Frequent Blog Update #3… an extremely awesome tech discovery and Latest Life happenings of Steven D

Hey you guys,

Steve Here.

How did you like that blog post title? I hope you liked it a lot.

As my post said, I discovered an extremely awesome thing about my computer. It’s called windows speech recognition macros. Skipping all the techie stuff that is libel to turn non-techie followers and readers away from my blog, I’ll just tell you what the thing does in English terms.
Well, as you know, speech recognition itself will let you control your computer with your voice. Speech recognition macros is a way to enhance speech recognition so that you can make custom commands and use them to your liking. For example, I made my computer have a conversation with me, and best of all I recorded it. You can listen to it… non-techie people; there is no tech talk in this recording. So, here you go:

Listen offline

I hope you enjoy!

Now, switching topics, Let me tell you about my recent life happenings.
On Sunday, I had church. It was your average Sunday school, and service. Except one thing: we were like the “old people class at Sunday school” as quoted by some one at the church. Here we were, a whole bunch of teenagers chilling and drinking coffee.
Besides that, I also got my robot reference manual finished on Sunday, and Libby’s 5 friends left (In case I didn’t mention it in Saturday’s post my sister had friends over for a slumber party; it being her birthday weekend and all).
I didn’t do much else on Sunday, besides crashing for a bit, and Just hanging out really.
Yesterday, was when I found out that my computer could talk back to me. I went from not even knowing it could talk back to me (barely even knowing about speech recognition) at 9 in the morning to having sophisticated conversations with the machine. Please lord, whatever you do, don’t let me be the weird dude sitting in his office and having 5 hour long conversations with his computer about how the registry was acting up or how mad he got when his cat bit him or something. 🙂
So yeah, that is what I was doing on my free time Yesterday. I also had to get a hair cut, and a nice refreshing bottle of chocolate milk, but you know that’s a little beside the point.
As far as today goes, it was yet another school day. There was nothing much to talk about today.
Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get lots and lots of awesome rain. I can’t wait for that. Not only because we need that rain, but also because I like the sounds of rain. Here’s a little catchy poem I wrote about the forecast:

The forecast calls for rain,
this should help you grow your grain.
Rain is good for my brain,
though not for traveling by plain.
I like the pattering against my window pain,
but the dreary days drive me insane
Hope you enjoy my nice little forecast there…
Moving on, my mom’s cousin is coming to visit on Thursday, and I believe she’s staying for the weekend. We’re having a family get together on Sunday, partly because Libby’s birthday and the fact that my mom’s cousin will be here.
Also, I still have that upcoming orchestra concert, which my sister and dad will be missing because they’re flying to Florida for a goal ball tournament. Unlike mine, she gets to miss 2 or 3 days of school. Erg… why is she so lucky!
Although I kind of have to admit I’d rather go to school and get to attend my orchestra concert than miss two days and fail such an easy class.
Well, I guess that about wraps up today’s post. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

a wonderful Fall festival

Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s the 700th post! I can’t believe that!!!

Today has been a good day. It has been busy, but none the less I have to say it was quite awesome. And as I sit here, propping my feet up on a chair and leaning back comfortably, I once again get to amerce myself into one of my favorite hobbies, blogging.
The day started out with goal ball. Me, being an extreme procrastinator, decided that I was just gonna sleep 45 minutes passed the time I was supposed to get up. So, basically, I didn’t even get to shower; and nor did I get to check my email as I do every morning if I can. It was a “throw on what you can, and shove whatever you can down your throat to keep from being hungry” type of morning.
Despite the rushed start, goal ball practice ended up going very well. I spent the first 30 minutes chunking ball after ball at the walls of the gym, and running after it. For some reason, probably do to the fact that only one other person showed up, the practice in itself wasn’t hard. It was quite repetitive actually; composed of my coaches (one of them being my dad of course) Chucking the ball at me and the other player and us blocking and throwing it back. So even though the activities that went on during practice weren’t in the least bit strenuous, I still ended up tired do to the fact that it was non-stop action for two hours streight.
After practice ended, I got to come home and chill for a few hours. I have a remote control robot, which is very old but high tech and fun to mess with none the less, but unfortunately the buttons on the remote aren’t in braille and nor is there a braille user manual. So, I had to write myself a kind of reference type of thing. I used a motified drawing board that actually turns drawings into raised line drawings so that blind people can feel them just as sited folks see them. Well anyway, I spent two hours outlining my robot’s remote and then typing the button lables into the remote picture, so that I would have them in braille and know exactly what they were called and where they were located on the remote.
Well besides that, after I was finished my dad and sister came home from the advansed goal ball practice, along with a couple of my sister’s friends (it being her birthday weekend and all), and we all went to the fall festival I mentioned on Thursday’s post.
There were several fun games. When we first walked in, there was a really amusing game, that also tasted good. In this game, you and your competitor get a doughnut on a string, and your goal is to see who can eat theirs first without using their hands. Mind you, the doughnut will swing around on the string, so it made it harder to get. I swear to you, that thing was flying around, bouncing off the back of my head and whacking me up side the face. Fortunately, though my sister won the game, I still got to enjoy that delicious doughnut.
After that, there were more games. One of which I had to play as David by throwing a Velcro ball and trying to stick it to the Velcro head of Goliath (I guess to simulate killing him)… and I didn’t get it but came close.
There is really only one other game I want to tell you about, the tick tack toe game I played with some one.
Origionally, nor me or my competitor won the first game, but the second game was different. I started by putting my O in the gop left, and she put her X in the bottom left. I then put my O in the middle of the grid, getting hopeful that I’d win. She really had the chance to stop me their, but of course wasn’t thinking, and decided to put her X in the bottom middle. So, I put mine in the bottom left and won. Now how crazy is that?
After all the games were finished, we had a dinner of corn dogs and stew. We then had a hey ride, and then had to go home before it started raining on us.
Well, unfortunately I’m afraid that I have to end this post because I’be told you all about the festival and frankly I’m starting to get tired :). So,

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

the Busy Life of Steven D

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Choir and orchestra concerts, sporting events, festivals, Halloween…

Okay so maybe I don’t have as much going on as you might’ve thought after reading the title of this post. I have been kind of busy this passed week though.

On Friday, I went to that goal ball tournament I told you I would be going to. I ended up playing on two teams because the Central Texas Avengers were short a player, and thus needed me to play for them. Of the games I played, (1 with the team I was origionally playing for and 2 with the Avengers), my team(s) won 2 of them. I can’t say that I did, because I was on a team of 3 or more people during the whole duration of the tournament. Here’s how the games went:
game 1–I played with Texas Goal ball, the team I was supposed to play with: we won.
game 2–I played with the Central Texas Avengers and we lost.
game 3–I played with the Avengers and we won.

So overall, if you ask me, I think we all did great. Now I’m sure you guys (being sited, or just craving for some form of media) are wanting the pics and video. I have already designed the goal ball 2013 page, and I could do 1 of 3 things, which I will sort out from nicest to meanest.
1–nicest: I could do all that work to get the picture code and video on to this post.
2–not too mean, not too nice: I could put the link for the page on this blog post.
3–making you do all the work: I could tell you to go to the nav bar and look for the page.

I pick the second choice. So, here’s the link:
page for goal ball tournament of 2013
Now, on to more important topics, Let’s talk about sports extravaganza.
When we arrived at the school for sports extravaganza on Saturday morning, it was really cold. Your’s truely, the sometimes full I am, chose to wear basketball shorts in 45 degree weather, with a 15 mile per hour wind blowing and the sun just barely coming up. I even to this day wonder why I had to do that.
Well anyway, after listening to the opening saramony, we started events. Instead of going on a long drawn out speech about the day, because I know that would bore you, I’ll just keep it short and simple.
I had standing long jump, 100 meter race, discus, lunch (that’s the best event ever), a goal ball demo for the audience that I participated in, 200 meter race, and shot put. As far as awards go, I got 3 gold and 2 silver metals. Impressing… right? 🙂
Now before I leave this topic, here’s a picture of me getting a first place award.
getting first place
Besides sports ex, I’ve been having quite a busy week. On Tuesday, my sister, mom and I went to my sister’s orchestra concert. It ended up sounding pretty good, but unfortunately I didn’t get recordings or video to put on the site.
Yesterday, my sister and I attended church, as we normally do every other Wednesday. And finally today, I had a concert of my own, but this time it was choir. My orchestra concert is November 7, so I’d better get that music down, huh?
Well tomorrow, my mom and sister are going to a haunted house with some friends of theirs’. I am not much of a fan of haunted houses, so I opted not to go. So tomorrow I’ll have free rein of the house…
On Saturday, we’ll have goal ball as is always done on Saturday. In case you’ve noticed that my dad hasn’t been a part of this post, it’s because he’s been at work and will be until Saturday when he gets the weekend off. He started this schedule 2 or 3 months ago, but I don’t remember whether or not I told you guys that. Well he’ll be coming to goal ball and coaching it, and joining the rest of us to go to a festival thing. I’m not exactly sure what the festival is, just in case you’re wondering why my description of it was so vage. Unfortunately, there is a possibility of rain on Saturday (I mean a good chance that it will. *crosses my fingers and hopes it doesn’t*
Well basicly, besides that festival, and the orchestra concert, there’s only one thing left to say.
October 28 will be the birthday of my sister, so be sure to wish her a good day. Don’t worry, I’ll try to pick on her as much as possible. 🙂 :)… just kitting.

Well, thanks for reading this post. I really hope you liked it…

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

P.S. this is post number 699. The next post will be 700, I can’t believe that. And, I reached 8000 views. You guys are really inspiring me to keep going. With the amount of views you’re givving me, likes, and followers, don’t expect me to quit any time soon.

Looking Ahead to a Busy Weekend

Hey guys,
Steve here.

I know it hasn’t been but two days since I last updated my blog, but I figured that since my only chance to write a real good thorough update wouldn’t be until Sunday, for I haven’t but a few hours today, and the latter portion of Saturday at which there is a highly promising chance I will be unmotivated to write a long and well-written post since that will be quite a busy day.
I am in a relatively great mood today. Though I am at school right now, the first 3 hours of the day I get to spend typing furiously on my keyboard and surfing the internet, two of my favorite hobbies. Today is an early release day at my school; and since the sighted folks of my school are taking a test that has not been accommodated for a blind individual, I get three hours to relax in a comfortable chair and have a good time on the computer. I haven’t the whole day to relax; all things must come to an end and unfortunately that test is one of them. At 11:15, which is no more than 50 minutes away, I must return to the real world, which is to say English class. I am not, of course, dreading this; because although we’re reading Shakespeare and doing work, I will be able to talk to friends. Not only that, but in an hours’ time after I go to English class, it will be time to go home, and I can eat lunch and get on my computer once again… and this time it will be my personal computer that has all my games on it.
Now on to what this post is mainly about, looking ahead, there are some quite busy days that lie ahead of me. Tomorrow, although I will be returning to the normal school routine, my dad will be picking me up at around 1:15. Speaking of which, I should probably email both my orchestra and science teachers to let them know I will not be attending their classes tomorrow. 6th and 7th periods will be the only ones I miss since they both happen to be scheduled after 1:15. Not that I’m mad that I’m getting picked up; for it gives me the excuse to miss out on two classes. What teenager, whether smart or not, would miss the chance to do that?
Now on to the reason I’m getting picked up. I have a goal ball tournament scheduled for Friday night, and we have to be ready and at the high school we’ll be playing at. It is nor mine or my sister Libby’s school, or the school of anyone we know. It is just a school that lets the goal ball coaches host the tournament, and also sports extravaganza which I will be attending on Saturday. I will talk more about that later on in this post though. Anyways, I have done this tournament many a time before, and can link to the posts that tell about my experiences from 2011 and 2012, and also a page with images and video about the tournament. Here they are:
post 1 although this is in audio post format, it will describe both the goal ball tournament and sports extravaganza in 2011.
post 2
This is for 2012
goal ball 2012, the page with images and video
So reading this post, you should get a general idea of what kind of posts and media this tournament will cause me to write. I will write that post on Sunday, so stay in tuned.
Now as I said a while ago, I will tell you about sports extravaganza, which I also said that I would be going to on Saturday. In sports extravaganza, blind individuals from all over Texas, and I think even people from out of state come to the high school we had our tournament the night before, and some organizations sponser an all-day track and field event for the blind. And though the event is mainly centered around outdoor events, there is also a goal ball demonstration after lunch, which they provide to you. I can honestly say that every time I’ve gone it’s been an awesome experience for not only me to enjoy, but the rest of my family as well.
The event usually ends around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and leaves me pretty tired do to all the fun activities I did. That is the reason I said I’d probably not be motivated to write a post as I am doing now Saturday afternoon.
Well, now that I have that out of the way, I should probably tell you podcast updates. As you know if you’ve been viewing the site for the past 3 days, the podcast has yet to be posted. I have come upon a decision on the game. It is called q9, and is an action packed game where you guide a small alien back to his space ship. It’s a relatively long game, and is filled with hazardous pits, annoying squeaky bats that make you really want to kill them, vicious creatures that want nothing more than to tare poor old Q9 to shreds and eat him all up. So, as q9, your goal is to run through the worlds and levels killing enemies and jumping pits. More will be described in the podcast episode.
I also have another podcast episode to do on Sunday, and the game for this will either be Death match, or adventure at C: another action game but that is slightly more difficult than q9.
More about these games will be on their respective podcasts.

Well, I must finally end this blog post… so see you Sunday.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Future milestones, and a look into the passed

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Cooler weather, rain, goalball, computer registry errors…

I suppose I could end the post here… right? Well not really. A blog post that is less than a sentence, in my book, is classified as a twitter or facebook update; both of which I refuse to mess with.
My last week was stressful yet kind of fun at the same time. It was boring and exciting as well. Unlike the last couple posts, I refuse to use the one plane word “good” to describe my week, for it is not true about all 7 days of it.
So, basicly here is how those days went.
Monday was, as you know, a day off of school. Tuesday through Friday were school days. In English class, we began to read Shakespeare. Though I have been at this blogging/writing business, my writing skills remain well below those of Shakespeare. So beyond that, we’re also doing a booklet project in social studies which I am all but finished with. In this we had 5 action pages, where we would describe stuff (we’re covering the American revolution and Brittan’s 13 colonies… just historical stuff like that) so the events would be like the Proclamation of 1763, the tea act, the stamp act, the townshend acts etc etc. You would also have to copy a cause and effect chart, look up 8 key people and what they did in the revolution, and define vocabulary words. I’m on the vocab part and will have that finished tomorrow.
By the way, while on the subject of school, I made all A’s on my report card. the lowest grade was a 90 (I don’t remember what class), and the highest was a 100 in choir class.
Now if you’re wondering about the weekend, here’s how that was.
Saturday was a whole day devoted to goalball. I feel as though I am a broken record when talking of my Saturdays; for they mostly seem to be all about goal ball. There is of course, no problem with that; goal ball is a really good sport, and I do have a tournament coming up on Friday. If I manage to get my mom to video tape or snap pictures of the games, I will create a goalball 2013 page for it.
Now back to the passed, also known as Sunday, that was a day of computer registry cleaning and relaxation and church. In the morning was when me, my sister and Dad went to church, after which I came home to get on my computer as I usually do on days like this. Unfortunately, my machine refused to cooperate–freezes, slow coming on, and even some instances where it wouldn’t come on at all and I was forced to run it in safe mode.
Well yesterday, deciding I’d had enough, I downloaded 3 registry cleaners so I could have a variety. Come to find out I had 2,800 registry errors, as stated by one program that was not quite as friendly with my screen reader (the program that uses speech output to describe what events are occurring or the text being transmitted to my computer screen). The program that wasn’t screen reader friendly was reg cure pro. So, I used c cleaner and AML registry cleaner which both proclaimed that I had 291 errors. I’m not sure what was right.
Well, skipping the rest since I know that non computer orianted people are probably hitting the exit button on there web browser or trying any means of escape from reading my blog, I’ll just tell you the end result. My computer hasn’t froze up since 24 hours ago when I finished the registry cleaning, and it seems to be going a lot faster.

Well that wraps up my last week of life. However, my podcast isn’t posted, but me and my cohost Devin ran into trouble.
I am not exactly sure what type of internet router I have, and you need to forward ports or something on the router in order to connect to multi player games or otherwise connect to someone else’s computer via remote access. Unfortunately, you must know the kind of router and how to forward ports or you’re basicly just out of luck. So, there’s this program called hamachi which overwrites that rule and lets you connect to other computers anyway via secure vpns (vertual private networks). Well this program has been malfunctioning, thus disabling Devin and I to test or play Death Match, the game of the podcast. I’m thinking about doing a different game until we get Death match figured out, so this podcast can be done.
By the way sorry for that confusing rant about computers I did there.

Well, I guess that about wraps up today’s post, so…

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
P.S. We’re coming onto both the 700th post and the 1000th day! This blog is truely reaching some stunning milestones! Keep reading, and I will definately keep updating.

Beta Testing, Podcast Delays, and Life Updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.

It has been a good long week (weekend really) since I last blogged for you guys. I can’t say I haven’t had the time, because though I’ve been gone for a week now I have had plenty of time. First of all I have to tell you about the podcast.

Devin Gutierrez has been away from his computer. I don’t know what he’s been doing (he tried to call me last night but I was unavailable at the time), but has been offline all day today. So until further notice, there is no podcast.

As far as for what I’ve been beta testing, it’s a game developed and maintained by my friend Danny Standley, and is called Death Match. I have set up a website for the game (I can’t take all the credit because Danny helped), so here it is:
http://dmweb.usa.cc. By the way dm is short for Death match. Visit that site to learn more, listen to demos, discuss, and learn about Death Match. Note the story page is not up though.

—————-
My life, if you really want to know :).

Last week was a pretty good one. Monday of course went Okay… but I think September 30th’s post covered that. Tuesday was a pretty normal Day, along with Wednesday Thursday and Friday. Basicly to sum up the week days there was homework, games (I took a break from scm coding), podcast planning, The daily annoyance ritual of school, and stuff like that. (I chose the word annoyance because school annoys me).
The weekend was the most eventful part of my last week. On saturday, we had goalball practice (being me, my sister, and our parents). As you know by now, our practices are 4 or 5 hours long, so that’s how long it lasted. After that, we came outside to weather that proved the following statement:
“If you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait 5 minutes.”
When we went to goalball Saturday morning, it was humid and 80 degrees. I war basketball shorts and a t-shirt and it felt good out there. When we got out of goalball practice, the weather was cold so that when we went to the state fair (I’ll talk about that in a second), I wore jeans and a heavy sweater and it still felt pretty cold. If you’re wondering, the temperature at 8 or 9 (when we left for practice) was what I said it was (80 or so), and at 2:00 it was 54 degrees. Can you say “Texas is bipolar?”
Well, on to the state fair. We went around 4:30 or so, and I can honestly say I had a great time. My sister and I rode this really spinny ride where you lie on your stomach and the thing goes up and spins you around kinda fast and then you stop (it lasts about 3 minutes or so), and our family walked around and tried some pumpkin pie coffee sample, a fried cake ball (oh my gosh it was great), and a fried snicker bar (that was also very tasty as well).
Around 7:00 or so, we had to leave the fair because it started to rain on us. My mom was adamant upon spending all our coupons, so we did some fun house. In there, there was a thing where you walked across some rather slippery bords and tried not to let your feet fall in the wholes, a moving walkway, a walkway that moved back and forth, one that went up and down, one that vibrated, and even one that went side to side. Also there were punch bags to walk through, sudden noises, and a spinning tunnle that you had to go through. (It spun around and you had to walk forward and to the right to get out). After that was done, we had a nice old shower in the rain storm, and went to eat at On the Border.
Basicly, the funnest part of Saturday was getting to spend the whole day with the family.

Yesterday wasn’t as eventful. I just basicly hung out, (my parents’ friends came over to help us fix our AC which broke on Thursday and left the second floor of our house at 90 degrees in the afternoon that day).
Today has been full of Beta testing for Death Match (Danny finally put me on the team and everything and I’m feeling honored :)).

Well I guess that about wraps up today’s post. I’ll do the podcast when I can, and be watching the dm site for new releases.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
P.S. It’s the 900th day of the blog! Keep viewing and I’ll keep posting!