see the point of limiting how much help you can receive, but still, a GPs isn't going to save you from that either. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, I didn't become good at mobility until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost but not stranded in the middle of nowhere. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with directions and things of that nature. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occasion I will, but it's not a regular
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Thanks Brad for the suggestions. I will certainly look into it.Mayana wrote:I'm not quite sure how to put it into words atm, but I'd just like to say that I think I know how you're feeling, and have felt the same way several times.And yeah, of course life's not fair and we have to just suck it up. But sometimes you have to acknowledge how stupid it is that we get half the features, for twice the price. Sometimes you have to complain, to let it out. It won't change anything, but at least the words will be out there and you might feel a bit better.Yes, exactly that. The classic "I'm going to rant but I can't provide a meaningful solution" type of feeling. I generally don't like to indulge that, but I get to a point where I have to, or else go insane.@camlorn, I fully agree with your sentiment, but have been afraid to express it like that. You might get a lot of backlash for it lolI'm not a KK user myself. And even after I feel more confident with doing midi in Reaper, KK is going to be a hard one for me to get to grips with, because I'm not a fan of the idea that you need a controller or else you don't have accessibility. The controller might be great, and if circumstances get to the point where it might actually be convenient for me to get the controller, I would consider it. But for now, I have no space for another controller, and am happy with the keyboards I already have, at least in terms of how they physically work.I feel like getting into KK would require me to learn more about Komplete than the individual instruments I would like to use. I've also heard that installing KK is finicky because you still have to object nav and or oCR your way through a few screens.If the accessibility were in individual products like Kontakt, Massive X etc. i'd jump all over that. And so far as I know anyway, those installers are pretty easy to use. But sadly that's not going to be a thing, at least I don't think it will be for a long while if ever.I also love the idea of designing my own sounds. VSTs in general are already a mixed bag when it comes to that. About 70 percent of the ones I've tried are fully or nearly fully automatable, 20 percent are limited, and 10 percent really don't give you much if at all. But if NI could somehow make even the graphical parts of their UIs accessible, well... I would probably be so excited I would die. I'd probably throw away all my synths and just use Massive X or something lol. I don't dare get my hopes up though.99 percent of people I've asked about this stuff don't seem to be coming from the same place I am. I think KK meets their needs perfectly, and it's just exciting to finally have access to and control over these big epic sounds now. They focus on what KK and the accessibility can do, and not what it can't. Which is great, don't get me wrong. But I like to know the full picture with things, and for me, talking KK sounds like loosening one part of the accessibility knot, without really finding a way to undo it. And yeah, like Camlorn said, it's not an easy problem. They certainly made something which works, and works well for many people. It just could, at least hypothetically, be so much more. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/601996/#p601996 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Problem reading messages in discord
Re: Problem reading messages in discord Yeah, I've never ever had success using NVDA in focus mode to read messages. All I use focus mode for is typing in edit fields.Somewhat unrelated, but I wish the search feature would get fixed. A long time ago it was great, but the accessibility has since been broken for ages. Now you have to use object nav to see things, and while it's not impossible to do, it's annoying.I'd report it, but I've been told others already have, so I'll just wait and see what happens. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/601782/#p601782 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Yep, that's true.I guess this bothered me as much as it did because it was the first time I really had to think about it. Having my own resolutions and feelings and desires growing up is all well and good, but that doesn't change how reality works. I mean, I'm normally easily accepting of that, but I have moments I guess. Lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/601781/#p601781 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Hi all,Before I start, please keep trollish or one-word replies behind; I would like to keep this thread constructive if it actually goes anywhere.My intention here is not at all to be in a bad mood or to bitch and complain on Christmas day. I had a great Christmas actually, and I try every year to enjoy it. But something has come up which frustrates me a little, and I can't decide whether the frustration is justified.Ever since I started using appliances with batteries, I wished I knew of a way to see how much charge they had left. Eventually I started using rechargeable batteries.Around that time, someone found an audible battery tester. It was a very simple unit; just stick batteries in and it beeps. The louder the beep, the more charge the batteries had. It wasn't very precise as the beep didn't change much, but it was enough to make me feel like I could find my own system for gauging the battery capacity. But somehow it got lost, thrown out etc. I haven't seen it in years.In the meantime, I ran into issues with chargers seeming to be dead, batteries not holding a charge etc. I don't exactly know what happened, but I couldn't trust any of my batteries or chargers. I got tired of that and eventually decided to replace everything. I spent a little extra money on a good charger and batteries, and have exclusively been sticking to that, and so far I haven't had any issues. But I'm still paranoid about the battery testing thing; I lost plenty of good recordings when I was having issues.An accessible battery tester was among the things I would gladly receive as a Christmas present. My mom was on the lookout for one, but we both knew our options may be limited. Eventually, she did find one though, the EZ test. It's available through APH, though it's out of stock, so I don't know how she managed to find one. I do know she waited weeks to get it, and didn't expect me to have it today, but as it turns out, it arrived just in time.In a nutshell, the tester comes with 2 AAA batteries which power it. You stick them in, then insert the battery you want to test. Once it gets a reading, it produces either 1, 2 or 3 beeps depending on the battery's strength. If the battery is practically depleted, only 1 beep is heard, and if it is very strong, 3 beeps are heard. An in-between state is signified by 2 beeps. Easy, simple. No sweat. Within 5 minutes I had found batteries which produced all three signals, so I knew what they sounded like and they were very different. All my dreams should be answered, right?I know I should be completely happy... but I'm not, and this is where I want to stress again that I'm not writing this to bitch and complain. But I felt uncertain when I heard two beeps. Did that mean it was close to full charge, or near being dead? My recorders can last at least 6 hours on a full charge with my current batteries (haven't really timed it precisely yet, but it's a while,). And that's just for recording. For playback, the time is probably longer. So, if I hear two beeps, does that mean I only have an hour or two, or 5 or 6? I have virtually no way of finding out. I wanted to see some intermediate state. A percentage, a voltage, even that imprecise beep which I'd have to listen to for several seconds to be sure I was confident in what I was hearing. But there's nothing like that, just three states, and it just bothered me a little. I decided that the best approach would be to keep as many of my batteries charged as possible, and to accept nothing less than 3 beeps on any of them.This might not have bothered me if it was all I had. But, after discussing my failing batteries with a hobbyist nature photographer, I started to realize that he has a lot more than I do. His tester gives him voltages and can test many more batteries I think. I don't know what else it does, but it just, felt like a more advanced unit. Do I need one of those? Probably not. But I take comfort in numbers and in progression, and his tester would give me such comfort. Yet, because I am blind, I don't have the option of getting one even remotely like it.And that one little issue, and those thoughts... they did something to me. Brought out all the frustration I have with being blind. Especially when it comes to using technology. I've mentioned this on other threads, but I have a lot of, probably unjustified, resentment toward blind-exclusive equipment. I am a firm believer that many things can be adapted, not reinvented, to be accessible. For instance, I'm happily using Windows and IOS on a daily basis with help from screen readers. Take the screen reader away though and you have a fully mainstream piece of equipment. It gives me an immense sense of belonging to remind myself of this fact, that I can show people I'm not some blind outcast you must feel overly inspired by and sorry for because I live in my own little world and I somehow manage to get by. I think avoiding
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Hi all,Before I start, please keep trollish or one-word replies behind; I would like to keep this thread constructive if it actually goes anywhere.My intention here is not at all to be in a bad mood or to bitch and complain on Christmas day. I had a great Christmas actually, and I try every year to enjoy it. But something has come up which frustrates me a little, and I can't decide whether the frustration is justified.Ever since I started using appliances with batteries, I wished I knew of a way to see how much charge they had left. Eventually I started using rechargeable batteries.Around that time, someone found an audible battery tester. It was a very simple unit; just stick batteries in and it beeps. The louder the beep, the more charge the batteries had. It wasn't very precise as the beep didn't change much, but it was enough to make me feel like I could find my own system for gauging the battery capacity. But somehow it got lost, thrown out etc. I haven't seen it in years.In the meantime, I ran into issues with chargers seeming to be dead, batteries not holding a charge etc. I don't exactly know what happened, but I couldn't trust any of my batteries or chargers. I got tired of that and eventually decided to replace everything. I spent a little extra money on a good charger and batteries, and have exclusively been sticking to that, and so far I haven't had any issues. But I'm still paranoid about the battery testing thing; I lost plenty of good recordings when I was having issues.An accessible battery tester was among the things I would gladly receive as a Christmas present. My mom was on the lookout for one, but we both knew our options may be limited. Eventually, she did find one though, the EZ test. It's available through APH, though it's out of stock, so I don't know how she managed to find one. I do know she waited weeks to get it, and didn't expect me to have it today, but as it turns out, it arrived just in time.In a nutshell, the tester comes with 2 AAA batteries which power it. You stick them in, then insert the battery you want to test. Once it gets a reading, it produces either 1, 2 or 3 beeps depending on the battery's strength. If the battery is practically depleted, only 1 beep is heard, and if it is very strong, 3 beeps are heard. An in-between state is signified by 2 beeps. Easy, simple. No sweat. Within 5 minutes I had found batteries which produced all three signals, so I knew what they sounded like and they were very different. All my dreams should be answered, right?I know I should be completely happy... but I'm not, and this is where I want to stress again that I'm not writing this to bitch and complain. But I felt uncertain when I heard two beeps. Did that mean it was close to full charge, or near being dead? My recorders can last at least 6 hours on a full charge with my current batteries (haven't really timed it precisely yet, but it's a while,). And that's just for recording. For playback, the time is probably longer. So, if I hear two beeps, does that mean I only have an hour or two, or 5 or 6? I have virtually no way of finding out. I wanted to see some intermediate state. A percentage, a voltage, even that imprecise beep which I'd have to listen to for several seconds to be sure I was confident in what I was hearing. But there's nothing like that, just three states, and it just bothered me a little. I decided that the best approach would be to keep as many of my batteries charged as possible, and to accept nothing less than 3 beeps on any of them.This might not have bothered me if it was all I had. But, after discussing my failing batteries with a hobbyist nature photographer, I started to realize that he has a lot more than I do. His tester gives him voltages and can test many more batteries I think. I don't know what else it does, but it just, felt like a more advanced unit. Do I need one of those? Probably not. But I take comfort in numbers and in progression, and his tester would give me such comfort. Yet, because I am blind, I don't have the option of getting one even remotely like it.And that one little issue, and those thoughts... they did something to me. Brought out all the frustration I have with being blind. Especially when it comes to using technology. I've mentioned this on other threads, but I have a lot of, probably unjustified, resentment toward blind-exclusive equipment. I am a firm believer that many things can be adapted, not reinvented, to be accessible. For instance, I'm happily using Windows and IOS on a daily basis with help from screen readers. Take the screen reader away though and you have a fully mainstream piece of equipment. It gives me an immense sense of belonging to remind myself of this fact, that I"m not some blind outcast who everyone feels inspired by and sorry for because they live in their own little world and somehow manage to get by. I think avoiding this stereotype
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Hi all,Before I start, please keep trollish or one-word replies behind; I would like to keep this thread constructive if it actually goes anywhere.My intention here is not at all to be in a bad mood or to bitch and complain on Christmas day. I had a great Christmas actually, and I try every year to enjoy it. But something has come up which frustrates me a little, and I can't decide whether the frustration is justified.Ever since I started using appliances with batteries, I wished I knew of a way to see how much charge they had left. Eventually I started using rechargeable batteries.Around that time, someone found an audible battery tester. It was a very simple unit; just stick batteries in and it beeps. The louder the beep, the more charge the batteries had. It wasn't very precise as the beep didn't change much, but it was enough to make me feel like I could find my own system for gauging the battery capacity. But somehow it got lost, thrown out etc. I haven't seen it in years.In the meantime, I ran into issues with chargers seeming to be dead, batteries not holding a charge etc. I don't exactly know what happened, but I couldn't trust any of my batteries or chargers. I got tired of that and eventually decided to replace everything. I spent a little extra money on a good charger and batteries, and have exclusively been sticking to that, and so far I haven't had any issues. But I'm still paranoid about the battery testing thing; I lost plenty of good recordings when I was having issues.An accessible battery tester was among the things I would gladly receive as a Christmas present. My mom was on the lookout for one, but we both knew our options may be limited. Eventually, she did find one though, the EZ test. It's available through APH, though it's out of stock, so I don't know how she managed to find one. I do know she waited weeks to get it, and didn't expect me to have it today, but as it turns out, it arrived just in time.In a nutshell, the tester comes with 2 AAA batteries which power it. You stick them in, then insert the battery you want to test. Once it gets a reading, it produces either 1, 2 or 3 beeps depending on the battery's strength. If the battery is practically depleted, only 1 beep is heard, and if it is very strong, 3 beeps are heard. An in-between state is signified by 2 beeps. Easy, simple. No sweat. Within 5 minutes I had found batteries which produced all three signals, so I knew what they sounded like and they were very different. All my dreams should be answered, right?I know I should be completely happy... but I'm not, and this is where I want to stress again that I'm not writing this to bitch and complain. But I felt uncertain when I heard two beeps. Did that mean it was close to full charge, or near being dead? My recorders can last at least 6 hours on a full charge with my current batteries (haven't really tested it fully yet, but it's a while). So, if I hear two beeps, does that mean I only have an hour or two, or 5 or 6? I have no way of knowing. I wanted to see some intermediate state. A percentage, a voltage, even that imprecise beep which I'd have to listen to for several seconds to be sure I was confident in what I was hearing. But there's nothing like that, just three states, and it just bothered me a little. I decided that the best approach would be to keep as many of my batteries charged as possible, and to accept nothing less than 3 beeps on any of them.This might not have bothered me if it was all I had. But, after discussing my failing babtteries with a hobbiest nature photographer, I started to realize that he has a lot more than I do. His tester gives him voltages. I don't know what else it does, but it just, felt like a more advanced unit. Do I need one of those? Probably not. But I take comfort in numbers and in progression, and that would give me such comfort. Yet, because I am blind, I don't have that option.And that one little issue, and those thoughts... they did something to me. Brought out all the frustration I have with being blind. Especially when it comes to using technology. I've mentioned this on other threads, but I have a lot of, probably unjustified, resentment toward blind-exclusive equipment. I am a firm believer that many things can be adapted, not reinvented, to be accessible. For instance, I'm happily using Windows and IOS on a daily basis with help from screen readers. Take the screen reader away though and you have a fully mainstream piece of equipment. It gives me an immense sense of belonging to remind myself of this fact.I think it actually helped me finally come to terms with being blind.Growing up, I was so used to being reminded every day about the challenges, differences and trials I would have to prepare for, was told that blind people are always disadvantaged etc. But for all the cautions I was given (which I do agree with btw), I never felt safe voicing my desires to
Re: The NVDA beeps.
Re: The NVDA beeps. No, changing the beeps can't be done unless they add in a completely new way of producing the beep sound. Not saying they won't... but all the same I wouldn't get your hopes up too quickly. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/598857/#p598857 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: how can i download my iphone's apps into ipa files using pc?
Re: how can i download my iphone's apps into ipa files using pc? I don't think you can extract IPA files with ITunes anymore. Iirc, they took that out a long while ago.Maybe there are solutions which can? But then you're probably getting into a legal grey area. Not to mention, most of the apps I would be interested in using this on are too old to run on current devices and have been pulled from the app store. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/598845/#p598845 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The NVDA beeps.
Re: The NVDA beeps. That doesn't work, because NVDA's beeps are synthesized, meaning they aren't just wav files you can replace.Not sure honestly how to go about changing this. I mean, I guess you could have wav files for each of the positions of a progress bar, but then you'd still be left with speech mode beeps, and mouse position beeps if play audio coordinates is on. And indentation beeps if you have that enabled. So, it seems impractical to switch them all to wav files. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/598844/#p598844 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Windows Explorer Replacement
Re: Windows Explorer Replacement I've also been looking into File Explorer replacements. I don't really need one imminently but I'm curious. I think I tried Explorer++ and 7zip File Manager, and while both are lightning fast, I seemed to encounter slowdown when going into folders with thousands of items. I have to wait seconds for the folders to display when going into them. This makes the process of moving stuff around in large folders very slow for me, and I've found that standard file explorer seems to be reasonably fast at loading such big folders. It's slower overall, but for big folders it seems to be faster.So out of the replacements people recommend, do any of them somehow avoid hanging when loading large folders, especially when going in and out of them repeatedly to move files around? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/596125/#p596125 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Windows Explorer Replacement
Re: Windows Explorer Replacement I've also been looking into File Explorer replacements. I don't really need one imminently but I'm curious. I think I tried Explorer++ and 7zip File Manager, and while both are lightning fast, I seemed to encounter slowdown when going into folders with thousands of items. This makes the process of moving stuff around in large folder very slow for me, and I've found that standad file explorer seems to be reasonably fast at loading such big folders. It's slower overall, but for big folders it seems to be faster.So out of the replacements people recommend, do any of them somehow avoid hanging when loading large folders, especially when going in and out of them repeatedly to move files around? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/596125/#p596125 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: I just got the most awesome keyboard ever!! buckeling spring switches
Re: I just got the most awesome keyboard ever!! buckeling spring switches To those who are undecided about keyboard types, let me give you my own account, from a fellow undecided person. I'm little more than an idiot when it comes to computer keyboards actually, so please don't take my advice as expert certified or anything. This is just my own experience!Put simply, I'm not a pro mechanical keyboard person. I tried to be, but I never really felt it. I don't hate them, but they're just not for me.What got me started on mechanicals was a few accounts from Twitter and some friends who had them. People were telling me they improve typing significantly, and they just felt and sounded so cool. I could sort of see that... they did sound cool. They're loud, but cool.My first mechanical was a Razor Black Widow. That thing is quite loud. And it's weird, I could see why people liked it, but after the novelty of it wore off, I kind of had trouble figuring out what I liked about it, if anything. It definitely feels different to type on, but for me, it really didn't feel advantageous to have. The only real advantages I could think of are: key combinations are far less limited, so you can press any combination of keys at the same time and they'd all get through. Also, some gaming tasks were easier, such as rapidly pressing an arrow key. I could basically feather tap the key, so that it shakes up and down just enough to trigger the switch but not enough to bottom out, which makes quickly pressing keys with minimal effort a lot easier. I never got amazing at this technique, but I imagine some people would love it. But yeah for standard typing, I just couldn't see myself digging the Black Widow clicky switches.So after about 2 years of that, I decided to do some research and find a mechanical I'd like better. Something without clicky switches. Something that was a bit thinner/slimmer. It was hard to find, but eventually I found a Corsair low profile gaming mechanical keyboard. Completely different feel. Much quieter and less key travel. So much less that I'd accidentally pressed keys just by bumping them, so I had to learn to be very precise. While the keyboard was still louder than your standard cheap membrane keyboard, it was a lot softer than a clicky one, so for a time I liked it. But, again, I thought to myself, why do I have this?The gaming tasks I mentioned above were even easier on that keyboard, and typing was nice once I got used to it but, I still didn't feel like it revolutionized the way I type. And it was about 170 bucks if I remember correctly. Though it's very possible I'm completely wrong, the numbers aren't coming to me so easily at the moment.The end to this story came about 6 months ago, when I got tired of my old machine due to various issues I had with it. I finally decided to do research and spend a little extra money and get something I really want, rather than get the best deal on a high spec machine I could find.The machine I ended up purchasing came with a really cheap membrane keyboard. I was secretly hoping it would; after all that mechanical keyboard experience, I wanted to return to an old friend. My plan was to try using the cheap keyboard it came with for a few weeks. If I felt like something was missing, I'd hall out my Corsair perhaps and switch back. And ya know what, I've never had the urge to hall my mechanicals out, because the membrane is just working well for me. To give you an idea of what it looks like, it's full size (I wouldn't settle for anything less on a desktop), but otherwise it's probably among the cheapest, lightest, slimmest keyboards ever.Occasionally the disadvantages of cheap membrane keyboards come back to me (unable to press certain odd key combinations, and perhaps a bit slower for rapid key presses in games), but I don't find myself being super troubled by that right now. Not to mention that every time I got a new keyboard, it took me at least a week to get fully used to typing on it, and during that time I made mistakes I hadn't made in a long time which was frustrating and made me wonder why I had even switched... so I think I'm just going to settle for cheap keyboards for the time being. That way if something happens to them, I can get another one easily, and chances are if I get a similar one, the transition curve will be much less annoying to deal with or may even be nonexistent if I'm lucky.I've been thinking on and off about why I've come to this conclusion, and while I'm not completely confident that I have an answer, I do have theories, both about keyboards, and the hands which type on them lol.First, my preference for touch has always been on having something that's easy to bottom out. For this reason, I can burn up a laptop keyboard especially once I'm acquainted with it. During school assignments I remember almost feeling like I could fly, and I think a lot of that was having less travel and having a firm bottom to guide me on the amount of
Re: the funnest site i have ever found
Re: the funnest site i have ever found This site is indeed fun to mess with. Spent at least an hour yesterday having fun with it, which is rare for me.Some of the voices have reverb on them, probably because they were taken from public address speeches etc. But a large number of them seem clean, even stuff I wouldn't expect such as the Simpsons. I think Gilbert Gottfried has done some studio voice work so maybe that's why he sounds clean, and some of the game voices could've been trained from ripped voice clips from games (Snake and the boss for instance). Speaking of Metal Gear I'd love to see a Kernel Camble! But others are still cleaner than I expected, so it makes me wonder where the voice clips for training were sourced from.FYI, Gilbert Gottfried's voice in particular cracks me up as it is, so hearing him randomly emphasize certain words gave me a good laugh.Would love to be able to mess with this tech offline... take random voice clips of myself and see if I can construct a synthetic voice of it for instance. Of course one has to be very careful when distributing tools to do this because they can be misused. But the tech is downright exciting, and just illustrates why machine learning is such an intriguing thing for me. I know nothing about how it works, but every time I see a machine learning algo related to audio, I become excited to hear it in action, and especially excited to try it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/594291/#p594291 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: the funnest site i have ever found
Re: the funnest site i have ever found This site is indeed fun to mess with. Spent at least an hour yesterday having fun with it, which is rare for me.While some of the voices have reverb on them which is understandable, others seem clean. The Simpsons for instance, Gilbert Gottfried, and many others. I wonder where the vovoice training clips were sourced from.FYI, Gilbert Gottfried's voice in particular cracks me up as it is, so hearing him randomly emphasize certain words gave me a good laugh.Would love to be able to mess with this tech offline... take random voice clips of myself and see if I can construct a synthetic voice of it for instance. Of course one has to be very careful when distributing tools to do this because they can be misused. But the tech is downright exciting, and just illustrates why machine learning is such an intriguing thing for me. I know nothing about how it works, but every time I see a machine learning algo related to audio, I become excited to hear it in action, and especially excited to try it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/594291/#p594291 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: the funnest site i have ever found
Re: the funnest site i have ever found This sight is indeed fun to mess with. Spent at least an hour yesterday having fun with it, which is rare for me. Gilbert Gottfried's voice cracks me up as it is, so hearing him randomly emphasize certain words gave me a good laugh.Would love to be able to mess with this tech offline... take random voice clips of myself and see if I can construct a synthetic voice of it for instance. Of course one has to be very careful when distributing tools to do this because they can be misused. But the tech is downright exciting, and just illustrates why machine learning is such an intriguing thing for me. I know nothing about how it works, but every time I see a machine learning algo related to audio, I become excited to hear it in action, and especially excited to try it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/594291/#p594291 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Let's all write to the developers about the Accessibility of the offic
Re: Let's all write to the developers about the Accessibility of the offic Jayde wrote:Honest question here, but...uh, what the hell is Telegram and why does its accessibility matter?Don't we have many, many other chat clients and programs and options that aren't Telegram? Shouldn't we, y'know, just use those accessible options and ultimately withdraw our support from a client that does not suit us?Don't get me wrong. There are times when it is a good idea to fight for accessibility. And perhaps this is one. But to my admittedly limited perspective, this just seems kind of pointless. It's like getting upset that Microsoft Edge isn't too user-friendly when you've got IE, FF or Chrome. Like sure, you hope Edge gets better, but there are other options.I completely understand where you're coming from, but I disagree with the sentiment in this case. Telegram seems, at least, to be very attractive. True, another app will likely come along in a year or two or three which will make people switch to that instead, but so far as I know, Telegram does have pretty much anything you could want in a platform for one-on-one interaction or for groups. As others have said, it's very privacy oriented but I'm not going to touch that right now since it's a hot issue already. You can have groups, you can send text and voice messages and do voice/video calls, you can even send files without stupid size limitations. I'm not sure what the size limit is, but it's quite large from what I'm told. Voice quality is pretty good too, almost as good as Discord. And I've heard you can create bots for various automated tasks like Skype and Discord. I don't use those features so I don't know what they really do, but I'm on a few Discord servers with bots and they are useful to have.I don't really know how many people use Telegram. I myself use it occasionally, but I wouldn't have a hard time believing its popularity is rapidly rising. In fact I know it is, multiple people I used to chat with on Skype are now using Telegram to do it, and some are using Discord too. Telegram has even picked up a number of contacts on my phone... people who I thought would never use these new age modern social media apps lol. So, Telegram is definitely getting up there.Sure, in many cases it's probably best just to avoid apps you don't like. If you don't have many friends, or or those people whom you wish to keep in your life don't mind using alternatives, you don't need to worry. But not everyone is accommodating, and some of those who are accommodating can't fully understand the issue because they don't live in a blind person's world if you will.The issue becomes extremely polarizing when dealing with communities. When an entire community uses an app you can't use due to accessibility reasons, and you really want to participate fully in that community but you can't, well that doesn't feel nice. I ran into that a number of times. Every group I'm a part of has a Discord server and that's where much of the social interaction takes place. They have forums, they have a messaging system like this forum, but the real fun takes place on Discord and I wanted to be a part of that. But Discord was ridiculously cryptic for screen reader users back then (aroundd 2016 ish). I of course couldn't make them switch to another app. So, I had no choice but to confront accessibility issues head-on, or be left behind.At one point I did allow myself to be left behind which sucked. And what also sucked was that almost every person I met on forums soon asked the dreaded question: "What's your Discord?" Just a casual question which I could easily answer; I could provide a username and tag because I had one, but I didn't want to give it out, because then I'd have to open that shit pile again. Fortunately it's far from a shit pile now, it's my main platform in fact. But yeah, having to explain to people that I couldn't use it, making accidental calls when I wasn't sure where I was, and hit an unlabeled button by mistake... ugh. And then watching sighted friends search desperately for solutions but not really knowing what to look for. It got awkward at times, as some took it upon themselves to help me by trying to show me how to send screenshots so they could see where I was in the interface. I commend them for being nice and helping and understanding what they could, but I just wanted to be rid of that crap. I already have an inferiority complex. I'm tired of feeling like I'm excluded from things because I am blind, especially when the barrier between me and the thing I want is an inaccessible interface, which can in many cases be remedied.The good news is that Telegram isn't so bad if you know which clients to use and which ones not to, but it's still not perfect, and it would be great if the official Telegram devs could do the right thing and care about accessibility. I'm not the type to put up a hard fight for it though, since at best i'd be standing on roof tops shouting,
Re: Let's all write to the developers about the Accessibility of the offic
Re: Let's all write to the developers about the Accessibility of the offic Jayde wrote:Honest question here, but...uh, what the hell is Telegram and why does its accessibility matter?Don't we have many, many other chat clients and programs and options that aren't Telegram? Shouldn't we, y'know, just use those accessible options and ultimately withdraw our support from a client that does not suit us?Don't get me wrong. There are times when it is a good idea to fight for accessibility. And perhaps this is one. But to my admittedly limited perspective, this just seems kind of pointless. It's like getting upset that Microsoft Edge isn't too user-friendly when you've got IE, FF or Chrome. Like sure, you hope Edge gets better, but there are other options.I completely understand where you're coming from, but I disagree with the sentiment in this case. Telegram seems, at least, to be very attractive. True, another app will likely come along in a year or two or three which will make people switch to that instead, but so far as I know, Telegram does have pretty much anything you could want in a platform for one-on-one interaction or for groups. As others have said, it's very privacy oriented but I'm not going to touch that right now since it's a hot issue already. You can have groups, you can send text and voice messages and do voice/video calls, you can even send files without stupid size limitations. I'm not sure what the size limit is, but it's quite large from what I'm told. Voice quality is pretty good too, almost as good as Discord. And I've heard you can create bots for various automated tasks like Skype and Discord. I don't use those features so I don't know what they really do, but I'm on a few Discord servers with bots and they are useful to have.I don't really know how many people use Telegram. I myself use it occasionally, but I wouldn't have a hard time believing its popularity is rapidly rising. In fact I know it is, multiple people I used to chat with on Skype are now using Telegram to do it, and some are using Discord too. Telegram has even picked up a number of contacts on my phone... people who I thought would never use these new age modern social media apps lol. So, Telegram is definitely getting up there.Sure, in many cases it's probably best just to avoid apps you don't like. If you don't have many friends, or or those people whom you wish to keep in your life don't mind using alternatives, you don't need to worry. But not everyone is accommodating, and some of those who are accommodating can't fully understand the issue because they don't live in a blind person's world if you will.The issue becomes extremely polarizing when dealing with communities. When an entire community uses an app you can't use due to accessibility reasons, and you really want to participate fully in that community but you can't, well that doesn't feel nice. I ran into that a number of times. Every group I'm a part of has a Discord server and that's where much of the social interaction takes place. They have forums, they have a messaging system like this forum, but the real fun takes place on Discord and I wanted to be a part of that. But Discord was ridiculously cryptic for screen reader users back then (aroundd 2016 ish). I of course couldn't make them switch to another app. So, I had no choice but to confront accessibility issues head-on, or be left behind.At one point I did allow myself to be left behind which sucked. And what also sucked was that almost every person I met on forums soon asked the dreaded question: "What's your Discord?" Just a casual question which I could easily answer; I could provide a username and tag because I had one, but I didn't want to give it out, because then I'd have to open that shit pile again. Fortunately it's far from a shit pile now, it's my main platform in fact. But yeah, having to explain to people that I couldn't use it, making accidental calls when I wasn't sure where I was, and hit an unlabeled button by mistake... ugh. And then watching sighted friends search desperately for solutions but not really knowing what to look for. It got awkward at times, as some took it upon themselves to help me by trying to show me how to send screenshots so they could see where I was in the interface. I commend them for being nice and helping and understanding what they could, but I just wanted to be rid of that crap. I already have an inferiority complex. I'm tired of feeling like I'm excluded from things because I am blind, especially when the barrier between me and the thing I want is an inaccessible interface, which can in many cases be remedied.The good news is that Telegram isn't so bad if you know which clients to use and which ones not to, but it's still not perfect, and it would be great if the official Telegram devs could do the right thing and care about accessibility. I'm not the type to put up a hard fight for it though, since at best i'd be standing on roof tops shouting,
Re: Is it safe to delete the .sys files from my c drive?
Re: Is it safe to delete the .sys files from my c drive? Turret wrote:@2 Windows managing it for you isn't always the best thing. I.E., as I said, mine was 18 GB, and that really, really is not good, especially for an SSD, as it decreases the lifetime of your harddrive by a fuck tun.Aren't SSDs good enough now that this lifetime decrease should be minimized, and will only affect you if you intend to use the drive for many years? I don't know for sure, I'm only asking. In any case, it's probably easy to put those files on a secondary internal drive, which I might do since those tend to have more space to spare. Then again, I might disable hibernation too, since I have 16 gb of ram and that file gets rather huge. I never hibernate, so I don't need it around.The pagefile/virtual memory confuses me a lot. My page file, interestingly, is 2 or 3 gb, and NVDA's resource monitor add-on is telling me 9 gb of virtual memory is used. I don't get it. Which one is correct, or am I seeing two different things?I kind of wonder why I need virtual memory to begin with, since I'm rarely maxing out my ram so far as I know. Maybe I am and I just don't know it, maybe the pagefile is doing its job. But right now, resource monitor tells me I'm using 7 gb of physical memory and 9 gb of virtual, so this is eluding me.I've disabled my pagefile in the past on other machines, but haven't gotten around to doing it on this one, and tbh the drives in this machine are big enough that a few gb here and there probably won't affect me that much.But yeah, don't delete system files. I did that once on an xp laptop... I was trying to recover an external drive, and the recovered files accidentally got placed on the root of the C drive. Thinking that it was safe to remove every file on the root of the drive, I did just that. My rationale was that important stuff would be in program files, windows, etc. Next thing I know the computer wouldn't boot. Then I gave the computer to my dad because he needed a laptop, but I warned him that I couldn't get it to boot. He managed to reinstall Windows, but he either couldn't, or wasn't willing to try, to recover my files. So I lost a shit ton of stuff because of that incident, and learned valuable lessons. Admittedly, Windows is probably a ton more robust now than it was 10 years ago on my XP laptop, but still. I'm not about to test it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/591424/#p591424 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave.
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave. It's accessible in the sense that you can open, play and process stuff. I only use it for specialty things.You can sort of edit, but I haven't really messed with it all that much. A few times I've gone into its selection range dialog, made a selection and deleted for example, but that's hardly intuitive. Maybe there's another way, I haven't really looked. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/590076/#p590076 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave.
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave. Yeah sadly 32 bit vst support is being phased out these days, so less and less modern plug-ins will work in Gold Wave.However, you shouldn't need to use the Izotope interface to change parameters. Iirc, Gold Wave supports a basic parameter view which lets you change the automatable parameters. Of course, you can't, well, automate them, but you can change them like you would any internal effect, and do offline processing that way. I used to do it all the time.Really wishing Gold Wave's vst support would get some updates. I've mostly switched to Reaper like many here, but for sample editing, looping etc. I have yet to find something nearly as nice as Gold Wave for that. It's not something Gold Wave was necessarily meant for, but it can work for that, and being able to quickly process something with a vst would be nice. I sometimes do it, but I'm becoming increasingly leery of that due to the limitations of the vst support.I'm not going to call the support shit/bad, I'll call it limited... it works, and for some, no, many plug-ins, especially older ones, it's great. So you can definitely use it to get some work done, and imho it doesn't have to be all that magnificent really. If you're using Gold Wave, you're clearly not intending to do things the way a daw does them, so keeping things simple isn't a bad thing. I'm not saying there's no room for complexity, I'm just saying that you can't expect Gold Wave's VST support to stack up to Reaper's. It does need 64 bit support, though.As an aside, I'm not sure how Audacity's vst plug-in support is doing these days, but that's an option too. There's also the free audio editor Wavosaur which was pretty good, but I really don't like editing with it. Not to mention it has this horrid habit of resampling the output audio to the target rate with no interpolation, so unless your file's rate and the target rate match, it's going to sound terrible on playback. The offline processing/saving should be fine, it's just playback that sucks. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/590017/#p590017 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave.
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave. Yeah sadly 32 bit vst support is being phased out these days, so less and less modern plug-ins will work in Gold Wave.However, you shouldn't need to use the Izotope interface to change parameters. Iirc, Gold Wave supports a basic parameter view which lets you change the automatable parameters. Of course, you can't, well, automate them, but you can change them like you would any internal effect, and do offline processing that way. I used to do it all the time.Really wishing Gold Wave's vst support would get some updates. I've mostly switched to Reaper like many here, but for sample editing, looping etc. I have yet to find something nearly as nice as Gold Wave for that. It's not something Gold Wave was necessarily meant for, but it can work for that, and being able to quickly process something with a vst would be nice. I sometimes do it, but I'm becoming increasingly leery of it due to how limited its VST support is.I'm not going to call the support shit/bad, I'll call it limited... it works, and for some, no, many plug-ins, especially older ones, it's great. So you can definitely use it to get some work done, and imho it doesn't have to be all that magnificent really. If you're using Gold Wave, you're clearly not intending to do thigns the way a daw does them, so keeping things ismple isn't a bad thing. But not supporting 64 bit plug-ins... well that's kind of limiting, and I'm not saying there are other things which could be added/improved, but yeah. I think it would certainly be more useful if 64 bit support were added.As an aside, I"m not sure how Audacity's vst plug-in support is doing these days, but that's an option too. There's also the free audio editor Wavosaur which was pretty good, but I really don't like editing with it. Not to mention it has this horrid habbit of resampling the output audio to the target rate with no interpolation, so unless your file's rate and the target rate match, it's going to sound terrible on playback. The offline processing/saving should be fine, it's just playback that sucks. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/590017/#p590017 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave.
Re: problem installing vinyl by izotope in gold wave. Yeah sadly 32 bit vst support is being phased out these days, so less and less modern plug-ins will work in Gold Wave.However, you shouldn't need to use the Izotope interface to change parameters. Iirc, Gold Wave supports a basic parameter view which basically lets you change the automatable parameters. Of course, you can't, well, automate them, but you can change them and do offline processing that way. I used to do it all the time.Really wishing Gold Wave's vst support would get some updates. I've mostly switched to Reaper like most people, but for samle editing, looping etc. I have yet to find something as nice as Gold Wave for that. It's not something Gold Wave was necessarily meant for, but it can work for that, and being able to quickly process soemthing with a vst would be nice. I sometimes do it, but I'm becoming increasingly leery of it due to how limited its VST support is. I'm not going to call it shit/bad, I'll call it limited... it works, and for some, no, many plug-ins, especially older ones, it's great. So you can definitely use it to get some work done, but it's nowhere near what you'd get with something more capable. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/590017/#p590017 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Fascinating article on earphoneless direct sound beaming
Re: Fascinating article on earphoneless direct sound beaming I don't know enough about this tech to be excited or skeptical, but it's one of those things i would love to try anyway. Just to see what it was like. Probably won't happen, at least for a long while, but still. I always like the idea, anyway, of trying new innovative things. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589862/#p589862 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on?
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on? Ah yep, that one was cool when I used it, I didn't know it still worked. What version should I use which is compatible with the later NVDA? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589818/#p589818 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on?
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on? Shame, I know it used to be pretty reliable for me. I ran into limits every so often, but within a day or less it would normally start working again. Now though, it never seems to work when I try it. So I'm using the google translate web site, which is pretty nice but it's annoying to have to keep going back to it. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.Maybe there's a nice alternative? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589742/#p589742 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on?
Re: broken NVDA translate add-on? Shame, I know it used to be pretty reliable for me. I ran into limits every so often, but within a day or less it would normally start working again. Now though, it never seems to work when I try it. So I'm using the google translate web site, which is pretty nice but it's annoying to have to keep going back to it. Hpefully this gets fixed soon.Maybe there's a nice alternative? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589742/#p589742 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
broken NVDA translate add-on?
broken NVDA translate add-on? Hi all,For the past few weeks I have been trying to use NVDA Translate, the one where you press control+shift+insert+t to translate stuff, and it's just spitting the original text back out at me. Makes me wonder if the add-on no longer works/needs to be updated.Can anyone confirm this? Is there anything I can try on my end to fix it? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589621/#p589621 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Sudden, Unexplained Youtube Issue
Re: Sudden, Unexplained Youtube Issue It's down for me as well. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/588993/#p588993 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Sudden, Unexplained Youtube Issue
Re: Sudden, Unexplained Youtube Issue Me as well. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/588993/#p588993 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The best recorder for recording lectures?
Re: The best recorder for recording lectures? Agreeing with Haily here.Olympus recorders weren't all that great once upon a time if you cared about quality, but they've stepped up and are now pretty darn good. They are far from out of date! I have no idea what Olympus recorders are being sold in South Africa, though. You guys tend to get stuff a little late sometimes, but the LSP4 has been out for about a year if memory serves, maybe a bit longer, and is certainly a great option if you can get it. If not, any Olympus from the past 5 or 6 years is probably going to serve you well, and have very usable voice guidance. That's one thing I really wish other recorders could do, since as much as I love my Zoom H1N and H5, I just don't have as much confidence with them. Unfortunately, the Olympus's tend to be a little more expensive than the Zooms. So if you can't afford the Olympus LSP4, look at the Zoom H1N, they're both great.Alternatively, the microphone on many phones can serve your purpose well. The quality won't be quite as pristine, but those microphones are great for recording lectures. If you have an Android, though, you might want to test it out before you stick with it; Some Androids have horrible microphones. I think this is largely becoming a thing of the past, but I haven't heard enough modern Androids and enough manufacturer's microphones to know what's going on these days.Those microphones you put in your ears are called binaural microphones. They have a very unique sound. I'm not sure what the common models are these days. I have a set of decent Sound Professionals ones. They make great recordings if you like the binaural sound, but for me at least, it would be too much work to use them to record lectures. Furthermore I have bad experiences with them not lasting through heavy day-to-day use; they're tiny and delicate so you have to be careful with them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/588764/#p588764 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The best recorder for recording lectures?
Re: The best recorder for recording lectures? Agreeing with Haily here.Olympus recorders weren't all that great once upon a time, but they are far from out of date! I have no idea what Olympus recorders are being sold in South Africa, though. You guy stend to get stuff a little late sometimes, but the LSP4 has been out for about a year if memory serves, maybe a bit longer, and is certainly a great option if you can get it. If not, any Olympus from the past 5 or 6 years is probably going to serve you well, and have very usable voice guidance. That's one thing I really wish other recorders could do, since as much as I love my Zoom H1N and H5, I just don't have as much confidence with them.Alternatively, the microphone on many phones can serve your purpose well. The quality won't be quite as pristine, but those microphones are great for recording lectures. If you have an Android, though, you might want to test it out before you stick with it; Some Androids have horrible microphones. I think this is largely becoming a thing of the past, but I haven't heard enough modern Androids and enough manufacturer's microphones to know what's going on these days.Those microphones you put in your ears are called binaural microphones. They have a very unique sound. I'm not sure what the common models are these days. I have a set of decent Sound Professionals ones. They make great recordings if you like the binaural sound, but for me at least, it would be too much work to use them to record lectures. Furthermore I have bad experiences with them not lasting through heavy use; they're tiny and delicate so you have to be careful with them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/588764/#p588764 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Braille: do you guys still use it in this digitalized world?
Re: Braille: do you guys still use it in this digitalized world? I'm kind of an odd one I suppose. Tl,dr: I believe every blind child should be fluent in braille literacy. That said, I believe it is important for blind youth, especially when nearing adulthood, to develop their own perspective, without pressure, on how much they feel they need braille in their day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, braille is a blind person's tool. There's no getting around it. It's a damn useful tool, and accomplishes many of the same things print does for the sighted, but the differences between braille and print are far from negligible in my opinion, simply because there's no way to make the two systems compatible with one another without a third party. Sometimes that third party is a transcriber, but for the most part, technology is serving that third party role extraordinarily well these days.You could argue that braille is not really necessary with the technology we have. To be honest, sighted people are struggling with the same problems; I have heard that children no longer learn cursive writing or how to read a clock face. Why? Because analog clocks are antiquated, and nobody uses cursive anymore. Aside from those things being old school, I think technology is just providing easier alternatives. Some people find that incredibly sad, some people aren't bothered by it. I'm in the middle somewhere, able to understand both sides. I'm not here to find happy compromises for all the world's problems, so I'll take a back seat and let other people sort out what is or is not needed in 2020.My own personal story:I learned braille really well in school, but I haven't used braille much in almost 8 years. I can still read and write it well though.The reason I ultimately stopped using braille regularly was that I was tired of dealing with it. I've never liked the fact that I am blind, and braille was just one more thing I felt made me different.What really clenched it for me was an incident a month or so into my seventh grade year. My English teacher asked me if I could write capital letters, because I forgot to capitalize words on a spelling test. She wasn't being rude or anything, she legit was concerned that my device wasn't advanced enough to do it. Some people might have been appalled; this would be an insult on their intelligence. I don't appall easily though. I knew it was an honest question, and it made me sad. It made me feel like I came from a primitive culture with poor educational standards. I don't hold it against her for asking at all... It just sent me on a thought train which added to my dissatisfaction with my blindness.Then there was the incident where a teacher accidentally gave my braille transcriber a test with the answer key, which resulted in me having to take the test late in order for the situation to be sorted out. Not to mention the multiple incidents where my hard copy braille was not very readable due to me erasing stuff, so I'd have to tell the transcriber what I wrote. It frustrated me, since I never felt directly responsible for my work. I always had to go through someone to translate my blind output to sighted input.When I started getting good at computers, I went through a phase where I was good at certain things on the computer, and other things on the note taker. Anything involving the Internet was a computer task, while anything involving writing was a note taker task. I had to go through braille to text translation which wasn't always perfect. More than once I'd go back and forth between note taker and computer, and I found it irritating. I just wanted to feel like I was fitting in with my peers. Maybe I was just looking for an escape from blindness.As it turns out, I sort of got my wish soon after high school. During my first few months of college, my note taker crashed on me very unexpectedly. It would take weeks to fix. I did have a nice laptop at the time, though I didn't use it much. But now I had little choice but to make it work.Funny thing, the laptop actually worked out as well as I could've hoped. I kept using it even when the note taker came back, which was a good thing because it crashed again in a few months. The laptop wasn't void of problems, but when I did have issues with it, I had many options to get it fixed. I never went a day without it... at worst, I had to call someone from the IT department to come in and get it booted up for me, which he was able to do in less than 2 hours. Another time they helped me over the phone to get reconnected to the wifi, and guided me through a procedure with ipconfig. Within 10 minutes I was on. It was, in a word, awesome. It was such a liberating feeling to do things the way any other sighted person with a laptop would.I felt that people around me were happy to know I could use the stuff they could use. Professors were put at ease when they saw I was able to use Blackboard, send e-mails etc. just like any other student who had a
Re: Braille: do you guys still use it in this digitalized world?
Re: Braille: do you guys still use it in this digitalized world? I'm kind of an odd one I suppose. Tl,dr: I believe every blind child should be fluent in braille literacy. That said, I believe it is important for blind youth, especially when nearing adulthood, to develop their own perspective, without pressure, on how much they feel they need braille in their day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, braille is a blind person's tool. There's no getting around it. It's a damn useful tool, and accomplishes many of the same things print does for the sighted, but the differences between braille and print are far from negligible in my opinion, simply because there's no way to make the two systems compatible with one another without a third party. Sometimes that third party is a transcriber, but for the most part, technology is serving that third party role extraordinarily well these days.You could argue that braille is not really necessary with the technology we have. To be honest, sighted people are struggling with the same problems; I have heard that children no longer learn cursive writing or how to read a clock face. Why? Because analog clocks are antiquated, and nobody uses cursive anymore. Aside from those things being old school, I think technology is just providing easier alternatives. Some people find that incredibly sad, some people aren't bothered by it. I'm in the middle somewhere, able to understand both sides. I'm not here to find happy compromises for all the world's problems, so I'll take a back seat and let other people sort out what is or is not needed in 2020.My own personal story:I learned braille really well in school, but I haven't used braille much in almost 8 years. I can still read and write it well though.The reason I ultimately stopped using braille regularly was that I was tired of dealing with it. I've never liked the fact that I am blind, and braille was just one more thing I felt made me different.What really clenched it for me was an incident a month or so into my seventh grade year. My English teacher asked me if I could write capital letters, because I forgot to capitalize words on a spelling test. She wasn't being rude or anything, she legit was concerned that my device wasn't advanced enough to do it. Some people might have been appalled; this would be an insult on their intelligence. I don't appall easily though. I knew it was an honest question, and it made me sad. It made me feel like I came from a primitive culture with poor educational standards. I don't hold it against her for asking at all... It just sent me on a thought train which added to my dissatisfaction with my blindness.Then there was the incident where a teacher accidentally gave my braille transcriber a test with the answer key, which resulted in me having to take the test late in order for the situation to be sorted out. Not to mention the multiple incidents where my hard copy braille was not very readable due to me erasing stuff... so I'd have to tell the transcriber what I wrote. It frustrated me, since I never felt directly responsible for my work. I always had to go through someone to translate my blind output to sighted input.When I started getting good at computers, I went through a phase where I was good at certian things on the computer, and other things on the note taker. Anything involving the Internet was a computer task, while anything involving writing was a note taker task. I had to go through braille to text translation which wasn't always perfect. More than once I'd go back and forth between note taker and computer, and I found it irritating. I just wanted to feel like I was fitting in with my peers. Maybe I was just looking for an escape from blindness.As it turns out, I sort of got my wish soon after high school. During my first few months of college, my note taker crashed on me very unexpectedly. It would take weeks to fix. I did have a nice laptop at the time, though I didn't use it much. But now I had little choice but to make it work.Funny thing, the laptop actually worked out as well as I could've hoped. I kept using it even when the note taker came back, which was a good thing because it crashed again in a few months. The laptop wasn't void of problems, but when I did have issues with it, I had many options to get it fixed. I never went a day without it... at worst, I had to call someone from the IT department to come in and get it booted up for me, which he was able to do in less than 2 hours. Another time they helped me over the phone to get reconnected to the wifi, and guided me through a procedure with ipconfig. Within 10 minutes I was on. It was, in a word, awesome. It was such a liberating feeling to do things the way any other sighted person with a laptop would.I felt that people around me were happy to know I could use the stuff they could use. Professors were put at ease when they saw I was able to use Blackboard, send e-mails etc. just like any other student who had
Re: is it just me, or has discord changed
Re: is it just me, or has discord changed Probably. I have no idea what issues Canary has, I was only told it does have some issues. Maybe they're not common though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/586402/#p586402 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election So... final thoughts of the election:Despite being registered republican, I voted democrat this time. Not sure how I feel about doing that... my political confidence is very low as you might've read in my previous post. But I've been trying, at least, to educate myself, especially by listening to Trump/Biden rallies, speeches and interviews to guide me on a path for the election. Something just drew me to Biden. He seems more grounded, more in touch with real-world issues. Trump seems, in a word, arrogant.When talking about climate change, he never confronts the issue directly, saying "We have the cleanest air, the cleanest water." Really? When asked about Covid, he can't really defend himself. When confronted with 230 k deaths or whatever it is, his response is "The virus was China's fault." No assurance for Americans that he will fight for them anymore. "We're learning to live with it," he says. With no regard to those who have learned to live with the loss of a family member. I do agree with the statement that we can't let it completely take over our lives, but I also am disgusted by his refusal/inability to provide insight on whether he could've done anything to prevent some of those deaths. I know, a lot of republicans are going to tell me "Why would he do that? It's done with, you don't get anywhere by dwelling on the past." But your past is there for you to learn from, and Trump seems incapable of that. Biden has admitted he has made mistakes, so that alone makes me feel better about him as a person at least. Hell, if you get the virus you're immune, end of story. That's what Trump wants us to believe. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. He doesn't even know, but I'm pretty sure he does believe it. Then there are the conspiracy theories. haven't even bothered to read them, because I know I would try to work out if they were true, and I'd be completely in over my head having a meltdown. But I do know this much: Trump likes to troll to see what attention he gets, and is convinced everyone who opposes him subscribes to fake news, fake media, and is a crooked corrupt democrat. Nope... not for me.If I found out a person I trusted deeply such as a life coach, close friend, or family member was routinely conducting themselves this way, I'd have a hard time trusting them to treat me with respect during a sensitive moment. One or two of those things, okay, people make mistakes, but, add it all up, and it doesn't feel right to see that kind of person being responsible for hundreds of millions of people.I had a conversation with my dad a couple days ago. I told him I have my difficulties trusting Trump as president because of some of the things he does, but those close to me believe Biden would screw things up bigtime, and I just don't feel like there's any peace or resolution. No matter what I do, I'm damned, and I wish we could all just get along. What should I do?His response, more or less, projected his republican beliefs, but touched me near the end. It went something like this: "In a country of over 380 million people, it's sad that we can't pick better candidates. Trump is a fucking knucklehead. But I feel like good things are happening. The stock market is up. He's negotiated peace treaties with North Korea. Under his Presidency, I'm allowed to bear arms which I feel is my right. I don't know how, I don't know why... I can't imagine Trump being responsible for all of it. I only know that things are going in a direction which I like right now. The most important thing you can do is vote for the policies which you think will make the country run in a way that it should be run. If you think the country has gone the way you like in the past 4 years, suck it up and vote for the knucklehead. Hopefully when his term is up, a more decent candidate will take his place. But look at the policies. Vote for the candidate whose policies make you feel best. But don't vote against a candidate. That's not what democracy is about. If you later realize you've made a mistake, but put your good conscience into the vote, it's okay. It happens."To hear him say those words was refreshing on the surface at least. It got me thinking on a slightly different track. Now, we could probably argue all day about whether Trump has policy. We could fight about whether Trump is fit to set foot in the White House. We could talk about whether the things my dad perceives as good things are actually good or not. Whether it's 80 percent good and 20 percent bad, or whether it's 20 percent good and 80 percent bad. We could go on and on, but I'm not going to do that anymore.In the end, it was a struggle for me to decide who to vote for. Maybe Trump is doing all sorts of good things like my dad says. I admit, I haven't been looking into a lot of it. I know I should, but I'm not really in a situation where a lot of those things affect me...yet. My mom steps in and helps with a lot of
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election So... final thoughts of the election:Despite being registered republican, I voted democrat this time. Not sure how I feel about doing that... my political confidence is very low as you might've read in my previous post. But I've been trying, at least, to educate myself, especially by listening to Trump/Biden rallies, speeches and interviews to guide me on a path for the election. Something just drew me to Biden. He seems more grounded, more in touch with real-world issues. Trump seems, in a word, arrogant.When talking about climate change, he never confronts the issue directly, saying "We have the cleanest air, the cleanest water." Really? When asked about Covid, he can't really defend himself. When confronted with 230 k deaths or whatever it is, his response is "The virus was China's fault." No assurance for Americans that he will fight for them anymore. "We're learning to live with it," he says. With no regard to those who have learned to live with the loss of a family member. I do agree with the statement that we can't let it completely take over our lives, but I also am disgusted by his refusal/inability to provide insight on whether he could've done anything to prevent some of those deaths. I know, a lot of republicans are going to tell me "Why would he do that? It's done with, you don't get anywhere by dwelling on the past." But your past is there for you to learn from, and Trump seems incapable of that. Biden has admitted he has made mistakes, so that alone makes me feel better about him as a person at least. Hell, if you get the virus you're immune, end of story. That's what Trump wants us to believe. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. He doesn't even know, but I'm pretty sure he does believe it. Then there are the conspiracy theories. haven't even bothered to read them, because I know I would try to work out if they were true, and I'd be completely in over my head having a meltdown. But I do know this much: Trump likes to troll to see what attention he gets, and is convinced everyone who opposes him subscribes to fake news, fake media, and is a crooked corrupt democrat. Nope... not for me.If I found out a person I trusted deeply such as a life coach, close friend, or family member was routinely conducting themselves this way, I'd have a hard time trusting them to treat me with respect during a sensitive moment. One or two of those things, okay, people make mistakes, but, add it all up, and it doesn't feel right to see that kind of person being responsible for hundreds of millions of people.I had a conversation with my dad a couple days ago. I told him I have my difficulties trusting Trump as president because of some of the things he does, but those close to me believe Biden would screw things up bigtime, and I just don't feel like there's any peace or resolution. No matter what I do, I'm damned, and I wish we could all just get along. What should I do?His response, more or less, projected his republican beliefs, but touched me near the end. It went something like this: "In a country of over 380 million people, it's sad that we can't pick better candidates. Trump is a fucking knucklehead. But I feel like good things are happening. The stock market is up. He's negotiated peace treaties with North Korea. Under his Presidency, I'm allowed to bear arms which I feel is my right. I don't know how, I don't know why... I can't imagine Trump being responsible for all of it. I only know that things are going in a direction which I like right now. The most important thing you can do is vote for the policies which you think will make the country run in a way that it should be run. If you think the country has gone the way you like in the past 4 years, suck it up and vote for the knucklehead. Hopefully when his term is up, a more decent candidate will take his place. But look at the policies. Vote for the candidate whose policies make you feel best. But don't vote against a candidate. That's not what democracy is about. If you later realize you've made a mistake, but put your good conscience into the vote, it's okay. It happens."To hear him say those words was refreshing on the surface at least. It got me thinking on a slightly different track. Now, we could probably argue all day about whether Trump has policy. We could fight about whether Trump is fit to set foot in the White House. We could talk about whether the things my dad perceives as good things are actually good or not. Whether it's 80 percent good and 20 percent bad, or whether it's 20 percent good and 80 percent bad. We could go on and on, but I'm not going to do that anymore.In the end, it was a struggle for me to decide who to vote for. Maybe Trump is doing all sorts of good things like my dad says. I admit, I haven't been looking into a lot of it. I know I should, but I'm not really in a situation where a lot of those things affect me...yet. My mom steps in and helps with a lot of
Re: is it just me, or has discord changed
Re: is it just me, or has discord changed Yes, Discord has changed. Now, you'll find chats with new messages in the tree view. With NVDA, go in the tree view, go to focus mode and down arrow and you will see those chats.If you press enter on something in the tree view, you're supposed to jump to that conversation, but that is bugged at the moment. I'm told this bug is fixed in Canary, but Canary has other issues. Your best bet is probably to wait until stable gets updated.So for now, just use the tree view to browse, and then use other means such as quick switcher to find the chat you want to jump to. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/586073/#p586073 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: What's the Deal With AMD
Re: What's the Deal With AMD Hmm. I used to hear a lot of things, some saying AMD was great, others saying Intel is the way to go for audio production. I finally got to draw my own tentative conclusion; Intel has an edge. Not saying that will hold for everyone, but here's my story:In 2016 I got a machine from Cyberpower with an AMD fx8320. 8 cores, 3.5 ghz speed. And the price was a lot cheaper than I thought. It worked well, but because this was a gaming machine, a lot of emphasis was placed on graphics and performance, so it fanned like a boss. Even at its quietest, it was moderately loud, and while it didn't bother me per say, it did make me think. Over time I wondered if it really needed to be that loud. This was my first fancy machine though; before that I was using really cheapo computers with duel core processors and 3-4 gb of ram, just so that I'd have something to use. This was back in the days of Win7 as well. But when getting the AMD, I wanted something that would work well for music production and multitasking, and it seemed a good choice. But every time I posed questions on Twitter especially, such as "Are things supposed to hang this much?" I'd always get replies like "What processor do you have?" And when I told them AMD, they would scoff and say "That's why. Nobody serious uses AMD for audio." To be fair, these are audio people I did respect, having heard some of their work before and having talked to them on other occasions, so while I did take offense to their dismissal, I also sort of believed they knew what they were talking about.About 6 months ago, the fans in that machine started getting even louder and making horrible rattling noises, and cleaning didn't help, so it looked like I'd have to replace fans. The headphone jack on the tower also went out, it was my fault because the plug accidentally got yanked and bent the jack frame out of shape, because they put the jack in a messy place where it felt really weird to plug and unplug stuff.I eventually got to the point where I just wanted a new computer which didn't have any issues. I sort of was like, "hell, why don't I just get a nice Intel that's comparable to my AMD machine, or maybe slightly inferior? This way I'd have a shot at a fair comparison between the two and if Intel is as great as people have told me it is, it'll be a win win."I ended up getting a Dell XPS 8930. It's customizable, so I picked options which were roughly equivalent to my AMD, and then got rid of stuff I didn't need (better graphics, and wifi since myInternet on ddesktop is wired etc.) In the end, I chose Intel I7 9th gen (8 cores, 3 ghz if I remember right), 16 gb of ram. The price was at least a couple hundred bucks more than the Cyberpower, but lower than non-customizable machines with the specs I wanted. Thanks to Covid I had to wait about 6 weeks to get it, but I did get it and... well. It was a nightmare to set up the way I wanted because I had to kill Waves Max Audio, find a way to force it not to come back, had to reinstall Windows to get rid of the crap they bundled with it, neither of which I had to deal with before, but I learned a lot from it. At the end of the day, I really love the machine. Fans are so quiet I often can't hear them, and performance? I mean it feels about the same, but it shines when I'm doing stuff in Reaper. I can push it about twice as hard before I run into trouble, and it is definitely more responsive during heavy tasks. Which goes completely against my expectations; I thought that since the Intel's speed was slower, (3 ghz as opposed to AmD's 3.5 ghz) that I would get slightly less performance but, my results at least are opposite. Of course, there are probably a million reasons why this could be the case, I'm not knowledgeable enough on this stuff to be cognizant of any of them.Now that I think about it though, I haven't done a super fair comparison really. I'm comparing 2016 AMD with 2020 Intel. And I never laid the machines out side-by-side, with the same configuration, equally fresh installations of Windows etc. to see how they handle certain tasks. Hell, maybe the AmD will do just as well on a clean Windows installation, but I kinda doubt it. It might do better than I usually see, but I tentatively feel like it won't be able to match. Still, I won't know until I try.So... I guess in conclusion to all this, if you're on the fence, I'd say just go with what feels right. I personally think Intel performs better and I get a little too paranoid aobut performance, not realizing sometimes that there are other reasons to consider one over the other, and also keeping in mind that my experience may not mean a whole lot compared to the many others people have had. So, do your own research if you can, and do what feels right. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/583781/#p583781 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
Re: Dexed VST Query in Reaper
Re: Dexed VST Query in Reaper @3, there are two ways. The only difference between them being how you send the sysex data out.1. Use Reaper's system exclusive functions to try to send the sysex data, in your case the .syx files, to the plug-in. If the sound changes, you're in luck; Dext is receptive to realtime sysex. If nothing changes, then you'll have to import the sysex using the interface I'm afraid.Like I say I haven't tried this so I don't know how to do it in Reaper natively. Heck I'm not even sure if Reaper can send sysex to plug-ins, it might only work on hardware for all I know. I really need to learn how Reaper's midi stuff works/doesn't work.2. Alternatively you can set another sequencer, in my case QWS, to send midi data to Reaper using a midi cable, then use QWS to send the sysex data.For midi cables, I use Loop midi, but there are others. Some people prefer Midi Yoke for instance, though I have no idea if anyone uses that anymore, or if it even still works.Heck I should probably just test Dext out for myself so I can let you know if this works or not lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/583334/#p583334 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Dexed VST Query in Reaper
Re: Dexed VST Query in Reaper This might be a bit of a longshot, but does the vst accept system exclusive messages in realtime? If so, if you're using Reaper, you could send the .syx data with Reaper's sysex functions instead of using the vst's inaccessible interface. I've never used Reaper for this though, so I can't help you too much with that right now. And unfortunately, some vsts can't work that way, you will need to import the file using the interface, so my idea might not even work.Hopefully someone else has a better answer than I do. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/583238/#p583238 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
checking the peak volume of a project in Reaper?
checking the peak volume of a project in Reaper? Hi all,Does anyone know if there is a way to quickly check the peak volume of a project in Reaper? For instance, if the master track peaks at -4 dB, what's the quickest way for me to see that? Right now, the only way I know to see the peak is to render the project, then check the peak of the rendered output file manually.My ultimate goal here is to normalize the render (maximize its volume so that the loudest part is just shy of clipping). So, if the render peaks at -4 dB, I either have to amplify the render by 4 dB and re-save the file, or increase the master volume by 4 and re-render. Both of which are tedious. Instead, I want to have a quick way of knowing the peak before I render. Even if Reaper has to make a temporary render and delete it once the peak is found, I would be fine so long as it worked.I've heard about, but never used, the peak watcher. But I was told by a friend that it requires you to play the project in realtime, so it wouldn't be the most efficient solution to quickly know the peak level of the project.Am I making sense? And if so, is there a solution you can offer?Thanks! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/581660/#p581660 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
checking the peak of an entire project in Reaper?
checking the peak of an entire project in Reaper? Hi all,Does anyone know if there is a way to quickly check the peak volume of the master track in Reaper? For instance, if the master peaks at -4 dB, what's the quickest way for me to see that? Right now, the only way I know to see the peak is to render the project, then check the peak of the rendered output file manually.My ultimate goal here is to normalize the render (maximize its volume so that the loudest part is just shy of clipping). So, if the render peaks at -4 dB, I either have to amplify the render by 4 dB and re-save the file, or increase the master volume by 4 and re-render. Both of which are tedious. Instead, I want to have a quick way of knowing the peak before I render. Even if Reaper has to make a temporary render and delete it once the peak is found, I would be fine so long as it worked.I've heard about, but never used, the peak watcher. But I was told by a friend that it requires you to play the project in realtime, so it wouldn't be the most efficient solution to quickly know the peak level of the project.Am I making sense? And if so, is there a solution you can offer?Thanks! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/581660/#p581660 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: My new Yamaha PSRE 463 Keyboard
Re: My new Yamaha PSRE 463 Keyboard That's one thing that makes me mad about the psr-s series. I don't think it's possible to use the keyboard as a sound card. If I'm wrong though, someone do let me know!As for getting it to be a midi input device in Reaper, have you tried looking in Reaper's midi device preferences? It should be there. YOu might have to enable it, I can't remember how Reaper behaves with new devices.If it already shows up in Reaper and you're trying to use it, that's a whole different set of procedures. Depending on what you want to do, the procedure is different eg. do you want to use it as a midi input, a midi output or both. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/581297/#p581297 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: My new Yamaha PSRE 463 Keyboard
Re: My new Yamaha PSRE 463 Keyboard A couple things.In my very limited experience, Edge and Chrome both read PdFs well. I prefer Chrome though.I have never used a psr-e keyboard, but on the psr-s970, what helped me a lot was learning what the various buttons were. I had sighted help with identifying what each button was called, then I wrote this down in a text document which I can then refer to when I need to refresh my memory on where a particular button is. When reading the manual, it would often specify which buttons to press. Fortunately on the psr-s970, button sequences are well-defined and easy to read in the manual. Of course, psr-e keyboards might be quite different, both in button layouts and how readable the manuals are.Another thing you might want to look into is txt manuals. Yamaha offers manuals in text format for some of their keyboards. The MoXF and the PSR-S970 or S975 have such manuals, which are easier to navigate. Unfortunately, these do not appear to be available for the E463, but still keep in mind for any future keyboards you may get.On a number of occasions I've needed sighted help with my S970, but at the moment I'm getting better at feeling things out so I can learn at least some basics on my own. Seeing AI also helps a bit if you have it. In my experience it can be a challenge to get it to read the screen well; it's about a50/50 gamble. For me, it's most useful to identify which screen I'm in if I get lost.Hope this helps at least a little. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/580593/#p580593 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Another political topic because why not
Re: Another political topic because why not Have to agree with Ironcross here. He sounds a little different, but I also feel like he's always had a bit of a rasp in his voice, so it's hard for me to tell exactly what is within normal limits. I've heard though that he looks terrible. As a blind person I of course can't say that, but I'd be interested to know how sick he looks. I'm a bit hesitant to ask a sighted person though; I feel like a lot of them will see how sick he supposedly sounds and project that onto how he looks, or vice versa. Of course I'm not saying every sighted person can't separate sound from sight, but it's a pattern worth considering I think. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/578702/#p578702 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Another political topic because why not
Re: Another political topic because why not Have to agree with Ironcross here. He sounds a little different, but I also feel like he's always had a bit of a rasp in his voice, so it's hard for me to tell exactly what is within normal limits. I've heard though that he loooks terrible. As a blind person I of course can't say that, but I'd be interested ot know if he sounds better than he looks. I'm a bit hesitant to ask a sighted person though; I feel like a lot of them will see how sick he supposedly looks and project that onto how he sounds or vice versa. Of course I'm not saying every sighted person can't separate sound from sight, but it's a pattern worth considering I think. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/578702/#p578702 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election
Re: Discussion of the 2020 American Federal Election I wasn't originally going to pop in here, in fact I'm not at all a politics person. Until now I've voted in agreement with my family, because I felt they've had my best interests at heart and were more informed than I am. And they probably are, but as of late I am not sure how I actually feel and it's... kind of nerve-racking for me now.As someone with a dash of Aspergers, it's hard for me to process stuff like politics. So much contradiction. So much emotion and passion behind it. So much fact checking required to know the truth, which I don't know how to do.I've never once, until the other day, really gotten into politics. I'd rather sit back and let other people decide the big stuff for me. I have a guilty conscience about this, but as a child I was allowed to do it. My family tried to get me to do things, but upon any sign of resistance or fight from my side, they figured it was just easier to do things for me, or to simplify things as much as possible so I would understand it in the relevant context. I'm so used to those mixd feelings, those feelings of whether I should do something myself or let other people do it for me, that I run away from the big stuff like politics, because I know there's a certain amount of responsibility related to it, and a certain amount of political smarts which I don't have. I certainly couldn't keep America functioning, and thus I have a hard time being super critical of those who do.My family are all pro Trump. Full stop. They would never vote for Biden, and they hated Obama. I talked to my mom about it a few minutes before writing this post, as I was curious to see what she thought of the recent events surrounding Trump.She likes Trump because he stands for what america should be. A free country where working hard is rewarded. She deeply values working for what you have. "Kids now don't want to pay for college," she said. "I think that's ridiculous. If you want to go to college, you should pay for it.""Your stepsister," she explained. "Your stepsister is full democrat. She didn't want to pay for college. She thinks everything should just be handed to her. If her dad were still alive... he wouldn't even talk to her if he knew how she was. Trump tries to encourage people to work hard and pay for what they have. I'm all for helping people who can't work, but I'm not going to help some Joe Shmoe who sits at home doing nothing."She didn't get animated and ranty, but she did seem passionate and unwilling to listen to a counterargument. Not that I would've provided one; I was sensing that tone of superiority that made me step back.I watched the debate, which I admit was a shock to me. I never watch those. But I did watch this time, mostly out of curiosity. I didn't understand any of the concepts Biden or Trump threw around beyond a pathetically basic level. I didn't know the acceptable amount of deviation from debate decorum, and even I expected it to get a little rough. but by the end of it, even I, the political invalid, who only watched it because I was a little curious, came away from it awestruck. Was this really how debates should go? Can't two political figures, especially the president of our country, conduct himself better than that? I didn't think so, and that's why I sided with Biden during the debate. He could've said the stupidest things about how this country should be run, but something in his tone assured me. His softspoken voice and his way of addressing "You at home" repeatedly... that alone just made me want to listen to him. He spoke passionately, persuasively and to us. Like I say, what he said didn't matter, I'm just going by his tone of voice and inflection.I would not have said that to anyone especially in my family, for fear that I would be dismissed as an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. But when everyone else, even my own family, were agitated by Trump's behavior at the debate, I felt immense relief. At least, we could agree that Trump did things he wasn't supposed to do.Even with that debate aside, something about Trump bothers me. He just comes off as arrogant and manipulative. Maybe I'm letting other people's opinions influence me too much. In fact I'm pretty sure I am; I don't watch many of his speeches. But even I am concerned. He constantly tells lies, or at least that's what I read. He is so self-assured. He calls countries shitholes, insults women, and tells white supremecy groups (I had to look up the definition of that last night btw) to stand back, but stand by. And if it is true that he made a remark shown to the public, jokingly or not, that we should be injecting bleach into ourselves to protect against Covid 19, well. Even if I am a political idiot, I don't want our president getting a free pass on any of that. But my family, either because of ignorance of this information or otherwise, seem unable to criticize him for it.When I asked my mom and her boyfriend
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? A small update: I've just tested Ferite and Just Press Record, and they both allow you to record in stereo. Not sure how important stereo recording is to some people, but it seems to be gaining traction, and I'm sad to say I don't much care for it. The stereo processing I mentioned in post 7 is still evident (there's a ton of what sounds like multiband compression and noise reduction), and the stereo orientation seems to auto rotate. I was recently talking to a friend who suggested that orientation lock might have something to do with how stereo recording works, but I have my phone locked to portrait. I'd need more info before I can really figure out how that audio rotation in recording works, since I can't really make heads or tails of it myself. Personally, I'd prefer going back to the mono recording from IOS 13 and earlier. Downmixing the stereo audio to mono isn't at all the same though; the stereo processing is different and more aggressive.To be clear, I am not saying stereo recording on IOS is just bad so you shouldn't use it. I'm saying that there aren't any apps yet which expose the full potential of stereo recording. So far the only apps I've seen which record in stereo are more focused on productivity and less focused on making the most out of the audio capabilities of the device. I saw this trend when I was first looking for a high quality recording app back in 2015 ish, so it's nothing new. In time, though, I'm sure an app will come out for purists. Either Auphonic (the best recorder for purists imho) will get an update or something else will come along.I'm also fairly optimistic that Audio memos will get an update for stereo recording eventually, however like I said in post 7, the IOS processing toggle isn't available for some users. If they've really made that exclusive to their subscription feature set, it's a real shame, since that is pretty much the biggest, and only reason I prefer it over the stock voice memos app at the moment. Maybe I should reach out to the dev and ask about this? After all when I last looked at the subscriptions, that option wasn't mentioned so maybe there's a bug that needs fixed. Of course I could have just missed something, I'm known to do that. Yet another thing to add to my list of things to look into. Call me crazy if you like. I'm probably rambling at this point and nobody actually cares lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/574984/#p574984 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? A small update: I've just tested Ferite and Just Press Record, and they both allow you to record in stereo. Not sure how important stereo recording is to some people, but it seems to be gaining traction, and I'm sad to say I don't much care for it. The stereo processing I mentioned in post 7 is still evident (there's a ton of what sounds like multiband compression and noise reduction), and the stereo orientation seems to auto rotate. I was recently talking to a friend who suggested that orientation lock might have something to do with how stereo recording works, but I have my phone locked to portrait. I'd need more info before I can really figure out how that audio rotation in recording works, since I can't really make heads or tails of it myself. Personally, I'd prefer going back to the mono recording from IOS 13 and earlier. Downmixing the stereo audio to mono isn't at all the same though; the stereo processing is different and more aggressive.To be clear, I am not saying stereo recording on IOS is just bad so you shouldn't use it. I'm saying that there aren't any apps yet which expose the full potential of stereo recording. So far the only apps I've seen which record in stereo are more focused on productivity and less focused on making the most out of the audio capabilities of the device. I saw this trend when I was first looking for a high quality recording app back in 2015 ish, so it's nothing new. In time, though, I'm sure an app will come out for purists. Either Auphonic (the best recorder for purists imho) will get an update or something else will come along.I'm also fairly optimistic that Audio memos will get an update for stereo recording eventually, however like I said in post 7, the audio processing options aren't available for some users. If they've really made that exclusive to their subscription feature set, it's a real shame, since that is pretty much the biggest, and only reason I prefer it over the stock voice memos app. Maybe I should reach out to the dev and ask about this? After all when I last looked at the subscriptions, that option wasn't mentioned so maybe there's a bug that needs fixed. Of course I could have jsut missed it, I'm known to do that. Yet another thing to add to my list of things to look into. Call me crazy if you like. I'm probably rambling at this point and nobody actually cares lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/574984/#p574984 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: One of the saddest documentaries I have ever watched. What do you thin
Re: One of the saddest documentaries I have ever watched. What do you thin Not intending to do thread necromancy here, but I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts on this Alzheimer's disease documentary. I can't remember precisely when I saw it, but it was this exact thread which made me aware of it, so thank you RTT entertainment for bringing it to my attention.I've always been a bit of a biology nut... though sadly I don't know or care about nearly as much of it as I should. I've always been fascinated though with psychiatry and psychology, mostly because I have issues of my own which I am trying, sometimes successfully and sometimes in vane, to understand.In short, this documentary moved me deeply. Movies can sometimes make me cry, but with a serious matter like this, I often just bow my head in sadness and in fear. I didn't cry while watching it, but I did get a lump in my throat during certain moments and had to shut it off and take a walk around the house to distract myself. I didn't think a documentary could impact me so much, but it did, probably because my mind was receptive to every little detail. I found myself watching parts again and again, particularly spots when Malcom would say things that didn't make sense, or would babble, desperately trying to be heard and understood. It just made me sad to hear that. It's one of those things that reading words cannot convey, you actually have to hear it being recorded to feel it.I also felt deeply for his wife Barbara, who seems to have phenomenal patience. The way malcom would have sudden outbursts of anger really concerned me. At first, I didn't understand why he was being so violent, but then I did: he was angry and felt threatened and out of control of this situation. On some basic level, he must have known what was happening, even if he couldn't talk about it, and I don't think I could've handled it much better if I were him, and that scares me. The fact that Malcom was musical and innovative before his illness just made it hit home harder for me, since I am musical and, well not exactly innovative, but i love experimenting and coming up with ideas.This documentary reminds me of this one, the Man with the 7-second Memory, where Klive Wearing suffered immense brain damage due to a viral infection, losing his ability to create new memories and to recall many old ones. As it turns out, he was also British and also a respected musician. That documentary didn't move me as much as the alzheimers one, but it did do something to me. Perhaps the one about Klyve Wearing didn't do as much to me because his illness was related to a viral infection rather than a natural cause, so I at least have a little more power to stop myself from ending up like him; try to avoid getting serious infections. I already have to do this because of an autoimmune condition. Not saying I won't ever have a horrible infection like that, but i'm trying to reduce my chances.The good news is that Alzheimer's doesn't run in my family. That doesn't necessarily mean I won't get it, but I'm at least not genetically predisposed to it so far as I know. But still, I am scared, probably way more scared than I should be, that I will end up with some horrendous brain problems. I have no real reason to be scared, at least not a good enough reason to start preparing for such a catastrophe, but my brain still plays tricks on me and makes me a pessimist, flashing ahead to a time 30, 40 or 50 years down the road where I am dependent on someone else for everything because my mind can't even find the words to say how much it has lost. Ironically, I'm not afraid of dying or physical ailments. So long as I can use a computer, speak and enjoy food and drink, I will probably be okay. So long as I can think for myself, carry on conversations and feel like I am useful in some way, I'll be okay. And if I die a nonviolent, non painful death, I'd take that over months of suffering. I'm nnot even afraid of what happens after I die. But take my memories and thoughts away and keep me alive to experience it slipping away bit by bit... Hell no. I'm such an intellectual person. I need my mind or else I have nothing.I know it's completely pointless to think ahead like that. Especially when I'm not even in my middle years yet. There's no reason to dwell on it. But it's still scary. It makes me feel like I have to do something big and spectacular now while I still can, but I don't know what.Ah well, maybe this was a wake-up call, to really make me think about the life I want to live, and live it to the best of my ability, rather than putting it off because it's too hard to think about. While I fully intend to enjoy the life I have and hope it is a long one, I'll probably think of this story from time to time, and use it as a reminder that I need to stop being lazy. Whether that'll actually happen though is anyone's guess.In any case, I really needed to get this out... tbh it's been hard for me to think about
Re: Best iOS voice recording software?
Re: Best iOS voice recording software? Sorry for the wall of text below. I'm just really interested in this and have a fair bit of info and speculation.As a bit of an audiophile, I care a lot about sound quality so I've been very interested in this topic.I don't like to use voice memos for recording because it enables the IOS audio processing (which sounds like eq and automatic gain control). It isn't bad per say, it just alters the sound and I would rather not have that. When recording a video with the videos app, the processing gets even more apparent, as it sounds like noise reduction is added to the mix. The audio is clear and of course in stereo, and the noise reduction isn't all that bad, but again you can tell it's not a pure recording. Not only that, but the orientation isn't fixed; turn your phone and the orientation will rotate. So unless you keep your phone perfectly still, the stereo field will either be all over the place, or just, blurred and difficult to hear, at least in my experience. Even before stereo audio though, I've been looking for other apps to record with, and here's what I found so far.A few years ago, I used an app called audio memos. It had an option to disable the IOS audio filters. Unfortunately, I can no longer recommend it to quality nuts like me as fervently as I once did. If you buy the app, you don't seem to get the audio filters toggle anymore, thus all of your recordings will have the filters enabled. If you bought the app a long time ago, you'll still get the option now, but newcomers will not get it, and I'm assuming this is because Audio Memos is using a subscription-based model to enable advanced features. Maybe if I used more of its features, I would be okay with this, but since I don't really need those features, I was disappointed to discover the change. I'm lucky enough to have bought the app before this happened, and thus I still get the option now, but I am soon going to switch to something else. Sometimes I use another app called Auphonic, which always leaves the audio filters off. You can even pick which microphone on your device it uses to record. The only huge issue with it is that it crashes when I change settings (which for me isn't a huge deal since I basically just set them once and leave them). The biggest problem for me at least, is that it switches your audio to the earpiece when you begin recording. I've been told that devices without an earpiece are fine, but with phones which do have an earpiece, it's an awful inconvenience if you don't want to use headphones. I have e-mailed the auphonic developers about this, and they said they would look into it. That was over a month ago though, so I'm not sure if they will or not.The last time I checked, Auphonic does not support stereo recording with the built-in microphones on IOS 14 beta. This is because there are separate API calls to enable and use it if I understand correctly. In my e-mail to Auphonic, I also mentioned the stereo recording, and provided a link to the above developer documentation page. I think Auphonic would be the perfect app to utilize this, as it already exposes options most other apps do not. Therefore if they add stereo recording, I expect you'll be able to change the orientation and whatnot, since it looks like the API will let you do that. And of course the filters will be turned off if possible, as that is one of the main selling points of Auphonic. Again, they said they would look into the stereo options and see what they could do. Whether it will actually be done or not is something I cannot at all predict. I'm hoping for the best, but not expecting too much.Heck, it's possible Audio Memos will get stereo recording first, iirc the app is still active. I'm not going to pay for a subscription if it's the first app to get stereo recording, but I may give it a trial run if possible.IN the meantime, I'd be very interested in other apps people use which have a focus on audio quality. Some interesting suggestions are in this thread, though I think Hokusai leaves the filters on, at least it seemed to do that last time I checked. I haven't tried any others, but I will do so in the near future. I've heard Just Press Record sounds good as well, but I haven't tried. Heck I don't even know if it's still around; I only briefly heard about it like 4 years ago.I haven't even looked into Gold Wave for IOS yet let alone check it out, but that's also on my list of apps to investigate. I'm not sure how many of the recording options are exposed or are planned ot be exposed, but I could certainly make a post on the forums about it if it seems to have potential. I've e-mailed the dev briefly on a few occasions relating to the PC version of Gold Wave, and I get a good vibe from him, so perhaps he's open to stuff like this. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/565491/#p565491 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
Re: sharing offline translations for games
Re: sharing offline translations for games Hi,I made a thread about this a while back, and I think I may have a solution, but I haven't tried it extensively.First off, I would be cautious about trying to use cache files to do translations. I'm not sure if cache files can take a string of text and parse it into substrings which would be required to make a good translation.For example, if you're navigating through items, you might hear something like "Rice ball (4) recovers 20 hp." But let's say you use one and go back in the menu, you then hear "rice ball (3) recovers 20 hp." Cached translations may not help in this case; the number has changed so the above example would require two translations, not one. Ideally you only need to translate the item name and its description, and leave the number alone.It gets even worse when the player's name changes. Cached translations are only going to help if your name is the same every time you play the game. Again, it's best to just leave the name alone wen you translate.NVDA can sort of act as a translator. I used it to translate some parts of BK3 before its translations came out, and also some other games. The way you do it is to modify the default dictionary. Of course, you strip information such as the player's name and numbers out of the non-English text when you put it in the dictionary. This worked well, but using the default dictionary to do it is not good practice. Fortunately, someone did tell me about an NVDA add-on which can do app-specific dictionaries. Apart from testing to see that the add-on worked, I haven't really done much translating with it. I'm pretty optimistic that it would work, though. Now I just need to stop being lazy and finish what I started. Or someone else can, it's not that hard if you have access to Google Translate or you know the language .The hardest part is deciding which order to put the entries in. Order does matter; the dictionary entries are scanned from top down, meaning that partial translation can easily happen if you put individual words close to the top of your file. For example, if you put "gold" near the top, and then further down you put something like "I'm selling this knife for 1000 gold." That translation will not work properly because gold" was closer to the top and took precedence, so you'll probably get something like "??? gold 1000?" (The question marks represent unknown characters). To fix this, you need to put all complete phrases near the top of the file eg. "I'm selling this knife for 1000 gold" comes first, followed by the word "gold" if it's used on its own. I recommend using a text editor to edit the dictionary files, that way you can easily move stuff around.Of course, you could forgo phrases entirely and just put individual words, but I don't really recommend that, since languages have context sensitive words. I don't know anything about foreign languages though, so I can't give specific examples. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/562786/#p562786 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Is Descript accessible?
Re: Is Descript accessible? I tried it very briefly. It might be accessible if you fiddle with it, but I had a lot of issues with keystrokes being intercepted by the program. Forinstance if I was in focus mode with NVDA and I tried to arrow around to look at my text, the program would catch that and switch to a different section of the project or something. Maybe I'll try it more later, but I just didn't feel like dealing with that at the time. I figured it would be too frustrating to really enjoy. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/558100/#p558100 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For those who care; I'm back.
Re: For those who care; I'm back. Agree fully with Camlorn post 55. Not a super big fan of how the decision was made, but hey. I am in full support of the decision, and since Jayde has admitted there may have been better ways to go about it, I'm not going to press the issue. We're beating a dead horse by arguing about it at this point guys.The only two reasons I have ever considered deleting threads are: 1. I posted something which hasn't gotten a single valuable response despite being up for years, and probably won't be noticed any time soon, or 2. If the responses I did get were justifiably calling me out on something stupid. If I remember right, I only deleted one thread for the latter reason, but still. This forum is easily searchable, both on the forum itself or by Google or other search engines so far as I'm aware, and a small part of me fears that my distant past could easily come up by a simple search, and if not, it's a simple matter of combing through my topics to find incriminating stuff. My own past mistakes and my guilt over them do drive me to delete the rare thread, and I can sympathize a bit with those who wish to delete some of their own threads. But I still do not believe it is reasonable to expect this to be a thing. Many forums don't allow deletion of threads. Heck, many forums do not even allow you to edit your posts after 24 hours.Once you post something on the Internet, it's out there. Admittedly this is a double-edged sword. You could very easily slander someone and scar them for life (cyber-bullying, hacking etc.) But it also helps in good ways too, because it is a constant reminder that actions have consequences, in real life and especially on the Internet. Regardless of your beliefs on what your rights should be on a forum, everyone will have to face the reality that anything they put on the Internet is not fully their's to control. Once it leaves your computer's ram and is uploaded to a server, it's out of your hands. Just as anything you say reaches the other person's mind as soon as it leaves your lips. You can't magically undo what you've said or take it back, so the fact that this forum, and some others allowed you to delete whole conversations for the longest time, and still allows you to delete posts, is going quite against the norm of society here. I think technology has given people the facade that they are in full control of what they say even after they've said it, and if you think about it long enough, it's a very very dangerous mindset to have especially when you're 12 and aren't mature enough to know any better/different. It's so easy to make a habit of washing away all the evidence if you're about to be caught or if you're giving yourself a guilt trip over what you've done. Those reactions aren't unreasonable per say. Like I say, I do sympathize, but it just concerns me how often such abilities seem to be taken for granted by people who are far from a crisis and would only use those features for their own satisfaction.I agree with The Great Carver, post 60, that if the delete thread feature weren't abused, it would be nice to have when it was truly necessary, but admittedly I can't think of any time it's actually been justified properly. I'm sure it has at some point though, I just didn't see it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/556212/#p556212 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Your choice? Would you restore your vision?
Re: Your choice? Would you restore your vision? For me it's complicated, so this is a long post. tl,dr: I'd probably want some vision if getting it was physically safe and if I had support from friends/family, because I've always been curious about what having vision is like.A bit of history:During my adolescence I went through a "why me" attitude. Ever since I was a kid, I hated the fact that I was blind. I felt as though 95 percent of people who knew me treated me as a different person. Someone who needed help, someone who wasn't quite with it. And I believed they were justified. In many areas I am in fact behind. Not far enough to keep me out of mainstream, but behind enough that I needed to be held back a lot in certain things and receive roughly 10 hours of tutoring a week in certain situations. I always resented that. Every time something came up which was addressed to my special needs, it just re-enforced that resentment, because I felt so alone. I had tons of support, but not much companionship, and I blamed that on the fact I was blind.The common response to such resentment I often hear is, "You can't control the problem but you can control how you react to the problem." Maybe that lifts some people up, but for me at least, it takes a lot to get me to really fly with that. Thinking about it wrong made me feel like I was even more broken. As a rough analogy, it felt like this: To replace one part of an appliance, I'd have to take it apart and disassemble 20 fully functional parts just to get at that one broken part. Of course, the only way that appliance is gonna get fixed is if you grind it out and do the work, no matter how annoying it gets. similarly, to stop resenting something, you need to change your attitude toward something, and it can be a long, annoying, confusing process sometimes, but it's the only way your attitude will change. I know this now, but my kid self couldn't possibly grasp that, and even now I have trouble with it because my mind has this tendency of letting negative things snowball.Fortunately, I'm a lot more at ease today than I used to be, because I have more friends. Some blind, some sighted. I'm not a social butterfly by any means, but I have a circle of roughly 20 friends of various types, who all mean a lot to me, in addition to my family, so they certainly help put me in a better headspace. I have enough diversity in my social circle that I finally feel okay about being blind. Most of them talk to me as casually as they do everyone else, and even if a blindness-related challenge comes up, they don't get nervous or talk stiffly or awkwardly about it, so that boosts my confidence.That said, I'd still be all for getting some vision. I've always been a very curious person. Always curious about new experiences, new medications, new ideas etc. I love to learn about everything new to me, and especially to talk to people who are knowledgeable in it, so the idea of getting my vision back is definitely something I have thought about. Naturally, during the days when I hated my blindness, I would've signed up to get my vision restored in a heartbeat. But during those days, I was innocent, naive and quite optimistic. I was only a kid, so I had little perspective on the potential negatives involved with such a thing. I just wanted vision, damn it. I wanted to see people, I wanted to play video games, I wanted to feel like I fit in without being singled out and treated like I was different. I would've traded all my favorite toys for it.Nowadays, I still would want vision, perhaps even go through an experimental trial, but with a couple conditions. First I wouldn't do it if there was a moderate to high risk of drastic physical side effects like death, or brain/nerve damage. Also, I wouldn't go through with it if I couldn't get support from some of my family and friends. Aside from that though, I can't think of any other reasons why I wouldn't do it at the moment.I'm perhaps not as worried as I should be about the shock factor, even though I've heard that you never learn to use newly acquired vision naturally or efficiently. The adult brain can't make sense of it the way someone who has always had vision can. I know this would probably overwhelm, confuse, frustrate, and discourage me to no end. But I am so insanely curious to know what vision is like. I have light perception, and that alone is so profound to me that I can't begin to describe what it's like to someone who doesn't have it. And that's just light perception! I can't even imagine what it would be like to see shapes, colors and other details. Maybe that's my downfall. I'm so curious about the things I don't have, that I let the excitement get the better of me when I am presented with the prospect that I might one day get it.70 percent of people who I've discussed this with are against it, due to the immense shock it would likely involve. They wonder why I would put myself through unnecessary hassle and
Re: Your choice? Would you restore your vision?
Re: Your choice? Would you restore your vision? For me it's complicated, so this is a long post. tl,dr: I'd probably want some vision if getting it was physically safe and if I had support from friends/family, because I've always been curious about what having vision is like.A bit of history:During my adolescence I went through a "why me" attitude. Ever since I was a kid, I hated the fact that I was blind. I felt as though 95 percent of people who knew me treated me as a different person. Someone who needed help, someone who wasn't quite with it. And I believed they were justified. In many areas I am in fact behind. Not far enough to keep me out of mainstream, but behind enough that I needed to be held back a lot in certain things and receive roughly 10 hours of tutoring a week in certain situations. I always resented that. Every time something came up which was addressed to my special needs, it just re-enforced that resentment, because I felt so alone. I had tons of support, but not much companionship, and I blamed that on the fact I was blind.The common response to such resentment I often hear is, "You can't control the problem but you can control how you react to the problem." Maybe that lifts some people up, but for me at least, it takes a lot to get me to really fly with that. Thinking about it wrong made me feel like I was even more broken. As a rough analogy, it felt like this: To replace one part of an appliance, I'd have to take it apart and disassemble 20 fully functional parts just to get at that one broken part. Of course, the only way that appliance is gonna get fixed is if you grind it out and do the work, no matter how annoying it gets. similarly, to stop resenting something, you need to change your attitude toward something, and it can be a long, annoying, confusing process sometimes, but it's the only way your attitude will change. I know this now, but my kid self couldn't possibly grasp that, and even now I have trouble with it because my mind has this tendency of letting negative things snowball.Fortunately, I'm a lot more at ease today than I used to be, because I have more friends. Some blind, some sighted. I'm not a social butterfly by any means, but I have a circle of roughly 20 friends of various types, who all mean a lot to me, in addition to my family, so they certainly help put me in a better headspace. I have enough diversity in my social circle that I finally feel okay about being blind. Most of them talk to me as casually as they do everyone else, and even if a blindness-related challenge comes up, they don't get nervous or talk stiffly or awkwardly about it, so that boosts my confidence.That said, I'd still be all for getting some vision. I've always been a very curious person. Always curious about new experiences, new medications, new ideas etc. I love to learn about everything new to me, and especially to talk to people who are knowledgeable in it, so the idea of getting my vision back is definitely something I have thought about. Naturally, during the days when I hated my blindness, I would've signed up to get my vision restored in a heartbeat. But during those days, I was innocent, naive and quite optimistic. I was only a kid, so I had little perspective on the potential negatives involved with such a thing. I just wanted vision, damn it. I wanted to see people, I wanted to play video games, I wanted to feel like I fit in without being singled out and treated like I was different. I would've traded all my favorite toys for it.Nowadays, I still would want vision, perhaps even go through an experimental trial, but with a couple conditions. First I wouldn't do it if there was a moderate to high risk of drastic physical side effects like death, or brain/nerve damage. Also, I wouldn't go through with it if I couldn't get support from some of my family and friends. Aside from that though, I can't think of any other reasons why I wouldn't do it at the moment.I'm perhaps not as worried as I should be about the shock factor, even though I've heard that you never learn to use newly acquired vision naturally or efficiently. The adult brain can't make sense of it the way someone who has always had vision can. I know this would probably overwhelm, confuse, frustrate, and discourage me to no end. But I am so insanely curious to know what vision is like. I have light perception, and that alone is so profound to me that I can't begin to describe what it's like to someone who doesn't have it. And that's just light perception! I can't even imagine what it would be like to see shapes, colors and other details. Maybe that's my downfall. I'm so curious about the things I don't have, that I let the excitement get the better of me when I am presented with the prospect that I might one day get it.70 percent of people who I've discussed this with are against it, due to the immense shock it would likely involve. They wonder why I would put myself through unnecessary hassle and
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower Okay, a bit of an update. Put simply I am... quite unnerved and disgusted as Jake basically made his own SoundFont without my knowledge, terminating our collaboration without even so much as a heads-up that he wished to proceed on his own. Still, the SoundFont is decent, though the lack of importance given to volumes and LFOs is somewhat noticeable if you care about such details. The balance needs work (drums in particular are quiet and some other stuff is loud). I suggest tweaking the balance, using recordings of the synth as reference. Still, I have to commend him for his determination and... persistence.For the record, I still intend to finish my soundFont. I've finished 59 instruments so far. As I said before, I'm not setting a release date. Those who are interested when it's released are welcome to try it. Until I have good news to share with you all, I'm bowing out, as I am frankly disgusted at being quietly cast aside. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/554817/#p554817 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower Okay, a bit of an update. Put simply I am... quite unnerved and disgusted as Jake basically finished the SoundFont without my knowledge, terminating our collaboration without even so much as a heads-up. Still, the SoundFont is decent, though the lack of importance given to volumes and LFOs is somewhat noticeable if you care about such details. The balance needs work (drums in particular are quiet and some other stuff is loud). I suggest tweaking the balance, using recordings of the synth as reference. Still, I have to commend him for his determination and... persistence.For the record, I still intend to finish my soundFont. I've finished 59 instruments so far. As I said before, I'm not setting a release date. Those who are interested when it's released are welcome to try it. Until I have good news to share with you all, I'm bowing out, as I am frankly disgusted at being quietly cast aside. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/554817/#p554817 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower
Re: a question for midi enthusiasts who have a Braille Note MPower Okay, a bit of an update. Put simply I am... quite unnerved and disgusted.I see that Jake has finished the SoundFont on his own, and I have to say it's decent, though the lack of importance given to volumes and LFOs is somewhat noticeable if you care about such details. The balance needs work (drums in particular are quiet and some other stuff is loud). I suggest tweaking the balance, using recordings of the synth as reference. Still, I have to commend him for his determination and... persistence.But let me share a bit of my perspective here. This may come off as snide and unnecessarily spiteful, but I feel it should be said.Ever since Jake asked me to help him with this project, I think he was hoping we'd drop everything and work on it nonstop until we finished, but I don't really work like that. I need to pace myself.I clearly said on this thread that the release timeframe Jake mentioned was a bit too optimistic. But during the first day, he wanted hourly progress updates, as though I was supposed to be working at full steam ahead. I became annoyed with this, so I politely but firmly asked him to limit update requests to once every day or two. He did stop bugging me, in fact he failed to communicate with me at all after that. Had I not been browsing this forum and seen this thread, I would still be under the assumption he was waiting for me to give him an update.My irritation does not come from the fact that he did his own version. It comes from the way I was presumably brushed off because I didn't do things the way he wanted me to. When he released his SoundFont, I wasn't acknowledged for any of the help I provided. Inserting the loop points was my doing. Dividing the envelope points by 65536 was something I worked out to perform an accurate conversion from DLS to SoundFont. Watching me work on the conversion on Skype for hours until I couldn't stay awake any longer, nope. Not important. Our understanding that I was probably more experienced with these types of conversions thus I should oversee the technicalities of it basically went flop. I guess what irritates me most is that Jake went ahead without even so much as a quick heads-up to let me know he wished to move forward without me.I'm not about to say I'm perfect in this, I'm not the best at collaborating either. In hindsight I should've probably let Jake help me out with more of the work, that way I wouldn't be stuck with all of it and he would have been more busy. At the moment though, I'm quite leery of that, so I think it would be better for both of us to go our separate ways with this.I still intend to finish my soundFont. I've finished 59 instruments so far. As I said before, I'm not setting a release date. Those who are interested when it's released are welcome to try it. Until I have good news to share with you all, I'm bowing out. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/554817/#p554817 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
