A Token Gesture to the Blind
Last week, a friend called to tell me that he had just seen a commercial for the commemorative Louis Braille silver dollar coins. Immediately, I saw it as a literal token gesture. If they really want to help the blind, why don’t they mark currency so we can identify it by touch?
The coins crack me up. They have the standard symbols and sayings as American currency. On one side, it has a portrait of Louis Braille, the inventor of braille, the system that a decreasing amount of blind people use to read by touch. On the other side, the coin has a picture of a boy with a bookcase of braille books behind him.
Now for the life irony: The coin has the letters “brl”, the contraction for braille, embossed in braille on it. Grade II braille has 189 contractions to shorten the amount of characters in this already bulky medium. “brl” stands for braille, any American braille reader would know this. Embossing “brl” on the coin just makes me laugh, sort of like the story I’ve told here before where the hotel had “NO SMOKING!” signs outside of each room. Why not write “Print” in print on it? They should emboss “$1″ that seems much more practical.
If they really want to help the blind deal with money, they should emboss or mark the currency, as they do in Europe. Some currency has actual braille on it, and other currency has special markings. I actually like this solution more than standard braille, because the markings don’t ware down as easily, and it requires less special equipment and overhead, which means less excuses from sighted bureaucrats. If Europe can do it, certainly America can! Stop giving us these token gestures! Do something real!
Summer Shines in the Winter
I have done it! I have gotten Linux installed on my Netbook. Specifically, I used Arch Linux for the Blind. Coming from Slackware, it made a good choice, since it already has Espeak installed, and I can get Gnome working out of the box as well. I believe I may even switch my desktop over, since Slackware 13.0 couldn’t even compile the stock kernels which ship with it. They require a newer version of gcc, which I installed, but that of course has broken some other things. I feel very impressed with Arch Linux so far.
I love having a portable computing device. The blind have had portable note-takers for years. I first got my Braille ‘n Speak in 1988 or so. I used and loved that thing for over ten years, then the company merged with others and became the Microsoft of the blind community. After that happened, I no longer had a constant computer at my side tow rite things down. I tried to fill the void with crap, but nothing satisfied me.
The Netbook has arrived in full force of course, and Linux accessibility provides incredible solutions. I can even ssh (log in) to my desktop upstairs while sitting in my living room recliner, and control it pretty much as if at the console. Can you do that with Windows? One crappy note-taker costs the same as thirty-one netbooks! They provide the lock, and GNU/Linux the key. Making a note-taking productivity suite under Linux has the advantage that I can port it to whatever machine I wish no matter what cool thing in the future comes out. As long as it runs an accessible version of Linux I can rock and roll!
I can’t reiterate how great this feels. I feel rejuvenated, like part of me has come back, now that I have this new medium of expression. I feel comfortable and free. This will go very well with blogging. I have Twitter running under Emacs. I also plan to make extensive use of Orgmode. “Your life in plain text” sounds just about right!
I find that suspend works far better under Linux. I disabled it under Windows, since it locked it up and didn’t seem as stable. Linux works wonderfully, I just keep the suspend mode active when I close the lid while on DC. It uses around one percent of battery charge per hour while in suspend. Then, I just open the lid and it pops right back up.
I now have my EeePC 1000HE in a very nice configuration. I kept the original 80GB Windows partition, and installed Arch Linux on the second partition. I now have a nice dual-boot configuration, though will do 99% of my work under Linux. I even have Firefox working under Gnome with Orca. Having Linux on a Netbook rules, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the time and desire.
It just occurred to me that I didn’t blog about what happened. The Thursday before last, a freak power surge took out the drive in my desktop. I’ve had to rebuild since then, and wanted to get my Netbook functioning, since I sort of needed it. Now things will work out, I will have a rocking new setup, and hopefully I can get the data off the old drive.
A Genuardi’s Zen Story
One day, two friends ordered some groceries from Genuardi’s. The order contained a number of essentials, including a bag of Yukon Gold potatoes. When the order arrived, the delivery man said that they didn’t have the potatoes. One friend became visibly upset, but signed the receipt and escorted the man to the door. After he left, the other friend became enraged, and loudly cursed the delivery man. The first friend explained that the order should have said “Same Size Different Brand” instead of “Same Brand Different Size” and apologized, since they had placed the order. The other friend didn’t care, and yelled insults at the no longer present delivery man, who probably didn’t even shop for the order in the first place.
“Have people become so robotized that they can’t even think for themselves, and can only follow the stuff written down on a form, and badly at that? You know, I think the Illuminati’s conditioning has worked a little too well, dumping sedatives and sterilants into the water and the like.” The other friend smiled. “Put down the moron from Genuardi’s. I did back at the front door.”
Based on a True Story
How to Find Peace within Twittering-mode
I love Emacs. I love using Twittering-mode to read Twitter from within Emacs. Only one thing bothered me about twittering-mode, and quickly browsing through its source-code showed me the fix. I also modified a tip on their page to give a text notification of new tweets. Just place these lines in your .emacs and enjoy. Modify as appropriate. Send me a tweet if you found this useful.
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/twittering-mode") ; if non-standard
(require 'twittering-mode)
(setq twittering-username "yourtwittername") ; replace
(setq twittering-notify-successful-http-get nil)
(add-hook 'twittering-new-tweets-hook (lambda ()
(let ((n twittering-new-tweets-count))
(format "%d New Tweet%s" n (if (> n 1) "s" "")))))
Fight the New World Order! Learn Esperanto!
A recent article in the American Thinker inspired a discussion thread on abovetopsecret.com which attempts to link Obama’s agenda, George Soros, and Esperanto. I would not contest the link between Obama and Soros, or the link between Soros and Esperanto, but as an Esperanto enthusiast, I must take issue with linking all three, and tying Esperanto exclusively in to the New World Order. In fact, I would argue that learning Esperanto would help defeat it.
Esperanto began as the creation of Ludwik Zamenhof, who wanted a neutral language to help people of different cultures communicate. Its roots mostly come from the romance languages and German. The words have a regular spelling and pronunciation, and can freely combine to form new words. The grammar has no exceptions, and only sixteen rules governing its use. A student can gain proficiency relatively easily, reaching a level where they can carry on a half decent conversation after only a few months of study. Compare that with studying most languages in school, where after a year you can ask someone their name and where they live. In fact, learning Esperanto can help with learning other languages, since it lets the student concentrate on building their vocabulary and grammar skills, instead of concentrating on rules with exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. When considered logically, the idea of a neutral international language makes sense.
Since its inception, Esperanto has attracted a diverse group of individuals, from far left socialists to radical libertarians, from devout Christians to extreme atheists, from curious artists to hardcore linguists, and everything in between. Zamenhof belonged to the Jewish faith, translated the Bible, and created his own philosophy called Homarismo (humanism). While some may say that it sounds like the philosophy of the new world order, most Esperantists do not consider themselves homarismoj (humanists) and view it as something interesting to consider and nothing more. Additionally, Zamenhof’s own writings and speeches certainly do not show him as a servant of any evil agenda, much to the contrary. He never intended Esperanto to replace existing languages, rather to act as an auxiliary tool to give everyone an equal footing when communicating internationally.
Esperanto has had a long history of prosecution by those who would do us harm. Hitler and Stalin both denounced it for the same reason. If people have the ability to communicate without boundaries, they become much harder to manipulate. I recall an incident on a mailing list during the Kosovo conflict. A woman there emotionally asked how Americans could support the war, and the slaughtering of innocent civilians. We all of course didn’t, and asked what she meant. “Oh,” she responded, “The media here says that you all support it, and celebrate in the streets.” We all couldn’t believe it. Most Americans either opposed it, or didn’t even know we fought a war in the first place, and probably couldn’t even find Kosovo on a map. This sort of thing completely exemplified to me Esperanto’s purpose and power.
The Internet and Esperanto have a lot in common, in that both provide a global way to exchange information. The Internet began as a project by DARPA to build an informational infrastructure which could
withstand a nuclear war. At first, only governments and colleges had access. Gradually, access trickled down to the masses. The government thought they could use it as a method of control. Al Gore proudly helped fund it, hence his claims of inventing it. His reasons had nothing to do with benevolence and everything to do with control. They supposedly even referred to the WWW as the World Wide Wiretap.
Of course, since information seeks the quickest path to greater distribution much as electricity seeks the quickest path to ground, the masses quickly began using it as a tool of freedom. The net has always had a strong libertarian contingent even in the earliest of the hacker cultures, and this inherent freedom resonates to this day in software design. Now, anyone can read information on all sorts of things to empower them and expose the criminal elite which has begun taking over the governments of the world to impose a one world agenda. Just look at Climategate. Now, governments want to control the net, and impose China-style censorship, as has recently begun in Australia.
This represents a trend towards greater control. We have the elites running scared. If the Obama administration thinks they can wheel out Esperanto to further their iron grip within a velvet glove, I say permesu ilin. Let them. It will only backfire in the same way as their pathetic attempts to usurp the Internet to their own ends. George Soros actually speaks Esperanto natively, so I have something to say to him. Se vi pensas ke vi povas uzi Esperanton por helpi viajn tiranecajn celojn, vi estas malkorekta! Vi malsukcesos! Boneco chiam superfortas! Translation: If you think that you can use Esperanto to further your tyrannical agenda, you are wrong! You will fail! Good always prevails!
I started writing this article some time ago as a response to the criticisms by some rightly concerned individuals, and finished it today, on Zamenhof’s 150Th birthday. Today has felt very joyful to me, largely thanks to Twitter. Many Esperanto friends world-wide have tweeted in Esperanto. Google even put up an Esperanto flag with some information. The language has received a lot of good press today, and I hope people will give it a try. I don’t think Esperanto will ever become the international auxiliary language, but it has developed a culture all of its own, and that has value. Today, I think back on the fun times I have had,and the weird people I have met because of my involvement with Esperanto. I wish it another 150 years of success!
If you would like to learn more about Esperanto, you can try the following sites: Esperanto USA provides information to people in America, where most of my readers reside, and lernu.net provides free courses. Mi esperas ke vi trovos lerni chi tiun facilan lingvon.