Best Christmas ever+best Internet radio station ever+best present ever

[kestrell]

The company was witty, gracious, and, at the table at which I sat, spent about half the time it took to consume the amazing feast talking about books. My friends know how to keep Christmas if anybody ever did.

I mentioned that I had been listening to the best Internet radio station ever, and it had been playing the best holiday music ever, and a couple of people asked for me to mention the URL so here it is: http://wwoz.com WWOZ out of New Orleans. It's a jazz and blues station, community supported there is only a quick mention of sponsors. And the N.O. definition of blues and jazz includes all flavors of both genres, plus, amongst other things, funk, Cajun, regga, Brazilian, and on occasion, burlesque, with gospel on Sunday mornings--a true gumbo. This is the place to be in a couple of months for Mardi Gras.

I received many warm black sweaters/polar fleece, and many many books.

The big present was the BookSense that LJ user alexx_kay gave me. This is the cutting-edge accessible ebook reader for blind users. I actually got the BookSense XT, which is the more deluxe model and has 4GB of built-in storage space (to allow data, music, and other files to be saved without using an external memory card), built-in FM radio, and the option of using wireless Bluetooth headphones.

The BookSense can read these Formats: digital audiobooks, text files, brl and brf (digital braille), doc, docx, html, rtf, xml, and Daisy (an accessible format with XML tags for increased functionality), .
There is also a digital recorder and a media player which plays MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, OGG, MP4, and M4A, podcasts, and files recorded from the FM radio.
Note: It does not play PDF or any proprietary ebook formats, and to play the audiobooks from the libraries for the blind such as RFBD, one must install the proper patch/DRM, although I have no intention of installing any DRM on my BookSense.
Size: 4.25 in (L) x 1.85 in (W) x 0.75 in (H)
Weight: 0.25 lbs.
It has a 12-hour continuous use of battery charge
2) 2 -hour charging time using AC adapter, 5-hour charging time using USB

I've decided to name the BookSense Alexandria, Lexi for short (Alexx would just be too confusing, plus lexi has the Greek for book or "of words" or "to speak").

BooksI received for Christmas:
Grimoires by Owen Davies (Oxford University Press, 2009) - a cultural history of grimoires
The Edgar Allan Poe Collection: 20 of Poe's chilling stories and poems
Caedmon unabridged 5 CDs 6 hours performed by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone
Anne Rice Angel Time read by Paul Michael unabridged 7 discs 9 hours
Shakespeare Stories edited by Giles Gordon (1982) - stories based on Shakespeare works incl stories by Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, and Kingsley Amis
The Friar and the Cipher : Roger Bacon and the unsolved mystery of the most unusual manuscript in the world by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone (2005)
The Paper Thunderbolt by Michael Innes
But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame! The Amazing History of the World's Favorite Madcap Aunt by Richard Tyler Jordan

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

WOOOT!

Booksense XT is thrilling. Not to mention that your highly tuned user-interface-fu will inevitably suggest 43 design improvements making life easier for the next generation.

is it the red one?

This review of the Department of Mad Scientists, a history of DARPA, might be of interest.

[kestrell]

Alexx tells me my BookSense is white, because there was a real shortage of available models form the vendors. However, it comes in a spiffy black leather cover from which there is very little reason to remove it, so it's no big deal.

Thanks for that book review link! I've been saying for years that the big picture of prosthetics as funded by DARPA --and DARPA funds all of the big money projects, including the ones involving quadrapelegics [sp?] and direct brain-computer interfaces-- is cyborg soldiers and other war-related technologies. People often act like I'm sort of conspiracy theory freak, so it's good to hae a published book to cite. I'm on a disability and prosthetics panel at Arisia, so I'm brushing up on my booklist, including a scanned copy of _The Body Has a Brain of Its Own_, which I haven't gotten far into yet, but love the vocabulary (peripersonal space definitely sounds more impressive than "personal bubble").

[jesse_the_k]

in addition to "peripersonal space" you get to play with "body mandala" and "body maps." The latter is remarkably expansive: it's why the tip of your cane feels like an extension of yourself; why I loathe strangers hanging on my push handles; and why threats to drivers' cars generate road rage.

That Arisia panel sounds like a gas!

[kestrell]

Yes, what I really like about the book is that it provides a vocabulary for ideas and emotions about body space which I had thought of, but for which I didn't have a language. Gregory Bateson talked about prosthetics/tech in regard to a blind person's cane, and I've compared a white cane to a cat's whiskers: the actual sense of how/where the body exists in the space and how it moves through that space is changed.

[jesse_the_k]

Wait til you read the incredibly high percentage of sensory cortex devoted to whiskers in a mouse's brain!

more about the color

[kestrell]

I wasjust at the BookSense downloads Web page so I could download the new firmware, andnoticed for the first time that the color words are descriptive, not decorative. The BookSense XT which is the more deluxe version is off-shite, and the descriptive word whit is used in the filename for the firmware download. The BookSens e Standard is the red one, and again, the color word, this time red, is used int he filename for the download.

Re: more about the color

[jesse_the_k]

OK, that's gotta be one of the best typos ever: I sure hope your new toy isn't "off-shite" in color. *g*.

Turns out the colors are *both* descriptive and decorative. That makes it easier for both GW's tech support and the unschooled sighted AT wranglers. "Which firmware do I need?" "The one that matches the color of your device."

Re: more about the color

[kestrell]

Actually, I dislike off-white because it always just looks dirty to me, at least in the bland tones of plastic (unlike fabric and paint dyes which can get colors like champagne, or cream, or winter white...).

I am so sleep-depped I'm amazed I only had that one embarassing typo today. I think it's the Prednisone's fault, but I keep waking up at 1 or so in the morning and can only doze until it's six-thrity or seven and a reasonable hour to get out of bed and make my pathetic decaf. Thank goodness I only have two more days of Prednisone left. The thought of sleeping through the night sounds so good I could almost cry. I was an insomniac for most of life and don't know how I did it, except I didn't know any better, but now i do and I really really miss it.