I heard of Be My Eyes.  Interesting concept.  The concept is pretty neat though for sure.  Right now though, I s see no need for it, since I don't do a whole lot other than work on my music and browse the internet and well, if i go anywhere, I have friends or family with me always.  However, if I was  on my own somewhere, then I could see this being useful.

True enough, if you always have sighted family members around who are willing to help, then you probably don't need Aira. But in my case, I live alone in a one bedroom apartment 40 miles or a one hour road trip away from the nearest family members I trust and am willing to work with.

I have used Be My Eyes, but because the people helping you are untrained volunteers with no agreements in force to protect you, I won't use it where my personal information or safety is involved.

IT's about 5:18am here in Texas, cald as balls, and I'm not doing much of anything.  NOt feeling good, but I still just keep doing what I do. *Shrugs*

Hey, we're only human.   I tend to try not to use these anglo saxon words online either, but let's face it, it happens when you do't think or feel like garbage or just simply angry at something or maybe even someone, and when that happens, your fingers slip.   Whoops!

Hope you get to feeling better though.

I'm posting twice in a row, because this update is difficult, and it didn't seem appropriate to put it in with a happy topic.

I told you all about losing my job.
Then about losing a friend to suicide.
Two days after that, my cousin suffered a stroke. He was on life support, and finally passed away on Thursday night.

Then yesterday, another friend, a girl from my brother's high school class, purposefully overdosed on prescription meds, and she has passed away.

Our town is small, one where everybody knows everybody. So although I wasn't in the same grade as these friends, I knew them.

I know that personal circumstances and world events can combine in the wrong quantity, at the wrong time, to make you feel like things are too much, that no one cares, that there's nothing in the future worth fighting for. But I am asking everyone, please, if you feel this way, try one more time. Reach out to someone, a friend, a family member, a stranger. Go to the police station and say you need help.
Just whatever you do, please don't give up.
Whether you can see it or not, you are important. You are here for a purpose, whether you know what it is or you don't. Life can be hard, but it can also be incredibly beautiful, and I don't want anyone to miss out on the good things.
YOU . ARE . WORTH IT!

@Mirage, really sorry to hear things are so difficult at the moment and people you know are going through these sorts of circumstances. Having been there myself I do appreciate the problem.

hope your own life gets better soon since it sounds like everything is piling up at the moment, actually i really hope 2018 doesn't mirror 2014 in being a universally crappy year for pretty much everybody.

@Simba, that trail ride still sounds cool, bone problems or not d.

@orko, if Aira ever makes it to the Uk please let me know, it does sound like an interesting service and something I think would be really useful to my lady and  I (provided two people could use the same account of course), though I think we'd probably get the phone version as even though I still have very limited vision and use the white cane myself (well when my dog isn't with me), I do still find my glasses more helpful than not and couldn't do things like play graphical games without them.

the price is a ittle higher than paid assistance, (assuming it remains the same in the uk), but on the other hand that is what one gets disability benefits for, though when a lot of services come to the Uk they have a nasty habbit of jacking the price up (especially if the rnib is involved), so we'll see.

One question i do have, is even if they cannot actually help you with mobility could they help you with things like reading a sign in an area or telling you what a shop is? Sat nav systems haven't progressed quite far enough to  you wich a certain shop door is, and while reever is very good at finding  things, reading signs on shop doors or station platforms is a little beyond her .

My cold finally! seems to be abating, which is good since I need to get back to singing, also we've finally cleared out the small room next to our bedroom (which we've knick named the cell), where my weights are, so will start back with exercising next week. It helps with my voice and is something I like to do,  provided it doesn't take me more than half an our or so each day.

lots of work on the db today, so got an update out, though as usually there is soooooo much more to add it's unbelievable, also the university situation still continues to be rather ridiculous, since now it turns out  my friend (who also works as my research assistant), can't actually print out said articles either without logging on to the university database. I cannot do that since the lovely uni It services refuse to send me a password on anything other than their very inaccessible web mail client (one reason I've never used my uni email).

It is quite ridiculous the lengths stupid publishers go to to make sure that nobody who isn't authorised read their work, lengths which actually make what should be accessible to everyone! accessible to even fewer people (and I use the term "accessible!" here with a very large pinch of salt considering they're image type pdfs that are utterly screen reader unfriendly).

I'll have to phone the uni tomorrow and give them merry hell I think.

On the plus side, doctor who continues to be awesome, I really liked the latest tenth doctor audios, and it was so great to see David tenant and billy piper back together. I'm also playing through A dark room in bits, which I'm finding wonderfully grim and rather fun, though I have had to stop several times to bash out db pages for a variety of games as people will gather, since once again we're rather falling behind especially with the Alexa now being another rapidly expanding platform.

Oh well , i suppose it keeps me out of mischief .

@Orko I do see the point on mobility, though in my case crossing major roads with pelican crossings has been a must, albeit I probably wouldn't try without and frequently work out routes that take in said pelican crossings.

Luckily where we are now is an even smaller town than Durham where I was previously, so though we're on the main road, once you get off our road and into town traffic is pretty minimal which is nice.

I would be interested to know though about Aira and signs, indeed I was thinking about that today  after taking Reever for a run my lady and I went to an American diner to try it out for brunch, actually it was sort of a must given my parents (with the best possible motive but being a bit on the over zealous side), not only showed me where the thing was when they were last here, but also hijacked one of the menus to take home and read onto my victor's audio function (normally I'd just ask the waiter/waitress), so we had to go to return it.

on the plus side it's probably one of the very! few places in the Uk I've seen that sells rute beer, which is something we don't get over here very much, but I really liked when in the states. Also amusingly, all their dishes are named after different states and the Pensylvania (which my lady tried), was pancakes with bacon and maple syrup which amusingly enough she's apparently never heard of in pensylvania at all (pancakes with maple syrup yes, but not with bacon as well).

She said it was interesting but next time she'd go for the version without the bacon. I'll have to give it a try myself, though today I just had one of their chillydogs which was definitely good, albeit the chilly was more of a flavoursome stew than an actual chilly with kick.

Besides further wrestlings with the university there isn't much else to report that isn't visible on the forum, I really should stop worrying about the db and play some bloody games for a change, hell I should just sit down and finish the last hour of a dark room, not to  Start A hero's call, try out the new version of Warsim and goodness knows what else!

@Orko A pelican crossing stands for a pedestrian light controlled crossing, the kind with redc and green lights, or occasionally red and green walking figures.
See This page on good old wikipedia

You do have them in the states but I'm not sure what they're called, I'll have to ask Mrs. dark. Actually that article is a little odd, since I always thought all the crossings with a button and lights (plus a bleeper and/or rotary), were called pelican crossings or pedestrian crossing as opposed to zebra crossings, though the wiki article specifically identifies pelicans as those with a yellow light for oncoming traffic. I also am not sure what a puffin crossing is as mentioned there (I've heard of them but I have no idea what they are exactly).

i'd always go to a pelican myself if one was available, especially with a large road so learning to handle them mobility wise has been a must.

With the diner, yes, a lot of places over here do have online menus (our favourite takeaway does which is nice), but not everywhere, especially smaller places. I was actually quite amused when i was trying to look up a local chinese takeaway and  up finding the menu of one of the same name, in Newark Massachusetts! it's all the fault of you rotten yankees pinching everyone else's place names! .

The American diner didn't have an online menu, hence why my parents asked the manager if they could borrow one, it was a little superfluous on their part but well intentioned, and in fairness the chilly dog was nice,  probably be heading back their to try the pancakes myself, especially now my Victor stream is back in working order so I can sit and read and have a coffee as I was used to do, which was always a very nice break when I had work to do in the morning.

not much else to report besides a lot of Dr. Who, finishing way of kings and  more playing around with Alexa plus some work on the db.
there do seem to be lots of games around at the moment, one reason I'm glad  we've recruited more people to add database entries, since manifestly there is just one of me .

I've seen plenty of intersections with chirping going on, usually in downtown areas, or big metropolitan areas, but usually one chirp is east west crossing, and the other is north south crossing.