New posts from starshipchangeling.net
The Starship Changeling
Always order more chicken nuggets than you want. By creating a short supply with high demand, you're guaranteeing crispy fresh chicken nuggets for yourself. If you play your cards right, you can get fresh fries, too.
💻 📚 Apple Card kept my Audible membership from being renewed multiple times. I lost 4 credits and two days of fighting with the two entities to get the thing fixed. Thing is, I almost didn’t renew because the Audible app and Airplay are always at odds on the best of days.
Want to read: You Like It Darker by Stephen King 📚 It’s already pre-ordered. Will maybe try to rer Cujo before it comes out.
🧑🏫🧑🦯 Dear teachers of the visually impaired,
On behalf of all congenitally blind children and mobility specialists who work with adults, please do us and them a favor. Save us all a lot of time somehow engaged in scoldings about always using our white canes by making sure we’re acquainted with it before we are subjected to, "Stay put." when the object we want is across the room and we have to make up our own system of finding it. Sincerely, A blind adult who may or may not be guilt tripping
I’m sure this is already making its way around the Fediverse. It has to do with the Sonos post I shared last week. Jonathan Mosen’s Facebook post has all the info about how to get involved. 🧑🦯
I’ve just finished adding emoji to all my categories on my site. If you're seeing this in another corner of the Fediverse, you can follow changeling@starshipchangelingnet to get these posts directly. You can also be more selective if you have an RSS reader and only follow the categories of interest. micro.blog is the new WordPress as long as you oly want to blog.
Happy Birthded Agay
🎶👯Got exposed to another group of waitresses singing “Happy Birthday to You” to a diner. It started out in the key of D and looked promising, but then they hit that high note just before they say the person’s name and dropped into something like B-flat.
For the record, I think the birthday song needs to be changed. I suggest Rabbit Ain’t GotIt shares it’s melody with Mary Had a Little Lamb, a tune most people can carry in some form. Basically, everyone surrounds the birthday person and sing this song instead. Do it seven times or whenever you end p yelling rather thann singing, as each repetition gets a bit louder. It’s easier on everybody with the same amount of awkward.
In the world of Non-24, there are no late starts, just unconventional ones. Ditto early mornings, late nights, typical days, etc.
Whenever I eat gator tail, I like to think I’m scoring one for the dragons and dinosaurs who lived in harmony before the alligators sailed in from their distant land of Gatoria and forced the gentle, friendly reptiles off their land. The alligators then spread propaganda like The Story of Saint ,George and Joracic Park to remind the humans how beastly these creatures were. It's a bigger conspiracy theory than b'irds are fake, I tell you.
📋 On today's menu...
- Catch up on tech news from the last 4 days
- Shave
- Daily swim
- Schedule more inservices for work
- Timesheet
- Start the migration of my followers from Mastodon to micro.blog to begin consolidating my online presence.
- Hang with friends online from mid-evening to bedtime.
🥂🥂 Hello everyone, and welcome aboard The Starship Changeling. Please continue to be patient as we work to onboard everyone as soon as possible. Thank you!
The ultimate Intro Post
Welcome :)
Imagine a social media experience where you log into one place and get all your content from across the Internet. Imagine a social media experience where you can follow people who post about interesting things, but also repost a lot of nonsense, and you can enjoy the best of them without putting yourself or the other person out. Imagine a social media experience where the reactions are hidden and what you’re left with are people who take the time to have meaningful discussion with you about your content. This is The Starship Changeling.
My experience is The Starship Changeling. The developer of micro.blog doesn’t describe his content management system as social media, but he’s got one of the most accessible forms of the future of social media, I feel, so I switched.
My Name is Randy
My name is Randy and I often go by Changeling. If you’re wondering why a government name and fun name are being used at the same time, here’s what happened.I used to be an Assistive Technology instructor for people with visual impairments, CATIS certified and all. For reasons way beyond the scope of an introduction post, I am now an accessibility and inclusion specialist for the organization I used to teach for. At the same time I was an instructor, I began interacting with more online communities.
In these communities, I went and still go by Changeling. Wonderful, right? Nice separation of casual and official life, but here’s the deal. Because I’m blind and it is one of those disabilities that has wide-ranging impacts both subtle and explicit, there’s no way for me to get away from my circumstances by adopting a digital life like many people can and do. Ready Player one? I look forward to it. Player two, I dream about it. Rogue AI god aside.
Because of this, I still had to advocate to get my needs met. I began doing accessibility testing and checking for people, reviewing their social media posts, online stores, websites and, in one instance, a consultation about image descriptions for an envelope-book via Twitter DM. I always did this without asking for compensation. I wanted in those spaces, and I was the one who knew what I needed to be functional in them, so charging felt wrong to me.
Furthermore, I didn’t often have the opportunity to teach special topics I thought were awesome. I started writing guides for using online platforms. The ones I’m most known for are Changeling’s Guide to Mastodon and Discord for screen readers. (Note: If you’re wondering about the whereabouts of said guides, I am currently in the process of updating them and reworking them to reflect requests from people who found it useful and saw ways to make it more user friendly.) I was building an extensive though untraditional resume under this name. The Discord guide even made it into an issue of Top Tech Tidbits.
Then I became an accessibility and inclusion specialist as a day job, and I saw a personal choice for myself. I could do my job based on my traditional credentials alone, collecting credentials more specific to this role as I go, abandoning a resume of experience I came by honestly and fairly and honestly and that directly benefits my knowledge reputation in my day job, or I could spruce up my home on the Internet and turn it into a tool that displays valid though unorthodox credentials. For the record, I think it’s going to be a yes and situation, meaning both methods are going to be used, said method to be determined by the situation.
About Surface Me
I love roller coasters, horror novels and music. I am also the human partner in crime to a cat named Alex.
Content
Here are the things I talk about. You can also find this information on the the Archive or feeds pages.
- Accessibility
- Blindness-related topics
- Tech
- Games
- Music
- Books
- Movies
- TV
- Observations and humor
- Events I attend
- And anything else I want.
You can also use the Feeds page and an RSS reader of your choice to subscribe to those topics that are of interest to you. Finally, visit the nurture your inner alien page to subscribe to the email newsletter. Be aware, however, this is only set to deliver a weekly digest of all posts. As you may be realizing, this email would be quite large.
Navigating
If you are a screen reader user, your best bet for consistent navigation around pages is to use the landmarks or regions feature. There are three main areas.
- Navigation: Lists all pages for the site.
- main: The area that displays the most recent posts.
- Footer: Has links to my other corners of the Internet.
You can also use the articles feature of your screen reader to quickly move between posts in the main area.
Interacting
As mentioned before, my starship is now completely free of likes, reposts and followers counts. I’m not saying you can’t do those things, but I will remain unaware of them. Let’s look at how we can effectively interact with each other.
- Fediverse: If you’re on Mastodon or any other service that support ActivityPub and The Fediverse, you can hit the reply button, compose your response and send it.
- micro.blog: If you are following me with your account, the reply link follows each post, as does a link to view an entire conversation.
- Reply by email: I renamed this link to “send an intergalactic transmission’. Click this, and your default email program prefilled with my email address and the post title or excerpt as the subject line. Compose your email, hit send and I’ll have your message.
- I’ll respond to you via the method you choose.
More info
See the about page for more information.
Thank you, and enjoy your ride on the Starship Changeling!🎢🎢🎢
📢 Good morning, Internetians. Are you gorgeous?
on Today's Menu...
- ✅ Shave
- ✅ Daily swim
- Provide tech support to someone
- 📅 Google IO!
- Hang with friends online.
📅 It's time for Google IO2024!!! 🎰
The actual event doesn't start until 13:00 Eastern for me, but watch this post as I'll be replying to it with my impressions. You can also interact in real time if you're registered on the Fediverse.
I'm willing to bet Apple will have similar functionality at their Keynote. All these companies are basically doing the same thing right now. beige.party/@Lottie/1...
Sonos: Pride cometh before the customer experience.
Daily menu for May 15, 2024
🌅 Good morning, imaginary friends in the shiny box. Are you gorgeous?
Remember, gorgeous can go beyond physical appearance; it's a state of mind and feeling.
📋 On today's menu...
- 🪒 Shave
- 🏊 Swim
- 📲 Call some people
- 💻 Maybe fix a computer -🧑🏫 Start my figurative Twelfth Step
- 🛜 Stream an Internet radio show and hang out on Discord.
- 🥬 Get a little high -📱 Hang online with friends
# 🎶 Today's Changeling Wakeup Song
I Believe in a Thing Called Love--The Darkness It was their only real hit, but there's no denying that dude's got some kickass falsetto.
Have a good one!
😎 Something Most People Don't Understand About Me
If I'm cursing, disagreeable as some might find it, you're fine. If I start using formal words and saying things like "ma'am" or "sir", run. It means i'm beginning to detach from you and view you as a threat/target.
Then and Now: On blind social media users and their use/choice not to use profile pics, complete with much deeper message for readers who are a step ahead.
😎🧑🏼🦯 Since my newest frontier into the Fediverse, I've become aware of just how many blind and visually impaired folks are out there with no profile pics. I remember a time, it seems so not long ago when I remember it, when someone in the blind community would make an argument for why we all need to have profile pics. Then, a bunch of users (I won't hurt anyone's dignity by calling them people when they act this way) would dogpile on the person--enough said, okay? What's important is it was not a random occurrence.
The trend I am seeing now is, it's accepted that blind people may not always have profile pics. I hope so. If we can have a subtle shift like that, there's still hope for other... Shifts.
Are you seeing this, too?
📗 Yes And
📗 Yes And
Definition
Pronunciation: Yes. AND!
Derived from the shorthand of the first rule of improv.
No questions. Always respond with Yes and... Before adding more detail to said improv.
Simplification for expression of the often complex state in which two conclusions are true at one time and are technically thought of and are not necessarily exclusively separate from each other, meaning these two conclusions can always be true at the same time, but many people cannot function in a way that allows for true validity of both conclusions, usually for reason of bias, inexperience, or yes and. Depending on the situation, there can be more than two valid conclusions. Bias, inexperience, pride, self-preservation, yes and.
Being able to function in a state of yes and is an indicator of emotional maturity if not good or gradually improving mental health.
Other examples not given as many yes and situations involve socially polarized statements and ideas typically found allover the place.
I’ve updated my about page. It's been a long time coming.
Something You Didn't Know About me 05/16/2024
Something you didn't know about me...
The first experience I had that showed me I shouldn't have to fight for accommodation was not actually by anyone in my office or in the field of blindness and low vision. It actually came from the LGBTQIA2S+ community. I used to be a mod for the Discord server for of Sounds Fake But Okay. Before that happened, though, I had occasion to request that they add alt text to their photos. Not only did they not argue, they added descriptions on every social media as well as their online store so I could support them by purchasing their products and know exactly what I was born. Regardless of where we all end up, it was a thing that happened, and will never unhappen.
People who dismiss Gen Z just for being Gen Z need to get off my lawn.
What We Worry About: A Repost of someone who is exercising their right to be disgusted
I don't necessarily agree with the tone of this post, but I do the sentiment. Also, this is my way of reminding you living blind is not a case of God bless us, and we don't all sit around eagerly awaiting some afterlife where we get back what we never had. This is what we worry about. Sit with that on your next long commute that takes significantly longer by bus, why don't you. You should.