A September 2006 Scientific american article describes the phenomenon of synesthesia as
an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality.
In other words, the brain receives one sense and converts it into another. For instance, the sound of a car passing by having a strong paint smell, or the number 16 tasting sweet.
Synesthesia can present itself in many, many different ways, and there is no specific method of telling whether you or someone you know is experiencing it or not. A triangle might taste like a dry wine for one synesthete, but smell like a sunflower for another. However, despite these wide ranging differences, the sense to sense mappings that synesthetes have are often very much the same. I.E. synesthete A will always think a triangle tastes like dry wine, and synesthete B will always think it smells like a sunflower. This is what sets synesthesia apart from things such as psychotic or drug/medication induced hallucination episodes.
Synesthesia is a fascinating and bizarre phenomenon, but it can be quite jarring, maybe even overwhelming, to deal with at times. For instance, imagine your synesthesia is turned up so high that literally every sense, and all forms of it, have a synesthetic mapping. You hear a plane flying overhead, as well as 50 people talking in 50 different languages and accents, all with different sounding voices. Oh and the smell of cooking food too. It’s a nice smell, but that’s not the point. Your brain is having to process thousands of stimuli and synesthetically map each one. If that doesn’t make your brain crash like Windows 95 after a Blue Screen of Death error, I have no idea what will!
I’ve known what synesthesia is for quite a while, but have never taken any serious notice of it. That is until I got chatting to someone online about it after reading some of their social media posts. Like me, this person is totally blind, but more to the point, he’s a synesthete. He’s an adaptable synesthete, meaning his synesthesia can effectively be turned up and down. Part of his synesthesia involves words having different textures, depending on both the language and accent in which the word is spoken. We eventually formed a kind of bond over our synesthesia, and now I consider us to be close friends. Well, as close as an online friendship can be. š
After chatting with him for a bit, I eventually realized that he’d helped unlock a part of me that I never really knew existed, my own synesthetic tendencies.
How my synesthesia works
I have quite a unique, but also highly confusing, form of synesthesia in which every word, in either English or any other language, is mapped to one or more musical notes in which I imagine that word being said. Now, here’s where it gets confusing. One word can have more than one musical note mapping, and each syllable, I.E. the parts that make up a word, also have their own mapping.
The only way for me to demonstrate this is with a piano recording. The following sound file shows how the word ‘Sweden’ is mapped to musical notes. The first note you hear is A4, which is the swee syllable. The second note, G4, is the den syllable. It might help if you sing along with the notes so you can get an idea of how the word maps to the notes.
If you’ve made it this far without your brain blowing up, first of all, congratulations! Secondly, here are some more piano examples of my synesthetic word to musical note mappings. Again, singing along with the notes might help you understand the mappings better.
For screen reader users, each word will be listed as a level 3 heading, and the mappings will be level 4 headings. This will allow you to quickly jump between them using the appropriate heading navigation keys for your screen reader.
Beat (music)/beet (beetroot)
Mapping 1. F4
Mapping 2. G4
Mapping 3. C5
CD (compact disk)/Seedy (full of seeds)
Mapping 1. D3, C3
Mapping 2. F3, D3
Mapping 3. F4, D4
Mapping 4. a4, C4
Mapping 5. D5, C5
Mapping 6. F5, D5
Feet (legs)/feat (achievement)
Mapping 1. A4
Scene (movie)/seen (with your eyes)
Mapping 1. E4
Sea (ocean)/See (with your eyes)
Mapping 1. D4
Mapping 2. F4
Mapping 3. G4
Mapping 4. D5
Mapping 5. F5
Swede
Mapping 1. A4
Sweet
Mapping 1. a4
Conclusion
Synesthesia can be a very confusing concept to wrap your head around; even the best scientists are still finding their way around it!
I hope this blog post has been as intriguing and insightful as it has been mind boggling. Below is a citation link to the 2006 Scientific American article that I used as a research point for this blog post.
Citation
Scientific American. (2006). What is synesthesia?. [Online]. scientificamerican.com. Last Updated: 11th September, 2006. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-synesthesia/ [Accessed 13th July, 2023].
You may find this hard to believe, but I, an average twenty-something blind guy from the United Kingdom, have been playing video games for almost 2 decades! I know. Unbelievable, right? It only seems like just yesterday, I was playing Turok on my dad’s first generation, Red Ring of Death prone Xbox 360, and having a blast in WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, showing how truly badass John Cena can really be. Joooooohn Cena!
But how have I managed to cope in the video game sphere for nearly 20 years despite being without any eyesight? In this post, I shall answer this very question, detailing the ups, the downs, the ins, the outs, the whys and the why nots of my video game journey. This is… 20 years in gaming: a history!
The early years. Introduction to computers and DIY simulation
Our story begins in the third year of the third millennium. Two zero zero three. Zweitausenddrei. The year 2003!
Ah, 2003. What a time to be alive. Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, the Nokia N-Gage was all the rage, and Junior Senior’s Move Your Feet was flying up the UK charts like a newly launched NASA space rocket. Also in 2003, little 2 and a half / 3 year old me was about to get his first glimpse of the breathtaking feat of electromechanics that is the personal computer system, otherwise known as the PC.
I’ve covered my first ever computer before in a previous post, so I won’t talk about it too much here. In a nutshell, it was a custom built PC from a friend of my dad’s. It had both a floppy disk drive and a CD-ROM drive, and when I first received it in 2003, it ran Windows 95. It was my loyal servant for 8 years, and I loved it to death. Pity I can’t remember its exact hardware specs, though. š
My introduction to the PC would also turn out to be my introduction to the ever amazing world of video games. There were 2 games I’d mainly play on my 2003 custom build.
Tonka Workshop
Tonka Workshop was released in 1998 by Hasbro Interactive. Targeted at young children, Tonka Workshop is set in the… uh… Tonka Town Workshop, Where players can build various structures and complete many DIY related tasks around Tonka Town. Town tasks include mending farm fences, repairing loose bicycle bells and fixing a dangerous hole in a park bridge so that children can play in the park again, with the cheery sounding Tonka Joe guiding you every step of the way.
You can either play using the hardware workbench and tool set that comes with the game, or you can just use the mouse like an ordinary PC gamer. Of course, being blind, I mainly used the hardware tool set.
You can find out more about Tonka Workshop by checking out this Wiki Fandom article (ignore the release date, it’s 1998, not 2000). You can also find a game play video by the CD-ROM Longplays YouTube channel below.
Playskool Store
Hey, look! Another Hasbro game! Playskool Store, released in the year 2000, sees you playing as a store cashier, serving your various animated customers. For each transaction you successfully complete, a gold star is added to your score. Once you have 15 gold stars, you can print out your virtual paycheck. Of course, a printer is required for this feature to work! š
Like Tonka Workshop, Playskool Store also comes with a hardware playset. Of course, it’s a cash register this time. To price up items your customers want to buy, you simply enter the associated number using the number pad on your hardware cash register. Each number on the keypad corresponds to a price in pounds. Number 1 = 1 pound, number 2 = 2 pounds, number 5 = 5 pounds, etc. I’m not sure if there were country specific versions of the game. If there was a US or Canadian version, for instance, I’d assume pounds would be replaced with dollars. What’s cool with this is that when you enter a price, a human voice speaks the price(s) you’re entering, as well as the total price of all the items. This was extremely helpful to me as a blind player. However, some tasks require a lot of scanning and on-screen symbol counting to price up items, which my dad was always happy to provide sighted assistance with.
I’ve been scouring the internet for many years, and sadly, I have been unable to find a single piece of game play footage for this game. At least, not to the same standard as Tonka Workshop. If anyone knows who is still selling the game, or where to find some decent, no-commentary game play footage of this awesome game, please, please, please let me know! Take me back to the 2000s where I belong!
Of course, as well as those games, I’d also play the timeless Windows classics like Solitaire and Mine Sweeper with sighted assistance from my dad, despite being utterly terrible at them!
2007. Wired for sound
2007 saw me enter the very fascinating world of audio games. Best defined, an audio game is a computer game that uses sound as a primary means of experiencing and interacting with the game and elements within the game. Because an audio game’s primary focus is sound, most audio games don’t come with any on-screen visual effects like a typical video game, leaving the player completely reliant on their ears.
Ironically, the very first time I played an audio game was when I was at school, using a Windows XP laptop owned by the school.
The following are the first 5 audio games I ever played.
Deekout
A simple but annoying game set on a 21×21 grid in which you have to avoid a beeping enemy for as long as possible. The longer you survive, the faster the enemy follows you around the board, making him increasingly harder to dodge. If he catches you, you die instantly and it’s game over!
Sonic Match
This game is kind of a beat matching game, but not quite. Think of PaRappa the Rapper, but you’re matching single sounds instead of rhythms. You basically have to press the correct arrow key, be it Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Up Arrow or Down Arrow, that corresponds with a specific sound. If you press the wrong arrow key, however, you will hear a long, loud, low-pitched buzzing sound and immediately lose the game.
Savage Gamut
I still haven’t mastered this game, and it’s been out for as long as I’ve been playing computer games! Think of the hardest boxing game you’ve ever seen or played, and times it by 10. The number of keystrokes you need to remember to play this game, as well as the order in which said keystrokes should be used, is migraine inducing!
Bobby’s Revenge
Have you ever wanted to fire paint balls at Santa’s slay and tase the living hell out of the fat sucker? Well, with Bobby’s Revenge by BSC Games, now you can!
Crazy Darts
This game needs no description. You’ve seen a darts game before, right?
These games, and more besides, can still be downloaded and played today via the Audio Games Archive.
Late 2007 to 2010. Family gaming, punching out, and leaving the PC Master Race
As well as being the year that got me into audio games, 2007 was also the year I started to move away from PC gaming and towards the video game console. My 2 primary consoles at the time were the Playstation 2 and the Xbox 360. I still proudly own a physical Xbox 360 to this day, however I unfortunately can’t experience the thrill of the Playstation 2 anymore, since I no longer have a physical PS2 and no computer I have right now is powerful enough to run the PCSX2 emulator. Oh, how I’d love to play the Simpsons Hit and Run and Road Rage again.
I was also introduced to handheld consoles around this period. My sister had a 2001 Nintendo Gameboy Advance and a 2004 Nintendo DS, and my dad gave me his 2005 Sony PSP 1000. We would sometimes have family/friends round the house and find ourselves in these little handheld game tournaments.
For Christmas in 2007, I got a Nintendo Wii. This was when the family gaming period really kicked off. We had many a Wii Sports tournament throughout 2008 because who didn’t? Wii Sports is, like, the best game ever! Wii Sports was ultimately what got me into the boxing and wrestling scenes, and the John Cena inside me would finally be unleashed in 2008 on both the Nintendo Wee and the Xbox 360 in the form of WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw. Of course, Cena wasn’t my only choice of WWE fighter, I was also an avid six-one-niner back then as well.
In 2009, I would get my hands on 2 new boxing games for the Nintendo Wii.
Punch Out! A 2009 Wii incarnation of the 1980s arcade/Nintendo Entertainment System classic of the same name.
Face Breaker. A much lesser-known title that was also released on the PS3 in 2008.
I loved both of them, but Punch Out was undoubtedly my favourite and the one I played most often.
We jumped into the Wii Fit craze in 2010 with a board of our very own. Only problem was that it could never seem to get our measurements right! Mine were often fine, while everyone else’s seemed to be slightly off in some way or another. My poor dad, who, by the way, had been exercising and had a perfect diet his whole life since serving in the military, was always the morbidly obese one. Never the less, we all took it as good fun, and we all had a good time playing on it for the very short period in which we had it.
2011 to 2016. Going live, trash talk and the end of my gaming life
2011 was a very big year for me as a gamer. On April 21st, my dad signed me up for Xbox Live. I’d been hearing about Xbox Live for about 2 years at this point. Seeing it pop up on TV from time to time and having spent much of 2009 and 2010 playing Kung Fu Panda on the Xbox 360 at my dad’s house, I’d always wanted to give Xbox Live a try. The idea of being able to play games with other people over the internet in real time had always deeply fascinated me as a kid. Can you guess which game I played on Xbox Live the most? If you said WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, you’re correct! I’d mostly be playing against random strangers, though. It wouldn’t be until months later that I’d start to build a list of actual Xbox Live friends who I knew in real life.
I soon found out that having an internet connected Xbox had unlocked a heap of new possibilities besides playing games. Watching movies and TV, engaging in instant messaging conversations, accessing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter… the opportunities were virtually endless! I remember my dad and I just sitting there for hours on end, browsing through the seemingly limitless selection of movies that could be purchased from the Xbox Live Marketplace, watching trailer after trailer after trailer.
3 new Xbox 360 titles would enter my collection in 2011.
Call of Duty: Black Ops, 2010
Crackdown 2, 2010
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, 2011
Throughout the next few months, I began to explore the vast universe of Xbox Live on my own. By the end of 2011, with help from my dad, I had virtually memorized the Xbox 360’s entire user interface, including the dashboard, guide menu and most of the settings menus. But then, that big user experience update dropped, introducing Xbox Live Beacons, adding the dreaded Bing search engine to the Xbox and changing the whole dashboard UI, which meant I basically had to relearn everything! Oh, and I also got an Xbox Kinect for Christmas in 2011. You know, that overhyped motion sensor, camera and crappy downsampled microphone combo that was popular for about 5 minutes?
Throughout 2012 and most of the 2010s, I would see myself getting into first person shooter (FPS) games more and more, thanks in large part to Call of Duty. Getting the very latest COD game every year almost became a Christmas tradition. Oh, and who can talk about Xbox games in 2012 and not mention Minecraft for Xbox? Having never played it on PC when it released 3 years prior, I was all over that crap when it arrived on Xbox Live Marketplace!
When I wasn’t playing games, I was either watching YouTube videos or receiving game related news and tips via what was known at the time as Inside Xbox. On Inside Xbox, there were 2 primary shows I’d watch.
SentUAMessage
SentUAMessage, which started in 2009, was a show in which Xbox Live users would write in and ask various questions about xbox games, the Xbox 360 console and/or Xbox Live itself and have them answered in some of the most comedic ways I’ve ever seen. The show was hosted by Dan Maher (A.K.A. Mr Pointy Head) and Andy Farrant, who’s nick name I can’t spell.
You can find a YouTube playlist of virtually all SentUAMessage episodes here. I say virtually because some episodes seem to be either missing or in the wrong order.
School of Xbox
School of Xbox was a series of videos voiced by Mr Pointy Head in which you learned about the wide range of exciting features that Xbox Live has to offer and how to go about using them. Think Video Professor, but non-fraudulent and dealing with Xboxes rather than personal computers. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find any of the School of Xbox videos anywhere online.
In 2013, I was one of the first people to get the brand new Xbox One, having received it as a Christmas present that year. However, this was when things started to go downhill. Over the next 3 or 4 years, I would start to lose interest in the Xbox platform due to many of the things I loved back when I first joined Xbox Live dying out, and being a blind gamer online would show its horrible downsides. Because I couldn’t see what was happening on screen, I didn’t really know what to do in the game, so I’d just be left standing there in the middle of the field. On the very rare occasion that someone would help me, the instructions they’d give were basically useless. I’d have people accusing me of
not actually playing the game
, and many nasty comments about me having no eyesight would be fired at me by everyone in the game.
The final blow came in mid 2016 when I permanently lost access to my Xbox Live account. At this point, I finally decided that I wasn’t gonna take this dog crap anymore and quit online gaming, and the general video game scene, completely.
2018 – present day. A gamer reborn, in retro form!
Throughout the latter part of 2017, a good friend of mine named Gary slowly began to introduce me to vintage video games. My nostalgia senses were already sky high at this point, having found out about such things as the Escargot Chat project, so I was more than excited to learn of such a prospect. I’d heard briefly about retro games and emulation before, but had never thought to give it a try.
In the early part of 2018, I received some DVDs from my friend containing a variety of arcade and retro console ROMs, and my journey back in time officially began.
I’d been shown how to use the Multi-arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) beforehand, so that was really my first experience of video game emulation. Then, I did some online research into different emulators and came across such projects as PCSX2, the best Playstation 2 emulator around, Duckstation for PS1 emulation, Dolphin for Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulation, and of course, the mother of console emulators… RetroArch!
Since RetroArch was made fully accessible to the blind in April 2019, I’ve been fully immersed in the retro game/emulation scene. The fiery passion and excitement I once had for video games is back and more powerful than ever before! I now mainly enjoy the fighting game/beat ’em up genre. This includes games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter etc. I also want to defeat this inferiority complex I’ve had since 2016 and get back into online games at some point. I just need a community of people who will actually help me out and accept me for who I am. Sure, I can be a bit slow and picking things up, but everyone is different. It wouldn’t be much of a community if everyone was the same, had the same skills etc, would it?
Shoutouts
I’ve encountered some really awesome people throughout my near 2 decade gaming journey, especially in the Xbox Live years. Here are just some of them.
Heres to my good friend Gary for providing me with those ROM DVDs (I said ROM DVDs, not DVD-ROMs) and getting me into the retro game scene, which ultimately revived my passion for computer games.
As some of you may be aware, Iāve been a huge lover of text to speech (TTS) content for a long while, having first stumbled across TTS videos on YouTube in 2013. I canāt quite remember the first TTS video I watched, other than the fact that it featured Microsoft Sam. This was before Iād officially entered the world of smartphones and got a computer of my own, so I was confined to an Xbox with no screen reader for browsing YouTube.
At the very end of 2020, I decided that Iād do what Iāve been wanting to do for years and become a member of the TTS community (or TTSC for short) with the goal of eventually making my own TTS content. After all, I’m not the only blind person out there whoās into TTS. Chris Wright, formerly known as BlindGamer95, also creates TTS videos. It is worth noting, however, that because I’m without any eyesight, my content will be quite different to that of creators such as Thunderbirds101 and AT88TV, both of whom I mentioned in my 5 people I’d like to get to know in the Text to Speech community post. This post will explain exactly how my TTS content will work. That way, if I get a comment like: āHey, why doesnāt this video have any images like a proper TTS video should?ā, I can just point them to this post.
So, letās get going!
Audio only
There is next to nothing in the way of a screen reader accessible video editor out there. Not within my price range, anyway; money is basically nothing right now. Thatās why, unfortunately, my text to speech content will contain no images or other visual effects. Normally, in something like an error video, the audio of a TTS voice reading the error will be synced with an image of the error, generated by a tool such as Atom Smasher’s Error Message Generator. The same goes for funny/weird sign videos. However, due to the reason I cited above, none of that is possible for me. Instead, you will only hear the voice reading the error or sign.
Sounds before errors
Normally, sounds arenāt cued unless a TTS voice malfunctions after raging at an error or thereās an OS switch, such as upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows 98 or downgrading from Windows XP to Windows 2000. In case of the former, the respective error sound of the operating system related to the error, such as Windows 95ās chord sound, will be cued. In case of the latter, the shutdown sound of the current operating system, followed by the startup sound of the new operating system, and its login sound if applicable, will be cued. However, Iāll have to make up for my lack of visuals with extra audio. Therefore, if Iām doing an error video, a single OS-related sound will be played before the error is read. For instance, if the current operating system in use is Windows XP, the critical stop sound will play. If itās Windows 2000, 98 or 95, the chord sound will play. If Microsoft Sam should rage so hard that he flies off the face of the planet, either a small section of a sound will be looped to create a glitch/computer crash effect, or a massive explosion sound will play. It all depends on what best fits the mood.
I havenāt yet figured out what Iām going to do for stuff like sign videos, Christmas specials etc, so if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know in the comment section down below this post.
Conclusion
I hope this post helps you understand how, and why, my text to speech content will be different to that of other creaters in the TTSC. The reason Iāve been putting off doing TTS content for so long, besides not having the knowledge or tools to do so years ago, is because Iāve always been afraid that the TTSC would simply cast me out or think nothing of me for not being able to meet their standards and expectations.
If you want to know when I start making TTS content, which will hopefully be very soon, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Twitter.
Last month saw the 2 year anniversary of what was quite possibly the most devastating event of my cyber life. Iām still feeling the pain and recovering to this very day. In this blog post, Iāll explain everything that happened, as well as the act of sheer stupidity on my part that caused it. Be warned, however, this post contains a hell of a lot of tech language. Therefore, you may want to
have the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary open in a separate tab for reference to save your brain from exploding. Iād rather not spend all day cleaning up pieces of your grey matter, thank you very much.
Backstory
At this particular time, my 2016 Stone Group laptop, which has a 2.3GHz Intel Pentium 3550M and a 500GB Western Digital HDD, was running Windows 10. I really wasnāt happy with this. The system would run slow as hell at times, the fans were always on full power for no reason, andā¦ wellā¦ it ran the giant piece of spyware, adware and bloatware we all know as Windows 10! I wanted to restore the laptop to its former glory by downgrading it to its home operating system, Windows 8.1. However, there was one problem, I didnāt have a clue how to access the PCās BIOS or boot menu screen. As any competent PC user knows, installing a different operating system requires that you boot into external media, be it a CD, DVD or USB drive. Because Windows 8.1ās boot image doesnāt come with Narrator, Iād have to boot into a special preinstallation environment (PE) with the NVDA screen reader installed, then launch the Windows setup program from another resource, such as an ISO file or other storage location.
After turning the web upside down, I eventually found what seemed like the perfect solution to my problem. EasyBCD by NeoSmart Technologies is a tool that allows you to modify the Windows boot configuration database (BCD) so you can get a dual boot configuration going. Since it modifies the Windows boot loader, it doesnāt require any form of BIOS access. Many minutes of fighting with not so EasyBCD were spent before I finally had a boot entry configured for my talking PE. Then, it was time for the downgrade party to begin!
Where it all went awry
Hereās where things start to go sideways. Iām booted into the preinstallation environment, proceeding through the standard Windows 8.1 setup steps. I selected my region, language and keyboard layout, chose a partition on which to install Windows and waited a while for the setup program to copy files and do whatever else it needed to do.
I noticed something was wrong seconds after the laptop restarted. There was no activity from the 500GB Western Digital drive. Usually, with mechanical hard drives, you can hear quiet clicking sounds as the drive head reads and writes data to the drive. In this case, however, there was nothing. Complete silence. I waited about half an hour, then pressed Windows + Enter to see if Narrator would start. The initial installation stage was complete at this point, so Narrator would have indeed been available for the rest of the setup process. However, nothing happened when I used the Win + Enter shortcut. I waited 10 to 15 minutes and tried the shortcut again, but still nothing happened.
After many restarts and a call to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk through the free Be My Eyes service, I eventually found out what the problem was. In a fit of utter idiocy that Homer Simpson would be proud of, Iād somehow managed to fry the Windows boot loader, making the system completely unusable! And things were about to get a whole lot worse!
The Real Devastation
Many days have passed. My PC is still in an unusable state, even more so than before. The BIOS is now all kinds of messed up, and my talking Windows preinstallation environment, my one and only lifeline, was no more. Donāt ask me how this happened; I have absolutely no clue! The PE, along with all my other data, was stored on a 1TB Toshiba HDD, since that was the only means of external data storage I had at the time. I knew I only had one option, which I was not going to like one bit! I was gonna have to use my mumās crappy Lenovo laptop to download another copy of the talking PE and write it to the Toshiba drive. This, of course, requires that the drive be reformattedā¦ destroying all the data on the drive! Oh, and I also needed another Windows 8.1 ISO. After what felt like forever and a week, I finally had a new, fresh, clean PE drive to boot from. But I knew I couldnāt even attempt to boot from the thing, knowing the way my computerās BIOS was. Luckily, I was able to find the manual on the manufacturerās website and use it to help me reset the BIOS back to default. It took another call to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk to get me around the BIOS and into the PE where I could independently install Windows. Soon, I had a clean install of Windows running and my PC was alive once more! However, all that rewriting of PE images and reformatting of drives had resulted in a combined total of over 500GB (half a terabyte) of valuable data being permanently lost. Iād experienced the digital equivalent of a house fire, losing all my personal belongings and everything I held dear in the blink of an eye.
2 Years On
Here we are, 2 years on from that fateful period. The Stone laptop is still alive and well, now quite happily running Windows 7. Yes, I know Microsoft doesnāt support Windows 7 anymore, but quite frankly, I couldnāt give 3 craps! I like Windows 7 and it works well for me. There is an enthusiastic community of retro tech lovers out there who are doing all they can to keep it and other icons of the past alive. Iām proud to be a part of said community and wonāt be leaving any time soon! Iām also much more cautious about backing up my data now. I still have my 1TB Toshiba drive, but now Iām making use of cloud storage services like pCloud and OneDrive, so I always know where my data is. I also make more of a deal out of saving my work often. If Iām not sure if Iāve saved a piece of work yet, I save it anyway, even if I did actually save it earlier on. Better to save twice than to not save at all.
Iād also like to thank Be My Eyes and the awesome Microsoft Disability Answer Desk staff for helping me get back on my feet. I really donāt know what Iād have done without them.
At the back end of last year, I officially entered the Text to Speech (TTS) community, often abbreviated as
TTSC
. However, I entered the community with one major downside. Due to my lack of eyesight, and the TTSCās content standards and conventions, there is a very limited amount of TTS content I can create. But being in a community isnāt just about contribution, itās also about socialization, thatās why itās called a community. With this in mind, there are 5 people that Iād really like to get to know and establish a personal friendship with, since these people, be it through guest appearances, direct or indirect references by other content creators etc, inspired me to get into TTS in the first place.
5: TheROFL98
TheROFL98 is the creator of the TTSCpedia as well as various Discord bots. I havenāt watched a lot of his videos, but Iāve heard a lot of him via other creators like Thunderbirds101 and CoolDude503. I will definitely start watching more of this guyās videos. You can do the same by Checking him out on YouTube!
4: NKRS200
NKRS200 has been on the TTS scene for a while now, with content spanning about a decade. He was one of those who helped get the TTS community off the ground. He didnāt originally make TTS content when his channel first started, but it was Microsoft Sam and friends that really sent the views flying in with stuff like the Funny News Bulletins series. If full names are your style, NKRS200 is short for
NKRS200 TV Studios
.
3: FairPlay137
While not very active in terms of content creation, FairPlay137 has still put out some funny stuff, and he has many cool projects in the works, including stuff inspired by popular TTS blooper creator Dave Madson. FairPlay even has an error generator planned, however I wonāt share it here since itās a work in progress and Iām not sure how many people he wants to see it.
2: AT88TV
Arron T (AT88TV) was one of the first TTS creators Iād heard of, way before all the others mentioned in this countdown, when I stumbled upon Microsoft Sam videos purely by accident back in 2012/2013. Not surprising really, since he helped pioneer the whole thing! Oh, what weād do to hear those ear-splitting EAS tones and Scottish bagpipes. It makes me wonder why Microsoft Sam keeps trying to subject the entirety of Scotland to his nuclear hellfire. AT88TV always has been, and will forever be, our favourite Scotsman!
1: Thunderbirds101
Seriously, where would the TTSC be without this wonderful Canadian? How can anyone not think of TTS and not have this guy immediately spring to mind! For about 13 years now, TB101 has been brightening up our lives with funny Windows errors, funny signs, off-the-wall Christmas specials, IWAY Cookie and Bologna Sandwich drama, and a hell of a lot more besides! Iād even go so far as to say that heās the reason this awesome community exists! May Microsoft Sam continue to unleash nuclear hellfire, hound us to death with the rules for the toilet and try to kill everyone with his diarrhoea dumps for many years to come!
For as long as I can remember, Iāve been an expert when it comes to computers and technology. Conceded, I donāt know every single nitty gritty detail, but then again, who does? The field is so wide and itās getting wider and wider by the day; itās virtually impossible to know every single thing about the cyber world. In my many years of experience with computers, I have grown to really detest certain things people might say or do. If you want to get along with me in any computer related conversation, these are the things you need to watch out for and avoid at all costs!
1: Browsing the internet
Think about what youāre saying when you say āBrowsing the internetā. The internet is a network of networks. Computers, routers, printers, smartphones, tablets, smart home appliances, all interlinked together. Are you saying that you have access to every single device connected to the internet and youāre browsing through their files right now? You must be the best hacker in the world! No, what you mean to say is: āBrowsing the webā. The web is a large collection of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files that reside on millions of high-powered computers located across the world known as web servers. The web, or the World Wide Web, is a feature of the internet; it is not the internet! Why do you think web browsers, web servers and websites have the word āWebā in their name?
2: My (insert here) is not working
āMy Facebook isnāt workingā. āMy Google wonāt loadā. These are phrases I really hate! You donāt own Google. You donāt own Facebook. Theyāre not yours. Youāre really talking about the products, not the company itself. Say things like: āThe Facebook app on my phone wonāt loadā or āI canāt seem to access Appleās websiteā. It will make life a whole lot easier for me when trying to diagnose what the problem might be and itāll also save you from getting an apple pie in the face.
3: Itās a virus!
Computer is running extremely slowly: virus. A program crashes while youāre working: virus. You get popup messages in your web browser: virus. Seriously, there are more than just viruses you know! There are many different types of malware including spyware, viruses, worms, trojans, keyloggers, adware etc. Yes, they can be extremely harmful to your machine, but theyāre not all viruses! For godās sake, get it right! Refer to the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary for information about the different types of malware your machine can pick up.
4: A tower drive?
No, that large box thing is not the hard drive! Thatās called the tower unit or system unit. All your computerās components, including the hard drive, Central Processing Unit (CPU), RAM and ROM chips, NICs (Network Interface Cards) etc, are all housed inside the tower unit. They are all connected together by slots and wires on the motherboard. Please, never again refer to the tower as the hard drive, CPU or anything else like that!
5: Big B, little b
Nothing makes me want to angrily smash every window in my house more than when bits and bytes get mixed up. Get this straight: a bit is a single binary digit (a zero or a one). A byte is a group of 8 bits. Bits are indicated by a little b while bytes are indicated by a big B. Bytes are commonly used to measure file sizes and drive storage capacities. Byte measurements include kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Bits, however, are commonly used to measure data transfer speeds (bits per second). See this paragraph.
The file I am downloading is 500MB in size. My download speed is 60Mbps.
Can you tell the difference? Just remember: a byte is bigger than a bit, so you use a big B.
6: I just got hacked
This is kind of similar to number 3. People sometimes think that just because their PC is displaying weird pop-up messages or running slow as hell, the PC has been hacked. If someone somehow managed to decrypt the password of your user account and use a remote access tool to log into your PC over the internet, then yes, your computer has been hacked. Getting pop-up messages and being redirected to dodgy websites is just a result of you clicking links you shouldnāt have clicked in the first place. Also, leaving your PC unlocked and coming back to find a casino site on your screen doesnāt count as getting hacked. Thatās just your own stupid fault for not logging out or pressing Windows + L to lock your account before stepping away from the PC! The access is already there, so no hacking is needed.
7: Just google it!
Admit it! You say it too! In fact, pretty much everybody says this. The problem with this is that it assumes Google is the only search engine out there. What about Yahoo, Bing and Duck Duck Go? Yes, I know Google has enslaved half the population of planet Earth and you might not get the same results from other search engines, but other search engines do exist! Instead of saying āGoogle itā, say āLook it up onlineā or ādo a web searchā.
Outro
So, there you have it! 7 extremely annoying tech related things I absolutely cannot stand. I will definitely make a part 2 if I think of any more. Remember guys, if I catch you doing or saying any one of these 7 things, there will be hell to pay!
If you know me well, youāll know that I love hanging out and talking to people. However, with my anxiety comes a whole lot of things that make something as enjoyable as socialising with people very difficult. In this blog post, I will describe some of the things that fire off bad feelings when Iām hanging out and socialising. The below points apply mainly to online communication, though some of them can apply to communication in the physical world also. Call me petty and weak if you want, but my mind is wired differently to yours, and you canāt judge me or think any less of me for it.
The sound of silence
When Iām in a voice chat with someone, or physically talking to someone who I donāt know very well, I will often sound quiet or not speak at all for a while. I often think that people will make fun of the way I talk, my accent, the way my voice sounds etc, or that they will simply not be able to understand what Iām trying to say. This makes me very sad, as it means that I may have lost a potential good friend. We all need friends in our lives, and feeling like youāre losing someone new who you have the potential to form a really close bond with is the worst feeling in the world.
Iāll discuss more about goodbyes and how I deal with loss in a future post.
Was it something I said?
I could be having a conversation with someone, and the person Iām chatting with could just stop replying out of the blue. Itās a two-stage process at that point. First, the anxiety kicks in. Many thoughts run through my mind, such as:
Did I say something wrong? Did a reference I make, a question I ask or a view I put across cause offense or anger towards me?
Am I being too annoying by asking too many questions, talking too much etc or does the person think Iām generally just a pain in the rear?
Does the person simply hate me and not want to talk to me?
Then, the depression starts. I get very sad and begin to feel isolated and alone, I feel guilty because I feel Iāve done wrong by that person, and I start to hate myself more and more.
Out of the loop
I could be with a group of people, and they could be discussing a topic that is completely alien to me. As a result, I will often feel as though Iām completely out of the loop, and not really a part of the group at all because I have nothing useful or understandable to contribute to the conversation with. I often find it hard to express my feelings to others, and as a direct result, they all get bottled up and I start to feel sad, lonely and left out.
Somebody help me, now!
I am often too afraid to ask people for help and support with things, especially tech support, because in the past, people have snapped at me for asking too many questions and I was once accused of āharassingā someone via email. While I do look things up online, often the articles I read will contain terrible grammar which annoys and frustrates me to no end. Also, you canāt always believe what you hear or see online. I just think that talking to someone about your problem is the best support method. I often get very anxious when asking a question or asking for help in general because I feel I have to word it perfectly so as to not sound stupid or anything else. This anxiety ultimately stops me from doing it, and Iām just left alone to figure things out. Itās an awful feeling when youāve tried every possible solution you can think of and nothing has worked, or you just donāt know how to solve a problem and you feel you have nobody to turn to because youāre so anxious and scared that someone will react badly to your request for help.
Conclusion
I hope this post has taught you some things and help shed some light on the thoughts and feelings that I often experience when I communicate with people both in cyberspace and in the physical world of planet Earth. I bet Iām not the only one who experiences these feelings. Be sure to let me know down in the comments if you have any similar experiences to me and how certain social situations make you feel inside.
Iām sure we all agree that the many impacts of the outbreak of COVID19, such as having to stay at home, having to remain 6 feet apart from one another, having to work and communicate virtually etc, is causing people to go insane. I am no exception to this rule. I already have a myriad of mental health complications, but all this stuff thatās going on right now is magnifying and amplifying these complications to no end. Here are just some examples of how the Corona Virus outbreak is impacting me mentally.
Working Remotely
I have an amazing support network at my college. They listen to my problems, they keep me calm, they are a shoulder to cry on, and they always know how to lift me up when Iām feeling down. Because I am having to work remotely, I feel I have lost this support network. Working remotely is the thing that is affecting me the most. Ever since the college closed, my depression has got a lot worse, my stress and anxiety levels are much higher, Iāve started losing more sleep, I want to cry all the time, Iām mentally and emotionally drained, work is constantly stressing me out, and Iām even too scared to check my emails in case teachers start asking for work that I either havenāt completed or made a complete mess of. I already feel like a failure, failing a college course will only make things a whole lot worse and people will think of me more as a disappointment and a letdown than they clearly already do. What do I do? Do I stress myself out and force myself to complete work to a perfect standard, bringing myself back to the same crisis point I was at in 2013, or do I take the risk of failing the course and having everybody I know and love openly despise me, probably also bringing me back to that 2013 crisis point? Itās a catch 22 scenario!
Television News Channels and the Internet
The television is constantly on during the day at my house and tuned into a news channel. I may be in my bedroom upstairs with the door closed, but sound travels and I can still hear it from downstairs. All these news channels are talking about is the damn Corona Virus! Nothing positive is happening in the news these days it seems! Itās gotten to a point now where my mind canāt tune it out anymore. The internet and social media doesnāt help either, but I canāt just stop using social media; itās my primary method of contacting people. Iād just feel even more isolated than I feel now if I withdrew from the internet. The more I hear about CV, the less hope I have of this whole thing ever coming to an end.
Concerns about Family Members
I have external family members, both very young and very old, that I worry about on a daily basis because of Corona Virus. Keep in mind that I havenāt been allowed to see these family members for almost a decade, and a lot of things have probably changed since the last time I saw them. For all I know, half my family could be dead now. I made a lot of happy memories with these people; itād be devastating if it turned out that some of them had left this world. Itās a constant fear that is pushing my depression and anxiety ever higher.
Conclusion
Those are 3 things that are really messing me up at the moment because of the whole COVID19 thing. Hopefully this madness will end soon! Stay safe and stay alive!
In my last blog post, I detailed the mental health struggles I face and how they affect me in daily life. In this post, I will describe some ways I help myself, and you can help me, deal with these struggles.
Wonāt you hold my hand?
We all need a hand to hold once in a while. I am no exception. My typical positions are:
I place my thumb on the back of your hand and my figures on the palms, or the other way round.
I rest my hand on the back of yours. Use this if youāre uncomfortable with position 1.
This provides a sense of peace and relief in periods of depression, stress or anxiety.
Take a walk, just a little walk
Iām sure we all agree that a bit of fresh air now and then allows us to escape from whatās going on around us and breathe free and easy. The sensory overload of too much loud noise, the stress of a fast-paced work environment, the anxiety of overcrowded places, they can all be fixed with a breath of fresh air.
The sound of music
It is scientifically proven that the music we listen to influences our mood. Upbeat music makes us feel happy, slow violin music makes us feel sad. Music is a great way for me to escape from my feelings and enter another world. I like many different types of music from rock to hiphop to rap. Music can also sometimes defeat a misophonia attack.
Conclusion
These are just some of the ways in which I deal with my daily mental health struggles. We all have different ways of dealing with things. Let me know down in the comments how you deal with issues in your daily life, be it emotional or physical. Letās start a community!
For years now, I have been struggling with my mental health. I have trates of depression, anxiety, misophonia and PTSD. In this post, I will try to describe what is going on inside my mind and how it affects my day to day life.
What goes up must come down
One minute, I can be calm, happy and generally in a good mood. Then the depression starts. This presents itself in many ways, from a low mood to a full blown fit of crying, tiredness, lack of mental and physical energy and even a loss of apatite in some cases. These episodes can last from a couple of minutes to a few hours.
Anxiety, sane and insane rivalry
This affected me massively during the summer of this yearā¦ or letās call it Family Feud Season. I would often have it for days on end. I’d be feeling restless, constantly shaking and moving around, my heart rate would be through the ceiling and sweat would pore out of my body like a very high powered tap. Both my mind and body goes into hyperdrive. I feel there is no way out. I feel isolated and lonely, like I have nobody to turn to, no shielding or protection. In the best case scenario, this will only last for a few minutes.
Whatās that sound?
Misophonia is where certain sounds can trigger emotional responses such as sadness, fear, anxiety, anger or frustration. I canāt deal with sounds that rise and fall an octave, or sounds with certain echo or reverb effects, especially if thereās a lot of tail in the reverb. I get very freaked out and it can be an anxiety trigger. I once had to miss 5 minutes of a college lesson because of it. Even after those 5 minutes had passed, however, the attack continued. It was well after an hour when the episode finally ended and the symptoms receded.
The voices! The voices!
I like to separate these episodes into 2 types.
Classic attacks
Iāve had these attacks for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, I hear weird voices and sounds in my head, as if thereās an audio editor in there applying weird cutting, mixing and splicing effects to the sounds. Itās so weird that itās quite hard to describe.
Some triggers for these attacks include the following.
prolonged silences, such as when a music track suddenly pauses or fades out, especially if the fade is very sharp and tight.
Sudden sounds, such as PA system announcements, and unexpected airline announcements.
Certain types of music, especially music tracks with a low-pitched voice mixed in, such as a telephone hold service or those old Disney feature presentation logos.
New/Misophonia-based attacks
In recent times, in the last 5 years or so, Iāve had attacks where I feel a presence, as if someone is in the area with me. Sometimes they can be floating around and sometimes they remain in one position, suspended and frozen in mid air. I also canāt touch anything during these attacks as Iām simply too freaked out to do so. This presence is often accompanied by breathy moaning/sighing noises. Think of the old Skype login and logout sounds, but more creepy and horrifying. This type of attack can be brought on by my misophonia, hence why I refer to it as a misophonia-based attack.
Listening to something quiet or on low volume can sometimes stop both types of episodes, but sometimes, I just have to ride them out as nothing I do will stop them.
<3>Oh god, itās happening again!
I once witnessed my mother have 2 Grand Mal seizures, one in her bedroom and another right beside me in a hotel bathroom. The hotel bathroom one was the most terrifying, as I pretty much witnessed the whole scene, from her body crashing to the ground, to the moaning and crying sounds she made as the seizure progressed. Thankfully, she survived the whole thing and is doing really well now.
As a result of this, I now have PTSD traits. These attacks often come in the form of repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating flashbacks of those horrifying nights, or some other scene/event, either related or unrelated. They can occur randomly, though nowhere as near as often as they used to. More often now-a-days, they are brought on by certain events that happen in movies, TV shows or real life. These include the following.
Loud bangs, explosions, gunshots etc.
Brutal torture/murder scenes, such as the famous shower scene from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho.
Scenes of intense emotional and/or physical distress.
Scenes of physical abuse/violence.
8/16-bit, cartoon and sci-fi sounds are not seen as PTSD attack triggers. This means that 8-bit sounding gunshots, cartoony punching sounds and lasers are completely fine.
Shutdowns
Sometimes, if I feel high stress or anxiety, I will go into shutdown mode. Mind and body simply stop working. I am perfectly awake and aware of what is happening around me, I just canāt speak, move or do anything. Itās kind of like when too many people visit a website at once and the server becomes unresponsive for a while because it has too many requests to process and canāt handle them all, or when there is a surge of electricity and the trip switch flips, knocking out the power to your house to protect your appliances. These shutdowns are a protection mechanism. If I didnāt shut down, Iād most likely have an anxiety attack, much like if there was no trip switch to go off in a power surge, there’d most likely be a fire. Shutdowns vary in length; the longest shutdown I had was about 11 minutes long. Also, one or more of the above can be happening during a shutdown. I may or may not feel tired or develop a headache after a shutdown; tiredness is more common. Take this into account if you ever see me still and quiet for a long time or I seem out of it.
Conclusion
I hope I have explained myself clearly and that you can understand the things I have to battle with on a day to day basis. Mental health is something I feel very passionate about. I feel we should all be able to talk about it. Itās OK not to be OK.
Those who know me well will know I am an expert when it comes to computers. Whenever someone in my family has an IT problem, Iām always the first to know about it. The question is, just why do I love computers so much? In this post, I will try to answer that question in the best way I can. Also think of this as my computing life story.
Iāve always been very much into how stuff works since I was a really small child. I did everything from messing around with light switches to randomly pushing buttons on TV remotes to taking the batteries out of stuff and trying to figure out which way they went back in.
It was the early 2000s; I wanna say around 2002/2003. My dad, who was in the army at the time, had a friend who worked for Microsoft. This was when my cyber life started. I was given a house-built desktop PC made by this friend of my dadās and I loved it to death. I canāt quite remember the exact hardware specs, but it ran Windows 95 and came with a CD-ROM drive and a 3.5in floppy drive. I never got to use the floppy drive though as we had no floppy disks. I loved Windows 95 back then and still love it to this very day. I played many games on that PC. These included
Tonka Workshop, a game where you build and mend things such as houses, cars, computers etc and take part in fun games and contests.
Playskool Store, a casheer simulator type game where you had to price up items that customers wanted to buy, scan items and so on. You got gold stars for every successful transaction. If you got 15 gold stars, you got a virtual paycheck that you could print out.
The first time I used a computer in an educational environment was in my first years of primary school. It was a Packard Bell laptop that ran what would become my second favourite and still used operating system, Windows 98. This was also the time when I was learning how to touch type and how to use a screen reader. The reader I used at the time was the much loved and despised JAWS screen reader. I also had a laptop of my own around that time. It ran Windows 2000 and had the 40 minute trial version of JAWS because no way were my parents gonna pay a thousand quid for the thing! Unfortunately that glory was short-lived as my computer illiterate mother loaded the laptop with malware and it never saw the light of day again!
2007 was the year I got introduced to audio games. My school laptop, which ran Windows XP, had a selection of audio games including Crazy Darts, Sonic Match and Savage Gamut. Sonic match is a game where you have to press the arrow key(left, right, up or down) that corresponds to a specific sound. Savage Gamut is a hard-as-hell boxing game I still have yet to master.
Fast forward to 2009. Iām in a new house and a new school. My old custom-built desktop is still alive and well, now running my most favourite OS, Windows XP. I got myself introduced to one of the worst laptops I ever used. Well, the laptop wasnāt bad, but the screen reader was. Enter Supernova, one of theeeeee worst readers Iāve ever encountered! Seriously, why is that thing still around? It ran Windows XP and had Microsoft Office 2007 installed, so that was an upside I guess. More downsides were to come though, as 2011 was the year I said goodbye to my house-built desktop beast. I still miss the thing now. I hope to find it one day and see that it still works.
The period from 2012 to 2017 was when my love for technology would start to turn into frustration. Enter the crappy Windows 7 HP laptops from my secondary/high school days. That thing was the slowest slow thing to ever exist in the very slow world of slow things. It should take a few seconds to log into Windows, not 5 minutes! I also had to use Microsoft Narratorā¦ Iāll leave you to figure out how that went. 2013 was the year I entered the world of note takers. My schoolās sensory support team decided to purchase the Braillenote Apexā¦ big mistake! Seriously, Uranium-235 is more stable than that thing! It froze, crashed, died and errored out like there was no tomorrow. In early 2014 I started to teach myself HTML because I wanted to create a website. At the time, I was confined to an iPhone and had no idea what a web host was. I launched many different websites on many different hosting platforms throughout 2014, all of which have since died out. 2015/2016 was the Python/MySQL period. Let me tell you, if I ever have to use MySQL ever again, Iāll rip my hair out!
This takes us up to right now. Iām currently studying Media at college after just finishing an IT course. The last year or 2 has seen me dig deeper into different operating systems such as GNU/Linux and MacOS. I now have an iPhone, an iPad, a Windows 7 laptop which Iām using to write this blog post and 2 Xbox consoles, an Xbox One and an Xbox 360. Also, my obsession with computers and technology is now stronger than ever. Who knows where the next 17 years will take me. Weāll just have to wait and C++.