Category: Geeks r Us
Here is the place to write about any technology disasters you all have had,
computer shutting off while you were in the middle of writing a big paper
that's due in 2 hours, accidentally spilling water on your computer and it
stopped working, your computer crashed and you have important files you
need on it, etc. I'll start with mine.
I thought of this because I talked about it on facebook. When you go on
facebook you see all of your posts from each day in the past. So this
happened to me 5 years ago today, and since it popped up on facebook I
figured I'd talk about it. So I was working with my tutor on editting a
paper. We were putting together an outline, and we talked about how I
wanted it to look. We discussed together what to put in the outline. I
also needed her help formatting it since it can be hard for a blind person to
format an outline since it has to be formatted a certain way. So we had it
all put together, the formatting was perfect, and right when my tutor was
about to save it, the computer shut off. Usually computers recover work
that couldn't be saved upon turning back on, but for some reason college
computers don't do that. So she was nice enough to redo it. She
remembered whatwe talked about putting on it, and she formatted it. I
had to go to class, so I couldn't stay. I went and picked up my flash drive
after class and she had it all done.
So what are some of your technology blunders? Share them here! :)
I carry my BrailleNote and my lunch in a bag when going to work. One day several years ago, I brought a container of soup for lunch. I put it in a Ziplock bag, but it apparently wasn't closed all the way, and the container didn't travel well. When I got to work and opened my bag to get my BrailleNote out, I discovered that the soup had leaked and my BrailleNote was ruined. It cost about a thousand dollars to get it fixed because the motherboard had to be replaced, and Humanware took forever to fix it and return it to me. Thankfully, one of my coworkers was able to loan me her BrailleNote while mine was being fixed. Needless to say, now I make doubly sure that the Ziplock bag with my lunch in it is closed tightly before putting it in my work bag.
technology disaster? been through this last year. I was doing the Az Marrets
and was in the middle of the math test. It kept shutting off on me but this
time this was for reals. I was on part 2 of the test when suddenly the
computer shut off. My teacher tried to charge it but it never turned back on.
Thankfully, I got a new comp but the other one had everything saved and
some stems I had done. No time to put the stuff on a flash drive. but, I
ended up doing good afterwords.
so, I make sure the comp works perfectly now and that I save things to my
flash drive. I'm not going through that again!
I drink a lot of water. If you've ever seen those big juice containers, it holds about four glasses of water a shot. I'm usually great about putting a cap on it. Except when I wasn't. One day I'd neglected to do it for a moment. My arm hit the jug and a torrent of water saturated my laptop. The unit turned off immediately. I hadn't backed up in a while. No amount of blow drying or rice would recover it. I've also had numerous experiences of material - ,usually either writing or sound design projects crashing without being saved. Needless to say I save and backup pretty frequently.
I knocked a pint over my laptop just before my university (that's college for all
you Americans) finals. While I could get it fixed free of charge as I had
accidental damage cover, I had to rent a replacement laptop for the exams.
This was around 12 or 13 years ago, and the rental rates varied wildly from
around $100 a week to $100 a month. There was also the issue of whether
JAWS would work on it (this was back in the days when video cards were more
problematic), and whether I could install JAWS on it in the first place. All very
annoying.
With my iPhone in my pocket, I took an unplanned swim in my parents' pool. Dang partial vision. Needless to say, I never walk around the pool without my cane any more. lol
When my iPhone 6 dived in the toilet from my pocket. It cizled and was ruined. I swear though it was so hot, I could have fried an egg on it.
Ooh, this really isn't a good topic. Too stress-inducing to read!
But I also had a cell phone fall in the toilet, fell out of my jeans pocket. It was my first cell phone, one of those candy bar style ones with the nice prominent buttons. I'd had it for five years; I'm not one who's eager to upgrade! LOL
Thank God I've never damaged any blind specific tech. I did spill a cup of sugary hot tea next to my laptop, once, but quick reflexes saved it.
A friend spilled orange soda into a VersaBraille machine, back in middle school, when they had such things; the late 80s. It was one of only two Versas available to our group. It made a sizzle sound, and went to sleep forever. No way to access what was saved on that cassette tape. I'm just glad it wasn't me who'd done it!
All of your stories, that's terrible, my favorite one was the soup all over the
braille note and the big jug of water all over the computer. I had a similar
experience. I was in high school, and I had a bottle of gatorade in my
backpack. It wasn't closed tightly, so it was leaking and it got all over my
papers, and my CD player for books. Luckily the CD player was fine. My
phone got wet last month. It got submerged in water after falling in the sink,
and I took it right out. Voice over sounded muffled for a little bit but it's fine
now. But my phone is fine and it didn't sizzle or get hot. I think having an
Otterbox case on it helped a lot.
RDFreak I'm guessing your phone got really hot for two reasons, though there
may be other factors at play:
Your screen curtain was off so current was running through the LCD -- current
that was being loaded with part number 2 of my guess:
Any toilet cleaning solution or even pee would get in there on the board and
cause arcs and sparks.
IMHO the fact you can't remove an iPhone's battery is one major complaint I
have against them. It becomes a safety situation when the device gets wet.
Interestingly my Wife's flip phone, she accidentally dropped in the wash
machine and only realized it after she'd turned it on. I stopped the machine,
extracted the vibrating phone, whipped the back off and took out the battery.
I immediately washed its terminal contacts as being in the wash it was exposed
to laundry detergent. That phone was toast. Lol She asked if I couldn't dry it out
like I usually do electronics, dry rice or paper towels. I told her, you get
something like detergent in there the device is shot.
And it was. Apparently she was curious enough to fish the parts out of the
garbage and "just see", it did nothing but buzz / vibrate randomly. Strange
response, but you never know how an arc is going to mess up the logic circuits.
Apparently the only one that was semi-active was the one to activate the vibe
motor.
These things happen to the best of us ... and it sucks when it happens.
Yes they do. It does suck when it happens; I thought I was going to have to
replace my phone, and I was very lucky not to have had any water damage.
I ruined 3 Braille watches, actually 2. One time I washed my hands with it
on, and I had it submerged in water and it got wet and stopped working.
Another time I had a Braille watch in my jeans pocket; I used to take it off
when I would wash my hands and forget about it. So I left it in the pocket.
My mom washed my jeans and she also washed my watch. Miraculously it
still worked; I was lucky. The second time I did that with the same watch. I
put it in my pocket, forgot all about it, and my mom washed my jeans. It
went through the wash yet again, and this time it was toast.
Hi Leo. It's an urban myth that you can't replace the battery in the iPhone,
though granted it's not easy.
I recently spilled sugary energy drink on my Mac's keyboard; cost me 2/3 the
price of the machine to get it fixed. Since spills are so common and the
machines are so expensive, I wonder why they don't either try to make them at
least a little water resistant or offer spill insurance.
I suspect they don't make them water resistant because they can charge you
2/3 the price of a new machine to fix it ... You can get accidental damage
insurance.
Yes the battery can be replaced in an iPhone for about $8 and some labor. The screws are small, so do it over a pan or something so you don't lose them.
Amazon and other places have the batteries.
My brother dropped his phone in the toilet today. He said for awhile the
screen wasn't working. He kept it off for a little bit, and when he turned it
back on, it still wasn't acting right. He said that when he would type, it
wouldn't register what he was typing. We just bought a 6s + for my mother,
and he was really close to needing to activate that phone for himself. Luckily
his phone is ok now.
My two, and hopefully only are these.
I was having a heated conversation one day and knocked my coffee cup over on to my wireless keyboard.
That was that for it.
If I’m drinking coffee in the morning sat my desk, I always use a spill proof mug.
The problem was, I didn’t follow my habit of closing the spout after a sip, because I didn’t expect anyone else to be in my office with me that morning.
But, someone came in, the heated conversation started, and I was gesturing and slapped it.
The next was when I first got started with cellular phones. I was cleaning a bathroom, had the phone in my pocket, and somehow it just jumped out and took a swim in the toilet I was cleaning.
Ah, these things can’t be restored no matter how I tried.
The contract had just gotten up a few weeks, so it was even more frustrating. I wasn’t ready to buy a new one. Lol
Lessons learned?
Never have heated conversations with your morning coffee.
Don’t take your phone with you near water unless it is zipped in a pocket.
That doesn’t mean a swimming pool. Simply leave it at home or in the locker.
Day late, dollar short, huh?
Grin.
I had a IPhone 5 and a keyboard case which holds the unit. So at the time my main driver was an android phone and my IPhone was my secondary device so I left it home with the wifey. When I came home, said hi to her, she neglected to tell me the phone was on the corner of our bed and a soda cup full of soda was sitting on the edge of the bed near the phone. yes, you guessed it, case and all went sliding in to the plastic cup full of soda. Well the phone was toasted along with my 75 dollar case. Ya, I was a bit heated after that fore not beeing told her soda cup was sitting near where my IPhone was sitting on the corner.
Yeah I don't know if this would be considered a disaster since this was
deliberate. My brother had 2 iPhones, a 5 and a 5s. He had the 5 for 18
months, and the 5s for 5 months. So when he had the 5, he was having
problems with it. It wasn't acting right. It was sounding muffled, and
people couldn't hear him when he would talk on the phone. So he got
really mad, and he took the case off his phone. He threw the phone really
really hard against a wall. It had a lot of physical damage, but he said it
still worked okay. So as the days went by, the phone was just getting
worse and worse, to the point where it was no longer useable. So he just
ripped the screen off. The phone was definitely toast. He then got a 5s.
With the 5s, he dropped it. He didn't have a screen protector on it, so the
screen cracked. He let me feel it, and it was pretty bad. And, it was in
one piece. He was at his friend's house, and he texted my mom and I from
his friend's phone the next day telling us his phone stopped working, and to
text his friend if we need to get a hold of him. So I thought the screen
just wasn't useable. Well a few days later, I found the phone. Yes, you
guess it! He threw it against the wall really hard, again! The screen was
off, one of the corners was completely mangled, and the top piece where
the power butten is was completely off. He ripped that part right off,
along with the screen. The phone could have been fixed. So now he has
my old iPhone 5. And it has lasted him 10 months so far.
How incredibly immature of him.
right? :p
oh, I have one! I was carrying my braille note from class to class as usual. it
was time for choir so I ran out carrying case around my waste, backpack
slung over my shoulder. well, when we walked out of the music room, I didn't
know that my case was open since one of the magnets moved a little. I ran
out forgetting that the case was open and well, the space bar on my braille
note broke. it still worked when another cell wasn't working. it was still
usuable but broken. :p
ever since I gave it back to the district that provided it, I never got another
braille note. :d
probably because it was so costly to replace the spacebar.
It was weird because it still worked even without the space bar. But, I guess
they needed it back because dot 6 on the cel key wasn't working. And, I had
gotten my laptop then so... that is the thing I'm using now for school and
other stuff!
I can honestly say that I've never had an accident of this nature. I've had
things break on technology,but never because of an accident. I had a hard drive
crash because it was old and warn out, things like that, but never something
spilled on anything, or dropping anything to have it shatter. I've dropped my
iphone a couple times, and my laptop has been knocked onto the floor once or
twice, but nothing happened. The closest I've come is having the screen
protector on my iphone crack. I took it off, and haven't had a problem since.
as for why they don't make things more waterproof, I have two ideas on the
subject. One, you can get waterproof technology if you want to spend the
money on it. Two, you can not have liquids and beverages in unsafe containers
around your technology. Me, for example, when I was going to be spending a lot
of time near both drinks and my computer doing research, I bought a thermus
that I could literally juggle and play football with, and it wouldn't spill a drop. I
had to push a switch for it to open, and it closed automatically. I never had a
drop spilled onto my computer, or my paperwork, or anything.
As to water prooffing, some companies like Samsung are doing this with mobile phones.
Mobile phones just seem to be things that get wet and people refuse to buy protective cases for them.
Other electronics need vents, so it is not possible to make them water tight.
Oh you can get water tight versions of them if you want one. I can't think of
any piece of technology that I don't know of a waterproof version. Everything
from phones that you could literally run over with a truck and toss in a pond and
it will still work, to laptops that you can take swimming with you. They exist if
you're wiling to spend the money on them. And by money,I mean three or four
times the normal cost.
they're that expensive? I'd stick to the non water proof stuff then. :d
I have one, and it sucked major dinosaur dink.
It was 1995, and I was in the eighth grade. I had a Braille ‘N Speak – anyone remember those? This one lacked both a braille display and spell check, but to a 13-year-old lover of writing and buttons, it was fantastic.
The tragedy struck one day when I was “experimenting” with some of the commands on the device. I loved doing that; just pressing all the key combinations I could think of in each location to see what they did. And yes, I did read the help file, but I still wanted to experiment. Anyway, I ended up going into the options menu and using, what I believe was X Chord, which took me into something regarding mail. I don’t recall exactly what it was, but I do know that after playing in that a while, I hit a chord which essentially made the device stop functioning. Turning it off and on yielded only silence. Warm resetting failed. I went home from school that night with a sinking feeling in my gut, and the hope that if I ignored it, it would all be better by morning.
It wasn’t. When I got to school, my braillist immediately took me into her office. She was angry – furious in fact. It was the first and last time I ever experienced her rage.
Her voice quavered, the fury barely controlled. “What did you do to the Braille ‘n Speak?”
Of course, being the 13-year-old little gutter shite I was, I pleaded ignorance. She wasn’t fooled; she knew. She sat me down in front of the clunky Perkins, that old knee crusher I and my classmates all loathed. She demanded I explain to SET BC – the unit’s provider here in British Columbia – exactly what I’d done, step by step. I did. As a result, the unit was shipped back. The Perkins became my sole mode of school work and writing all the way until grade 10, when I went through my transition out of complete teenage douchebaggery. I’ve learned much since then. I still enjoy pressing buttons to see what will happen, but I’ve toned it down considerably, and I make reasonably sure I have an idea what the result will be.
Sounds like there was a bug in that particular system, if you could press a
single chord or command in a menu only to render your unit inoperable. I will
freely admit though that my work on devices that use flash only goes back as
far as Windows Mobile.
I'm not quite buying it that you broke it. Not from a technical standpoint. Sure,
from a parental standpoint perhaps you were doing something you shouldn't
have, if those were the rules. But at 13 I'd say that was a pretty minor rules
violation compared to some of us.
Far too often, people *think* they broke something technological when in fact
the item they clicked or the key they pressed only correlates, not causing, the
event. Again, I can't speak for these units, but there's no rational reason for a
unit to have a command that deliberately renders it inoperable. And if one could
enter a mail program in the year 1995 on a mobile device, that could have
caused a lockup without an external modem attached. I'm assuming it is a text-
only device so you would have used a serial Hayes-compatible modem for
something like that. In those days, you could cause a system crash in Windows
by opening a serial port with nothing on it, so I guess it's possible you could
have caused such a crash, though again I don't know the architecture.
But a cold boot should have fixed that. And even the Apple Newton devices for
sighted people back then had a cold reset option, one which sent a cutoff to the
power supply and a typical use / on to the board to restart it. I've only been
inside a Newton once, but as I'm blind I never interacted with one as a user.
Anyhow, if your device was a text-only system, and this predates sophisticated
caching, I don't see how a cold boot wouldn't fix it. That's not just turning on /
off a mobile device, that probably meant using a pin on the back or a
combination of keys.
Short of that, even the Newton devices had a reset option which reloaded the
flash. That's something even the tiny palmtops for Novell networks we used to
give to yuppies in the early 90s when I was admin-ing Novell systems. Some
CEO dorks it somehow, have them reset and go through setup.
Sure, you'd have had to go through whatever system setup the device had, but
assuming it had no screen, such a setup would have talked.
Anyhow, I believe your story, but I have to wonder if a child's guilt plus an
instructor who must not have had a technical education factored into this. That
just isn't compatible with how ROM / EPROM-based systems work. A cold reset,
if not just a warm or cold boot, should have fixed it.
The order I'd have prescribed was warm boot, verify, and if not then cold boot,
verify, if not then reset. I don't think they had data vs. user store in those days
on any device, so no such thing as user vs. hard reset like your Windows Mobile
devices.
Anyhow, your story kind of intrigued me a bit, and who hasn't felt the childish
guilt for some sort of prank. But seems like someone was either ignorant,
woefully so, or busting your chops. Or, perhaps, there's something wildly
inaccurate in my understanding of how the older blind devices worked. Flash is
flash, though, and certain principles apply. No soft sciences educator is gonna
beat that any sooner than a six-day creationist can beat thermodynamics.
Omg Remy, I use to do that, and once I got jibberish. lol I just thought I was the only one who liked to press random shit on Braille n speaks, and yes, I got to use one of those. This was early 2004 or so before the apex and empowers came out.
Yeah that's crazy what happened to the Braille n Speak. It shouldn't have
stopped working just because of a command. I don't think your braille
teacher should have gotten angry with you since it was an accident, and it
wasn't like you planned for it to stop working. I used to have the Braille
Lite, not sure if you remember those. I had the 2000 and the millenium.
When I had the millenium, they used to crash on me constantly, and I
wouldn't destroy it. One of them stopped working completely. My
technology teacher took it apart and he said it was no good. The battery
was disconnected from the terminal on the inside.
As to my brother with the iPhones, yes it was immature and childish,
especially with the second phone where the screen could have been fixed.
And with the first one, he could have just bought a new phone and not
threw it. And as far as the phone being mangled and parts being off, I'm
not making that up; I actually saw both phones.
As far as replacing the battery in the iPhone, you do have to be careful
with the screws, but they do make magnetic bowls. So when you put the
screws in, they stay in the bowl so you don't lose them.
As to lyour brother with the iPhones, and I don't even do corporal punishments, I'd have turned him over my knee and paddled his ass for that shit. And no phone after that.
And I'm not even the beatin' kind. I never did it with the daughter.
I believe the devices that are water tight are in cases. I don't think there the regular variety.
I noticed in my first post I didn't say cheaply.
You have industrial or marine stuff. Really nice too, but as pointed out expensive in case you spill morning coffee. Lol
Ah the Braille n' Speak Classic. Many was the time I had to do a hard reset,
which involved executing an i chord (i with spacebar) on startup, and hearing
the worrying words 'System initialised'. Worrying because this was before you
could explicitly choose to have the device save your data, so you were reliant on
it's extremely flaky and idiosyncratic file recovery procedure. You normally got
bits of your data back, but it was usually interspersed with gibberish and often
you would lose at least part of it.
I'm a little surprised you could get any of your data back at all. Although I don't know what their reset / flash rewrite scheme looked like, and depending on what they wrote the software in, I perhaps would cry my way through that one. Assembly and I were never friends.
I've had a few tech disasters, counting the one with the braillenote that I posted about a few weeks ago. By the way, that braillenote is still working, even with that one cell being totally screwed up. The first disaster happened during my first semester of college. I was putting the fnishing touches on a paper, and felt that it needed some more info. After I quick search, I found a sight that had plenty of stuff. I wrote the final paragtaph, put the source in, saved my work, and shut down the computer. The next morning, I turned the computer on, intending to email the paper to my professor. After a few minutes, I noticed that the computer wasn't doing anything. According to my grandmother, there was something on the screen about some dll file was missing. The thing wouldn't even boot in to windows! Saying that I was screwed was the understatement of the century. This was back before xp died, and the only thing I had for backing stuff up was a floppy disk. But of course, I hadn't backed up the paper as I was working on it. Two days later, the harddrive was reformatted, and I certainly learned how helpful a flash drive can be after that.
So I'm guessing you had to rewrite the whole paper?
no, she had to get it somehow from her computer. use common sense, girl! :p
of course, she had to rewrite it! :d
Sounds like the old days when you wrote a paper and learned later that the ribbon had gone out on the typewriter at page 1.
Yeah.
Laughing.
Typed your ass off and...
Not technically a disaster, but would piss you off.
What's a VersaBraille?
Ribbonless typing! I'm cringing for your past self. lol
Gods and gargoyles it happened far more often than I'd like to admit!
It did! Ooh, you've just revived my ninth grade PTSD over a research paper I had to type and retype, for that very reason. LOL
Mikaela, the Versabraille is a mid 80s vintage computer type machine which stored content on standard cassette tapes. It had a Braille display of maybe eight or ten cells, and operated on a battery that could be recharged. Battery life wasn't long. The machine was as heavy as a Perkins brailler. It was prone to displaying error messages, and abruptly rewinding or ejecting the cassette, before you had a chance to save your work. It could connect to a printer, and it was an exciting thing to have, when it worked as it should, but my experience was that it was never very reliable.
Made the coolest sound when the battery died, though. LOL
Oh yes, and at the time, since it was the first refreshable braille I'd ever seen--not sure they had any others, then--I thought it was the greatest invention, ever!
I remember once I forgot to save my work on my braille note apex. I was
working on this research project and forgot to save it. I asked for extension
days for the research again. :d
Oh. It saved braille on cassettes. Very strange. And yeah, in those days it would have been. Not very modern and easy to operate though. I would have enjoyed banging on it, and getting mad at the thing. Though it makes me feel bad for dissing the BrailleNote Classic. Speaking of, here's my technology disaster. I had to think hard.
The BrailleNote Classic was perhaps the worst device a person could have at my state school, because nobody else had one, they all had Apexes. Well, point is, my friend, Taengkwa, decided it would be fun to play with mine. She did it often, but this particular morning, she somehow managed to get the thing out of its case. Of course, by this time it was being a rather stupid piece of crap, and not doing what it was supposed to do at all. That, and Taengkwa has ADHD, so she finds it fun to bang on things for whatever reason. She first decided to bang on the keys. Then she reset the BrailleNote, which she had somehow dubbed Tubby (why, I have no idea) and after she finished with that murdermania, she found it a good idea to take the thing and literally drop it from about the height of her head (about four feet and some inches), out of its case, onto the hard floor. We'll just say my tech teacher and I were up in the dorm around ten in the morning, hurriedly hunting for pins, before the janitor got to my room. I couldn't use the device without speech very well from then on, and it rattled for the rest of its days. The display died a year later, after Lovati fixed it for me. We never found all the pins, so he had to steal pins from broken Apexes. Nothing happened to the data, and I had to lie to him about exactly how the thing managed to get broken in the first place. Not humorous, as that was my only school device. Taengkwa hasn't touched my devices since. She felt horrible, as I think she believed the device was invincible.
Never killed my braille lite but I did make all kinds of weird noises with the speech, much to the amusement of some, and the annoyance of others. I could get it to do a perfect imitation of the wheel on the price is right, including the longer bleeps as it slowed down.
One technology disaster, is when my iPhone 5 fell out of my jeans into the toilet. Fortunately I was able to upgrade, but that still sucked. No more iPhone five.
A similar thing happened years ago, when I lived with my aunt and uncle. We were driving in the car and had just gotten food from Chick-Fil-A. I had a large cup of tea in my lap, and their truck went over a big bump causing the flimsy cup to spill tea all over my then Nokia N75 phone. Fortunately, AT&T's disability group allowed me to replace my phone no problem. Actually, I bought the same model off EBay, and sent it to AT&T's disability group to install Talks for me.
oh, that sounds horible, mikaela! Lol, my friend got in trouble. Technically it
was my fault but you know... :d she and I were supossed to do this research
project. she oppened up a pdf file before I could say it didn't work on my
laptop. too late she realized that the computter totally froze on her and
turned off. I got so mad I was litterally about to punch her. Fortunately, the
teacher sent me a microsoft word document so that worked out fine. I
deleted the pdf document before she opened it again.
Here's another college related tech disaster, this one taking place at the worst possible time, finals week! I was up in the testing center, working on my history final, when my braillenote decided to just randomly lock up right in the middle of writing the essay. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the thing to respond, so in a last ditch effort to get it working, I performed a service reset. According to the user guide, performing a service reset without humanware supervision is a big no no. My braillenote finally came back up, with all of my data intact, except for the file containing my history final. The professor did give me extra time to redue the final, but he was not happy about it, and dropped my grade by ten points.
What an asshole. The professor, that is.
Hello all:
While this is a bit off topic, I am curious as to how you all format your papers (for those of you who are in college.) Furthermore, since some articles are dreadfully long, how do you extract relevant information?
Thank you. I've been trying to obtain an answer to this question for a while. Please do not be prideful. If you received assistance in this process, let me know. This is with Jaws and being totally blind. Are there any Braille style manuals available??
Formatting depends upon your subject and genre. I used Chicago because I
was in the humanities, there are many others, MLA, APA, AMA, and the list goes
on and on. Each have their own little special things they like. You'll have to look
up which one is required of you. I've never found a braille reference guide.
They're updated so much even if I had it would be out of date by now. I do
think someone needs to make one though.
As for extracting relevant data from an article, there really isn't a trick to it.
You really should just buckle down and read the entire article. if you try to get
relevant information out of it without reading it all, you won't have good
information. It would be like judging a contest by only listening to one out of
four contestants. You can't say who was best, because you don't know. so the
best thing to do would be to work on your reading speed and your reading
comprehension.
The best tip for that is called active reading. It means that you don't just read
the article. You take notes. Have your computer next to you and write down
important definitions, what the thesis of the article is, what evidence is used,
what the conclusion is, does it prove the thesis in your opinion. write those
things down and you will be able to answer questions about the article much
better than someone who skimmed it. It take more time, but with practice you
will get faster at it.
I agree. Maybe you should get someone to help you learn study habits.
I've seen several of your questions, and most times I wonder if you've been taught to
study.
You seem to want a shortcut for everything, when what you are in college for is to,
well, read articles completely, not skim them.
Smile.
It is much like a job. You won't get paid if you do half the assigned project.
If you need to read something twice until you have grasped it, well, that is what you
do.
I know that Bookshare has the APA formatting manual. I'm sure there are others there as well. Like Cody said, you'll want to be certain which format your Professor requires. Many times, you can create a template in MS Word or Pages that will help with formatting your pages. I haven't actually done this, but I understand that it can be done.
Hi all,
Wayne, you are correct in attempting to discover a shortcut, as I believe most students at the college level skim material. Obviously, being blind, skimming is almost non-existent, so what the AT industry should be committed to is inventing a method in which this can be achieved.
Normally, when I read, I do not take notes because I have my BrailleNote connected to the computer. So, either I have to open another document, write information down, or switch out of terminal mode on the device.
An example of a fabulous software that allows more flexibility and simplicity is FSReader. Books from BookShare are rendered in an HTML format, permitting quick and effective navigation. One can initiate a scan of the relevant material by using the Headings List in Jaws or via the quick key H. If a book is formatted as a Daisy text-only file, then information can be selected, copied, and pasted. The user can then rewrite his or her notes by rewording sentences or paragraphs.
At CSUN, one of the highlights was the new Fire from Amazon. Apparently it is now possible to highlight specific text. I ordered the $50.00 device to try it out. If articles were made accessible through the creation and implementation of tags within a PDF, it would be much easier to skip to sections that a user might be interested in reading. Unfortunately, no matter how stringent the accessibility guidelines are, there will always be a level of non-compliance.
Nathan.
I've always used MLA, and there really isn't a short cut. What will you learn by doing that anyway? Also, did you go to a high school in the hood or something because you should have some idea of how to format a simple paper...
Nathan.
In college, I did some tutoring. I found even the seeing students that skimmed a chapter that weren’t versed in the subject simply didn’t learn all required.
The first question I’d ask them was “did you read the chapter, or at least the summary?”
These that said no, missed much.
I sincerely believe it would be a breeched service to create some program for the blind to allow them to skim.
If you read in braille, as you say, then you could skim paragraphs.
You read a bit of it to catch the meaning, then move to the next, and so on.
In braille, skimming is sort of easy, but still, you will miss information, and that is why you are supposed to read it.
You say you’d need to open up another program to use your computer for note taking while you have your braille device connected.
Why can’t you?
Because you have said so on these boards, you own more than one computer, so you could even use two.
I agree with the poster above, in high school, and even junior high, I learned to write a report, or paper.
If the professor wants a specific format, I would guess they’d ask.
If you write, and use the rules of English, you should be able to write any paper generally.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all this to be mean, but I really believe a college education means more than getting by.
If you have to many classes, take fewer, so you have time to study, and read.
Why else are you paying your money?
The best method is to pay someone to write your papers, if you are looking for a solution just to get by.
Smile.
I can write coherent sentences and paragraphs, but I've always found formatting to be arbitrary and confusing. And even the thought of using MS Word makes me feel ill. Fortunately, humanities-style formatting isn't too important in my field. Real computer scientists don't use Word, anyway. Many use LaTeX for formatting, which is great because nothing is hidden from me.
Agree with Voyager.
No, I attended a regular high school, but research papers were rare. Just because other blind people understand formatting does not mean one has to display arrogance and pride. How about being helpful for once?
Also, I think there is a way to move by paragraph using the BrailleNote. I can't remember, but will refer to the user guide. As with many others on this cite, I was never formally trained on how to use my screen reader. So, while I may have decent enough skills, formatting is just something that causes me unnecessary stress. If you understand how to format papers, then why not help others. I can write; that is not the problem. Otherwise, there would not be 800 and some posts here. Oh, and why does everyone get a degree? I'm not paying for my education. VR is. If I ever had to take out lones totaling nearly $130,000.00 then I would not be in school.
I was never formally trained to use my screen reader either, but I can, and that came because I read the manual.
I didn't skim it to learn only what I required, I read it.
It is difficult to be helpful when you don't have the exact answer the person is looking for.
That answer is.
You get over by using this program, so you never need to learn how to format a paper.
I'll be helpful. Why not take a basic English, and the next level English class?
Next, get someone to explain how to format a paper, and explain how it looks.
You'll need to see this on a kpiece of paper, so the book, not your electronics.
For this exact reason is why braille is extremely important. We need to see how things look.
If you're not paying for your education, don't you sort of feel you should use the money being spent so you are actually educated once you finish?
Would you like to go to a doctor that explained how they skipped over stuff in medical school, and found shortcuts to pass?
I doubt it.
I'd say a person goes to college so they can become versed in the subject. If not, it is a waste of time and money.
Once you are in the work force, you'll be asked can you. If you can't, you can't do the work you went to college to do.
Again, this is conversation, not jumping on you. Maybe being helpful is someone that is willing to tell you these things and not allow you to say it is correct to get by.
Sure. Just describe to me what it looks like. Usually that results in my forgetting it because I've never seen it. I have to touch it, hear it, smell it, sens it in some way and do it to understand it. My community college MS Word "learning" experience consisted of someone telling me to push buttons, then reporting if whatever they wanted had happened. I usually could perceive no difference and I felt like a monkey trained to type on command. And, Braille doesn't always look like print. Just try reading computer programs written by sighted people - some lines are indented by 20 or 30 spaces. Looks fine to them, but it's nearly impossible to read in Braille.
Braille isn't perfect for that sort of thing.
However, he's asking about writing an English paper. Braille is perfect for this.
You can see how things are lined up. Were foot notes are placed.
I use Microsoft Word, and because I have seen, plus now use braille, I have a perfect understanding how to make the program do what I want as to formatting.
If I'm given some specifics, I can use the program, or here, we've had suggestions of other programs, to make my paper look like that format as well.
But if someone says to just write a paper, I've been taught how to do this in a basic fashion.
You've seen before. My point, exactly.
Voyager, it doesn't have to be actual Braille. How is your spatial ability? If you have the ability to determine approximate spaces between physical objects you should be fine with this.
So, take a regular 8x11 (or is 8.5?) sheet of paper that back in the old days we would print out our papers on. Have someone sighted and who understands the formats you need to use for school lay out pencils or pipecleaners or something straight horizontally on the paper. You would need different lengths for this demonstration. It doesn't have to be perfect, it is just to give you a physical representation to help you understand what you are doing when you are formating your papers.
If you are only talking about programming....I am where you are in relation to regular document formatting! That is way out of my comprehension.
Just a little sharing here, when I moved into my new place, people had described the layout to me. I just couldn't wrap my head around an image of it (yes, I used to have vision.) Even though I walked around the place over and over, it just wouldn't fit together. I finally did a little mock up like above using pens or something along those lines and laid them out like the layout of the house and was finally able to grasp the dimensions.
Hope this helps, and if it doesn't say so and maybe someone else can come up with something better.
At risk of perpetuating the off topic tangent: Re Wayners's point on programs
for skimming, there's the JAWS summary feature that lets you do various
things, including pulling out the first sentences of paragraphs, seeing the
frequency with which words occur in a document and moving to the various
instances, etc. While not as effective as skimming print, it might be useful in
some circumstances.
Wayne has a lot of good points.
The one thing Braille doesn't very well provide is the notion of font and attributes. I mean, braille is Braille is Braille. Spacing, sure. Back in the day when I had to do everything on a typewriter that worked. But the new kids would run squealing for the hills like a hog with its tail pulled, if they had to look at something as ewwy and gross as typewritten fonts.
I don't know about school, but in business font and attributes are pretty damned important. Remember your average person has five seconds or less at a fifth grade reading level to get what you're saying, enough to be hooked on it to finish. Pathetic? Sure. When I was in college the technical writing courses told us 10th grade. Dumbing down of society and all that.
But the best way I can explain fonts and attributes to you is this: It's the distinction that different parts of the text provides. The spatial stuff provides the separation, so by looking at a sheet of paper they know where footnotes and headers begin and end. You're lucky, kid, just insert a Footnote using Word. No need to click with the typewriter and count clicks, and hopefully not miss.
But the font and attributes is how you separate out the terms and definitions, things like that. A bulletted list provides someone the ability to see each bullet point as its own entity. In Braille all of this is represented by spacing and indentation plus a couple of symbols only.
And when you need to format something, select the text whose format you need and then apply the formats using your program.
Of course most of what I do is numbered outlines, occasional bullet lists though usually leave that for the nonengineering types, and tables.
It's like anything else: Once you do it a time or several you're good.
The thing about formatting is once you've designed your canvas, as it were, (thinking about this as though you were setting up a UI), you can reference the parts in your document or in referring to it, oor just in your mind.
I've had the occasional misfortune to work on several patent documents over the years, and being able to say "Table 4" or "the outline under the Procedure 2 heading, item 2.4.3" just makes everyone clear on what item you're referring to.
Formatting is no more and no less than a visual way to describe parts of something. The bolds, italics, underlines, etc. are there to draw attention to certain things. At its most fundamental, formatting is just a sort routine. So in the end you've got people who don't know what they're doing, but are in power, looking at all your summary and headings, sign for it, and those who actually understand your line of work can read the finer details and pick it apart.
Once you understand what each formatting type is used for, like most things mechanical it kind of demystifies itself.
You really have to talk to people in your actual field to know what each type of formatting does. It's been decades since I was in school, but a footnote (which you won't use once you leave college) is to cite a reference. It's kind of the original hyperlink if you will.
Tables are another thing, right? Because in Braille you usually get a caption telling how the columns will follow one another and then it's done line by line in a nontabular format. But you use web pages, Amazon, stuff like that, so you're miles ahead of those of us who came up before the web and just did Braille, a slate, or a typewriter.
So you already know if you use the table commands in your reader, you can have a table with column 1 down the left being the item's name, 2 is the price, 3 is the description. And in column 3, the description may span more than one line, but you don't really have to worry about that often. Someone looking at it sees the whole table, but also sees the row or line they're on, and also sees the particular cell in that row they're looking at plus maybe some above and some below it.
Paper braille doesn't give this to you because you would have to kill a single tree for one table. But you having had the Internet understand that the table displays not only data but the relationship between the data. You know what price goes with what item and what its description is all by their position in the table.
engineers, software and otherwise, use similar tables.
Anyway I hope this explains some of it. I'm a lifer too, and came up before the Internet, and thus didn't really interact with sophisticated formatting at all until going online. Being a programmer / technical type surely helps in understanding how the parts work together, but really anyone can.
Where it becomes subjective there can be trouble; I've seen a pair of marketing types fighting over a hue like two cats in a sack. It happens. But for the most part formatting you will be able to understand.
Guys, we're talking an essay here, you don't need to worry about fonts and
sizes. I've written in four different types, and none of them asked for anything
other than twelve point font in the standard type. Set your chosen document
program to double space and go on about your way. You don't even really have
to understand why you need it like that. Just do it. Its one little thing.
Sometimes they may ask for specific margins, and if they do you just change
that setting, though I've never heard of a professor measuring a margin before.
When it comes to formatting there are two big differences. First is the way
things are cited. Chicago uses footnote citations. The others use in text
citations. So if you're using footnotes, you need to know where the designating
number goes in the sentence, and how to make a footnote. Nowadays your
computer will just do it for you. On my mac all I have to do is put the cursor
where I want the footnote and hit a button that says make a footnote. It even
keeps all the nubmers in order for me. Its great. If you happen to be using
another format, you have to know how they want in text citations done, then
just do them that way. If they want page number and author's name in
parentheses, do it that way. Not that challenging.
Next, there is the spelling of different words and the way certain punctuation
is used. Some styles want you to put a period inside quotation marks when a
quote ends the sentence, some want it outside. You just have to learn these
things. You don't need to visualize it, or worry about why it is the way it is,
because often it doesn't even have a reason. It jut is, so you just do it that way.
Right.
I use word for much of that, and it has features to make say foot notes too.
Because I was visual I can honestly say that English braille and English writing say in a book, news paper, as to format, looks exactly same.
You'd not double space a braille document, but you might a printed one.
But, in English, I learned all these things.
What a foot notes was, how to add quotations, numbering.
I learned that a paragraph needed to be indented 5 spaces, so using a braille writer, or type writer, I could do exactly that.
I don't need to on a computer, because it does it for you.
I also took a typing class.
In school, my teacher that did the blind stuff, showed me how tables, and charts looked too in braille.
I took some math classes you had to use graphs, so these were made out of braille graph paper for me.
I understand what a list should look like.
Maybe, due to computers, the blind don't get these tools, or training before they get to college.
I honestly get confused, when people say, they have no idea what these things look like.
Am I correct, that it simply isn't taught anymore to the blind?
I had a Braille Lite M20 in grade school, and if you so much as breathed on that thing it would crash. I can recall at least three separate times in which I was strolling innocently through the status menu, nothing out of the ordinary, and suddenly I'd feel the braille go fuzzy under my fingers, and that was all she wrote. Naturally, it was always my fault, even when the bugs were widely-reported.
Hell, Meglet, that sounds like the Braille Edge 40 I've got now. lol It makes me crazy.
VH, my spatial ability is all right. I'd probably understand a demonstration like that pretty easily.
Forereel, I probably took bits of what you were saying out of context. As a congenitally blind person (and a very senses-based thinker), it drives me nuts when people don't show me anything tangible but instead use lots of words to describe a concept that is brand new to me. They learned about it through actual experience, but somehow they expect me to understand the new thing just through their description and my imagination. They almost always have some adventitiously blind person in mind when they assume I can do this. But I don't think that's what you meant.
Leo, I'm curious as to how you program on a team. Specifically, how do you deal with all that indentation? Do you strip it out while you're working and use a script to reintroduce it, or do you just learn to read it?
No. I strongly believe a blind person should be given something they can touch.
Whatever is required to create a graph, or whatever, should be done.
The seeing teacher has a wealth of tools to create these things, so I wonder why it isn't being used now to teach the blind.
When I work with seeing persons, I'm always stating, "if you look at this."
Well, when I work with a blind person, I ask them if they minde of I take their hand so I can show them what I'm talking about.
You can't imagin what you can't preceive. OIt just isn't possible.
Oops, I wasn't ready to post that, but you get my meaning hopefully. Lol
I really am learning that the blind child gets a lesser education.
Why do you give a young student a Braille Lite M20 when what they need is a Perkins braille writer?
A seeing child receives a pencil and a paper note book, and learns to write.
A blind child needs a slate and stylus.
In a math class, you need to be able to write out your problems, and figure them out on paper, so you can understand how that works.
I love electronic gadgets, and they bring a wealth to our lives, but in the beginning, we really need basic tools.
No laptops, no screen readers. We need to learn how to see things and perceive them.
We need to learn how words, numbers, graphs, charts, things are.
I’d advocate, that for the first 6 or 7 years of a child’s education, all materials should be presented in a tactual manner.
Maybe in middle school, you can now start to use electronic gadgets to a point, but only limited.
Okay, rant over, and I’m honestly sorry this situation exists.
Yeah, finding people to make that shit though Wayne. I agree, but all of that is in dream land somewhere.
I wasn't being arrogant, but writing a paper isn't that difficult, and I learned other styles in grade school. My university also has a writing center, so maybe use that.
Voyager, when it comes to indentation, I'm a dick about it. I love it, I useit exclusively, I hate it when someone block-centers their code! Indentation is how you can see the relationship of a given statement to its parent condition or loop
In school you work on only your own projects. In real life, most of your time will be spent fixing bugs in code -- yours, and most importantly, someone else's. That's just how it goes working on commercial products, especially if you get a stable job working on mature enterprise stuff. Indentation is how you know what relates to what.
I'm none too good at coding by ear, as it were, using primarily speech. I use primarily Braille. But if you have to use speech, set up your screen reader to indicate indentation, and I guess set it up to tell you by how much.
When it comes to Braille, I just set up my editors to use real tabs not spaces, and if possible set the tab size to a quarter inch or something, which results in maybe two Braille cells per tab.
Then when you have a question about a particular line, move your cursor left and right on the blank space at the beginning of the line to see how many there are.
But when you're buzzing through to get an overview of how a particular module is laid out, indentation is extremely helpful.
I guess I'm a "visual" blind man when it comes to looking at stuff like that. By seeing the indentation, you see what each statement belongs to, and what each condition or loop belongs to. Not that nesting too many levels deep is remotely close to good practice.
But again, chance are you're going to need to look at someone else's code and if they indented correctly, at least that serves to help you figure out what's connected with what, even if they didn't use meaningful variable names or name a function to look like it would returns a bool when in fact it sets an unrelated variable elsewhere and returns some other data type.
So yeah, I can be, and usually am, a dick about indentation: love it, and hate it when other people refuse to use it. I think it must be just a thing where some people visualize it one way, and a great many of us visualize things in the indented way which kind of looks like an outline.
Hey Rain and others,
My university has a writing center as well, but you know, maybe I am tiring of the constant religion affiliated with this university. While theology is intriguing, especially in a practical sense, it is useless in real life. Speaking of technology disasters, a podcast was put together by JJ, who runs the Zone BBS, advertising the accessibility of Kindle Fire. Well, for one reason or another, VoiceView is extremely sluggish and unresponsive. Have any of you tried the Kindle Fire? About to return it. The app works quite well.
Leo, regarding indentation, it is easy enough to configure within Jaws. Press insert + V, then I for indentations, press space to toggle them on, and let the excitement begin! Interestingly enough, when I indent a paragraph using tab, sometimes Jaws says 1.5 inches, but it seems inconsistent. Well, you all have a nice evening.
Sorry Nathan, but you can't blame theology on your lack of ability.
At the writing center, you'll not be asked to write Bible verses, just the work you bring them.
English, is English, even at a Christian university.
the Samsung Galaxy S7 which I have, "Samsung is claiming it can be baried in upto 5 feet of water.". Some videos on youtube show the phone being spilt on by water. I have fore my IPhone S6 a mophy battery and water proof case. yes, if asked, the mophy case does protect your IPhone from a drop on hard concrete even if it bounces. The cost $99 with tax, so its expensive but worth it. I can not tell you how many times that case saved my Kimberly's IPhone, lord knows.
Dan Mathis
I saw a smart phone once that used bulletproof glass for the screen and had
an all metal case, stuff like that. I think it was called the MGM Explorer. Tehre
are videos on youtube of stress tests for it. You really can find things that are
build to be indescructible. its just a matter of affording them. But then, I've
never had any of the four iphones I've owned even have a scratch on them at
all, so maybe its more the use than the technology.
as for your writing center, sorry, but if memory serves you're going to Liberty
University. If you didn't want theology, you should have gone somewhere else.
You can't go to Liberty and then complain about the theology. its not like they
hide it going in. everyone in america knows about liberty university.
I also like Mophie cases even though I'm not likely to drop my phone outside, or spill water on it.
Maybe I've been lucky in this reguard, but when i'm using it, I think about these hazards so do things to avoid them.
In my case, it is an 800 dollar item, so I respect it as such.
Laughing.
Liberty University, where that crack daddy Fallwell claims women in pants were some kind of perversion. Lol I found that on the internet once by mistake this was ten years ago now.
It is still not the university.
Sorry folks.
I'll grant you that the trouble he's apparently having has nothing to do with beliefs, just needs the tools for how to write and format.
Agreed. I wonder if any of the posts I've written on here were positive? Lol.
I'd say that depend on your view.
If you've gotten something from your post, or questions, sure.
Right, doesn't have anything to do with you not formatting a paper, but I will be more than happy to explain things to you since your teachers couldn't bother in grade school.
Okay... When?
The writing center won't help with the formatting? Or at least explain it to you? ask your professors what they're looking for. I hate MLA myself, but that's what I have to use for now. A.P.A. format looks easier.
No technology disasters to speak of at this point. Knocking on wood it stays that way.
And I've kept drinks away from the computer.