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Hi all, and Welcome to SB's ramblings.
What you will find on this site are some of my thoughts and opinions for you fine people to enjoy and ponder. What you will not find on this site are a lot of visual graphics because I am blind and I don't need them.
Now, if you are talking about audio, then you are talking my language. I love to take my little digital audio recorder with me and let you hear some of the things I love to do. Plus, every so often I will give my thoughts on radios, computers, and other topics that may cross my mind regarding things that are
happening in the world.
I have inserted a little audio file telling you about myself and some of the equipment I use in the production of this web site, and also my contact info.
So here we go with the good stuff.
Monday, April 04, 2011 Microsoft Security Essentials mini tutorial.
Hi all, a few weeks ago I made the major decision to rebuild my Windows system from scratch. So now that I had a fresh new clean installation of windows I decided to give Microsoft Security Essentials a try.
Those of you who know me, know that I was a great proponent of the Avast virus protection program. Avast still has allot of good things going for it , like a pretty speech friendly user interface, and it is still free for home use.
But I thought what the heck, lets give MSE a try. I had heard through the grapevine that MSE had a very small footprint, and the interface was a refreshing change from the usable, but over cluttered interface that Avast uses.
I have bin using Microsoft Security Essentials now for 3 weeks or so, and I gotta say I do like it. The only complaint that I have with the program is that it does not seem to update its definition files as often as I would like. But that is no real show stopper for me, I just remember to Manually update the dat files when I first log on the PC.
Then I thought to myself, how about I do a mini tutorial on Microsoft Security Essentials so I can show everybody how to manually update the dat files for themselves. And that is exactly what I did.
I also decided to go throu the basic interface in this mini tutorial as well.
The total running time of this Microsoft Security Essentials mini tutorial is 22 minutes and 33 seconds.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
During the last Digital audio users group I did a short live tutorial on using Internet Explorer to read RSS feeds and download podcasts.
After the program I thought to myself, how about doing a tutorial on this same subject for the tech news list and my web page users to enjoy as well.
This gives me the advantage of making a good clean copy for my archives, as well as a place for those of you who attended the live program to grab yourselves a copy to learn from on your own.
So here you go.
The total running time of this tutorial is 33 minuts and 24 seconds.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
bop it by hasbro, reviewed by Tony
Remember when you were a child and you use to play with your electronical Simon game? Now there is a modern day electronical game that is based on the principle of the old game Simon. This fun and fast paced game is called bop it and is made by Hasbro. There are three levels to the game, Novelist, master, and expert and you must complete one level in order to advance to the next. There are some differences between the two games. First, Simon produces a different sound for each color and has lights. Bop it will talk to you, giving you the instructions to either, twist it, pull it, or bop it. Secondly, Simon will give you more time to respond to mimic the sequence of tones it produced, while bop it gives you about a split second to react. One similarity between the two games is multi-player mode allowing for a group of individuals to have fun. This is an idea toy for a child who is blind because all of the buttons are raised and easy to identify. Bop it is around 20 dollars and would be a great idea for a Christmas gift.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Here you go with show number 54 of SB's Ramblings, revisiting the Olympus dm520.
In October of last year I put together a program on how to use the Olympus dm520 digital recorder. Now after 6 months or so I feel it is time to update you all with some of the 520's more obscure features.
Here is a list of what I will be covering in this program.
1. Setting the 520 to run off of external power.
2. Charging batteries internally in the 520.
3. Talking about seen's and what they do.
4. Setting the time and date.
5. Setting an alarm time.
6. Setting a recording timer.
7. Using the 520 as an external soundcard.
The totle running time of show number 54 is 54 minuts and 16 seconds.
click here for show number 54 of SB's Ramblings.
I have also updated my last.fm favorites file as well.
Last.fm is a great web site to listen to all sorts of music and audio for free. You may need to sign up if you don't live in the USA.
If you want to here more about Last.fm just scroll down the page until you come to the Wednesday, June 10, 2009 show and take a quick listen.
Click here to go to the Last.fm web
page
Click here to download my favorite Last fm radio pages.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
On this latest addition of SB's Ramblings I would like to show you a possible replacement for Winamp.
The program is called Foobar2000 and it seems to be very accessible to us blind folks.
Foobar2000 may sound familiar to some of you out there, Heck I even tried it myself about 5 or 6 years ago. I thought It had potential at that time, but I was not comfortable with the program. Now to give Foobar it's do, I was not really ready to play around with it's default interface at that time, because I thought Ok I maybe able to change it but could some one who has less technical skills do it as well? Plus I have to be honest, they weren't going to pry Winamp out of my cold dead hands after using it for 7 years or so. You know how one gets comfortable with a program and gets lazy? Well that was exactly how I was with Winamp.
I can't really explain what made me give this program another chance, but I am sure glad I did. I started using the program, and after 2 or 3 days or so I dumped Winamp, not because I did not like Winamp but, because Foobar has so much more that just seemed easier to use out of the box.
Now I can't say if Foobar is going to be the cat's meow for everybody, but it is worth giving it a good once over.
Heck I liked the program so much I decided to do a tutorial on it. Please remember I can't possibly go through all the programs functions, but I give it a good try.
This Foobar2000 tutorial is somewhat different then I normally produce.
I usually just give you 1 big long mp3 file and a link to where you can get the program, but this time I decided to split the file up in to more manageable parts.
Here's what you need to do to listen to the tutorial. Just download the Foobar2000-tutorial.exe file, then put the file in an empty folder on your hard drive. Now all you should have to do is just hit enter twice on the executable and you should see a folder called "Foobar2000-tutorial". Note it is not really necessary to place the executable in a empty folder, but I do this just because I like to have a clean place to start off.
You will see 2 folders in the Foobar2000-tutorial, the first one is the audio folder and the second is the links folder. The audio folder contains 5 mp3 files, This is the tutorial split up in to 5 different sections. The links folder has links that pertain to the Foobar2000 program and other things you may need. There is a Me-first. mp3 file that you may want to listen to as well.
Last but not least, You can't hold me responsible if any thing happens to your computer from using any files, audio help, and or any thing from this web site.
The total running time of the Tutorial is 2 hours and 20 minutes and 50 seconds split in to 6 sections.
click here for the Foobar2000 audio tutorial
Sunday, February 21, 2010 Show number 52
There has bin some discussion on the Talking tech e-mail list about backing up your e-mail messages in outlook express, and how one would go about doing this. This started me into thinking it maybe time to do another Sb's Ramblings on just this subject. Then I thought, how about well I am showing you how to save your DBX files I go ahead and show you how to export and import your address book and IE favorites. So to make a long story short, Here is a quick tutorial on doing just that.
The total running time of show 52 of Sb'S Ramblings is 30 minutes and 57 seconds.
click here for show number 52 of SB's Ramblings.
I will be listing the updates to this page rite under the last updated date.