[Techno-Chat]: RE: [Techno-Chat]: Hims International: Blaze ET – Progress Report
X-SpamDetect-Info: - Start ASpam results --- X-SpamDetect-Info: This message may be spam. This message BODY has been altered to show you the spam information X-SpamDetect: : 8.0 sd=8.0 Close nspam=7 nok=1 0.88 $0.04(dnswl_none) $0.04(X-myrbl:Color=white) 0.09(X-SpamContent:clean) $0.90(X-LangGuess:English) 0.90(spf2_failed) $0.87(X-NotAscii:utf) $0.85(X-Verify-SMTP present) $0.20(X-Phrase:clean) 0.28(X-PhraseHits:secret) Lowered 3 X-SpamDetect-Info: - End ASpam results - Dear Gordon, It sounds as if you have had an interesting few hours of discovery to good effect. Best wishes, Roger Firman. From: Gordon Smith [mailto:gor...@mac-access.net] Sent: 12 October 2016 18:40 To: Techno-Chat ... Technology Enthusiasm! Subject: [Techno-Chat]: Hims International: Blaze ET – Progress Report Hello everybody As I reported to the group earlier, this morning I received my new Blaze ET. I’ve been playing with it now for a little while, and it goes way, way above that which is attainable on the rival HumanWare devices. For one thing, the Web Radio channels are up-to-date, and they actually work! However, as yet I haven’t managed to play any of the BBC national or local radio channels. That isn’t to say it isn’t possible, I merely haven’t got around to it as yet. I shall do so, rest assured. Regarding settings of the hardware and software. Connecting to my custom network was a total breeze! I just entered the relevant data into the appropriate fields, and clicked connect. It just workedQ! With my Stream, I have always had problems in this regard so I shall go and try that again shortly, just to be fair, in case anything else has changed which made it possible for the Blaze to function. It could be, as I recently reset my router and started over. Controlling the Blaze is also as easy as 1, 2, 3! i use that expression quite deliberately. Most of the hardware consists of rows of three buttons, with the exception of the keypad which is arranged in a traditional circle-style with the small “OK”button residing in the centre. Without its case, the Blaze fits snugly in the hand. It weighs in at just a little more than the Stream, and aesthetically it is only a mere half a centimetre wider, and exactly the same length. The “Guide” voices on the Blaze seem to use either the Ivona or Acapela Group speech engine, so the quality is very acceptable. Changing language, time zone, voice persona, pitch and speed was very simple. So it doesn’t take long to find your way around. In the box with the Blaze came a print and Braille quick start guide. However, and this is my only real dislike about the whole product. Whoever transcribed the quick start guide into Braille clearly doesn’t really know what they’re doing. For whatever reason, the line spacing has been changed, and it’s only around 0.75 of where it would ordinarily be. This close line spacing makes the quick start guide very difficult to read, to be honest. or the life of me, I just don’t get it! Why on earth anybody would want to tamper with those settings is beyond me. Fortunately, there is a documentation CD provided with the Blaze, which contains the quick start guide and also the main user manual. To be fair, I only spent a few short minutes looking at the Braille guide, just to check that everything which should have been in the box was indeed present. I managed to find my way around the device without the aid of a guide. if you’ve seen Hims software design philosophy before, you probably won’t even need to touch the user guide. As somebody who extensively uses a Braille Sense U2, I had a pretty shrewd idea of how it worked before I even switched on the device and, sure enough, I was not disappointed. In terms of services available, the Blaze really lives up to its name. It goes blazing ahead of the Stream, offering a diverse world of configuration options which make it possible to configure the device just the way you like it. Interestingly, the core operating system is Redhat LINUX, judging by the layout and format of the flash disk. That’s certainly a step in the right direction, seems that Hims too is on the point of ditching Windows Mobile. I tried playing a DAISY book, and then recording one. It’s possible to record in either plane wave or MP3 mode, or else have your recording marked up as a very basic DAISY book. I don’t know how far Hims will take that, and what level of navigation it will permit. But I suspect that at the moment at least, there is only one level supported by native recordings in DAISY format. I played a book which I created recently for a client which uses multi-level, multi-heading navigation. I had no difficulty whatsoever with playing that book on the Blaze, and navigation according to publisher’s parameters seems to work fine. The internal microphone is quite sensitive
[Techno-Chat]: Hims International: Blaze ET – Progress Report
Hello everybody As I reported to the group earlier, this morning I received my new Blaze ET. I’ve been playing with it now for a little while, and it goes way, way above that which is attainable on the rival HumanWare devices. For one thing, the Web Radio channels are up-to-date, and they actually work! However, as yet I haven’t managed to play any of the BBC national or local radio channels. That isn’t to say it isn’t possible, I merely haven’t got around to it as yet. I shall do so, rest assured. Regarding settings of the hardware and software. Connecting to my custom network was a total breeze! I just entered the relevant data into the appropriate fields, and clicked connect. It just workedQ! With my Stream, I have always had problems in this regard so I shall go and try that again shortly, just to be fair, in case anything else has changed which made it possible for the Blaze to function. It could be, as I recently reset my router and started over. Controlling the Blaze is also as easy as 1, 2, 3! i use that expression quite deliberately. Most of the hardware consists of rows of three buttons, with the exception of the keypad which is arranged in a traditional circle-style with the small “OK”button residing in the centre. Without its case, the Blaze fits snugly in the hand. It weighs in at just a little more than the Stream, and aesthetically it is only a mere half a centimetre wider, and exactly the same length. The “Guide” voices on the Blaze seem to use either the Ivona or Acapela Group speech engine, so the quality is very acceptable. Changing language, time zone, voice persona, pitch and speed was very simple. So it doesn’t take long to find your way around. In the box with the Blaze came a print and Braille quick start guide. However, and this is my only real dislike about the whole product. Whoever transcribed the quick start guide into Braille clearly doesn’t really know what they’re doing. For whatever reason, the line spacing has been changed, and it’s only around 0.75 of where it would ordinarily be. This close line spacing makes the quick start guide very difficult to read, to be honest. or the life of me, I just don’t get it! Why on earth anybody would want to tamper with those settings is beyond me. Fortunately, there is a documentation CD provided with the Blaze, which contains the quick start guide and also the main user manual. To be fair, I only spent a few short minutes looking at the Braille guide, just to check that everything which should have been in the box was indeed present. I managed to find my way around the device without the aid of a guide. if you’ve seen Hims software design philosophy before, you probably won’t even need to touch the user guide. As somebody who extensively uses a Braille Sense U2, I had a pretty shrewd idea of how it worked before I even switched on the device and, sure enough, I was not disappointed. In terms of services available, the Blaze really lives up to its name. It goes blazing ahead of the Stream, offering a diverse world of configuration options which make it possible to configure the device just the way you like it. Interestingly, the core operating system is Redhat LINUX, judging by the layout and format of the flash disk. That’s certainly a step in the right direction, seems that Hims too is on the point of ditching Windows Mobile. I tried playing a DAISY book, and then recording one. It’s possible to record in either plane wave or MP3 mode, or else have your recording marked up as a very basic DAISY book. I don’t know how far Hims will take that, and what level of navigation it will permit. But I suspect that at the moment at least, there is only one level supported by native recordings in DAISY format. I played a book which I created recently for a client which uses multi-level, multi-heading navigation. I had no difficulty whatsoever with playing that book on the Blaze, and navigation according to publisher’s parameters seems to work fine. The internal microphone is quite sensitive, and it’s also adjustable. However, adjusting the sensitivity to a higher degree than the default did introduce quite a lot of noise on the recording from the internals of the device. Using an external tie-clip microphone which has a very high specification, I was able to produce a more than acceptable quality test recording which was totally noise-free. Although adjusting the sensitivity level on the Blaze to a degree or two higher than the default value produced problems. In order to speak, one must breathe occasionally. And with the sensitivity level set to quite high, it was triggered by my naturally inhaling oxygen, and then exhaling a mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide. So at a guess, I would submit that the default sensitivity levels are just about right, and there’s probably no need to adjust those at all. It is great to have the option, however, and Hims needs to be given credit
