Category: Daily

It’s cold up here, and the cold happened a lot earlier in the year than I’m used to, so I think it’s time to start listening to the Harry Potter film scores while I work.

I could do this in the summer but it’s just not the same.

Luckily there’s already a playlist for this, so I can just hit play and let it go.

I don’t shuffle them, I just let them play all the way through in order.

Best way to listen to film scores.

Other favorites: Star Wars, (originals, not remasters), Labyrinth, (original, not remake), Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, (all of them, in order of Hobbit movies and then Lord of the Rings movies).

I should put together a list of all the film scores I like and stick them on a page.

True love is your boyfriend buying a case of a local brew he thinks you’ll like, and recommending you drink some of it and call your best friends after you’ve had a bad day.

I’ll post about the beer later, but mad elf is fucking right. That’s also one of the best craft beers I’ve tasted, and it’s got something like two times the alcohol as store-bought beers, so yeah I ended up definitely drunk last night, and I have zero regrets. Will definitely do again.

Welp looks like I will be taking time out of my work day to pause and install a new iOS update that is thankfully available because after taking a phone call earlier today and ending that call I have encountered what I’ll call the “all your sounds are belong to us” feature of iOS 13.

Apparently this is applicable to VoiceOver users only, and it wouldn’t be nearly as big of a deal as it is if it weren’t for the fact that just about everything I log into requires two-factor authentication and I need my phone for that because Google Authenticator is on my phone and so is the SMS app which I use for backup or for services that won’t let you use an authenticator app.

I am very much not happy right now because this requires me to not do things like log in to GitHub or Google Drive or a ton of really important stuff for work.

For those of you who aren’t voiceOver users, it happened like this.

Take phone call, say things, end phone call. Phone then completely shuts down and refuses to reboot despite having 94% battery power, requires sticking it on the charger and having John call me which then rings my watch which apparently sets off a chain reaction between phone and watch which the attempt to ping my phone from my watch did not set off.

That’s it, the rule about not drinking while working is being temporarily suspended because I have a meeting at 8PM and I just wasted something like forty five minutes. Update is installing now so I get to restart the phone and go through the whole “getting started” bullshit and pray that this bug is resolved in 13.2 because it is absolutely not cool that I’ll have to look out for this every time I take a phone call.

How’s your Tuesday going?

Beer Drinkers Are Boycotting Yuengling After Its Billionaire Owner Endorses Trump. The rest of us never started drinking Yuengling in the first place because we know there are much better options out there, like Guinness. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I’ve been forcibly upgraded to iOS 13.2. Yes, it finally happened.

I was just pleasantly surprised by the fact that VoiceOver audio is no longer send to a paired bluetooth speaker. I forgot that was a new feature of iOS 12.

I was not so pleasantly surprised by VoiceOver repeating “space space” at its loudest volume even though its volume isn’t set there.

Thankfully it didn’t wake the sweety up. He’s out like a light.

#MeetTheBlind Independence means not being turned into a zoo exhibit without my consent by those who would claim the title of being my spokesmen, and it means calling out those who would lead the blind community when they attempt to coerse me into participating in inspiration porn after they have failed to convince me to join the ranks of inspiration prostitutes. Independence means calling out those who would represent me when they talk but do not walk with regard to sexism after having made repeated promises to fix it within their ranks. Independence means shining a bright light on significant accessibility failures on the part of those who would represent me when they claim the right to enforce accessibility for others. And finally, independence means that my friends and family and colleagues view and treat me like a human first and an inspiration second not because I’ve had to constantly remind them to do so, but because they didn’t need Meet the Blind Month to convince them of my humanity.

I missed this earlier in the year, but apparently the NFB is partnering with Be My Eyes as self-described blindness experts.

Sorry NFB but if you’re declaring yourself an expert, you’re not an expert.

Why do I have a feeling this is going to be just as useful as WordPress experts?

I can see it now. All the disability related posts featuring hard-core federationists in the comments sections are going to come with tons of “as a blindness expert” in the comments aren’t they?

That’s all we need. Thought leaders ultiplying at gremlin-like rates.

Points to the first person who comes up with a stealable designation for these ever-multiplying thought leader gremlins, extra if the word gremlin is involved.

One of the things I love about Micro.blog is that the timeline is chronological. This means I can hit the back button after reading through a conversation and land on the post that started the whole thing off. On Facebook, for example, if I hit the back button, I get dropped to a random point within my newsfeed, and I lose the place I was at. The post from which I rabbitholed is never to be seen again. Thanks, Micro.blog.

I’m writing this because the trend of blind people using Facebook Live is unfortunately spreading.

So, friendly reminder to blind people who are using Facebook Live that it still doesn’t support captions or transcripts and we don’t know when or if it evere will.

I get wanting to do video, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

But if you care about accessibility, then you shouldn’t be using a platform that makes it pretty much impossible to not actively discriminate against an entire class of people, in this case deaf and hearing impaired people.

We can sit here and talk about positive impact and other buzzwords all day long. But you can’t good intention or positive impact your way out of this as long as you’re using Facebook Live.

We can sit here and say “don’t do dos and don’ts because it hurts feelings” all day long. But there are somethings that really are as simple as “do” and “don’t” when it comes to accessibility, and prioritizing convenience over one of the most critical and impactful aspects of accessibility by choosing to use a platform that explicitly doesn’t support captions or transcripts is one of those things.

So, if you really do care about accessibility, such that all the hell-raising about inaccessible apps and websites really is more than just looking out for your own interests, don’t use Facebook Live.

I got breakfast from Dunkin Doughnuts for myself and the sweety this morning.

Mmmm Munchkins. I haven’t had these since forever.

Not gonna do this every day by any means because it would get too expensive, but it’s definitely a very nice treat.

OK, post properties do not carry over.

I need to think about how I want to resolve this. It’ll take some code.

I think the links themselves would carry over, but then we’re back to the problem of contrast issues for low-vision people viewing from the Facebook app, and there’s at least one of those who likes this page.

Photos I believe I’ve figured out. I’ll either need to attach a featured image using the standard featured image box, or add them directly to the content.

Checkins should be OK because location and weather data get attached automatically to the content, so there will be something, even if it’s just a weather status.

I’ll need to figure out how I want to work around book posts and other similara content.

I just accidentally closed my browser and lost a ton of work. How’s your Friday going?

This post is a test of how post kinds will display when sharing to Facebook.

I’m biting the bullet and letting WordPress.com manage syndication to Facebook since I really don’t want to rangle Facebook and Facebook seems to be giving Micro.blog a hard time by (seemingly randomly) discontinuing publishing to Facebook pages.

Specifically, I want to see if I can publish without manually adding a custom message and still have the contents of titleless posts post in their entirety to Facebook.

There’s a bit of an issue for low-vision users of the Facebook app on iOS at least when you post just the title of a post and the link without an accompanying message.

I seriously doubt Facebook is going to do anything about this, since they pretty much don’t listen to their accessibility team unless someone somewhere in management decides it’s time to throw them their occasional bone, so I’m trying to mitigate it from my end.

I of course have zero control over the styling of the app, and I can’t pass those kinds of changes through from my websites.

Apologies in advance to those who are following me on Facebook while I test this.

I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of extra looking in the near future for hotels skipping the smart speaker craze. I do not want to walk into my hotel room and say anything to Alexa. If Amazon gets its privacy act together, (same with Google et al), then I’ll be happy to jump on board, but until then, I’d like to hold on to at least some choice in the matter.

The wireless network is down because of a thunderstorm, and I have one out of four bars for cell phone signal. I think this might actually be slower than dial-up. Time for an unscheduled break from work. Hoping the rest of the day doesn’t go like this. Oh well, at least the radio is still working. L

I think I’m going to change my site’s footer to “Site best viewed with a computer and a cold one.” I suppose I should modernize that a bit, since people use more than just computers to view websites, but I’d dearly love the opportunity to poke fun at the whole “site-best-viewed-with” (insert browser, usually Chrome) nonsense.

The surprise heat wave broke today, so the windows are open and there’s a wonderful breeze coming in. I looked at the temperature in Augusta and it’s 94 compared to our 72. Glad I’m not there.