During the intensive, my teacher Justin said that I could use echolocation to see sculpture. This intrigued me. Of course, I immediately wanted to go to the Rodin Museum and try it out. Justin said I should do it myself later so we could work on more practical things. I agreed, but really wanted to go. Today I had my chance. My father runs the Seraphin Gallery. Once in a while he will ask us his kids to go to an art opening.
This time however he said they would have sculpture, so that peaked my interest. I told him of my plan to use echolocation to try to see sculptures. Most art museums will not let you touch the sculptures, sometimes even getting quite mean about it. I recall a field trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This totally took away the appeal.
Marble feels muddy under cloth. I even got to have a chat with the sculptor, David Borgerding. I felt excited that I could touch the pieces, but I felt just as excited about trying echolocation to see something abstract.
I walked there with a friend of the family named Alex, who should have a blog of his own. We entered the gallery and I just started echolocating to find sculptures. I felt like a kid searching a room for treasures. And sure enough I found them! They arose like dark forms, monuments of abstraction. I could scan and make out the major features. You know that tale about the blind men touching an elephant?
That would never happen with echolocation, which lets you see the whole structure instead of its discrete parts. I saw a lot of waves, and appendage-like forms. Even the squares did not have perfectly square shapes. No right angles, just curves. I gravitated to two in particular. The first reminded me of a sailboat. The second one reminded me of the monument to abstraction I referenced above. David actually took this picture himself, so there you have a picture of a sculpture taken by the sculptor.
This one also had an amazing texture, since he made it out of bronze and polished it somehow. I think gold also played a part. Hearing about these colors reminded me of another visual aide, the Color ID app I have previously used to watch a sunset. It accurately identified the colors of the metals as I passed the iPhone over the sculpture. The app has exotic colors which I enjoyed in this artsy setting, especially Almond Frost, whatever that means.
The simple colors proved more practical in a basic sense, grays and browns mainly. This gave a very complete picture. While discussing all this with the artist and others, I realized something else. Normally I use echolocation in every-day settings, such as finding a path, following the shoreline of a building, or enjoying the organic patterns of a tree.
Now for the first time my brain saw something completely abstract. It tried to put names to the forms but ultimately could not. The visual centers of my brain felt satisfied and saturated. By this time the crowds had begun filing in, making echolocation less effective, especially for appreciating aesthetics.
The wine went to my head and I felt like eating. Alex and I walked to a nearby restaurant. By the time we returned, the showing had ended. I look forward to appreciating sculpture again, especially now that I can see it. I like sculpture! Ever since I started using an iPhone, I have wanted to learn how to write apps for it. I made several attempts to learn Objective C, but it never worked out. Then one day I learned about RubyMotion and it changed my life forever, just like the iPhone itself.
I have just finished the tutorial and have a basic understanding of how to write an app. RubyMotion rocks! The spacing feels off between the characters. Oh well. I still appreciate the free board, and will try to use it and enjoy its nice feeling.
Now, on to the course materials, a book called Chess for Beginners. Unfortunately, they only offered the materials in braille or on cassette.
I would have preferred an electronic text, but oh well. I chose cassette, since I can listen much faster than I can read braille. This, however, meant finding a working cassette player. It seems so funny, everyone used to do everything on tape. As a kid, my mom got me the hundred greatest books on tape. I found one, a Handy Cassette, a great recorder for the blind.
I plugged it in, and it released the Magic Smoke. It freaked me out hard. My girlfriend had to help me out. I still feel hypersensitive. People have gotten killed from them! A friend will lend me a tape recorder, and I will get a free one from the Library for the Blind, so it should work out. We had a much better time. They have always prided themselves on customer service, and they lived up to that with us.
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While doing Qigong the answer spontaneously occurred to me. I should use the newer loop for the lower bands. When i want to switch to the higher bands I should disconnect and remove the double outer loop, and connect the single outer loop.
I remembered the cable I forgot to send back, and the pieces slid into place. Most users switch to the higher bands by connecting and disconnecting the booster cable, but connecting and disconnecting the whole loop would make the process much easier. Two days later I got up the courage to try again. I popped off the double loop and connected the single loop.
I worked 3 stations on 20 meters. I then took off the single loop and put on the double loop. I worked 2 stations on 40 meters. My idea worked! I decided to take the plunge and tune down to 80 meters. I checked my SWR. Nervously I tried responding to a station. By the end of the night I had completed 14 QSOs on 80 meters, and nothing bad happened. Everything worked! This brings me to the end of a long quest to get on meters from my condo.
Alpha Antenna gave me excellent support, and we ended up improving the product. It still amazes me that I can work meters from an antenna which sits on a tripod by my window. It takes me back to my childhood in Swarthmore with my doublet.
I still miss the trees. The time has come to upgrade my Android phone. Two and a half years ago I got an Essential Phone. I enjoyed the stock Android experience, but the company went out of business. Major operating system updates stopped, and my battery has begun to lose its charge. Say what you will about Essential, but they addressed every accessibility issue. I read a number of reviews of the leading Android phones as of July Critics consistently recommended the OnePlus 8 Pro.
It runs their own version of Android called OxygenOS. A quick search turned up a Stack Exchange post telling sighted people how to turn off TalkBack, so I knew that the built-in accessibility gesture would work.
It arrived the next day from Amazon and I began setting it up. I found one or two unlabeled controls during the installation, but nothing which stopped me. I did not like having the fingerprint sensor in the glass so I could not feel it, and OxygenOS did not provide any spoken feedback. I found that Face ID worked more accurately in many environments, but neither worked perfectly.
I transferred all of my information with OnePlus Switch. I even got my music and ringtones. I appreciated the full sounding stereo audio. I instantly saw the appeal of the three-position ringer switch.
I found the shape of the phone ergonomically pleasing. I began to love my OnePlus 8. Then I got a phone call. TalkBack told me to swipe up with two fingers to answer, but it did not work. I tried several times, getting more frantic with each futile swipe. I only had a blank screen and a ringing phone. I could not find any controls to activate. Nothing worked. The phone stopped ringing, and I got a voicemail message.
I called voicemail and brought up the keypad. The buttons did not work! I found an unlabeled button at the bottom of the screen which I hoped would hang up the phone. Luckily, it did. Clearly they had done no accessibility testing. It felt like a slap in the face. A web search turned up a post on their community about the inaccessible swipe gestures], and another specifically about the keypad issue. Obviously they never resolved either. The path of least resistance became clear.
I returned the OnePlus 8. I made 3 QSOs and had a great evening. I went back up on Sunday and decided to use my AX1. He made me a cable for my KX3, so I like to work him when I hear him.
I still need to find something for the wind. I came down for a snack, and when I returned my trusty AX1 would not tune. I appeared to have the same problem I had on the previous day with a different antenna. I could not figure it out and decided to call it a night. Clearly I have some testing to do. In all I made five fun QSOs with my new straight key. It performed as expected, and it survived its first trip up to the roof deck. Thanks Meg! Imagination becomes reality.
I have had weekly Qigong lessons for over two years. Then the pandemic happened. My practice continued uninterruptedly. Qigong truly showed its value. As things started to ease up a little we began talking about meeting again, but they had closed the yoga room. We have a park down the street, and I wondered about going there. Iris thought it sounded like a great idea.
They say that optimally you should practice Qigong with your bare feet in the Earth. We picked a day with pleasant weather and finally met. We walked to the park, basically a straight shot. I showed Iris how to find a shoreline - a constant guide for use with a cane. We made our way to a tree and began class. It felt wonderful! Wind blew through the leaves of the tree above me.
My hands would occasionally brush against them. The sun streamed down. Birds sang. Even the noise from the traffic and the others in the park felt welcome. I felt the stress of the last few months begin to wash away. A little bit of normalcy had returned. We have returned to my Qigong tree a few times since then. The pandemic forced us to find it. Some time ago I worked my first DX contact with a long distance station. In this special event you can score points for making Morse Code contacts, with bonus points for long distance stations.
I thought I would go on 20 meters in the last few hours, closest to twilight. I previously had good luck working the gray line. The contest ended at PM local time. I worked a few stations in Canada, but mostly worked America.
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