Hi,

Well, I read about this free software by System Access to go today and I
was excited to try something new. Ironically, people on this list often
criticise Dolphin for poor planning and incompetence during the latter
stages of the development process, and their support to customers. I'm
sorry, but Satogo got me annoyed within 30 seconds of loading their site.
Having been a beta tester for several software vendors and being one who
likes to test out new software, I can honestly say that's a first.

OK, so the first impression of the site is great; a nice, clean interface,
just one link and a nice voice prompt telling me to press Enter to get
started. Then, a simple 2.71MB download, and I'm ready to roll. But,
forcibly terminating my existing accessibility product, which I'd
incidentally used to get to the site in the first place, without warning,
thus causing me to lose any unsaved settings in that application, and then
playing music at me for nearly two minutes, again without any feedback
left me wondering just what on earth it was doing to my poor computer.
OK, no worries, let's move on.

So, I finally have speech back, totally ignoring my computer's sound
settings and booming out at me from my rear left speaker, nerve-janglingly
emulating the dark days of hardware synthesisers and their Darlek
undertones at their worst. Now what's this? I have to log in? Account
number and PIN? Is this some kind of scam? Oh, but no fear, I can create
an account if I don't already have one, or, I guess I could just continue
without. Since when have I needed an account to have my computer speak to
me? But moving on.

Ah, I can press Alt+H for help. Well, as they kindly didn't provide any
guidance on how to use the system before it was installed, or even whilst
it was being installed, that's quite comforting. A new window pops up,
telling me to kindly read the entire help file before contacting technical
support. No mention of just how to do that, or even that support was
available, but I do have the tendency to shoot first and ask questions
later, so maybe I'll wait and it'll all become clear in due course. And
that's it. Yes, I'm not just cutting this short so I can catch some
well-deserved shut-eye that is truly it!

Maybe if I press the down arrow it'll continue, and offer me some inkling
of what I should do next. Maybe it's one of those old-fashioned jobs that
don’t know how to scroll past the visible window. But no, I'm told, twice
no less, once by the suicide-inducing fellow and again by another guy who
sounds like he's had one too many on a Saturday night (oops, it is
Saturday night as I write this but I digress) that I'm already at the end
of the document. Is he kidding me? Try again, with the same result. And
again, just in case good things really do come in threes. Nope, clearly
not this time.

So let's just get this straight so we're damned sure there's no mistake.
This thing which is actually suppose to help people has hijacked my
computer, caused old Bach to roll over in his grave and my neighbours to
seriously consider committing me to an asylum for my taste in music, given
me the strong desire to break something and helped me do absolutely
nothing. Nothing! And it didn't even have the decency to tell me how to
shut the god-forsaken thing up. I had to work that out myself, and even
then it meant ending my entire web browsing session - I had pages up I was
consulting between, thank you very much.

So, in summary, whereas the concept is good the delivery, implementation
and support are sorely lacking. I recommend this to anyone who either
fancies a joke, or is collecting artefacts for the worst design of the
year award. Come back when you've done your homework, tested it, asked
users about it, tested it again and got your house in order. Oh, but
wasn't that what people said about Dolphin?

This review is being posted on several mailing lists, the patwaspotterfan
blog on LiveJournal and elsewhere on the web. The Satogo software was run
on a Windows Vista computer using both IE7 and IE8 and was used simulating
a blind user with no useable sight for maximum effect. No information,
which personally identifies any individual other than myself, is intended
with this submission.

Hi! I’m back from abroad over the weekend, but it seems like I’ve returned to total madness.

The electronic version of my second article in Target Magazine is available (from 19:00 on 03/02/2009) for your viewing pleasure. Read it here. Also on the shooting front, there is now some uncertainty about coaching times, as Jim was indicating he might want to change them. I've nothing concrete on this, but it will either turn out to be good and very tiring, or bad and very frustrating. The best scenario would be an increase in coaching prior to Wolverhampton, and the current status quo afterwards. Finally, I located my hat, which is now waiting in the blind locker at the range for collection on Thursday. Now if I can stop forgetting things all over the place like goods dropping off the back of a speeding truck, that would be real good.

It snowed again. Naturally, everyone's acting like the world's come to an end and we'll all be held hostage in our houses for the foreseeable future. Honestly, I've never seen anyone act as melodramatically when it comes to the weather as the people here in the UK. Is it any wonder foreign visitor’s think we're all complete nutters? It rains, and we make a song and dance about it in a way that would make the Venetians proud. It snows, and by Thor, you'd better start seriously re-evaluating your definition of the word normal, and hope you're still remotely sane at the end of it all.

( More-Books )

( Uni-Things )

The heating and plumbing issues are mostly fixed. Our regular engineer finally materialized after a long pleasure stint in New Zealand, and promptly diagnosed several frozen valves, the contraction of which had caused the leak in the pipe and the resulting low water pressure. All's well now, however the heating still loses pressure occasionally whilst it's switched off, but apparently that's about as close to normal as we're going to get. At least the water flows properly, the house is no longer in danger of collapsing from water saturation and the rooms are reasonably warm. All this for £60. It could be worse.

That, my friends, is it. I’m waiting on a special delivery, the non receipt of which will probably cause me major headaches in the power department later today, but as I’m about to leave and it’s not here, what’s a guy to do? I’ll post again soon, as soon as things settle down again and I can stand to endure this mad world.

Another week is over, and I've sat three of my four exams for this session. So far, I'm confident of a performance that is at least marginally acceptable. The extra time has been worth its weight in gold, particularly for Accounting yesterday. I just have Business Strategy and Organisation left this coming Monday and I'll be done, but they just had to leave the hardest exam till last.

I was very pleased to hear my latest article was published in Target magazine. I'll have it on the web as soon as I receive the official electronic version, but from what Ali read over the phone to me, they haven't cut anything out which is a pleasant surprise. I basically talk about how rifle shooting for the visually impaired needs to move out of the 20th century and into the 21st, and how we need to stop aimlessly clinging to the 'same old, same old' like lost sheep and innovate. The internal politics of the sport is all shot to hell and I can imagine a rather fractious AGM at Wolverhampton this March.

Did anyone watch the inaugural ceremony for Barack Obama on Tuesday? I missed most of it as I was revising, but I was told the reception for Bush (or lack of one depending on your standpoint) was just awesome. I'd honestly have paid to see that! I also nearly killed myself laughing hearing how Chaney was so anxious to leave the White House he busted his back and had to be led out in a wheelchair. Haha, payback's a bitch and mouth-wateringly sweet.

I got the ‘Perfect Day’ album by Cascada this week. It’s good, just like the previous one.

We have a new plumbing problem at home here, as one of the pipes linked to the hot water tank is leaking. Our regular plumber and heating engineer guy seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, but we're weary of just finding any old guy who might not be able to fix what we think the problem is, what with labour charges costing a packet nowadays. For the moment, we'll live with the old-fashioned bucket to catch the drips.

OK, all for now, have a great weekend and try not to stress too much.

I came in this evening to hear some good news.
Tesco delivered the replacement bed as promised. However, they did not have instructions to collect the damaged one and apparently they may well come round later to pick that up. I thought this was strange as both delivery and collection could have been accomplished in the same trip thus saving them money, but oh well. I was a bit annoyed as I spent nearly an hour and a half rushing to pack up the old one only to find it for nought. Has anyone noticed it's always much easier to unpack something than to re-pack it in the same way in which it arrived? I have no idea how to fit in the polystyrene blocks that the old bed came with as packaging, but luckily there aren't all that many parts which could technically 'break' so it should be OK.

I received the license code for the 30-day trial of the beta version of MobileSpeak which I am testing after finally getting round to installing it on the Nokia N91 yesterday. This after I successfully used the Generic Product Code Reset Technique to upgrade the firmware on and debrand both the N91 and N70. Well actually I had some trouble with the N70 after I entered the wrong product code from an online forum, but I eventually had it sorted and there were no ill effects. I've already noticed an increase in speed on both models, and it's a pleasure to finally be able to use all the features of the N91 after nearly 9 months of using it just as a basic phone. I'm particularly looking forward to using it to make voip calls over my WiFi network using the SIP settings function that I found.

I saw This Article on Racing Cars today whilst browsing the news. I'd have loved to see them, and having a go in the Swedish model sounds fantastic. Maybe some day. The closest I've ever got to something like that was when my Godfather and I went tearing round the local countryside in his car at over 100mph. I remember particularly when we stopped with the car hanging over the edge of a hill, then with the brakes still applied jammed the gas pedal to the floor and let said brakes go. That was wild.