Blind Crawler Blog

I don't care about your Zoon

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:45:04 +0000

This is going to be a very short entry. Here is how I prevent spam comments from appearing on my blog. In my blog software settings, I have an option to receive a notice that a comment is received. It is not set to automatically post the comment to the blog. So if you are a spammer, I can tell this very easily, and will not approve the comment. If you are an actual person, and also send a comment on how to start a blog, I would suggest Live Journal, or Blogger.com. Other than that, look for the link to the software I use at the bottom of this page, get a web server, and install it to the web server. Then, read the tutorials available on the blog software website. I am sure though, this will not prevent the spam notifications, and in that case, I will eventually turn off the ability to post a comment at all. However, I say again, I preview every comment that gets sent to this blog before I decide whether it shows up on the page or not. I honestly don't care if you are posting a question of how to start a blog on a topic that has nothing to do with it or not. If you are asking some random blog how to start a blog, then you are not ready to start a blog. Try finding a podcast on the subject, or type how do I start a blog in the Google search box. Other things I do not care about are spammers that can't write in complete English sentences. I also do not care about your Microsoft Zoon, or how big you think my penis should be. I do know this post should attract alot of spam comments though, and I will block every one of them. Sorry spammers, but you are going to waste alot of time, money and effort trying to get your pill ads on this blog.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

The Braille Crisis

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:05:08 +0000

According to the National Federation of the Blind's own documentation, only 10 percent of the nation's blind are able to read braille. Surely anyone would agree with the NFB that this is a crisis. However, I feel that the cause and effect is not fully being explored. How exactly could a population sink to a level of only 10 percent literacy? There is of course the lack of teachers that are able to teach braille, but from my research, that is only an effect of a much bigger problem. The problem is in the organizations for the blind themselves. Yes, I say it is the fault of organizations such as the NFB, ACB, and AFB. The problem is also with braille and braille equipment manufacturers. There is of course no simple answer to what has happened over the years, but the reasons become more and more clear as the problem is analyzed. First of all in order to solve this problem, financial resources of the blind organizations need to put teaching as a higher priority. At present, many of the blind organizations spend millions a year on inequality lawsuits rather than putting funding toward the root causes of the inequality. Many of these lawsuits do include job inequality, but as any employer knows, if they are faced with two potential employees, and one can read and write, and one cannot, the employer will of course choose the literate employee. It is frustrating to see the number of blind people who harbor on the internet every day who do not know the basic rules of spelling, and sentence structure because they were never taught it. I do not see this as the fault of the individual that cannot read or write, but I see it as the fault of the system responsible for their education. I see it as the fault of the very organizations that were set up to counteract this like the NFB, ACB and the AFB. A further look into the root of the problem also points to assistive technology and product vendors. For example there are certain companies like Freedom Scientific that although their business may seem noble, their business model is far from noble. In Freedom Scientific's position in the blind community, they have been allowed for decades to charge any price they wish for educational products such as braille displays because their business is designed to sell to government contracts, and not to the individual. The excuse they use is that the market they sell to is a small niche market, but could they not expand their market to those individuals who can't afford the thousands of dollars that a braille display costs? They instead resort to the monopolistic practices of pouring money into organizations such as the NFB for trade show conventions. That in turn buys favor with the NFB to showcase those products instead of supporting lower cost alternatives. Other issues are with the organizations putting money into costly side projects such as a GPS based self driving car. While that is a nice dream project, how is a blind person to afford one of those cars if over 70 percent of the blind are unemployed? There are also convention speeches by the President of the NFB where his main focus of the speech is of the perception of blind people, and include that movies never use blind people to play the role of a blind person. If only 10 percent of the blind community can read a movie script, what reason would the movie industry have to cast a blind person in the role? Rather than trying to push equality lawsuits concerning that issue, why not direct those resorces into the failing education system for the blind instead. Another side project that seems noble is with the Louis Braille coin. One of the awareness campaignes to advertise the coins being available for sale was NASA taking two of the coins into space on the space shuttle. The odd thing is, no matter how many times the NFB has been asked, they have never come forward with the cost of that advertising campaign. One thing that is well known though, is that a single space shuttle flight was never cheap. How much of that advertising money to raise awareness could have been used to hire teachers? To worsen the crisis, now many of the government agencies that filter money to blind organizations are being cut by measureable amounts. Cut backs such as funding to braille libraries, outreach organizations and to Social Security itself only deepens the crisis. Even with these cuts becoming well known, companies like Freedom Scientific, GW Micro and so on continue to charge unattainable prices for a huge majority of the blind individuals, major blind organizations continue to accept funding from these companies in exchange for advertising favor. The blind organizations continue to insist that the alternative technologies are too inadequate to endorse. However the blind community is awakening to the fact that they do not endorse alternatives not because they are inadequate for many blind person's needs, but because the organizations are afraid of losing the pay off money that assistive companies hand them. If the blind organizations truly wanted to fix the crisis, they would instead demand these assistive technology companies lower their prices to an average based on a blind individuals income, and not just by what the government contracts are willing to pay them. As a warning to the assistive companies that refuse to do so, surely they are aware that as the government continues to cut funding, they too will also fall victim to the cuts? Perhaps a better option other than bankruptcy would be to change their business model to become affordable to their population, because as the alternatives continue to develop, more and more of their customers, for financial reasons, will use the alternative technologies instead. It is well known that people, as well as monopolistic business will always be resistant to change, but changes happen whether we prepare for them or not. One thing that is given during change is a choice. The choice is clear. Do these organizations and businesses continue under a model that has been broken for decades, or do they do what is needed to truly educate their people so that they may find jobs and become successful also. The one detriment to every mind is corruption.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

NVDA's object and review cursor navigation explained

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:48:59 +0000

I have been using NVDA from either a developer side or a user point of view for quite some time. recently one of the most common complaints that many new users of NVDA have is with object navigation and review mode. Object navigation, for Jaws users is NVDA's way of adding a Jaws cursor into the program. NVDA does what the Jaws cursor can do, although quite differently from Jaws. There have also been many NVDA users that have read through the NVDA user guide documentation, but for various reasons are still confused by how to use the feature. In this blog post I will not go through every command available in object navigation and review mode, but I will go through the commands I use most often, and try to explain them as simply as I can. Also be aware that my main computer I use for NVDA is a desktop so I may not list the laptop commands that do the same thing, but rest assured, they do exist.
OK, for the desktop layout for NVDA, review and object navigation is mostly done by using the num pad on your keyboard. One thing you will want to make sure of for this to work is that you press the numlock key on the top left of the num pad until NVDA says num lock off. Next go to your desktop, find any icon on the desktop, preferably the NVDA icon, and press alt+Enter. It should open up the properties window for the NVDA shortcut icon.
Here is the easiest way I know of to explain the following NVDA hotkeys:
Insert + num pad 7 will place NVDA in review object navigation mode. Basicly it is like turning on the Jaws cursor for Jaws for Windows. Something to keep in mind though with NVDA is the mode only works for the current window in focus. So, if you navigate away from the window you are in, you will need to press insert + num pad 7 again to re-activate the mode.
The next keys are ones that will allow you to read information that you may or may not be able to tab to, text on a dialog box and so on:
The best way to remember these keys is to know that windows on the screen are essentially pages with things such as buttons, and text drawn on them.
The first key is num pad 7 by itself. This key will move NVDA's review cursor up line by line and will read all of the objects and text that it encounters on the line as it moves. If you press num pad 9, it will move the review cursor down line by line, and will make NVDA read the objects and text it encounters as it moves. The next two keys to know are num pad 4 and num pad 6. The way to think of these two keys is since the previous two keys move line by line, num pad 4 and six move review word by word backward and forward. Num pad 4 moves back word by word, or object by object, and num pad 6 moves forward word by word or object by object. The next two keys num pad 1 and 3 move the review forward and back essentially letter by letter, or character by character. Num pad 1 moves back character by character, and num pad 3 moves forward character by character.
OK so you may be saying, that's cool but what if it is a button or something that I can't tab to? Believe it or not NVDA, if it can see it can get to it as well as activate the button in most cases. The story I am about to tell is a completely made up scenerio, so it may not be the same as what you experience, but it is intended to give you the basic idea of how to use things.
I have a window open that for some reason has a button on the screen that NVDA can't get to by using my tab key. So I activate the review mode by pressing insert + num pad 7. I am not exactly sure whether the button is near the top of the window or near the bottom so I press num pad 7 and 9 to read up and down the window, listening to what NVDA finds. Eventually as I do this I hear the button I am looking for, but there are a number of things also on the same line. So, I then press num pad 4 and 6 to go backward and forward across that line until the review cursor lands on the button I want. Once I am lined up where I am wanting to be, I will now introduce a couple more keys that will help you. They are move mouse pointer to current review object, and left mouse button click. OK, so I through some of that programmer speak at you that you may or may not have read in the NVDA user guide, move mouse to current review object, and you are asking what does that mean? I think The more human wording to use would be, it moves the mouse pointer to where NVDA's review cursor is. Remember that in the scenerio I just explained that I moved the review cursor around until I found the button I wanted? Well with the next two keys it will move the mouse pointer to that button and then I will be able to press another key and it will click on that button. To do this I will press insert + num pad slash, and that will move the mouse pointer to that button I found using the review cursor. After that I just press the num pad slash key by itself and it will do a left mouse click on the button. And that's it. There are of course more key commands than that, like num pad asterisk or star to make NVDA do a right mouse click, but the keys I explained should help with at least 90 percent of what you need to do.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Blind games: close, but not quite there

admin — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 10:27:55 +0000

First, a note to the readers of this post: This post was originally written by me on August 17, 2008. While many things have changed with the inclusion of Voice Over in Apple products I still believe that PC games for the blind are still somewhat lacking for reasons expressed in the post to follow. I therefore am reposting the article to this blog. According to many in the sighted video gaming world, there have been up to now six generations of video games. There were many such as Pong that were the first popular video game to reach a mainstream audience. Adventure was the first widely distributed text adventure game, although not the first as many may believe. Possibly the most popular video game of all time was Pac-Man, released in Japan in 1979, and in the US the following year. In the early 80's, games such as these reached a height of popularity in both video game arcades and home consoles, such as the Atari VGS, later known as the Atari 2600. However, around 1983 the video game industry experienced a crash due to poor quality games, clones and re-hashes of older games. There were also poor business management decisions, such as the release of Pac-Man for the Atari gaming console. They had actually produced more Pac-Man cartriges than there were Atari consoles produced to play them on. To the public however, what had happened is the high cost of the gaming systems, the games and the poor quality of the games caused public interest to drop. There were many good games that came from this era of video games though, such as Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and text adventures such as Zork. Many of these games are today available as either freeware, abandonware or as Roms running on emulators such as Mame. Many of them are quite playable by the blind without any special adaptation at all. In recent years the blind community has seen a resurge of these games with adaptations such as Shades of Doom, Pac-Man Talks and Access Invaders. While innovative in there own right, there are many in the blind community that feel they lack imagination and originality. Many blind gamers are at this point hoping for a new generation of games for the blind. They believe games that simply are an adaptation of twenty or thirty year old games for the sighted, should either be sold at a lower cost or distributed free. While many of them are, many feel that others are sorely over priced. The problems do not stop there. In fact, the blind video games fall far short compared to the sighted games in technological advancement and originality. One of the maine reasons behind this is, many of the games are programmed by only one programmer, or very small teams of programmers. In the mainstream game market these teams are much larger. They consist of concept designers, story writers, voice actors, and programmers that attempt to push the technology to the limits of the hardware available at the time. These are areas that blind gamers feel the blind gaming industry is falling short. It would be good to see the people involved in the blind gaming industry begin to work together in larger numbers in order to, create higher quality games that are once again innovative, original, and are compelling to the blind gamer. This would require that programmers that had previously produced games either on their own, or in small groups band together, that auditions be advertised and held for better voice actors that better add to and suit the story or mood of the game. More original story lines and game concepts should also be explored and auditioned. Many of the blind game developers feel that the blind gamer market is much too small to make those actions worth their while, so they continue to develop games independant of others in the industry. However the number of people that feel that belief is leading toward stagnation is growing, and that if the current situation does not change, the blind video game industry may experience a crash similar to the crash of 1983. Personally, I believe the blind community is in the midst of a worldwide change. A change in technological advancements, lower costs for adaptive equipment and software, and a belief that they need to band together in order to achieve that level of equality. I amalso hoping that the blind video game industry becomes a deciding factor in this change. I do not want the blind gaming industry to innovate toward stagnation. If the blind game developers would agree to make the changes needed, they may also find that their audience is much larger than previously thought. Many of them are simply waiting for blind games to either reach, or at least come close to the sighted games available, because they have already been playing Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Doom for over twenty years now and want something new. Ultimately, it is up to the blind game developers to decide whether to expand on their past innovations or not, because the customers are waiting. It is commonly known that video games these days are basically reincarnations of older games. Some examples of these are the popular Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero series. In reality they are derived from the well known electronic game Simon, released in 1978 by Electronic Arts. Simon was an electronic game that had four colored buttons and would play tones and the player had to play back the corresponding tones. As the game progressed the tones began to form a song. Even Simon, while innovative for its day, was derived from the children's game Simon Says. But, what Simon did also show is the capabilities of electronics of its era, and for that it was thought of as a breakthrough. Text adventures were also a breakthrough of its era and were quite popular in the mid 70's and 80's. Essentially, they were derived from teen oriented books in the 70's known as "Choose your own Adventure". The idea behind these books was that at the end of each chapter of the book the reader was given a choice of how they wanted the story to progress with instruction of what page to turn to, depending on the storyline they chose. Today, text adventures do still have a bit of a cult following. They are better known today as interactive fiction. While they may not be the technological marvel that they were in the 70's and 80's, they still have their place in modern gaming. One way they hold true is in their innovative and compelling storylines. They also have a following among the blind community because they are easily played using either text to speech or braille. However, there are many blind gamers that will not play them because they don't want to listen to a droning text to speech voice for weeks at a time or they don't own a braille display due to their exorbinant cost. Thus enters the audio adventure game. While there have been a few good titles in this genre for the blind, many still feel they were also plagued by shallow storylines and less than compelling voice acting. In fact next to none of them reach the level of many text adventures in the realm of immersive stories. There have been many among the sighted games that captured this quite well though like Metal Gear Solid and the Resident Evil series. Aside from the visual elements, what those games did quite well is they used complex storylines, sound effects, music and mood from the voice acting to draw you into the game. In Resident Evil if you walked into an erie hallway you could literally feel that something was not quite right about it because the mood and volume of the background music and sound effects would change to a much darker theme. I feel that for the blind game developers, this level of complexity has not yet been attained but is attainable. It does require that much closer attention is paid to storryline, voice acting, sound and the mood the story writer is trying to achieve. Simply put, if the voice acting is bad it won't be believable. If the mood of the music is happy in a dark area it won't draw the listener in. If the monsters don't crash in from behind them they won't turn to look. In concequence without compelling elements such as these, customers won't feel the need to purchase the game, and the game developers will continue to feel that the blind gamer market is still a small niche market. Personally, I do hope these barriers and beliefs will be overcome in the near future. With a bit of imagination, closer attention to detail and willingness to work together, I believe they will. jpgreer: 17.08.2008, 20:07:45 End of document

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Who is really behind your shiny new toy causing hatred?

admin — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:00:27 +0000

Time and time again we hear Apple is better than this product, HP is this, Microsoft is that. Anyone that is falling into this product is better than that garbage is falling into what is called advertising propaganda. Let me start by asking you, the reader, where Apple products are built? Where are Hewlett Packard products built? Where is that Dell computer you have been looking at built? How about that nice new Sony Playstation? How about that Nokia phone that you claim is so much better than an Apple iPhone because it's not Apple? All of those products and product brands are all manufactured by one company in China. Literally, they are all manufactured by one company called Foxcon. Now you may be saying that you don't believe it, how could this be. Apple is an American company. So is Dell, but the truth is, they are both manufactured in the same manufacturing complex in China. And before any other countries start blaming America for the state of the economy, and that American corporations are the problem, take a moment to look into those products you may think are manufactured in your home country. I can guarantee you they are not. In fact, Canada only requires that 51 percent of any product be manufactured in Canada to be labeled, "Made in Canada". For example Rim, the company that makes Blackberry phones is made in Canada, right? Wrong. Take a look into where that LCD screen on your phone is made, then look at where the processor for it was made. How about the plastic it was made from. Did Canada manufacture that? Where did the oil come from that made the plastic. Was that oil drilled in your country? Now I don't mean to single out Canada in this, because every country does the exact same thing. People are being duped by a very simple propaganda called advertising. Religions are guilty of it, governments are guilty of it, every country around the world is guilty of it. Religion uses it to advertise their view of right and wrong, and causes people to judge those who don't see the world in their view. What does that manufacture? It manufactures hatred, and drives war. What does war do? It makes those corporations that manufacture your favorite toys richer. Surely you can see that Chinese processor in your cell phone being used in that computer that shoots guns can't you? Do you think that American and western countries are the only one to blame for it all? If so take a look into the Chinese naval base in Pakistan. How about that oil pipeline they have that runs from Pakistan to China. How about that gold mine that is not too far from that naval and trade route base. Is all the money from that gold going to the people in Pakistan? How about the oil interest in Iran? Is all the oil going to America, or does Russia, China, U.K., Austrailia, North Korea, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Isreal, New Zealand, Spain, and so on also use that very same oil? It is not the people of each country that we should be angry at, it is the corporations that give money to the governments and pay off politicians for their own gain that are the problem. And it all comes down to you and the choices you make. What company made that food you just ate while reading this? How much did you pay the corporation so you could have electricity so you could run your computer so you could read this? What created that electricity? Was it coal? Was it oil? Was it a dam on a river that no longer has as many fish in it? Was it nuclear? Are they all American companies? If you believe they are, you might want to look again before you get angry.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

About another section of the site

admin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:50:09 +0000

This is just a quick post to clear up any confusion people may have about the RSS feeds available on Blind Crawler.com. Some who read this blog may or may not be aware that my friends and I also produce a series of podcasts you can subscribe to via another RSS feed. The feed address for the podcasts are different from the feed for the blog posts. The RSS feed address for the podcast is: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/BlindcrawlerPodcasts
For those who are not aware of what a podcast is, think of it as a pre-recorded radio show, you can download and listen to at your leisure on your computer or mp3 player. Our podcasts cover a fairly wide range of topics, from politics, medical issues, cooking, to gadgets and a bit of comedy. One thing you may notice as you listen to our shows is the varying quality of the audio. We do hope you can forgive us for the audio quality, and still benefit from the content of the shows. Many of us are recording the shows with little or no money available for microphones or equipment to do so. We are also learning how to do these things as we go, so we may not be up to everyone's standards for entertainment, but we do try. Many of the glitches in the audio production are also because of myself, and lerning as I go in audio editing and engineering. However, we do hope you will visit the podcast feed, give us a listen, and tell us what you think, good or bad. Even the bad feedback is a good thing for us, because we are trying to make shows that are enjoyable for everyone. Take this next thing I am about to say with a bit of tongue in cheek humor. If you listen and can't stand the shows because of the bad sound quality, we do also have PayPal buttons sprinkled throughout the site. If you donate to the shows, then we could buy some higher grade equipment to sound better. Well, it's a thought, but not sure if the donations for such things will happen, nor is it why we do the shows. We do the shows simply because we enjoy doing them, and because we hope you enjoy listening to them. I do apologize if in this post I seem to be rambling about a subject you may not care about, but perhaps we can both agree that the internet does open up a world of expressed opinion and fact for all of us. It's nice to have such a place to express them, is it not? In my opinion it is. The podcasts are just another way that my friends and I are able to express both opinion and fact.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

The guilt of greed and need.

admin — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 05:52:08 +0000

Many people throughout history have been trying to find the cause for war. Why does it happen? Who caused it? What caused it? There is a very simple answer that very few of us will admit to, that we are all guilty of. The answer is greed. It's that feeling of thinking that person has more than me. It's that feeling that if we don't do something about it, someone is going to take away everything we have. It's even that feeling of I need this thing in order to survive. The truth is, since birth we are bred to think this way. Now, who are the people responsible for war? This may come as a shock, but it is all of us. Human society, including myself has been duped. We are all raised to want and need something better in life. There are those that know this fact about human behavior, and they prey on it, even before we realize it. We have all been born into a corporate society. Everything we see these days has been manipulated by corporations. Government, no matter how poor the people are in a particular country. Religion, no matter how noble they may seem. Even a business who's purpose is to save human lives is guilty of this greed, because they all do it with agenda in mind. There are those that will disagree with me about religion being a part of the cause of greed. But before you disagree blindly, take a break from reading this, and look on your cross hanging on your wall, or around your neck, and tell me where that cross was made? What store did you buy it from? Why did you feel you needed to buy it? These same questions apply, no matter what religion you may be. Do any of the religions of the world say that we need to buy symbols to signify what we believe? I wonder if that child laborer working in a sweatshop in China believes the same way you do about the Bible or Koran they printed for you? In fact take a look at the sticker on anything you have bought. Where was it made? For example, if you buy a pair of $40 pants at your local department store. That $40 is a week's wage to the person who physically made that pair of pants. The sad part of it all is, so many people will read this and think, "How terrible", but will continue on with their day as normal, because it does not affect them personally. That, is how the corporations get to continue on with business as usual. They depend on you saying, "I have no idea how to fix it, but I need this thing for this or that." Even you that are reading this are guilty of that same greed of need. Afterall, you needed a computer in order to read this blog post did you not?

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

A night at war

admin — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:40:18 +0000

This is for the blind people that complain because life is not going their way. Imagine for a moment being in the U.S.

Marines. It's dark outside and because there is no electricity, there are no lights. in other words, you cannot see anything.

Suddenly a gunshot comes from somewhere, and a split second later you hear the bullet come what seems like inches from your

ear. A moment after the gunshot the brigade you are with begins to yell in unity "Sniper! Sniper! Sniper!" The shot seemed to

have come from a row of houses in the distance, but where? As the endless chatter of the military radios begin to chatter,

you hear someone else from the brigade yell something indistinguishable over the rest of the noise. Nearly as suddenly as it

began, the noise quiets down, and the air becomes dead silent. An order is passed down to you by a whispering voice to move

to the third point, west. Your average citizen may not know what that means, one because they were not at the military

briefing you attended, and two, your average citizen probably would have been sending their next text message over Twitter

and missed what was said anyway. So, you and your buddy that you were assigned to, run quietly to move into position. You get

to the position and then crouch behind a bombed out wall that would seem to be the only thing left standing from the

structure. Your knee crouches on something soft. An odd place for something soft. When you reach your hand down to see what

it is, you discover that it is the charred remains of what was once a teddy bear. It then becomes clear that the wall you are

behind was once the house of a family with children. Your military training now has to kick in to block out the thought of

who has died in this very spot. You have a job to do soldier! Your job is to protect the lives of your friends, and yourself

now. Can you do this, or would you just break down emotionally? In this situation, an emotional breakdown would mean certain

death. Your mind still wants to wander away to all of the friends and loved ones that have passed away, and those who smile

and greet you at the door when you return home. That, is the reason why you fight. Because if you do not, that thought will

forever become a memory. A second shot rings out. You hear the bullet hit the wall in front of you at about the same level as

your heart. Whoever this is, knows you are there. Your partner then whispers in your ear that he was able to see the fire

from the gun from that last shot. He thinks he can get a clean shot at the sniper, but he will need a distraction to draw the

sniper out. "There is another wall over there. Echo point, and it is about 5 meters", he says, "Do you think you can make it

there?" He gives no reason why you need to break cover, and move to that position, but he does out rank you. "Wait for a

moment", he says, "then when I say move, move into position"
A short time passes, then he gives the word. Without hesitation, you break cover and head for the far wall. Almost as

suddenly as you break cover another distant shot rings out, and the bullet passes behind you. You do not want to give him

another shot so you hasten your step to the wall. No sooner than you take that next step, your buddy stands, aims, and takes

a shot. You hear the crack of the gun echo off of a distant building, and then that dead silence again as you continue to

move into position. As you reach the wall, the silence continues only for a moment, and then what seems like a distant cry

can be heard. Another shot is taken by someone in another position, and then the cry stops. The radio hooked to your side

suddenly keys up,and a voice says, "Sniper down, DOA, militant appears to be around 7 or 8 years of age."
The storry I have just written to you, begs the moral question, no matter if you are blind, sighted, in another country, we

have to teach our children well. Teach them not to hate, but not to be dependant on the life they are given, because it can

change in an instant. Given the age of the child in the story, the only life he would have known is a life surrounded by war.

A parallel to the story is there is a generation of kids that all they will know is dependance on what they can be given. Are

either of these parallels being taught the right way to survive? That is a question that will require you, the reader, to

take a look around you, and take that step to change what you know is wrong. Because if you don't, your children will grow up

just as dependant as you are, because children will learn what we teach them. Sometimes, by what they see and hear. There are of course more moral issues that can be taken away from reading this story, but I will leave that up to you to think about.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.