Orbit

My daughter came home a while back talking about something I figured out was a refreshable braille display.   I had heard of them but hadn’t seen one but apparently she was using one at school.   She types all the time on her braille machine, but that’s standalone for the most part.   She’ll be using that a lot for school, but she’s also going to be learning other technologies as well.

A refreshable braille display lets you read braille one row of twenty characters at a time.   You read the first twenty characters and then press next and the next twenty are presented to you.   This works for lots and lots of things.   You can connect it to a phone or iPad and it will send the words there to the display.   You can have it send books or other text to it.

The iPad (phone or other tablet) sounds a bit difficult to envision.   I couldn’t picture it either as a complete solution at first but it’s coupled with something called, “Voiceover” which is an accessibility option that speaks anything and everything on the screen and changes navigation so you don’t have to see anything at all to move around.   It’s hard to explain and honestly even harder to use because we see things and can go the much faster route of going directly to what we want on the screen.   But this is a blog post topic for another day.   Suffice it to say there is great software out there to help visually impaired people.

Back to the Orbit.   My daughter talked about this refreshable braille display and I didn’t think much of it because they’re very expensive.   Except there was a new one, developed with government and foundation funding that put the orbit in the price range of a low-end iPad.   When I heard this I ordered one, sight unseen.   But it was backordered we found out.

My daughter has been waiting for the mail to come every day, asking if packages were her Orbit.   She, too, has never used one because they’re really new, but she’d used the predecessor and she was excited.   And today a package was at the front door.   I looked and excitedly told her it was her Orbit.   She and I opened the package and then she took over.

She knew how to turn it on and what to do next.   The only content on the SD card included was the user manual, which wasn’t that interesting to her, but she spelled out words and serial number to me.  When the doorbell rang I told her to go play with her friends and I’d see if I could get it figured out before she came back inside.

Three minutes later, my initial confidence in feeling I knew a few things about the Orbit had waned, because I suddenly realized I was in over my head.   I had pulled up the manual online which was all well and good since it was in printed text.   The Orbit has none of that.   It has a single row of twenty braille cells that give you every piece of information you need.   Where you are, what the menu choices are, what options you can select—everything—in braille.  And I don’t read braille.

I got the braille alphabet card and contracted braille word list out and struggled through finding the settings menu.   The online manual helped me to get to the content on the SD card, but since I didn’t know what files were there I abandoned that for a while and worked on bluetooth pairing the Orbit to my daughter’s iPad.

I’ve bluetooth paired a whole lot of devices together in my day but this one was unexpected.   It wasn’t a traditional bluetooth pairing but an accessibility/keyboard/braille reader bluetooth pairing under the accessibility settings on her iPad.   And that should have clued me into to the next thing that happened—but it didn’t.

I opened the Notes app and created a new note and then turned voiceover on.   And the little braille display started clicking and refreshing and showing the text I was hearing spoken on the iPad.   I wanted to type something in the notes app to see if I could get it to show up on the Orbit, but I couldn’t get the keyboard to appear.  And that was strange.  It was just gone.  I toggled voiceover off and then like magic, the keyboard appeared again.   I turned voiceover back on and the keyboard went away again and then it hit me: the keyboard was the Orbit.  

I pulled up my braille alphabet sheet and pitifully slowly typed my name, heard it speak the letters and then display the name on the iPad when I pressed the space bar.   And I was thrilled.   Seriously, this was cool stuff, I was thinking.    About this time, my daughter and her friends from the street came in and I called them to the bedroom where I was working.   She took over and started typing and having text appear at a much more impressive rate to the iPad.   Her friends thought it was very exciting as well.

I had to once again get her to let me have the Orbit back so I could get the other main functionality working—the ability to read books.   There was one book she wanted: Goldilocks (she was non-specific about there needing to be bears) and I had been preparing to download the book when I got the Orbit in hand.    But this, like the rest of the process, wasn’t straightforward.

Thankfully, one of the VI teachers had told me about Bookshare.org, which I registered for and then submitted a form from my daughter’s eye doctor to get her access to the content.   But I hadn’t downloaded anything yet.  I brought the SD card from the Orbit down to my computer and then  found Goldilocks (with the three bears) and a few other books.   How to download the file though?   There are settings to choose.   We had a twenty-character braille display and my daughter has started to learn contracted braille (which is sort of like shorthand braille).

I put the files on the SD card and then went back upstairs to the Orbit and put the card in.   I had looked up the key command to get to the file list on the SD card and I knew there were only five books I’d put on there which should be easy, right?   Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.   I brought my daughter and her friend back in and had her scroll (or what I thought was scrolling) through the file titles.

The thing is, my daughter is great with braille—but she’s only just finished kindergarten.   She would read off things and we’d try another option by backing out.   And then we found Goldilocks.   And we figured out how to get into the file and start reading.    And then we ran into more trouble.

You know in books where there are those words in tiny print after the title page that we never pay attention to and always skip?   They have to be there in the braille version and let me tell you, it’s a lot of text.   I finally told her I’d see if I could edit the file so we could skip straight to the story.

That was interesting.   Here’s what a bit of the file looks like:

  ,A FEW M9UTES LAT]

,GOLDILOCKS >RIV$ AT

! BE>S' H\SE4 ,%E

WALK$ "R 9 )\T EV5

BO!R+ TO KNOCK4 ,ON

! D9+ ROOM TABLE 7

?REE 9VIT+ B[LS (

PORRIDGE4',I DON'T

M9D IF ,I D1 SD

,GOLDILOCKS1 HELP+

Twenty characters across, but a lot of characters I don’t understand because they’re some standardized format for contracted braille.   So I went back and asked for the file to be formatted in uncontracted braille.    I pulled out all the extra at the beginning and it looked like this text from Cows That Type:

  ,A BIG

RED BARN SITS IN THE

COUNTRYSIDE BEHIND A

WOODEN RAIL FENCE4

,THE BARN DOORS ARE

OPEN4 ,THE ONLY

ANIMALS IN SIGHT ARE

BIRDS IN THE SKY AND

ON THE BARN ROOF4

  ,FARMER ,BROWN HAS

A PROBLEM4

  ,HIS COWS LIKE TO

TYPE4

  ,ALL DAY LONG HE

HEARS

  ,CLICK1 CLACK1

MOO4

  ,CLICK1 CLACK1 MOO

  ,CLICKETY1 CLACK1

MOO4

And my daughter loved it.  And we couldn’t get her off the Orbit for the longest time.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had spent a good bit of time playing Fortnite today.   My husband told him he had to take a break.   My son was incensed, complaining very loudly, “but I took a break when I ate lunch!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Here’s my daughter on her Orbit.   You can hear the braille cells changing as she presses the next line button:

An Act of Kindness

I typed my blog post on my iPhone in the dark in the back of our car while we sat in unmoving traffic last night.   We went to see Imagine Dragons in concert and got an outstanding parking space.   I don’t want to have a blind child.   I don’t know if she wants to be sighted at this point because all she can remember is the vision she has, but I’d trade just about anything for her to have her sight back.

But that’s an academic discussion and sort of a downer.   Let’s talk about the Imagine Dragons concert, starting with our crazy good parking spot and ending on the long wait in that same parking lot for the attendees to depart, one car at a time.

We used our handicapped placard for parking, which I always feel strange doing, but my daughter definitely qualifies for the privilege.   We arrived earlyish and got a spot within fifty yards of the concert entrance.   We had passed thousands of people in line just to get into the still closed gates.   Our parking spot was ideal, but did we have to go to the back of the line to get in?

Apparently not because when they opened the gates we walked through a handicapped entrance area and were able to get ideal seats on the lawn.  We spread out our blankets and told the other two families we’d hold the spots for them until they arrived.

My children were hungry and so were we.   Once we had our seats (directly in front of the stage) secured we took turns getting food.   My husband took my son first.  Once they returned, my daughter and I went, very slowly, through the now-packed lawn area, avoiding people while she tried to use her cane, until we got to the paved walkway.

We got to the food counter, ordered chicken tenders, fries and a pretzel for my daughter.   I didn’t want to order more because I had to hold her hand and the food and navigate us back through crowds of people.   I asked if they took Apple Pay when the server was handing me the food and a man on the side said, “you don’t need that.   It’s taken care of.”  

I looked around, wondering if it was a, “pay it forward” kind of thing and told him, “please tell whomever I need to thank, thank you from us.  That’s very kind.”   It turned out he was the one who had given us the food for free.   And he wasn’t done yet.   He asked if we needed any drinks.   I said I was getting only what I could carry back.    That wasn’t a problem, he would have someone help me back to our seats.  He wanted to know if we wanted several other things and was most insistent so we accepted a funnel cake.

He brought another staff member over and had him take down the names of my daughter (and my son when he heard she had a brother at the concert as well) because we had told him it was her first concert.    I’m holding our food while he told me to come over to the funnel cake stand and I held that on top of our food.  

Then he took us over to the merchandise stand and asked my daughter to pick out a t-shirt.   He said, “I have a little pull here after all these years.”   He and I talked about the venue’s history as I’d been going there since he started working.   As he walked us back to our seats he said he was struck by my daughter and me weaving our way through the crowd and being patient as we waited to order our food.   He has a close friend who’s seventeen-year-old son has lost his vision.  

We thanked him and I told him he made our night very special.   He said, “I’m not done, I’ll be back.”   And sure enough he was.  He had two certificates stating my children were attending their first concert.   And he had the t-shirts.   I gave him a big hug and said he had touched my heart with his kindness.

After the concert (which we loved) we discovered our very close parking spot put us about last to get out.   So I wrote a short blog post in the car and put off this story of kindness until tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  For some reason after seeing the lead singer of Imagine Dragons sing with his shirt off the entire concert, my son has been going around shirtless.   He says it’s because he’s hot…but I wonder.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a fever.   Suddenly today she’s sick.   She feels bad but has nothing other than a fever in symptoms.   We’ll check her out tomorrow and see if we need to take her into the doctor.

Wardrobe Changes: 0

We went with friends to see Imagine Dragons in concert tonight.   It was hot but the concert was good.   It was my childten’s first concert.  My daughter fell asleep part-way through and my son got interested in the boy in front of us who was playing on a phone.

I’ve been to a lot of concerts.  The bigger they are, the larger the production, the more wardrobe changes there sometimes are. But not always. Tonight’s concert required only one pair of black shorts for the lead singer, Dan Reynolds.   Simplicity.

We’re stuck in traffic and I’m too tired to write more, on my phone, in the car.   An interesting thing happened though at the concert ooo have to write about tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:  Uncle Bob messaged me this morning, “I just heard from downstairs, “Reese, you’re hurting my feelings. You’re hurting my feelings, now shut up.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  my daughter couldn’t see the musicians or the stage really but she liked the music.

Boom Woofers

Okay, I just had to go with that blog post title because it made me laugh today.   We were visiting my in-laws for the Fourth of July and my husband was talking to his mother.   The conversation was about some wiring he was going to do in their bonus room before it was painted to prepare for television and sound.

My mother-in-law wanted to make sure some wire or another was long enough or in the best spot in case they needed to get, “one of those boom woofers”.   My husband looked at her and said, “do you mean sub-woofer?”   She did, and knows what it’s called, it just wasn’t coming to mind at the time.   We all had a good laugh at the alternate name.

For the Forth of July we went out on my in-law’s pontoon boat for a lake ride.   We’d just gotten to the middle of the lake when we had a guacamole incident.   It turns out it had been left at the house, which wouldn’t do.   My husband and children were already in the water with the children in life vests, floating along happily.   My in-laws live on the lake so my husband told us to go back, get the guacamole, and he’d wait in the water with the children.

Several minutes of discussion was had about the advisability of leaving him with two children in the middle of the lake.   He pointed out that they were highly buoyant children and besides, they had noodles and an inner tube to boot.   So we left them.

Electric pontoon boats don’t go that fast so we made non-record time back to the house, docked for less than two minutes and then returned to find them still floating, alive and no where close to being ready to get out of the water yet.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came found some perfume bottles on display at Nana and Papa’s house.   He’d never seen perfume before I don’t think, so I told him what it was.   He was about to spray some on himself but decided against it when I asked if he wanted to smell like that all day.   Then he brought the bottle over and was going to spray me but I told him I didn’t prefer perfume.   He didn’t spray any on me but said if I did wear some, “maybe when you fart it wouldn’t smell as bad.”  (Why I tell you all about these things, I will never know,)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother-in-law was getting the salad ready and asked Papa if he wanted some blue cheese with it.   He said he didn’t think so.   My daughter, who was sitting and listening to the conversation asked him a follow-up question, “do you want some red cheese then?”

Precious Few

There are precious few advantages to having a blind child, or, I suppose to being blind.   But there are some.   One of them is the handicapped placard for large crowd events.   It turns long, slow lines of traffic to get to a parking spot a long walk away from the venue into what I’d call a LIFO situation.

As a programmer (which I used to be before I became a mother and then a real estate agent), LIFO means Last In First Out.   It’s used in inventory valuation in businesses and is something you learn early on in programming.   Basically the last one in is the first one out.

In our case this evening, we were going to a festival where there were food trucks, rides and then fireworks.   We didn’t want to make an afternoon of it so we arrived quite late.  Without the handicapped parking placard, we would have been in a lengthy line of cars, parking at the very back of the now full parking fields.   Instead, we were diverted to a parking area right beside the event space itself.   We  got out and were in line to get food in less than five minutes and then waited to see the fireworks in our chairs we’d placed in front of our car.

Once the fireworks were over (and I’d gotten my funnel cake after a forty-five minute wait in line) we  got in our car to leave.   Because the parking space we were in was right near the exit, we were back on the road in just a few minutes.   Last to arrive, first to leave.

We told my daughter thanks for letting us used her handicapped placard tonight.   She said she didn’t care.   Which worried me, because that belies something underneath that means she did, in fact, care. I’m going to see if I can get her to talk about it, although I’m guessing she won’t want to.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was very happy to be a the “Third of July” festival tonight.   He wanted dumplings and then didn’t stop dancing around for the next half-hour while we waited in line for ice cream.   He got both sorbet and ice cream and then swirled them together.   It looked unappetizing to me, but he liked it.   The dumplings, he said, were his favorite.   He’s really starting to branch out and like all kinds of food.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter did not like the fireworks.   To be more specific, the sound of the fireworks.   We were quite close and they were loud.   She wanted to get into the car to get away from the noise.   I was sort of on her side with this because I didn’t like the noise level either.   I was hoping she’d be able to see the fireworks though as they’re bright on the night sky.    I got in the car with her and realized she was able to see the fireworks through the windshield of the Model X.   The car’s windshield goes back and overhead much farther than a typical car.   Even through the tinted section of the windshield she said she was able to see the bursting lights in the sky.   Although to her, I’m not sure it’s more than directional light.   She asked me, “mom, can you hear them when they launch?”   She was paying attention to the sound when the firework ignited and then the timing them before they exploded.

Lawn Mohawks

We had dinner with friends from the neighborhood this evening.   We keep in touch, which isn’t as frequent as we probably should, considering we’re only three streets away, but it’s always nice to catch up when we do get together.

Tonight’s agenda, as set forth by Tim, was as follows via email:

1) Approve minutes from last meeting in 2016
2) discuss solar
3) discuss model 3
4) compare flame throwers

In translation, this means the last time we went out to dinner with our friends was 2016 (has it been than long?). The remaining three points revolve heavily around Tesla and Elon Musk’s endeavors, of which all four of us are enthusiastic.

Not as much of the dinner was as Tesla-centered as planned, including side stories of how they are building a house downtown and will only be in our neighborhood another year and their neighbor, who can’t quite figure out how to mow his grass without leaving bits between each pass, or “lawn Mohawks”.  

My daughter’s vision came up, because it’s an interesting subject and everyone wants to know how she’s doing but we always circled back to Tesla.   They’ve ordered a Model 3.   Next dinner, which will hopefully be sooner than 2020, we’ll have to go in their new Tesla.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I are playing a new game on the iPads.  We can play solo or in teams.  Initially he was having a hard time getting through the next stage until my husband showed him he had to spend all the points he was earning on skills, open the chests he was finding and enhance all the new gear he had collected.   After he’d upgraded everything he played for the next half-hour shouting out, “that was totally easy!”,  “I’m amazing!” and other excited cries from the living room.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said she had a new color: ‘malente’.   She told me she would show me how she makes it if I was interested.  

Dinner Apart

We had a family conference on our bed late this afternoon.   The subject was what to do for dinner.   There were a lot of conflicting opinions, entirely among the children about where we should go.   My son repeatedly shouted out, “P. F. Chang’s” and “Pei Wei” until he was cautioned agains more outbursts, pending disciplinary action.

My daughter wasn’t particularly helpful, saying no to almost everything.  She did come up with some good suggestions and then almost gave in to her brother’s heavy bias towards P. F. Chang’s until he came up with some altogether new additions to the dinner restaurant option list.   The new ideas suited my daughter well, what with her deciding Olive Garden was exactly where she wanted to go.   Only this wasn’t P. F. Chang’s.

We told them they would have a few minutes to decide together and if they hadn’t come to an agreement by then, the decision would be made by my husband and me and there would be no additional discussion about the matter.

It was at this point that my daughter had an idea: dad would take her to Olive Garden and I would go with my son to P. F. Chang’s.  My husband and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, “why not” and that was that.

On the way to the restaurant my son told me everything we were going to order, some of which was specific like, “the steamed pork dumpling appetizer—six, not four” and others which were less so such as, “and you get the beef thing and I’ll get the lo mein and the chicken thing.”

The last time we were there we had been with six people and had ordered lots of different entrees to be shared.   I had to explain to him that we weren’t going to get an appetizer each and also two  entrees each: it was too much food.   He still wanted to tell me what to order, but we worked it out and got plenty of food.

As we were leaving he was doing the most absurd walk out the restaurant door.  I said questioningly, “what in the world are you doing?”  He told me it was his entry for The Ministry of Silly Walks  (from Monty Python).  I had to take a video of it for him in case we ever figure out how to submit an entry for admission.

The Big Boy Update:  As we were leaving dinner tonight we were exiting a busy car park with cars moving all around us.   My son observed, “guys with cool cars like to drive slow so the girls can look at them.”   There was a slow-moving convertible sports car in front of us my son told me was very cool.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband and daughter had a filling dinner together tonight.   My daughter ate all her salad, pasta, fruit and two breadsticks.   She said she even had room for dessert.  My son and I had to bring food home from our meal, although we did get a lot to eat.