2018-02-01 08:22:02

Wow it doesn't seem half a minute since christmas, and suddenly it's february, that's actually a bit scary especially with Mrs. Dark and I having to  a major singing course quite soon.

Well my life at the moment is rather like Bilbo's answer in the hobbit when he's picked up by the trolls and they ask him if there are any other hobbits around:

"Yes lots and none at all"

Namely that lots of things are going on, but probably not much in the scheme of things.
Apart from starting a new nebula collection (this one from 1995) I am also at the moment engaged in a research study about disabled people. They interviewed me last night and I have a longer interview this morning, it's actually a market research group who are doing it but on behalf of a disability charity and I get payed a hundred squid for it. Actually since Mrs. Dark hung around and chipped in and they're getting two viewpoints for the price of one, I sort of am tempted to ask them for a double payment, but I am guessing that might be rude, still we'll see what happens.

Other than that I've had lots of work to do on the db and I still need  to writeup my review for Ashes of honour.

Actually in terms of gaming I need to sit down and try things out just for fun, rather than specifically to do db pages for them, which is mwhy I might take a bit of time off after the next set of updates to play through some of the cog games and maybe other things too (I still haven't sorted out the navigation in A hero's call or played the game much).

Hope everyone else is having fun.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-01 10:41:11

greetings dark.
glad you are ok and doing fine. things are cold here big_smile but i am ok. just preparing for a test on sunday, wish me luck. happy new month and i hope your month will be going good.

don't wish to become like the oceans, the flowers, or the sun. oceans will dry out, flowers will die, and the sun will be extinguished. be yourself and nothing and no one else and hope for a better tomorrow.

2018-02-02 14:58:23

they dark, thought i would ask what you think of the way of kings now that you've read it and are now going to words of radiance. i actually really like the serie, it's really worth reading.
correct me if i'm wrong but there are 3 books out right now isn't it?
i've heard that hte serie will include 10 books.

2018-02-02 19:26:38

As for me, I am freezing, then thawing, then freezing again. Wheather here is weird. As for any other activities, I am currently working on university stuff. Among my current projects is one that will take me the whole semester. We're developing a 2D stealth adventure and I've decided to make this an excuse to try to figure out how to make such a game accessible. Should be fun.

I have a website now.
"C: God's Programming Language
C++: The object-oriented programming language of a pagan deity" -- The Red Book
"There, but for the grace of God go I"

2018-02-03 00:00:00

Well, last night around midnight, just after I crawled into bed, I heard this loud crash. When I lived on the east of town, I lived close to a rail yard, and I would hear the occasional loading up where train cars would couple, they'd back up the loco and it'd slam into the car and couple them together. It sounded kind of like that, and I couldn't figure out what happened. Here it turns out that someone wrecked their car, hit a tree and ended up on someone's lawn. It's like catty corner from my dining room window. The thing is, there were parked cars along the street, so my conclusion is, since none of them were damaged, that he must have been driving on the sidewalk. He was probably drunk or something. They towed it off and I fell asleep soon after.

It's moderately cold and fairly windy today.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-03 00:47:59 (edited by Orko 2018-02-03 00:58:42)

Yeah, I'm waiting for the third book of the Stormlight Archives too, specifically on BARD.

2018-02-03 23:25:31

Went out today to send the old broken laptop back to Amazon, then got a new one. It's a little 13 inch dealie with a SSD and a Touch screen.

I'm reading the latest Stuart Woods novels in the Stone Barrington series, of which I believe there are now 48. It's a good series involving big money, hot chicks, yachts, nice cars, airplanes, a bit of sex thrown in there, and oh yeah, people try to kill Stone all the time. Oh and, if there are any um... well, whisperings of Agency stuff, well, I wouldn't be at liberty to discuss it.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-10 17:03:40

I am not sure if I said something in the january topiik, but I was soo bussy with school in these 2 months, now I have holliday and tomorow on sunday is my birthday, so, I am so happy, probably I will get an eco dot or eco look and I will try all skils writen by Dark in the lists.
Howp I will hear good things from you.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-02-11 21:56:58

Congratulations!

2018-02-12 19:24:18

@Angel, hope you have fun with Alexa.
As I said in the alexa topic, the music playback is pretty dire if you want more than the top 40, but the games and other stuff it does are fun indeed, from smaller trivia games to full on rpgs.

Well over the weekend I was in ipswich for a vocal studdies course.
It was amazing, working on a song in detail and having lectures on various ideas from the physiological information about how to stand when singing, going to psychology of how to not get off stage and instantly think "that was crap!), I admit some of the positive thinking and mindfulness got a bit much, though the technical aspects were useful and we met some lovely albeit the trains getting down there were a bit of a disaster, being as we were delayed for close to two hours.
mrs.Dark sang "no good deed goes unpunished" from wicked, which was rather scary, and not nice for me, essentially hearing my wife in absolute agony.

I did Race you to the top of the morning from The  garden musical, a  much gentler song about a father telling his son a bed time story and getting wrapped up in things a little too much, though both of us managed apparently to make the audience cry which is always a bonus big_smile.

Sadly we did hear the music scummer shcool we've been going to has finished! this basically means the one community where we could be assured of getting a chance to perform and a part on audition, as well as being fully accepted by a lot of like minded people is utterly closed. Needless to say we're both devastated.

Today basically we've been recovering, so all that's been on the agenda for me has been listening to the latest bf torchwood audio (god! that series is grim), and tonight we're having pizza! big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-12 22:44:41

Well, something sad, I will get it in April cause in April I will go in the UK and I will buy it from here.
My birthday was ok, a single problem, my phone was droped on a hard material by a year and a half old kid, the flip chase was completely broken, I had a problem with sim card slot and now it is resolved, but well yah, I need to get a new flip chase cause my phone is just glas so, scratches are alot.
But no problem, if this phone will have problems again, I still have my s3 neo wich is crap, it stayed more than 30 mins in water without me knowing that, it was droped from big things, but still works with no lag.
And I know I will have problems with music on Alexa, my dad has a prime ackount and he said he will give it to me and continue to pay, but I am buying it especialy for interesting skils like bible and games.
Cause I am tooo tired to do some more posting, can I ask someone please to make a topik or something in how to setup the dot as a blind user, what things can I do with it and what advantages and disadvantages has it, cause my dad wanted an ecow plus, but I said no to this.
And why not, an audio demonstration?
smile Howp I will hear for you soon and thanks for congratulations I got here from Brian and alooot of congrats on skype from members.
Thanks in advance for the gwide, if it will happen.
big_smile

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-02-13 14:29:28

@Angel, just start a topic and ask your question, or indeed ask in the Alexa topic, but setting up the echo  really difficult if you use the web client, just a matter of putting in your amazon account username and password, then making sure your Echo connects to your home's wireless network.

[Prime accounts on the echo don't really do much in and of themselves, or not from what I've found.
You can get a little extra music (though you still get nagged to buy amazon music unlimited as well), but as I said the music aspects of the thing are pretty cruddy imho.

I have a prime account for my wife and I, but the main reason we do that is to get free delivery on buying stuff from amazon itself, as we find Amazon a useful place to do shopping and actually want to setup amazon pantry so we can order food items that are too heavy to carry such as bottles of drink, or just too bulky to cart around like kitchin roles.

Sorry to hear about your phone. I'll admit I'm a little bothered that they haven't bought out a survivor case for the iphone 8 yet, so my Iphone is currently caseless. If they don't soon I might have to get a temporary substitute.

Actually one irritating thing about the Iphone 8 is the requirement for an adaptor cable. for earbuds. I took it with me, looking forward to some quality  with the Cog/hg titles on the long train journey, only to find I'd forgotten the stupid lightning adaptor grrrrr!
I think I'll probably buy one to keep in my man bag just in case, aside from the one I keep with my phone, but it is a miner pest.

We actually have found a great case for my victor stream, although the soft leather case humanware sell with the thing is pretty crappy and expensive. It's actually the case for the old Cardiac monitor my dad used before he had his heart operation with several of the straps out of the inside, it fits the victor very well and is a good protective case ;D.

Well not a lot to report given that through most of yesterday I was pretty dead, and what I mostly did was curl up in bed with Mrs. Dark  listen to the latestTorchwood from Big finish.
My god that series is getting bloody dark, and I love the fact that they've got Yvon Hartman back. For a character who was only in two hours of tv and just to show how evil Torchwood one was, she's made a great impact in the audios, and makes a fantastic antagonist, especially since she's not necessarily evil, she's just a complete psychopath with no contience who will do anything to achieve her ends with no regret. The irony is sometimes those ends actually involve good things, like getting rid of a psychic worm from the internet that's causing people to go nuts with guilt and kill themselves, it's just the methods Yvon uses.

Anyway, back today to usual stuff like gamings and working on the db, plus of course working on book reviews.
My last review for Ashes of honour by Seanon McGuire is now up and can be read Here on fantasybookreview.co.uk

I've finally! been able to get hold of all of Jack Vance araminta station trilogy, which I'm really looking forward to since with their usual efficiency when I read the first book back in 2003, the bloody RNIB hadn't done anymore, and since the first book ends on a big fat cliffhanger I was most annoyed, so I should be reading and reviewing those next.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-13 20:58:24

The prime ackount was not my idea, so, I really don't care if it does something or not cause I will use it onli for skils.
I have a single problem, it has no baterry, so, I need to stay with an external power bank to keep it running at school.
My phone is complete repaired now, well, almost complete, but not because the mother of the kild was offering to pay the cost of a new case, she just keep hidding, like I do not know who droped my phone, like nothing has happened.
Now I have a small substitute, like a skin on it who is just crap cause it will not protect the thing against nothing, but my mother bought a new one for me and she needs to send it from the UK to me, but for securiti reasons for now, the phone is always on something like a wardrobe when it is not used.
And thanks for the clue, I will ask my questions in the Alexa topik.
And please Dark, look in the topik about results of Christmas contest, cause I wrote here but the topik is not getting in front of the page.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-02-14 11:20:00

Hi Angel.

Yep, the echo dot needs to be permanently plugged in and attached to a wireless network. Actually my lady and I are a bit narked since we took the echo dot with us on the vocal studies weekend, but I didn't have time to sort out the hotel's wireless network (even assuming you could access it for free and didn't have to pay an arm and a leg), so we've annoyingly lost our streak on several games.

Since we'd worked up a 50 day streak on word of the  quiz and question of the day, this is quite annoying big_smile.

Btw, also fixed your title and replied in the christmas competition thread in the news room, sorry about taking so much time over this.

Well as it's valentines day, I bought my lady some flowers yesterday. We were debating what to do, when Mrs. Dark suddenly remembered we'd been recommended an Italian restaurant which I just learned the way to last week.
I phoned them at ten last night wondering if they'd have any seats,  yes they do (they even have a braille menu apparently), so that's where we're off to this evening big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-14 22:08:12

I ordered an echo too, should get here today. I've had Alexa in the form of a smart speaker, but its got some issues and its just not doing the job since you need to press the button.

I was also recommended a book to read, which I did. It's called Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan I think. The book takes place in the future where no one really dies anymore, instead, when their current body dies, their data stack, which is a piece of technology that contains basically them, their memories, essence and soul, if you will, this gets extracted and they can be re-sleeved. A sleeve is another body, but it can be whatever body, it doesn't have to be a clone of you. This guy was basically put in data storage, which is like prison for some reason or other, he was sprung by this rich guy to do a job. He gets to Earth, a place he'd never been, to start working on this job. Things get a lot more complicated and twisted, and before long, he's involved in this criminal ring, and ends up being blackmailed. It's really good, lots of action, both fire fights and sex scenes. It's on BARD fr those who have access to that, but if you can, I'd recommend not getting it from there, I did, and was dismayed to find out it was Eric Sandvold doing the narration. That guy is just... mmph, I can't even. I dealt with it because I don't have any other services like Audible or anything like that. He creeps me the hell out when he tries to voice each character different, the women tend to sound like little girls, and he tends to sound like some creepy old pedophile.

Anyway, the book is really good, and I'd recommend reading it if sci-fi is your thing.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-14 22:49:20

Hi Ironcros32.
Can you please give me the price of that book? Cause it seems interesting.
And thanks Dark, it was not your fault, it was the fault of a bug I think.
And well, it's goot with some restaurants who have braille menues or apps, I can not find some in Romania, onli fastfoods and things with menu apps.
And by the way, happy Valentine's day for you all who celebrate, I do not have a girl friend yet.
smile but that is not a problem, I have alot of friends and I have alot of time to find one.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-02-15 00:33:25

As I said, I used BARD. I realize you will not have access to it, but I also don't know what services you do have access to, so a google or similar search engine search will be better for you since you will know better than I which services you have at your disposal. Also, any price I can give you will be in American Dollars, which is not going to be in your currency.

BARD or Braille and Audio Reading Download I think it stands for, is a service for the blind and physically handicapped run by the Library of Congress of the United States. It's not therefore available to the general public, and after applying, you will have to provide medical documentation stating your disability. It is a service only available inside the U.S. however. I do believe there are services similar to this in Canada and the U.k. but I confess to knowing nothing about them.

My echo arrived, and I was somewhat dismayed to find out that asking it to make a call would call that person's mobile number. I thought it would initiate an echo to echo call, so I managed to pick someone I knew had one. I cancelled before the call went through though lol.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-15 01:00:39

I personally don't use the calling feature the Echo has because I am unwilling to share my phones contact list with Amazon or the Alexa service.

No big deal, I didn't buy the Echo to make calls anyway.

2018-02-15 02:29:03

Hi.
@Ironcross, you might be interested to know that altered carbon is now a TV show and is available on the movie vault. Don't know how good it is, I haven't read the book or watched the show, but here you go .

Well things for me have been good, I've been listening to a lot of great music, and I've been reading some good books too. Right now I'm reading wednesday's child by Peter Robinson. It's very good, apart of the inspector Banks series, and it is set in england which is very cool! I really like the series a lot especially since the characters and their motivations for doing things is so believable. I love stories about police detectives, I think because I don't find books with hard-boiled private detectives very convincing.
I've also been reading the raven's shadow trilogy by Anthony Ryan. Right now I started the second book tower lord, which is very good, but the multiple character perspectives threw me a little at first. The series really is a treasure, I wish I could forget it, just so I could start reading it all over again lol!
Recently, I got an android tablet, so I'm trying to fool with it a little, see if I can figure things out, if I don't do something to blow it up first.
Lately I've been trying to play more iOs games which has been a really fun experience. Today I got godville, which is supposed to be very funny, so I can't wait to play it!

@Dark, how did you like the way of kings? It's a very interesting series especially when you start getting into words of radiance.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2018-02-15 02:56:12 (edited by GrannyCheeseWheel 2018-02-15 06:15:38)

Ah, thanks for that, I'll take a look. I don't know if it will be the same thing or not, I don't really know how they could make a series out of that, but we shall see.

***EDIT***

OK, it is based on the novel cool. I'm checking it out now and holy shit, the narrator sounds a lot like Neil deGrasse Tyson. I doubt that's who is doing it, but he sounds a lot like him, I was like what the... at first.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-15 10:04:55

@Orko, I haven't used the Alexa calling feature for the same reason, plus I dread to think what the charges are.
One thing I was sad about is that apparently you can't use the Echo dot to listen to music on Youtube, which is slightly irritating given how cruddy amazon music is, especially since at the moment we don't have any speakers for my pc so sharing music or looking up random stuff for Mrs. Dark and I is a little difficult (though hopefully I'll be able to sort some new quad speakers out next week).

@Guitarman, Godville has it's moments, though it was a little too unreactive to me to spend time on, but there are a lot of great titles for Ios. I recently noticed Silver sword had more access fixes including navigation facing, so I'll need to give that one another go. It's been hovering on the brink of accessibility for years, but it might have just tipped over it, or at least I hope so since that would be another major rpg release as huge as King of dragon pass.

As regards the stormlight archive, yes we're on words of radience at the moment and it's nice to read it together and discuss what's happening in detail.
We both read both Way of kings and words of radience before, but we read them quite quickly, so didn't take in a lot of details.
Shalon's past is wonderfully dark, and I like the way her brothers are complex characters. I do wonder how the magic and the world with the spren fits into the hole schema of the cosmir, but right now I'm keeping off the copper mind wiki until we've finished oathbringer since I don't want spoilers, ---- besides we're also going to read the Roshar section from arcanum unbounded between Words of radience and oathbringer to remind us  that particular universe works.

@Ironcross, my lady has played me a bit of Eric Sanvold from Bard and actually I thought he was quite awesome, especially with his extra voices. He does have a high voice and he can make it higher for certain characters from what I heard, but the women he seemed to do a very high voice for were either actually little girls or were deeply mysterious and probably had that high, girlish voice a lot of anime characters have.

if you want to here a woman with a little girl voice you should hear Kate Simsis I'm reading reached, the last in Ally condy's matched trilogy at the second, and honestly the woman who reads it sounds as though she's about twelve big_smile.

Not a series I'd recommend, far too much draggy romance with rather useless characters and not enough distopea though the premise for some of the society based on top hundreds is interesting, though the third book seems to promise to be better than the other two.

oh and yes my lady and I are reading Stormlight together, but we each also have a book going to read on our own as well. For both of us reading ranks second to Oxygen.

As for  Bard and other services, Bard is only available to us citizens, even if you have a visual impairment, ditto with the RNIB talking book library here in the Uk, though they have scarcely  a sixth of what Bard has.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-15 11:05:27

Hello.
I can use Audible and I think I can use other services.
I do not have a problem with us dolars, I use them more often as a curenky.
Now, I am in school, returning in some hours.
And I am happy, I got over 800 posts, and by the way, it is human antivirus, not human antiviruse.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-02-15 12:34:19

That Echo doesn't do youtube doesn't surprise me, Amazon has always been a bit snotty about cooperating with other companies it views as competitors.

And with the release of Google Home, Amazon definitely sees Google as a competitor.

So unless Amazon can figure out a way to monetize it, I doubt you will ever see a youtube skill for the Echo.

2018-02-15 13:31:25

Well Orko one thing I have noticed is that Alexa is following Ios in that people are extending the functionality and Amazon aren't objecting so long as the skills remain free.

For example, a recent skill added access to a hole bunch of Uk radio stations, (including Classic fm), which aren't available by default through tune in or on amazon directly.

i suspect youtube will follow relatively soon, particularly with the inherent crappiness of Amazon's own music service.

Still, it's only a mild interest, the Echo dot doesn't have a great speaker anyway and if I had speakers on my pc that worked my lady and I would use those instead when we wanted to use Youtube.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-15 14:22:55

Hi,
Well, earlier this month we went to London, and I got to do the Star Wars vr experience. Wow. Just, wow. It comes down to the same thing with most audiogames, if devs added audio queues for when you are on target, it'd be perfectly accessible. This experience, I'd say, was around 90% doable and seriously, it has impressed me. A lot. OK, it's a bit diffrent from normal vr stuff because you can walk around and oyu had tactile effects such as heat, so someone was guiding me around, but the head tracking and audio I think is similar to existing vr rigs, and if this is what a lot of them sound like, then wow. It's so close to being fully accessible, and I mean *that* close.
Apart from that, the Japanese audiogame Dreamy Train has been taking up much of my time this month. I still need to update the entry with a download link and info on the monthly event feature, but I am liking the amount of unlockables.