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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jaybird110127 It actually cost me less than putting in an automatic switchover. Because I could do it myself, without requiring a licensed electrician, inspection from the power company, or a disconnect from the grid while it was installed. I looked at a propane generator with automatic switching, and between all the licenses and completely replacing the breaker box, it was going to cost me around 20 thousand dollars. I did this system for only eight thousand.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jaybird110127 I have a hole home battery backup. However, I don't switch to it automatically. I want to ration power, so I switch circuit by circuit based on what's going on. For example, in the summer I don't put the hot tub circuit on it, but in the winter I have to in order to prevent the pipes from freezing. I also shut down the servers and then take the battery backup away from them. Assuming I ration to use only the essentials (medical equipment, lights, refrigeration) I can keep everything going for up to five days without electricity or a fuel delivery. Also, the battery system can be charged by a Tesla charger, or any other electric car charging station. And it's multiple batteries, so if I think after 60 hours I won't be getting power back, I can take one discharged battery and recharge it, and bring it back without interruption to the power.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg @ppatel I've never heard Diphone synthesis that sounds good. That's pretty much what festival and flight do.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel @Tamasg Good luck with that. The more I dig in, the more complex it all gets. But you could make a big difference if you focused on the phonemizer (IE going from text to IPA). Then we wouldn't depend on espeak at all anymore, and would effectively be a speech engine from scratch. The phoneme editor includes support for third party phonemizers already, so you can test easily.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg So weirdly, I'm using this voice pretty much exclusively at work. It's perfect for reading emails and generating reports and proofreading my writing and stuff. But for home use, I'm still not finding it a good fit for reading fanfic or ebooks or articles. It's...not relaxing? I can't identify if it's just Eloquence is what I'm used to, or if it's something about the voice.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg Something about the new release sounds really good! I can get up to 80 without having issues understanding. Before it was around 65.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg It's probably a good idea. Just so that if someone is giving feedback, or complaining about something, that you can't hear or reproduce, it's easy to say "Please press reset and make sure you still have this problem."
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg So one thing to think about: If people change settings in the NVDA addon, then you release an update, it looks like there settings aren't always updated. And it's really, really easy to break subtle things. If I were you I might consider adding a reset to defaults button in the addon. Because otherwise you're going to get feedback from people who toggled a checkbox like co-articulation without thinking about any of the associated settings and now wonder why everything sounds bad.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg But what has been helpful is using your tool to show me just how wrong everything I have tried for formant estimation actually is. So it's been useful in that I can generate audio with known values, give it to my formant estimation attempt, and know that my estimated data is incorrect.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg What I've been playing with, and why you haven't heard much from me, is trying to create some good way to extract formants from existing sounds, in an accessible way. Thus far, though, nothing has worked, or been as accessible as I want it to be. It involves matlab and other terrible things. But what I really really want is something where I can put in a second of sound and get an estimate of all the formants and transitions, and then use the tools you created to compare them. But I haven't gotten close enough to have anything to share.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg The key is to realize this can't be only your project. Think of it like you're founding an organization that needs to persist over the years. You're already doing that work, by documenting everything really well, and giving lots of people other features they can use. As well as creating tools. But your goal should be getting it into a state you, personally, like, and then in moving towards having other people in charge of different things. So all you do is final tests and sign off on releases.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Huh. Sourceforge is still a thing. I'm sure someone, somewhere, is even still using it.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Jage No no this is the fediverse. If you have ever used AI even once, for captions, alt text, or language translation, you are guilty of war crimes against humanity. No but seriously, look at openrouter.ai. If you're using codex-cli, you can just change the endpoint to openrouter, get an API key from them, and then pay per token. Or just use this fork with built-in openrouter support: github.com/ymichael/open-codex
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes @serrebi @Jage @blindndangerous @walkside3 @Orinks Good job catching that — you're not just making a joke, you're delving deeply into our relationship with large language models. You're not crazy, this is real. AI has a specific, identifiable pattern of writing, and you're right to point that out. Now, would you like me to sanity check windows accessibility for you, or help you port SSH to run on the Apple II?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@blindndangerous @serrebi @Jage @jscholes @walkside3 @Orinks Same. I would, however, like a more accessible terminal. Or a better NVDA. Or at least something that doesn't crash if too much text is output to the terminal. But WSL won't fix those things, so just use the default SSH on Windows.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @alexisbushnell They can. Depends on if you're using 5G or CDMA or what though, I guess. mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/simple-microwave-oven-leakage-test-using-wifi.1176492/
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@alexisbushnell It would only explain wifi issues that happen while someone is using the microwave. If the issues start when the microwave starts, and go away as soon as the microwave stops, then it's the cause.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@alexisbushnell Okay, I don't have links to hand, but I'm a licensed ham radio opperator, and this is the kind of theory we learn. The danger from a microwave comes if it is failing to keep the actual waves inside. Microwaves are designed with an enclosure that blocks most of the energy from them. However, you might notice that when you run your microwave, your wifi and cell signal degrades. This is because your wifi/cell and a microwave use similar frequencies. But your wifi just uses a millionth or billionth of the power. So when those waves start leaking out of your microwave, they can drown out the wifi completely. The danger comes from just how much energy is leaking. You can stick a wifi antenna directly in your mouth for hours while it transmits, and nothing bad will happen to you. But if it was putting out the same power of a microwave, you would be cooked. In general, the test I use is this: place your cell phone inside the microwave, and close the door. DO NOT! TURN ON THE MICROWAVE OBVIOUSLY! Now, with the door completely closed, try to call your cell phone from another phone. If it rings while inside the microwave, I'd worry a bit. If it doesn't, I wouldn't. This works because your cell tower is transmitting at low power, and is far away from you. So if your phone can talk to the tower from inside the microwave, it means it's probably leaking more energy than you would really like.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tamasg Also liking Robert with the 16 khz sample rate. Reminds me of the Toshiba TTS that used to come with old Toshiba laptops, if you've ever heard that one.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@alexchapman @jscholes @alexhall @Bri Yup. And when things are inaccessible, blind people should also be policed about our tone, and never ever make frustrated statements about the issue. I hope we'll all remember this standard that we must all be held to the next time an app breaks accessibility and doesn't follow accessibility standards.