| I sell SpeedDots tactile Screen Protectors |
[31 Jul 2011|04:05pm] |
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Who is SpeedDots?
SpeedDots.COM, a California-based company, announces the official release of the SpeedDots Screen Protector, a tactile approach to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch for those who are blind or have low vision, permitting easy navigation and orientation to some of Apple's most popular touch-screen devices. Using single dots to denote the virtual keyboard, along with a few commonly-found buttons and controls, blind/low vision users can input information more quickly and efficiently than ever before.
In escence, we provide screen protectors for your device with Braille-style dots to enable you to type quicker and easier on your device, as for quite a lot of blind people, typing on a flat surfice is very time-consuming and annoyingly difficult.
SpeedDots tactile Screen-protector for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 4th Gen.
Each protector (including shipping) costs £6.50 in the UK, and €9.00 to Mainland Europe.
In the United States, each protector costs $7.00.
A $3.00 shipping charge applies.
Two types of SpeedDots screen-protectors exist.
Standard: Our standard screen cover has a mark on every letter of the keyboard with the exception of F, and j as
well as all of the standard iPhone controls. This layout is good for people new to the iPhone or people
who do a lot of typing.
Advanced: Our Advanced screen cover Has markings on the letters F, and J, as well as on all of the standard iPhone
controls. If your an advanced iPhone user, or you want a very clean and simple layout, then the advanced
model is for you.
For more information, please use one of the resources below:
To buy in the UK or Mainland Europe: http://SpeedDots.onj.me
UK/Europe distributer email: Speeddots@AndreLouis.COM
To buy in the United states: http://www.SpeedDots.com
United States distributer email: Info@SpeedDots.com
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| A sort of catchup, and talk of microblogging |
[13 Mar 2011|10:55am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 thoughtful |
] |
It has come to my attention that I haven't posted a damn thing in here for what some might call ages. This is practically abandonware now, not sure what I'll do with it.
blogging has changed for me, to microblogging which is far more convenient, gratifying and instantaneous as one can see results within usually, the first few minutes of posting something. Sad, but true.
In any case, I will keep LJ around but if it wasn't obvious or anything, I'm mostly to be found over there instead of over here where I microblog many times a day for the most part, and where you can follow both my lovely wife and my little boy Jake. yup, even small children blog these days, it's just a sign of the times don't ya know?
What else? Aah yes, created myself a youtube channel where i posted exactly *one* video but that will of course grow to be more in the future. MRS louis also has a youtube channel of her own where she posts many videos of Jake at play, and other such fun things should you wish to investigate that at your leasure.
So given my lazyness, I'll quickly throw around some more links to things I've been doing of late.
In no particular order then:
Onj.me, a url shortener for well, shortening urls that isn't bit.ly met.al goo.gl or any of the others. What for? Simply because I could. Use it, get your friends to use it, it's something to do. If for no other reason than you can say you know the guy that was sad enough to put the thing online.
We went that one step further and made our own Windows desktop application to shorten urls as you put them in the clipboard, just to make your life that bit easier.
Other things. Hmm. Oh yes, played at a gig on Feb 24 with my dad which you can download from the above link if you wish. Was quite fun, and my first gig in many many months.
My album continues to sell fairly well in the digital stores, at present made just a tad over $350 from it's creation in August of 2009, so can't complain too loudly.
Even payed for a 48-second album promo created for me by the very talented
Patrick Perdue as I trust very few people to do quite such a great job at audio, which is nothing personal to Steve
and Derek Lane of course, but he got the right idea for the kind of sound I wanted.
Onj's TV is now about a year old and some, continuing to bring you quality?... programming from this side of the pond at all hours of the day and night.
Now what? I don't know. I'm all linked out I think. I think I got all the relevant points out in any case so I'll put this out there for some reason or another, and continue to read more HP fanfic because this one seems really good so far. Hopefully it'll stay that way.
good day, and enjoy yourselves. Chances are you won't hear from me till I turn 28 anyway, as infrequent as I post, so sometime after May 30th. Sad, but true.
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| Seasons Greeting |
[25 Dec 2010|08:44am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 relaxed |
] |
SEASONAL GREETING FOLLOWING EXAMINATION AND APPROVAL FROM OUR LAWYER:
From Me ("the wishor") to you ("hereinafter called the wishee"),
please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for
an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low
stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect
for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their
choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all...and a
financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated
recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but
with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and
having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious
faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:
* This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal
* This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be
made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor
are acknowledged.
* This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any
of the wishes.
* This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the
restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain
jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
* This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within
the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the
issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, which ever comes first.
* The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this
wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor
* Any references in this greeting to "God", "the Lord", "Father Christmas",
or any other festive figures, whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive,
shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting,
and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images
are hereby acknowledged.
.........in other words "Merry Christmas!"*
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| The Louis Bin for August 28, 2010 |
[29 Aug 2010|01:49am] |
| [ |
mood |
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happy |
] |
Greetings. Has it been a long time or has it been a very, very long time? I think it's been an extremely long time. Now all my bases are covered, I can take the time to say that yes, I did a show. As in, actually sat down at the PC and did a show on TBRN and I thought it was rather enjoyable myself.
It was even a bit longer than usual, because nobody was on after me, so we went over the usual 3 hour time limit by about 20 minutes or there abouts. I'm tired apparently, as I wrote seconds not minutes. Um, yeah? How's about not really?
In any case, go here to download it and learn about what's been happening with me over the last 8 or so months since I last broadcast personally, and not cohosted with  arfy8820 which I usually do.
In the show you will hear the Oracle, thought to be long dead, Bryan sounding just like the Oracle, scaring many of the participants, a few tracks in which drum solo's are muchly talked about, much fun with the iPhone 3GS and playing with apps, new tracks from yours truely and the traditional addictive drumming you've come to expect. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did creating it.
Tomorrow and Monday is of course the Notting hill Carnival given that it's the end of August and that's what happens in August is it not? Naturaly the stream must go ahead and so for the next two days until perhaps Monday night or very early Tuesday morning, microphones will exist outside my window to bring you music, crouds of people, and whatever else may occur during that time. you will probably want to go
here to listen live to it and hopefully enjoy it, be amused, or outright worried by the crazy mad people to be found outside my block of flats in Central London.
With this, I can depart having done what I came to do.
When I shall write in here next I have absolutely no clue. When I will be able to do another show I again have absolutely no clue, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Take care one and all, and from me, goodnight.
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| An unusual week thus far |
[09 Jul 2010|09:14am] |
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Greetings. Told you I wouldn't abandon LJ and I haven't. Been quite the week. Since I last posted, many things have happened, or at least given that I was expecting them, a number of little things that then add up to quite a few if that makes sense.
Kirsten and Jake went off on their holiday to Spane for two weeks as of last wednesday. I would've been going with them, but a friend of mine from Germany is here on the exact same dates, 7-21 July so he's staying with me and we're going site-seeing and geek-shoping etc, so in a way it's like a holliday but one where I don't leave my home city.
So far it's been quite interesting. Haven't gone anywhere exciting yet, but did introduce him to the local fish and chip shop where he had, of course, fish and chips, not something you can just go get in Germany apparently. He seemd to think it was pretty good as well, so that's a bonus.
Sleeping alone for the first time and the longest, since my wedding is also strange. Jake isn't waking me up in the night demanding food at 3 o'clock so I'm sleeping for a lot longer than I would otherwise, and somehow, not feeling particularly great for it. I guess the old body-clock is waiting for the human alarm and it's not happening, which causes all sorts of strange occurrences to occur, or something.
The fish and chip thing happened on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday, mister German man and my brother took a trip accross town to where Dwayne works, and then mister German man went about his business, with a map on how to get back here. From what he told me last night, he went to Oxford circus, Piccadilly, Hyde park and a couple other places and had a good time. I have some recordings he made actually using the Zoom Q3, which I will be showing in my next show on TBRN whenever that happens.
During that same time, a keyboard player friend of mine Alex came over to visit me. I didn't know he was bringing a keyboard, only visiting, so we had an impromptu jam right here in my living room, and obviously I had to record it. No way I was going to let an opportunity like that pass me by.
In parts it gets just a little bit clippy, but it's unedited, and all yours if you'd like to give it a listen
right here.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it. Now please, take this at face-value, ok? It's better for me if you do.
I'm an OK keyboard player, OK leaning to pretty good, I guess. This isn't me talking here. I dispise that kind of self-arrogance in anyone, so this is just what I've been told. Alex however, is on a totally new level of playingness. What I do, he can do 10 times better. What he does, I can't dream of doing. So put a somewhat good player and an extremely! good player in a room, provide them keyboards and this is the result.
Naturally, like with most jams, the warmup is average, but I can garontee it does get better. Quite a lot better by the end of it. Nearly a two-hour file there, I think it's 107 minutes and some.
Comment here if you like, I'd be interested in your thoughts.
On that note, no pun intended, I will go away, read a book, catch up on the madness that is twitter at this time which appears to be mostly about NFB and the iPhone 4, and start my day at some point.
Have fun, and thanks for reading.
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| Me? On twitter? |
[03 Jul 2010|08:12am] |
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Apparently so, yes. To clarify, that does *not* mean I am going to abandon my LJ or even facebook, because though three social networks is quite a damn lot, they all serve a fairly useful purpose. It was actually an article I read on a symbian website of all things that convinced me to try twitter, despite the fact that it didn't mention it at all.
Here's a comment taken from my Facebook to Caitlin H, who I hope won't mind that her name is mentioned here. It's me writing, not her, but I think it should clarify my feelings on the subject. Caitlin refuses to get twitter, like me two days ago, but sadly stupid things can change your mind, even if they really have no right too.
<----snip---->
Caitlin: I can see why you don't. I nearly never, ever did. It was an article that I read about the death of Symbian that changed my mind.
Since I'm such a die-hard, iPHone-hating, Apple-are-bastards person, and said left right and everywhere else I'd never own an iPHone because
Symbian would never, ever desert me would it? Would it?? And now it's gone and done that, well. If I have to replace my trusted, sexy, beautiful
N86, it'll either be with a Droid phone, or, the god-forsaken iPHone, against my better judgement.
Here's how I see it. If I can stoop as low as to even *consider* an iPHone, I suppose I can try twitter.
Like the iPhone, the idiots of tweetings have had their chance to be dumb tossers and now twitter's settled down to what it should be. A place to
post informational stabs. When I saw twitter all over my LJ, not even containing posts from the people who's LJ's it was coming from, I got major,
major pissed off. Now it's somewhat better.
Just like the iPHone 3GS default firmware was pathetic and utterly shite, the latest firmware is something I'd think about while watching grass
grow. Sad that I've had to sink this low, but that be the truth of it.
<----snip---->
That ladies and gentlemen is what I said, and having used Twitter for now just over a day, I see the appeal. Like I said, it does not mean I will jump ship totally, I still need more than 140 characters to express myself thank you very much, but Qwitter, the Twitter client I use, is possibly the first ever program to truely support Dolphin's API so it means I don't have to use SYstem access or NVDA to access Twitter, like I do with Monopoly. That really gets on my nurves having to change screen-reader to play just one game. However, that game is the best damn thing to come out of the audio game market in such a long time that I just have to play it.
In any case, my twitter name is the same as my LJ name so follow me if you dare. I mean if you wish.
I even got my wife on there too, as she got me into facebook, so I recipricated.
Anyways that's me done for now. Time to get up and start my very hot Saturday.
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| A busy couple of days |
[28 May 2010|12:04pm] |
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Morning. Long entry ahead, cut for geekyness later. you have been warned.
Today is Friday. Two days ago it was Wednesday. It proved to be a very long day indeed. I had ordered a computer from Ebay, namely a new server machine, because my old one was dying. I've had it since 2005 or 6 I can't quite remember, and I got it from Dolphin as they had old stock they didn't need. It came as a 500 MHZ machine, I later upgraded it to a 750 with 768 megs of ram. It ran, for the time it was alive, a great many servers, including email and web for AndreLouis.COM, an irc server, and acted as the house's file storage and printer medium.
Recently it had started to reboot randomly, which I thought meant it was time to put it in the bin, or something like that. What it actually meant, was it was being attacked from the outside and couldn't handle it because it was so slow, but I'd been having issues with it for a while so I decided to buy a new computer, and only found out after the fact that the reboots were due to outside influences. In any case it turned out for the best, but that's later.
After having visited a site you might know as Ebay to find a replacement server, I found quite a nice machine in the form of an HP Xw6200 which is a dual Intel Xeon 2.8 GHZ,2 GB ram, 250 GB hdd, For a not very pricy sum of £149. Thanks to Paypal and the bank, I could afford it, but not really.
That is to say, if I didn't have to buy it, I'd have been better off, but I did, or thought I did, so I wasn't. I was lucky. I ordered on Monday, it was dispatched same day, and arrived on wednesday. Or did I order on Tuesday? Either way it came very quickly and by wednesday evening was fully set up and had quite happily replaced the older machine.
In any case, the fun begins Wednesday morning at around 10 AM local time.
(Stage left, enter big hawnking box containing components.)
Me: It's here! Lets do some remodeling!
Kirsten: Oh look all the buble-wrap.
(Jake plays with the buble-wrap after I take computer out of box. Jake also climbs in box and has baby boxy fun times. Seems to quite enjoy himself).
( Want more? click here.Collapse )
Having skipped ahead later and later, wizzed through the night and into the next day, we arrive at Thursday and yet another package for me. This time, a Sony TC-K611S tape deck yet another ebay package.
I bought it to replace my Aiwa thingy that I don't know the model of, because the fanbelt in it had died.
It's another tripple-head machine with adjustable bias and so on and so fourth, and it's most geeky feature is a motorised door. I personally find it amusing, because although it has no remote, it can be used with one, so I could eject the tape from across the room should I want too.
I also like it because I can put a tape in and immediately press play or rewinde or fast forward, it will shut the deck and start the action I asked of it. It has no auto-reverse but really, what high-end decks do? It apparently was made in 1993 and cost quite a lot more than I bought it for. It's in good condition apparently rarely ever used, and sits in pride of place on top of my JVC amplifier, under two routers, a flat panel display and a gigabit switch.
The transport is quiet, unobtrusive, the machine is clean when it has a good tape to work with, doesn't seem to have any motor issues and has a feature found in my dad's BMW car system where by it can detect silences in the tape and stop and play at that point. I like it much.
Truthfully I've had quite a crazy few days and am glad it's finally over.
AS I have been writing this since 10:58 local, and it's now 12:01, due to stops and starts and thinking on what to write, the last thing I have been waiting for has arrived. Kirsten's camera cable was faulty, and we bought a new one. So now the usb port on the Wii is acting as a charging socket. Most fun.
I shall now go and find something to eat. Nothing new there then really, and on Sunday I shall be 7 and 20. That's practically ancient!
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| Guess the sound? |
[15 May 2010|08:15am] |
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I don't know when I last posted and don't have the inclination to look, so I'll just say what I say and see what happens. Life, lately has been interesting.
Dealing with stupid people that turn their back to you, say cryptic shit about you on twitter which is a service I don't subscribe too, and don't have the friggin balls to tell me to my face? Yep. that's so-called friends for you. Retards more like. Over-inflated sons of bitches really. I have no time for idiocy in my life, so they're practically dead to me. No skin off my dick as it were.
In other news, the Q3 has been making the rounds filming Jake grow up, which was kind of the point really. I have videos of him building up blocks and knocking them down, I have videos of him pulling himself to a standing position against our sofa, and I have videos of him trying to steal the peddle to my keyboard and attempting to eat it. That one is amusing, but if he ingests the peddle, I shall have to buy another one which won't be quite so fun, but it's all good.
Also, yesterday I happened to take my trusty Iriver, no, not the Q3 this time, and the not so working Wizzzo microphones and attach them to my kitchen window because something was going on outside. The subject line says it all really. Given that it's not time for the Notting hill Carnival just yet, have you any idea what else it could be?
Listen here to find out and comment if you think you know what it is. There is no mention of it at all during the 19 minutes and 45 seconds, so I will be interested to see who gets it. for a very quick throw this together job it came out better than it should have really. I didn't know how long it was going to go on for, so I rushed around the house grabbing headphones, iriver, microphones, nearly broke everything on the kitchen window cill trying to set up in time, but in the end it turned out OK anyway.
In any case, enjoy, and see what you think. Oh, and those who already know, don't be ruining it for others.
Well it's now 8:15 in the morning exactly so look, I can post at a decent time.
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| Existance is futile |
[03 May 2010|10:15pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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Spinning a ladder over my head |
] |
That isn't quite the quote I think, but sometimes it feels that way. Not always, just occasionally.
In any case, what happens if I go out and buy a Zoom Q3 Well, a voicepost of course. What better way to celebrate a brand new piece of electronic goodness than to make something stupid to say hi?
Not much, so that's what I did.
In it, you will hear some old favourites, such as the fridge, the lazer printer, and what it feels like from the camera's point of view to be dropped less than 24 hours after receiving it. I'm sure it didn't like me very much after the last of those, but it's still working so it can't be all bad, or can it?
Time to run, it's late and I'm sleepyish.
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| The Larfy Drop Bin for March 20 2010 |
[21 Mar 2010|08:37am] |
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Hi. Hello. Greetings. Not much to report other than I was the one, not arfy8820 to stream the show last night for the first time since December, so naturally I must link to it.
It was only two hours long because I forgot about the stupid American time change happening, so those Eastern folk are only 4 hours not 5 behind me. I should've started at 9 PM local but I didn't because I wasn't ready. STarted at 10 instead so it's only a two hour show. Anyway if you want it, here it is so take and enjoy.
Basically we start off a bit rusty like, it's been 3 months since I did that after all. Take a phone call, talk to a bunch of people, demonstrate the Juno to XV conversions I talked about in my slightly geeky entry and then finally play some ninjam to round up the show.
In other news today Jake is 6 months old so halfy birthday to him, or something. That's about it from this small Microdot of London so I'm out.
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| Wayfinder's dead, join OviMaps instead! |
[14 Mar 2010|08:00am] |
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Hi. Won't matter to a lot of you but those with WAyfinder subscriptions, if you haven't crawled out from under your rock of choice yet and don't know, it's dead. That means in a nutshell, no more hope of it's revival. No more updates, no more support.
The next best talking thing undre Symbian is Ovimaps. I just wrote Ovipams and didn't mean too.
Anyways, there's a new list started up for it at this time, just yesterday. Best thing to do if you can, is just join it, we don't know if it's going to have a lot of traffic or not, but it will be a good way to get hints and tips from other users that have made it work.
I've installed Ovimaps 3.something on my N86 at this time, and played with it a bit, so we'll see how it goes.
The Talks and Wayfinder access lists were getting cluttered up with Ovi stuff and I'm sure the mods don't like that.
You can go here to join and choose the OviMaps list from the drop down. Click proceed and follow instructions. Pretty easy I think.
To se if the new OviMaps works with your phone, you'll kind of need to download it. The best way to do this is from a Wifi connection if you have one.
Point your phone to www.nokia.com/maps using the phone's browser, find the download link and hope for the best.
Hope to see some of you on the new list. It's time to retire, Wayfinder access. WAs good knowing you while it lasted.
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| A slightly geeky entry |
[10 Mar 2010|09:15am] |
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Hello. Lately I've been feeling motivated to do more with my Juno-G. Why? I don't know. Probably because I went online and found some patch banks made by other people and decided for the third time, to try the juno librarian. What that basically does is allow me to fill the user area of my keyboard up with some happy goodness. So two days ago, I sat down and said i will get this bastard thing working, because it's bugging me that I can't. I'm only blind, not stupid. Well that's questionable, but still. So I did. I managed to get it working to the point where I now have some very fun patches in my Juno, and one of the banks i found was all the sounds from the XV that I used to own.
Thing about that is, the XV had some great sounds. the juno also has some great sounds. But some of the XV had sounds the Juno doesn't. So I've been spending the last two days finding sounds that I've really, really missed ever since I sold the XV, and am being more amazed by the power of this keyboard all the time.
I bought it when I needed a replacement for my Korg Trinity which I sold to some guy named Alex, who can actually make better use of it than I can. Really, it was just meant to sit on topp of my Rhodes and look cool. I later found out that it had some great sounds, as I didn't really plan to use them for much quite honestly, and only use it as a controler. And then as I say, two days ago my virtual eyes were opened to the possibilities. Now I want not only to use sounds, but to make them as well. So as soon as a working editor comes along, that's what I'll be doing.
I've managed to retreave sounds from such tracks as the theory, Bec and fix this.
Many more as well that I liked but never used in any pieces, so it's all quite new and exciting.
Possibly the most interesting thing, if not the best-sounding thing I found is a piano from the Fantom X. That module is the Juno's daddy box, in that the Juno has most of the wave forms from the Fantom X, but is missing 64 mb of the wave rom, including this piano. Someone managed to rip the piano and put it into 92 little wave files, and port it to the Juno. It's better than the stock piano but not as good as the one on the expanssion board that I have. It's certainly alright though, and multi-layered.
With that in mind, I definitely want to start sampling things and make my own sounds. It just takes the Juno ages to boot now, because the sounds come from a Compaq flash card, into the ram, so boot time is now equivalent to a fairly fast computer, taking about 1.5 minutes. It's mighty odd when a keyboard actually has a noticeable boot time.
In any case I'm still in bed, and the shower has my name on it, so I will go and use it. However, I feel like writing new music so expect to hear more from me shortly, especially with the fun sounds I'm finding.
Derek Lane, Dan R, and a guy from Finland who's name I can't spell, let alone pronounce are all welcome to my Juno bank should they want it. And GF also sounded interested, but his Juno's at church, so it can't benefit quite yet. Maybe the Jawsites among us will have better luck with the editor though, and be able to create and share some sounds should they feel like it. Would be nice.
PS. IF you get a spair moment, throw your media player at this or if that doesn't work, this which, by the information in the title bar when you load it, will be obvious what it is, so doesn't require explanation.
It's a link to a stream, not a virus. I'm not quite that dumb and stupid. Oh, that's another sound I was able to retreave from the XV, I forgot.
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| Time for my first track this year |
[04 Mar 2010|12:50pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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relaxed |
] |
Greetings peoples. I haven't written here for quite a while so what's to catch up on? A few different things if I remember any of them. Jake continues to , grow, what a bloody surprise, that! Getting teath now, sharp ones. I have been composing many many things but not really releasing any of them, apart from very short clips in mp3 for some friends of mine who cannot play ogg at their school, all located here and today decided to just si down on a whim and write something utterly brand new and for me, never tried before.
Picked up a Korg M1, a piece of Hypersonic and the old Korg Wavestation and produced A day in the rain which is more of a tracklette than a track, being only 1 minute 47 seconds, and it is unlike anything I personally have ever done before. for the MP3 version you'll be wanting this one if ogg isn't your thing.
I doubt I'll make a habbit of producing both versions as quite frankly it's tedious but aah well, for now it shall suffice.
Also got a ninjam I threw together with a group of peeps a while back as well. Simply called live for today it can be downloaded up there a bit.
This incorporates Bandstand and a bit of playing and what not. Other people come in later, but not for a good few minutes. I'm alone on the server to start with, so I did what I do best, which is solo my face awwf!
Hope you enjoy both of those, let me know what you all think either in LJ where this is published first, facebook as a note, or on my website at AndreLouis.COM where this gets sindicated. How nice of it!
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| What am I doing here again? |
[31 Jan 2010|11:39pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 silly |
] |
Left hand folows right and and considers what to enable human at end of arms to type on keyboard. Typing thusly, proves that nothing really useful was thought about, and thus stream of conciousness or something meant to resemble that appeared on your screen. In actual fact, this lead to nothing of consequence being typed, and nobody is quite sure what the point of this was in the first place. Perhaps embibing Jigermeister in not quite small, but not quite large quantities on a Sunday evening is the reason for what most of you will most likely term, bulldoodoo, or equivalent expletive.
Please move along now. Some day I shall come back here, investigate the writings on the wall and ask myself or whoever happens to be in my vicinity at the given time, why exactly I would dare to compose something so utterly pointless, that it makes golf look interesting. something is seriously wrong if that sport has entertainment value outside of the wii version.
I think at this point a bye bye is in order, so that is exactly what shall happen at this juncture.
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| Alive it would seem |
[27 Jan 2010|08:34am] |
| [ |
mood |
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a bit angry, but not too much |
] |
Yes quite right. I'm here just on the off chance somebody sees this and wanted to know that. If not, well, feel free to return to your umbrella and stay out of the rain. so what's going on? Good question. Jake grows up, we are looking for a new place to live, and the world turns. All bog-standard things right? I thought so.
However, it hasn't been an entirely uneventful few weeks sinse my last update, no no. what have I done? In no particular order:
Upgraded mine and Kirsten's netbooks to Wireless N from Wireless G, improving the range of connectivity and speed for one thing.
It was interesting to say the least. having never opened up a netbook before, and not wishing to do so while it was still under warrantee, I waited till it wasn't, and then struck! Well not quite as dramatic as that or anything, but I thought it sounded better than to simply say, I just took an electric screwdriver and screwed the hell or unscrewed the hell out of it. In any case, it happened, it was good, or rather is good, so it feels like I gave my netbook a new lease of life without having to resaut to one of those horrid Harpu's (bless me!) sorry about the sneesing thing, but Harpu (bless me!) just does sound like that. Asus and their stupid naming schemes.
Next, my website that has had the exact same look since 2006 was updated with the help of Quinn and Wordpress in various dosages.
Feel free to take a look at what I like to call, the new and improved AndreLouis.COM and comment here, or on the site as you can do that now, about your thoughts. Do you find it screen-reader friendly? Is it sluggish to load on your connection? Does the colour scheme do really trippy things to your face and upset your equilibrium? None of the above? All of the above? Let me know.
Speaking of screen-readers, them things over at blind bargains are holding a voting something or other I don't really know what for, but one of the categories is best screen-reader of 2009. Now, I don't want to vote for Apple, Flaws, Windoweyes or system access. In fact I thought to myself, I'll vote for NVDA just because it's doing really quite well, and surprise all you people that know I'm a diehard Dolphin fan, but the fact that they weren't even represented upset me so much on principal, that I simply chose not to vote, and will not do so therefore.
You can all feel free to do so though, if you go over here and look at what other categories are listed. they appear to be interested in best accessible game for 2009, best hardware product for the blind, best software product including Klango and Quitter and a few others. I would like to note that one of the choices, namely 'Apple Accesible iPhone and iPod Touch' is miss-spelled, and as I
stated, Dolphin is not represented. Now whatever you might think of them regarding screen-readers, their product is a magnifier, and how can you not magnify properly? you just do. One of their voting categories says, and i quote:
'3. Best Screen Access Program. This award goes to the best screen reading or magnification product of 2009, regardless of the operating system. This includes both computers and mobile devices.'
Note the word *magnification* in that category.
Please also note: Talks & zooms, and MobileSpeak are not represented, despite the fact that it says, and once again I quote:
'This includes both computers and mobile devices.'
It's a tad hard to
represent the mobile community if only Apple is here, is it not? Or am I just being too damn picky? either way, there's stuff missing. If you're going to produce a website, do the damn research and put *all* the requisites up there, not bloody editor's choice for frig sake! Otherwise Jaws wouldn't have even gotten a looking. It would've simply been System Access and Nvda. Possibly Window-eyes but only because they have one good programmer working with them, namely audiorabbit03 who knows his stuff inside, outside,backside, and all other kinds of side that haven't yet been invented.
Right well I'm done here. Like I said, an update. Nothing overly long or even interesting but I pay for the privilege of ranting in LJ since I have a payed account, and I wanted to get that off my chest. Why pay for something I don't use? Yeah I thought so too.
PS. If you ever watch the TV, namely BBC, you might like to share with your friends this pointless clip because I mentioned it in my facebook status and I think, quite scared a few people.
Have a nice day. London, United Kingdom [0C, Mostly Cloudy] 8:20 AM GMT on January 27, 2010
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| Hello? can you all hear me at the back there? |
[01 Jan 2010|08:33am] |
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Greetings. I was going to say greetings to one and all but what exactly does that really mean? One an all? If I'm saying greetings to one, then wouldn't I just come up to you and say 'hi, wassuuuuuuuup!' Or something. If I'm saying hello to loads of you, then I dono, I'd uh, say something different, right? So why one and all?
Oh I dono it's all stupid and pointless anyways. For the record it's 2010 like it is in most parts of the world by now, apart from possibly Hawaii, Alaska, Midway Island and international dateline west.
Given that I don't know anybody from those places apart from Keao who might not even live in Hawaii anymore anyway, I won't waste time writing the three words, 'happy new year' but oh damn, I just did, so consider that my duty done. At this time, I am the only person who is cognicent in my house. My lovely wife Kirsten and son Jake are asleep, but I decided that I couldn't sleep anymore at about 5:58, read for a couple of hours, got up, had a shower, and now I'm here doing this. Once this is done and I've worked out what it is I actually wanted to say, I will return to my book and see what the first of the first 2010 has to say for itself, if anything. Most likely it will say much the same as most other days, but one can never tell can one?
Yesterday was fun though. James Bowden the QWS guy showed up, and spent a few hours here, then we received a visit from Ednun, who I went to college with, who we call Donkey Ed, but only in a nice way. He has a probably quite dangerous fixation with that particular animal so it is fitting. All in all, a nice day.
In the evening when our house was just ours and visitor-free, we watched eastenders, put Jake to bed, had some particularly decent alcahol, and finger-food which passed the evening away quite nicely thank you very much. I admit to not having been bothered to see in midnight, so I cannot say that I was awake last year, but oh well. There's always next year. And the next. and the next too, most likely.
So then, in a very quick year review, what has happened?
Marriage, April 18. Proceeding week, receive visitations from Pam, David, Patrick and Brandon. Also Domica and Iyana's Christening.
Week after wedding, lack of honeymoon due to lack of money. No lottery wins here. Christening party for above sisters, fun.
May 30, turn another age on the calendar for whatever reason. This appears to happen every year without fail, and I haven't yet worked out what causes it.
August 29, Kirsten joins me in the turning a new age thing. Is this some kind of trend?
Also, release my debute album A State of Mind. In following weeks, be notified it hits Amazon UK, Amazon France, Amazon US, and Amazon Germany. Possibly others. Also napster, iTunes, and just recently, CdUniverse.com. I think.
September 21, Jake is born. What a bloody day! Literally and figuratively. Tiring yes, but more for the wife than for myself. I'm just the guy after all. What do I know about letting some kid suck on my tits night after night? Sleep through it that's what.
September 22, my nan, my mother's mother turns 60. Living the life in Barbados, what more could you ask for? sun, sea, sand, sounds all good to me.
If having a kid is considered to be quiet, then the next few weeks are relatively that, as nothing too exciting happens.
October 8, London eye gig for Blind in Business. Fun, not particularly profiteable for myself, but that's alright I suppose. Someone benefited somewhere so that makes it all good. Vaguely.
November 5, Bonfire night. Nothing of import here whatsoever. Nothing. Nothing to record, nothing to show for it. What a dull day that was.
November 6, Charlotte's birthday. That's my crazy sister inlaw who turned 16, and took a trip to New York. Nothing to do with me, but a note on the calendar.
If anything else happened between then and Christmas I don't know. Probably, but nothing of great excitement so ignore it.
December 25, no idea. What's that all about anyway? Is it some sort of significant day I'm supposed to be aware of?
December 27, now ya talkin! food! fooooooooooood at my grandad's. Oh, and on december 25 I just remembered, I had also much much much good food at my inlaws. so that's what it must have been for. Man, how I forgot about the food I don't know.
December 27 till present, pretty quiet, and thus concludes this. How sad.
No truthfully it was a very eventful year I must admit, and i'm certain there are things I forgot but not out of spite, so don't bother suing me. If you think I have anything worth taking away you're mistaken. other than my wife and child which you can't have anyway, and if I forgot something I took part in that had anything to do with you, well I appologise for that also. Not for the taking part you understand, but for the forgetting there of.
Well, I must go now, I've been at this writing lark for what seems like ages, but is only in fact 33 minutes and counting, so that's that. I've only written this much in half an hour? that's quite sad isn't it? Aah well, can't have everything I spose.
Oh, happy new year. Forgot about that.
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| An actual show from me? Bloody'ell! |
[27 Dec 2009|02:20am] |
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Yeah I know. I never thought I'd do that again either but apparently I did. Last show from me and arfy8820 this side of 2010 and you can download it here if you want. It's very chilled out, new music, much talk, and kind of a step back to the 2004-2006 days when it was Skype not teamtalk, and the quality tried to be good but failed. Must go to bed at this point, tiredness is making itself known.
Thank you for reading. Thank you even more if you can spair the time to listen. We do this for you after all.
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| Still alive |
[25 Dec 2009|08:37am] |
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To whom it may concern,
Wishing you and yours a merry/happy Christmas, if you celebrate and if not, good for you.
Right. so today I will be at my inlaws for the usual Christmas dinner and what not, which will be fun. I hope the rest of you have a day worth remembering, I'm sure I will. The last few weeks have been nothing out of the ordinary, hense the reason I've been this quiet, but I figure if I don't post now, I probably won't for the rest of 2009, so get it over and done with. Thus, I did.
May you have a better year than this one, and may you perhaps win the lottery and make millians, but if you do, just remember it was my good wishes that made you get as far as you did, so I expect a 60/40 cut, in my favour. Haa bloody haa.
Piece out. Can't be arsed to say much more. Nothing much more to say.
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| I suppose I should kind of update? |
[02 Nov 2009|06:26pm] |
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contravercial did I spell that right? |
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Boy oh boy. As my wife just said, the weeks just feel like they're flying buy. Jake is 6 weeks old this very day, and it has been a busy 6 weeks at that. I've been told to update by two people so I thought I should put in an appearence, though admittedly I don't know what to say.
As non-parents might imagine, or perhaps they can't, it's a trip. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it isn't. Take last night for example. He slepped for 4 hours straight, which doesn't happen often. Usually it's a case of, after 9 o'clock, get as much sleep as you can even if you're not tired because by 8 the next morning, you won't be tired, you'll be friggin dead! he is getting better though, and Kirsten makes the point that she feels like she feeds and changes him in his sleep most times now.
Naturally lots of family have been down to see him from both sides of the divide and apparently he looks like me quite a bit, which for him can't be good. Poor kid.
For those who don't follow me on facebook, you won't have been notified of the pictures I put up a few days after he was born, so you can get them here assuming you can see them, or someone you know can. I will have to collect more of them as time goes buy, as they were taken a relatively long time ago now, and he has changed.
What you also won't know is that my album A State of Mind is not only available to buy from CdBaby, but also from iTunes, Amazon US and Amazon UK.
I found this out purely by accident when googling for it, because I was told by CdBaby they send to as many digital musical outlets as possible, so I wanted to see if it was true.
I actually do feel quite famous now that I'm on both iTunes and amazon, as a lot of people know such big brand names, so it's a feelgood factor.
Though I don't update much, stay tuned to this space, you never know, I might have a recording or two of whatever firework celebrations occur in this part of town in a few days time, it just depends. There isn't much out of the Jake quarter yet because he doesn't do much other than eat, sleep, poo, cry and sleep some more, which doesn't really make for an exciting listening experience, but when he starts to be a bit ambulatory shall we say, then I will gladly pull out the Jeklin disk, put it on the floor, sit back, and hit the record button. If he comes upto the mics and starts yelling at them, all the better.Our living room has more than enough floorspace to let that happen so it will be interesting to see what he does.
In any case, I go now, having done my civic duty to my live journal which I haven't abandonded, honest. Yes I said abandonded, deal with it. It felt right to type it, so type it I did.
If, or when anything of significant interest happens, you'll get to know about it. Right now though, unless you live in the UK and want to give a pretty cool christmas present of a pogo colour mobile printer, I'm afraid I have nothing much more of interest to say.
I bought one of them because Ebay sent me an email of daily deals and that was one of the things, and we like it. Look it up in your favourite search engine and buy one for your sighted brothers, sisters, cousins, they'll definitely like it. I bought one for Charlotte, my fake sister personage, and Karine, my 15 year old cousin who saw the one we had here, printed a picture on it, and said I definitely gotta get me one of those, so she got one too and loves it. Definitely a girly thing.
Right well that really is it. I don't know what I'm still doing here honestly, so with that said, I will won't be here any longer. Yup, you heard it here first, I will won't. So bye, and all that.
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| Babies are strange but I have one anyway. |
[22 Sep 2009|09:40am] |
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I know, unusual subject line but well, it says that because it's true. Jacob Peter Louis was born at 06:58 yesterday, September 21 and came home at about 11 PM the same night. He clocked in at a wapping 10 pounds 6 ounces and therefore, is chunky and heavy.
Kirsten and myself were up all night from Sunday through to last night, and then she was up practically all of last night as well of course, but I did manage to catch a few hours of sleep, somehow.
I want to share with you however, a small file that is 13 minutes in length and starts at about 07:05, just 7 minutes after Jake was born. It's basically just a bit of what was going on in the room at the time, and is titled, naturally, Baby archive 2009 which follows on from my 2005 offering, when my sister Domica was born. I know it's not much, but after that, the recording got very boring and quiet and extremely uninteresting. He slept, Kirsten tried to doze, I was on the NEtbook chatting to the fine people on irc as they got the exact time Jake was born. I was in IRC for about 10 minutes before he started crying to signify that yes actually, I am here, feed me now or else, hear the loudness of my face! After that I took out mister Iriver, microphones which are dying on the right hand side and I don't like it much, and you get the recording found above.
Well, time to start a new day in the life of the louis family and see what's in store. Visitors no doubt, and other such things.
Enjoy.
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