Diary of a lost college writer

How to import MS office word auto correct list into openoffice and libraoffice

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:46:29 PDT

This procedure will require
1. a text editor with ability to search and replace with regular expressions (I use NoteTab, free on the internet)
2. an archiver with viewing capability (I use WinRar, free on the internet)
3. A list of bad and good words in text format separated by some arbitrary symbol. (I used the autocorrect.txt file from Thunderbird email.)

(Autocorrect.txt from Thunderbird email comes in that format and has over 900 common mis-spellings with corrections. To find autocorrect.txt in Thunderbird: do a search for the file, or look in Thunderbird's extension folder for a folder ending in "117}", and open that folder. Using your text editor, open autocorrect.txt and it contains entries such as the following:

monday<>Monday
tuesday<>Tuesday
wednesday<>Wednesday
abscence<>absence
acces<>access
accesories<>accessories
accidant<>accident
....

When you have a text file of errors and corrections separated by some symbol such as <> (as above), you are ready to import it into Open Office.)

Do the following:

1. Open your list of corrections (in the format above) in your text editor.
2. Do search and replace-all for the following 3 operations:

1. Search for ^ (regular expression) and replace all with this exact phrase:

<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="

(you must include the trailing double-quote)

Your list should now look like this:

<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name=" monday<>Monday
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name=" tuesday<>Tuesday
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name=" accidant<>accident
......

2. Search for <> (or whatever separating symbol you have used) and replace all with this exact phrase:

" block-list:name="

(you must include both double-quotes)

Your list should look like this:

<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="monday" block-list:name="Monday
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="tuesday" block-list:name="Tuesday
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="accidant" block-list:name="accident
....

(note that there MUST be a single blank space between the double-quote following the error and the text: block-list:name.)

"monday" block-list:name

3. Search for $ (regular expression) and replace all with this exact phrase:

"/>

(you must include the double-quote)

Your list should now look like this:

<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="monday" block-list:name="Monday"/>
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="tuesday" block-list:name="Tuesday"/>
<block-list:block block-list:abbreviated-name="accidant" block-list:name="accident"/>
....

Your list of corrections is now ready to be placed in the Open Office autocorrect list.

1. Close Open Office.
2. Locate a file beginning with acor_ It will likely be acor_en-US.dat or acor_en-CA.dat or whatever language you are using. This file is in the ....\user\autocorrect folder in your Open Office profile.
There will be more than one such file if you use autocorrect with more than one language.
3. Make a copy of this file (e.g. "copy of acor_en_US.dat" and save it in the same folder so that you can re-use it if you make an error.)
4. Open the file acor_en_US.dat (or whatever your file is called) using your archiver. (You might have to right-click on the file, then Open with, then choose your archiver program.)
5. In the archiver window, click once on a file called "DocumentList.xml"
6. Use your archiver's View command to open this file in your text editor.
7. The very last entry in this file is: ></block-list:block-list>
8. Place your cursor immediately between the "><". Like this:
> |</block-list:block-list>
(Your cursor MUST be immediately between the two angle-brackets.)
9. Go to your data file (the list of errors and corrections you created above) and copy the entire file (Crtl-A, then Ctrl-C)
10. Go to your acor_en_US.dat file, (be sure your cursor is in the position explained above) and insert your data (Ctrl-V)
11. Save this file.
12. Go to your archiver and it will ask if you want to update the archive. Answer Yes.
13. You're done! Close the archiver and your text editor.
14. Open a document with Open Office, go to Tools/Autocorrect/Replace and you will find all your corrections there, ready to use, adjust or delete as you wish

A crippled critic review of breaking dawn part 1 with audio description

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:16:37 PDT

Click this link to buy the described DVD of Breaking Dawn for $12

I know how this ends,” Jacob (Taylor Lautner) snaps at Bella (Kristen Stewart) in the mawkish, intermittently gory “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1,” “and I’m not sticking around to watch!”

This penultimate “Twilight” film is the best in the series so far. It’s languorous, romantic, moody, and, in the end, horrifying. The long-awaited wedding of Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) is finally here, and it’s a beautiful set piece, all longing glances and tension. The marriage of a girl to a vampire who’s terrified that his love will tear her apart is appropriately suspenseful. The bed-shattering, PG-13 honeymoon is played for sweetness, but Bella’s sudden and problematic pregnancy (the fetus is sucking the life out of her) is genuinely disturbing. The director treats the supernatural drama with a grave, serious eye, and the film’s the better for it. The movie has the slow, page-turning feel of a gothic novel; the actors deliver their lines in hushed tones, until the violent childbirth rattles the film to an unnerving, bloody conclusion. Here, love and romance lead to horror, and the author Stephenie Meyer’s characters are shown to be blessedly primal; they do what they do out of pure animal instinct.

Tween audiences likely won’t agree, but really, who can blame him? Poor Bella. All she ever wanted was to get into the pants of hottie vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who once sat next to her in science class. But if there’s a moral that teenage girls can take away from these films based on Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular novels, it is this: Lust doesn’t pay.

Bella’s been beaten, bitten, driven to suicidal depression and nearly murdered over the course of the past three films. She fares no better in “Breaking Dawn — Part 1,” when her first time with new husband Edward leaves her not only bruised from head to toe, but impregnated with his demon spawn, devouring her from the inside.
Still, it was a beautiful wedding.
Director Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Dreamgirls”) hits his stride at the film’s start with a satisfyingly lavish spectacle, starring an awkward Bella teetering down the aisle in high heels (and trying not to dwell on her Boschian nightmare of the night before, in which she and Edward leer over a wedding-cake-shaped pile of guests’ bloody bodies).
Welcome bit players surface to give funny toasts. Bella’s dad Charlie (Billy Burke) reminds his new son-in-law he’s a cop who owns a gun; Anna Kendrick’s Jessica reveals an awesome high school nickname for Edward: “The Hair.”
But it all goes wrong just when it should go right: Bella and Edward’s long, long, long-awaited honeymoon sex scene is the most anticlimactic deflowering since Jennifer Jason Leigh’s in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (an old-timer’s movie, kids!) One shot of Pattinson’s muscular arms snapping the headboard in two, and it’s the next morning at their Brazilian island villa. Bella doesn’t even get a chance to enjoy the afterglow, as Edward’s already telling her how sorry he is to have roughed her up. “I’m not,” she says, in an uncharacteristic display of not agreeing with everything he says. “Don’t ruin this for me.”
Too late! Because. . . she’s late.
Then everything’s all soap-operatic close-ups and weirdly political hand-wringing. “We’ll get that thing out,” Edward vows, while Bella clutches her already-bulging stomach protectively. The pregnant woman’s body knows what it wants. While the werewolves mass outside waiting for the unholy birth of the baby they’re pledged to destroy, the vampires wilt and Bella readies herself for her likely death. Is there a political message in Bella’s insistence that the fetus, however monstrous, is not an “it” but a child that must be delivered? I’m not ruling it out—but context, people. In any case, the last twenty minutes of Breaking Dawn are so harrowing that it’s possible to forget that most of the acting is soap-operatic (the guy who plays Carlisle is aging to look like Liberace) and the dialogue from hunger. The movie’s that primal.
The rest of the Cullen family (Peter Facinelli, Nikki Reed, Kellan Lutz, Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone) resurface and engage in a debate about whether to use the term “fetus” or “baby.” (When their work is done here, perhaps they can be dispatched to Mississippi.)
Condon’s not doing anyone any favors with his relentlessly tight facial shots: the hair and makeup budget for this film seems to have been reallocated to the humor department (there are actually a handful of intentional laughs, in between the groaners). Reed and Facinelli in particular look like their wigs were left out in the rain in between movies.
Good old Jacob, the hotheaded werewolf Bella loves (but only as a friend), doesn’t have much to do in this installment besides stomping around vowing to make someone pay for Bella’s increasingly skeletal condition, communing with his wolf pack in abysmal CGI, and in the film’s absolutely creepiest moment, “imprinting” on Bella’s baby daughter, which means she’s his destined soul mate.
As Bella — very reminiscent of Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby” — sips a Styrofoam cup of O-negative and nears her due date, Condon seems to regain his momentum. The film’s final, bloody act, which sees the birth of Bella and Edward’s baby via vampire cesarean (it’s what you think), almost but not quite makes up for the past hour of overwrought living-room histrionics and muddled wolf-vampire skirmishes.
Finally comes the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Bella opens her eyes, reborn as a vampire. But any real payoff — seeing her get the chance to stop being such a darn pushover — is delayed until next fall, when “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2” arrives in theaters.
Pattinson, who seems pretty well aware of how ridiculous this has all gotten, sums it up nicely. “Well,” Edward says to his emaciated, blood-slurping bride, “they say the first year is the hardest” I agree, because in such a two hour parole, nothing could have been worse, except for the audio description.
The audio description, supposed to give clues to what's happening in Bella’s abysmal quest to birth something that should have never even existed, is actually, by far, the most annoying audio description that I have ever heard. Some editing went wrong in the audio description department because the overly dull female narrator interrupts the dialogue a third of the way into the movie and continues to do so throughout the films duration, making me want to turn off the audio description. The description is written very well despite the redundancy of word choice in sentences and for the fact that the writer uses words that are not in a dictionary. For example, the scene blanches to pure whiteness. But the poor performances of the narrator drawls so much from the writing it’s really hard to give the audio description writer any credit what so ever. Narrator Jones Wilmore provides a decent listening experience. Her tones in scenes is somewhat appropriate, kind of like someone who goes to a funeral and laughs when the pastor tells a joke that no one else laughs at. Jone attempts to deliver clear audio description, but due to extremely poor editing by WBGH media access group, the experience is demised far more significantly than I would have hoped.
With the rise of the new breaking dawn part two coming out, there's only one way that the soon to be dead twilight film franchise will have nowhere to go but up. With poor audio description, and an overall performance, I resolve to give this movie one bite out of five. I just hope that the next money making film won’t Rob me of my life and my sanity.

GW Connect has now improoved!

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:02:08 PDT

The following major changes have been made to GWConnect since version 1.06. Please consult the GWConnect documentation (included with the download) for full details on all new features.

GWConnect can now be made ad-free for non-Window-Eyes customers. Please visit http://www.gwmicro.com/catalog/gw_connect for details.
GWConnect's startup time has been reduced.
You can now rename contacts in GWConnect. Either choose the Rename item from the Contact/Context menus or hit F2. If the renamed text is blank, GWConnect will fall back to the contact's own display name or phone number (in the case of Skype Out contacts).
A new privacy dialog has been added to the Skype menu. This will allow you to limit who can call you, send you IMs, etc.
Also under the Skype menu is a voicemail options window. Here you can enable/disable whether voicemail is active for your account as well as record your own greeting. Note that it appears that for this feature to work, you have to explicitly enable the voicemail option from your Skype account on the web if you haven't already done so.
Added SMS support. Note that the Skype Kit only supports sending SMS messages. There is presently no way to receive them. Additionally, you must have sufficient Skype Out credit or sending the message will fail.
Added an "Answer" item to the Call menu so you can now use this directly from the main UI in addition to the dialog or global hotkeys.
When a call begins, GWConnect will now tell you who's calling if you have enabled speech messages.
Under the call menu is a "Hold/Resume Conversation" menu item. This will let you put the active call on hold locally and resume it. GWConnect will announce the new status of the conversation; e.g. "conversation on hold" or "conversation resumed."
The Contact menu has a "View Mood Text" item for people who weren't able to see the full mood text column. All this does is open a message box with the mood text for easier review.
Added Alt F1 through Alt F12 (excluding Alt F4) to switch to different preset contact views such as Skype Contacts, Skype Out Contacts, etc. The name of the new view is also announced.
There is a new tab in the options window called "Startup & Shutdown." All choices related to GWConnect's startup, minimization, and shutdown behavior have been moved here.
Added an option to the Startup & Shutdown tab to ask you whether you want to close GWConnect on exit. This is enabled by default.
Added the option to have Alt-F4 minimize GWConnect rather than close it outright. This option is found in Options/Startup & Shutdown.
Added an option to automatically answer incoming calls (under Options/General). When active, any incoming calls will be answered but only if you aren't already in a call with someone else. If you are, the caller is sent immediately to voicemail.
In options/general is an edit box where you can instruct GWConnect to hang up if you don't answer an incoming call after X number of seconds (default is 30). Enter only whole numbers greater than 0. Note that this option will only do something if you have set this value to be greater than 0 and if you have enabled voicemail for your account.
An option to speak timestamps for incoming and outgoing chat messages has been added to Options/Speech (default is unchecked). This setting is entirely independent of the "show timestamps" option for the message log.
A new checkbox has been added to the speech tab to cause GWConnect to always say "alert" prior to any of its messages. This is disabled by default. Note that this only applies to program-generated events such as when contacts sign in, a message is received, etc. Anything you do which would normally cause speech (such as changing contact views, reading messages in text chat windows, etc. will not produce the extra "alert" text.
The message log tab in the options dialog has been renamed to "History."
Under the history tab of the options window is a new group of radio buttons which will let you choose how much text chat and recent event history should be retrieved. The default is to only retrieve activity from the last 30 days.
Added a checkbox under the "Startup & Shutdown" tab of the options window to let you choose whether to run GWConnect when Windows starts. There is now no need to re-run the setup program or manually delete the GWConnect shortcut from the local user's startup group if you want to change this behavior after installing GWConnect.
A setting has been added to Options/Files which will allow you to have GWConnect automatically close file transfer windows when they complete.
You can now automatically accept incoming files when the respective checkbox is checked in the Files tab of the options window. When enabled, any existing file will be overwritten, and the incoming transfer will be accepted without any intervention.
If you place or accept a call while one is already active, you are now asked if you want to put the original conversation on hold, hang up on the original, or try to merge the calls. If you choose to put the original on hold, it will automatically resume once the new conversation ends. This behavior is configurable under the options window.
Added a "Call Back" button to the voicemail playback window. When clicked, it will stop the active voicemail (if one is playing) and place a call to the person who left the message.
If you place a call to one or more contacts with phone numbers defined (either by you or in his/her profile), you are now asked which one you want to call.
You can now assign office, mobile, and other phone numbers to contacts by choosing the "Assign Phone Numbers" item from either the Contact or context menus. Note that whereas you can assign three numbers to a regular Skype contact, you can only assign two for a Skype Out contact.
Your Skype Out balance can be viewed via the respective option from the Skype menu.
You can now view a contact's local time in the view profile window.
The program now says and shows user display names for incoming calls. Before, GWConnect would show only the person's Skype name or telephone number.
The names of call participants are spoken when calls begin.
When editing your profile or assigning phone numbers to a contact, each respective entry is normalized before the change is committed to Skype.
Text chats now include a status line which will allow you to see when members of the active conversation are typing. Similarly, a checkbox to options/speech has been added to let you choose whether GWConnect speaks something when someone in an open text chat types a message. In addition, GWConnect likewise will send the appropriate notifications to members of a chat when you type.
Added Control-A, Z, X, C, and V hotkeys to select, undo, cut, copy, and paste text inside chat and SMS windows.
Messages in text chat windows are now displayed a bit differently to make them easier to read visually.
When inviting users to a text chat, you can now choose as many people as you like rather than only being able to add one person at a time.
If you sent a message whose contents was a single emoticon, GWConnect would play the outbound message sound but failed to display it in the message log. This has been fixed.
Adding users to an existing one-on-one conversation worked, but the title bar of the chat window would never update when adding someone to a conference. This has been fixed.
If a conversation is put on hold remotely or if a participant puts you on hold locally, GWConnect will now speak and display a message saying as much. In addition, a short beep will play every ten seconds while the active call is held.
GWConnect can now detect when the list of available audio devices changes; e.g. if you plug in a USB headset, GWConnect will re-initialize the audio devices and try to keep hold of your input/output preferences. There is still a known problem where the microphone on certain cards such as the Sound Blaster Audigy will become active regardless of your preference in the Windows Volume Control. This is a known Skype Kit limitation awaiting resolution.
If you have more than one voice conversation active, you can now switch among them by using Control-Alt-F1 to go back or Control-Alt-F2 to go forward. Or, use the Previous/Next Conversation items under the call menu. GWConnect will speak and display the information about the new call which is activated.
When a call ends, GWConnect will speak and display its final duration on the status line similar to native Skype. If you don't want this to happen, uncheck the respective checkbox in Options/General.
GWConnect now keeps track of individual conversation durations as long as they're live. This means that if you switch among conversations, GWConnect will be able to keep up and display the correct duration on the status bar. Note that timing will cease whenever a live conversation is put on hold and start again when the call resumes.
When adding Skype Out contacts, you can now optionally assign a display name to the newly added phone number.
You can now send multiple files in a single file transfer request.
In the view profile window, GWConnect now shows the person's birthday (if given) in the default locale's format. e.g. in the US, you will see something like 8/29/1984 or in the UK, 29/8/1984. We also show the person's age if his/her birthday is available.
Under the Skype menu is a new item called "Change Language." This allows you to set GWConnect to run in any of its supported languages. If you decide to change the language, GWConnect will ask if you want to restart for the new change to become active.
If you first ran GWConnect in one language, hotkey descriptions in the options window would always appear in that language even if a new translation later became available. This has been fixed.
You can now send and receive contacts to people in your contact list or in text chats. Use the "Send Contacts" option from the Contact or context menu in the main window or by clicking the aptly named button in the chat window. Choose the contact(s) you want to send, and once done, the people at the other end will receive notifications allowing them to add the contact to their Skype buddy list, view his/her profile, or ignore the contact.
Added a reset settings option to the Help menu. You will be asked whether you want to continue. If you answer yes, your settings will be deleted and GWConnect will restart as if for the first time.
The system tray icon is always present so long as GWConnect runs.
GWConnect now stores window positions in addition to sizes when you move or size them.
If you moved or resized the main GWConnect window, the defaults would continue to be used on the next launch. This has been fixed.
Shortened the message descriptions in the recent events window; e.g. instead of "message received from Blah," there is now just "message from Blah." Additionally, call durations are displayed when available.
Sent/received messages in the recent events window now include their contents when applicable.
Under the Call menu are two items for turning the speaker volume up and down. Additionally, you can use Control-Alt-F11 and Control-Alt-F12 to accomplish the same from within any other active program. A "speaker volume" slider has also been added to the devices tab of the options window. Note that until Skype provides a way to disable microphone AGC, GWConnect will be unable to adjust your microphone volume. Appropriate controls will be added once this becomes possible.
Custom contact groups are now fully supported. You can add, edit, and switch to custom groups of your choice from under the "Custom Groups" item of the View menu.
GWConnect will no longer receive keyboard focus if it is configured to run from the system tray on launch.
Unicode (rather than ASCII) text is sent to your chosen screen reader. Text written in non-Latin languages will be spoken correctly, assuming the screen reader in question correctly supports Unicode.
Control-Alt-End has been added as a global hotkey to Hold/Resume conversations.
Added a hotkey to mute/unmute program-generated speech (Control-Alt-F3 by default).
A global hotkey has been added to repeat the most recently spoken message. it is Control-Alt-F10 by default.
Fixed the problem where the incoming authorization sound would play but no window would appear.
GWConnect would not always speak or display messages whose contents were single links. This has been fixed.
An option to repeat the caller ID of an incoming caller has been added to Options/Speech (enabled by default). When active, GWConnect will repeat the name of who is calling every five seconds.
Added a hotkey to focus the most recently active chat within the active GWConnect session (Control-Alt-C by default).
Choosing "Show Main Window" from the GWConnect system tray icon would sometimes do nothing. This has been fixed.
When you tried to leave a voicemail for someone, GWConnect would sometimes hang up immediately when the voicemail window opened. This has been improved. Note that Skype are still investigating voicemail-related issues that some GWConnect users have reported. An updated runtime will be shipped with GWConnect when the issues have been corrected.
A number of visual changes have been made which will not impact screen reader users.
Fixed the issue where the settings file would sometimes become corrupted at program shutdown.
Many minor bugs have been corrected thanks to error reports. Thank you!

Google's avvessibility improovements.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:09:36 PDT

This week Google announced a number of accessibility upgrades for various services. Among the services that were upgraded were Google+, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

The Google Docs and Google Calendar update improves their compatibility with screen readers. Now it is easier to use these services with VocieOver, Jaws and ChromeVox. Google Docs and Google Calender now have more keyboard shortcuts for easier navigation. To learn more about the upgrades click here and here. Google Docs and Google Calendar are free for anyone with a Google account.

Another Google service that received accessibly upgrades is Google+. Google+ is an invitation only social network. One of Google+'s standout features is hangouts. Hangouts is a group video chat feature that supports multiple friends. When chatting, Google+ recognizes who is talking and brings their video to the front of everyone else's screen. People that use sign language were previously unable to get the floor of a group chat. Because people who sign language do not make noise Google+ was unable to recognize that they were talking. The update in Google+ gives deaf users the option to press shift+s during a chat to get them self recognized

Blind fun with AT&T

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:38:26 PDT

One of the things that has always bugged me (and I'm sure it has most of you, too) is to sit down to dinner only to be interrupted by a phone call from a telemarketer. I decided, on one such occasion, to try to be as irritating to them as they were to me. The call was from AT&T, and it went something like this:

Me: Hello

AT&T: Hello, this is AT&T....

Me: Is this AT&T?

AT&T: Yes, this is AT&T....

Me: This is AT&T?

AT&T: Yes. This is AT&T....

Me: Is this AT&T?

AT&T: YES! This is AT&T. May I speak to Mr. Kingett please?

Me: May I ask who is calling?

AT&T: This is AT&T.

Me: OK, hold on.

At this point, I put the phone down for a solid 5 minutes thinking that, surely, this person would have hung up the phone. I ate my salad. Much to my surprise, when I picked up the receiver, she was still waiting.

Me: Hello?

AT&T: Is this Mr. Kingett?

Me: May I ask who is calling please?

AT&T: Yes, this is AT&T....

Me: Is this AT&T?

AT&T: Yes, this is AT&T....

Me: This is AT&T?

AT&T: Yes, is this Mr. Kingett?

Me: Yes, is this AT&T?

AT&T: Yes, sir.

Me: The phone company?

AT&T: Yes, sir.

Me: I thought you said this was AT&T.

AT&T: Yes, sir, we are a phone company.

Me: I already have a phone.

AT&T: We aren't selling phones today, Mr. Kingett.

Me: Well, whatever it is, I'm really not interested, but thanks for calling.

When you are not interested in something, I don't think you can express yourself any plainer than by saying "I'm really not interested", but this lady was persistent.

AT&T: Mr. Kingett, we would like to offer you 10 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Now, I am sure she meant she was offering a "rate" of 10 cents a minute, but she at no time used the word "rate". I could clearly see that it was time to whip out the trusty old calculator and do a little ciphering.

Me: Now, that's 10 cents a minute 24 hours a day? AT&T: (getting a little excited at this point by my interest) Yes, sir, that's right! 24 hours a day!

Me: 7 days a week?

AT&T: That's right.

Me: 365 days a year?

AT&T: Yes, sir.

Me: I am definitely interested in that! Wow!! That's amazing!! AT&T: We think so!

Me: That's quite a sum of money!

AT&T: Yes, sir, it's amazing how it adds up.

Me: OK, so will you send me checks weekly, monthly or just one big one at the end of the year for the full $52,560? If you send an annual heck, can I get a

cash advance?

AT&T: Excuse me?

Me: You know, the 10 cents a minute.

AT&T: What are you talking about?

Me: You said you'd give me 10 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That comes to $144 per day, $1,008 per week and $52,560 per year. I'm just interested in knowing how you will be making payment.

AT&T: Oh no, sir, I didn't mean we'd be paying you. You pay us 10 cents a minute.

Me: Wait a minute here! Didn't you say you'd give me 10 cents a minute? Are you sure this is AT&T?

AT&T: Well, yes, this is AT&T, sir, but....

Me: But nothing! How do you figure that by saying that you'll give me 10 cents a minute that I'll give you 10 cents a minute? Is this some kind of suliminal telemarketing scheme? I've read about things like this in the Enquirer, you know. Don't use your alien brainwashing techniques on me.

AT&T: No, sir, we are offering 10 cents a minute for....

Me: THERE YOU GO AGAIN! Can I speak to a supervisor please?!? AT&T: Sir, I don't think that is necessary.

Me: Sure! You say that now! What happens later? AT&T: What?

Me: I insist on speaking to a supervisor! AT&T: Yes, Mr. Kingett. Please hold.

So, now AT&T has me on hold, and my supper is getting cold. I begin to eat while I'm waiting for a supervisor. After a wait of a few minutes and while I have a mouth full of food.......

Supervisor: Mr. Kingett?

Me: Yeth?

Supervisor: I understand you are not quite understanding our 10 cents a minute program.

Me: Id thish Ath Teeth & Teeth? (Is this AT&T)

Supervisor: Yes, sir, it sure is.

I had to swallow before I choked on my food. It was all I could do to suppress my laughter, and I had to be careful not to produce a snort.

Me: No, actually I was just waiting for someone to get back to me so that I could sign up for the plan.

Supervisor: OK, no problem, I'll transfer you back to the person who was helping you.

Me: Thank you.

I was on hold once again and managed a few more mouthfuls. I needed to end this conversation. Suddenly, there was an aggravated but polite voice at the other end of the phone.

AT&T: Hello, Mr. Kingett. I understand that you are interested in signing up for our plan?

Me: Do you have that friends and family thing because you can never have enough friends and I'm an only child and I'd really like to have a little brother.........

AT&T: (click)

How to install the OCR NVDA add on.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:32:01 PDT

after some furious pounding at my hot keyboard, I have found out how to install the OCR NVDA add on. I thought, "why should I keep this to myself?" so I figured that I would share it with you all! enjoy! To give the new experimental OCR plugin (that Jamie created) a whirl, you will need to download the plugin from The OCR plug in, and unzip the file. It will make a directory called OCR. This will need to be copied and pasted into the global plugin directory.
The easiest way to find out where to put the OCR plugin for the installer version, (and once you have copied the OCR directory), is to press the Windows key. Your start menu will come up. Go to programmes, then another set of menus will come up with all of the programmes on your PC. Once this comes up, find a menu called NVDA. Once there, a submenu will come up and you will need to find one called explore user configuration directory. Next, press enter. There will be some folders in there and you will need to find one called global plugins. Paste the OCR plugin into that directory. This is where other plugins will go for the installer version.
For the portable version, the OCR plugin will have to be put into the following directory: nvda...user configuration...global plugins. Make sure that you paste the plugin for the portable version into that directory.
You will need to reload the plugins, by going to reload plugins under the tools section in NVDA. (Insert N...tools...reload plugins). You will also need to reload NVDA to update your settings. The object you are going to scan must be in focus otherwise it will not work. If you are unsure, go to running locations and locate the item and press enter to put you into focus. To OCR the item (for example a pdf that has not been done), use the Insert key and the letter r to start it. It will say performing OCR, then say done. To read what has been written there, you will need to change over to the review cursor to read the contents of that document. Please read the section called reviewing text in the user manual if you are unsure. The information given back to you will vary from scanned image to image, depending on the quality of the things you have scanned. Please refer to step 4 above if needed. Currently, the OCR only works with the snapshots

How to be a white person

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:06:53 PDT

This is a guide on how to be white. White people, no one understands us white people at all. Perhaps if people read this top secret guide on how, in fact, to be a white person, then perhaps people will stop being so condescending to us, and judging us. These things are what every white person should do by decree. There shall be no exceptions. You MUST follow these guidelines.

1. Be disproportionately religious.

You, as the all-powerful white person have a strict duty to hold. That is teaching the black people, Mexicans, and Japanese about the bible, even though you’ve only read the New Testament. Spout your religious knowledge to any other ethnicity because you’re supposed to show off your superior intellect. Don't worry if it's wrong, no one will question you. Remember, you’re white!

2. Be a leader or an executive of a massive corporation.

It's your duty to strike down anyone who gets in your way, even your own brothers and sisters to get that high up position. Don't stop for anyone, even the poor. You’re white, so you simply have to be rich and wealthy. If you’re not, well… simply put, you’re not white. In order to be considered a true white man you must make it to the top, even if you have to bring people down with you. Perform excessive measures to get to the top of any corporate organization. In college, sleep with your teachers. At work, manipulate situations and people until you have control over the company and its finances.

3. Don't have empathy for those less fortunate.

You’re white. You shouldn’t understand what other people go through. If someone tells you a sob story, use it to gain in the social ladder, in money, fame, or popularity. Steal a few ideas, blackmail a few people if you must, but don't understand what the less fortunate have to go through. You can definitely lie about the fact that you do feel for them, but you can't have any genuine feelings. If you do, you’re not white.

4. Go to an Ivy League college.

You’re supposed to be the best, and how can you be the best if you don't strive. You can't go to a community college, ever! You have to go to a popular Ivy League school like Yale or Harvard. There is no if’s, or but’s about it. Go to an Ivy League school if you’re not smart or don't have the best’s grades or the best social skills. You’re supposed to give off the impression that you’re well endowed, and by doing this, you'll get even more respect. If you go to any other type of college, at all, well, you’re not white.

5. Stare at black people.

This is very critical in the white culture. At least 67 times throughout the year you have to stare at black people and make them feel uncomfortable. If you can, toss in a leer if you must. Stare at someone minding their own business, or especially a black person who appears to be doing something suspicious. You’re white, so it's your job to protect your planet earth even with the pollution, bad money management, and bad stereotypes you caused. You’re white, so you must be on the lookout for anything suspicious, especially them darker folks. You’re also supposed to be afraid of black people for no reason, and call the police on them instantly when they put their hands in their pockets. It's a white rule. If you don't call the police, even when nothing’s wrong and this black person is just getting their wallet, you’re not white.

6. Like one kind of music.

There's only one kind of music you’re supposed to like at a time. The two categories of music you are allowed to like are boy bands and country. You cannot like any other kind of music. The soft winy songs of the country songs are the trademark of your people. For the young white people, rock and boy bands will be your only music you like.

7. Be racist at least 78 times a year.

It's imperative to be racist to every other ethnic group out there. Say racist comments, make racist gestures, even telepathically transmit racist thoughts. Target black people especially. Every white person has to be racist a certain amount of time every year. This shows that you’re powerful and that you know who to trust. Even when you’re not being racist, make people think you’re racist. They must not ever know the truth; every white person should be racist at any cost. If you’re not, you’re not white.

There have been several people who were believed to be white, but have failed to perform multiple of the above actions. These people were looked down upon, stared at in public, backstabbed for money, called racist name's, and mentioned in a rock or country song. Remember, if you want to be white, you have to follow our strict code of conduct. Otherwise, you will go to community college.

NVDA now has OCR recognition!

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:01:39 PDT

Well all, as you all know, I am a huge supporter of the free NVDA project, and this has just made it all the better. Why? Because NVDA has, at long last, surpassed jaws with its new feature. NVDA now has OCR capabilities etched into it’s add on package. What does this mean? Well, now you will be able to do the same thing that jaws users will be able to do with a free screen reader that continues to update on its own! The new NVDA has been released, and there's a new add on manager added along with auto update and a host of other features. Highlights of this release include an in-built installer and portable creation feature, automatic updates, easy management of new NVDA add-ons, announcement of graphics in Microsoft Word, support for Windows 8 Metro style apps, and several important bug fixes.

New Features

NVDA can now automatically check for, download and install updates. (#73)
Management of custom plugins and drivers for NVDA has been made easier with the addition of an Add-ons Manager (found under Tools in the NVDA menu) allowing you to install and uninstall NVDA add-on packages (.nvda-addon files). (#213)
Many more common NVDA features now work in Windows 8 Metro style apps when using an installed release of NVDA, including speaking of typed characters, and browse mode for web documents (includes support for metro version of Internet Explorer 10). Portable copies of NVDA cannot access metro style apps. (#1801)
In browse mode documents (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.), you can now jump to the start and past the end of certain containing elements (such as lists and tables) with shift+, and shift+. Respectively. (#123)
New language: Greek.
Graphics and alt text are now reported in Microsoft Word Documents. (#2282, #1541)

About the OCR.

For dozens upon dozens of years things have been inaccessible to the blind. Java related applications, scanned PDF documents, DVD menus even, but now that's all changed with the new add on for NVDA. Frequently, you will encounter images that contain textual information. These can include a PDF file, the setup screen of an application, or the menu of selections for a DVD movie. While these images contain text that is readable by a sighted person, NVDA is unable to read the text as it is part of the image.

The new Convenient OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature enables you to access any image on the screen that includes text. With just a few simple keystrokes, NVDA will recognize the image in a matter of seconds and activate the cursor so you can navigate the resulting text. Here are a few cases where this would become useful.

1. Someone emails you a scanned image that contains text, such as a scanned PDF.

2. DVD menus.

3. Inaccessible programs that run with the java code.

4. Oddly formatted PowerPoint presentations.

I don't know about you, but I’d rather have this option, even though it's hard to install. The benefit, trust me, is a worthwhile one. I've installed it only once, and that's only after installing another plugin engine for NVDA. Below is the details of the add on.

Description = """Performs optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from an object which is inaccessible, such as a scanned PDF image or a DVD menu.

name = ocr
summary = OCR
version = 0.20120511.01
description = """Performs optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from an object which is inaccessible, such as a scanned PDF image or a DVD menu.
The Tesseract OCR engine is used. Only English is currently supported.
To perform OCR, move to the object in question using object navigation and press NVDA + R."""
author = NV Access Limited.

Link. OCR #NVDASR add-on package: http://t.co/Ns5DmUqs

Google's Self-Driving Cars Get Their First Learner's Permit

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:57:12 PDT

Google's mysterious and seductive self-driving car has taken another step toward the assimilation of our nation's byways, now that the state of Nevada as given the robotic wonder its very own driver's license. The Department of Motor Vehicles spent the last several months developing a new set of regulations to govern the operation and testing of "autonomous" vehicles and they've just awarded the first official driver's license based on those regulations to Google. That means the company can now test drive its cars on any public state roads, provided there are two soft and fleshy humans inside the vehicle who can monitor and take control, if necessary. Unfortunately, having two slow-witted mammals behind the wheel actually makes the car more dangerous, the only known traffic accident involving a Google car was blamed on human error. Apparently, we're the ones who can't be trusted to keep the machines safe.

blind gamer beast mode 1. halo hangup

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 05 May 2012 07:24:09 PDT

was playing the closing minutes of a halo death match, hiding behind a piller, actually on top of one. Using my sniper, I took out 6 men in a row, all within three seconds of each other. Elated, I jumped about, feeling badass that a blind guy sniped 5 people all in a row. I forgot that I was on top of a piller, and I jumped off the edge, committing suicide.

And that's my blind beast mode of the week. LOL.

Blind gamer tips!
#1. Don't jump randomly!

sightless hope chapter 13. A day at FSDB

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:54:48 PDT

click this link to read the chapter. http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2770005/14/Sightless_hope_A_memoir_of_child_abuse

What I Do When You’re Away

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:56:14 PDT

I sleep with the lights on, all of them. It's not because I miss you;
it's for safety. You probably don't know this, but you can't get
burglarized with the light on. The best defense is a good offense, so I
attack the threat of home invasion by turning on every single light in
our apartment — except for your desk lamp which I can't figure out how
to turn on. It's really only ever on when you're using your desk, anyway.

However, all the other lights will be on, and that includes the blue one
glowing from my television screen. It's not because I miss you; it's my
terrible upbringing. I was raised in a family where people woke up in
the middle of the night to reset their television sleep timer. Walking
through my childhood home at 2 a.m. it'd look like a sudden carbon
monoxide leak had occurred: people sleeping on floors, couches, in
chairs, and the rare bed, with lights and TV ablaze. To this day, you
could wake up more members of my family by turning a television off than
by turning one on.

I eat dinner very early when you're away. I mean super early, like I'm
vying with the elderly for the prize of being mocked by hack comedians.
I meet friends for meals too, but if I happen to be eating alone it will
be early. Also, I talk to the dog a lot. It's not because I miss you;
it's because we get along great and the dog makes some pretty erudite
points for someone who's illiterate.

This sounds depressing, but it's not. I truly enjoy my "me" time, which
has the added benefit of giving me an excuse to use the phrase "me"
time. I don't sit and wait for you like furniture and you'd never ask me
to do it. Although if I had to do it I'd be the armchair because it has
the best location, but that's just my New York sensibility. I go forward
and have adventures. It's not because I miss you; it's just what we both
do, part of being alive. Also, it's fun to think that when I will meet
you in the future I'll be slightly changed, because that is the closest
I'm going to get to being Marty McFly.

When you're away I still go out, but not too much. You're not my mom and
this isn't my Whisky rebellion (unless you count my overindulgence in
Alexander Hamilton trivia). You're not a cat and I'm not a group of
mice. I don't have to wait for you to be away to play; in fact, you
usually encourage it. Although I do eat a lot of pizza, being home
alone just doesn't ignite my inner Kevin McAllister. At the most I'll
have an extra drink, or maybe stay out slightly later. It's not because
I miss you; it's just a lot of people have birthdays this month.

Sometimes when you're away, I forget to lock the deadbolt and I think
about how pissed you'll be if we get robbed. Rightfully so, forgetting
to do that is pretty careless. Especially considering our current
Ross-and-Rachel-relationship with renter's insurance, do we have it?
Don't we? I think I online chatted with a guy from All State, but I
don't remember signing anything. Did you? Does the fact that I can do a
really good impression of Dean Winters as "Mayhem" mean anything?

The next time I leave the apartment, I'll throw on a few more lights.
That will cover us just in case we don't actually have the renter's
insurance and I forget the lock again. Also, it's really nice to come
home to that warm glow of the lit apartment. Another thing is, if you
happen to get back while I'm out, you'll be able to see our place from
the street, you know, in case you forget what it looks like while you're
away.

Plus, it'd be good to have that light spill out onto the sidewalk too,
because they still haven't fixed the broken bulb over the stoop. They
are being really irresponsible about it at this point. If Oprah's
self-defense episodes and Lifetime movies taught me anything, it's that
getting out your keys in the dark is a death wish. Unfortunately, as you
know, our building is owned by some kind of nameless ghost. I don't have
the number to his nowhereabouts, which is why nothing ever can be fixed,
including stoop bulbs. So yeah, the next time I leave the apartment,
I'll throw on a few more lights — except for your desk lamp, which I
can't figure out how to turn on. It's really only ever on when you're
using your desk anyway. So it makes sense that I can't figure out how
to turn it on; it's not because it's overly complicated.

It's because I miss you.

the accessible YouTube guide.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:32:37 PDT

Since YouTube is so inaccessible, and since I couldn't find a complete guide on how to make the YouTube experience work for you if you’re a blind user, I have resolved to make my own complete guide on how to make an accessible YouTube experience to the blind and the visually impaired. Pay close attention, because the earth will end in 9 months! Read on,

One thing to keep in mind is that this guide will be utilizing a lot of different resources and alternatives. There’s no single solution. I’ll talk about one piece of software that may help you but that isn't my primary aim. My aim is to provide alternatives for You Tubers and viewers who are blind. Enjoy!

Manage a YouTube account with a screen reader.

I'm sure there's a way to navigate around YouTube with a screen reader, but I'm too lazy to even fiddle with such nonsense and guess what those unlabeled buttons are for. I have two solutions. The first one is a lot better than the second one but if you really hate using mobile versions of things, then option two will be good for you.

1. Use the mobile version of YouTube. http://m.youtube.com. With this mobile website, you can actually do a lot of things to your account, even comment on videos. You can't reply directly to people on this site when they comment your video unless you type at, and then their user name. You can't message people by composing a new message. You can, however, read and reply to messages that you get in your inbox. You can also manage your subscribers. this site provides a screen reader friendly environment to at least edit your videos, playlists, personal info, account settings, account sharing, and all that and a little bit more. Uploading videos using this clean interface is a lot better than just uploading your videos through email. With this system, you get a better control of the title and description and even the tags. If you use your quick navigation keys, and your links list, you will be a pro YouTube user in no time! It doesn't have hardly any ads or graphics on the site, so you should have no problem at all navigating it after learning what the links are called when you are looking for them. There is one downfall however, actually, a couple. You can't watch videos or reply to comments directly with a link or button on videos. While this website is definitely lacking in some of the most essential in the whole YouTube experience, such as the composing a message feature, if you’re a frequent YouTube uploader, this is the best alternative for managing your YouTube presence.

2. Use the text based web browser, WebbIE. http://www.webbie.org.uk/download.htm. While this is an alternative to managing a YouTube account if you don't like the mobile interface, this isn't a good solution. Unfortunately, it's the best one for YouTube creators at the time of this writing. The web browser will attempt to display the entire site in a text format, and trust me this makes navigating a lot faster, but don't think you won’t hit the wrong button from time to time. There's buttons on there that just say search, or close, without any text before the button to tell us what it is. Also, using this browser, the search field for videos is somewhere at the bottom, but the search button to hit is both at the bottom and the top of the pages. Replying to comments is mainly the only easy thing to do using this method compared to the mobile YouTube option. Since you'll be on the main YouTube site using this browser, you'll have access to all of YouTube has to offer. Getting it to work for you, however, is a different story altogether. There's unlabeled buttons, unlabeled images, and this is even more evident navigating with this browser. In some cases you will come across a huge string of java links that are supposed to be for one button, or there will be buttons back to back coded with java and you will have to decipher them. Using standard navigation keys you'd use in Microsoft word mixed in with its own keys provided, this method will make it a lot easier to check your email and reply to YouTube messages despite the difficult layout of the website. It makes searching for videos a little bit easier and it makes editing the video information a little bit easier but not as easy and quick as the mobile website listed above. I should note that this isn't the web browsers issue, this is YouTube’s. The text based web browser can get rid of a lot of annoying flash animation ads that slow down navigating. The good thing is, you can keep the browser in text mode and just play videos and listen to them with no advertisements.

3. Free YouTube uploader software. http://downloads.dvdvideosoft.com/FreeYouTubeUploader.exe. If you’re just looking for an accessible desktop solution to upload videos, this is the best solution. You can upload videos, add the description and add keywords, but unlike YouTube where you can enter unlimited keywords, here you can only enter 15 per video. When you first start the program, as with all other software by this maker, such as free YouTube to mp3 converter, navigate to the options menu, browse around because each software is different, and then check the box that says enable screen reader mode. After you do this and then restart the application, it will become a lot better and faster to use with its own keyboard shortcuts and simplified interface. This software is only for uploading videos to YouTube but it's the best accessible desktop alternative to uploading YouTube videos.

4. A combo of all three. If you use a combo of all three above, you will be the best blind YouTube user ever!

Now that I've talked about how to accessibly manage your YouTube videos and account using a screen reader, now I'm going to tell you how to watch YouTube videos accessibly with no ads!

How to accessibly watch YouTube videos using a screen reader.

1. The accessible interface to YouTube. http://tube.majestyc.net/.this is a good website. All the search results are links with no thumbnails, and this layout presented is just a simple, clean, interface. You can even control the videos with keyboard shortcuts! You can't view related videos, or you can't comment on videos, but you can use the mobile website to do that if you really want to do that, or just use WebbIE. This is an okay accessible alternative to watching YouTube videos, but despite it missing some key features like showing user names of the video uploader, related videos, and the inability to play playlists, this one just falls short. I’d use this for just quick spurts on YouTube, and nothing lengthy. I hope it sticks around. There's a donation button at the bottom of the page to support the website.

2. Easier watching of YouTube videos. http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/. This website isn't as good, or as clean. I didn't even use it that long. It does have accessible YouTube controls, but you have to tab to everything. The search API also isn't that good at all. When I would try and look for a user or even a specific title, almost all the time nothing came up in the results without me digging through pages. I hated looking for videos on here. I didn't even want to stay here on this site. The search results are in a list that seems to be hard to navigate away from when using NVDA. I didn't like this site at all.

3. YourTube, accessible YouTube. http://www.povidi.com/yourtube/. This is the most complete and rich interface to YouTube I have ever seen that makes watching YouTube videos a breeze. This is the best alternative for watching YouTube videos accessibly! Unlike the other websites, you can watch every video that a user has uploaded by clicking into their profile, view comments, view information about the video, and see related videos. The controls are operated by buttons on the page, and it even has a checkbox to notify you when a YouTube video is done uploading so you can just play the video. This website will automatically skip ads in the YouTube video. When looking for a video, the results show up as headings with no thumbnails and brief descriptions of the video below the result. Unfortunately, you will not see who the video is by. You have to enter the video in order to see that information. Unfortunately, this website does not support playing playlists, as I know of, but definitely try this site out if you have a screen reader and if you just want to browse YouTube all day and watch some videos! This site, at the time of this writing, isn't hosting any ads on it. I hope this site expands its features, because even though it's a new website, this is some strong competition to beat!

And that's my comprehensive guide on how to get the most out of YouTube if you are totally blind. If you have any questions you can follow me, the blind writer, on twitter.

TV sure is educating! yeah!

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:55:48 PDT

This post was inspired by a god friend of mine. I was watching her watch TV and this post came to mind. You know, I may not have a college education, read books, travel, or — to be honest — go outside, but I’m perpetually acquiring new information like a sponge, like a little baby, like an erudite scholarly intellectual type guy. I’m like one of those old sages who live in temples high atop isolated Himalayan mountains whose every word is a golden nugget of universal truth. You see, I have cable television, which means I have The Learning Channel, the History Channel, The Travel Channel, and The Discovery Channel. These educational networks dispense valuable wisdom to me. All of this wisdom is relevant and never ever misleading, but I don’t need to tell you this; it goes without saying the purpose of television is to intellectually enrich viewers.

The other day, I watched a show on the History Channel called Ancient Aliens about how thousands of years ago, extraterrestrials contacted the Mayans and bestowed advanced scientific knowledge (nothing too advanced though like light speed engines, microchips, or the fact that human sacrifices are an ineffectual superstition). This allowed them to design the doomsday calendar and map the stars. These are all historical facts by the way. The scientists on the show know aliens visited because of statues that vaguely resemble astronauts and also hieroglyphics that mention Gods from the sky. At first, I thought this might be a bunch of made-up nonsense fabricated by conspiracy theorists and financially motivated anthropologists, but hey, it aired right after a World War 2 documentary — World War 2 actually happened, so this must also have happened. They’re the same kind of show. The History Channel would never juxtapose the wild theories of crazy people alongside real verifiable events from history. That’s not a thing that happens. It would be irresponsible.
You know what the best source of history is though? Cajun Pawn Stars . Also Swamp People . Also American Pickers . Nothing illuminates the past like a pile of junk in some old man’s garden shed. Oh my, I remember high school history class when the teachers took us on field trips to the homes of lonely obese hoarders, and how we would gleefully rifle through mountains of garbage for precious artifacts from, say, the civil war or medieval China. The hoarders would mumble interesting historical facts like, “Sometimes I tear hair out of my beard and eat it,” or “Expiration dates don’t mean nothing if it still smells like a food.” Meanwhile, I’d pull out a broken bird feeder or a bottle full of ancient urine and feel the weight of history pressing down on me like an overfilled trash bag being shoved down to make room for more trash. Once, our eighth grade history teacher invited a man whose job was to hunt down and kill alligators to lecture us about the finer points of swamp life. I’ll never forget the lessons he taught me: shoot the gator between the eyes and shrimp goes well with damn near any dish.
Ask me about bible mysteries. The Book of Revelations. Apocalyptic scenarios. I can tell you how one day, an asteroid is going to smash into the earth, and there’s nothing we can do about it . All of humanity will be wiped out in a fiery inferno that engulfs the planet like a formfitting orange and red striped blouse, reducing our greatest cities to deserts of ash. I can tell you how a killer supervirus will be released by terrorists in the middle of New York City, spread across the globe, and infect billions in a matter of days, and there’s nothing we can do about it . Where are you going? I want to tell you how God will bitchslap the planet, and wipe it clean of all the irredeemable sinners still hanging around after the rapture, and there’s nothing we can do about it . Then, after the destruction, there’s Life After People . I know what you’re wondering: what will happen to the kitties and puppies after we die from, you know, whatever? I can tell you because I’ve been enriching myself with what I call Brain Treasure. Little dogs will die first because predators will get them, and big dogs are too ungainly and short lived; the medium sized dogs, however, will flourish among the empty ruins of our civilization, eating our abandoned pizzas and ice cream sandwiches. You’re welcome for this precious Brain Treasure.
Sometimes I feel like I should leave the house — visit another country or at least get out of town for the weekend. But then I remember: every goddamn place is haunted. Haunted Hotels , Weird Travels , Most Haunted , Ghost Adventures , America’s Haunted Castles , Haunted Lighthouses — ghosts have infested every corner of this planet. There’s A Haunting on Discovery Channel, Ghost Intervention on TLC, Celebrity Ghost Stories on Biography — I mean, I used to think ghosts were manifestations of imaginative people desperate for some evidence of life after death or fitting things they don’t understand into a preexisting framework, but turns out: nope. Ghosts are totally real. I know for sure ghosts exist all over the place because of the high volume of shows about them on highly esteemed educational networks. Network executives would never exploit the superstitions of an ignorant populace for financial gain; they’re not monsters actively perpetuating a culture of delusion. Come on. Everything I’m saying is true because it sounds true when you read it. Let my sincerity wash over you like boiling hot tar. Let your preexisting notions regarding “irony” melt away like skin covered in boiling hot tar. If earnestness was boiling hot tar, you’d be drowning in an ocean of boiling hot tar right now. You’d be sobbing as your lungs filled with my metaphorical boiling hot sincerity tar.

A crippled critic review of breaking dawn on the way

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:51:17 PDT

I know you all have been asking for me to review the movie breaking dawn with audio description. It's on it's way, trust me. It will be written and uploaded within the next two weeks… if even that. I do have a lot to do after all. Heh. I will tell you all that this will be a huge negative review! Yes… I did hate that movie to the core, ncluding the audio description. You will see why when I get it uploaded. Until then,sit back, and wait. Smile.

Crippled Critic Review of Small Steps by Louis Sachar

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:33:40 PDT

Click here to buy Small Steps by Louis Sachar

Put yourself in Louis Sachar's shoes. You've been writing children's books for a number of years now and one day divine inspiration hits you and you come up with what could easily be called the greatest children's book of the last 25 years, "Holes". It sweeps the nation, gets a coveted Newbery Award, and is subsequently on every required reading list in the USA from now until doomsday. Now it's time to write a sequel. You do so and it falls into the lap of an average everyday children's librarian and sometime reviewer. And unbeknownst to you, Louis Sachar, you have just placed this perfectly nice graduate of an MLIS program in a bit of a pickle. Ideally, I want to be the kind of person who judges every title at hand on a one-on-one basis. I want to pretend that I've never read anything else by this author and that the book I am reading is its own separate entity. But with a book that has even the slightest connection to "Holes", this charade becomes almost impossible. "Holes" was a force of nature in and of itself, and "Small Steps", while a perfectly nice book, cannot even be breathed in the same breath as its predecessor. My advice? Give "Small Steps" to someone who hasn't read "Holes" yet.

His name is Armpit. Okay, that's not exactly true. His name is Theodore but back at Camp Green Lake he acquired his current nickname. Now he's out, finishing high school, and he has a pretty great job doing landscape work after school. That is, until X-Ray shows up. Another former Camp Green Lake inmate, X-Ray has a ticket scalping scheme that he's sure will earn beaucoup de bucks for the both of them. That is, if Armpit's willing to put up the cash. Aiding in this wacky investment, our hero is soon engaged in a series of events that culminate with him befriending/dating Kaira DeLeon. Kaira, for the record, is the greatest pop star alive, but by growing close to her Armpit is having a hard time putting his other troubles behind him. And when Kaira's unscrupulous manager wants to use Armpit's record to his advantage, the kid may be headed for deep trouble indeed.

It is a little hard to figure out why Armpit, who comes off as such a sweetie here, ever got sent to Camp Green Lake in the first place. There are some references a popcorn incident, but they're brief. The advantage to this, though, is that Sachar's brevity on the subject certainly makes it clear that Armpit is just an average joe caught up in a racist system. And Mr. Sachar's willingness to talk about race in this manner comes across as immensely refreshing, I have to say. So many children's authors pussyfoot around the issue, maybe bringing it up if the book is set in the past. Sachar, on the other hand, is willing to point out that if a large black teen is walking down the street, there are going to be people who cross to the other side. That said, he did it better in "Holes". "Holes", showed racism, both subtle and blatant. It managed to tie in the entire American system of racism from slavery times onward. "Small Steps", falls far more on the blatant side of the equation. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. It just means the story feels less whole.

Aside from the topic of racism, this is also a book willing to make reference to the current situation in Iraq. Moreover, it makes more than one sly reference to the most common bit of racist currency available today: Anti-Muslim feeling. When Armpit and X-Ray feel that the cops are on to their ticket scheme, they manage to try to shine that attention away from themselves and onto a non-existent character named Habib. Good old turban wearing, ticket scalping Habib. The unspoken thought is that if they name an imaginary Muslim to be the real scalper, maybe the cops will feel that there are bigger fish to fry somewhere. It doesn't work, but it manages to say loads about how X-Ray and Armpit's minds work.

Still, there were structural problems with the book. It was very odd how Sachar kept tossing the point of view hither and thither throughout the text with very little rhyme or reason. One minute we're in Armpit's head, another minute we're following Kaira, and another we are in the bedroom of the girl Armpit likes at school. And I hope you like figures, by the way. This book has a whole heaping helpful of economics in it that may cause the average set of eyeballs to glaze over for a moment or two. Finally, the bad guy's scheme in this book is a teensy bit flawed. Kaira's manager intends to have his star charge hurt. The only problem is, he himself hired her bodyguard. So when that guard shows up, it shouldn't be as great a surprise to the manager as the book makes it out to be. Altogether, these are small qualms, but the book had the potential to feel so much tighter and whole. They rankle with the reading.

In the end I kind of felt like, "Small Steps", was trying to be more of a teen read than "Holes" ever was. Always taking into account that the "Holes" readership grerw older, this makes a fair amount of sense. And teen-like elements, such as references to sex, are nice and straightforward but I suspect the real readership will still turn out to be "Holes" lovers of the younger stripe. For the most part, "Small Steps" is able to find its footing and doesn't slip up too often. It also has Sachar's trademark readability quotient, which doesn't hurt things any. From sentence one the book is go go go. So while I find that I cannot block the memory of "Holes" completely from my mind, I at least can give "Small Steps" a wary thumbs up. It could be better, but it's pretty darn sweet as it is.

What Your Favorite Disney Film Says About You... The Weird Writer Style

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:20:02 PST

Pocahontas: Perhaps the first film that opened your eyes and taught you to hate oppression and ignorance in all its forms, Pocahontas launched you into a lifelong career of being into nature, teaching doe-eyed white men what it means to respect others, and absolutely hating when hipsters wear Native American stuff. Pocahontas taught you all that being strong, proud, and true to yourself means — all while showing a more-than-decent amount of thigh and rebelling against your totally obtuse father. Pocahontas just got it.
Cinderella: It would be a safe bet that you probably have a thing for shoes and — if you took any serious life lessons away from the film — you truly believe that all ugly people are inherently evil. You are also totally down to date a guy who is in no way right for you, but who chance brought you to in too romantic a way to get over. But hey, after so many years of underpaid manual labor (in your case, working at Starbucks, most likely) you’re totally ready for someone who’ll offer you a bit of romance and escapism.
Fantasia: Let’s be honest — you get completely, incomprehensibly stoned and watch the hell out of some Fantasia .
Alice In Wonderland: This crazy, kooky, totally un-mainstream, slightly dark Disney film would kick-start your lifelong love affair with all things Hot Topic, My Chemical Romance, and dressing like Alice herself. The Mad Hatter came to represent so many things that your parents just didn’t understand, the Cheshire Cat had the smile that stayed with you long after the rest of him faded away, and that rabbit was just so avant-garde with his pocket watch. You probably even enjoyed that incredibly lackluster reboot with Johnny Depp.
Sleeping Beauty: I don’t know, I think we can all agree that Aurora (Had to Google that, does anyone really remember that girl’s name?) is by far the lamest Disney Princess. I don’t know what you like if you like her — sleeping in late, being really pretty, and nailing the most boring Prince? I guess? In any case, you’re not doing a whole lot until some guy comes along and validates the hell out of you. I assume you’re the kind of person who puts romantic song lyrics in your statuses and likes pictures of children in wedding outfits kissing. Just a hunch.
Song of the South: LOL, you’re so, so racist.
Peter Pan: You love imagination, hopes, dreams, and charming British children. Also, you may, in retrospect, be offended by the bright red Native Americans. However, no amount of racial stereotyping could ever erase the magic you felt when those little kids went flying around the room in circles. You might have taken the whole “never growing up” thing to heart, and may have a hard time paying rent on time these days. But it’s okay — you have magic in your soul.
Toy Story 3: You love crying. You love crying so, so much. You love crying when Andy plays with his toys with that little girl, or when Woody watches him walk away and looks okay about it. You love crying when they accidentally get thrown away. You love crying when the toys are headed for the incinerator and they finally realize that they’re not going to be able to cleverly hop out of this problem and they all look resigned and brave and hold each others’ hands as they accept their fate, and Mr. Potato Head holds his wife to his chest so she doesn’t… WHAT THE HELL PIXAR.
Ratatouille: I bet — in fact I would bet a lot of money — that you’re the douchebag who posts pictures of every other meal he makes on Facebook with captions like “Oh you know, just a pan-seared filet mignon in a port reduction over a bed of sauteed chanterelle mushrooms and a puree of leeks with a Yukon Gold potato crisp garnish, to be served with that bottle of Bordeaux I’m finally cracking open tonight! Happy Wednesday night everyone!” Either that, or you like Paris.
Holes: You like remembering that, at one point, Shia LaBeaouf was bearable.
Atlantis: You are way, way, way into Steampunk and you were into it way, way, way before it was cool. When you’re not busy looking up corsets made out of leather and copper wiring on Etsy, you’re elaborately pretending that your significant other is Victorian-era nobility before you get down to some serious, nerdy bodice-ripping.
Mulan: You have endless appreciation for Mulan’s way-ahead-of-her-time gender presentation and career path as a woman, and you are totally down with all of the difficult but totally cool choices she makes. You also kind of wanted Shang to get with her even when he still thought she was a guy, let’s be honest.
Hercules: First of all, you have immaculate taste, as Hercules is clearly the funniest Disney movie ever. Non-negotiable. Also, you are so not like those other Princesses who sit around waiting for their hunky, dopey, Don Draper-in-a-cape heroes to come and save them. No. You’re Meg, the Adele of Disney Princesses, the one who has loved and lost and is finally ready to love again. You can show a guy the ropes as a fabulous Greek chorus narrates your struggles, and you can totally part-time as James Wood’s personal assistant.
The Lion King: You are a twenty-something guy. There is a law, somewhere, that states that all 20-something guys must have an extremely tender spot for The Lion King — so tender, in fact, that with enough liquor in their system, you can occasionally get them to burst into a round of “Hakuna Matata.” Can occasionally be substituted in a man’s childhood memories by Aladdin .
Aladdin: The first time you saw Kim Kardashian, you were like “Jasmine came to life!! :D” and then you were like “Oh no, she’s super gross and has sex with Brandy’s brother. :(”
Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Jessica Rabbit was an important — nay, an essential — part of your pubescence.
The Little Mermaid: You would do pretty much anything for this guy you barely know. You’d cut off the lower half of your body and replace it with a new one, you’d tear out your vocal chords, you’d live on land when you ostensibly still have gills. (Did Ursula ever address that?) Your father is a dick, basically, and you are going to do any and everything to make him pay for how oppressive he’s been. If that means marrying the guy he can’t stand (in your case, probably a guy with a neck tattoo who refers to your father as “Man”) then so be it. You’re young, ginger, and in control. You can do what you want.

new changes with me and my blog.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:56:58 PST

Hi all! Just a quick recap of what the heck is happening with this blog. Recently I've been getting a huge vast array of emails asking me why are things bigger and why things are placed oddly on the website. Here's why. Us blind people use screen readers and some screen magnifiers. Many blind people I know don't have the money to pay for all this interesting useful equipment, so, I'm making my blog accessible to the blind community. How am I doing this? Well, let me tell you!

1. For screen reader users. In the coming weeks, I'll add some button assignments to links just like on Facebook. If you want to get to my list of accessibility links, then you can press control 1, and all that.

2. For low vision. The general text is bigger so you don't have to move the mouse to the left and right all the time. All the blog posts will be accessible to low vision readers in one area. This area will be on the left side. All the extra stuff I want to show off will be at the right.

3. For the readers who have trouble with reading, I'm putting my blog up on iTunes in an audible podcast form. Just look for the weird writings and everything will be there. You can download my writings to any iPod, IPhone, Mp3 player, or device that supports mp3 downloads to listen to on the go!

4. For screen reader users. I have designed the blog so that it automatically detects you have a screen reader, and switches the layout of the page and disables all images.

5. For the color blind people, there's an alternate link in my navigation bar that says simple layout. Select that.

6. For the deaf… well, you all don't need anything designed. Yay!

7. For mobility impaired users… the layout has changed, links are all in one place, posts are in another, and sidebars are only on the right side. This should make my blog faster to navigate through.

8. For screen reader users. All dates and arrow graphics, and share graphics will only show up if you click into the blog post. Thanks to my friend James for that suggestion.

9. For low vision. The page has white text on a black background.

10. For blind readers better audio captchas have been added to the email sign up page. Instead of hearing numbers and such, you will hear common universal sounds and your job is to identify them.

11. For my non English readers… here will be a link in the navigation bar that will translate the page you’re on to any language using Google translator.

And that's it! Now here are blog posts to come!

1. Review of breaking dawn with audio description.

2. Journals about what's been going on with me.

3. More rants about smelly people.

4. A rant entitled: police should have a law against being stupid.

5. More maniacal interesting reviews of windows 8.

6. And yah, blog posts about my life because I and my boyfriend am the only thing interesting to read about, huh? I really don't get why. I mean… I'm not that detailed, am i?

7. A comparison of accessible bus systems in the state of Florida.

And much more! I hope this helps you out a lot! Stay tuned!

A crippled critic review of ENDER'S GAME

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:47:35 PST

The best way to distinguish a work of pornography from a conventional narrative is to look at its structure. All narratives, to some extent, are concerned with such things as character, plot, exposition, development, climax and resolution; but in pornography these are merely nods to propriety, threadbare garments which barely conceal the real purpose of the narrative: to deliver a particular kind of gratification again and again. Conventional narratives may head in any direction, but porn always orients itself towards its pet catharsis, and never strays far away.
Imagine, for example, that you were unaware of porn, and watching one of those softcore "erotic thrillers" on late-night cable. Within minutes you would notice that it was no ordinary thriller, that something about the storytelling was a bit off. You might wonder if it was strictly necessary, from a narrative standpoint, for the characters to disrobe and hump each other every five minutes. You might wonder why random, pointless characters are introduced just to be fucked, and why the plot is contrived in such a way as to allow all the leading characters to hook up in every combination a heterosexual male might care to see. To one expecting a conventional narrative, the porn narrative has a demented, obsessive appearance; it is static, repetitive, moves only in circles.
Such was my experience reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, which purports to be a classic sci-fi novel, but is actually, I now realise, a work of pornography. Some readers might be deceived by the book's scrupulous avoidance of sexual content, but it just happens that sex is not the particular fetish of Ender's Game: it finds its gratification elsewhere.
The book in fact caters towards two related fetishes. The most obvious of these is geek wish-fulfillment. Ender Wiggin, the protagonist of the book, is a classic Mary Sue — a pre-pubescent boy genius who is simply the best at everything. Compared to his peers at the space battle school for gifted kids, Ender is wiser, more intelligent, more sensitive and loving, better at his studies, a better hacker, a better fighter, a better leader. He is better than all of them, and they hate him for it. They all hate him for it — all except the girls, of course — and they never let him forget it. They want to crush him, humiliate him, kill him, but Ender is better than them, and because he is better than them, he always wins through.
In the best traditions of porn, each chapter is simply a build-up to a catharsis. Ender proves he is better than everybody, and the reading nerd finds a vicarious release. The sequence of catharses begins with revenge over a school bully (whom Ender kicks to death); and then, just as the porn movie raises the bar with more exotic positions, more extended sessions, and more numerous participants, so the obstacles facing Ender become more difficult. The provocations become more extreme, the bullies become tougher, his mentors set him impossible challenges. But Ender always wins, no matter how hard or unfair the fight, no matter how much his enemies conspire to stack the odds against him. He always wins, and forces his enemies to acknowledge his brilliance and superiority — and if they don't, he eventually kills them.
There is no dramatic tension or genuine excitement about any of these encounters; the only tension comes from how long the inevitable catharsis can be delayed. It's made quite clear early on that Ender is the best, unbeatable, guaranteed to fulfil all your geek revenge fantasies; each chapter reliably delivers its load. In each chapter, as surely as the pornstar gets her tits out, Ender faces a terrible provocation; in each chapter, his eventual triumph is as certain as a cumshot, and just as undeniable.
To sustain this pattern, the plot is contrived to make sure that other characters always hate Ender. There is no obvious reason for him to be so despised, at every turn, by his peers: he's a confident guy who excels at games, the kind of guy who would typically be well-liked at school. And yet, people seem to hate him a priori. Every time Ender makes friends, he makes more enemies, and everything he does makes his enemies hate him all the more. This mass of hate is overdone and never convincing: it simply plays into the paranoia of the target readership. Its effect is to enhance the gratification, ratchet up the pornographic tension, make Ender's inevitable victories all the sweeter.
Geek wish-fulfillment is not the only fetish on display in Ender's Game: the other is self-pity, the lonely self-pity of the truly gifted and persecuted. Ender, you see, doesn't want to keep beating and humiliating and killing people. He is always forced into these actions, against his will, by the school governors who keep pushing him to succeed, and by his victims themselves, who just won't accept that he is the best. "Why wouldn't he leave me alone?" he wonders as he kills another bully. After every victory comes an equally cathartic bout of self-pity, as Ender wracks his soul in ecstatic remorse over his situation. Even in this area, he excels. No one can self-pity like Ender!
In the final one-man gang-bang of wish-fulfillment, Ender is tricked into fighting an alien fleet against impossible odds: he ends up destroying the fleet, the alien home planet and indeed the entire alien species. But all this time the aliens have been preparing a special message for him and him alone: it turns out they were nice after all and didn't mean any harm. This brings us to a final sustained orgasm of self-pity as Ender understands the message and realises the horror of what he was forced to do; he knows then that he must travel the galaxy with the aliens' message, pitying himself for all mankind. It's really quite breathtaking. If you get your jollies from self-pity, this must be the most arousing thing imaginable.
But then again, if you get your jollies from self-pity, you are sick and need help. The same goes for geek revenge fantasies. This is the real problem with Ender's Game: it's not just porn, it's sick porn. Whatever one might say about porn that fetishises sex, at least sex is a healthy and natural impulse, at least sex is usually a pleasant thing. The fetishes of Ender's Game, by contrast, are not healthy. We all feel sorry for ourselves at times, we all occasionally like to fantasise about being the best and proving it; but if you dwell on these feelings to the extent of the protagonist of Ender's Game, if you buy into the book's message of "everyone hates me because I'm the best" (which is delivered without the least sense of irony or introspection), if you see your life as a tale of unending persecution by your inferiors, then you either need to get some perspective, or get some help. Those who claim that Ender's Game truly captures their own childhood feelings are revealing a bit too much.

JESUS

Jesus Christ is a well-known Mary Sue character for Christian geeks with a persecution complex, so given this and the author's well-publicised religious affiliation, it's no surprise that Ender is a blatant Jesus figure. The similarities are endless. As with Our Lord, Ender knows from an early age that he is destined to be the saviour of humanity; he constantly struggles with this destiny, wants to reject it, self-pitying like only the Son of Man can. Like Jesus, he spends his forty days in the wilderness (in this case, Florida) and survives temptation; like Jesus, he suffers a veritable Gethsemane of self-doubt on the eve of his fateful day.
The parallels run deeper. Ender's birth is a subject of mystery; his siblings are similarly gifted, and at an early family get-together his brother claims the gifts came only from the maternal side.

"'It was all your genes that made us geniuses, Mom,' said Peter. 'We sure didn't get any from Dad.'"

Perhaps "Dad" isn't Ender's real father: perhaps his real "Father" is someone else? Later, after his moment of glory, Ender effectively "dies" by being denied permission to return to Earth, but then lives again by becoming an administrator on one of the former alien planets. Finally, in his thirties, he ascends in a spaceship and preaches his message from world to world, effectively achieving eternal life thanks to the relativistic effects of faster-than-light space travel.
I'm sure many more similarities could be unearthed by people interested in such things, but in truth I tire of these cack-handed pop-cultural depictions of Jesus, from this to Narnia to The Matrix, which are often far too earnest for my liking. At least the Jesus metaphor in Paul Verhoeven's Robocop had an element of satire and irony: Robocop was an American Jesus, resurrected with all guns blazing. But there is no irony about the Jesus metaphor in Ender's Game. Instead, Card uses Ender to promote his own perspectives on Christianity.
For one thing, Ender is Card's attempt to reconcile the more ostensibly pacifistic Christian teachings with his own militarism and war obsession. Ender takes Jesus's instruction to "love thy enemy" seriously — "I love my enemies," he says, "then I destroy them." In fact, we are told, only one as loving and sensitive as Ender could be such an effective killer. Ender loves so much that he is one with his enemies, he thinks their thoughts, he knows their movements almost before they do. The apparent irony dissolves: beating your enemy is loving him: his defeat is sufficient evidence of your love, since it would not have been possible without it. As Ender shows, "love thy enemy" does not prevent Christians from engaging in combat — in fact, it's the Christian advantage in combat. Here we have a semantical conjuring trick worthy of the finest medieval theologians — if only the crusaders had thought of that one! In the hands of any other writer, such an idea would be played for laughs, the blackest of comedy, but here it's all painfully serious.
Card also uses Ender to push his intentions-are-everything concept of morality. It's okay, for example, that Ender beats two of his bullies to death. In each case, he is merely pursuing the most rational course of action: it is only by beating the absolute shit out of his opponents, to the best of his ability, that he can be certain the bullying will stop. Anything less and they will come back and hit him harder another day. He doesn't intend to kill the bullies: he doesn't even find out that he has killed them until much later, and in the meantime, his self-pity has cleansed his soul. (And besides, as he tells us, he loved them anyway.) Does Card use this kind of sophistry to justify his support for the Iraq War or other "pre-emptive" invasions? I doubt his good intentions, or his self-pity, or even his love, will be much comfort to the victims, even they do satisfy his Father in Heaven. (Notably, the feelings of Ender's human victims are never really dealt with in the novel — they are only mentioned when they factor into Ender's plans for victory. Otherwise, only Ender and his sister seem capable of suffering.)
To further illustrate his moral ideas, Card then dreams up something even more revolting: a genocide that is nobody's fault. The military commanders who planned the invasion didn't intend to wipe out the aliens: they were just executing a morally sound pre-emptive strike, like Ender with the bullies. Neither did Ender, who executed the invasion, intend to wipe out the aliens: he just thought he was playing a computer simulation. It's a wonderfully guilt-free massacre, mass murder with a clear conscience: the mind boggles at the kind of actions one could justify (and could have justified) with these arguments.

WRITING

I find it hard to imagine a more objectionable novel than Ender's Game; perhaps the content of the Left Behind series or the standard piece of right-wing "milSF" trash would be more offensive, but fortunately the technical deficiencies of these books make them more or less unreadable. The disturbing thing about Ender's Game is that Card is a good craftsman of prose; he makes the pages turn, he's an effective manipulator. In the early chapters, he inhabits the child mind convincingly; Ender's bewilderment, his confusion with the adult world, his exaggerated fear of bullies, all seemed authentic to me, until I realised they were all too earnest and in the service of pornography. But still I kept reading, as though hooked by a nasty but compelling piece of propaganda. Just as The Eye of Argon is well-composed enough to bring home the awfulness of its prose, the prose in Ender's Game is good enough to bring home the horror of its content.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim the book is well-written, however. At times Card's skill with prose deserts him, especially when he drools over his battle tactics like a weekend paintballer. Sci-fi urgently needs to purge itself of the work of these gun nuts and armchair tacticians — there are few things more embarrassing than to watch a middle-aged man play with his toy soldiers. The structure of the narrative, as I've already mentioned, is lopsided, and the final plot twist is very predictable. Characters, Ender included, are generally blanks onto which the reader can project his own fantasies: Ender is every reader's stand-in, Valentine every idealised loving sister, Peter every nasty older brother, Bonzo every stupid big bully. The premise of the story — that children will fight future battles — seems plausible until you give it a moment's thought. I could buy it as satire, perhaps, but as with everything else in the book, it's played in deadly earnest, and comes across as very silly. (The side-plot of Ender's teenage siblings taking over the world is sillier still.) But Card can morally absolve himself on this note: the silliness is clearly unintentional. In fact, I can't recall a note of humour, wit or playful irony in the whole novel. It's one of the most poker-arsed things I've ever read.
In other art forms — music, painting, dance — it's more possible to draw a line between art and artist. These are more abstract arts, and since it is hard to tell what the artworks represent, it is equally hard to tell whether they represent the views or personality of the artist. But writers cannot hide behind abstraction so easily. Writing is always, in some manner or another, an expression of a particular human consciousness. Writing, more than any other art, is a measure of the human being who writes it. And on the evidence of Ender's Game, Card just doesn't measure up.

Loosing a friend.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:07:58 PST

When it happens, you won’t want to believe it. You’ll take their word for it when they say they’re busy, swamped at work, “just doing me.” You’ll make excuses for them, put your ringer on extra loud in case they call. But you’ll still feel the change, and because you can’t rationalize it, you’ll try to ignore it.
It’s a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When the two of you are having a beer and you realize that you have both been staring out the same window for twenty minutes, nothing to say, the opposite of a comfortable silence. When they cancel plans consistently and stall when giving you reasons. When you scroll through your contacts and stop at their name and almost call but don’t, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned and confused.
Sometimes there’s no huge fight that marks the end of a friendship. No falling out, no major disagreement. Sometimes it just falls apart for no good reason. Distance. New relationships. Priorities. Somehow these things can become more important than your connection; they shouldn’t but they do. And as we get older we tend to downsize, prioritize. Trim the corners of our lives, keeping what’s important and discarding what isn’t. Sometimes we stop needing people in our lives and it isn’t even conscious. No one wakes up in the morning actively thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll stop being friends with so-and-so today.” It just goes out with an empty fizz, like a cigarette hitting the bottom of a Coke can.
In so many ways, losing a close friend is worse than losing a lover. Lovers are transient for the most part but friends are supposed to be there for you always, or so we like to believe. Friendship is a special kind of love that’s not supposed to fade. You never expect the one person you thought you could always depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. And when they do you feel sickeningly stupid and cheated, wondering what you meant to them all along, whether you were just convenient or in the right place at the right time. You never really know for sure.
You look through pictures from back when you were happy — holding each other up drunk and ecstatic, working on art projects on a rainy Sunday afternoon — and can’t understand what happened. Reach for the phone. Attach a photo to an email, start the subject line with some fusion of “Remember this?” and “I miss you…” Get suddenly overwhelmed by a horrible emptiness and discard the draft, leaving the phone untouched. History. So much history flushed down a dirty sink.
And the worst part is, you don’t even know how to explain yourself. You know if you bring this up with them they’ll give you a blank expression and a blank excuse. You don’t want to explain how you feel. You can’t. You just want them to get it, to read you like they used to be able to. You want to take them by the shoulders and shake them, screaming Where are you? What happened?! Until you’re blue in the face. But you can’t do that either, because you’re no longer on the same level and it’s going to make you feel crazy.
In life, it’s a given that you will lose people. People will flow in and out like curtains through an open window, sometimes for no reason at all. But losing someone important to you will feel like a suckerpunch every single time, and you’ll never see it coming. Which makes the friendships that do hold out, the ones that make it through countless breakdowns and breakthroughs and changes and years, so damn important

New facebook feature allows importing numbers to Iphone adress book.

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:28:57 PST

Update: Facebook released an update to their iPhone App that makes it quick and easy to sync your Facebook Friends with your iPhone Address Book Contacts. If you have an iPhone, this is a great way to import your Facebook Information to Address Book on your Mac.
When Apple announced the iPhone the importance of the Address Book application increased significantly. Address Book was now not only the tool to keep the various contact details about your friends, family, and work colleagues but was now the way you managed your phonebook on your iPhone.
Over the past few years Facebook.com has emerged as a great way to keep in touch with your friends and family. One of the optional fields in Facebook that your friends can make available to you is their phone number. Now, you can import your Facebook Friends phone numbers to Address Book.

Firefox & Greasemonkey

The first thing you need to be able to import your Facebook phone numbers to Address Book is the Firefox Web browser and a plugin called Greasemonkey.
Head over to the Firefox website and download the web browser if you don’t already have it installed on your computer.
After you’ve installed Firefox you need to install the Greasemonkey plugin. This plugin will allow you to utilize a free application to gather all the Facebook phone numbers from our account.
Navigate to the Greasemonkey plugin page and click the add to firefox button

After Greasemonkey is installed the application will ask to restart Firefox. Restart the browser and navigate to the Greasemonkey script page that you will utilize to get your Facebook friends phone numbers and import them into Address Book. Click install to add the script to your Greasemonkey collection.

Getting Your Facebook Friends Phone Numbers

Now that you’ve added Firefox, Greasemonkey, and the Greasemonkey script to get Facebook phone numbers, head over to http://www.facebook.com/friends/. Login to Facebook if you’re not already logged in and click on the Phonebook button.

Once the page has loaded, in Firefox click Tools >> Greasemonkey >> User Scrip Commands… >> Export Facebook Phonebook.

The application that will export the data may require you to login with a Google Account but will then transfer you to a page where it will allow you export your friend’s phone numbers into Address Book.

Adding to Address Book

Once you’ve ran the Greasemonkey script to export FacebookpPhone numbers and have found yourself on the AddressBooker menu, select Export as vCard. In the popup window that appears, select Open with Address Book and then press Ok.

Address Book should then launch and ask you to confirm that you’d like add the contacts to Address book. Allow Address book to import the new new vCard details and then merge the contact details on any overlapping imported contacts.
Once sync’d, Address Book on your desktop and iPhone will now contain the name and phone numbers of your friends who have shared their number on Facebook.
For additional details on the script and application used to export the phonebook details from Facebook visit Brad’s Life (the creator of the script and application).
NOTE: latest version of the script is working for some people. Others are still receiving errors.
Stay fashionable, go wireless with a Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset for your iPhone.

A blind run of windows 8. A first look at accessibility

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:11:41 PST

Blogging to the song mine by Taylor Swift.

As a blind person, I love many things. Just a few of them are the right to stare and grin at puppies. Another thing is what happens with me and my boyfriend goes shadily into the bedroom, and then the screen fades to black. I love it when people in the computer industries use accessible mean, modes, and told, and make them prominent in any way possible. Even though Microsoft isn't my favorite company by any means, I still use windows, and until my boyfriend and I can afford it, I won’t be switching over to a Mac at all anytime soon. I would, however, like to point out that Microsoft, after over 10 years in the computer business, is finally taking people with disabilities into consideration.

Someday, I don't know the day; a Windows 8 developer download was released by Microsoft. Download the link here. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ at the time of this writing, I haven’t quite installed it. I'm in the process of installing it on a new windows partition. What do I think about the accessibility of the new operating system, however? Well, obviously they won’t be as accessible as apple and voiceover, but the times are changing for bill gates and his world domination. Below are just a few examples of accessibility improvements in windows 8.

Voice recognition. It seems that the speech recognition in windows 8 is there, but I couldn't test it seeing as how I have not given windows 8 a test run yet.

Deaf accessibility solutions. Really, the deaf don't need these, accept for closed captions, but there are a few extra tweaks inn there that can make the experience better in some instances for people with hearing impairments. In the new and shiny looking ease of access center, there’s an option to extend the flashing of the screen when your computer makes a sound. This was just in a blog post. As I have said, I didn't test this out for myself yet. My boyfriend is downloading the iso image now.

Accessibility options during setup: when Windows 8 launches for the first time and prompts you for the name of the computer and other personal settings, an accessibility icon in the bottom-left corner. Opening this icon provides a list of all the major accessibility features and the option to turn them on. The instructions are also read out by Narrator. This is a great help as in Windows 7 it was difficult to complete the setup process as most features couldn’t be enabled until the setup process was completed and the Windows desktop appeared.

New windows magnifier! One reason I hated windows so badly was the fact that you couldn't use the windows magnifier for doing anything at all. When the new, and supposedly improved, windows 7 launched, the hype was all about the new windows magnifier. I also use something that is called high contrast that inverts everything. Basically the screen is black with white words on it. I use this so I don't have to make my good eye milk like a cow. I use this all the time. In previous windows versions, this conflicted with windows magnifier and you couldn't use the full screen magnifier. One of the biggest complaints of Windows 7 was that you could use the full-screen magnifier, but changing to the high contrast theme would change it to the old ‘strip’ magnifier that is used in windows XP and Vista. This has been rectified in Windows 8 and now both Magnifier and the high contrast themes can be used together. The magnifier itself also appears to have a few different modes and a tweak so it will be interesting to see how this evolves as the development process continues.

A screen reader right out of the box! In a previous post by me I talk about narrator in depth. Narrator has finally received a major update, the first since it appeared in Windows 2000 some 11 years ago. To date it seems to have a lot more commands, but it’s important to stress that it is still not an adequate screen reader in its own right at this stage of the development. Hopefully work on Narrator will continue so that Windows can finally have some reasonable functionality for people who are blind or vision impaired out of the box.

New accessibility choices for login and desktop: arguably one of the best improvements in Windows 8, the Ease of Access Center now features a ‘Change logon settings’ option. This screen provides a list of all the major accessibility features in Windows 8 with the option to turn them on at the login screen, turn them on at the desktop, or both. This can also apply to multiple assistive technologies, such as the On-Screen Keyboard and Sticky Keys.

These are just some of the new accessibility features I have heard about, watched, looked at, or read about on the internet after looking it up online. I still don't think Microsoft new accessibility tackle will ever compare to apples, but I could be wrong. Maybe Microsoft has finally realized that the reason Mac got such a big following is because of its accessibility appeal to people with disabilities.

I'll be Frank. I can't wait to test drive this new version of windows. Apparently it's supposed to be lighter on resources amongst other things. I would, however, advise you on what laptops you use it on. If you install it over an old partition, some important drivers may have some problems installing.

So what does this mean for Microsoft and the blind community? Who knows, but this is the best push forward to making usable computers that I have ever seen. In fact, it makes me wonder why didn't they just do this from the get go?

Well all, I'm out. If you want to follow me on twitter, my screen name is @theblindwriter. My boyfriend is also on twitter. @shamation. Please don't ask him what I eat for breakfast. That's just odd. Subscribe to me if you wish. I'll be Blogging more about windows 8 when I get my boyfriend to make me a new CD for me. Cheers all, and have fun anticipating the first compotation apple has ever had in years!

LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice.org: Showdown for Best Open Source Office Suite

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:20:06 PST

With the release of a new version of LibreOffice this month, it’s a good time to look at the two major open source office suites, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org, to see what advantages each offers, and which is a better bet for end users.

Both products are suites of office applications, comprising word process, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, database, drawing, and math tools. Both also spring from the same code base. OpenOffice.org was created by a German company called Star Division, which Sun Microsystems bought in 1999. Originally the suite was called StarOffice, and it was popular in the European market as an alternative to Microsoft Office. After picking it up, Sun changed the name of the product to OpenOffice.org and released its code as open source. The product retained some popularity in the enterprise, partly because of its cross-platform capabilities and no-cost license.

In 2009, Oracle announced it would be acquiring Sun, and many wondered what would become of OpenOffice.org. When Oracle proved to be less than willing to share its plans for the product, a number of OpenOffice.org community members opted to fork the OpenOffice.org code. In November 2010, they created LibreOffice, to be managed by a new German non-profit called The Document Foundation.

A few months later, Oracle opted to donate the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation, which today maintains OpenOffice.org as a so-called podling project until OpenOffice.org completes the migration process to become fully integrated within the Apache organization.

The Growth of LibreOffice

In the 10 months since LibreOffice split off from OpenOffice.org, the new office suite has maintained a more rapid release cycle than the old 18-month cycle maintained by Sun and Oracle. It is not clear how rapidly OpenOffice.org will update as the suite moves forward within the Apache system, but it’s a fair bet that the development cycle will speed up.

LibreOffice’s development cycle has put its version 3.4.2 ahead of OpenOffice.org’s 3.3.0, in more ways than just version numbers. The LibreOffice team is implementing a lot of fixes that many in that development community felt were needed. For instance, LibreOffice’s ability to import file from Microsoft Office is getting better than that of OpenOffice.org. Opening heavily revised and commented Word files in OpenOffice.org still leads to misrendered comments and loads of font issues, while LibreOffice Writer handles revisions, comments, and fonts nearly perfectly. Other fixes include more ODF-compliant color and line support as well as an improved Print dialog box that is markedly better than its OpenOffice.org counterpart.

Calc improvements are also coming fast in LibreOffice, the best of which currently being a much-improved Pivot Table tool (now actually called “Pivot Table” instead of the old “DataPilot” moniker). Pivot tables and LibreOffice don’t have a pleasant history: the last time I tested it, opening a spreadsheet with a pivot table inside would cause LibreOffice Calc and every other LibreOffice window to crash, where OpenOffice.org would open the same spreadsheet fine. Fortunately, since LibreOffice 3.4.2, those days are gone. LibreOffice Pivot Tables also now allow for named ranges, which is a great addition.

In other areas, Calc in LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are pretty much on equal footing. Fonts and basic functions in Excel documents are converted perfectly, though many not-really-that-obscure Excel functions don’t come across at all. SUMIF and COUNTIF are there, but not their multi-range/criteria counterparts SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, nor AVERAGEIF and AVERAGEIFS. This makes Calc a bit weak as an Excel replacement in either office suite.

Impress is a better experience all around, and equal in both flavors of the suite. PowerPoint presentations open easily, and fonts and images transfer pretty well. There’s a slight edge in this application for the LibreOffice version, which has put the Presenter’s Console front and center as an easily installed extension.

These three components comprise the bulk of use for most end users. LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are pretty similar in performance and features in the other office suite applications, with one exception: LibreOffice Draw now has support for scalable vectore graphics, something OpenOffice.org lacks.

Support and Certification

Aside from the code, OpenOffice.org used to have one big advantage over LibreOffice: corporate support. When OpenOffice.org belonged to Oracle and to Sun, enterprises could buy annual support for $90 per seat, which got you support and hooks into Microsoft SharePoint or the Alfresco content management systems. Small businesses could get support alone for $50 per seat.

Unfortunately, that advantage is gone. In April, before Oracle announced its intention to move OpenOffice.org to Apache, it dropped commercial development and support for OpenOffice.org. Now the two office suites have virtually identical support options. Each suite has online forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists. Corporate support is available from some third-party companies, such as the Linux distribution vendors who ship LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org, or any number of consultants that can be found on either project’s website.

Support vendors must be certified, so you know you’re not hiring some schmoe off the street. Here, OpenOffice.org has the slight edge. LibreOffice, according to Italo Vignoli from the Document Foundation, is “planning a certification program to make it easier for providers of services to be recognized and for corporate users to select a competent partner.” OpenOffice.org, though, already has a certification program in place, though it is not clear how or if that program will undergo alterations within the Apache umbrella.

Which One Wins?

With its rapid development cycle, LibreOffice has already pushed its feature set ahead of OpenOffice.org’s. OpenOffice.org may catch up, but the licensing differences between the two projects may hold it back. When OpenOffice.org was moved into the Apache Software Foundation, it was placed under the Apache Software License (ASL) v2. LibreOffice is dual-licensed under the Mozilla Public License and the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 3.0. That means that while LibreOffice developers are free to incorporate OpenOffice.org code into their project, the reverse is not true. LibreOffice’s licenses are incompatible with the Apache license, so OpenOffice.org developers will be unable to directly capitalize on the progress made by the LibreOffice team.

The outlook is not completely dismal for OpenOffice.org. With IBM heavily invested in OpenOffice.org development (its proprietary Lotus Symphony office suite is based on OpenOffice.org), there’s a fair chance that some improvements made in Lotus development could find their way into OpenOffice.org.

That’s looking ahead, however. For now, it appears that LibreOffice offers a better feature set, and with support options being equal, it’s the features that currently make all the difference.

An email group for writers!

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:36:28 PST

Hi all! I would just like to tell all of you about a new group for writers that I have made. The group is called college writers. The group is a place to share and read work by college writers from all over the United States. This is an English group, primarily in English, so if you do not know English, please use a translator.
Many people, blind people, have been asking me how to subscribe and get past the damn captcha. I am here to tell you. All you have to do is send an email to college-writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. This way you can just subscribe with any email address that you want to get emails with. When you get a confirmation, if you just want to verify by email and not have to click on any links, you just have to reply to the auto reply message with NO change in either the subject line or the message itself. After doing this, you should get the rules and all that, and voila, you are joined! So post, meet new people, and just have fun!

the bible you never knew Exodus 1

kingettblue@gmail.com (Robert kingett) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:20:04 PST

Exodus 1

After Joseph and his family lived happily ever after, their descendents did not live happily forever after. Why? Because they were slaves. Sadly, after Joseph had moved to Egypt, God had become rather bored of playing with the humans and had started to find just how enjoyable lounging around doing nothing was. The problem, however, is that when one is lounging around doing nothing, somehow the time goes even quicker and quicker and, before you know it, poof! 400 years gone and you aren't even out of your pyjamas yet. God felt a little guilty since he had, after all, promised countless times to both Abraham and Jacob that their children would rule the world. God needed to set them free, but in order to do that, he needed a prophet...

Down on earth, whilst God had been lounging around doing nothing, plenty of things had been happening. Only a few years ago the Egyptian Pharaoh had ordered the killing of Israelite babies in order to keep the population down. One baby though, escaped. His mother put him in a basket and went to the river where she let him go. The basket floated down the stream and ended up beside the Pharaoh's daughter. The baby was taken in and was called Moses because he was taken out from the water. The baby grew up, and grew up knowing that he was an Israelite. This was all fine and well until, one day he killed an Egyptian for beating an Israelite slave. Moses, being a good and moral man, instead of advocating the immorality of keeping slaves and, instead of giving himself up to the law, decided to do a runner. Moses ran as far as Midian where he rescued a group of girls from robbers. As a reward, Moses was given one of the girls as his wife. After a few years with his wife in Midian, God, who was watching him, decided it was time to get in touch.

One day, when Moses was out looking after the sheep, a bush suddenly burst into flame: this, in itself, was surprising, but what really got Moses freaked, was when it started talking.

"Moses" said the bush "I am GOD."

Moses, having never been advised by anybody not to trust bushes, was confused but not particularly distrustful. "God?" he inquired tentatively.

"Yes, I am the lord your God. Since the beginning was, I was, and since I was, the beginning was. God is my name and my name is God: no other name do I have and no other name has God for God beith my name and my name beith God," said the Bush.

Moses looked confused. "So the name of this Bush is God?"

"NO!" cried the Bush, clearly irritated. I am not the Bush, I am merely using the bush to talk to you and to look impressive."

"So what are you then?" asked Moses.

"I am that I am," the Bush replied simply.

Moses, who didn't think that explained anything, just looked even more confused, "but what does that mean?" he asked.

The Bush sparked angrily , "It means, I don't know, ok? From now on just do as I say. You can to take the sandals from your feet, for a start: this is holy ground."

"Oh" said Moses "Actually, I reckon it's pretty firm, look - (and here Moses stamped the ground) seems pretty solid to me."

"Look" the Bush said impatiently "Obey and take them off."

"Alright," said Moses "If it bothers you that much. I don't even see why wearing sandals or not is gonna affect me anyway."

"Now," the Bush said "I am God so you must do as I say. I've been watching what's been happening to my people, the Israelites, recently in Egypt and I'm all rather upset about it. I have some nice hot, sandy desert flowing with milk and honey for you guys, but I need to get you all out of Egypt."

How're you gonna do that?" asked Moses.

"You're gonna tell Pharaoh to let them go."

"No way" said Moses "He'll never listen"

"Well, it doesn't matter if he listens or not" said the Bush "I am God, and I pretty much do what I want – I'm kinda really only doing this to make myself look really cool. So take this staff I'm giving you and go to Egypt and do some real funky stuff in my name, ok?"

Moses still looked kind of uncertain. "Do I have a choice?" he asked.

"Not really," the Bush replied.

Later on, when Moses had had longer to think about it, he somehow had the feeling that perhaps it wasn't so unusual to hear such crazy things from the mouth of a Bush.
Moses, however, was good as his word and set off to Egypt to free his people. On arriving in Egypt, he hooked up with his brother, Aaron, and they both went to Pharaoh and said "Let my people go."

Pharaoh sneered: "Why should I?" he asked nastily.

"This Bush spoke to me in the desert and told me that he was the God of the Israelites. He said that he will do really nasty things to you all unless you do as he says," explained Moses.

Pharaoh laughed, "Yeah right, whatever you say."

Moses was unperturbed - he and Aaron took their staffs and said: "Behold – the power of God!" Slowly the staffs turned into snakes and hissed at the Pharaoh, who was unimpressed because God, who was finding this enjoyable, was programming the Pharaoh's brain to deny the Jews their freedom. Thus, Pharaoh merely raised an eyebrow and said:

"Party tricks - my sons' entertainers do this trick all the time." Pharaoh said. "I will not let your people go; instead they shall work, and work more than they have done before."

After this, Moses' popularity with the Jews went down markedly, but he did not give up. God told him to go to Pharaoh by the River Nile and turn the Nile into blood so that Egypt would stink and all the crops would rot. God, after all, had spent 400 years lounging around doing nothing, and now that he had an activity, he found he was rather enjoying it. All that imagination he had used up during the creation was coming back to him in the form of really terrible deaths he could give people. Next, for example, was frogs. Millions of frogs, all of them bouncing, hopping, ribbiting and croaking absolutely everywhere: in the fields, in the houses, in the beds and the bathrooms. Pharaoh got so frustrated that he finally agreed to let the Isrealites go, but this rather alarmed God, who had just begun having fun, and so God went into Pharaoh's heart and mind and hardened it against Moses.
Thus another plague was given to Egypt; this time it was lice - thousands and thousands of them and, just like the frogs, they were everywhere. Pharaoh begged Moses to have them stopped, promising that he would free the Jews, but, when once more, Pharaoh changed his mind, Moses and God let leash yet more plagues. After the lice, a disease was sent to all the Egyptian livestock so that all the animals would die and then, after that, Moses sent for boils to appear on all the Egyptians and all their livestock (even though the livestock was now dead), but God was still hardening the heart of Pharaoh so that Pharaoh would not yield. The next plague was extremely heavy, dangerous hail and balls of fire. Moses warned the Jews and the god-fearing Egyptians to keep themselves and their livestock (even though the livestock of the god-fearing Egyptians was dead) inside lest they be killed by the hail and falling balls of fire. Pharaoh once more begged for the plague to end, promising the freedom of the Jewish slaves but, once the plague was over, the Pharaoh once more failed to keep his word.

Moses was now getting rather frustrated by this and was wondering when it would all come to an end either way, but God spoke to him and assured him of success. "It's ok," said God "This is all part of my plan. I'm hardening Pharaoh's heart so I can show off my power to all the Israelites. Once they've seen all the really scary stuff I can do, they won't bother worshipping silly statues anymore." And so they entered into the next cycle of plagues with locusts which ate everything that hadn't been ruined by the hail and then with a darkness that lasted three days. After these last two plagues, Pharaoh once more promised to let the Israelites go, but God was not yet satisfied.

"Not yet," he said to Moses, "There's one more thing I really wanna do – I've been saving it for last. Once I've done this, Pharaoh and the Egyptians will want nothing to do with you and everyone will think I'm amazing. Moses agreed, having decided by this time that the Bush was certainly not to be messed with, and so the next day the last plague came: the death of the first born. God warned the Israelites to put blood all over their front doors so as to escape the plague, which, during the night, killed all the firstborn of both the people and the animals (even though all the animals had been killed in an earlier plague). During this time, God also executed judgment upon the Egyptian Gods even though they did not exist.

After the plague the Isrealites were allowed to go free, but not before God gave them rather complicated instructions on the eating of bread. Still, they made it towards the Red Sea when, suddenly, Pharaoh and his men appeared on horseback to recapture the children of Israel. The people were terrified, having just realized that they had never considered just how they were going to get across the sea, and now they saw that they were well and truly screwed. They were a little more relieved when a giant fireball plunged to the ground blocking the Egyptians path, but they still all ran panic stricken towards Moses, who luckily knew just what to do. He struck his staff into the sea and the sea began to part, letting the Israelites through. Finally, once the Isrealites were safe towards the other end of the sea, as God's last trick, He decided to let the Egyptians past the fireball and into the Red Sea, only to have the sea come crashing down on them all, drowning them, smashing them against rocks and so on.

The Children of Israel, on the other side of the sea, saw this and celebrated. They had won their freedom