#Journal of an exhausted Dutch Pixy 🧚🏼‍♀️ (Saturday, September 7th 2024).

TL;DR a harder start of the day due to humidity pains. Got some chores done. Helped dad and got back exhausted and dead 😂...

I woke before the alarm. Arwen was very restless so I quickly got dressed and prepped everything so we could head out as soon as possible. She really had to go, maybe the meds were kicking in and her body was struggling with that now? Poor gall... After the business was done, we headed back and I fixed her food. The snacks were put in their usual spots and I got ready to leave for the gym.

I enjoyed some social media and my protein drink. Then I just felt so sore. I should have taken some extra meds, but I didn't and now it was too late to do so... So I only rode the seated bike for a while. Then a massage in the chair before I headed back home again. I felt a bit bläh as I had wanted to do more. I've been gaining weight, I've been eating more and exercising less, and I don't like this direction I'm heading in... 😔 But when my body is that sore, it's so hard to do anything. And I feel bad, so then my eating disorder wants comfort with... Food... 😔

After the massage I headed back home and washed up. Cleaned out Arwen's years and then I got my brekky. After brekky we got ready for SniffBook walkies. While it was dry, it was very humid, which made things a little less enjoyable. But Arwen and I took it easy and we made the best of it.

When we got back, I felt exhausted. So I didn't work on my blog yet again... 😔 But I headed to the couch and relaxed some... Then we had another walkies. After that, I relaxed some more. I knew I would be helping dad later that day with the car, and I'd need some energy to do that. So today, I'd take it easy, especially when my body already feels sore.

After some relaxing again, I walked Arwen again, as she indicated she wanted to go out. Unfortunately, she had wanted to go to the woods.... I'm so sorry Arwen, it's not allowed for now. As if we go to the woods, she also wants a swim. And she won't understand going to the woods and not be allowed to swim... 😔

After walkies I had some food. I hung three frames, but wasn't all satisfied with one of them. But I was out of spoons to correct it now so I'll have to do that later. I spend some time gaming with a very sweet friend! Yay for that.

Then we got ready to head to Nijmegen. But there was some road construction, so we had a longer drive as we had to go all the way around now... But when we arrived, dad wasn't ready yet... 🤔 I started with one of the chores while he got ready to help. Of course now it got more sunny and warm, so I was hot rather quickly. My hands definitely did not like the work. But I promised to help, so I grumbled and then did the chores. After a few hours I was dead and broken, and we had to drive around again to her back home. So Arwen and I got to Skoosh and drove back home.

I got ready for bed and took some extra painkillers as my shoulders and hands were bad... It didn't take too long to fall asleep. Unfortunately I woke early as I heard a dog barking and I was afraid that it was Arwen trying to get my attention. But... It was the neighbor's dog! Ah well, the scare of Arwen needing me had woken me all the way so I got up early and started my day...

🧚🏼‍♀️ 🍀 💜 🐾

#PixysJourney
#WeirdFolks
@weirdfolks

Okay, so I just have to rant about something that I think is going to hold the Linux Desktop back a bit, especially for blind users. That is config files. Specifically, editing some file that's got no kind of linter, or checker, to make sure that whatever the user put in it works and doesn't leave one without speech.

So, this is specifically about the Speech dispatcher, which is a package in Linux a bit like Microsoft's SAPI. Of course, there's that new one, Spiel, that's being worked on, but I've not tried it yet. So, you can run spd-conf to set up a config file, but a lot of folks tell me that, in order to increase the default speech rate for stuff like games that use speech-dispatcher, web apps that speak through speech-dispatcher, self-voicing apps, I'd have to edit the config file.

Now, that's not awful for me, I can do it. But there really, really needs to be a GUI for it. And if you ask *me* why I don't make it myself, I'll tell you that if it's so easy, you should have made it with the snap of *your* tallented fingers, instead of spending all that time being a reply-guy. Windows has a speech properties dialog. Mac has Spoken Content in System Settings. Linux should have something similar. And, if it turns out that there is and I just don't have the proper package installed, I'll gladly change my tune to "distros should have this installed by default."

I've also seen this in Emacs packages like Ellama, where you have to set up Emacs Lisp calls to the right function with the right parameters inside your usepackage block, and it's hard for me to figure out how to add the openAI-compatible service that I have to Ellama. And AI hasn't helped yet.

So, having things being customizable is amazing. It really is. There are so many keyboard configuration settings, for example, that I think blind people are going to love playing with. But goodness, there needs to be something to change your system TTS stuff, and hopefully one day we can have a command to turn on and off the screen, like the iOS screen curtain so we can maintain privacy.

#Linux #accessibility #blind #LinuxDesktop #foss #tts