This morning we got to do something I've been meaning to do for a while. I got to show you our talking scale...which sounds like my mom! It's kinda creepy hearing a voice that sounds like your mom telling you your weight.
It's a quick one, only 10 minutes, but here it is.
This will be the last audio of the night. It would have been up sooner but...well...I got distracted.
We started off talking about the whole underline/underscore thing. Ro had said that Voiceover says "underline" still, and then Steve said that JAWS says underline too. More and more weirdness.
We decided that would be the last audio of the night. Poor Steve had been awake since 4:30 because he knew that I had to wake up early, so his body woke him up a couple hours before. Apparently, it likes to do that. I don't know about that sort of thing...as I've slept so heavy that my snore sounded like a broken fridge motor. The thunderworks were in full effect, so Trix was busily shaking away. So we decided to start answering questions people have been sending us. We explained again that we probably aren't going to do all the mailbag stuff in one go...because it just wouldn't work.
Since we thought we'd rambled long enough about that, we decided to answer James's question about whether we miss Echo or Blogger yet...which is kind of funny since this post is getting posted to Blogger too. James, you wanted rage? You got it. Here it is in written form. We got to talk about how much more Wordpress allows us to do compared to Blogger, and how Wordpress search kicks Google Blogsearch's ass from here to China. As soon as we can find a daily email-sending thinggy, it'll be curtains for the Blogger version.
Finally, Ro asked us the condition of the talking beer koozy. In this earlier cast, it was going downhill. Well...the news isn't good. You can hear just how much poor old Joe has to say.
I don't know why, but every cast appears to have a Tugboat reference in it. Hope you don't hate us for that.
For this 42 minutes of goodness, grab it from here. Hopefully we can squeeze out some more audio tomorrow, and at least try and answer more questions.
Here comes another one. This one will be quick. Ceci asked me what made me decide to get a guide dog...so I started talking.
I hope something in here makes some sense. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts are a bit disorganized and confusing. But I think my main points are walk with some guide dog teams and if you can, spend a little time with one, so you can really get a feel for it. And, ask lots and lots of questions.
Well! Aren't we the audio crankin' machines? We decided this one would have a different twist on it. We decided to take you, the loyal vomiteers, on a walk with us. We'd never done this before...and it kinda showed in the audio quality. Most of it is pretty listenable, but there are some parts where...ow ow ow ow ow! Stream+need to raise voice over traffic=clip clip clip clip! So...do not listen on headphones, I don't think so. We'll do better next time...namely, place Stream on left shoulder. By the way, Shane? How did you carry your stream on your routecasts? I need pointers. I tested it before leaving and it sounded fine. I forgot the part where I need to raise my voice to be heard over the traffic din.
We decided to demo an audible pedestrian signal, or the blind guy chirp chirp lights as lots of people know them. We thought we'd clear up some confusion, as well as show the differences between two types of chirp chirp lights. We also thought we'd drop into Tim Hortons just because it's nearby, and pick up a couple things at the store on the way home. We turned the recording off when we were in the store just because really? do you want to hear "I'll have a smoothie. Yes debit. chinga linga loo, thank you!"? That's boring.
We split this bad boy into two smaller parts. There's part 1, the trip to Timmie's, description of the lights and how blind people cross streets, talk about the new Tim Hortons bigger drink sizes, and other babble. You don't hear it, but Trix got called a cute dog by some random passer by. As we arrive at Tim Hortons, Steve asks again what constitutes a yogourtless smoothie? It has been written, but we felt like talking about it. That bit is about 23 minutes long.
In part 2, which lasts about 25 minutes, on our way home, we talked about how poor Steve got hit with a giant allergy attack, how we didn't get to ask what a yogourtless smoothie would look like, and how Steve thinks ice caps are disgusting. I happen to like them, but he thinks they're ick. This made us decide we would do our questions not as one cast, but as the mood struck us to talk...and it was time to talk about the differents between Canadian and American iced tea. And, since we were answering that question, we went in to the whole milk in a bag thing.
I have also learned something. This milk in a bag thing only starts in Ontario and moves east. Westerners get mad if you accuse them of drinking milk in a bag. In describing the different sizes of milk cartons, I start singing Good Luck to the Barleymow. Now you can enjoy a much better version.
As we walk down the street yammering about milk bags, I have a question for folks who live in the UK that came up. I was talking to Torie on Twitter, and somehow crossing streets came up, and she said that over there, they have to wait for an all quiet, cross at a zebra crossing, hit a beep beep light, or wait for assistance. The idea of walking with the parallel traffic is not safe. Is this true across all of Ireland? Can other blind folks explain this? Frankly, the idea of not being able to go with the surge is about as weird to me as Americans find buying milk in a bag.
And we arrived home with our stuff, Trix drank furiously, and we signed off.
So, I hope you can enjoy this clippy cast. I apologize again for that. Hopefully we can learn and do better.
The urge struck us to do some more audio, so here we are. We had a lot of fun doing this one.
It started with me not saying go at the right moment. Woops. Welcome to me not being a good record button-pusher. Then we just rambled about the awesome weather, the Blue Jays winning again, and the coolness that is our balcony.
I don't know if you can hear what happened next, but somebody's car alarm similar to the one I described in this old post started going off, so Steve started imitating it...at which point, Trix brought us back to the reason we decided to do this audio in the first place.
Unfortunately you can't hear it, but Trix started circling us, puffing furiously. We put the mic in her face, but she did not puff hello. I described some new behaviour Trix does when there are fireworks or thunder storms, or our new term, thunderworks! The fear has been with her all along, but it has changed recently. Oh yeah? and I meant 1 a.m. not p.m. woops.
Moving on, we talked some more about the hot weather, and the plants a friend and I are planting in the Enabling Garden. Hey, anybody know where the reference "fuck this cat, and fuck this door!" came from? Go ahead and take a guess. At this point, we came up with our third invented word, Friedo (pronounced "fried o"): dog left in a hot car. We also made up some new lyrics to what would be the Frido song. And you know what? We should have stuck to that song...because I proceeded to ruin the next song we attempted. Even these people did a better job.
This led to an awesome story of how, in his CFRU days, Steve unintentionally insulted electronica. R2D2, a television and a vacuum having a threesome, you say? What a description.
Wow. This thing goes everywhere. We went from how you can't please everybody on the radio and on websites to me apologizing for not realizing that the Jonathan Sory story was more tragic than it seemed on the surface.
...which somehow led in a long and winding way to things taking on a totally different meaning if you're just listening to them, which then led to talking about screen reader users who just go by the way words sound and don't check the spelling, which can lead to some rather creative typos. Man, if you're bored, I understand.
Before we signed off, I made fun of Steve's loud phone text message noises, and Trix reappeared, looking all scared all over again.
And that about does it for another one. I think coining 3 new terms is pretty good. We enjoyed putting it together, hope you enjoy listening. Go get it in all its 1 hour and 7 minute glory.
Well...our first audio is up. We had hoped to have it up last night, but we kind of fell over after we finished recording it. The file got uploaded to the server, but hell if I was going to write the post around it. So I'm writing it this morning.
Poor Steve had to start it alone, because Trix had to take care of business. But I figured I'd make my presence known. If you wondered why Steve suddenly made some yelling noise in the middle of his sentence, no, he hasn't lost his mind. I was down below, making the Tugboat noise at him. I hoped the mic would pick it up, but it didn't. The Tugboat noise? Yes, the Tugboat noise. It's about 6 minutes in, but there it is. Probably if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it either. If you don't feel like waiting 6 minutes for 16 seconds of Tugboaty goodness, you can download his promo right here. Eeeeeee!
After I distract him with randomly-placed Tugboat noises, Steve manages to get his groove back, and talks about our new website, and how it's awesome to have audio capabilities back. He then moves on to baseball, and how certain Blue Jays are doing really well while others were awesome, but need some help.
When I got back, we talked about wrestling, and I finally sort of mention Tugboat, but we really couldn't do him justice. That moved us on to how much wrestling has changed over the years, and how hard it is to be a new fan today.
Next up, I gave a brief update on me, and how Trix gave me a little bit of a scare. This led us to talking about how awesome it is to move over from Blogger to a place where we actually have some server space, and the awesome that is Skynet Communications. We also got to rag on Blogger importer for screwing up who wrote what, and being just a wee bit bizarre.
Somehow we got from here to talking about the new Guelph Central Station, AKA the land of confusion where our city buses live now. We talked about how eventually we hope it will be easier to navigate, but right now, it's a total zoo, and we're all confused, which is really fun when transfer times are next to 0. We also talked about how it's kind of dumb to have a heap of bus platforms and no real shelter, since the inside of the building won't be functional until 2013. Also, we mentioned that that light at St. George's Square is no longer an all-way stop, so don't die, everybody.
As we talked about the crappy decision that was changing routes in January, we some how wandered into describing our creepy landlord from the old apartment building.
While Steve went to get a beer, I talked about how awesome Shane's podcasts are, and how they brought back memories of training.
Things begin winding down with another plug for Skynet Communications. Somehow that led into a talk about how the "underline" key is now called "underscore" and wondering how that happened.
We wrap things up by reminding people that they can send us questions and we will answer them in an audio mailbag, but we need more questions, so keep sending them in.
And that does it for our first 53 minutes of chaos. If you feel so inclined, go get it. Enjoy, and there will be more to come, I'm sure.
Don't you just love it when you're in your early 30's but the internet is doing its best to make you feel ancient? That just happened to me thanks to this piece called 11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard.
I remember all of them. My grandparents even still have a rotary phone on the wall in their hallway, believe it or not. Yes, in 2011. And better yet, they use it, or at least my grandma does. Grandpa seems to appreciate his portable button phones, but whenever grandma gets on the line, it's always on the old, crackly beast that you can barely hear anymore. It hardly works, but I'll still be sad when it finally comes down...if it ever does. I have a feeling that thing is going to outlast us all.
Oh, and I must take issue with one of these. Gas station driveway bells? How young are our theoretical kids? Granted there aren't as many of those around as there used to be, but at least where I've been they haven't really started fading out until the last few years. Am I crazy?
Enjoy the little trip into Back In My Day Land, everybody. And Carin, I'm sure you'll appreciate the first bit of the cash register description. It sounds like something you'd say.
Update: The audio hasn't worked for a while here. Thank you Blind File Sharing for hosing us. So now, for all things cast, pop on over to our new site. There, you'll find audio that works!
Well, it is here. The Occupy VC Cast, the Occucast, whatever you want to call it, it's here...and it's about to occupy about 2 hours of your time. It would be awesome if you found it 99% funny.
We divided it into 4 parts. It would have been only 3, but well, ya see, I'm a giant moron and caused us to need to make a bonus part.
Part one lasts for about 25 minutes or so. In it, we spend some time on the whole Occupy VC thing, and how the Occupy movement has invaded my subconscious, because when I hear 1% or 99% from the computer as it's loading something, I immediately think of Occupy-related stuff. We mention Lunchupguelph, and ramble a while about the work Christmas party we went to, some about the odd weather, the Baker Street Station, and then we set off on our first major rant. Steve got very creative in making fun of the reasons people come up with for petting guide dogs when they know they shouldn't, and Trix got excited by his silly tone. I also did my best to describe the drink I tried at Baker Street Station, man that was awesome. Then after Steve talked in a funny voice, a joke next to noone will get, we brought this part of things to a sudden end.
In part two, which lasts about 42 minutes, Steve made me a drink and we talked about its ability to smack me around six ways from Sunday. We also talked about how Steve knows what drinks I'd like and has a pretty good track record. the story of the recent time where one of our Twitter buddies jokingly called Steve a douchebag came up, as well as the fact that someone seriously calls themselves Magnificent Douchebag as their Twitter name. We asked a question about something someone said who has gone lots of times to the Occupy Toronto movement, and Steve scared the hell out of me by mentioning this video. We lament the fact that BlindFileSharing's front end went splat, cutting off access to the files. Other topics talked about are the Occupy Movement's biggest curse, the stupidity of news media working people into a frenzy over nothing, Black Friday insanity, The mumbly new Tim Horton's slogan and general suckiness of Tim Hortons commercials, especially the use of the words "whipped topping". And before we break again, Steve talks about how much he loves the Grey Cup finals, and a few recent Grey Cup party memories.
And then, we really get silly in Part three, which goes about 50 minutes. This was the other half of our inspiration for audio. The story goes that the police in our area step up their efforts to watch out for impaired drivers. So, they pull everybody over on a stretch of road, ask them if they've had anything to drink, and if they think they have, they test them and deal with them. This is called the RIDE program (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere). But at Christmas, they call it the festive RIDE program. This always gave us an image of singing cops jingling bells and being full of jolly cheer while making people walk the line and blow into the breathalizer. We then wondered what sort of songs they would sing at the festive RIDE program...and that's what we spend the majority of the time doing. Part of the way through, I suddenly realize we need bells, and go off in search of something that would serve as bells. Since I can't find them, we have to settle for jingling our keys. At the very end, we wrap up by laughing at someone for thinking the Foo Fighters were called the Food Fighters, and there's a little joke in there for a fellow known on Twitter as @thedangillis.
And just when you think it's over, we make Part four, all because I found those pesky bells! This one only goes about 4 minutes or so.
This piece should have gone up last week, but due to the small matter of it not being recorded until right now, that didn't happen.
On this here 18.5 minute adventure into something or other, we touch on such topics as the good and bad of the #LunchUpGuelph event Carin went to today, why you should never, ever break anything made by Corelle and my talking Maple Leafs beer koozie with Joe Bowen's voice on it that was the main reason for recording this thing. Yes RO, you finally get to hear it. There's also a bit of Trixie, who plays some tug, runs around a bit and gets quite interested in the microphone.
If this sounds interesting or if you're the type to listen to stuff just because it's here, have at it.
And when you're done having at it, enjoy game 7 tonight. Even if you don't like baseball, you maybe should watch. Last night's game was one of the best games I've ever seen, the kind of game that makes fans out of people who never gave a damn about baseball before.
Amanda may hate me for this, but I'm going with the Cards. their run has been amazing and for some reason I'd kind of like to see them win. On second thought, Amanda may love me considering how well some of my previous baseball predictions have gone.
Whatever happens, I'll be watching and hoping for another fun one. Back and forths are great when you have no true cheering interest.
If you missed it live and would like to hear it, you can download this afternoon's episode of Accessibility Matters featuring Carin and I right here.
We were on with Jan and Susan for the whole hour talking about various things, but most of the time was spent on CFRU itself and the goal the folks there have of making the studios accessible for people with various types of disabilities.
I talked quite a bit about my time as an on air host and how difficult it can be to be the blind guy in a room full of what to me is unlabelled music and computers that don't talk. There was also talk of Carin's new job, Guelph Transit and the announcing of bus stops (always a favourite around here) and how much of a difference the attitudes of those around you can make in the life of a disabled person. A few other things got touched on as well, but those are the main points.
And before I forget, the line at the end where one of them says they hope I'll come back to the station and I respond with something like "you don't have me back yet" was meant to come off as be careful what you wish for, not as there's no friggin way I'll ever be back. Wanted to clear that up in case there was any doubt.
Enjoy the show, and please do donate if you can. CFRU does a great service to Guelph and beyond and honestly does need your support. If you feel like throwing them a few bucks, call 519-837-2378 or head over to CFRU.ca.
I saw this comic about what is and is not irony on Twitter. Well, I should say I saw a link to it, because it was a great big ol' image. But because I'm persistent *coughcough* annoying *coughcough*, the guy who sent it out actually read it into an audio file! Isn't that awesome beyond awesome? He even did it at his desk, so that's why he's speaking in that low mumble. Sean Yo, you rock. You just do!
I figured I'd mention it here since it references Alanis's song that is full of things that are decidedly not ironic, and we've talked about that before.
We said we weren't done with audio. Here comes some more.
A little while ago, I mentioned that Jack Layton had died. So, later, I learned that someone had created a drink in his honour. So, Steve made one of these, and we talked about it. Believe it or not we talked about it for 27 minutes. It, and other stuff, but hey, that comes with the territory, doesn't it? Hope you enjoy. It looks like Steve's diggin' the Layton.
We decided to have some corn on the cob for dinner. So while we were husking, we started talking. We apologize, this one got a little heavy there. We intended to just talk about the weird way people in Guelph pronounce the word "food," and talk a bit about how hard it would be to husk corn when you only have the use of one hand, as Steve's dad does. But well, things went down in a slightly unpredictable fashion. Sorry for the partial downer.
Here's your first audio of the day. If you listen to these things mainly for Carin, you may hate this one. I'm all by myself this time. Don't worry, I only talk for about 8 minutes, so you won't have to put up with me long.
What we have here is just me killing a few minutes waiting for the Jays to start. I'm sitting outside drinking a beer and talking to you. We're talking about people wishing summer to an end, how Christmas is getting out of hand and another tword. There's also a word or 2 about Carin being kind of silly and dangerous. Enjoy.
If anybody needs me, I'll be outside with the game and my beer. I'll have Twitter with me out there, so feel free to say hi.
A while back, I bid on an item In an auction L_Squared was running to try and raise money to sponsor a puppy. After looking through the cool items, I settled on something called a "Snuggle Juggle" toy by Nylabone. It was a stuffed toy with a squeaker designed to be durable! Aa, this I gotta see!
Well, it arrived in the mail, and I went to get it yesterday. Today, we opened the box and introduced Trixie to the toy. Judging from the resulting audio, Trixie was very impressed with my choice.
And even after she put it through that, all it is is a little slimy! Cool!
After a false start this morning thanks to a lovely piece of technology that decided not to work for no good reason, we can now let the audio begin!
Since the original kick off was not to be, I decided that there would be no better kick off substitute than documenting the weekend's first beer. So along with an appearance from Carin, that's exactly what I did.
Along with beer, we also cursed out her evil Stream and a local judge. There were a few other things in there too, but hell if I'm writing them all down. You're going to listen to it, you'll find them.
We only yammer for about 8 and a half minutes, which is probably some kind of record. I imagine as the drinking picks up that record is less and less likely to be broken, so enjoy the short one. You can download it here.
For quite a while now, people have been asking us when we're going to be doing more audio. Well, barring any August style stupidity, this is your lucky...weekend.
Wait, did he say weekend?
Yes, yes he did.
Carin and I talked about it and agreed that we want to try something a little different. Instead of blocking off a pile of time and recording a single monstrous something or other cast that's just a hair short of 3 billion hours long, we're going to throw things at you throughout the holiday weekend. Some of these things may be 30 seconds long, some of them could go for 30 minutes for all we know. We have no idea how this will turn out, but we're going to experiment with it.
So keep your eye on the site if you're around this weekend, or grab everything in one shot when you get back from hanging out with people likely much cooler than us. If all goes well, we should have something up for you this afternoon if not sooner.
As always, feel free to let us know what you think. Mentions on Twitter, emails, comments...we'll be keeping a possibly less than sober eye on them all, so feel free to talk to us. And this might be a bad idea, but if any of you have suggestions for what you'd like to hear, let us know. No promises that we'll actually do it, but it's worth a try because hey, you never know.
We'll talk to you all soon. Oh, and happy Labour Day weekend, everybody.
I really should have had this up at the end of last week, but sleeplessness, laziness and a Fathers' Day weekend out of town all conspired to make sure that didn't happen. So, here it is now.
Yet more Access Recreation Day clips have been edited and posted. There are 3 of them here,featuring Cyndy McLean showing me how a bunch of stuff works. We talk about tennis wheelchairs, hand cycles, various attachments that help you use those things, the cost involved and how you may be able to get your hands on some of it so you can try before you buy. Cyndy gives some nice play by play of what she's doing as she demos everything, so you'll be able to get a pretty good idea of what's involved.
At this point I think all that's left are a tour of the Rec Centre where the event was held and recordings of the wheelchair basketball and goalball demonstrations that are going to need some hella editing...poor Carin.
Speaking of Carin, she does a great job with all of this accessibility business in general, and speaking for myself, does a ridiculous amount of work for the Barrier Free Committee, putting some of the others over there to shame. I hope they understand and appreciate what they have in her. The woman's a damn workhorse, and you're lucky she's one of you. Treat her well.
a picture of the yes please burger. Holy crap, how many things did we have to mention in that short stint?
