Tag: life

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.

my life as I think I know it

Hey guys,
How u doin’?

Well I’m doing good…

I haven’t written in this blog lately, have I? Well, the last thing I posted was about the podcast, and a life update, but that was Wednesday; you probably don’t know my current life situation. For all you know, I could be posting this blog post on a high tech supercomputer while sitting on a strange planet in a parelell universe… well not exactly.
Whether or not this disappoints you, I gotta tell you…
things have gone normal for me.

On Thursday, I had school, but got to get out early for a doctors appointment.
Friday was normal, like a tipical Friday should go…
Saturday, the whole day was dedicated to goal ball. There were two two hour long practices, and when ended we had to go to coach Kristie’s house to talk about teams for our upcoming torniment.
Sunday (yesterday), I spent playing my game and on skype… I even computered myself out later in the day and had to do something else.
Today has been your average Monday… not good, but not bad either.
As far as future plans go, I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary I will be doing over the next few days. Well besides talking on skype and smashing zombies anyway.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Important Podcast Notice, and a Brief Life Update

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

As this post title said, I have a bit of important news about the Steven D Podcast.

First of all, the podcast will be renamed. Devin Gutirez has been helping me for so long that I think I will call the podcast Steven and Devin podcast from now on–he has contributed in a big way–helping me with game demos, and giving his word on 3 to 4 minute segments of the cast. He is very much my cohost of the cast, so I have decided to fully raise him up to this position. So devin if you’re reading this, congrats.
Also, the podcast has a new time and date–it will now be on the first and 3rd Saturday of the month. There is now a calender of podcast reliece dates on the podcast page for the next 3 months through January 1.

————————————–
life

Moving on, the passed several days have gone quite well for me. On Sunday, I had to clean… (sadly). But afterward I logged into swamp and played.
Monday I spent practically the entire day on Skype with a couple friends, and also playing swamp. I wanted to become level 18 o swamp that day, but didn’t quite make it that far.
Yesterday was the first school day of the week, and after school I actually made level 18 on swamp!!!! In fact, I have earned 600 more xp since then.
note: I made a swamp campaign repository Monday night. The site is screpository.wordpress.com where I put all swamp campaigns; it already has 100 views! …can you say Great Website Devlaying it total!eloper (jk).
Oh and why I’m on the swamp topic, I have spent 3 days 3 hours and 30 minutes playing total… shocking, right?
Back on the life events, I also found a new flight simulater game for the blind, and am afraid I will get addicted to it. Unfortunately it costs money, so I’ll try to work my way up to getting to buy thatt.
Anyway, if you’re wondering what I’m doing in the future, I have church tonight, an open couple days with just school planned Thursday and Friday (I’m saying that assuming my parents haven’t planned something I don’t know about), and this weekend I only have goalball planned.

Well I hope you enjoyed this post, and look forward to new ones.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

~rize adventure end of summer event for the blind

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

I attended an event for the blind with several activities. I did airsoft rifle shooting, (I hit the target), wood cutting, sailing, kayaking, and went through a petting zoo. Here are the pictures:

Me shooting an airsoft rifle at a target
me kayaking
me riding in a sailboat
Working on creating a spin top
finished spin top
me trying out a bicycle only opperated by hands
Holding pig
Me holding a chicken
petting rooster

what’s been going on with me lately

Hey you guys,
Steve is back.

I took a blogging break, but not a major one. I guess it doesn’t matter really how long I was gone, but the fact that I’m back into it matters more. Well, this blog update will come in two parts, one tonight and one tomorrow because I have quite a bit to tell you.

Today, I will tell you my life events, while tomorrow I will tell you about the project I’m working on, so enjoy!

Basicly, life has been going good for me. Last week was pretty normal, being that I had goalball to attend, homework to complete, and that I had to practice my violin skills. Oh yeah, if you’re curious as to how that’s going, it’s pretty boring as of now. I am optomistic that that will change, though. Really what we are doing now is plucking strings, and we just started with the left hand down, making the notes. If you play string instroments, you get what I’m talking about.
On another note, this week so far was pretty normal as well. Saturday we went to the lake, there were quite a few of us (my parents, my sister and I, my sister’s friend Kristen, and my parents’ friends and their kids all came). It lasted pretty much all afternoon.
Now I guess I should make a confession and excuse to go along with it. Unlike most excuses however, the one I’m about to give you is not a lie to get my way out of trouble. So, here it is:
confession–I haven’t done podcast episode 10
excuse–I have been doing some hard core programming and beta testing on a project that I plan to demonstrate in the podcast release.
More on the program will be talked about tomorrow.

Well so to summarise my last two weeks up, I have been skyping friends, doing homework, going to school, programming, and all that good stuff. I can say however, that I’m glad it’s the weekend.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

P.S. The power went out at school today. People were freeking out at everything, (I guess I can get that because it’s Friday the 13th).
Oh yeah, happy Friday the 13th to you. Don’t let Jason get ya.

Latest Severe Storm Steve news

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

Reporting live from the Steven D Studios…

oh yeah whatever.

You’re probably wondering what was up with that intro. Well, I’d better tell you, huh?
Most of this news is about computers, and some of it is actually about storms.

First thing’s first, my new school computer
I got a new school computer yesterday! It’s very light, speedy, and purfect for what I need it for anyway. I am real glad I got that; it really beats my old, slow, warn out school computer that has seen better days. Anyway, the brand of computer I have isn’t dell or Apple, but it comes close. I believe it’s a Lenovo or something.
Now, moving on, I have some rather depressing news about my personal computer I use at home.
It looks like I’ve caught a virus on that computer, and now am using it in safe mode. This isn’t all depressing however, since I know just what to do (for now anyway). After I finish this blog post, I’m going to restore the computer to August 8, which will most likely fix the problem. If it doesn’t, just be preying for me :).
Lastly, I will be shortly making 2 more storm recordings available to you. I have one from June 9th, and another from July 16th. I know that’s way outdated right now and really isn’t anything new, but it’s dead in the middle of summer and I’m afraid there hasn’t been any powerful storms to record. Well, you can check them out on the natural events page

And finally, I should probably give a quick little summary of my first week of school.
I’m glad it’s over.
Okay, let’s try that again. That wasn’t much of a summary…
Well, It’s gone pretty well. I’m saying that now because that was the easiest week of the whole year (besides the last one), so I bet it will get quite a bit hard. If you’re wondering, my outlook on math is grim. I’m already getting confused, so I’ll have to talk to the teacher about it on Tuesday. Hmm, seems like a few tutoring sessions are in my near future.
Other than that, I don’t have much to say about my first week, since you already know my schedule.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

My Last Week of Freedom

Hey you guys,
Steve here.
I’ve had a good last week of summer. I just pretty much got to hang out while my mom and sister did all the back to school shopping Monday and Wednesday, the 3 of us and my of&m (orientation and mobility) teacher went over my new school schedule, and me and my dad went on a bike ride yesterday and today. We completed the 9.23 mile ride in 35 minutes and 13 seconds yesterday, and 35 minutes and 1 seconds today. I don’t know about our average speed for yesterday, but it was 15.9 miles per hour today.
If you’re wondering what I’m going to do the next 2 days, I can’t tell you. Probably the same thing I’ve been doing… hanging out and messing around the computer.
Speaking of computer, I’ve done some awesome things to the site, and also found a new game to be addicted to. I’ll first start with the site change.
Instead of having a links widget on my side bar, I now have a “My Favorite Sites” page. If you go there, you will see my links organized into the following categories:
games
friends’ websites
audio and podcasts
other useful stuff
development tools
sites that caught my unseeing eye(misc).
Now I bet you’re wondering, “What game could he possible be addicted to now?”
I’ve got an answer to that. There’s this online; multiplayer game room with the following card and board games/features:

  • 1000 miles
  • Uno
  • dominoes
  • connect 4
  • La Scopa
  • Jass
  • chess
  • monopoly
  • Poker Texas Holdem
  • Bouillabaisse
  • Rummy
  • Battleship
  • Reversi
  • Yahtzee
  • The Little Exam
  • Farkle
  • six picks
  • black jack
  • spades
  • and, the ability to create free chat tables
  • pretty much fully customizable
  • you can chat any ware

I think you should check it out.
Well, I guess that’s about it for this post. See the bottom of it to see my school schedule.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
school schedule:
1. choir
2. math
3. pre-ap social studies
4. pre-ap English
5. Spanish–yep, the two language classes are right next to each other.
6. Orchestra–yep, I’ll have a lot of concerts this year…
7. Science–I have a good teacher (It’s better to have classes your big sister has been already).

updates and anoying school projects

Hey you guys,
Steve is back.

This week hasn’t been very active. I’ve been learning a programming language, bgt (a coding language where blind people like me can code our own games), and have officially programmed my first ever bgt script.
I will talk about that in another blog post, as my file den account is still under maintenence. In fact, regarding that issue, I have recently been informed that due to there hard drive restoration scheduled for the middle of next month, some of us are affected. I can tell you, that as soon as my account is back, I am archiving every single file on that account, so when the new platform is built I can get them all back up on the sight. This will be a lot of work for me, since I have links to about 60 files spread out all over this 23 page, 680 blog post website. And, I will have to update all of them! Exhausting…
right?
I thought so.

Anyway, back to my week, I got a pretty good storm recording Tuesday night. That will also be posted on the blog as soon as the file den is back up. And, as bike riding goes, I did a ride with my dad today. For some reason, it didn’t hurt, give or take a few hills. That’s beyond the overall point; I just didn’t feel nearly as much pain as I normally do.
Now, to point out the weird parts for you, The bike ride left me sick to my stomach, shaky, and I was raining sweat. Hmm… Don’t know what happened there.

Basically, there wasn’t much to my life. The only other thing that really happened, was going to spin class Monday night, and anice 3 day streek of rain.
There wasn’t anything summer like to my life besides that. On a not so cool note, I have a school project to do this summer.
On the bright side, I made it into pre-ap english, and that’s why I have that project. I have to read 2 books, one of which is pretty good (I don’t know about the other, because I never read it), and I also have to make a mask and do something else (I forgot because after all, it’s still summer vacation, and my mind just doesn’t feel like thinking school work until August 26).
Well, I will try to get that done by Wednesday, so I don’t have anything to worry about. It may not be as anoying as I said in the title of the post, but I still don’t want to do it.

Well, if anything else pops up, I will be sure to update you guys.

For now…
thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.