Hello again.

Only one more week... That's right. By this time next week, I'll have completed my project and my Masters course this semester. I can't wait. It's been a very interesting project, and I've learned a lot. I am glad though that it's finally nearing completion. We have one more live class next Wednesday, and our final project is due that same day. I'm really close to being done. All I really have to do now is fix a few things, and write up a couple more documents, and print everything out. Then it's done. I am quite curious how long the final document will end up being, because we're essentially printing all the design documents for both last and this semester, the instruction, evaluation, and feedbak and final reports. I'm thinking it will be at least 50 pages by the time all is said and done. It will be a great thing to add to my portfolio though.

Work is going well too. I'm still working on the usual stuff like outreach and training, but I'm starting a few new projects too. This past Wednesday I met with a few people at Dayton's Bluff Library to start working on an audio project for the library website. There are some key policies and information that would be helpful to people in audio form. The first part of the project is to figure out what information we want to focus on. Then we'll find people who can help translate these pieces into a few different languages. Finally, we'll be recording audio files of all of these translations for the website. Some library policies are hard to understand for some customers, so including both text and audio descriptions in their native language should really help.

I've also been helping more with the Digital Advisory team at Intermedia Arts. I've been helping come up with ideas and accessibility suggestions for their new website. The team also briefly spoke at an Intermedia Arts board meeting last night. Things are going well, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the website progresses.

I've also been learning about more assistive technology workshops and presentations around St. Paul that I plan on going to. I'm always trying to learn more about what's out there, and especially learn more about other technology that help people with other disabilities. I know AT for visual disabilities pretty well, but still feel I don't know as much as I'd like about other technology. I'm also using these sessions as an outreach and networking time. It's a great way to inform people what services and technology are here for free, at the library. Of course I'm starting to think about life after CTEP, and possible job opportunities in the assistive technology field, and the more connections the better.

I also got to take a quick look at the assistive technology computer at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State library. The computer itself is pretty nice actually. The only thing that's maybe lacking a little is memory. When running all the recent assistive technology it's really useful to have 1 GB RAM, and the good news is RAM's dirt cheap right now. As for assistive technology, they have a couple of programs, but they aren't recent versions. I also learned that JAWS isn't on that machine. We're looking to address to this because otherwise I can't really use that computer. They currently have Kurzweil and Dragon Naturally Speaking. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping to make some connections with other colleges and universities around the area, to see what they offer for assistive technology, what's pretty standard, and what unique things each one might have. This should help presenting our case that there is a need for some additional technology. I'm also going to plug WebAdapt, especially since it's free and all...

So I have plenty to keep me busy at work. I'm really hoping to get more customers coming in because it's really slowed down since it's gotten nice outside. One cool thing I just learned while I was typing this, is a couple other library branches should be getting a similar assistive technology computer. There's a meeting about it in the beginning of May, which I don't know if I'll be helping with yet or not. I hope I can though because I feel it's a very valuable service.

Oh, and we're still working on our video project for our Accessibility and Usability committee. We shot some footage at Lexington on Saturday, and will finish the rest of the footage we need by this weekend. ON Monday, we're going to meet, and go over what we have, and how we want to proceed from there. It might be interesting to see how things work out. One of our committee members is leaving CTEP for a cool new job she just got, so that's really cool.

I haven't had much time for anything really fun or exciting this week. I've been pretty busy. I'm still playing my DS off and on. I really love this little system, and I'm so glad I got it. It's really nice because I'm not tied down to a TV, and it's a great way to kill a couple minutes between other stuff. I've been playing quite a bit of Tetris DS and started Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow. Both are really fun. I'm also looking forward to The New Super Mario Brothers and the updated DS system that I might have to get later in May. The screens are much better and brighter, whichwill really help. Also, I can't remember the exact dates, but the coolest time of the year for gamers is coming up in May. E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is coming up, and I can't wait to see all the awesome stuff that will be coming out over the next year. I'm especially excited to learn more about Nintendo's mysterious Revolution console. I sooo wish I were going this year, but I'll settle for camping out in front of the computer off and on for a couple days to get all the happenings.

Finally, since everyone is posting videos and other interesting projects on their blogs, I'll end my mini-novel with a very very cool link. The people behind this site are part of the demo scene. These demos are like little movies, but are actually generated by code rather than actual video footage. The really interesting thing is, these demos are very small. These guys produce some very amazing stuff that can fit on a floppy. They also have started making an actual simple first person shooter game in under a meg, which you can get from this site. I highly recommend checking this site out, and watching and playing these demos. I recommend watching FR08 The Product and FR035 or something, The Popular Demo. The game is pretty sweet too, especially for how much content is crammed into under 1 MB. Go to http://theproduct.de/index.html to see the demos.

And that'll do it for this week.

Well, it's Thursday again, so I'm back for another weekly update. Things have been quite busy this week. I've met with a couple of customers here at the library, and over the phone. There really haven't been many people calling, e-mailing, or stopping by the library lately, but I'm still trying to get more people interested in what we have here. I suspect the nice weather has something to do with this, and I can't blame them I guess. Still things are going well. Everyone I have been helping seems to come back and says they learn a lot.

Last Friday the CTEP Accessibility and Usability committee started shooting video footage for our video project. We got some footage from Intermedia Arts that morning, and then PPL in the afternoon. I think it went really well, and we got a lot of good footage. I even got to try shooting a little video, which was cool because I didn't know how well I could see to do so.

This past Wednesday, we also got to go on a tour of the new Rondo Library we'll be moving to this summer. My main first impression was simply how huge the place truely is. It's a lot bigger than Lexington Library. It's probably over twice the size. Everything seems well thought out though. I got to see where the new homework center, and my favorite part, the electronic classroom will be. The rest of the library looked quite nice too. The construction isn't quite done yet, but you really can get to see how things will start to look shortly. I can't wait to see the final product.

Aside from work, I'm still slaving away on my Masters project. I finally have enough people who have completed my module, so I can finish my report that's due on Friday. We have to write a 5 to 10 page paper that basically described how all the testings went, how I did them, and how well everyone did. No actual names will be used though. I have most of the written part done, but since the last couple of people finished last night, I have to still put together lots of tables, charts, and graphs that show a variety of things. This is the pat I'm not lookiing forward to. It's just a lot of data entry, and making tables and charts that look nice. I found out last night that I had completely forgotten how to make a graph in Excel, so I was relearning that again. I just never make graphs because I never have the need, and I can't really read them myself. I now know enough again to finish my report though.

Everything went really well with my evaluations. I got 8 people to go through the training module, and I got really good and different feedback and suggestions from everyone. So thank you everyone who did go through it. It's helping a lot. After I finish this report, it's the final draft of everything. I really have to just compile everything into one long Word file, and fix a few things in the documentation, and I'll be done. I can't wait. It's been a lot of work, but I've learned a lot.

I really haven't had any time to do anything much else than work and homework this past week, and I forsee the same for the next week or two. That's ok though because I'm getting a lot done.

Until next week...

I'm back again. This week has been quite busy actually. The main focus this week has been my project for my Masters course. I have everything online now, and ready to go. I've been getting people to test it, and write any thoughts, comments, and problems they have with the module. So far three people have tried it out, and it's gone well. I've got some good feedback already, and I should have plenty more by next week. Then it's pretty much just writing about how things went, and organizing everything for the final day of class. Considering where I was just a month ago, it's come a long way and actually looking pretty good.

Work has been going pretty well too. I've been helping out a few customers over the phone with some of the technology they have at home. It sounds like a couple of them may come to the library to see what technology we have as well, so I hope they do stop in soon. I've also been doing more work with Intermedia Arts this past week. This Tuesday, we had our second Digital Advisory committee meeting, which was pretty interesting. A lot of interesting ideas came from it, so I'm interested to see what happens over the next few months. We also had some good food.

I also did a presentation to the Intermedia Arts staff this Wednesday on assistive technology and website accessibility. I only had about 20 minutes, so I didn't get to show off that much cool stuff, but it was still a lot of fun, and people seemed to really get into it. I actually really enjoy doing this kind of thing too, so I guess that's something to sconsider when looking for my next job. I would almost make a good salesmen that goes to trade shows and stuff to show the technology and talk about how cool it is.

Late last week I also started working with a new portable book reader called the Book Port. It's about the size of a calculator, and will read a variety of different types of electronic books. It reads text, Word documents, HTML pages, and also supports Audible books, Daisy books, and regular MP3 files. The speech synthesizer it uses isn't near as good as Jaws, but I'm starting to get used to it more now. Maybe in a future hardware update, they'll support more synthesizers? The nice thing is that it uses standard compact flash cards for storage. It came with a 256 MB version, but I've already almost filled that up. I may have to look into a couple bigger cards for all the books and media I have. It's still nice though because the bus rides aren't near as boring, and I can just tune out the annoying people.

I haven't done too much for fun the last few days. It's been so nice out, but I've been so busy I haven't gotten to take much advantage of it. There will be a CTEP party this weekend that should be fun to go to though. And tomorrow the AU committee is starting its first video shoot, so that should also be interesting.

That's about all for this week.

It's Thursday again, so I'm back for another update. A lot has actually been going on this past week, work, school, and otherwise.

Work has been quite busy but fun this past week. Last week was very slow, and I only met with one or two customers. This week though, I've met with three or four. I'm still helping one customer learn Dragon, and it's going quite well actually. It's much easier now that I can use and experiment with the software itself. There are still some things to figure out, but it's going well.

Another customer is interested in getting the word out there to senior groups and other organizations he works with about the assistive technology. He also mentioned some class that is taught every so often at SSB on how to teach people computers, kind of how to be a teacher, and how to explain the basics of computers and assistive technology. This sounds interesting because while I am doing pretty well, I could always use more pointers. I'm not certified to be a teacher, I'm just winging it and building on past experience for the most part.

I also attended another training at SSB on Wednesday. This time it was on a couple of electronic Braille devices. It was actually pretty cool, and I could see the use of a small Braille display and Braille keyboard combo. However I just have a hard time still justifying the price for these things. I know I've talked about this probably several times before, but price is just insane. Braille displays are probably some of the most expensive pieces of assistive technology for the Blind. A 40 character display can be over $6000.00 Just thinking about that much for 40 letters, wow.... The small one they shoed off was a 12 character display with a Braille keyboard. This wasn't too bad comparatively speaking. It was just under $2000.00 Still, if I was an engineer, I think my first project would be to come up with a different way of making these devices much cheaper, but still work well.

On another technology note, I just got my new BookPort yesterday. This is a little device that can read many types of electronic books like Daisy, txt, Word documents, Audible books, and MP3 files. It also has a voice recorder for quick notes and a Braille keyboard mode for typing notes. I don't know how to do much with it, but know enough to read and listen to tunes on the way to and from work. Yay! Bus rides aren't boring now, and I can block out all the crazies. I'm going to have to look into a bigger Compact Flash card, like 2 or 4 gigs. The 256 MB one it came with will be filled shortly. So any dirt cheap Internet deals are welcome. It has to be a type 1 card though.

My friends from Crookston came down this week, and so we had some fun this week. We played some cards on Tuesday night, and I'm sad to say I rarely got a good hand all night. We played Smear, and me and my partnor won one game, but lost the other two pretty badly. It was still fun though.

Finally my masters course is progressing a bit further. I really need to finish polishing up the material, and getting everything working in HTML EZ by Monday, so I can start my one to one and small group testings of the module. Most of the content is done though, but I still have to think of a couple of questions for a couple end of unit quizzes. The aim is to have 5 questions for each unit, but I'm a little short on a couple of units. Then it's just adding users and getting a few technical things taken care of. So things are still moving ahead, and I just might be seeing the end of the tunnel in the distance. This project has been very interesting, but I'll be really relieved and glad when May 3rd is here.

That's about all this week. Thankfully the snow's gone, and it's been quite nice lately too. So until next time.