Disaster Area

Accessible Technology - On the Road to CSUN with Gary and Dan

Some friends of mine, Gary and Dan, who work at Microsoft in their accessibility organization are videoblogging and tweeting their way from Seattle to San Diego this past week on their road trip to the 27th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference aka CSUN (for Cal State Uni Northridge, where the conference originated).

One of the things I have come to appreciate as I have been exposed to it over the years is accessible technology. What is accessible technology? Basically anything that allows people with disabilities or functional limitations to participate fully in society - limited by only their own desires rather than as lack of access to all that life has to offer.

The earliest accessible technologies were things like braille and guide dogs for the blind. These are still of immense importance in the world of accessibility, but the meteoric rise in the capability of personal computers and the internet has created both a fantastic opportunity to connect people and a great challenge to make it accessible to everyone.

How accessibility technology advances in the connected world is a complex interweaving of hardware companies, software companies, advocacy organizations, charitable foundations, government policy making and the sheer determination of individuals coming up with solutions to problems they deal with every day.

Dan and Gary have an itinerary that has them dropping in on many companies and agancies on their way down the west coast. Fortunately, the west coast is ripe with opportunities to find out more about accessible technologies.

From a senior center to Boundless Technology and ViewPlus Technologies to rural communities and guide dogs for the blind, the video snippets do a great job of highlighting the need for assistive technologies and how those needs are being met.

My favorite though is when Dan and Gary visit Yahoo! which highlights how technology companies can collaborate to provide the best possible experience for the end user. Alan Brightman, Yahoo's Chief of Accessibility is a great interview. Biggest takeway -building in accessiblity from the start costs about 2% of the cost of a project. Adding it later the cost is 100% - i.e. you have to spend all that money all over again. The same general principle holds for all kinds of desing - airplanes included. It's best just to get the requirements right at the beginning...

Logging 2012 Style

Once the downed trees were cleared from the roadway they had to be dragged out of the way to be cut up. Here's one of the trees on that sorry journey.

San Francisco to Paris with the Northern Lights

Phenomenal time lapse photography of an Air France flight...

Hipster Anthem

The Honest iPad2 Video?

Not like this has been a secret, of course, but Conan O'Brien does a nice job of spoofing the self-importance of Apple... VP of DreamTelligence, anyone?

Shooting of John T. Williams Inquest Begins Today

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Local Seattle Times sotry here.

My previous post is here. As the Times article notes, it will be unlikely the inquest recommends prosecution for murder, but for sure Birk should never wear a uniform again.

To recap events:

At 0:52 John Williams appears on camera, ambling across the corsswalk, preoccupied with whatever he's goit in his hands (whittling wood, we presume).

At 0:59 he exits from view on the right of the screen.

At 1:04 Officer Birk appeared in view on the left of the car, having exited his vehicle to follow Williams. He walks, purposefully. He appears to have his gun drawn.

At 1:07 he starts shouting, "Hey, hey, hey, put the knife down, put the knife down, put the knife down."

At 1:09 he exits the camera view to the right, still with the cop strut going on, following determinedly, in no apparent danger.

At 1:14 he fires five shots in rapid succession.

So in five seconds, either John Williams transformed into Sasquatch or some other terror and menaced Birk, or the more likely explanation, Birk is a trigger-happy rogue cop who shot to death a harmless, almost deaf man with only a verbal warning shouted from behind. The story has it that Williams was hit ijn the side. Given the timing, it would seem perfectly logical to assume that he heard something and turned to see what the noise was about, which Birk took to be an act of menace. It's a pathetic excuse, but it's the thread by which Birk's case hangs.

At the very, very least, Birk showed appalling judgment, such that he has no business being in a police force of any kind. Sadly, the Seattle Police have a shoddy record of policing their own ranks, choosing instead to abide by the old boy's club rules. We'll see if this egregious example of the abuse of power begins to turn the tide.

God knows what the blonde woman who was walking right towards the scene as it happend thought of it all. She certainly didn't seem to see anything untoward until she jumped whent he shots were fired.

Police dashboard cam video below:

US Navy Going Downhill

And that's hard to do on water.

In a story broken by the Virginia-Pilot newspaper, Captain Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, while XO (Executive OFficer, second-in-command) of the carrier produced a series of video "entertainment skits" for broadcast to the entire ships company (about 6,000 people) in 2006 and 2007. They were apparently well-made, but featured content that would make Benny Hill blush. The more boorish good ol' boys (and perhaps some of the more loutish women) on board thought they were funny, but complaints were not welcomed by Honors (I wonder why?).

In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.

Update: Video excerpts on Youtube

In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.

They're all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 and broadcast to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and starred in them is Capt. Owen Honors - now the commander of the carrier, which is weeks away from deploying.

It's also interesting that especially in the wake of the repeal of "don't ask don't tell" the homophobia based humor remains rampant (because let's not pretend much has changed in the last three years).

Honors was an F-14 naval aviator and a former Top Gun pilot. It's sad to say that that kind of phyical ability often comes with a puerile jock mindset that manifests itself in stunts like this. Here's some more:

After that, the video returns to Honors. "Finally, let's get to my favorite topic - something foreign to the gay kid over there: chicks in the shower," he says.

He gestures to the person next to him - who, through a trick of video, is Honors wearing the blue coveralls of a Navy surface warfare officer, or SWO. SWOs include the officers who crew the ship; they don't include fighter pilots and other aviators. Repeatedly in the videos, Honors, a former Top Gun pilot, draws distinctions between aviators and SWOs and refers to SWOs as "fags."

On one level, I can see the defense of "it's just the guys letting off steam", blah, blah, blah. Pressure cooker environment, yada, yada, yada.

But this guy was second-in-command, now commander, of a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier and its aircraft. He's also a key link in the chain of command that enacts the pointier end of US foreign policy.

As such, these juvenile antics that would be no longer be welcome in a junior high school playground are surely grounds for relieving him of his command (and for that matter, also anyone above him who condoned this kind of behavior at the time.)

What would Capt. James T. Kirk think? Sadly, this ain't Star Trek, Mr. Sulu.

Africa A Cappella

Just watched this with friends again...

Frustration...

...is trying to figure out what the Spice Girls want for Christmas.

Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,

So tell me what you want, what you really really want,

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,

So tell me what you want, what you really really want,

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really wanna zigazig ha.

Where is this zigazig ha thing and where can I purchase one?

Lunar Eclipse Time Lapse Video

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.