Seedy Spews

The ramblings of a dweeb who lives life like it's 2005

Seedy Reviews: KeyOp by Day Garwood

12/08/2023 / / 0 Comments

Very few times do I consider a piece of software or its developer worthy of a personal review. However, with the software I’ll be talking about today, I simply had to make an exception. The software in question, KeyOp, is quite literally changing the way I interact with the Windows operating system. I’ve been using Windows for 20 years now. Throughout virtually all this time, I’ve been using things like desktop icons, the start menu, and the run dialog for launching installed programs. However, with KeyOp, this near two-decade old habit is quickly being replaced by a much speedier, more efficient way of working with the OS.

What is KeyOp?

KeyOp is a free utility for Windows written by a blind, UK-based software and music producer by the name of Day Garwood.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Day by voice online a few days ago. In doing so, I found out that we have some things in common. We’re both British, we both like screwing around with tech and writing code, we both like text to speech synthesis, and we’re both into listening to and producing music, to name a few. He seems a genuinely funny, kind-hearted person to be around. But this isn’t a review of Day himself, this is a review of his software. Or, maybe this review just became a review within a review?
The basic idea of KeyOp is that it allows you to quickly and easily launch any Windows program you have installed on your system with a keyboard shortcut. Well, actually, 2 keyboard shortcuts. The first is a three-key combination, such as Shift + Control + P. This is known as a category. Basically, what type of thing are you trying to launch? The second shortcut is a single key which you press to actually launch the desired program or website; yes, this thing even lets you launch websites! This is known as a trigger, because it triggers the opening of the program or website tied to that key. Each category can house one or more triggers. For example, instead of manually typing

https://scene.seedy.gq

every time you wanted to visit this blog, or even launching it from your bookmarks, you could set up a web category, assign it to something like Control + Shift + W, then create a trigger that opens your default web browser to

https://scene.seedy.gq

with a single hit of the S key! In addition, these triggers can be activated from anywhere within Windows, such as the desktop or any running program, without the need for desktop icons, start menu shortcuts or what not! Version 1.2 even lets you define subcategories. For example, in your programs category, Shift + Control + P, you could have a subcategory for launching multimedia software, Shift + Control + M, and another subcategory for launching web browsers, Shift + Control + B, with each subcategory having its own triggers.

Upsides

Very high speed, a very low footprint

Being written purely in the programming language of C, KeyOp is extremely responsive and fast. So fast, in fact, that when I click on my desktop shortcut to run KeyOp, it quite literally takes an instant to launch! Before my heart has even had a chance to beat, KeyOp is up and running, ready for me to open a program or website!
What’s more, the program is very small, with the main executable only being 951KB in size; one of the many beauties of C! It’s also very light on system resources. As of writing, KeyOp is using virtually 0% of my CPU, and only 600KB of my 8GB RAM. Six hundred kilobytes! Just 40 kilobytes shy of the amount of RAM Bill Gates allegedly said ought to be enough for anybody, way back in 1981!

Portability

The keyOp zip file clocks in at just over 1.8MB. Also, KeyOp is very self-contained, meaning it doesn’t store anything outside its own folder. Everything from the UI sound files to the KeyOp configuration file, keymap.ini, is stored within a single folder. This makes it great for carrying around on a USB flash drive or SD card, since all your KeyOp settings will be there, regardless of the computer KeyOp is running on. Provided, of course, that computer B has the exact same programs installed in the exact same locations as computer A. Also, since KeyOp does not try to access the registry or any other protected location within Windows, it does not need administrator permissions in order to run. If certain cards are played right, you could run this thing on a school computer if you really wanted to! Another thing that makes KeyOp so small is the fact that its UI sounds are stored in FLAC format. FLAC files can be made very small without losing any quality, so they’ll sound just as good as they would if they were uncompressed wave files.

Out of sight, out of mind

KeyOp keeps an extremely low profile when running on your system. It doesn’t take up valuable space in either your task bar or system tray, and there are no pop-up dialogs, ads, or toast notifications that get in your way. The only indication you’ll get is a couple of short sounds that play when you activate categories and triggers.

The ultimate in customizability and ease of use

The sheer power of this program lies in its keymap.ini file. You can define both categories and triggers for pretty much any program or website you want, and assign virtually any key(s) on your keyboard to these categories and triggers, with a well-written, simple-to-understand manual guiding you every step of the way. What’s more, as of V 1.2, each category or trigger can have a custom UI sound assigned to it. Just be careful you don’t assign a category to a key combination that is already in use by either Windows itself, or another running program, otherwise there’s a high chance that KeyOp will refuse to run. Key conflicts are pretty much unavoidable, and are a problem with any program that deals with keyboard shortcuts, not just KeyOp. What’s also cool is that when defining a trigger for an installed program, you don’t even need to enter the full path to the program’s main executable file. If the program has an execution alias, Firefox is an example of this, or the executable file is in your path variable, you need only enter the name of the file, and you don’t even need the file extension! Speaking of variables, KeyOp is also built to handle Windows environment variables, such as %appdata%, when entering program file paths. This means that

%appdata%\MyProgram\program.exe

will work just as well as

C:\Users\Your_Username\AppData\Roaming\MyProgram\program.exe

.
You can also refresh the configuration if you decide to add a new category or trigger to the file later on while KeyOp is running. This allows KeyOp to reload your keymap.ini file with the new changes without you having to shut down the program and launch it again.

Awesome UI sounds

Those who know me well will know that I love my UI sounds. KeyOp does not disappoint in this department! There’s a UI sound for just about any occasion, from starting KeyOp, to activating a category or trigger, to trying to activate a trigger that doesn’t exist in any categories, to shutting down the program. Each UI sound has a retro vibe to it, especially the startup and shutdown sounds, which personally remind me of the Windows NT 4.0 startup and shutdown sounds with their electronic synth type elements.

A responsive, reliable developer

Yes, I know, I said this review would not be a review within a review. However, I need to talk about the fact that Day is an incredibly responsive, reliable and respectable developer who actually listens to user feedback and tries his best to act on it. After all, it’s not just stable, well-written code that makes a good program, it’s also the developer of said program. The reason for Day’s responsiveness is not only his awesome personality, but the fact that he is a lone developer, not working for some massive billion/trillion dollar tech company with a corporate structure more puzzling and complex than a rubik’s cube. This means that Day is able to quickly respond to feedback and improve KeyOp’s code without messages being passed to 5000 different teams and departments, half of them just not thinking its worth the time or effort and sitting on their backsides all day scratching their privates while enjoying their constant, fast-flowing money showers.

Downsides

Honestly, I see know major downsides with KeyOp! It is truly a wonderful little program, through and through!

Final rating

Day Garwood has dedicated many hours and days of his busy life to ensure that KeyOp remains as fast, simple, reliable, stable, accessible and responsive as it can possibly be. KeyOp is a prime example of how anyone can create excellent quality products, even when wearing L plates. I’m sure that if you give KeyOp a try, your cyber life will be changed forever, whether you are blind or sighted. After all, you sighted folks really need to start using more keyboard shortcuts instead of expecting everyone to deal with the mouse all the time.
With all this in mind, I award KeyOp by Day Garwood an extremely rare 10 out of 10! May this virtual golden trophy serve as a permanent reminder of both your awesome software and personality! Keep up the good work!

Conclusion and credits

If you enjoyed reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it, and you’d like to try out KeyOp for yourself, you can download the zip file from Day’s website. To extract the zip file, follow the instructions in your archiver of choice.
If you’re on the Mastodon platform, you can follow Day on the TweeseCake Social instance. You do not need an account on the TweeseCake Social instance to follow Day. You can simply follow him from the instance you’re currently on.
I must also thank Rebecca Legowski for contributing many of KeyOp’s UI sounds, as well as a few suggestions on how the project could be improved, bug fixes etc. The strong partnership between Day and Rebecca, and KeyOp’s constant high standards of stability, reliability and general coolness, proves the old adage: ‘Teamwork makes the dream work’.

The Sound of Music: Synesthesia and Me

14/07/2023 / / 0 Comments

A September 2006 Scientific american article describes the phenomenon of synesthesia as

an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality.

In other words, the brain receives one sense and converts it into another. For instance, the sound of a car passing by having a strong paint smell, or the number 16 tasting sweet.
Synesthesia can present itself in many, many different ways, and there is no specific method of telling whether you or someone you know is experiencing it or not. A triangle might taste like a dry wine for one synesthete, but smell like a sunflower for another. However, despite these wide ranging differences, the sense to sense mappings that synesthetes have are often very much the same. I.E. synesthete A will always think a triangle tastes like dry wine, and synesthete B will always think it smells like a sunflower. This is what sets synesthesia apart from things such as psychotic or drug/medication induced hallucination episodes.
Synesthesia is a fascinating and bizarre phenomenon, but it can be quite jarring, maybe even overwhelming, to deal with at times. For instance, imagine your synesthesia is turned up so high that literally every sense, and all forms of it, have a synesthetic mapping. You hear a plane flying overhead, as well as 50 people talking in 50 different languages and accents, all with different sounding voices. Oh and the smell of cooking food too. It’s a nice smell, but that’s not the point. Your brain is having to process thousands of stimuli and synesthetically map each one. If that doesn’t make your brain crash like Windows 95 after a Blue Screen of Death error, I have no idea what will!

I’ve known what synesthesia is for quite a while, but have never taken any serious notice of it. That is until I got chatting to someone online about it after reading some of their social media posts. Like me, this person is totally blind, but more to the point, he’s a synesthete. He’s an adaptable synesthete, meaning his synesthesia can effectively be turned up and down. Part of his synesthesia involves words having different textures, depending on both the language and accent in which the word is spoken. We eventually formed a kind of bond over our synesthesia, and now I consider us to be close friends. Well, as close as an online friendship can be. 🙂
After chatting with him for a bit, I eventually realized that he’d helped unlock a part of me that I never really knew existed, my own synesthetic tendencies.

How my synesthesia works

I have quite a unique, but also highly confusing, form of synesthesia in which every word, in either English or any other language, is mapped to one or more musical notes in which I imagine that word being said. Now, here’s where it gets confusing. One word can have more than one musical note mapping, and each syllable, I.E. the parts that make up a word, also have their own mapping.
The only way for me to demonstrate this is with a piano recording. The following sound file shows how the word ‘Sweden’ is mapped to musical notes. The first note you hear is A4, which is the swee syllable. The second note, G4, is the den syllable. It might help if you sing along with the notes so you can get an idea of how the word maps to the notes.

If you’ve made it this far without your brain blowing up, first of all, congratulations! Secondly, here are some more piano examples of my synesthetic word to musical note mappings. Again, singing along with the notes might help you understand the mappings better.
For screen reader users, each word will be listed as a level 2 heading, and the mappings will be level 3 headings. This will allow you to quickly jump between them using the appropriate heading navigation keys for your screen reader.

Beat (music)/beet (beetroot)

Mapping 1, F4

Mapping 2, G4

Mapping 3, C5

Cat

Mapping 1, A4

CD (compact disk)/Seedy (full of seeds)

Mapping 1, D3, C3

Mapping 2, F3, D3

Mapping 3, F4, D4

Mapping 4, D5, C5

Mapping 5, F5, D5

Feet (legs)/feat (achievement)

Mapping 1, A4

Scene (movie)/seen (with your eyes)/h2>

Mapping 1, E4

Sea (ocean)/See (with your eyes)

Mapping 1, D4

Mapping 2, F4

Mapping 3, G4

Mapping 4, D5

Mapping 5, F5

Swede

Mapping 1, A4

Sweet

mapping 1, a4>

Conclusion

Synesthesia can be a very confusing concept to wrap your head around; even the best scientists are still finding their way around it!
I hope this blog post has been as intriguing and insightful as it has been mind boggling. Below is a citation link to the 2006 Scientific American article that I used as a research point for this blog post.

Citation

Scientific American. (2006). What is synesthesia?. [Online]. scientificamerican.com. Last Updated: 11th September, 2006. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-synesthesia/ [Accessed 13th July, 2023].

20 years in gaming: a history

07/10/2022 / / 0 Comments

You may find this hard to believe, but I, an average twenty-something blind guy from the United Kingdom, have been playing video games for almost 2 decades! I know. Unbelievable, right? It only seems like just yesterday, I was playing Turok on my dad’s first generation, Red Ring of Death prone Xbox 360, and having a blast in WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, showing how truly badass John Cena can really be. Joooooohn Cena!

But how have I managed to cope in the video game sphere for nearly 20 years despite being without any eyesight? In this post, I shall answer this very question, detailing the ups, the downs, the ins, the outs, the whys and the why nots of my video game journey. This is… 20 years in gaming: a history!

The early years. Introduction to computers and DIY simulation

Our story begins in the third year of the third millennium. Two zero zero three. Zweitausenddrei. The year 2003!
Ah, 2003. What a time to be alive. Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, the Nokia N-Gage was all the rage, and Junior Senior’s Move Your Feet was flying up the UK charts like a newly launched NASA space rocket. Also in 2003, little 2 and a half / 3 year old me was about to get his first glimpse of the breathtaking feat of electromechanics that is the personal computer system, otherwise known as the PC.
I’ve covered my first ever computer before in a previous post, so I won’t talk about it too much here. In a nutshell, it was a custom built PC from a friend of my dad’s. It had both a floppy disk drive and a CD-ROM drive, and when I first received it in 2003, it ran Windows 95. It was my loyal servant for 8 years, and I loved it to death. Pity I can’t remember its exact hardware specs, though. 🙁
My introduction to the PC would also turn out to be my introduction to the ever amazing world of video games. There were 2 games I’d mainly play on my 2003 custom build.

Tonka Workshop

Tonka Workshop was released in 1998 by Hasbro Interactive. Targeted at young children, Tonka Workshop is set in the… uh… Tonka Town Workshop, Where players can build various structures and complete many DIY related tasks around Tonka Town. Town tasks include mending farm fences, repairing loose bicycle bells and fixing a dangerous hole in a park bridge so that children can play in the park again, with the cheery sounding Tonka Joe guiding you every step of the way.
You can either play using the hardware workbench and tool set that comes with the game, or you can just use the mouse like an ordinary PC gamer. Of course, being blind, I mainly used the hardware tool set.
You can find out more about Tonka Workshop by checking out this Wiki Fandom article (ignore the release date, it’s 1998, not 2000). You can also find a game play video by the CD-ROM Longplays YouTube channel below.

Playskool Store

Hey, look! Another Hasbro game! Playskool Store, released in the year 2000, sees you playing as a store cashier, serving your various animated customers. For each transaction you successfully complete, a gold star is added to your score. Once you have 15 gold stars, you can print out your virtual paycheck. Of course, a printer is required for this feature to work! 🙂
Like Tonka Workshop, Playskool Store also comes with a hardware playset. Of course, it’s a cash register this time. To price up items your customers want to buy, you simply enter the associated number using the number pad on your hardware cash register. Each number on the keypad corresponds to a price in pounds. Number 1 = 1 pound, number 2 = 2 pounds, number 5 = 5 pounds, etc. I’m not sure if there were country specific versions of the game. If there was a US or Canadian version, for instance, I’d assume pounds would be replaced with dollars. What’s cool with this is that when you enter a price, a human voice speaks the price(s) you’re entering, as well as the total price of all the items. This was extremely helpful to me as a blind player. However, some tasks require a lot of scanning and on-screen symbol counting to price up items, which my dad was always happy to provide sighted assistance with.
I’ve been scouring the internet for many years, and sadly, I have been unable to find a single piece of game play footage for this game. At least, not to the same standard as Tonka Workshop. If anyone knows who is still selling the game, or where to find some decent, no-commentary game play footage of this awesome game, please, please, please let me know! Take me back to the 2000s where I belong!

Of course, as well as those games, I’d also play the timeless Windows classics like Solitaire and Mine Sweeper with sighted assistance from my dad, despite being utterly terrible at them!

2007. Wired for sound

2007 saw me enter the very fascinating world of audio games. Best defined, an audio game is a computer game that uses sound as a primary means of experiencing and interacting with the game and elements within the game. Because an audio game’s primary focus is sound, most audio games don’t come with any on-screen visual effects like a typical video game, leaving the player completely reliant on their ears.
Ironically, the very first time I played an audio game was when I was at school, using a Windows XP laptop owned by the school.
The following are the first 5 audio games I ever played.

Deekout

A simple but annoying game set on a 21×21 grid in which you have to avoid a beeping enemy for as long as possible. The longer you survive, the faster the enemy follows you around the board, making him increasingly harder to dodge. If he catches you, you die instantly and it’s game over!

Sonic Match

This game is kind of a beat matching game, but not quite. Think of PaRappa the Rapper, but you’re matching single sounds instead of rhythms. You basically have to press the correct arrow key, be it Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Up Arrow or Down Arrow, that corresponds with a specific sound. If you press the wrong arrow key, however, you will hear a long, loud, low-pitched buzzing sound and immediately lose the game.

Savage Gamut

I still haven’t mastered this game, and it’s been out for as long as I’ve been playing computer games! Think of the hardest boxing game you’ve ever seen or played, and times it by 10. The number of keystrokes you need to remember to play this game, as well as the order in which said keystrokes should be used, is migraine inducing!

Bobby’s Revenge

Have you ever wanted to fire paint balls at Santa’s slay and tase the living hell out of the fat sucker? Well, with Bobby’s Revenge by BSC Games, now you can!

Crazy Darts

This game needs no description. You’ve seen a darts game before, right?

These games, and more besides, can still be downloaded and played today via the Audio Games Archive.

Late 2007 to 2010. Family gaming, punching out, and leaving the PC Master Race

As well as being the year that got me into audio games, 2007 was also the year I started to move away from PC gaming and towards the video game console. My 2 primary consoles at the time were the Playstation 2 and the Xbox 360. I still proudly own a physical Xbox 360 to this day, however I unfortunately can’t experience the thrill of the Playstation 2 anymore, since I no longer have a physical PS2 and no computer I have right now is powerful enough to run the PCSX2 emulator. Oh, how I’d love to play the Simpsons Hit and Run and Road Rage again.
I was also introduced to handheld consoles around this period. My sister had a 2001 Nintendo Gameboy Advance and a 2004 Nintendo DS, and my dad gave me his 2005 Sony PSP 1000. We would sometimes have family/friends round the house and find ourselves in these little handheld game tournaments.

For Christmas in 2007, I got a Nintendo Wii. This was when the family gaming period really kicked off. We had many a Wii Sports tournament throughout 2008 because who didn’t? Wii Sports is, like, the best game ever! Wii Sports was ultimately what got me into the boxing and wrestling scenes, and the John Cena inside me would finally be unleashed in 2008 on both the Nintendo Wee and the Xbox 360 in the form of WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw. Of course, Cena wasn’t my only choice of WWE fighter, I was also an avid six-one-niner back then as well.
In 2009, I would get my hands on 2 new boxing games for the Nintendo Wii.

  • Punch Out! A 2009 Wii incarnation of the 1980s arcade/Nintendo Entertainment System classic of the same name.
  • Face Breaker. A much lesser-known title that was also released on the PS3 in 2008.

I loved both of them, but Punch Out was undoubtedly my favourite and the one I played most often.
We jumped into the Wii Fit craze in 2010 with a board of our very own. Only problem was that it could never seem to get our measurements right! Mine were often fine, while everyone else’s seemed to be slightly off in some way or another. My poor dad, who, by the way, had been exercising and had a perfect diet his whole life since serving in the military, was always the morbidly obese one. Never the less, we all took it as good fun, and we all had a good time playing on it for the very short period in which we had it.

2011 to 2016. Going live, trash talk and the end of my gaming life

2011 was a very big year for me as a gamer. On April 21st, my dad signed me up for Xbox Live. I’d been hearing about Xbox Live for about 2 years at this point. Seeing it pop up on TV from time to time and having spent much of 2009 and 2010 playing Kung Fu Panda on the Xbox 360 at my dad’s house, I’d always wanted to give Xbox Live a try. The idea of being able to play games with other people over the internet in real time had always deeply fascinated me as a kid. Can you guess which game I played on Xbox Live the most? If you said WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, you’re correct! I’d mostly be playing against random strangers, though. It wouldn’t be until months later that I’d start to build a list of actual Xbox Live friends who I knew in real life.
I soon found out that having an internet connected Xbox had unlocked a heap of new possibilities besides playing games. Watching movies and TV, engaging in instant messaging conversations, accessing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter… the opportunities were virtually endless! I remember my dad and I just sitting there for hours on end, browsing through the seemingly limitless selection of movies that could be purchased from the Xbox Live Marketplace, watching trailer after trailer after trailer.
3 new Xbox 360 titles would enter my collection in 2011.

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops, 2010
  • Crackdown 2, 2010
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, 2011

Throughout the next few months, I began to explore the vast universe of Xbox Live on my own. By the end of 2011, with help from my dad, I had virtually memorized the Xbox 360’s entire user interface, including the dashboard, guide menu and most of the settings menus. But then, that big user experience update dropped, introducing Xbox Live Beacons, adding the dreaded Bing search engine to the Xbox and changing the whole dashboard UI, which meant I basically had to relearn everything! Oh, and I also got an Xbox Kinect for Christmas in 2011. You know, that overhyped motion sensor, camera and crappy downsampled microphone combo that was popular for about 5 minutes?
Throughout 2012 and most of the 2010s, I would see myself getting into first person shooter (FPS) games more and more, thanks in large part to Call of Duty. Getting the very latest COD game every year almost became a Christmas tradition. Oh, and who can talk about Xbox games in 2012 and not mention Minecraft for Xbox? Having never played it on PC when it released 3 years prior, I was all over that crap when it arrived on Xbox Live Marketplace!

When I wasn’t playing games, I was either watching YouTube videos or receiving game related news and tips via what was known at the time as Inside Xbox. On Inside Xbox, there were 2 primary shows I’d watch.

SentUAMessage

SentUAMessage, which started in 2009, was a show in which Xbox Live users would write in and ask various questions about xbox games, the Xbox 360 console and/or Xbox Live itself and have them answered in some of the most comedic ways I’ve ever seen. The show was hosted by Dan Maher (A.K.A. Mr Pointy Head) and Andy Farrant, who’s nick name I can’t spell.
You can find a YouTube playlist of virtually all SentUAMessage episodes here. I say virtually because some episodes seem to be either missing or in the wrong order.

School of Xbox

School of Xbox was a series of videos voiced by Mr Pointy Head in which you learned about the wide range of exciting features that Xbox Live has to offer and how to go about using them. Think Video Professor, but non-fraudulent and dealing with Xboxes rather than personal computers. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find any of the School of Xbox videos anywhere online.

In 2013, I was one of the first people to get the brand new Xbox One, having received it as a Christmas present that year. However, this was when things started to go downhill. Over the next 3 or 4 years, I would start to lose interest in the Xbox platform due to many of the things I loved back when I first joined Xbox Live dying out, and being a blind gamer online would show its horrible downsides. Because I couldn’t see what was happening on screen, I didn’t really know what to do in the game, so I’d just be left standing there in the middle of the field. On the very rare occasion that someone would help me, the instructions they’d give were basically useless. I’d have people accusing me of

not actually playing the game

, and many nasty comments about me having no eyesight would be fired at me by everyone in the game.
The final blow came in mid 2016 when I permanently lost access to my Xbox Live account. At this point, I finally decided that I wasn’t gonna take this dog crap anymore and quit online gaming, and the general video game scene, completely.

2018 – present day. A gamer reborn, in retro form!

Throughout the latter part of 2017, a good friend of mine named Gary slowly began to introduce me to vintage video games. My nostalgia senses were already sky high at this point, having found out about such things as the Escargot Chat project, so I was more than excited to learn of such a prospect. I’d heard briefly about retro games and emulation before, but had never thought to give it a try.
In the early part of 2018, I received some DVDs from my friend containing a variety of arcade and retro console ROMs, and my journey back in time officially began.
I’d been shown how to use the Multi-arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) beforehand, so that was really my first experience of video game emulation. Then, I did some online research into different emulators and came across such projects as PCSX2, the best Playstation 2 emulator around, Duckstation for PS1 emulation, Dolphin for Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulation, and of course, the mother of console emulators… RetroArch!
Since RetroArch was made fully accessible to the blind in April 2019, I’ve been fully immersed in the retro game/emulation scene. The fiery passion and excitement I once had for video games is back and more powerful than ever before! I now mainly enjoy the fighting game/beat ’em up genre. This includes games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter etc. I also want to defeat this inferiority complex I’ve had since 2016 and get back into online games at some point. I just need a community of people who will actually help me out and accept me for who I am. Sure, I can be a bit slow and picking things up, but everyone is different. It wouldn’t be much of a community if everyone was the same, had the same skills etc, would it?

Shoutouts

I’ve encountered some really awesome people throughout my near 2 decade gaming journey, especially in the Xbox Live years. Here are just some of them.

Seedy’s MVPs of 2021

13/12/2021 / / 3 Comments

Well, another year is almost out. This year, we focused on trying to clean up the faeces that came out of the butt hole of last year, but we just wound up smearing it everywhere and making the situation 10 times worse.
However, amongst the heaping pile of hot garbage, there were some cool people that really stood out, ready and able to fil our lives with joy, happiness and entertainment, with the goal of making us feel good about life and keeping our spirits high in this royally screwed up world we live in.

At the end of last year, I listed my Most Valued People (MVPs) of 2020. Not all of these people have necessarily played a supportive role in my personal life, but they’ve been there to provide me, and others, the happiness and good vibes we so desperately needed, especially with this deadly disease wiping out thousands of people every day! So, without further ado, I present to you… Seedy’s MVPs of 2021!

As you can probably imagine, it’s very hard to condense a list of so many cool people down to just 15 places. Therefore, it’s only natural that more than 1 person can take a single place, and some people are struck off, despite how badly you want them to be on. Sorry guys, it’s just how countdowns work. 🙁

Privacy Notice

This countdown mentions people in my personal life. Therefore, I’ve taken a number of steps to make sure that everyone’s privacy is protected as much as possible.

  • All those in my personal life who are featured in this countdown were notified beforehand, and I was granted their express permission to feature them.
  • Unless a person’s real name is public knowledge, only their full first name and the first letter of their surname will be shown. If someone has a common online username or nick name that they use in place of their real name, said username/nick name will be shown instead.
  • No places of work or residence, including building/apartment numbers, street/town names etc, will be mentioned anywhere in this countdown.

A Final Word

If you personally dislike one or more people featured in this countdown, please don’t publically shout your feelings out in the comments. WordPress has an approval system for comments posted on an article, so if you’re gonna start drama, your comment(s) will simply be rejected and won’t show up on this post at all.

The Bottom of the Pile

15. Chris Wright

Chris Wright has been making content on YouTube for about a decade now. I first came across him when his channel was named Blindgamer95. However, he has since changed the name of his channel to his real name.

Chris, who, like me, is without any eyesight, makes many types of content include audio game demonstrations and text to speech (TTS) skits featuring many computer voices like Microsoft Sam, Mike and Mary, and the LH (Lernout & Hauspie) voices.

I only got talking to this guy personally a few weeks ago. However, I can honestly say that he is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting in contact with. Plus, he’s taking time out of his busy life to record, edit and upload these audio game demos, shedding light on something that very few people know about, and we take for granted every day as blind people.

If you wish to check out Chris Wright’s content for yourself, you can visit his YouTube channel by clicking here.

14. Michael MJD

Climbing up a place to number 14 is the master of insane technology experiments himself, Michael MJD! I’ve yet to find out what MJD actually stands for, but anyway, Michael saw his 11th year on YouTube this year, with his channel now weighing in at a massive 240 thousand subscribers! That’s about 6 times less than the minimum amount he actually deserves, however.

Michael is the guy who takes a device that’s primarily meant for listening to your favourite jogging tracks and turns it into so much more. Windows XP on an iPod? Come on! He’s the guy who gives a whole new meaning to the idea of nested virtualization, taking it to a whole new level of madness. Hell, he’s the guy that goes out and buys a nigh on hundred pound pint of Microsoft OS branded ice cream!

You can find out all the crazy stuff that happens over at MJD Studios by Checking out Michael’s YouTube channel.

13. The Nostalgia Mall (Billy Core) and the Flying Scotsman (Jay Wakefield)

Also stepping up a place on the ladder this year are Billy Core and Jay Wakefield, also known as the Nostalgia Mall and the Flying Scotsman respectively.

I’ve enjoyed Billy and Jay’s content for many years, and this year was no exception. Specializing in content regarding vintage hardware and software from many brands including Compaq, Packard Bell and Toshiba, these guys’ channels are a must-watch if you pine for the days when computers actually worked out of the box, before digital downloads, subscription models and endless software update cycles took over our lives. When plug and play actually meant plug and play, not plug and sit on your ass for 3 hours while 50GB of software files and updates download and install.

Out of the 2, Jay has taken more notable steps this year, such as venturing slightly away from physical hardware and focusing on virtualization and emulation, using tools such as PCem and 86Box. Jay also revived his website earlier this year. I’m not sure how the website looked in its previous life; it had died long before I discovered both him and Billy. However, in its current form, the site functions as Jay’s personal blog, much like Seedy on the Scene is my personal blog.

12. LogicProXGaming

It’s a new entry at number 12. Logic has been a blind video game accessibility activist for many years, especially when it comes to the wildly popular building/survival game of Minecraft. He also specializes in the Logic music production software for MacOS, hence the LogicPro part of his handle.

Logic uses his YouTube account, Twitter timeline and other communication platforms to raise awareness of how video games can be, and are being, made playable by the blind by highlighting the accessibility features that are present in Minecraft, either through in-game means or the use of external, third party modifications to the Minecraft software. His YouTube channel contains tutorial videos and live streams that show him demonstrating Minecraft’s built-in accessibility features and external mods in action. Speaking of tutorials, Logic is currently working on a tutorial series called the Blind Craft Survival Guide, a reference to the Minecraft Survival Guide series by Pixlriffs. This series will show aspiring Minecrafters how they can set up the game on their computers and enjoy all of its many exciting features. Sighted people can follow along with the tutorial, but it’s mostly targeted at blind gamers who rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Huge kudos to this guy for taking time out of his busy office job to show the world that 100% functional eyesight is not required to experience the fun and excitement that video games like Minecraft can bring!

11. Sarah Sbaughn, AKA Sbaughn006

From very late 2020 to very early 2021, Typerspeed 2, the reboot of my Typerspeed game, was buggy, unstable and relying on speech synthesis and artificial intelligence algorithms for its voicing. With no hope in sight, Typerspeed 2 was quickly heading towards the same fate as its original iteration in 2018, a big, heavy axe to the head! That was until Sarah (Sbaughn006), out of the goodness of her heart, sat down and recorded some voice lines for the game and allowed me to use them on a permanent basis, at absolutely no cost to me. The game finally had a actual, real life, human voice, and I finally had a reason to keep the project alive! She is just one of many kind supporters who has helped Typerspeed develop into the challenging, fast-paced, high-intensity PC typer it is today.

The Top Ten

10. Brandon Cole and Misty Rayburn

Flying up 3 places to number 10 is none other than everyone’s favourite video game accessibility activist, Brandon Cole! His wife, Misty, is also joining him this year. Together, Brandon (Super Blindman) and Misty drive the Break Down Walls movement, an initiative that aims to smash the barriers between video game developers, gamers with disabilities and their target audiences, be it through live streaming or general interaction. The Break Down Walls website also includes a dedicated guides section, which contains video game accessibility guides written by both Brandon himself and the wider disabled gaming community.

Alone, Brandon fights for video game accessibility for all gamers who are visually impaired/blind. He raises awareness of features that are, and can be, made available in video games to assist the blind, including menu and in-game narration via text to speech or human voicing, visual colour/contrast adjustments, and adapting font/text sizes.

Why not check out Brandon’s Twitch channel. It features many fun and exciting video game streams, including, most notably this year, game play of Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone, made possible by the Hearthstone Access mod. There are also many interviews that Brandon has taken part in, with the primary goal of raising awareness of his work, why he does it and what he hopes to achieve from it.

The thing that earns Brandon and Misty a place on this countdown is their endless fighting spirit and give ’em hell attitude. When people around them try to push them back, they push 10 times harder. Together, they work tirelessly to crate a better, more accepting and inclusive environment for disabled gamers the world over.

9. The King Cobra and Braille0109

Climbing up to 9th position, and joining Braille0109 from last year, is Angel, also known as King Cobra. It’s always a laugh with these 2 guys. This year hasn’t been a easy ride for me personally, however, these 2 have always been there for me when my smile wasn’t working.

Braille himself has helped me through some rough seas over the years as well, most notably the Data Wipe 2019 incident, in which 500GB of my personal data was tragically lost, never to be seen again. That was such a stressful period in my digital life that almost resulted in me quitting IT forever. However, Braille kept giving me good advice, pointing me in the right direction towards restoring my PC to life and slowly rebuiding my infrastructure. Now, almost 3 years later, I’m in a better position now than I ever was! I have a PC, a Mac, A 1TB external hard disk drive, SD cards, cloud storage services, and my own virtual private server! Oh, and I’m also developing software again!

8. Destructatron and Supremekiller

Note: Supremekiller changed his handle recently, however this new name hasn’t propagated across all his platforms yet, so the old one is being used here.

Up 2 positions from last year are the ever-helpful empath Supremekiller, and the quick-witted tech nerd Destructatron. The main reason for Supremekiller’s rise through the ranks this year is the fact that for most of this year, and some of last year, he has provided me with a fast, reliable and stable means to host my cloud infrastructure, my websites, my radio station, the Fireseed Forums message board etc. Before then, I was relying on free web hosting services with extremely limited features. If I wasn’t provided with such generous offerings from SK, the Fireseed Network would have probably died along with everything else in 2020. It’s because of him that the Fireseed Network is even a network in the first place!

Destructatron, on the other hand, has always been there to help when problems with said cloud infrastructure have come up, be it my stupid mail server refusing connections from clients because of misconfigured SSL/TLS settings, or the IRC server that would refuse to even start because the configuration file was missing a single god damn semicolon! Conceded, he hasn’t always been able to successfully solve a problem, but he’s always given it his best shot, and that’s all I ask at the end of the day. Destructatron is also just a good friend to have around. If you’re having a horrible time right now, he’ll most likely be there to help you out.

7. Jade H

Even though Jade is no longer in my life anymore, I still think about her and miss her a lot every day. She was one of the many people who supported me through the draconian COVID19 lockdowns last year. I know she’s just an email away, but sending an email is nowhere near the same thing as actually being in face-to-face contact with someone. Even when you can’t physically see someone, you can mentally see them by hearing the sound of their voice and feeling their presence.

6. Leanne E

Rising up 2 places to 6th position is the woman who has supported me through thick annd thin non-stop for 4 straight years! From when I took my first big steps into college back in 2017, to the cold, dark days of 2020 during the COVID19 lockdown, she was always a shoulder to cry on no matter what. Thank you for continuing to support not just me, but countless other people as well. I’ve no idea where we’d be without you!

High Fives

5. Helen T

Although I haven’t really seen much of Helen this year, she is not moved down or disqualified from this countdown because she has played a hugely supportive role in the past. When we were all stuck inside our houses, working from home and staying 6 feet away from each-other, it was getting to the point where it wasn’t just my mental health that was becoming a problem, but my physical health as well. In this moment, I reached out to Helen (virtually, of course), and she gave me the boost I needed to tell my daemons to beat it! Thank you for keeping me strong throughout the years.

4. Aly T

For most of 2020, My stress and anxiety levels were so high that I couldn’t even boot up my computer, let alone log into my email client or use any other part of the internet; COVID19 and its impacts were everywhere! Throughout 2020 and 2021, Aly has tought me that it’s perfectly fine to slow down once in a while, and that all I can do is try my best, even if I fail.

3. Jonathan Kay, AKA Trekie, AKA the Messenger Geek

Sliding down 2 places from the top spot is the Messenger geek himself, Jonathan Kay.

I don’t give a monkey’s backside what you have to say about Jonathan. Again, your attacks will just get rejected by WordPress’s review system upon my request, so don’t even try. He’s a special friend to me, and he’ll always have a place in my heart.

An MVP for Microsoft’s MSN/Windows Live Messenger service for over a decade, he ran a support site that provided many helpful articles highlighting MSN Messenger (pre-2005)’s many exciting features, how to use them, and how to resolve MSN Messenger related problems. He is also the creator of the now defunct Messenger Reviver software, which kept the awesomeness that was MSN/Windows Messenger alive while Microsoft was relentlessly forcing people over to the ever-rotting crap pile that is Skype. Jonathan also inspired the creation of Escargot chat, a Python-based project that aims to revive MSN/Windows Live Messenger and other dead instant messenger clients.

On a more personal level, Jonathan further stoked the fire that is my nostalgia for the 2000s. If it wasn’t for him, I’d never have discovered Escargot, and 5 years of devistation and frustration over the death of MSN/Windows Live Messenger would not have been reversed.

2. Garry W

Since 2017, this guy has been nothing to me but an absolute legend! He has held my hand through every single problem I’ve faced since then. College stresses, my introduction to PTSD in 2018 and everything else that came before and after it that year, and everything in between. He introduced me to the world of virtualization and emulation, showing me that there is indeed an escape route from what we call modern life. He has supported every single one of my personal projects since the word go. He’s the ultimate inspiration for projects I’m most proud of, such as the House of Fireseed and Typerspeed, from version 1.0 of the game way back in 2018 through to Sepia, the game’s current iteration. Gary has not only kept me strong over the past 4 years, he’s kept me happy, mentally grounded, and, dare I say it, alive.

Number One!

And so, here we are, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Who will seize the top spot and be Seedy’s ultimate MVP of 2021? Well, we shall see!

The winner, and Seedy’s ultimate MVP of 2021, is…

1. Richie W and Nathan Smith of Nathan Tech

I haven’t known Richie as long as I have Garry, but none the less, he deserves the same legendary status. He’s kind, supportive, geeky, nerdy… him and I just click with everything. He’s into pretty much all the movies, TV shows, video games etc as I am, and much like Gary, is always ready and able to be your friend and support you come hell or high water. His wacky, off-the-wall humour is enough to make the whole world smile. For these reasons, and so much more, Richie flies right up from his number 3 position in 2020 to stand tall and proud in first place in 2021!

Joining Richie at the top of the tree is Nathan Smith of Nathan Tech. I wrote a review of Nathan Tech in June, so I won’t go into too much detail here. But to repeat what I said in said review, Nathan is nothing more than an altruist who puts the health and happiness of others well above his own, even if it means starving himself to death in the process. He’s a software developer, an audio content creator and the owner of a sci-fi MUD (multi-user dungeon) game known as Cosmic Rage. Being without any functional eyesight, Nathan is highly devoted to making his software, and that of other developers, accessible to all, no matter the disability. In fact, I’m using one of Nathan’s software programs, Sunrise Waterfall, to write this countdown!

Below is a list of links to some of Nathan Tech’s work.

Conclusion

Well done to everyone who made the list this year, especially our joint first placers, Richie W and Nathan Smith.

Since I don’t have actual golden trophies to give you guys, here are 2 virtual ones instead. Around the outside of the trophies, bold letters read

You are Seedy’s MVP of 2021!

How I will make my TTS content

27/08/2021 / / 0 Comments

As some of you may be aware, I’ve been a huge lover of text to speech (TTS) content for a long while, having first stumbled across TTS videos on YouTube in 2013. I can’t quite remember the first TTS video I watched, other than the fact that it featured Microsoft Sam. This was before I’d officially entered the world of smartphones and got a computer of my own, so I was confined to an Xbox with no screen reader for browsing YouTube.

At the very end of 2020, I decided that I’d do what I’ve been wanting to do for years and become a member of the TTS community (or TTSC for short) with the goal of eventually making my own TTS content. After all, I’m not the only blind person out there who’s into TTS. Chris Wright, formerly known as BlindGamer95, also creates TTS videos. It is worth noting, however, that because I’m without any eyesight, my content will be quite different to that of creators such as Thunderbirds101 and AT88TV, both of whom I mentioned in my 5 people I’d like to get to know in the Text to Speech community post. This post will explain exactly how my TTS content will work. That way, if I get a comment like: “Hey, why doesn’t this video have any images like a proper TTS video should?”, I can just point them to this post.

So, let’s get going!

Audio only

There is next to nothing in the way of a screen reader accessible video editor out there. Not within my price range, anyway; money is basically nothing right now. That’s why, unfortunately, my text to speech content will contain no images or other visual effects. Normally, in something like an error video, the audio of a TTS voice reading the error will be synced with an image of the error, generated by a tool such as Atom Smasher’s Error Message Generator. The same goes for funny/weird sign videos. However, due to the reason I cited above, none of that is possible for me. Instead, you will only hear the voice reading the error or sign.

Sounds before errors

Normally, sounds aren’t cued unless a TTS voice malfunctions after raging at an error or there’s an OS switch, such as upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows 98 or downgrading from Windows XP to Windows 2000. In case of the former, the respective error sound of the operating system related to the error, such as Windows 95’s chord sound, will be cued. In case of the latter, the shutdown sound of the current operating system, followed by the startup sound of the new operating system, and its login sound if applicable, will be cued. However, I’ll have to make up for my lack of visuals with extra audio. Therefore, if I’m doing an error video, a single OS-related sound will be played before the error is read. For instance, if the current operating system in use is Windows XP, the critical stop sound will play. If it’s Windows 2000, 98 or 95, the chord sound will play. If Microsoft Sam should rage so hard that he flies off the face of the planet, either a small section of a sound will be looped to create a glitch/computer crash effect, or a massive explosion sound will play. It all depends on what best fits the mood.

I haven’t yet figured out what I’m going to do for stuff like sign videos, Christmas specials etc, so if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know in the comment section down below this post.

Conclusion

I hope this post helps you understand how, and why, my text to speech content will be different to that of other creaters in the TTSC. The reason I’ve been putting off doing TTS content for so long, besides not having the knowledge or tools to do so years ago, is because I’ve always been afraid that the TTSC would simply cast me out or think nothing of me for not being able to meet their standards and expectations.

If you want to know when I start making TTS content, which will hopefully be very soon, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Twitter.

.

Seedy Reviews: Nathan Tech

25/06/2021 / / 0 Comments

Navigation

Introduction

I can’t exactly remember when I first encountered Nathan Tech, but I know it was a while ago; long before this site, and the Fireseed Network in general, was a thing. I found out about a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) called Cosmic Rage. I was actively searching for MUDs to get into at the time, so I thought I’d try it out. Unfortunately, it turned out that me and MUDs don’t exactly mix. However, when I landed on the website where the MUD was, I did some deep diving and found that there was a whole lot more to this content generating entity than just Cosmic Rage. An RSS feed reader? A media player? A website builder? What the hell was going on here?
I eventually found out that the creator of these projects was a blind UK-based software developer by the handle of Nathan Tech. Having tried some of his products over the years, and having had the honour of actually meeting the man himself at the beginning of this year, I thought to myself: why not write a review about this guy? However, this thought would soon recede into the back of my mind and fade to dust. The event that really inspired me to write this article was a March Pat Price Tek Talk podcast in which Nathan discusses the history of Nathan Tech and the software and other projects he’s developed over the years.

Who, or what, is Nathan Tech?

First, let me start by saying that Nathan Tech is not this guy’s real name. It is simply the handle that all his projects fall under. His real name is actually Nathan Smith, which he shares publically.
As I mentioned above, Nathan Tech is a blind software developer from the United Kingdom. I say software developer, but he’s done a lot more than just develop software since he started in early 2013. Some of his most notable works include audio tutorials covering writing websites in HTML5, programming in Python and using Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader on iOS. He has also made some audio games over the years. The following is a list of some of his software projects.

  • Calliope, a powerful media player that has support for many different file types. It’ll basically play any audio or video file you throw at it.
  • Luna RSS, a fully featured RSS feed reader, podcatcher and feed builder

    • .

  • Sunrise Waterfall, a feature-packed utility that allows you to make awesome websites and documentation files without any coding skills whatsoever

    • .

All Nathan Tech’s software is 100% accessible to the blind/visually impaired. It is also written for Windows, which kind of makes sense when you think about it. Nathan Tech, NT, Windows NT!

How this review works

This review is divided into 3 sections: upsides, downsides, and over all rating out of 10. The magnitude of the upsides and downsides will decide the over all rating, so future review subjects… beware! Each upside and downside will be titled with a level 3 heading, then a brief explanation will follow. Don’t fly in expecting a perfect 10, however, as there’s a downside to all things in this world, and not everyone is perfect.

Upsides

1. Nathan Tech gives all and expects nothing back

Every single project of Nathan Tech’s is usable by everyone free of charge, and nothing is expected of anyone in return. Basically, Nathan’s view on donations is that if you’re going to ask for donations, you might as well charge. While I kind of agree with him, I have to ask: is he sort of saying that projects like NVDA should be paid? Never the less, this is definitely worth a million altruism points.

2. No annoying nags

Before I continue with the video, let me remind you to please subscribe to my channel and purchase my merch.

Or

Today’s Top Deal! (insert product here) is now 75% off for one week only!

We’ve all been there before. Don’t you just find yourself pressing the skip button? I do. However, Nathan Tech doesn’t do any of that stuff. What you get with Nathan Tech is free of charge and free of hassle! Like a radio station that lets you enjoy your favourite music hits constantly without cutting to a 10+ minute ad break every 5 god damn minutes, or ending a song after the first verse so the DJ can chat a load of useless hot garbage about “the latest trend that’s sweeping the internet!”.

3. Always willing to improve

No project is free of errors, and Nathan Tech’s projects are no exception. However, he’s always reaching out to people for ways he can make his work better for everyone, be it fixing software bugs, correcting errors in a tutorial or improving the accessibility and user experience of his products. Most companies will just give you a canned reply, telling you that they value your feedback and they’ll pass it on to their teams so they can look into it. The next thing you know, it’s 5 months later and the company hasn’t done a god damn thing to resolve the issue you reported. Either that, or they started working on your issue 3 months prior, but have been too busy sitting on their backsides all day drinking tea to finish the job. Give Nathan a problem to solve, and it’ll most likely be solved in a matter of days or weeks!

4. He knows how to deal with tech illiterates

If there’s one thing Nathan is a lot better at than me, it’s dumbing stuff down so that the computer illiterate crowd can understand the points he’s putting across. Not only that, but he breaks things down into little pieces, assisting those who struggle to process very large amounts of information so they can take each bit of information in and process it in their own time. This is especially good for people like me who have a hell of a hard time dealing with huge user manuals with thousands of pages and subpages that are divided into a hundred different sections and subsections.

5. Accessible to all

I mentioned at the start of this article that Nathan Tech’s products are 100% accessible to the blind/visually impaired. However, they are really built with everyone in mind, no matter what kind of disability you have, or if you’re not disabled at all. Nathan’s tag line is

It’s not disability, it’s ability

. I don’t agree with this all the way from a realistic, scientific prospective, but the work he produces for the community at large really lives up to it.

Downsides

Honestly, the upsides mostly outweigh the downsides. However, as I stated at the start of this article, everything in this world has a downside.

1. OS Limiting

OK, I’ll be reasonable with this one, as not everyone has the same mind set as me. If you know me well, you’ll know that I absolutely hate OS limiting software. That is, software that has very strict operating system requirements, such as only running on 64-bit versions of an operating system or requiring the latest and greatest operating system in order to run; I’m looking right at you, AltStore! Being a part of the vintage/retro tech community, I believe software developers should strive to make their software available on as wide a range of operating systems as possible, both new and old. Why can’t we have more RetroArch’s in this world?
A large amount of Nathan Tech’s software, including Calliope and Sunrise, suffers from OS limiting, requiring at least Windows 7 with a bunch of updates in order to run. However, they do support Windows 7, and they do run under 32-bit versions of Windows. Also, Luna RSS has Windows XP support. Hell, I even managed to get the thing to run under Windows 2000!

2. He was here, now he’s not

Again, I won’t be too harsh with this one, as I believe Nathan is doing a university degree at time of writing. I know how stressful education can be, I’ve been there many a time. However, it can be quite frustrating at times. Nathan can be very active online, chatting, developing, releasing… and then he’ll just fly off the face of the earth, taking days or even weeks to return.

Over all rating

Over all, Nathan Tech gets an excellent 8.75 out of 10. His altruistic nature, fiery passion for his work and willingness to help and support others no matter what earns him my highest honour. Let’s all take our hats off to this guy and what he brings to our world! Keep up the awesome work!

Conclusion

If you’d like to experience Nathan Tech’s work and show him some love yourself, you can check out his website and follow him on Twitter. The more people who know about this guy, the better. So go on, spread the awesomeness!

Data Wipe 2019: How I Lost 500GB in One Fell Swoop

02/03/2021 / / 0 Comments

Last month saw the 2 year anniversary of what was quite possibly the most devastating event of my cyber life. I’m still feeling the pain and recovering to this very day. In this blog post, I’ll explain everything that happened, as well as the act of sheer stupidity on my part that caused it. Be warned, however, this post contains a hell of a lot of tech language. Therefore, you may want to
have the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary open in a separate tab for reference to save your brain from exploding. I’d rather not spend all day cleaning up pieces of your grey matter, thank you very much.

Backstory

At this particular time, my 2016 Stone Group laptop, which has a 2.3GHz Intel Pentium 3550M and a 500GB Western Digital HDD, was running Windows 10. I really wasn’t happy with this. The system would run slow as hell at times, the fans were always on full power for no reason, and… well… it ran the giant piece of spyware, adware and bloatware we all know as Windows 10! I wanted to restore the laptop to its former glory by downgrading it to its home operating system, Windows 8.1. However, there was one problem, I didn’t have a clue how to access the PC’s BIOS or boot menu screen. As any competent PC user knows, installing a different operating system requires that you boot into external media, be it a CD, DVD or USB drive. Because Windows 8.1’s boot image doesn’t come with Narrator, I’d have to boot into a special preinstallation environment (PE) with the NVDA screen reader installed, then launch the Windows setup program from another resource, such as an ISO file or other storage location.
After turning the web upside down, I eventually found what seemed like the perfect solution to my problem. EasyBCD by NeoSmart Technologies is a tool that allows you to modify the Windows boot configuration database (BCD) so you can get a dual boot configuration going. Since it modifies the Windows boot loader, it doesn’t require any form of BIOS access. Many minutes of fighting with not so EasyBCD were spent before I finally had a boot entry configured for my talking PE. Then, it was time for the downgrade party to begin!

Where it all went awry

Here’s where things start to go sideways. I’m booted into the preinstallation environment, proceeding through the standard Windows 8.1 setup steps. I selected my region, language and keyboard layout, chose a partition on which to install Windows and waited a while for the setup program to copy files and do whatever else it needed to do.
I noticed something was wrong seconds after the laptop restarted. There was no activity from the 500GB Western Digital drive. Usually, with mechanical hard drives, you can hear quiet clicking sounds as the drive head reads and writes data to the drive. In this case, however, there was nothing. Complete silence. I waited about half an hour, then pressed Windows + Enter to see if Narrator would start. The initial installation stage was complete at this point, so Narrator would have indeed been available for the rest of the setup process. However, nothing happened when I used the Win + Enter shortcut. I waited 10 to 15 minutes and tried the shortcut again, but still nothing happened.
After many restarts and a call to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk through the free Be My Eyes service, I eventually found out what the problem was. In a fit of utter idiocy that Homer Simpson would be proud of, I’d somehow managed to fry the Windows boot loader, making the system completely unusable! And things were about to get a whole lot worse!

The Real Devastation

Many days have passed. My PC is still in an unusable state, even more so than before. The BIOS is now all kinds of messed up, and my talking Windows preinstallation environment, my one and only lifeline, was no more. Don’t ask me how this happened; I have absolutely no clue! The PE, along with all my other data, was stored on a 1TB Toshiba HDD, since that was the only means of external data storage I had at the time. I knew I only had one option, which I was not going to like one bit! I was gonna have to use my mum’s crappy Lenovo laptop to download another copy of the talking PE and write it to the Toshiba drive. This, of course, requires that the drive be reformatted… destroying all the data on the drive! Oh, and I also needed another Windows 8.1 ISO. After what felt like forever and a week, I finally had a new, fresh, clean PE drive to boot from. But I knew I couldn’t even attempt to boot from the thing, knowing the way my computer’s BIOS was. Luckily, I was able to find the manual on the manufacturer’s website and use it to help me reset the BIOS back to default. It took another call to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk to get me around the BIOS and into the PE where I could independently install Windows. Soon, I had a clean install of Windows running and my PC was alive once more! However, all that rewriting of PE images and reformatting of drives had resulted in a combined total of over 500GB (half a terabyte) of valuable data being permanently lost. I’d experienced the digital equivalent of a house fire, losing all my personal belongings and everything I held dear in the blink of an eye.

2 Years On

Here we are, 2 years on from that fateful period. The Stone laptop is still alive and well, now quite happily running Windows 7. Yes, I know Microsoft doesn’t support Windows 7 anymore, but quite frankly, I couldn’t give 3 craps! I like Windows 7 and it works well for me. There is an enthusiastic community of retro tech lovers out there who are doing all they can to keep it and other icons of the past alive. I’m proud to be a part of said community and won’t be leaving any time soon! I’m also much more cautious about backing up my data now. I still have my 1TB Toshiba drive, but now I’m making use of cloud storage services like pCloud and OneDrive, so I always know where my data is. I also make more of a deal out of saving my work often. If I’m not sure if I’ve saved a piece of work yet, I save it anyway, even if I did actually save it earlier on. Better to save twice than to not save at all.
I’d also like to thank Be My Eyes and the awesome Microsoft Disability Answer Desk staff for helping me get back on my feet. I really don’t know what I’d have done without them.

5 people I’d like to get to know in the Text to Speech community

15/01/2021 / / 1 Comment

At the back end of last year, I officially entered the Text to Speech (TTS) community, often abbreviated as

TTSC

. However, I entered the community with one major downside. Due to my lack of eyesight, and the TTSC’s content standards and conventions, there is a very limited amount of TTS content I can create. But being in a community isn’t just about contribution, it’s also about socialization, that’s why it’s called a community. With this in mind, there are 5 people that I’d really like to get to know and establish a personal friendship with, since these people, be it through guest appearances, direct or indirect references by other content creators etc, inspired me to get into TTS in the first place.

5: TheROFL98

TheROFL98 is the creator of the TTSCpedia as well as various Discord bots. I haven’t watched a lot of his videos, but I’ve heard a lot of him via other creators like Thunderbirds101 and CoolDude503. I will definitely start watching more of this guy’s videos. You can do the same by Checking him out on YouTube!

4: NKRS200

NKRS200 has been on the TTS scene for a while now, with content spanning about a decade. He was one of those who helped get the TTS community off the ground. He didn’t originally make TTS content when his channel first started, but it was Microsoft Sam and friends that really sent the views flying in with stuff like the Funny News Bulletins series. If full names are your style, NKRS200 is short for

NKRS200 TV Studios

.

3: FairPlay137

While not very active in terms of content creation, FairPlay137 has still put out some funny stuff, and he has many cool projects in the works, including stuff inspired by popular TTS blooper creator Dave Madson. FairPlay even has an error generator planned, however I won’t share it here since it’s a work in progress and I’m not sure how many people he wants to see it.

2: AT88TV

Arron T (AT88TV) was one of the first TTS creators I’d heard of, way before all the others mentioned in this countdown, when I stumbled upon Microsoft Sam videos purely by accident back in 2012/2013. Not surprising really, since he helped pioneer the whole thing! Oh, what we’d do to hear those ear-splitting EAS tones and Scotish bagpipes. It makes me wonder why Microsoft Sam keeps trying to subject the entirety of Scotland to his nuclear hellfire. AT88TV always has been, and will forever be, our favourite Scotsman!

1: Thunderbirds101

Seriously, where would the TTSC be without this wonderful Canadian? How can anyone not think of TTS and not have this guy immediately spring to mind! For about 13 years now, TB101 has been brightening up our lives with funny Windows errors, funny signs, off-the-wall Christmas specials, IWAY Cookie and Bologna Sandwich drama, and a hell of a lot more besides! I’d even go so far as to say that he’s the reason this awesome community exists! May Microsoft Sam continue to unleash nuclear hellfire hound us to death with the rules for the toilet and try to kill everyone with his diarrhoea dumps for many years to come!

Seedy’s MVPs of 2020

01/12/2020 / / 1 Comment

Well, here we are at the backside of another year. To say this year has been a tough one would be the understatement to end all understatements. 2020 has been a year of outsized devastation, loss, pain and suffering for all. We’ve all had to play a supportive role in each-other’s lives more than ever this year, and I feel it is vitally important that we recognize those who took the time out of their lives to keep us living ours as happily and freely as possible. Hence why this year, I’ve decided to try something new in the form of a countdown of 15 people who have been the most awesome to me over the past 12 months. Not all of these 15 people have necessarily played a supportive role in my life, but they have just been cool people in general with the content they’ve provided, the things they’ve said or done etc.
It was very hard to squeeze this list down to just 15 people. So many more people deserve to be on this list. However, TLDR is not what I aim for here. Also, perhaps inevitably, not everyone took just 1 position on the list; there were ties.

Privacy Notice

Because this list features people in my personal life, not just those I know online, I’ve taken a number of steps to ensure that everyone’s privacy is protected as much as possible.

  • First, I requested the prior permission of all offline (real life) friends featured in this list before featuring them, which they all granted.
  • In the case of real names, only the first letter of a person’s surname will be shown. If someone has a common online handle or nick name, that will be used instead. Only if a feature uses their real name in public will it be mentioned here.
  • No references to places of work or residence will be mentioned.

Final Notice

I honestly don’t care about your feelings towards the people featured on this list. If you personally dislike someone mentioned on this countdown, don’t go spouting off in here. Remember, WordPress uses an approval system for comments, meaning comments haved to be accepted by the site owner (me in this case) before they can show up on posts. Any negative or hurtful comments towards anyone mentioned here will be rejected without a second thought. Now, without any further ado, let’s proceed!

The bottom of the pile

15. MichaelMJD

Why so many people haven’t heard of this guy, I’ll never know. If you like crazy tech experiments, retrospectives, hardware and software overviews and demos, history lessons… basically anything tech related, MJD’s your guy! The downside, however, is that he only seems to accept business related communication one-to-one. If this wasn’t the case, I would have placed him considerably higher. He still qualifies for this list none the less. To experience this technological craziness for yourself, check out his YouTube channel.

14. The Nostalgia Mall and the Flying Scotsman

The Nostalgia Mall and the Flying Scotsman, otherwise known as Billy Core and Jay Wakefield respectively, are 2 YouTubers with a target audience of retro hardware and software lovers and nostalgia freaks. Those who know me well will know that I’m a sucker for the old school stuff. Billy and Jay are both retro tech collectors and have been on the scene for a good while. Long time viewers might remember Billy as “Road Geek” and Jay as “VideosSansFrontier”, which is french for “Videos Without Boarders”.
Like MJD, however, they are kind of hard to communicate with outside of their main platforms, which knocks them down a place or 2. In my view, any kind of communication is key, regardless of how it’s done or what it’s for. Billy and Jay’s YouTube accounts are listed below.

13. Brandon Cole

Brandon Cole, also known as Super Blindman, is the closest to an activist you can get, especially when it comes to accessibility in video games. He has expressed excitement for many video game titles that were made accessible this year, with one notable example being The Last of Us: Part 2. He even copilots the Break Down Walls movement with his wife Misty Rayburn. After you’re finished reading this, why not check out Brandon’s website and his Twitch channel.

12. Andre Louis

Andre is another one of those guys who is more unheard of than he really should be. He is a blind musician from the UK and has been highlighted many times in the media, including the BBC’s The world wide web’s a stage article. He even has his own YouTube channel. Oh, and he’s also a Friday Night Dinner fan. Can’t beat the classics, eh?

11. The King Cobra (AKA Angel)

If you need someone to talk to when you’re feeling low, or someone to brighten up your day when you lose your smile, Angel is the one to turn to. I’ve had many a conversation with him during the lockdown period and have always felt better as a result. He knows how you’re feeling and understands what you’re going through.

The Top Ten

10. Destructatron and Supremekiller

Despite the latter’s handle, these people are both really nice in their own way. Like Angel, SK is nothing but an empath who is always willing to help you out no matter what. Destructatron, meanwhile, is your funny, quick-witted tech support guy. He also knows how the community feels when some tech illiterate newbie doesn’t know what the hell’s going on and freaks the hell out at the sight of a terminal when they fly over to Linux. Remember guys, Linux is for code crackers and server admins, not people who don’t know what a god damn power button is!

9. Braille0109

I’ve known this guy for a couple years now. He’s the one for you if you want someone in your life who is strong willed and doesn’t take any crap from anyone. He’s also a good online gamer. I’ve been severely beaten in pretty much every game I’ve played with him. I predict many more years of severe in-game beatings.

8. Leanne E

Leanne has helped me a great deal during the dark and depressing lockdown months. She was always an email away, and always ready to dish up some witty reply to brighten the mood. I get along more with people who have a dry sense of humour than those who take things to heart and are angry all the time. Why so damn serious, dude! Hypersensitivity gets you nowhere in life.

7. Jade H

How could anyone possibly say anything negative about this person? Her sense of humour is better than mine, and that’s saying something. I’ve only known her for 5 minutes and she’s already in the top 10 of my MVP list? Wow, she must be good! She’s the type of person that makes you see that you’re not alone in your stresses in life. She sees more good in you than you think you have.

6. Lauren H

While not as technically minded as me, Lauren is quite the retro game console fan. She was also there for me a lot during the lockdown. Her sense of humour is also second to none.

High Fives

5. Helen T

I always feel at home when she’s around. During the early part of lockdown when COVID19 was all over the news and my stress levels were through the ceiling, she was the one who pulled me back from the edge, replying pretty much instantly to any cyberspace message that came her way. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without this woman in my life. This year probably would have ended up like 2013 if it wasn’t for her.

4. Aly T

The fact that Aly is a huge fan of both the IT Crowd and Friday Night dinner because of me is not why she’s number 4 on this list. The real reason is that she was one of my first points of contact during those times of social isolation and quarantine, when the situation was starting to affect my physical health as well as my mental. She made me see that it’s perfectly OK to breathe easy and that health is much more important than work.

3. Richie W

You can’t get any more geeky and off-the-wall than this guy. He literally ticks all my boxes. Nerdy? Check. Loves the Simpsons and Futurama? Check. Loves sci-fi? Check. Wants every PC in the world to run Windows XP? Check. Would sooner consume content on CD or DVD than wait 6 weeks for a digital download? Check, check and check!

2. Gary W

There are a number of reasons why this man is the runner up at number 2.

  • He has supported me and held my hand through every major breakdown I’ve had over the last 3 years, including before my PTSD started in 2018.
  • He was the one who single-handedly ignited my passion for retro gaming and emulation.
  • He inspired me to fight for digital accessibility for everyone, playing a part in the events that lead to the launch of the House of Fireseed.
  • He is receptive to everyone’s thoughts, opinions and feelings and is willing to go out of his way to fight your corner.

Number One!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Drum roll, please!

1: Jonathan Kay

Seizing the top spot this year is the guy who has ultimately become one of my all time favourite people in the short time I’m known him. It’s the Messenger Geek himself, Jonathan Kay! An ex Microsoft MVP, Kay provided support for MSN and Windows Live messenger for many years. Of course, that was up until Microsoft decided to purchase Skype and turn it into a clunky, laggy, inaccessible mess that’s more bloated than Homer Simpson after his obesity mission back in season 7. Thank you for feeding my nostalgic fires and bringing me back to my childhood roots before everything went to hell in a handbasket. We need more Trekies in the world, just like we need pre-2010 Microsoft back. Check out Jonathan’s website and blog.

Conclusion

And there it is, my top 15 most awesome people of 2020. Once again, well done to Jonathan Kay for bagging the top spot and becoming my official MVP of 2020. Apologies to everyone I had in mind who didn’t make this list. Who knows, you could be in the list next year. Here’s hoping 2021 is a better year for all of us!

The Seedy FAQ: 20 Wacky and Wild Questions about Seedy!

14/08/2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been wanting to do this for a short while now. The idea actually came to my mind after someone on a Discord server I’m on suggested it.
Do you want to know me, but you’re too afraid to ask questions or just don’t have the time? Well, here’s a little quick fire Q-n-A post that will hopefully answer some of those burning questions you might have.

1: Who are you?

I am known as SeedyThreeSixty or Seedy. You can just call me Seedy; it’s easier.
I am without any eyesight. I see nothing. No colour, no light, no shadows… nothing! Pure blackness!
I am a hobbyist software programmer, web developer and, of course, blogger. I love anything to do with computers, especially old school tech. Video games are my life! I love fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Virtua Fighter etc.

2: Were you born blind?

Yes. I have been blind since the day I was born, though it hasn’t affected my life in any way. I can do exactly the same things as a sighted person, just in a slightly different way.

3: What’s your favourite fighting game?

Street Fighter! All the way! Even though I suck hard at the games, I love pretty much every Street Fighter game in the series. The Alpha series, the EX line of titles from 1996, 1998 and 2000, even the original Street Fighter from 1987!

4: What’s your favourite video game console?

The Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 will always be my favourites! Always! I played the hell out of those consoles as a child. I still play the hell out of them now thanks to the power of emulation! I still play on my physical Xbox 360, but I use the awesome PCSX2 emulator to get my Playstation 2 fix.

5: What’s your favourite operating system?

My 5 favourite operating systems are Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 7. I used those systems a lot as a child, and I still do today thanks to virtualization. I’d die to be reunited with my old house-built PC again so I can experience that selfsame childhood joy with real hardware and not have to put up with laggy virtual machines!

6: Why are you stuck in the past?

OK, forgive me for being a little harsh with this one, but it’s the only way I can get this point across.
The 2000s were full of happy moments. From visiting theme parks with my family, to playing games on my custom-built Windows XP desktop, to sitting around the dinner table with the family and watching The Simpsons and/or Futurama on Sky 1 every night at 6. As soon as the 2000s went, everything else went with it. My family, my PC, the games I played, a lot of close friends from school and the like, the Sky package, the happiness and love for life I once had… everything!
The nostalgia I have is down to my burning passion and desire to keep those memories alive. At the end of the day, memories are all I have now! I’m proud to be a 2000s kid. I’m proud to be nostalgic. I’m proud to be a part of the retro community. My nostalgia will only grow more powerful. If you don’t like it, get out of my life! You can’t criticize me for being me!

7: What’s your soul purpose in life?

My reason for living, if I’m completely honest, is making people smile. Helping others out and making them feel happy makes me feel happy. I hate to see people struggling and feeling sad. A friend in need is a friend indeed. If I end up flat broke and on the streets, at least I can say I took some time out of my life to help someone out with their problems.

8: How do you play video games when you’re blind?

See A Guide to playing Video Games Without Sight.

9: How do you use a computer when you’re blind?

See A Guide to Using Computers Without Sight.

10: Would you say you had OCD?

Definitely! Especially when it comes to dates, numbers etc. It angers me to no end, and can make me feel uneasy. I hate it when people get dates wrong, such as the release date of a song or the date of a historic event. I also hate it when people abbreviate years. It’s not twenty twenty, it’s two thousand twenty! You wouldn’t say “I have twenty ten pounds in the bank”, would you? I get that one thousand nine hundred forty-five is harder to say than nineteen forty-five, but if the second digit in a 4 digit number is a 0, like in 2010 or 1066, don’t abbreviate it! That’s what twenty-four hour time is for!

11: What’s your favourite day of the year?

At time of writing, one of my favourite days of the year is only 12 days away! I call it Windows 95 day. It falls on 24th August, the date of Windows 95’s release. Windows 95 brought many awesome features to Windows, such as the start menu, 32-bit app support, the ability for devices to be instantly recognized by the OS through the power of plug-n-play, and so much more! It’s a bloody good operating system, so why not celebrate it? That’s my opinion anyway. I also see Windows 95 day as a day to celebrate the simpler times and to remember the many, many happy days of yesteryear.
My other favourite day, and I think this one applies to all mathematics/science nerds out there, is 14th March, also known as… Pi Day! I won’t get too geeky here, but you can find out more about Pi Day, and Pi itself, on the Pi Day website.

12: How do you dream if you’re blind

My dreams are almost entirely auditory, meaning they are mostly filled with sound. On the occasion that I do see in the subconscious world, my sight is generated from descriptions that other people have given me in the conscious world, such as those of forests, mountains, famous buildings etc. Isn’t the brain a wonderful thing?

13: What’s your favourite alcoholic drink?

I am a cider drinker. I drinks it all of the day. I am a cider drinker. It soothes all me troubles away.

14: What programming languages do you know?

I know Python a lot more than any other programming language. The only other languages I know are just markup languages like HTML and Markdown. I don’t know C/C Plus Plus, PHP, Java, JavaScript, or any other real programming or scripting language.

15: What type of music do you listen to?

I like to listen to a lot of rock music. I like songs from the likes of Five Finger Death Punch, System of a Down, Divide the Day, Papa Roach etc. I also like a bit of pop, hip hop and EDM. After all, house time is any time, and any time is house time!

16: What food do you like

Pizza, pizza, pizza, and more pizza! I also like anything that’s super hot and spicy. Gimme dat supa hot fiyya!

17: Your favourite TV show is?

I am a hard core Simpsons and Futurama fan. If you don’t like it, you can bite my shiny metal ass!
There is a lot of stuff I can’t watch, such as TV episodes or films with explosions, loud bangs, jump scares etc due to my PTSD and misophonia. You can find out more about these here.

18: What’s the best prank you’ve ever pulled?

This one time, someone (I won’t say who) tried to get access to my computer. Unbeknownst to them, however, I had a permanent lockout policy set up on my user account. By typing in the wrong password 3 times, this person had triggered the lockout. Of course, with the person being computer illiterate, they didn’t have a clue what the error message on screen meant or why they couldn’t log into the system. They called me and told me what was wrong. I convinced them that the computer was broken and that the only way to fix it was to reset the entire operating system! However, I had a secret weapon in my pocket. I booted into a talking Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) and fired up a little tool called NTPW Edit. This allowed me to break into the security account manager (SAM) and restore access to my local user account. No system reinstall needed! Even after I’d fixed the problem, the person still thought my entire computer was broken and was none the wiser. Tee hee!

19: What’s your favourite number?

I have a few lucky numbers. One of them is 4,294,967,296, or 2 to the 32nd power. Of course, I’m a computer nerd, so this really is no surprise. Other ones include 5, 9, 50, 60, 95, 98, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and all the powers of 2.

20: What’s your computer related pet peeve?

I absolutely cannot stand the term 4k. Read my lips: 4k. does not. exist! A 4k display has a resolution of 3840×2160, twice that of a HD display, 1920×1080. 3840 / 1000 is 3.84. Therefore it’s 3.84k, not god damn 4k! 4k is just a marketing ploy to make the display tech sound better than it really is. Don’t fall for it! At least the term 1080P is correct, though.
You can find 7 more computer related things I absolutely despise here.

Conclusion

There you have it. 20 weird, crazy questions and answers about me! I hope I was able to bring you a step closer to solving the highly complex enigma that is… me.

7 Computer Related Things I Absolutely Despise

07/08/2020 / / 1 Comment

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an expert when it comes to computers and technology. Conceded, I don’t know every single nitty gritty detail, but then again, who does? The field is so wide and it’s getting wider and wider by the day; it’s virtually impossible to know every single thing about the cyber world. In my many years of experience with computers, I have grown to really detest certain things people might say or do. If you want to get along with me in any computer related conversation, these are the things you need to watch out for and avoid at all costs!

1: Browsing the internet

Think about what you’re saying when you say “Browsing the internet”. The internet is a network of networks. Computers, routers, printers, smartphones, tablets, smart home appliances, all interlinked together. Are you saying that you have access to every single device connected to the internet and you’re browsing through their files right now? You must be the best hacker in the world! No, what you mean to say is: “Browsing the web”. The web is a large collection of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files that reside on millions of high-powered computers located across the world known as web servers. The web, or the World Wide Web, is a feature of the internet; it is not the internet! Why do you think web browsers, web servers and websites have the word “Web” in their name?

2: My (insert here) is not working

“My Facebook isn’t working”. “My Google won’t load”. These are phrases I really hate! You don’t own Google. You don’t own Facebook. They’re not yours. You’re really talking about the products, not the company itself. Say things like: “The Facebook app on my phone won’t load” or “I can’t seem to access Apple’s website”. It will make life a whole lot easier for me when trying to diagnose what the problem might be and it’ll also save you from getting an apple pie in the face.

3: It’s a virus!

Computer is running extremely slowly: virus. A program crashes while you’re working: virus. You get popup messages in your web browser: virus. Seriously, there are more than just viruses you know! There are many different types of malware including spyware, viruses, worms, trojans, keyloggers, adware etc. Yes, they can be extremely harmful to your machine, but they’re not all viruses! For god’s sake, get it right! Refer to the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary for information about the different types of malware your machine can pick up.

4: A tower drive?

No, that large box thing is not the hard drive! That’s called the tower unit or system unit. All your computer’s components, including the hard drive, Central Processing Unit (CPU), RAM and ROM chips, NICs (Network Interface Cards) etc, are all housed inside the tower unit. They are all connected together by slots and wires on the motherboard. Please, never again refer to the tower as the hard drive, CPU or anything else like that!

5: Big B, little b

Nothing makes me want to angrily smash every window in my house more than when bits and bytes get mixed up. Get this straight: a bit is a single binary digit (a zero or a one). A byte is a group of 8 bits. Bits are indicated by a little b while bytes are indicated by a big B. Bytes are commonly used to measure file sizes and drive storage capacities. Byte measurements include kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Bits, however, are commonly used to measure data transfer speeds (bits per second). See this paragraph.

The file I am downloading is 500MB in size. My download speed is 60Mbps.

Can you tell the difference? Just remember: a byte is bigger than a bit, so you use a big B.

6: I just got hacked

This is kind of similar to number 3. People sometimes think that just because their PC is displaying weird pop-up messages or running slow as hell, the PC has been hacked. If someone somehow managed to decrypt the password of your user account and use a remote access tool to log into your PC over the internet, then yes, your computer has been hacked. Getting pop-up messages and being redirected to dodgy websites is just a result of you clicking links you shouldn’t have clicked in the first place. Also, leaving your PC unlocked and coming back to find a casino site on your screen doesn’t count as getting hacked. That’s just your own stupid fault for not logging out or pressing Windows + L to lock your account before stepping away from the PC! The access is already there, so no hacking is needed.

7: Just google it!

Admit it! You say it too! In fact, pretty much everybody says this. The problem with this is that it assumes Google is the only search engine out there. What about Yahoo, Bing and Duck Duck Go? Yes, I know Google has enslaved half the population of planet Earth and you might not get the same results from other search engines, but other search engines do exist! Instead of saying “Google it”, say “Look it up online” or “do a web search”.

Outro

So, there you have it! 7 extremely annoying tech related things I absolutely cannot stand. I will definitely make a part 2 if I think of any more. Remember guys, if I catch you doing or saying any one of these 7 things, there will be hell to pay!

Apologies From Deep Down: A Message From the Heart

26/07/2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been wanting to do this for quite a while, but now I feel it is the right time to do it. I feel that there are some things I should apologize for. Certain things I’ve done in the past, or little quirks of mine, that might have caused harm or offence to one or more people in my life.

Broken promises

There are many things I said I would do and havent. Wild Windows Errors episodes, website articles, various other types of audio and text to speech stuff, etc. For that, I am truly sorry. I feel I have broken many promises to people. The fact is, I’ve just been too mentally tired and exhausted. Having to juggle college work, a stressful home life and the impacts of COVID19 is really weighing me down. TTS is something I love doing, and as soon as I find the mental and physical energy, I will continue doing it.

Spam, spam, spam, spam…

Whenever I see people online on any IM site or social media platform I’m on, I will often try to engage in conversation with them. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, if a person I’m talking with goes silent for a very long time (hours, days, weeks, etc) I get very upset and worried. I may send multiple messages to see if the person is OK, if our friendship is still good etc. If I appear as overly spammy, clingy or annoying, I sincerely apologize. It’s just the way my mind is wired. I can’t make any promises that this will improve quickly, but all one can do is try.

Me and my sharp tongue

I’d like to formally apologize to anyone I have spoken to in a way that has come off as overly snappy or harsh. When I’m stressed, upset, anxious or angry, I will often snap at people. When people find it hard to express their feelings, those feelings get bottled up inside, and it causes people to take their frustration out on others. I am no exception to this rule. After all, a balloon can only take so much in before it bursts with a loud bang! Please don’t take it personally if I say something to you that sounds hurtful or harsh, because I don’t mean it in any way, shape or form.

What’s all the hype

When someone does something nice for me, I will often give them credit and thank them for it. However, I sometimes give people too much credit, and it can end up coming across the wrong way. I won’t give any details, but this just happened recently. I felt so bad because I thought I’d caused great offence to that person, and I had to change my wording. If you have been affected by this, please know that I am deeply sorry and that I will try my darnedest to not let it happen again.

Conclusion

I hope you can understand the points I’ve made here and can accept my apologies. Nobody is perfect, and we all make mistakes in our lives. The important thing is that we learn from these mistakes and become better people for learning from them.

How anxiety impacts me socially

17/07/2020 / / 0 Comments

If you know me well, you’ll know that I love hanging out and talking to people. However, with my anxiety comes a whole lot of things that make something as enjoyable as socialising with people very difficult. In this blog post, I will describe some of the things that fire off bad feelings when I’m hanging out and socialising. The below points apply mainly to online communication, though some of them can apply to communication in the physical world also. Call me petty and weak if you want, but my mind is wired differently to yours, and you can’t judge me or think any less of me for it.

The sound of silence

When I’m in a voice chat with someone, or physically talking to someone who I don’t know very well, I will often sound quiet or not speak at all for a while. I often think that people will make fun of the way I talk, my accent, the way my voice sounds etc, or that they will simply not be able to understand what I’m trying to say. This makes me very sad, as it means that I may have lost a potential good friend. We all need friends in our lives, and feeling like you’re losing someone new who you have the potential to form a really close bond with is the worst feeling in the world.

Was it something I said?

I could be having a conversation with someone, and the person I’m chatting with could just stop replying out of the blue. It’s a two-stage process at that point. First, the anxiety kicks in. Many thoughts run through my mind, such as:

  • Did I say something wrong? Did a reference I make, a question I ask or a view I put across cause offence or anger towards me?
  • Am I being too annoying by asking too many questions, talking too much etc or does the person think I’m generally just a pain in the rear?
  • Does the person simply hate me and not want to talk to me?

Then, the depression starts. I get very sad and begin to feel isolated and alone, I feel guilty because I feel I’ve done wrong by that person, and I start to hate myself more and more.

Out of the loop

I could be with a group of people, and they could be discussing a topic that is completely alien to me. As a result, I will often feel as though I’m completely out of the loop, and not really a part of the group at all because I have nothing useful or understandable to contribute to the conversation with. I often find it hard to express my feelings to others, and as a direct result, they all get bottled up and I start to feel sad, lonely and left out.

Somebody help me, now!

I am often too afraid to ask people for help and support with things, especially tech support, because in the past, people have snapped at me for asking too many questions and I was once accused of “harassing” someone via email. While I do look things up online, often the articles I read will contain terrible grammar which annoys and frustrates me to no end. Also, you can’t always believe what you hear or see online. I just think that talking to someone about your problem is the best support method. I often get very anxious when asking a question or asking for help in general because I feel I have to word it perfectly so as to not sound stupid or anything else. This anxiety ultimately stops me from doing it, and I’m just left alone to figure things out. It’s an awful feeling when you’ve tried every possible solution you can think of and nothing has worked, or you just don’t know how to solve a problem and you feel you have nobody to turn to because you’re so anxious and scared that someone will react badly to your request for help.

Conclusion

I hope this post has taught you some things and help shed some light on the thoughts and feelings that I often experience when I communicate with people both in cyberspace and in the physical world of planet Earth. I bet I’m not the only one who experiences these feelings. Be sure to let me know down in the comments if you have any similar experiences to me and how certain social situations make you feel inside.

How the Corona Virus pandemic is affecting my mental health

14/04/2020 / / 1 Comment

I’m sure we all agree that the many impacts of the outbreak of COVID19, such as having to stay at home, having to remain 6 feet apart from one another, having to work and communicate virtually etc, is causing people to go insane. I am no exception to this rule. I already have a myriad of mental health complications, but all this stuff that’s going on right now is magnifying and amplifying these complications to no end. Here are just some examples of how the Corona Virus outbreak is impacting me mentally.

Working Remotely

 

 

I have an amazing support network at my college. They listen to my problems, they keep me calm, they are a shoulder to cry on, and they always know how to lift me up when I’m feeling down. Because I am having to work remotely, I feel I have lost this support network. Working remotely is the thing that is affecting me the most. Ever since the college closed, my depression has got a lot worse, my stress and anxiety levels are much higher, I’ve started losing more sleep, I want to cry all the time, I’m mentally and emotionally drained, work is constantly stressing me out, and I’m even too scared to check my emails in case teachers start asking for work that I either haven’t completed or made a complete mess of. I already feel like a failure, failing a college course will only make things a whole lot worse and people will think of me more as a disappointment and a letdown than they clearly already do. What do I do? Do I stress myself out and force myself to complete work to a perfect standard, bringing myself back to the same crisis point I was at in 2013, or do I take the risk of failing the course and having everybody I know and love openly despise me, probably also bringing me back to that 2013 crisis point? It’s a catch 22 scenario!

 

Television News Channels and the Internet

 

The television is constantly on during the day at my house and tuned into a news channel. I may be in my bedroom upstairs with the door closed, but sound travels and I can still hear it from downstairs. All these news channels are talking about is the damn Corona Virus! Nothing positive is happening in the news these days it seems! It’s gotten to a point now where my mind can’t tune it out anymore. The internet and social media doesn’t help either, but I can’t just stop using social media; it’s my primary method of contacting people. I’d just feel even more isolated than I feel now if I withdrew from the internet. The more I hear about CV, the less hope I have of this whole thing ever coming to an end.

 

Concerns about Family Members

 

I have external family members, both very young and very old, that I worry about on a daily basis because of Corona Virus. Keep in mind that I haven’t been allowed to see these family members for almost a decade, and a lot of things have probably changed since the last time I saw them. For all I know, half my family could be dead now. I made a lot of happy memories with these people; it’d be devastating if it turned out that some of them had left this world. It’s a constant fear that is pushing my depression and anxiety ever higher.

 

Those are 3 things that are really messing me up at the moment because of the whole COVID19 thing. Hopefully this madness will end soon! Stay safe and stay alive!

How I Deal With My Mental Struggles

21/11/2019 / / 0 Comments

In my last blog post, I detailed the mental health struggles I face and how they affect me in daily life. In this post, I will describe some ways I help myself, and you can help me, deal with these struggles.

Won’t you hold my hand?

We all need a hand to hold once in a while. I am no exception. My typical positions are:

  • I place my thumb on the back of your hand and my figures on the palms, or the other way round
  • I rest my hand on the back of yours. Use this if you’re uncomfortable with position 1.

This provides a sense of peace and relief in periods of depression, stress or anxiety.

Take a walk, just a little walk

I’m sure we all agree that a bit of fresh air now and then allows us to escape from what’s going on around us and breathe freeand easy. The sensory overload of too much loud noise, the stress of a fast-paced work environment, the anxiety of overcrowded places, they can all be fixed with a breath of fresh air.

The sound of music

It is scientifically proven that the music we listen to influences our mood. Upbeat music makes us feel happy, slow violin music makes us feel sad. Music is a great way for me to escape from my feelings and enter another world. I like many different types of music from rock to hiphop to rap. Music can also sometimes defeat a misophonia attack.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways in which I deal with my daily mental health struggles. We all have different ways of dealing with things. Let me know down in the comments how you deal with issues in your daily life, be it emotional or physical. Let’s start a community!

Inside an Ill Mind: My Mental Struggles and How They Affect Me

20/11/2019 / / 1 Comment

For years now, I have been struggling with my mental health. I have trates of depression, anxiety, misophonia and PTSD. In this post, I will try to describe what is going on inside my mind and how it affects my day to day life.

What goes up must come down

One minute, I can be calm, happy and generally in a good mood. Then… the depression starts. This presents itself in many ways, from a low mood to a full blown fit of crying, tiredness, lack of mental and physical energy and even a loss of apatite in some cases. These episodes can last from a couple of minutes to a few hours.

Anxiety, sane and insane rivalry

This affected me massively during the summer of this year… or let’s call it Family Feud Season. I would often have it for days on end. I’d b feeling restless, constantly shaking and moving around, my heart rate would be through the ceiling and sweat would pore out of my body like a very high powered tap. Both my mind and body goes into hyperdrive. I feel there is no way out. I feel isolated and lonely, like I have nobody to turn to, no shielding or protection. In the best case scenario, this will only last for a few minutes.

What’s that sound?

Misophonia is where certain sounds can trigger emotional responses such as sadness, fear, anxiety, anger or frustration. I can’t deal with sounds that rise and fall an octave, or sounds with certain echo or reverb effects, especially if there’s a lot of tail in the reverb. I get very freaked out and it can be an anxiety trigger. I once had to miss 5 minutes of a college lesson because of it. Even after those 5 minutes had passed, however, the attack continued. It was well after an hour when the episode finally ended and the symptoms receded.

The voices! The voices!

I like to separate these episodes into 2 types.

Classic attacks

I’ve had these attacks for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, I hear weird voices and sounds in my head, as if there’s an audio editor in there applying weird cutting, mixing and splicing effects to the sounds. It’s so weird that it’s quite hard to describe.
Some triggers for these attacks include the following.

  • prolonged silences, such as when a music track suddenly pauses or fades out, especially if the fade is very sharp and tight.
  • Sudden sounds, such as PA system announcements, and unexpected airline announcements.
  • Certain types of music, especially music tracks with a low-pitched voice mixed in, such as a telephone hold service or those old Disney feature presentation logos.

New/Misophonia-based attacks

In recent times, in the last 5 years or so, I’ve had attacks where I feel a presence, as if someone is in the area with me. Sometimes they can be floating around and sometimes they remain in one position, suspended and frozen in mid air. I also can’t touch anything during these attacks as I’m simply too freaked out to do so. This presence is often accompanied by breathy moaning/sighing noises. Think of the old Skype login and logout sounds, but more creepy and horrifying. This type of attack can be brought on by my misophonia, hence why I refer to it as a misophonia-based attack.

Listening to something quiet or on low volume can sometimes stop both types of episodes, but sometimes, I just have to ride them out as nothing I do will stop them.

Oh god, it’s happening again!

I once witnessed my mother have 2 Grand Mal seizures, one in her bedroom and another right beside me in a hotel bathroom. The hotel bathroom one was the most terrifying, as I pretty much witnessed the whole scene, from her body crashing to the ground, to the moaning and crying sounds she made as the seizure progressed. Thankfully, she survived the whole thing and is doing really well now.
As a result of this, I now have PTSD trates. These attacks often come in the form of repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating flashbacks of those horrifying nights, or some other scene/event, either related or unrelated. They can occur randomly, though nowhere as near as often as they used to. More often now-a-days, they are brought on by certain events that happen in movies, TV shows or real life. These include the following.

  • Loud bangs, explosions, gunshots etc.
  • Brutal torture/murder scenes, such as the famous shower scene from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho.
  • Scenes of intense emotional and/or physical distress.
  • Scenes of physical abuse/violence.

    • 8/16-bit, cartoon and sci-fi sounds are not seen as PTSD attack triggers. This means that 8-bit sounding gunshots, cartoony punching sounds and lasers are completely fine.

shutdowns

Sometimes, if I feel high stress or anxiety, I will go into shutdown mode. Mind and body simply stop working. I am perfectly awake and aware of what is happening around me, I just can’t speak, move or do anything. It’s kind of like when too many people visit a website at once and the server becomes unresponsive for a while because it has too many requests to process and can’t handle them all, or when there is a surge of electricity and the trip switch flips, knocking out the power to your house to protect your appliances. These shutdowns are a protection mechanism. If I didn’t shut down, I’d most likely have an anxiety attack, much like if there was no trip switch to go off in a power surge, there’d most likely be a fire. Shutdowns vary in length; the longest shutdown I had was about 11 minutes long. Also, one or more of the above can be happening during a shutdown. I may or may not feel tired or develop a headache after a shutdown; tiredness is more common. Take this into account if you ever see me still and quiet for a long time or I seem out of it.

Conclusion

I hope I have explained myself clearly and that you can understand the things I have to battle with on a day to day basis. Mental health is something I feel very passionate about. I feel we should all be able to talk about it. It’s OK not to be OK.

My Cyber Life Story: Why I Love The Hell Out of Computers

20/11/2019 / / 1 Comment

Those who know me well will know I am an expert when it comes to computers. Whenever someone in my family has an IT problem, I’m always the first to know about it. The question is, just why do I love computers so much? In this post, I will try to answer that question in the best way I can. Also think of this as my computing life story.
I’ve always been very much into how stuff works since I was a really small child. I did everything from messing around with light switches to randomly pushing buttons on TV remotes to taking the batteries out of stuff and trying to figure out which way they went back in.
It was the early 2000s; I wanna say around 2002/2003. My dad, who was in the army at the time, had a friend who worked for Microsoft. This was when my cyber life started. I was given a house-built desktop PC made by this friend of my dad’s and I loved it to death. I can’t quite remember the exact hardware specs, but it ran Windows 95 and came with a CD-ROM drive and a 3.5in floppy drive. I never got to use the floppy drive though as we had no floppy disks. I loved Windows 95 back then and still love it to this very day. I played many games on that PC. These included

  • Tonka Workshop, a game where you build and mend things such as houses, cars, computers etc and take part in fun games and contests.
  • Playskool Store, a casheer simulator type game where you had to price up items that customers wanted to buy, scan items and so on. You got gold stars for every successful transaction. If you got 15 gold stars, you got a virtual paycheck that you could print out.

The first time I used a computer in an educational environment was in my first years of primary school. It was a Packard Bell laptop that ran what would become my second favourite and still used operating system, Windows 98. This was also the time when I was learning how to touch type and how to use a screen reader. The reader I used at the time was the much loved and despised JAWS screen reader. I also had a laptop of my own around that time. It ran Windows 2000 and had the 40 minute trial version of JAWS because no way were my parents gunna pay a thousand quid for the thing! Unfortunately that glory was short-lived as my computer illiterate mother loaded the laptop with malware and it never saw the light of day again!
2007 was the year I got introduced to audio games. My school laptop, which ran Windows XP, had a selection of audio games including Crazy Darts, Sonic Match and Savage Gamut. Sonic match is a game where you have to press the arrow key(left, right, up or down) that corresponds to a specific sound. Savage Gamut is a hard-as-hell boxing game I still have yet to master.
Fast forward to 2009. I’m in a new house and a new school. My old custom-built desktop is still alive and well, now running my most favourite OS, Windows XP. I got myself introduced to one of the worst laptops I ever used. Well, the laptop wasn’t bad, but the screen reader was. Enter Supernova, one of theeeeee worst readers I’ve ever encountered! Seriously, why is that thing still around? It ran Windows XP and had Microsoft Office 2007 installed, so that was an upside I guess. More downsides were to come though, as 2011 was the year I said goodbye to my house-built desktop beast. I still miss the thing now. I hope to find it one day and see that it still works.
The period from 2012 to 2017 was when my love for technology would start to turn into frustration. Enter the crappy Windows 7 HP laptops from my secondary/high school days. That thing was the slowest slow thing to ever exist in the very slow world of slow things. It should take a few seconds to log into Windows, not 5 minutes! I also had to use Microsoft Narrator… I’ll leave you to figure out how that went. 2013 was the year I entered the world of note takers. My school’s sensory support team decided to purchase the Braillenote Apex… big mistake! Seriously, Uranium-235 is more stable than that thing! It froze, crashed, died and errored out like there was no tomorrow. In early 2014 I started to teach myself HTML because I wanted to create a website. At the time, I was confined to an iPhone and had no idea what a web host was. I launched many different websites on many different hosting platforms throughout 2014, all of which have since died out. 2015/2016 was the Python/MySQL period. Let me tell you, if I ever have to use MySQL ever again, I’ll rip my hair out!
This takes us up to right now. I’m currently studying Media at college after just finishing an IT course. The last year or 2 has seen me dig deeper into different operating systems such as GNU/Linux and MacOS. I now have an iPhone, an iPad, a Windows 7 laptop which I’m using to write this blog post and 2 Xbox consoles, an Xbox One and an Xbox 360. Also, my obsession with computers and technology is now stronger than ever. Who knows where the next 17 years will take me. We’ll just have to wait and C++

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