This year marks the 200th anniversary of the invention of the Braille code. The International Council on English Braille, which has a General Assembly every four years, met this time in Auckland, New Zealand.
I was profoundly honoured to be invited to deliver the keynote address to mark the 200th anniversary of the code that gave blind people literacy. The address is called “Safeguarding the Legacy, Investing the Inheritance”.

Whether you’re blind or not, whether you read Braille or not, if you’re interested in the cultural impact and the history of a system that gave an uneducated minority literacy, I hope you find this address informative. You can read the text, or listen to the audio.
It is of course presumptuous of me to think I might be remembered at all when my life is over. But if I am, I would like to hope that this address might be a reason. I put months of work into it, because Louis Braille is my hero. I do not have the words to truly convey the impact his work, his genius, has had on my life.

I hope you enjoy it, and I thank with deep appreciation ICEB for the opportunity to deliver it.
mosen.org/iceb2024

My Address to the 2024 General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the invention of the Braille code. The International Council on English Braille, which has a General Assembly every four years, met this time in Auckland, N…

^{Mosen At Large}

For those interested in computer virtualization, this may be of interest here. VMWare Pro, not just the player, is now free for personal use. This also holds true for VMWare Fusion on the Mac.

This blog has some details.

https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstation-pro-now-available-free-for-personal-use.html… (1/2)

Are you blind? Have you heard of the commandline, but don't know what it means or how to use it? I recorded a tutorial that shows how to use a popular commandline utility called YT-DLP to download the audio version of a video with a screenreader, and how you can apply this to other commandline applications. This will accomplish jobs more quickly and bypass inaccessible graphical user interfaces. I hope you find it helpful!

#a11y #accessibility #screenreader

New instance, new introduction. Hello, I am Adam from Ottawa Canada. I am a totally blind man, identifying as he/him.
My primary interests are technology and music. I was a former professional drummer, playing the bar stages of Ottawa and the ocasional out-of-town show.
I've always been rhythmical, annoying the heck out of my parents at the tendor age of four on up banging on pots, pans, spoons, and whatever else I could get my grubby little hands on.
I got my first drum kit when I was 12, back in 1999. I got a couple of upgrades over the years, and then switched to electronic kits in 2007 when I managed to save and purchase a Roland TD-12 kit with my own money. That was like buying a car for me, LOL.
I was professionally active from 2007 until 2019.
Some hearing issues with extended loudness causing anxiety and unease started my issues with playing live shows, and then COVID19 really finished that career.

I've been interested in technology from a young age as well, receiving my first electronic note taker for the blind, a Blazie Engineering Braille Lite in 1996 at the age of 9.
I then got my first computer in the summer of 1998, learned DOS, then eventually Windows 3.1, 95, and on up.
I've had many, many, many computers and other technological devices since those days, and I have done any serious compute work in Linux, where in I am mostly referring to running servers, hosting things, and distributed compute projects.
Professionally, I am currently a systems/server administrator, backend web developer, database administrator, and infrastructure administrator.
Other interests include animals, documentaries, listening to most kinds of music, having deep intellectual conversations, and pondering the meaning of life.
#Mastodon #Introduction #Ottawa #Canada #Blind #Music #Technology

Modernizing #accessibility for @gnome and desktop #Linux was the subject of a recent talk by Matt Campbell, long-time a11y advocate and developer of screen reading technologies across multiple OSes.

Watch the talk about GNOME leading an effort to design & prototype a new accessibility architecture:
youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9…

Modernizing Accessibility for Desktop Linux - Matt Campbell, GNOME Foundation

Modernizing Accessibility for Desktop Linux - Matt Campbell, GNOME FoundationThe desktop Linux ecosystem has changed dramatically since accessibility was fir...

^YouTube

#Suno? #Udio? Who needs those? #ElevenLabs has just blown my actual mind and I am here for it! Cannot wait to get access to this.
I have not been so excited by AI-based music until now.
Don't skip anything, just listen.
Pay attention to the extremely fast Rap section too. It's up there with the best of them.
You've never heard AI music like this, trust me.

youtube.com/watch?v=GpYd8hU_EV…

Udio & Suno AI just got STOMPED on.. New AI Music is SCARY GOOD

Elevenlabs just announced EASILY the most insanely good AI music to date.▼ Link(s) From Today’s Video:Announcement: https://twitter.com/elevenlabsio/status/1...

^YouTube

In Europe, flying is cheaper than taking the train.

It's an embarrassment, and a major problem: we have to stop flying for silly short distances. Realise that the overheads of flying (reaching the airport, awaiting 2 hours, the flight, the unloading, reaching the destination) largely cancel out any time gains of flying. And the carbon costs are utterly untenable. Not to speak of the modern, dire conditions of the whole flying "experience".

Another embarrassment is that train connections can't be guaranteed when across countries or companies. They aren't even coordinated. As if those who commission and set the schedules didn't travel by train themselves, at least not internationally. In considering how tiny most European countries are, it's frankly bizarre.

There are so many destinations one could travel by train to, yet in practice, it's not sensible. A disgrace.

The upside is that it can be fixed.

#trains #EuroRail

🚇 Před 50 lety se poprvé rozjelo pražské metro i s cestujícími. Po slavnostním zahájení, které obstarala muzika a projevy komunistických potentátů, vyrazila souprava ze stanice Kačerov do stanice Sokolovská, což je dnešní Florenc.

irozhlas.cz/veda-technologie/h…

📷 Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy

Už ráno byla před stanicí fronta, vzpomíná na zahájení provozu metra před 50 lety vedoucí Kačerova

Otevřelo pouze pro pozvané hosty, kterých bylo podle Roberta Mary zhruba 50 tisíc a šlo z většiny o politicky exponované osoby nebo rodinné příslušníky zúčastněných na výstavbě.

^{Ľubomír Smatana (iROZHLAS.cz)}

I have a huge amount of appreciation for the fact that Nautilus / #GNOMEFiles can seamlessly pattern-select, batch-rename and move files both from its treeview and from search results… all with keyboard shortcuts! *Extremely* useful to clean up filenames.

Today, in someone else's messy folders, I was able to cleanly rename everything and eliminate at least 40 duplicates in a directory that contained over 180 files, most of which were in the wrong locations.

#GNOME #productivity #gratitude

A mindset can be both strange and amazing. Allow me to illustrate:

Today, I wanted to insert index times of one cue file into another. I know at least 10-15 programming and scripting languages, so I very likely could have written something to accomplish this. I could have used shell programs like cut, sed, etc, to accomplish this.

First, asked both Gemini and Chat GPT if they can come up with something. They could not, even with different prompts and corrections.

Then, I looked around to see if someone had written something specifically for cue files. No dice.

Then, I've seen that awk has automatic field splitting as it steps through lines. Okay, let's do it. There's one problem: I've never used awk. No worries.

One hour later, I had the solution written in awk, took around 4 lines.

Looks like today I learned awk and no regrets. The reason? It was easier than everything else out there that I found. I think this is a sign of me getting old lol.

Continuing a tradition #Conversations_im is available for free on the Google Play Store for the next 7 days.

play.google.com/store/apps/det…

Conversations (Jabber / XMPP) - Apps on Google Play

An encrypted, user friendly XMPP instant messaging client optimized for mobile

^{play.google.com}