Technology – Page 9 – Well Eye Never

Virgin Media Installation

I’ve been in London for just over a month now, and so far things are going well. As anticipated and hoped, it’s been a much needed and refreshing change of routine, and the last few weeks have been pretty busy as you can imagine. I’ll write about the many things I’ve been up to soon.

The one thing we have had trouble with, however, is getting the internet set up, which is why I’ve been so quiet here. We had been assured by BT that they could transfer our broadband account to our new property without any problems, which we were glad to hear. But unfortunately, as I explained in detail in my Christmas journal, their system got completely confused by the additional homeworking line my employer had installed. So the transfer kept failing, and after spending ages on the phone we cancelled our account.

We then signed up to Virgin Media instead, taking advantage of a generous offer via my employer’s benefits scheme, whereby I got free installation and a £10 per month discount for the first year. Since then I’m happy to say that the switch to Virgin has been successful so far. They’re not perfect – who is? – but on the whole we’re very happy with what we’ve got. So I thought I’d do a review of their service to give my first impressions.

Journal – Christmas 2016 (Moving To London)

Finally, after nearly 120 journal posts – and thank you so much for reading if you’ve gone through some or all of them – my mother and I have now moved away from Devon into my Nan’s house in London, which we inherited when she passed away.

So in this post you’ll find out how we’ve settled in over the festive period, sorting through various bits and pieces, having problems with BT, going shopping and taking some nice walks. I also got to see my best mate and his wife who were visiting the city, signed up for some social events in January, watched a lot of TV, and was shocked to hear about the deaths of 3 very popular entertainers.

Going forward, I’ll be sharing my (hopefully many) adventures in London in a monthly roundup format, as I’ll explain at the end. But for now, I hope you enjoy this bumper post about my long-awaited arrival in the capital!

Sight Village 2016

Last week I had to go up to London for a couple of days, so I took the opportunity to spend a long afternoon exploring Sight Village, an exhibition showcasing products, services and organisations for visually impaired people. Their main show each year is in Birmingham, but they also have roadshows in Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, in this case, London. So I thought I’d do a write-up bout my visit. Which, fair warning, is quite long! But I’ve added headings throughout to split it up, in case you want to jump to any part in particular. So I hope you find it interesting. 🙂

Audio Description On Youtube

In this post and video I want to describe what audio description is, how it is useful for the blind and visually impaired, and why it’s high time we should be able to add it to Youtube videos. This is in support of the #AudioDescribeYT campaign, launched by James Rath.

Underground, Overground, Rambling Free

This past week I spent a couple of days in London with a friend. Just a brief visit, but we had a lovely time. It was my first time in the city for a few years – I used to go up there two or three times a year when I was a kid, because we had relatives there, but over the past 5-10 years the visits have been much more sporadic. Hopefully I’ll actually be living there soon (crosses fingers), so it was also a preliminary visit to re-familiarise myself with the area and see what it was like getting around the place.

Journal – July 2016 (London Visit)

Welcome back to my journal. This month I stayed with a friend in London for a few days, at my Nan’s house that my mother and I are soon hoping to move into, and there are some updates on our relocation plans as well. So I hope you enjoy!

Journal – May-June 2016

Welcome back to another set of journal entries. Things were pretty quiet between February and April, hence I’ve waited until now to do an update. So there’s plenty to mention here, including good news about our planned house move, my first proper attempts at blogging, some notes about the elections and EU referendum, and more. I hope you enjoy!

Audiobooks

I’ve written previously about the importance of music and audio description, so I also want to post about the use of audio for books too. After all, books don’t just have to be printed on paper or displayed on a screen – a huge number of them have audio versions as well. They are particularly useful for visually impaired people of course, but sighted people can (and do) listen to them as well. I don’t personally use them very much – music, TV, films and the internet take up enough of my time where entertainment is concerned – but my mother listens to them a lot, and I do listen to one or two occasionally.

The VIP Daily Living Tag

There’s a new Visually Impaired Persons Tag doing the rounds at the moment, initiated by My Blurred World and Life of a Blind Girl, and Fashioneyesta has also responded to it at the time of writing. They’re all superb posts by superb bloggers, so they’re worth checking out. Although I’ve not been tagged myself, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and join in anyway, as I do think they’re great questions. So hopefully nobody will mind. 🙂

Audio Description & DVD Navigation

I’ve just received, and have happily started watching, Doctor Who Series 9 on Blu-ray. And from a visually impaired person’s perspective, I’m very pleased to see they’re continuing with audio navigation and audio description on the discs. Sherlock gets the same treatment as well.

I personally find it very useful for pointing out smaller details that I’ve missed, and for reading text on the screen that I would otherwise have to pause and squint at to read, among other things. But it’s frustrating that such audio assistance isn’t much more widespread. So I thought I’d quickly explain what it is and why it’s useful.

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