Tom’s blog

I realize this post is a little late,  but I had a few issues come up with my Web Hosting provider this past week

I’m sure some of you noticed, I posted a couple different blog entries in January, but then noticed they got deleted, and then kept switching themes around.  There was a reason for all this madness.

My old hosting provider,  hastyhost, went out of business back in mid January.  They were a really good hosting company,  I had been going with them since I lost my job in 2007 after I moved to Fort Wayne and lost my VPS site and discussion forum.  They were generous enough to give me a hosting package for $10 a year.  It wasn’t big enough to hold a discussion forum, but it supported my blog, which was all I cared about at the time, since nobody ever visited my discussion forum anyway.   My brother in-law offered me hosting on his server, and I was going to take him up on it, until hastyhost was gracious enough to give me that $10 a year offer.

Then when hastyhost went out of business, instead of giving us any notice, they decided to switch everybody over to a new company called XE Solutions, who was gracious enough to honor our old hastyhost pricing.  That was a good thing, until XE Solutions had 3 hard drive crashes, and kept restoring everybodys account from the last backup they had, which was in early December,  so thats where all my posts went..

The thing that gets me, I relied on the off-site backups the hosting provider provided for us,  trusting them to take care of keeping the off-site backups current.   Well when XE Solutions hard drive crashed, so did all their off-site backups.  The same thing happened with my VPS last year,  so I think that has taught me a lesson to keep backups HERE at home on a regular basis.  I don’t know how to save backups on a cpanel shared hosting account though, so I’m going to have to learn, probably over at web hosting talk,  which is a discussion forum I visit often, because I do want to keep regular backups here, but unless I automate them somehow, this will keep happening to me.  Even if I had kept a backup here, it would have been even older yet then the backup they had,  so I’m going to have to start keeping weekly backups over here on my hard drive, or on my portable HD somewhere, or something,  not real sure what to do on that yet.

Anyway,  after hastyhost went out of business, and they switched everyone over to XE Solutions, the first thing i noticed when they switched us over,  they didn’t have suPHP installed, and it was in their policy NOT to include it.   I’m not sure why, they told me but I forgot exactally,  something about suPHP isn’t secure, and it could compromise accounts,  which I knew wasn’t true, but they insisted suPHP was a security risk.  I guess each hosting provider has their own strange policies.   Its like, I don’t agree with a host not allowing Shell Access either.  Sure a shell prompt is a security risk by itself,  but you can change the connect port # to something other then port 23, which takes care of that problem, which is even a better idea then running Jailshell,  but some of these hosting providers are really not that knowledgeable.  Its like with XE Solutions, without suPHP, I couldn’t upgrade wordpress without changing permissions to 777,  which is an even bigger security risk then suPHP would ever be,  its crazy some of the ideas of these different providers.

So anyway, after fussing with XE Solutions,  I finally just said “forget this”  and decided to go with a more expensive host that I knew would be reliable.   My current plan now is thru a company called  vertexhost,  who I have known one of the owners of for alot of years.  He writes the Community Forum software I use,  and they’ve been friends of mine for awhile.   I’m still not getting Shell Access thru this host,  but I really don’t use Shell that much anymore, unless I have to change ownership and permissions for some files on the server, thats all I ever used it for to begin with.  It would be nice to be able to upgrade wordpress using ‘wget’ but I noticed with this host, upgrading wordpress thru the admin panel is much easier, I don’t have the file ownership and permissions problems I did with past hosting providers, so I decided it was worth spending $8 a month for quality hosting. So far, I’ve been very happy with Vertexhost, so we’ll see.  I have friends who have been with them for over 10 years, and I trust their judgement,  so that alone says alot to me.

I wasn’t sure, at first, how I would pay $8 every month,  since Medicaid finds it necessary to check my checking account for withdrawls they don’t think are necessary for the basics of life.   They don’t want you to go back to college and try to better yourself in a computer degree that could get you off Social Security and Medicaid to begin with,   instead they want you to suffer, so when they see any charges they don’t think are “necessary” to live and breathe,  they stop your food stamps.  Instead of paying $8 a month for hosting,  or $10 a week to contribute to the church,  they say ok,  you shouldn’t be using your money for those things, you should be paying that $8 towards food,  not a blog,  so then your denied your $200 in food stamps that month.  Its hapened to me several times.

So I was like ok, how do I get around this retarded mess?   Sure I don’t have to have a blog to survive, but $8 would only be 2 meals at most, its not like I could love an entire month of groceries on $8, so I don’t understand what the big deal is?  Even with 1 person I spend over $150 a month on groceries, most more then that,  so I don’t understand why Medicaid “whines” about a little $8 bill,  or a $40 bill for TV, or another $40 for internet,  its not like if I didn’t have those things, I still wouldn’t have enough money for food every month, its crazy,  but because I do want food stamps and Medicaid assistance helping to pay for my Medical expenses   (in the $1,000 range or more)  I had to figure out a way to pay for my hosting and other small expenses so Medicaid wouldn’t find out about them.

I finally figured out a way, that hopefully won’t get me in trouble, we’ll see..  I decided to get one of those temporary Walmart money cards, and just pay my bills with that.   There are a couple of advantages I found in paying bills that way.

1.  The charge is denied from the card until you have the cash to load onto the card,  which you do at any walmart store.

2. If the money is automatically withdrawled from the card, and the full amount isn’t in there,  then the company who charged you just doesn’t get their money.  There are no “bounced check” or other charges accociated with this card.   WIth this, I can make other online purchases too, without worrying about bouncing my checking account.  Right now I’m trying to get all my bills over there that I don’t want Medicaid to see that I have,  so I can actually start living again.

I mean, its not that I care what bills Medicaid sees per se, its not that.   Its just that, whenever I don’t have quite enough in my checking account to cover the bill, I end up bouncing a check, which ends up costing me $30 each time the transaction tries to go thru,  which one time costed me over $200 just for 1 bounced check, and since the bank doesn’t pay the seller either, you still have to pay the bill along with the bounced check charges.

So I like this walmart money card idea much better.   There is a small monthly fee for using the card after you’ve used the card for over 2 years,  but I figure, to get around that, I can always get another card every 1-2 years,  that way I can avoid those charges too.  Even if I had to pay those small monthly fees,  its worth it to have overdraft protection, it really is.

Anyway, because my site was messed up for so long,  expect to see alot of changes here in the coming month.  I haven’t decided rather I’m going to put the FusionBB board back up or not.  I was thinking if I did decide to put a bulletin board up,  I’d ditch FusionBB and just go with MyBB,  since its the most like FusionBB  then the other free solutions.   Besides, I don’t make money on my site,  I’ve never been able to,  so there’s no use in paying another yearly fee for MyPaymentPal and all that extra stuff, when I don’t use any of it.   I had a FusionBB site before, and nobody ever came to visit but once at the most.  Even this blog doesn’t get many comment visitors,  so I figure I’m better off sticking to the free solutions,  unless I start getting some more interest in this site, but for now, free is the better way to go I think.

Alot of these plugins for wordpress want $10 a year for each plugin, and I just can’t afford that, so I’ll be switching plugins around on this site too for awhile.  If there’s anything you want here, please let me know,   but if people want the updated version of “ajax edit comments” just as an example, then there going to have to help me with the cost to upgrade, otherwise, they’ll just have to be happy with the old free version.  I’d like to be able to put all kinds of cool stuff on this site, I just can’t afford it, I’m sorry.  I could put all kinds of cool stuff on this site if I just had the money,  and since I never ask for anything but donations, you guys will just have to be satisfied with the site the way it is.

May God bless you and your family in the weeks to come. Take care everyone. love you all!

written by tcoburn

For those of you with Verizon cellphones, did you know there’s a feature in your voicemail that allows you to send a voice message as easy as sending a txt?  Yeah its pretty cool, check this out.

If you call your voicemail box (your cell #), enter your password,  then press 2 to send
a message. Then it says “at the tone, please record your message, when you are finished
recording, press #” then record a voice message, press pound, then it will ask you for the destination mailbox, type in the destination 10 digit phone number, then it will say
“checking destination”, say to you the callers name, then it’ll say
“message sent”  or ” press * if  no more destinations”, for those
who want to send the same message to multiple recipients., you can press pound again to add another destination, so on and so forth.  My friend Chad actually uses this service, or a similar service only offered by Verizon I think, to send the same voicemail to multiple people in his contact list, you know to tell people where he will be doing his karaoke shows at that particular week.

pretty sweet eh?  Of course this only works between mobile to mobile, but I’m sure AT&T, and Centennial have a similar feature built into their voicemail box.  I’ve never used either of those carriers so I don’t know, but it is a nice feature that verizon wireless offers to their customers.

Another thing, if you call your voicemail from a land line phone,  instead of thru your cellphone, you won’t be charged airtime fees just for checking voicemail.   Us cheapo’s are always looking at stuff like that to save on airtime minutes.  lol   otherwise I’d probably be charged 100 minutes a month just in airtime fees to my voicemail box.  lol

written by tcoburn

In response to the following article, from the Inventor of the recaptcha

http://bit.ly/2PK9ez

Interesting article, but Blind users cannot read captchas! and even for partials who use Window Eyes, Zoomtext, or the open source alternative NVDA, recaptchas are still near impossible to read for us blind folk.

written by tcoburn

Ever wonder how a blind person gets around a Computer screen? Not too many sighted people think about this, but blind people don’t use a mouse.  So how does a blind person move around the desktop?

By using the keyboard, it is very easy to get around in Windows, even if the screen were turned off entirely.

First, one needs a screen reader, so that what is on the screen is read out loud.  To accomplish this, there are several options.   I use a program called Window Eyes from a company called gwmicro, located here in Fort Wayne.  Another good program is called  Jaws.  Some of my fellow blind friends prefer Jaws over Window-eyes, but both programs accomplish the same task, just one uses different hotkey combinations then the other.   I personally like Window Eyes, not just because I can get local support whenever I need it,  but also because the keyboard commands are fairly easy to remember for the most part.

There is another solution I will recommend for the partially sighted, called ZoomText from a company called aisquared.  Zoomtext has magnification and screen reading enhancements geared towards the partially sighted.  Alot of partials don’t know this, but Zoomtext has its own combinations of keyboard commands similar to Jaws or Window Eyes built into it too,  but is better for the partially sighted, while Jaws or Window Eyes is geared more for the totally blind.  I personally use both Window Eyes and Zoomtext at the same time, because I get the magnification features of Zoomtext, with the screen reading capibilities of WIndow Eyes, which as of late, do function quite well together.  In other words, I use Zoomtext to watch videos and play games with my remaining vision,  while using Window Eyes to read the text that is on the screen to me since I can no longer read large print anymore.   That way, on my laptop for instance, I don’t have to get my face right up against the screen, I can just have it read out loud to me.   I think even for people who do have some sight,  having text read out loud to you, instead of trying to squint, and get up real close to the display, to see it with your eyes, is quite helpful.

Either of these 3 solutions can be purchased for around $800-900, so there not cheap, but both Window Eyes and Zoomtext have monthly payment plans to make the cost easier.   There is also your local states Vocational Rehabilitation office. Alot of times if you need the software for work related activities, they will pay for the software you need.   For those who can’t afford the high cost of screen reading programs, there is an open source option called  NVDA which stands for “NonVisual desktop Access”.   Its aim is to be an open source solution to Jaws or Window-Eyes,  but I think its got a long way to go.   Again, it uses different keyboard commands then Jaws or Window-Eyes, so your learning yet another set of screen reading hotkey combinations.

Now assuming you have one of these solutions, or are trying one of the demos,  how does one who is blind get around a desktop?  Well, that is a good question, and is really simple to answer,  by using the keyboard.    A blind person, or most partials, don’t use a mouse at all, so to get an idea of how a blind person gets around a desktop, one must first put away the mouse.

Once thats done,  you may be thinking, well what do I do now?

First, you can move around the desktop by using the TAB key, or go back using SHIFT-TAB.   To access the start menu,  you can either press the Windows key thats located between the CTRL and ALT keys,  or by pressing CTRL-ESC.    Once the start menu comes up, you can get around the start menu itms by using the arrow keys. In Windows Vista, you again use the arrow keys,  but if you want to switch between the Star Search edit box, the Common Items list, the shutdown / power tasks, shortcuts lists, and the all programs treeview,   you just press the TAB and SHIFT-TAB keys to cycle thru the different start menus panes.

Now your probably wondering, how do I get to the system tray icons?   For that, you can use a built in Windows hotkey   WINDOWS-B    This will take you to the System tray icons.  To go from one to another, you just use the arrow keys.   To click on one of them, just press the ENTER key.   To right click on one of them,  you press SHIFT-F10 . This brings up the familar right-click  context menu,  then you just use the arrow keys to move around, and the ENTER key to activate one of them.

There is also a key to jump directly to the taskbar. That key is WINDOWS-T.  Then you just use the arrow keys to move around the different taskbar windows. pressing ENTER switches to that window.   Windows-M  minimizes all windows.

Lets say, for instance, you have Mozilla Firefox open.  Lets say you want to jump to the address bar to type a website into the address bar.  ALT-D jumps directly to the IE or Firefox address bar.

For most screen readers, the current window must be maximized in order for the screen reader to read its contents completely.   If you want to change the window status from minimized, maximized,  restored, and close, to bring up that menu, you press the ALT-spacebar.    This is the same as if you did a right-click on the windows title bar.   neat eh?

Most people know that to close a document, you press CTRL-F4, but did you know you can do that with Windows on your desktop  too?   You can also access the menus underneath the title bar by pressing the ALT key.   If you wanted to access the EDIT menu directly, you can press ALT-E  and that brings down the edit menu.  Then you can arrow around,  press the ESC key to close the menu,  or press ENTER to click on an item in the menu.   pretty nifty eh?

Even for sighted people, there are times where you mouse may not be working, and you have no choice but to use the keyboard to get around.  I’ve had to use the keyboard several times to get Windows to shut down.  In WIndows Vista, or XP, its easy, just press the WINDOWS key to bring up the start menu,  arrow or tab around, until you get to the shut down dialog.   Its pretty easy, but just takes practice.

Screen reader programs, however,  make alot of these common tasks easier.  For instance, in WIndow Eyes,  I can press  INS-S  to bring up a dialog box listing the current system tray icons,  then press the TAB key to click, right click, or double click on an icon I want to click on.   Same is true for the Internet.   If I want to get a list of links on the current webpage, I just press the letter L  while in browse mode, which is on by default.   This brings up a dialog listing all the current links on the webpage.   I can use another key, the X key, to read the current text on the page to me,  or different key combinations to search for text, or to read specific text within blocks of tables.   I know alot of web designers have gotten rid of HTML tables, but most screen readers have an option to read text within a table,  so it will list all the current tables within a document, just like the list of  links,  and have it read whats in that specific table.  Javascript, CSS, flash, and other visual methods make reading most webpages more difficult for the blind, but still can be done.  Its just that most screen readers prefer breaking up text into tables, just like websites used to be written in the old XHTML days before java and javascript and ColdFusion sites became so popular.   Window Eyes, for instance,  uses the same method of navigating around websites that the old Lynx browser used to do.  remember those days?  where you just used the arrow keys to move around from link to link?  Well Window-Eyes’s browse mode  turns IE and Firefox into that old arrow key browse mode, using specific keys like   T, E, C, L, and X to read specific content that the blind user is looking for on the page.   Its pretty nifty stuff.   I personally think Windows browsers should convert back to the old style Lynx browsers, so that they are more friendly to blind users.

Most program are accessible for blind people these days,  except for Flash and javascript enabled sites.  Email is also fairly accessible using different key combinations in outlook or outlook express.   Instant messaging, however, is more difficult, but most blind users I know prefer an instant messenger client called Miranda IM.  Right now I’ve been trying to get digsby to work with Window Eyes, but alot of blind people prefer Miranda, because it doesn’t use a bunch of flashy javascript like digsby and other such programs use.  Instead, Miranda uses already existing windows dialogs to read and write instant messages, which is much more screen reader friendly.

Feel free to add some more tips for blind Computer users in my comments. I would be interested in hearing what other tips and tricks you guys may have for other blind and partially sighted computer internet users out there.

written by tcoburn