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Contents
Reflecting on a Remarkable Year for Living Blindfully. 4
My 25th Anniversary of Live Internet Broadcasting.. 5
Drafts Working Around a Serious iOS Bug.. 7
iPhone Call Volume Not Being Remembered.. 9
Update on Using SalesForce at Work. 10
Follow-up on Switching to Windows for Music Production.. 12
Changing the WiFi Network on Sonos. 24
Making Technology Available to Developing Countries. 25
JAWS Country License and Marmite.. 28
Amazon Echo Users, Beware of Changing Your Password.. 57
I Am Getting My First iPad. How Do I Learn to Use It?.. 58
Trouble With the Peacock App.. 60
Welcome to 262
Voiceover: Merry Christmas! Welcome to episode 262 of Living Blindfully, the last episode for 2023.
[music]
Lyrics:
[female voice]
In a world where ignorance tries to hold us down,
There’s a light breaking through,
Showing us the way, (Showing the way).
Jonathan Mosen leads the way
With a voice that’s strong and clear, (strong and clear).
Together we rise,
No sight, but still we see.
Oh yeah,
Living Blindfully,
Living free.
(Chorus)
With every step we take, we break the chains that bind.
Oh,
Never let our hearts be defined
By what we cannot see,
’Cause we’re Living Blindfully.
From every corner of the globe, voices unite as one.
Oh
Rise above, we’ll overcome.
Together, we will find Our strength in solidarity,
Living blindfully,
Being all we can be.
[male voice]
Proudly, Living blindfully.
You and me,
You and me.
Jonathan: A little song about Living Blindfully put together by Suno AI, the artificial intelligence that we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time on this episode talking about.
Also coming up in this episode: in solidarity with those getting their first iPhones with Face ID, I’ll revisit the day I learned about using Face ID and what I learned, there’s more on the serious bug affecting Drafts and some other apps, and because we never shy away from the controversial topics on this show, we’re even going to talk about Marmite. Brace yourself.
It is wonderful to be back with you for one final time in 2023.
And I suppose, the first thing I should do is apologise for the variable quality of my voice during this episode. We put things together at different times, you see. So at some point, I will be sounding a little bit blocked up like this. And at maybe other points, I might be sounding even more blocked up. And then at other times, it sounds like there’s nothing the matter with me at all. Isn’t it marvellous what technology can do, weaving it all together?
It’s always nice when a family member goes overseas and thinks of you, and brings something back. You kind of feel valued. You know what I mean?
And so I’m very grateful that Bonnie brought the COVID-19 back (the special imported American variety thereof) and gave it to me – an early Christmas present. So I’ve been battling this thing for quite a few days.
This may not be the best episode I’ve ever done, and I apologise for that. I’ll do the best I can.
This is episode 262, so it is worth mentioning that Area Code 262 belongs to Wisconsin, I think the southern part of the state. Milwaukee is covered by Area Code 262, and I know we have quite a few listeners in Milwaukee, so this could be the moment that you have been waiting for where we highlight your Area Code.
Wisconsin is very famous for the cheese. So if you are in the United States and you are going to be having cheese at your festive table, it may well be coming from Wisconsin.
Enjoy this moment in the sun, Milwaukee, or in the snow, I think would be more appropriate. It can get pretty nippy in Wisconsin at this time of year.
Meanwhile, the Country Code 262 belongs to a country, I think it’s a little island called Réunion. Some websites don’t refer to it with an E (I think it is an acute accent), and others do. I don’t think it’s pronounced reunion. It’s probably Ray-union. But I have not heard of it before, and maybe I can be forgiven for not having heard of it before because apparently, its population is only 985,000, so not even a million people living there.
However, if one of them is you, a very warm welcome, and I hope that you enjoy this episode with the same number as your country code.
Reflecting on a Remarkable Year for Living Blindfully
It’s natural, I suppose, to be a bit reflective at the end of the year.
It’s been a remarkable year for this podcast. I wasn’t sure whether it would still be here by the end of the year, to be honest.
When we rebranded from Mosen at Large to Living Blindfully, I didn’t know whether sufficient people would find it worth paying for, and I understand that because there is a lot of content out there. So I’ve been absolutely overwhelmed, and surprised, and delighted, and very humbled, actually, by how many people have chosen to subscribe to Living Blindfully plus. I want to thank all of you who have chosen to do that. It really means a lot.
Some of you give a dollar a month, and that’s great. Others give substantially more, and that is just so incredibly generous. I don’t know what to say, but I’m very grateful.
And I’m also thankful for the advertisers who’ve supported the podcast this year. It has all helped for me to hire some great people to assist with the production of the podcast, and I will thank them at the end of this episode.
But it’s all been amazing, and I think the name Living Blindfully has resonated. It’s caught on, and it’s just been an extraordinary year. So wonderful things can happen.
Advertisement: Now, one of our sponsors is Pneuma Solutions, and they’ve been sponsoring our transcripts for quite some time now. They’re incredibly supportive. And I want to tell you about what’s happening with Pneuma Solutions over the next little while.
First of all, let’s talk about the 12 days of RIMFest. [Jonathan sings to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas] On the first day of RIMFest, Mike Calvo gave to me… No, it should be Matt Campbell. I don’t know. They can work it out for themselves.
Anyway, so this is from the 20th of December, all the way through to the 2nd of January, 2024. The first thing you need to know is that Remote Incident Manager will be absolutely free for anyone and everyone to use. I mean, dude! If you’ve always wanted to check out RIM, now is the time.
And this is a good time because if you’re a little bit tech savvy, you know what happens. You go home and mum or dad, or aunt or uncle, or sibling, or whatever wants you to fix their computer for them. And sometimes, it’s just easier to remote in, especially if it’s an unfamiliar keyboard.
There are all sorts of scenarios here. Or maybe, you could use some help yourself. Maybe, this technology is just frustrating and you could get some help through RIM, knock yourself out, as my American friends like to say, and do it through RIM as much as you want during the 12 days of RIMFest beginning on December the 20th.
Also, back by popular demand, the stand-alone weekend support package offering unlimited time for interactive sessions over the weekend is once again discounted from $99 per year (which was a great deal anyway), all the way down to $50 per year. Those who buy during this promo period will lock in the discounted rate. After January the 2nd, the RIM free for all will end, and the weekend support will be back to $99 annually, for those who buy it as a stand-alone offering.
And I should also mention that there is a little bit more. As I said last week, Scribe for Meetings is free all the way through to the end of December as well, if you’ve wanted to try that out.
And if you want to learn a bit more about Scribe for Meetings, you can, of course, go to the Pneuma Solutions website. But we also featured Scribe for Meetings on a previous episode. So if you go to LivingBlindfully.com and search for Scribe for Meetings, you can find out all about the value of that and take it for a spin before the end of December.
All happening at Pneuma Solutions. Find out more at PneumaSolutions.com. That’s P-N-E-U-M-ASolutions.com.
[music]
My 25th Anniversary of Live Internet Broadcasting
One of the things that I’m quite heartened by is how many younger people seem very interested in assistive technology history and internet radio history.
There’s this archive floating around of all my original Main Menu shows, and there are some young people who have this encyclopedic knowledge of stuff that I’ve done that I’ve long forgotten.
But I like history of certain kinds as well, you know. I love listening to old recordings of news events as they broke, and various things like that.
So I thought I would just mention that there is a bit of a milestone coming up for me. And that is that over New Year, it will be 25 years since I did my first live broadcast with Shoutcast.
I had been doing on-demand audio for quite a long time before that.
Those of you who’ve been around a very long time will recall my website which was called The Arena. And we had a feature called the voice behind the keyboard, where we had a bunch of people who just introduced themselves, essentially. It was a novelty thing at the time because we knew these names on email lists, but we didn’t know what people sounded like. So I set this thing up on the web called the voice behind the keyboard. And if you had a little bit of technology and the ability to make a real audio encoded file, then I would upload it to this website called The Arena, and people would be able to hear the voices behind the keyboard.
But this is live stuff we’re talking about. Normally, at New Year’s, I do a welcome to the New Year thing live from New Zealand. We’ll probably do that again, and I may well play some old recordings as part of that.
That normally happens at 9 PM New Zealand time on New Year’s Eve going into the New Year, because we’re pretty much the first country to see the New Year. So it’s kind of fun to broadcast from a New Year, while most people are still in the old year.
We beta test it, so you don’t have to. We kick the tyres to make sure that 2024 is fit for purpose.
So I may well delve into the archives, and play some very old recordings and reminisce a bit.
But I do remember my first Shoutcast broadcast very well. Sadly, I don’t have a recording of it. I don’t think the technology existed for you to archive live recordings at the very beginning.
But Shoutcast was MP3-based technology. It came from a company called Nullsoft, who made Winamp.
And it was quite a breakthrough, really, because before Shoutcast came along and kind of democratised streaming audio, it was quite complicated to set streaming audio up. Real media, real audio, was the dominant technology then. Microsoft also had something called Windows Media Audio that was a rival to Real networks, and was also used for streaming audio.
But when MP3 streaming came along through Shoutcast and the software was free, relatively simple to set up, and the client was easy to use because you could just use Winamp itself, I knew that this was a breakthrough moment for the blind community, and that they would embrace this.
I was running an email list at the time called the PC Audio List. I remember [laughs] posting an email to that list and it said in the subject line, “Shoutcast! Yes, yes, yes!”, which was a pretty strange subject line to think about. But I was really captivated by this, and I was pretty confident that a lot of blind people were going to use this and get involved in internet radio.
And during that first stream, only a couple of people tuned in.
I was using Winamp with a line recorder plugin, so there was no cross-fading. The song would fade all the way out, then the line recorder plugin would come in on the playlist, and I’d talk through a microphone headset. But it was a global broadcast, and that showed all of the promise of Shoutcast. I was not supposed to be distracted by that.
My then-wife and my 2 children at the time were away at the in-laws, because I was working on my Masters thesis. I was working full-time as a government relations professional, but the organization I was working for had also put me through a Masters degree in Public Policy, which I was doing part-time.
This was our summer, obviously. It’s when I take a big break from work, and I was supposed to be finishing off the Masters thesis.
I took a break, (Everybody needs a break from time to time.), looked at my email, found out about the release of Shoutcast, and got a little bit distracted.
I did manage to finish the Masters thesis, but it also gave me this internet radio bug. And the rest is history. I mean, there have been some amazing highlights for me in this internet radio thing over the last quarter century.
Founding ACB Radio was a great experience. And then, working with so many talented people. Really, we wrote the rulebook on that sort of project. We learned as we went along. We developed protocols. We built concepts.
We taught a lot of people as well. That’s the thing I’m most proud of as I look back over the last 25 years. Whether it was SoundForge tutorials being conducted live at the ACB convention, or various other audio tutorials I’ve done, or just mentoring people, I think as I look back, and I see so many people that I’ve worked with still doing internet radio and thriving in whatever station they’ve chosen to work with. I’m very proud of that legacy, of that contribution.
Of course, Mushroom FM is now so well-established and a part of people’s lives. And at Christmas in particular, I’m reminded of this – that for many of us, Christmas is a happy time, particularly for me this year. It’s going to be an incredible time with my first grandchild.
But for others, it’s a very sad, and difficult, and lonely time. And I know that Mushroom FM keeps a lot of people company during those tough times. We’re familiar voices. We’re companions. And that’s an awesome responsibility.
One of the big highlights, of course, over the last 25 years was the We Are With You concert, the concert for Ukraine. That was just an incredible project to be involved in. And despite sitting here and coordinating that for, (What was it?, over 12 hours, I think.), by the end of it, I was just so full of adrenaline, inspired by the incredible talent that this blind community has in its midst and that so generously contributed their music and their time, and how many listeners contributed their dollars to the effort to assist blind Ukrainians – those who stayed behind and those who left.
So it’s been an amazing 25 years doing this internet radio thing. And if I’ve had the pleasure of working with you at any time during that period, thank you.
If you’ve listened, well, a very special thank you. You’re what it’s all about.
Drafts Working Around a Serious iOS Bug
Last week, we talked about a very serious bug that has crept into iOS affecting some third-party apps whereby if you double tap an edit field of an existing document of some kind, (And we see this in Drafts and we also see it in the Day One Journal app. There are probably others.), you can’t give focus to the edit control to do any editing of the existing text. This is a VoiceOver-specific bug. If you turn VoiceOver off, it all goes away.
Kimberley. It’s good to hear from you again, Kimberly. Hope you’re doing well. She says:
“I am writing from Bowling Green, Kentucky.”
What an absolutely awesome place name that is. Bowling Green, Kentucky.
“I wanted to tell you of a workaround I have discovered for editing a previously created draft.
I find this bug most prominent in the Drafts app.
What I do is open the draft I want to edit, get frustrated that I can’t actually edit it, then triple-click the side button to turn off VoiceOver. After that, tap once on the screen where you think the draft text is located, then triple-click the side button again to turn VoiceOver back on. After that, double tap in the text, and voila!”
And Kimberley’s actually got the proper little accent over the A in “voila”. That’s impressive.
“There is a cursor.”, she says.
“It is by no means perfect, and it is extremely frustrating, but it does work.”
Thanks, Kimberley.
Yes. That would work because you’re turning VoiceOver off, and VoiceOver is the problem.
I have heard back from Greg Pierce who’s been communicating with me about this, and he says he’s found a workaround, and that a new build of Drafts will be hitting the App Store very shortly. That will work around this issue and resolve it.
It is such a shame that an indie developer has had to spend so much time working around this Apple bug when you consider how many resources Apple has, and he’s just one guy. But it’s also evidence of what a great developer Greg is. He represents all that is good about the active, vibrant, indie, third-party developer community, and I’m grateful to Greg for spending so much time on this.
I do hope though that in due course, Apple will fix the bug because it’s not only Drafts that is affected, and not everybody’s as diligent as Greg is.
I’ve got the 17.3 beta 1 installed and sadly, the bug persists.
[music]
Voiceover: Stay informed about Living Blindfully. By joining our announcements email list, you’ll receive a maximum of a couple of emails a week, and you’ll be the first to learn about upcoming shows and how to have your say. You can opt out anytime you want.
Join today by sending a blank email to announcements-subscribe@LivingBlindfully.com.
Why not join now? That’s announcements-subscribe@LivingBlindfully.com, and be in the know.
Hearing Technology
Patti Chang is writing in, and she says:
“Hello,
Just dropping a note to express my thanks for the segment in 256 regarding experimenting with hearing technology.
My husband Francisco and I dance a lot, to say the least. The environment is noisy, and people are also conversing.
I have used the customizable settings outlined for my AirPods, and the difference is amazing. I tolerate the loud music better. But more importantly, I hear much more of the conversation around me. Makes me more social during dance. I think I even hear better than others now, in terms of what is being said.
Have to wonder if I was missing people asking me to dance before I started wearing the AirPods and using these settings.”
Thank you very much for writing in, Patti, and thanks again to Elijah who wrote a very comprehensive summary of hearing technology. It really was very well done. And it just goes to show, Elijah, it was worth it. You made a difference.
iPhone Call Volume Not Being Remembered
Avnish is writing in, as he continues his relentless quest to conquer his iPhone 15 Pro.
“Dear Jonathan,
Thank you very much for the lovely podcast episode 259.”
Well, one does one’s best, you know.
He says:
“I wish my emails to you were less frequent, now and then only.”
Now and Then’s such a good song.
“Actually” he says, “I only write to you when I can’t find any solution.”
No pressure.
“On my now not so new Apple iPhone 15 Pro, (it’s 2 months old), I have a new problem.
When I answer a call, (Yes, I do use this device as a phone also.), I usually find that the volume is low. So during the call, I increase the volume to the desired level. After the end of the call, I hang up.
I have noticed that when I get another call, the volume has again gone down to the lowest level, and I have to increase it again.
This is very annoying. Every time I get a call, I have to increase the volume, and this is quite irritating.
I’ve tried everything in my limited repertoire, but I am unable to fix this.
Can you kindly suggest a Jonathan quick fix?”
[laughs] Well, sorry to say, Avnish, no. I don’t know what would be causing this. I don’t believe I have seen this myself.
But when I’m using my phone, I’m always using my made-for-iPhone hearing aids, so that could have something to do with it.
So perhaps if somebody has any hints for Avnish on this, why would his volume of his in-call speaker essentially I guess, be resetting to a volume lower than he wants every time a call starts, and is there any way of stopping it? Let’s see if we can outsource this to the community. 864-60-Mosen, if you want to give us a call in the US. Or drop me an audio attachment or write something down and send it in to opinion@LivingBlindfully.com.
Update on Using SalesForce at Work
David Van der Molen says:
“I have an update regarding my recent post, in which I mentioned I was having trouble using SalesForce at work.
The project manager at the organization for which I work discovered an organization called Blind Institute of Technology. Their website URL is www.BlindInstituteOfTechnology.org.
This wonderful organization provided me with an instructor and an apprentice at $90 US per hour to help me learn how to navigate SalesForce with JAWS. They also made recommendations to my supervisor and the project manager on how to improve the layout of my SalesForce profile to optimize it for better JAWS navigation.
I still, however, am interested in learning about discussion forums regarding software platforms people use on the job.
One other question.”
[Jonathan laughs]
“If I were a blind New Zealander looking for work or having on-the-job difficulties related to my being blind, what services would the organization for which you are CEO be able to provide me?
I’m really curious about that because I wonder if there are agencies out there which specialize in advising employers or blind employees on technology and other related accessibility issues.”
Okay, David.
Well, Workbridge is an organization that seeks to find employment for a wide range of disabled people, and Workbridge tackles this in several ways.
On the supply side, if you will, Workbridge makes sure that somebody’s CV is up to scratch, that they’ve got the skills for the positions that they want to pursue. It can then reach out to employers.
It works quite extensively with employers to try and increase the demand side.
So obviously, if you’ve got a great product, it doesn’t matter if no one wants to buy the product.
And unfortunately, there are so many misconceptions that persist about what disabled people can and can’t do that when you start to go through higher periods of unemployment and labour is plentiful, often, disabled people are the ones who suffer most. So it’s important that disability confidence programmes are run and available, and that people are able to just talk candidly through the fears that employers have. That is essentially what Workbridge does.
If it’s coming down to providing assistance with technology, right now, that is not Workbridge’s role. So you would have to seek that advice as a blind person elsewhere.
Workbridge is a pan-disability organization, and it doesn’t employ specialists who know about various assistive technology. Especially when you’re pan-disability, knowing a lot about a wide variety of assistive technologies (everything from switch control to screen readers and magnification, to dictation software), it’s quite a tall brief, and that’s not something that, at the moment, any contractual funding that Workbridge receives covers. So you’d have to seek that elsewhere.
Hope that helps, and I’m really glad that you’ve got some progress there.
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan! How are you? Affik from Israel here.
And yes, you can hear my Apple watch speaking for some reason.
Someone asks about SalesForce, and if SalesForce is accessible.
So SalesForce is indeed accessible. I’m working with SalesForce in my day job at Strauss Water. I’m investigating a customer’s account, and their shipments, their assets. SalesForce is really accessible.
But with every complex CRM, there are a few accessibility strange bugs. For example, when I’m opening a case, I’m going to, like, an asset and then opening a case, or recording something on the case, like, typing and then saving what I documented on the case, it says ‘Alert: success. Case xxxxx has been created. JavaScript’. And then, it’s verbose a few times and it’s repeating itself a few times.
I opened a ticket with SalesForce on January 2022, and nothing has happened since then.
SalesForce has an accessibility team, accessibility department. I think they’re doing good work, except, you know, their priority with accessibility bugs is a bit strange.
Follow-up on Switching to Windows for Music Production
Jonathan: Matthew Whitaker is back with a follow up. He says:
“I wanted to follow up on my previous message regarding my plans to switch over to a Windows environment for music production.
After some more careful consideration, I’ve made a few adjustments to my settings that I wanted to share with you.
Firstly, I’ve decided to change my mixer to the Midas” (Midas, maybe? M-I-D-A-S) “M32. I’ve found an app that is fully accessible with NVDA, allowing me to control almost every aspect of the mixer independently, without relying on sighted assistance. This decision will greatly enhance my music production experience.
In addition to the mixer, I’ve also decided to focus on getting a desktop PC, specifically the Sweetwater Creation Station.”
Your creation station. That’s a great name, isn’t it?
“While there are two models available, I’m leaning towards the 400, which I believe will meet my requirements.
Regarding laptops, I’ve been exploring the Framework computers. They offered the flexibility to easily swap out various parts, which is quite intriguing. The upcoming Framework 16 model has caught my attention.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this option, and whether it might be a good fit for my music production needs.
Lastly, I’ve decided to go with the Evo 16 interface, which, I must say, your demo of it, Jonathan, was fantastic. It solidified my choice, and I’m really looking forward to integrating it into my setup.
I appreciate your ongoing support and guidance in helping me create an accessible and effective music production environment. Your expertise has been invaluable to me, and I’m excited about the possibilities this new setup will bring.
Thank you once again for your assistance, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the Framework laptop, and any other suggestions you may have.”
Well, it’s gonna be groovy when you’re all up and running and creating things with this new setup, Matthew. It’s always exciting to do the planning and the shopping.
Sometimes, it can be a bit daunting to do the setup because you’ve got a whole lot of new tech to get used to, and that can be a bit difficult. But I’m sure it will be worth it, and you’re obviously being meticulous about your research.
My one question, (And you know your needs far better than me, but I’ll ask the question just in case it’s helpful.), I wonder if you would need the mixer if you’re getting the Evo 16. Because the EVO 16 will allow you to create different mixes, submixes, you know, mixes that you can send to headphones, mixes that go out to certain channels.
It seems to me that something like the M32 might only be necessary if you’re going to be doing a lot of live work. So if you’re gonna take it out and do live performance, (and maybe that is the case), but you might find a bit of duplication between what you need to do with the mixer and what you can actually do with the audio interface. So that might save you a bit of money, potentially.
The desktop PC makes a lot of sense to me. Typically, I’ve always had those custom-built for me. In previous years, I would work with a PC builder very closely.
Now, I’ve got Henry, the wonder son-in-law, Heidi’s husband, and he builds them. And we’ve built PCs for a few blind people around the country actually now, and there’s something very bonding about sitting down and actually choosing every single component carefully.
And obviously, this PC, this desktop here in the studio was designed to be super quiet. It was designed to peak performance, and it’s a really good machine. I don’t think we’ve touched what’s in it since, maybe about, … I think in 2021 or 2022, we replaced an optical drive. But the guts of it, I think has been largely the same since 2019, and it’s still rocking and in very good shape. So I like the custom build.
But obviously, if you’re going to a company like Sweetwater that specializes in music production, I’m sure that they will see you right.
In terms of the Framework computers, I’ve only read about them.
We’ve talked about them here on Living Blindfully, in the context of the Optima computer, which Adi Kushner and Orbit Research are working on. And I’m looking forward to seeing whether 2024 brings that product to market.
But the reviews seem pretty favorable overall. You can certainly Google for reviews on the Framework products, and quite a few come up. It looks like they really know what they are doing.
And the concept of modular portable computing is empowering. The idea that you can swap different components out, chop and change the ports, upgrade the RAM.
I mean, I’ve had laptop computers in the past where something goes like a USB port, it goes a bit dodgy for some reason. In fact, I had a MacBook like this once. And they said, oh, that means a whole motherboard replacement.
So I applaud the principle of Framework, and it sounds like the reality is measuring up to the principle.
But I don’t think I have heard anybody who’s actually using one on a daily basis in the blind community.
So if anyone’s got one of these Framework computers and you want to tell us how it’s working out for you, and you glad that you bought one, please let us know.
I have always enjoyed using ThinkPads.
I kind of strayed away from ThinkPads for a while. But I used them for, I don’t know, 10 or 11 years straight in the 2000s.
And now, I’m back with my ThinkPad. And overall, despite a couple of little issues that we’ve talked about here on the show, I like it a lot.
So moving to another brand like framework would be a big decision for me, but I love the concept.
And if you end up getting one, do let us know how it works out for you.
Learning to Use Face ID
Neville is writing in, and he says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
I have just purchased an iPhone 15, which requires the setting up of Face ID.
In a recent edition of Living Blindfully, you mentioned your daughter had made a tutorial or similar on how to set up Face ID without sight. As I was unable to locate this item on your site, could you please direct me to where it can be downloaded?
Also, have you a PayPal account so I can send some funds towards the cost of your great weekly podcast? I don’t wish to become a plus member, and don’t mind at all if my copy arrives a couple of days late. I find the podcast extremely informative and would like to contribute financially to the costs.”
Thank you very much, Neville. That’s really generous of you, especially since you would get nothing in return for that, so I kind of feel a bit, [laughs] you know, reluctant to take your money without any benefit to you. But if you would like to make a contribution, I mean, thank you so much.
I am on PayPal, and it is Jonathan@mosen.org. Jonathan@mosen.org is my PayPal account.
Now as for the Face ID thing, this is an old episode of the Blind Side, Neville.
There was a lot of concern when the iPhone X came out, which was the first iPhone containing Face ID, that it was going to be a major problem for blind people.
So I did something quite unusual on the Blind Side. We set up Face ID without me knowing how to use it. Heidi was trying to explain it to me as a sighted person who thinks like a blind person, and we just put that out there on the podcast episode.
And it amazes me how people still say to me, “That Face ID thing that you did, it was just so helpful.”
So I have dug it out of the mothballs, and I will play you the relevant bit of the iPhone X unboxing podcast.
[start of podcast replay]
VoiceOver: How to set up Face ID, heading.
First, position your face in the camera frame.
Then, move your head in a circle to show all the angles of your face.
get started, button.
Jonathan: [sigh] Alright, let’s see what this does.
VoiceOver: Get started.
Position your face within the frame, heading.
Set up later in settings.
Position your face within the frame.
Head positioned correctly. Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle, heading.
12% completed.
Tilt your head up and to the right.
25% completed.
Tilt your head up.
Follow the arrow, heading.
Tilt your head up.
Tilt your head up.
38% completed.
Tilt your head up and to the left.
Tilt your head up and to the left.
50% completed.
Turn your head left.
Turn your head left.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle., heading.
Hold the device in front of your face at a distance of 25 to 50 cm.
Head positioned correctly.
Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle.
Reposition your head to the center, then turn your head left.
Reposition your head to the center, then turn your head left.
Reposition your head to the center.
62% completed.
88% completed.
Tilt your head down.
Tilt your head down.
Hold the device in front of your face at a distance of 25 to 50 cm.
Head positioned correctly.
Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle, heading.
Reposition your head to the center, then tilt your head down.
100% completed.
First face ID scan complete, heading.
Jonathan: Well, I’m sure I can speed that way up.
VoiceOver: Continue, button.
12% completed.
Heidi: May I give some feedback?
Jonathan: What was that?
Heidi: May I give some advice?
VoiceOver: 25% completed.
Jonathan: Hang on a second.
Heidi: Okay.
VoiceOver: Turn your head right.
38% completed.
Tilt your head up and to the left.
50% completed.
Turn your head left.
Reposition your face within the frame, heading.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle, heading.
Turn your head left.
Reposition your head to the center, then turn your head left.
Reposition your face within the frame, heading.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle, heading.
Follow the arrow, heading.
Reposition your head to the center.
62% completed.
75% completed.
Reposition your head to the center, then turn your head left.
88%.
100% completed.
Face ID is now set up, heading.
Jonathan: Now, so it sounds like my mistake is that you’ve got to keep it in motion, right?
Heidi: Yeah. So what you’re supposed to do is you start looking straight onto the phone, then you tilt your chin up. And then, start rotating your head like a clock face.
So you start, it’s tilted up, so you’re looking up to 12. And then, you just slowly rotate around the clock, looking down to look at 6, and so on.
Jonathan: Like that? Like so?
Heidi: Yes, like that.
Jonathan: Okay, so I’m tilting sort of right and down, and then left, and then up sort of thing?
Heidi: Yeah, so you’re trying to look at every number on the clock face.
Jonathan: Okay.
Heidi: Also, you had the phone tilted slightly, so it wasn’t looking directly at your face. It was looking sort of upwards.
You’re really good on FaceTime. You just need to hold it in the same position you’d hold it in if you’re on a FaceTime call.
Jonathan: So you’ve got to have the phone directly, quite some distance away from you and directly upright?
Heidi: Yeah, and right in front of your face, like level with your face, not down or high up.
Jonathan: Right. And that’s interesting because you’ve got to keep the phone at that level while you, … So you keep the phone at a constant while you tilt your head?
Heidi: Yes.
Jonathan: Well, I’m going to have another crack at this when we perhaps restore from the iTunes backup because when we do that, we’ll wipe the phone.
VoiceOver: Continue, button.
In progress.
Jonathan: I understand that if you’re doing it correctly, the face ID setup process is really quick.
And of course, there’s no documentation. There will be soon because I’m writing iOS 11 Without the Eye.
[laughter]
By the time we get that chapter written, I’ll have a lot of hints on how to do this correctly.
What’s happening is with the iPhone X, if you tap the screen, it wakes up. So you tap the power button, then it goes to sleep.
And then, if you just tap the screen,
VoiceOver: 12 PM.
Jonathan: Yeah, like it’s like the Apple Watch.
Now I just look at it, flick up, and then I think we’re at the screen.
So it’s going to take some getting used to. Let me, while this restoration is going on, get used to that.
VoiceOver: 12 PM.
Jonathan: So I’m looking at the phone.
Heidi: It doesn’t like that your microphone’s in the way right now.
Jonathan: Oh, alright.
Heidi: [laughs]
VoiceOver: Try again.
Jonathan: Oh, didn’t like that at all. Alright, let’s try again. I’m going to move away from the mic, give it a clear view of me.
VoiceOver: 3 notifications.
Jonathan: Oh, wow! Okay.
VoiceOver: [12:01] PM.
I’m still getting used to …
Once we get out of this restore mode, I hope I’ll get a better handle on how to flick up.
There we go.
Alright.
VoiceOver: Setup.
Jonathan: So you’ve got to hold your finger down at the very bottom of the phone.
Heidi: Like, right above the lightning.
Jonathan: Yeah. Right above that. And then, sort of slide it up.
So let me try that again.
I just put the phone to sleep.
VoiceOver: [12:01] PM.
Jonathan: I’m going to …
VoiceOver: 1 notification.
Jonathan: Okay. And yeah, there we go. You get a bit of haptic feedback.
So the trick here appears to be…
The Face ID is fine. I mean, the mic was in the way before.
But I wonder how sensitive it is.
VoiceOver: [12:02] PM. Friday, …
Jonathan: If I put it down on the table here and just look in it, …
Now, that’s not going to work, is it?
Heidi: No.
VoiceOver: Try again.
Jonathan: Yeah.
VoiceOver: Friday, the 3rd of November.
Heidi: I think it’s getting too much chin and not enough face. [laughs]
Jonathan: Right, oOkay. So you really have to pick the phone up, hold it in front of you, and there we go. Then it’s really reliable. And then, you flick up from the very very bottom.
VoiceOver: Set up.
Jonathan: And you’re in.
Okay. I’m getting used to it.
But I tell you what, it’s not as intuitive, I think, as just pressing the jolly old Home button. But you get used to anything. You’ve just got to make sure you’re at the very bottom of this phone. Because I think what we’ve also got to get used to is that this is all screen. And so even at the very very bottom of the phone, it’s touchable area.
VoiceOver: Screen dimmed.
Jonathan: There may be a bit of a learning curve here for a blind person, I think. Because for a sighted person, working with cameras is really intuitive.
Heidi: Yeah.
Jonathan: For some blind people who haven’t done much with a camera or just getting used to how far you have to be from the phone, there could be some beating down issues with this.
Alright.
Heidi: Also see an issue where sighted people would pick up their phone to use it anyway, whereas blind people might just unlock it and leave it off to the side, not looking at it.
Jonathan: Well, that’s exactly right.
And one of the things I said was that if I were not in need of this phone for business purposes, I probably wouldn’t get it because I like using the phone in my pocket all the time, and I just unlock it with Touch ID, and it stays in my pocket. Now, I appreciate that’s a very uniquely blind use case.
[laughter]
Jonathan: Because everybody else has got to see the screen.
So you can’t complain about that going away, but I’ll miss that. I’ll miss being able to use the whole thing in my pocket all the time, and just rest my finger on the Home button.
I’m now going to try again and see if I can set this up more efficiently, and perhaps more accurately, now that I know what I’m supposed to do.
VoiceOver: Cancel, button.
Animation of a head gently moving in an outward facing circle.
Jonathan: Oh, that was interesting. That was helpful.
Heidi: Yeah.
VoiceOver: How to set up Face ID?, heading.
Jonathan: What was that, Heidi?
Heidi: An outward-facing circle, like looking at the numbers around a clock face around the middle.
Jonathan: Yeah.
VoiceOver: First, position your face in the camera frame. Then move your head in a circle to show all the angles of your face.
Get started, button
Position your face.
Head positioned correctly
Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle, heading.
12%…
Head positioned correctly.
Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle., heading.
38%.
Head positioned correctly.
Starting first scan.
Move your head slowly to complete the circle.
Jonathan: I’m moving constantly this time.
VoiceOver: Head positioned correctly.
Jonathan: And it’s getting vibrations.
VoiceOver: 100% completed.
Jonathan: Okay.
VoiceOver: First Face ID scan complete, heading.
Heidi: It keeps removing your face.
Jonathan: What was that?
Heidi: Every time it says something like face in correct position, it means it had previously lost your face.
Jonathan: Right.
And I think you’re holding the camera a little too low. You need to hold it, like level with your face.
Jonathan: Well, it was a lot quicker than last time, though. So we’re making some progress.
Heidi: [laughs]
Jonathan: Let’s try with the second scan.
VoiceOver: Continue, button.
25% completed.
38% completed.
50% completed.
62% completed.
Tilt your head down and to the left.
Reposition your face within the frame.
75% completed.
100% completed.
Jonathan: Oh, that’s better.
VoiceOver: Face ID is now set up.
Jonathan: Well, that was not so bad.
So a number of factors I’m learning from this.
You’ve got to keep your head in constant motion. You’ve got to keep your head moving, and you’ve got to make sure that when you start this process, …
It’s as if you’re having a FaceTime call with Apple. So you’ve got to think of it as talking via FaceTime, and you have got to get the knack of not moving the phone. Move your face around as much as you’d like, but leave your phone. Your phone is the constant.
Is that a fair summation?
Heidi: Yes, that is.
Jonathan: Yeah. Alright.
VoiceOver: Done.
Jonathan: That was much quicker.
VoiceOver: Reset Face ID.
Jonathan: And so now, I’m going to lock the screen. And I suspect we’ve got a better scan. Let’s just try powering up.
There we go.
VoiceOver: [12:45] PM.
Jonathan: There we go. Swipe up.
Oh, sweet.
VoiceOver: Settings.
Jonathan: Sweet!
[laughter]
Jonathan: Right. Let’s just try that again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. So we’ll lock the screen, and we’ll hit the button.
VoiceOver: [12:45] PM.
Jonathan: Oh, mate. Yeah. Okay. Alright.
So I am going to take some great care to write this up in some detail in iOS 11 without the Eye. I’ll do this several times, and we’ll get the wording right, and provide a guide here. But that’s basically the gist of it. Look directly at the camera as if you were FaceTiming someone, keep your head in a constant motion, looking at all directions of the clock face. So you get all the way to sort of 3, 4 o’clock, and then you go all the way back to 9, 8 o’clock.
Heidi: Yeah.
Jonathan: Unfortunately, your head won’t swivel all the way around, or you’ll break yourself. [laughs]
Heidi: No. But a way I’m sort of imagining it is that your nose is trying to point towards these different numbers, and the clock slightly in front of you.
Jonathan: So your nose is the hand of the clock?
Heidi: Yeah. So you want to start, well, you start head on.
So you’re facing the center of the clock with your nose, and then your nose goes up to 12, and then it rotates around, pointing out towards 1, out towards 2, straight down towards 3, down 4, down 5, straight down 6, so on and so forth.
Jonathan: Right.
[end of podcast replay]
Jonathan: Alright. It’s the 2023 Jonathan back again.
Man, I really was a noob with that Face ID, wasn’t I? [laughs] But we got there in the end.
And now, I don’t think twice about setting it up, or using it, or anything like that.
That came from the Blindside episode 61, the Blindside podcast. It’s still out there in podcast land, so you can subscribe to it. There are no new episodes, but all the original episodes from 2016 through to 2018 I think it was, are all in there. And that’s episode 61.
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Changing the WiFi Network on Sonos
Hello, Christian Bertling. He says:
“Hey, Jonathan,
I have a quick question.
Is there any way to change the WiFi network for Sonos if you’re moving, for example, or if you have a Sonos Roam and you take it somewhere that has WiFi, like a hotel, for example?”
I haven’t tried to do this much, Christian, because when I travel with the Roam, I typically just use it as a Bluetooth device. I use it with my computer or my phone and just blast the music, and that works really well.
The first thing to be mindful of is that a lot of hotel networks are going to require authentication. They take you to a web portal. You need to enter your room number or some sort of magic password they give you.
The Sonos Roam is not going to be able to do that, and I’m not going to be able to do that.
If you have access to a standard WiFi network that just takes an encryption key, then you should be able to add that and switch to it. And that is found in the Sonos app. And you go into settings, and then system, and then networks, and you can add a new network there.
But don’t expect it to work in most hotels because it just won’t, and that is the same for most WiFi speakers.
Making Technology Available to Developing Countries
Let’s turn to the important subject of making technology available in developing countries.
And Jeanie Willis says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
I’m so pleased you have started to open up the discussion about the difficulties in access to assistive tech in developing countries.
Even here in New Zealand, I think many of us struggle with the cost of equipment and software being in effect, twice the price as for someone in the US in real terms, compared with what we earn.
But obviously, this is completely out of reach in many developing countries who often have no government or other support agencies to assist in any area.
A good example of this was recently, when a music teacher from India was looking for a particular piece of music in Braille” (with an uppercase B), “that one of her students was going to be using, and she couldn’t find it.
She seemed quite panicky about this, and not very responsive to some of the suggestions on the list for ways she might be able to make do with a different edition, or some scanning and music OCR to at least in part, go some way to getting a score. Recommendations of transcription services who could be paid to transcribe were also helpfully given.
But it wasn’t until after this when I was emailing this lady off the list and later, as she has become a friend, that I realized we had all made the stupid mistake of assuming she had a Braille display. And without this, most of our suggestions were just not possible.
Basically, she needed a well-made, reliable BRF that she could get embossed. She had no other way of reading anything in between, or editing something herself.
I have also had some interesting conversations regarding the average pay for a music teacher in her area. And after currency conversion, can see there is no option to pay for transcription, music OCR software (which is useless without a Braille display anyway), or subscriptions to various sources of music itself.
I also looked into what access she could have to any international libraries, only to find that although India has joined the Marrakesh Treaty, there seems to be no blind service library there at all, only Daisy Foundation of India.
There just is no service provider to assist at all. And this experience I am finding duplicated with another teacher in the Philippines, Malaysia, and on it goes.
I have no idea what the answer is to how we can advocate and assist with getting Braille displays and other equipment into blind users’ hands in these countries. It is hard enough to do here in New Zealand, unless you have a specific need for work.
But it is at least good to see the conversation being opened up, and I absolutely applaud companies like Pneuma Solutions and projects like NVDA, Sao mai,” (that’s 2 words, S-A-O and then M-A-I), “and others who are either using an open source free model, or looking at how they can give people in these countries a different deal so they aren’t left out.
I hope you are planning on interviewing Martine at some stage about these issues, and would also be interested in hearing how the ABC Global Book Project is advancing.
However, in the area of music, I feel like we have a crisis in Braille availability and transcription even in the developed countries.
I don’t know about other books on ABC. But for music, it seems like NLS and CNIB originally shared some resources, but they stopped. My impression from talking with folks in the States is that NLS has all but stopped Braille music transcription, CNIB has tried to move to some stupid sort of audio description of it, Reading Out Notes etc I guess, and Vision Australia and RNIB never joined up and shared.
The few bits that I can find are often in an old format, out of date, or foreign language. And even the Royal Schools Exam Board, who has traditionally always made their piano syllabus available in BRF from their website, decided to stop last year as they couldn’t easily get the transcriptions made.
We have only a handful of qualified music transcribers worldwide, no course currently available to become a music transcriber, and no one training. Most of the transcribers have either retired, or are overdue to do so. Hence why I say ‘crisis’.
The DAISY project to try to get publishers to provide music XML direct to service providers who can put it through an automated Braille conversion system would certainly help speed things up, but does not eliminate the need for skilled checking, editing, and proofreading. The level of mistakes due to different house styles is still far higher than for text.
So I would love to hear how WBU is advancing the Marrakesh Treatie work so that at least, what is being transcribed is being made available and not duplicated, or in the hands of the very few who have a service provider with a living, breathing music transcriber employed.”
Tap to Wake, and Be My AI
Pam MacNeill, not too far away from me, actually, has put fingers to keyboard and says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
I wanted to say a HUGE thanks to you for suggesting that those of us with iPhones turn the touch to wake feature off, if not needed. I had been experiencing issues with my screen waking up when I didn’t want it to ever since a couple of iOS updates ago. It was driving me batty!”
Oh my goodness! We can’t have that, Pam. [laughs]
“After you advised how to find this setting and switch it off, I am no longer bothered with the phone talking to me when I don’t want it to.
I also wanted to add to the discussion about Be My AI with advice of an unusual use case which might interest listeners.
As a disability responsiveness trainer, I develop and facilitate workshops for largely non-disabled people within the community. I also develop and facilitate capability building for disabled people, too.
I recently facilitated a 3-hour getting it right workshop for staff from one of the larger universities. At the end of a very successful afternoon, I distributed evaluation forms to all the participants and collected these at the end.
Today, I was able to read these with the help of Be My AI. I just took a photo of each form and Be My AI not only read the applicable rating circled, but also the handwritten comments at the bottom of the forms.
This is great for me because I like to pass the evaluations along to whoever has hired my company, Disability Responsiveness New Zealand Limited” (Good plug there, Pam.), “as a way of providing accountability to them for the funds spent on the workshop.
It’s great to be able to read the forms and handwritten comments before sending these to the person who commissioned the workshop.
Cheers and thanks again for all you do, Jonathan.”
Thank you, Pam.
That is just a brilliant use case for Be My AI. The things that this can do are just quite stunning, aren’t they? It’s been a game changer for 2023, for sure.
JAWS Country License and Marmite
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! This is Péter from Budapest, Hungary.
Nothing can be further away from me than to praise our extreme right government.
But I have to make a little correction based on what you said in the recent episode.
You mentioned that JAWS country license is available only in South America, in Colombia, if I remember well. But in fact, it is available in Hungary as well since 2018, when Hungary bought country license as well from Freedom Scientific.
So in Hungary now, JAWS is practically free for anybody. All you have to do is fill a quite simple form, and you have to provide the number of your identity card. That’s because this is only available for Hungarian citizens. But apart of that, it’s just free.
So once you fill this form and they have checked that you are, in fact, a Hungarian citizen, the next day, you will get your code and you are good to go. And they even renew this license every year. So in fact, you haven’t got to do anything at all. Once you registered, once you typed or pasted your number to JAWS, then you’re okay. It just works.
And one more thing, you don’t even have to testify that you are visually impaired. So it’s for everybody, for the sighted as well.
So that’s about my little correction.
And the other thing is Marmite. You mentioned some years ago Marmite, and that’s from you that I heard the first time about this food. I wanted to give it a try because I like to taste unknown foods, if I can.
One of my friends lives in Brussels, and she just met one bottle of Marmite in a shop. And when she traveled to Hungary, she brought it to me.
And me and my mother sat to the dinner table and gave it a try. We put it on toast.
You mentioned that it’s a food that divides people into 2 groups, lovers or haters. Or maybe Wikipedia says this. I don’t remember exactly.
But anyway, we gave it a try. And I have to say that unfortunately, we fell into the haters group. It’s very very special, strong, interesting, but it’s not for us. [laughs]
So I gave it away because we only began the bottle, so I gave it to one of my friends. Maybe she will like it, I don’t know. There’s no feedback since I gave it to her.
But anyway, thank you. It was an interesting experience.
If you have other suggestions concerning special dishes or food from New Zealand, do share with us. I’m absolutely open to anything. [laughs]
Let me wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy holiday, and for all your family.
Goodbye!
It was Péter from Budapest, Hungary.
Jonathan: And a Merry Christmas to you and yours, Péter. Thank you for listening to the podcast, and for your contributions. Let’s deal with these in turn.
Thank you for the correction. I was still involved with Freedom Scientific back in 2018, when that Hungarian site license was put together, and I’d completely forgotten about it. Sorry, Hungary.
So it is great to see that that is available in Hungary, and I think this is a way forward. If we can seek country licenses for some of these powerful proprietary blindness software packages, that may well be a way to ensure that everybody has access to the best technology available, particularly when that may help with employment, which is such a critical issue as well.
Now, on to the very important subject of Marmite. Obviously, no Marmite on toast for you on Christmas Day. [laughs]
For those who aren’t aware, Marmite is a spread. There’s also another one called Vegemite which I think, comes out of Australia.
So there are multiple levels of debate. There’s the Marmite versus Vegemite debate. And then, there’s the debate about whether all of it is just disgusting or not. I haven’t had Marmite or Vegemite for a very long time.
But I would also add there’s another very important nuance. I don’t think you will have tasted New Zealand Marmite. It’s possible, but it’s unlikely. The Marmite that is available in Britain and makes its way to Europe sometimes is a different recipe, and a different taste from the Marmite that we get here in New Zealand.
I cannot say that I have tried British Marmite because while I don’t mind Marmite, (you know, I kind of grew up on it and that kind of thing), I wouldn’t go out of my way to have Marmite.
I do remember, I think, (now Carolyn’s going to castigate me if I’m wrong about that). I seem to remember that when I was at school with Carolyn Peet, was it you Carolyn that came to school with Marmite and chip sandwiches? I’m sure you weren’t the only one. But they would put Marmite and some potato chips (what they would call crisps in Britain) between slices of bread, and you’d have Marmite and chip sandwiches, and the Marmite would kind of go all sticky on the chips and give you this flavorful thing. A number of kids had them, and I’m pretty sure Carolyn was one of them.
And if I’m wrong about that, Carolyn, I have no doubt I will hear about this.
Some people even drink it. I remember when I was a kid, the ads for Marmite used to say that it made a nourishing drink, and I think that just does move us into the incredibly gross territory.
But to all you Marmite drinkers out there, I mean no offense. Taste is a very subjective thing.
But what I want to emphasize is that the Marmite recipe in New Zealand is not the same as the Marmite manufactured in Britain. And the reason why I found this out is because Jenny Lay-Flurrie (who is the head of accessibility at Microsoft) and I have had a bit of back and forth about this over the years. Because Jenny does have some New Zealand connections, and she has told me repeatedly that the Marmite we have in New Zealand is not a patch on the Marmite that you get in the UK.
I really should investigate this, I suppose, and see if I can taste the difference. Apparently there really is one.
So what you may have put on your toast with your mother, Péter, may not be the same as what we put on our toast, or some New Zealanders anyway, put on our toast. Isn’t it an interesting world?
A Demonstration of Suno.ai
When we look back at 2023 in technology, I think the major theme will be AI, artificial intelligence.
It all started with ChatGPT. And some of us early adopters were playing with that in late 2022. But in 2023, it was adopted en masse in a way that we’ve never seen before with any other product only surpassed, interestingly, later in 2023 by Threads, Facebook’s Twitter alternative.
We’re being told that AI is moving rapidly. Large language models are perhaps a stepping stone to something even more powerful in the medium term.
Many of us have seen firsthand the potential benefits of large language models when it comes to image recognition, thanks to Be My AI and their implementation of ChatGPT’s image recognition. Sometimes, it does a stunningly brilliant job of describing a scene. At other times, if it thinks it’s seeing a remote control, for example, that is actually not the remote control you have, it could give you completely erroneous information.
Many of us have used ElevenLabs in 2023, sometimes to create fun projects, at other times for professional purposes. In fact, Living Blindfully uses ElevenLabs every week in every episode.
Several people have commented to me how pleased they were to hear the voice of Mike Moran doing the sweepers for this podcast. What you may not know is that Mike’s voice is licensed and uploaded to ElevenLabs.
There are times when I need something done for the podcast where I’d like our corporate voice, if you will, to turn it around quickly. And if I could just type that in and then have the voice speak it back, it would save me a lot of time.
So I approached Mike Moran and said is it ok if I license your voice for Living Blindfully? We’ve got a great copy of him in ElevenLabs, and it works brilliantly.
AI is being used in so many professional contexts now as well, and that’s only going to increase.
Music isn’t exempt from AI’s reach either, and you only need to look at YouTube and TikTok to see this. There are many examples now of artists who never sang a song actually being heard singing it, thanks to some pretty cool technology out there.
So for our final episode of 2023, it seems only fitting that we show you some technology that puts all of this together. And it’s called Suno AI (that’s S-U-N-O AI), and that’s their website by the way at Suno.AI. This service is in beta at the moment.
If you find it difficult to write lyrics and you don’t know a note of music, Suno AI can still help you to come up with a musical creation that actually can sound credible. It’s fun to play with this at a basic level. But you can also give it some metadata, little bits of instructions that help guide the artificial intelligence to produce what you want.
I’ll show you a couple of examples of songs that I’ve produced with Suno AI, and then we’ll go through the user interface and talk about how you can use this.
The first example I want to play is a song that I had it produce for the Mosen Explosion, my internet radio show on Mushroom FM.
Now broadly speaking, there are 2 ways that you can produce a song with Suno AI.
One is to give it some instructions, kind of like a prompt when you’re typing into ChatGPT, and that’s what I did in this case.
The other is that if you want to, you can write the lyrics completely yourself. You can give it a poem and essentially ask it to set it to music.
In this case, I told it to write a song about the Mosen Explosion radio show on Mushroom FM. And I think I gave it some other details about the time that it is, and that Jonathan Mosen is the host.
And the lyrics that came back will definitely have a ChatGPT feel to them because it is using ChatGPT to generate the lyrics.
When the lyrics come back, you can edit them if you want. I don’t think I did too much editing for this one.
You can also describe the style of music that you want, and I told it that I wanted an upbeat 70s feel to the song.
So here’s what it came back with. I did use some advanced techniques to make sure that we got a nice ending to the song, and I’ll show you how that works a little bit later. But this is pretty impressive, I think.
[music]
Lyrics:
It’s time to light it up.
We’re gonna have some fun.
The Mosen Explosion,
The party has begun.
Come on!
Jonathan Mosen, he’s the king of the show,
Bringing the commotion wherever he goes.
Every weekday, at 2
He’s there just for you.
Tune in again,
Let the music fill the air (fill the air)
Mushroom FM,
Where the fun guys are everywhere (everywhere)
The Mosen Explosion is the place to be.
Join the celebration,
Come and set your spirit free
It’s the Mosen Explosion,
On Mushroom FM
Oh yeah, on Mushroom FM
Jonathan: One of the cool things I like about Mastodon is that so many of us are just experimenting with technology and sharing our experiences. So I learned about Suno AI from Mastodon, and this is the first thing that I actually got out of it.
I wrote these lyrics. It’s not that hard to write some 12-bar blues lyrics, or at least not hard to write some bad 12-bar blues lyrics.
And then, I told Suno AI to generate some 12-bar blues, and I actually think it does a really credible job of this as well.
This is the very first thing that Suno AI produced for me.
[music]
Lyrics:
Oh no! My baby’s got the Rona.
She’s far away in Tennessee.
I said my baby’s got the Rona.
She’s far away in Tennessee.
I just want her to get better,
So she can fly straight home to me.
Jonathan: Now, a couple of things.
You’ll notice that stops very suddenly, and this is the most common question I’ve been asked about Suno AI. How do you stop that very abrupt end like that?
The other thing is, it’s not a perfect 12-bar blues. I would have thought on the second line of each verse, the line that repeats the first line, you would go for a major 7th chord on the subdominant that would be consistent with a 12-bar blues pattern.
So I don’t know if it did a 100% perfect job of it, but it’s a credible job of it.
I’ll give you 2 more examples that show you different genres that this can do.
I produced this one because every day at 10 AM at my office, we go through the quiz from the Post which is the Wellington newspaper, and it’s a good bonding time because we all just get together, try not to talk about work too much, and do the quiz. And it’s fun. And quite a few of the offices of the organisation I work for do this around the country as well. So I thought it would be fun to produce a little theme for the quiz that we do at 10 in the morning.
These lyrics are mine. So I typed in all the lyrics for this one, and told it that I wanted some jazz.
Here’s what it came back with:
[music]
Welcome on, everybody.
The clock has struck 10,
So it’s time for everyone to do the quiz again.
Forget all your troubles and relax for a while.
Let’s answer all 10 questions, and do this thing with style.
Quiz time, quiz time.
The highlight of our day.
Quiz time, quiz time.
3 cheers, hip hip, hooray!
3 cheers, hip hip, hooray!
Let’s get all 10 today.
Jonathan: And again, that’s an early example of my Suno AI experiments, so it does cut off abruptly as it is want to do. And we’ll cover that when we do a demo of the Suno AI user interface.
So it sounds a bit like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but it’s not particularly melodically catching.
And of course, this is the challenge that they have. Most of the good melodies are taken, you know, and they have to be quite careful not to plagiarize. I’m sure that is a real concern for the company.
And to try and minimize that risk, you can’t, in the instructions for the kind of thing that you want produced, say that you want it to sound like a particular artist.
One more example, before we go to the user interface and demonstrate how this works.
This is inspired by nothing more than the fact that Bonnie and I treated ourselves to some UberEats after a long day. And I thought, oh, I’ll get out the old ThinkPad and write a little tribute to the marvelous UberEats for delivering this food.
When I started writing the lyrics, and this is another one where I wrote the lyrics myself, I had a country song in mind. But no matter how many times I tried to generate it, it just didn’t sound like I wanted it to sound.
So I thought, alright, well, I’ll do something completely different and generate some hip hop. I don’t know very much about hip hop. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear this. But I do really like the catchy chorus that it generated.
So this may be the first and only time that I will generate anything related to hip hop. Here we go.
Hey Bonnie, little darlin’,
It’s been a long day.
We both rushed off our feet.
So I was thinking, baby baby I would pay,
And get us both some Uber Eats.
I love Uber Eats,
They’ve got tasty treats,
And there’s nom nom at my fingertips.
I just meet my driver at the old front door,
And I don’t forget to rate and tip.
Well, I was thinking maybe I would get me a steak,
Or an omelette with some toast,
and you can maybe order something freshly baked,
or a juicy chicken roast.
I love Uber Eats,
They’ve got tasty treats,
And there’s nom nom at my fingertips.
I just meet my driver at the old front door,
and I don’t forget to rate and tip (no, I don’t forget to rate)
Jonathan: Definitely not what I had in mind when I was just typing in the lyrics there. But sometimes, you just gotta go with the unexpected.
When you use Suno AI, you consume credits when generating a song.
Now, as I understand it, each song or fragment of a song is known as a chirp, and every chirp is going to cost you 10 credits.
On the free plan, you get 50 credits a day, so that means it’s enough to generate 5 chirps every day, without cost.
The first paid plan is, in my view, actually quite reasonable because it gives you 2500 credits per month. That gives you 250 chirps. And if you are able to pay yearly, then it comes down to $8 a month. And for now, I’ve locked in that $8 plan for the next year.
I’m on the Suno AI website.
JAWS: Suno.ai – Microsoft Edge Dev.
Jonathan: If I press H to navigate to the first heading on the page, we get…
JAWS: Make any song you can imagine, heading level 1.
Jonathan: I think that’s a nice description – make any song you can imagine.
If you’ve not used Suno AI before, you’re going to have to create an account.
You can sign in in various ways.
I’ve already done that, so I’m going to bring up my list of links.
JAWS: Links list, dialog.
Jonathan: And press the letter T.
JAWS: Terms and conditions.
Try the beta, 4 of 6.
Jonathan: That’s the one I want, so I’ll press enter.
JAWS: Suno.
Jonathan: And I’m on the Suno AI main page.
What I’m going to do now is demonstrate how easy and quick it is to just have an idea, and turn it into a song.
I’ll bring up the list of links.
JAWS: Links list, dialog.
Jonathan: And I’m going to press C.
JAWS: Create, 2 of 8.
Jonathan: And we’ll press enter on create.
JAWS: Suno. Navigation region. Create link.
Jonathan: And we’ll go to the edit field.
JAWS: A country song about thanksgiving, edit.
Jonathan: And they provide an example of the kind of thing they’re looking for in this edit field.
So I’m going to press enter.
[Forms Mode on sound]
JAWS: A country song about Thanksgiving, edit.
Jonathan: Now, you don’t have too many characters to play with here, so just be careful of this. It’s always worth checking that your whole prompt is actually in the edit field, or you might get unexpected results.
I’m going to type a Christmas song wishing peace on earth to all the listeners of the Living Blindfully podcast.
Now, let’s just read that back.
JAWS: A country song about Thanksgiving, edit. A Christmas song wishing peace on earth to all the listeners of the Living Blindfully podcast.
Jonathan: I’ll press tab.
JAWS: Create, button.
Jonathan: I will press space on the create button.
[Forms Mode off sound]
JAWS: Suno document.
Jonathan: And off it goes.
What I’m going to do now is perform a search on my screen reader for the word compose.
JAWS: JAWS find.
Toggle repeat 1, button.
Jonathan: And we’ll go again.
JAWS: Rapping to top. Composing 2 songs.
Jonathan: There we go. Composing. That’s what we want. I typed part of the word compose, so it’s found it.
JAWS: Composing 2 songs, two minutes.
Jonathan: It is now going ahead and generating 2 versions of this song. When the process is complete, we’ll have 2 versions to try.
JAWS: Loading, …
Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday. Yeah.
Load. Composing 2 songs, 2 minutes…
Jonathan: We just wait patiently for this process to complete. Sometimes, it can take 2 minutes. Sometimes, it can take more. Sometimes, it can take less. And I guess that all relates to server load. I think if you do pay for a plan, you do get some priority over those who don’t.
JAWS: Composing 2 songs, 2 minutes…
Jonathan: It’s still going ahead. It’s worth the wait though, usually. We’ll just see how long this is.
JAWS: Composing 2 songs, 2 minutes…
Jonathan: It’s taking a while this time, but we’ll hang in there. And maybe it’s just that I’m so excited about seeing what an amazing Christmas song we get.
JAWS: Play, button. Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday.
Jonathan: Okay, so that is the last line of the lyric. We can go up and review all the lyrics, but why don’t we just play this?
JAWS: Play, button.
Jonathan: There’s the play button for the first version, and then it will go on and play the second version. So here we go.
JAWS: Suno. Play, button.
[music, first version]
Lyrics:
As the snow falls softly covering the ground,
There’s a feeling of warmth spreading all around.
In this season of love, let’s gather close and hold
a moment of peace, a message to be told.
From the Living Blindfully podcast to all of you,
Wishing peace on Earth may always shine through.
In the darkest of nights, may hope guide your way.
Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday, oh yeah.
Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday, oh yeah.
[music, second version]
Lyrics:
As the snow falls softly covering the ground,
There’s a feeling of warmth spreading all around.
In this season of love, let’s gather close and hold
a moment of peace, a message to be told.
From the Living Blindfully podcast to all of you,
Wishing peace on Earth may always shine through.
In the darkest of nights, may hope guide your way.
Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday, oh yeah.
Sending love and joy this Christmas holiday, oh yeah.
Jonathan: So there you have it, complete with little Windows system sound. But that’s not generated by Suno AI. That’s because my PhoneLink app is still sending notifications when I didn’t expect it to be.
And again, it cuts off very quickly. There are things that you can do about that, and I’ll show you that in a moment.
You cannot edit the lyrics in this particular mode. So I recommend using the other mode, which we’ll get to in a moment.
And if you, like me, are in the Southern Hemisphere, and you’re not going to get any snow on Christmas anytime soon because you’ll be baking in the sunshine, well, That Christmas song is obviously not for you, but we still wish you peace on earth regardless.
I am going to bring up the list of links.
JAWS: Links list, dialog. links list view.
Jonathan: And I’ll press the letter C.
JAWS: Create, 2 of 8. Create custom, 3 of 8.
Jonathan: This is a much more powerful mode, and I recommend using this because there’s just so much more you can do in here.
JAWS: Navigation region. Create custom, link.
Jonathan: Now, we’ve got a couple of form fields on this page, so I’ll go to the first one.
JAWS: Enter your lyrics, edit.
Jonathan: You don’t have to type complete lyrics if you don’t want to, but you can. So if you fancy yourself as a bit of a poet and you wanna write all the lyrics, you can just type them or paste them into this edit field.
You also can type no lyrics at all.
If you’re trying to generate a little bit of a music bed for some audio production thing you’re working on, this is one way to do that.
But what I’m going to do is press enter.
JAWS: Enter your lyrics, edit.
Jonathan: And I’m going to type something like,
With my cane, I’m able.
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
Alright, so let’s review that.
JAWS: With my cane, I’m able.
Nothing’s misspelled gonna stop me now.
Jonathan: Now, I’ll press tab.
JAWS: Generate lyrics, button.
Jonathan: What I’ve done there is just entered a lyric fragment. I haven’t entered a complete set of lyrics. So if you do enter a complete set of lyrics, you’ll want to ignore this button. But because I’ve just entered that lyric fragment, I want it to generate some more lyrics for me, so I’ll press the space bar, …
JAWS: Suno document.
Jonathan: And it’s gone ahead to generate those lyrics for me.
Let’s just review the edit field now.
JAWS: Enter your lyrics, edit. Contains text.
Verse:
With my cane in hand,
I’m ready to go.
I’ve got the fire inside,
Ready to show.
I might move a little slower,
but that won’t bring me down.
I’ll keep on moving,
Gonna reach the higher ground.
Oh, yeah.
I’ve faced many challenges.
I’ve overcome them all.
Chorus:
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
I’m unstoppable.
I’ll keep on pushing through,
No matter how hard the fall.
With my cane as my guide,
I’ll navigate this world.
I’ll keep on chasing dreams,
Won’t let anything unfurl.
I’m unstoppable, unstoppable.
Oh, yeah.
Jonathan: That’s pretty yucky, actually, in a number of respects. [laughs]
But if we go to the top of the edit field, …
JAWS: Top. Verse.
Jonathan: You’ll see something here that’s important.
JAWS: [V-E-R-S-E].
Jonathan: This is an example of the kind of thing that you can enter here to give the AI some instructions. And this tells it that this is the first verse of the song. These instructions, or this metadata are contained in brackets, not parentheses, but actually the brackets.
JAWS: [.
Jonathan: That’s what JAWS says for me when I look at that punctuation.
You can give all kinds of instructions here, and I’d encourage you to experiment because it’s actually quite surprising, the instructions it seems to know.
And in my experience, if it can’t do anything with an instruction that you put in these brackets, if it can’t pass it, it just ignores it.
So I’m going to pause this and just edit this lyric a bit.
Alright. Well, here’s what we have now.
JAWS: [Verse]
With my cane in hand,
I’m ready to go.
I’ve got the fire inside,
Ready to show.
All those e-scooters
won’t bring me down.
I’ll keep on moving,
Gonna reach the higher ground.
Oh, yeah,
I’m living my best life.
Come on, I’m moving, grooving, free.
[Chorus]
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
I’m unstoppable.
I’ll keep on pushing through,
No matter how hard the fall.
With my cane as my guide,
I’ll navigate this world.
I’ll keep on chasing dreams,
Won’t let anything unfurl.
I’m unstoppable, unstoppable.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan: You heard it say Chorus there, and that is also in square brackets. So that sends a signal to the AI that this is, well, obviously a chorus.
If I press the tab key now, …
JAWS: Generate lyrics, button.
Jonathan: we can generate more lyrics.
JAWS: Enter style of music, edit. Blank.
Jonathan: And now, it wants to know the style of music. Well, that’s interesting. Let’s try R&B. So I’ll type that in, and then, …
JAWS: Generate, button’.
Jonathan: We’ll generate it.
JAWS: Suno document.
Jonathan: I’m now going to find the composing part on the screen.
JAWS: Composing 2 songs, 2 minutes…
Jonathan: And I will pause the recording so that we don’t keep you in suspense for a moment longer than necessary, to see what it comes up with with these 2 versions that it is now generating.
Alright, suspense over.
Let’s hit the play button and hear the 2 versions.
JAWS: Suno. Play, button.
[music, first version]
Lyrics:
With my cane in hand,
I’m ready to go.
I’ve got the fire inside,
Ready to show.
All those e-scooters
won’t bring me down.
I’ll keep on moving,
Gonna reach the higher ground.
Oh, yeah,
I’m living my best life.
Come on, I’m moving, grooving, free.
[Chorus]
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
I’m unstoppable.
I’ll keep on pushing through,
No matter how hard the fall.
With my cane as my guide,
I’ll navigate this world.
I’ll keep on chasing dreams,
Won’t let anything unfurl.
I’m unstoppable, unstoppable.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[music, second version]
Lyrics:
With my cane in hand,
I’m ready to go.
I’ve got the fire inside,
Ready to show.
All those e-scooters
won’t bring me down.
I’ll keep on moving,
Gonna reach the higher ground.
Oh, yeah,
I’m living my best life.
Come on, I’m moving, grooving, free.
[Chorus]
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
I’m unstoppable.
I’ll keep on pushing through,
No matter how hard the fall.
With my cane as my guide,
I’ll navigate this world.
I’ll keep on chasing dreams,
Won’t let anything unfurl.
I’m unstoppable, unstoppable.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan: We have 2 versions there. I’m going to go with the first.
I’ll down arrow.
JAWS: Heart, button.
Jonathan: We can heart this one, if we want. I’m not sure what effect, if anything, that actually has.
JAWS: Share button menu, collapsed.
Jonathan: The share button is also available in the first simpler user interface.
And if I press the spacebar on it, …
JAWS: Share button, menu.
Download video, 1 of 2.
Jonathan: It makes a nice little wavy video, if that’s important to you. If you want to put it on YouTube, or TikTok or something like that.
JAWS: Download audio, 2 of 2.
Jonathan: And then, you can download an MP3.
I’ll push escape for now.
JAWS: Leaving menus.
Share button, menu.
Jonathan: And then, I’ll press tab.
JAWS: More button, menu.
Jonathan: And there’s a more button that we’ll get to in a moment.
If I down arrow, …
JAWS: Play, button.
Jonathan: We’ve got the second play button. And all these controls pertain to the second version of the song.
So it can be a bit confusing. But if you press the play button and you can immediately press the spacebar to stop it again, you’ll know the clip that you’re working with, and you can be assured that you’re working with the one you think you are.
So I’m going up to the first one.
JAWS: More button menu, collapsed.
Jonathan: Here’s the all important more button.
I’ll press the spacebar.
JAWS: Reuse this prompt, 1 of 2.
Continue from this clip, 2 of 2.
Jonathan: If we want to extend the song, this is the important one – continue from this clip.
I’ll press enter.
JAWS: Leaving menus.
More button, menu.
Jonathan: I’ll turn Forms Mode off. Virtual PC and go to the top of the screen.
JAWS: Suno.
Jonathan: When I navigate now to the edit field, …
JAWS: Enter your lyrics, edit. Contains text.
With my cane in hand, …
Jonathan: We’ve got the existing lyrics.
JAWS: Generate lyrics, button.
Enter style of music, edit.
Jonathan: And we’ve got the R&B there.
If I go down, …
JAWS: Continue from. Clear, button.
Appears to be a large building with the dome and a large dome graphic.
[verse]
With my cane in hand. I’m ready…
Jonathan: Now, it’s showing me that I’m continuing from that. That gives me a confirmation that what I’m about to do is extend this song.
If I don’t want to do that, …
JAWS: Clear, button.
Jonathan: There’s a clear button here, and I can make sure that I’m starting a new song rather than extending the current one.
So just to recap, we went to the More menu for the clip that we want to extend, and then we chose Continue from this clip.
Now, in the Edit field with the lyrics, we don’t obviously want the same lyrics to repeat themselves. So I’m going to press Enter. We need to clear the Edit field of the lyrics it currently contains, so we can press Ctrl + A to select everything, and then Delete to delete all the lyrics that we had before because they’re still saved in the previous clip, and they’re available, and we can merge these clips a bit later.
And I’m going to type, “With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.”
And now I’m going to press Tab, and generate some more lyrics.
JAWS: Suno document.
Jonathan: Now, let’s have a look at the lyrics that it has generated this time.
[laughs] Perish the thought.
JAWS: Enter your lyrics, edit.
[verse]
Every single step,
Foiled by darkness,
Lost in the shadows
Jonathan: Oh boy!
JAWS: Searching for a way.
But then, you came,
My faithful companion.
With eyes of kindness,
Leading me astray.
Oh, yeah.
Together we conquer,
No boundaries can hold us.
A guiding light,
You are the key to my progress.
[Chorus]
With my guide dog,
I’ve harnessed success.
Through the darkest nights, you’re my compass.
With each stride we take,
We’re breaking through.
We’re a team that’s unstoppable,
Me and you.
Yeah.
With my guide dog, we’ll reach new heights.
Together, we’ll overcome.
We’ve got the fight.
You’re my strength, my partner, my best friend.
With my guide dog, our journey will never end.
Oh, yeah.
Never end.
Oh, yeah.
Ooh.
Jonathan: Let me just tidy that up a little bit, and come back.
Right. Well, I mean, here’s what I have now. It’s a bit better than what we had before. [laughs]
JAWS: [verse]
Every single step,
Confident and proud,
Knowing the way,
Striding through the streets.
We’re together,
My faithful companion.
With eyes of kindness, leading me astray.
Oh, yeah.
Together we conquer,
No boundaries can hold us.
A guiding light,
You are the key to my progress.
[chorus]
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
Ain’t no limit to the places we can explore,
With each stride we take,
We’re breaking through.
We’re a team that’s unstoppable,
Me and you.
Yeah.
With my guide dog,
we’ll reach new heights.
Together, we’ll overcome.
We’ve got the fight.
You’re my strength, my partner, my best friend.
With my guide dog,
Our journey will never end.
Oh, yeah, never end.
Oh, yeah.
Ooh.
Generate lyrics, button.
Clear, button.
Generate, button.
Jonathan: I paused the recording while it generated the next clip which is essentially, this next verse of the song we’re making.
So let’s play what we’ve got back.
JAWS: Play, button.
[music, first version]
Lyrics:
Every single step,
Confident and proud,
Knowing the way,
Striding through the streets.
We’re together,
My faithful companion.
With eyes of kindness, leading me astray.
Oh, yeah.
Together we conquer,
No boundaries can hold us.
A guiding light,
You are the key to my progress.
[chorus]
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
Ain’t no limit to the places we can explore,
With each stride we take,
We’re breaking through.
We’re a team that’s unstoppable,
Me and you.
Yeah.
With my guide dog,
we’ll reach new heights.
[music, second version]
Every single step,
Confident and proud,
Knowing the way,
Striding through the streets.
We’re together,
My faithful companion.
With eyes of kindness, leading me astray.
Oh, yeah.
Together we conquer,
No boundaries can hold us.
A guiding light,
You are the key to my progress.
[chorus]
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
Ain’t no limit to the places we can explore,
With each stride we take,
We’re breaking through.
We’re a team that’s unstoppable,
Me and you.
Yeah.
With my guide dog,
we’ll reach new heights.
Together, we’ll overcome.
We’ve got the fight.
You’re my strength, my partner, my best friend.
With my guide dog,
Our journey will never end.
Jonathan: There was a large instrumental section at the beginning of the first clip, which meant that it actually timed out. There’s I think it’s an 80-second limit on each clip or chirp with Suno AI.
I’m going to go to the bottom of the screen, …
JAWS: More button menu, collapsed.
Jonathan: And actually, that’s the more button that I want because it pertains to the second clip.
And we’re going to do one more generation.
JAWS: Reuse this prompt, 1 of 3.
Continue from this clip, 2 of 3.
Jonathan: There’s a third option now. If you recall, there were only 2 before. But now, there’s a third.
JAWS: Get whole song, 3 of 3.
Jonathan: What that will do is stitch the 2 clips together that we’ve just put together.
But we’re not done yet because we don’t yet have an outro.
JAWS: Continue from this clip, 2 of 3.
Jonathan: I’ll press enter.
JAWS: Leaving menus.
More button, menu.
Jonathan: And we’ll go back to the edit field.
JAWS: Suno. Enter your lyrics, edit. Blank.
Jonathan: I’ve just cleared the lyrics field.
What I’m going to do now is type a [, and then the word outro, O-U-T-R-O, and then a ].
Let me just confirm I have that.
JAWS: [ O-U-T-R-O]. Blank.
Jonathan: That’s telling Suno AI that we’re wrapping it up.
And we’ve got now, …
JAWS: [outro]
With my guide dog,
I’ve harnessed success.
And with my cane,
I’m able.
Oh, yeah.
With my cane,
I am able.
Jonathan: That sounds fine to me.
JAWS: Generate lyrics, button.
Clear, button.
Generate, button.
Jonathan: And we’ll go to generate.
JAWS: Unavailable.
Suno document.
Jonathan: And it is now generating the outro of the song.
So we’ll pause the recording while it does that, and then we’ll hear the 2 outro options that we have.
It is worth me pointing out that if you’re not happy with what it generates, you can generate multiple times, and it does give you very different results every time. So if neither of the 2 versions that you get through any of these processes does it for you, just keep generating, maybe tweak some lyrics, tweak the style a little bit and hopefully, you’ll eventually get to something that you find acceptable.
Let’s play the outros.
JAWS: Pause, button.
[music, first version]
Lyrics:
Journey will never end.
journey will never end.
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
And with my cane, I’m able.
Oh, yeah.
With my cane, I’m able.
[fade out]
[music, second version]
Lyrics:
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
And with my cane, I’m able.
Oh, yeah.
With my cane, I’m able.
JAWS: Play.
Jonathan: Well, that cut off really quickly, the second one.
I’m not sure why we got a little fragment of the previous lyrics. But what I’m going to do is go with the first one.
JAWS: More button menu, collapsed.
Jonathan: We’ll go to the more button, …
JAWS: Reuse this prompt.
Continue from this clip.
Get whole song, 3 of 3.
Jonathan: And we want to choose get whole song.
JAWS: Leaving menus.
More button, menu.
Jonathan: And if I search on the word clips at this point, …
JAWS: Link, my clips.
Putting clips together…
Jonathan: So it’s going ahead and combining those 3 fragments. And then, we will have a song.
So let’s now play what Suno AI ultimately came up with.
JAWS: Play, button.
[music]
With my cane in hand,
I’m ready to go.
I’ve got the fire inside,
Ready to show.
All those e-scooters
won’t bring me down.
I’ll keep on moving,
Gonna reach the higher ground.
Oh, yeah,
I’m living my best life.
Come on, I’m moving, grooving, free.
[Chorus]
Nothing’s gonna stop me now.
I’m unstoppable.
I’ll keep on pushing through,
No matter how hard the fall.
With my cane as my guide,
I’ll navigate this world.
I’ll keep on chasing dreams,
Won’t let anything unfurl.
I’m unstoppable, unstoppable.
Every single step,
Confident and proud,
Knowing the way,
Striding through the streets.
We’re together,
My faithful companion.
With eyes of kindness, leading me astray.
Oh, yeah.
Together we conquer,
No boundaries can hold us.
A guiding light,
You are the key to my progress.
[chorus]
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
Ain’t no limit to the places we can explore,
With each stride we take,
We’re breaking through.
We’re a team that’s unstoppable,
Me and you.
Yeah.
With my guide dog,
we’ll reach new heights.
Together, we’ll overcome.
We’ve got the fight.
You’re my strength, my partner, my best friend.
With my guide dog,
Our journey will never end.
Oh, yeah, the journey will never end.
Oh, yeah.
Ooh.
You’re my strength, my partner, my best friend.
With my guide dog,
Our journey will never end.
Oh, yeah, the journey will never end.
With my guide dog, I’ve harnessed success.
And with my cane, I’m able.
Oh, yeah.
With my cane, I’m able.
[fade out]
Jonathan: Mm-mm. There you go. And if you want to,
JAWS: Heart, button.
Jonathan: You can.
JAWS: Share button menu, collapse.
Jonathan: Share it, …
JAWS: Download video.
Download audio.
Jonathan: And download audio.
JAWS: Downloading mp3, 2.1MB.
Download completed.
Jonathan: And there we have the MP3 file with a very cryptic name, so I suggest you go and give it a name that makes sense to you.
I’ve got a bit of a collection of Suno AI clips that I’ve put together. It’s a fun thing to play with. There are lots of things to explore.
Don’t be afraid to try using meta tags. It’s particularly important to be quite descriptive about the kind of music that you want, and it does seem to be very responsive to that.
So that is Suno AI. That’s the website to go to, if you want to play with this. suno.AI.
Advertisement: Living Blindfully is brought to you in part by Aira. That’s the service that offers professionally trained agents to give you sighted assistance anytime, anywhere.
It’s good to see Aira now being offered as an accommodation in an increasing number of workplaces. There are so many ways that this can be useful from getting past an inaccessible website, to navigating an unfamiliar building, to have someone read you a piece of paper and even take notes on that document, sending it to you later. When your workplace funds Aira as an accommodation, you can say goodbye to relying on sighted co-workers or apps that may not provide the accuracy or speed that you need on the job.
Aira can improve your productivity, efficiency and independence in your workplace. And when you advocate for Aira to be available in your workplace, you’re not only improving your own productivity. You could be helping to make a dent in our high unemployment statistics.
We’re already seeing that workplaces that embrace the need for visual interpretation tend to hire more blind people. Win-win!
Aira will work with you to advocate for your workplace to offer sight on demand. You can email them to make an appointment so an expert at Aira can help make it happen. The address to contact is access@Aira.io. That’s access@A-I-R-A.IO.
Amazon Echo Users, Beware of Changing Your Password
Voice message: Hi, this is Mike May giving you a heads up that if you’re ever prompted to change your Amazon password and you’re invested in many Soup Drinkers, don’t do it.
The problem is that every one of your devices that’s linked will need to be re-entered with a new password, and re-linked.
In our houses, we share an account and have 25, 30, 40 different devices. And they all had to be not just re-entered with a password but in a lot of cases, the whole wizard was created all over again.
For example, in the older Echos, you can’t just tell it to hook to your existing Echos. You have to go through a whole setup. Same thing with the Fire TVs.
Another tip while I’m at it is to try to standardize on a particular brand, let’s say light bulbs. If you choose different brands, then you have to install different apps and link them separately.
And then when they go out or they get disconnected, you’ve got to reconnect them all over again.
I really like the Amazon Basics light bulb because it doesn’t require a separate app.
Same thing goes for shades. We have one by Hunter Douglas that’s on PowerView app, and another one that’s on Neo Smart Blinds. It’s a real pain when you have to try to remember the interfaces in these different things when you don’t use them very often. This home automation stuff can be tricky and complicated.
I’m a big fan of taking notes, but don’t always take quite enough, particularly when it comes around a year or two after I made an installation.
Good luck! Hopefully, you learn from my words of wisdom.
Jonathan: Oh my goodness! That does not sound like a pleasant experience, Mike.
Thank you for sharing that. Hope you were able to finally sort it out.
I Am Getting My First iPad. How Do I Learn to Use It?
Let’s go to Dennis, who is in Huntsville in Alabama for this next email.
He says:
“I am totally blind, and do not have an iPhone, or any smartphone for that matter.
I am getting an iPad next month and was hoping you could tell me the best way to learn it, or get learning materials on it. I am completely new at this, and I’m not sure how to approach it.
Thank you for any help you can give me.”
Well, Dennis, I will do my best to get you started.
And it’s a shame, in a way, that this is the last episode before we take a break because I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people with suggestions to help you out here.
But let’s see if we can give you some resources, so that you aren’t completely stuck when you get your new iPad.
AppleVis is a user-driven community for blind Apple users. You can find it at AppleVis.com. That’s A-P-P-L-E-V-I-S.com.
They do have a getting started section. And I just took a quick look to see what’s there these days. There are a lot of guides on getting started with your first iPhone or iPad. You need to understand some basic gestures, and also, of course, setting up the iPad.
If you’re getting the iPad new, then I would recommend somebody at a store sets it up for you so that when you take it away, you have VoiceOver already talking. That will lessen the learning curve for you.
I’m not saying it’s not possible for a blind person to set them up from scratch. But if you’ve never used a device like this before, that’s a pretty tall order, as you are trying to come up to speed with how it all works.
If someone’s giving you the iPad, hopefully, that person is a little bit tech savvy and can turn VoiceOver on for you.
The way that they do that, you might like to tell them, is to go to settings, accessibility, and then VoiceOver, and there’s a switch there that turns VoiceOver on.
There’s also some getting started material that seems to be iPhone-specific on the National Braille Press website at NBP. That’s November Bravo Papa.org. And when you go there and check out the bookstore, you can purchase some material on getting started with the iPhone. There are other books there as well that may be of interest. An iPhone book will still be helpful because the gesture set is largely the same.
And I guess a critical question for us to think about is how you like to learn. Are you the kind of person that is happy picking up a book and learning from it? Or are you the kind of person who likes to be shown something hands on?
If you’re in the latter category, perhaps you can find out whether there are state services for the blind available in your state that might be able to assist you with learning iPad. At least, initially.
And if you’re OK using technology like Zoom on your computer, then you may be able to find a very good remote tutor, because as long as you’ve got VoiceOver up and talking and that remote tutor can hear what voiceover is doing, they may well be able to patiently talk you through the basics of using an iPad. So that could be an option, too. I don’t have anybody specific off the top of my head to suggest, but it might also be something that AppleVis could potentially help with.
If you don’t mind joining email lists, there are plenty of email lists available where blind people discuss these products. There’s a directory of helpful technology lists available at TopTechTidbits.com. You can find their email directory there.
But also, a Google search may assist you as well. If you type in something like “discussion list for learning iPad for blind users”, or something like that, you may well get some useful results back.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been on any Apple-specific lists so I don’t have one to recommend that might be particularly friendly.
You might also check out YouTube to see whether there are any useful resources on getting started as a blind person with iPad or iPhone, and that could be useful, too.
There’s also a book by Michael Feir called iOS Personal Power, which he has made available free. So if you search for iOS Personal Power and then Michael’s name, (it’s Michael, and Feir is spelled F-E-I-R), that will come up as well, and you can download that free book that is humonganormous. I mean, there’s a tremendous amount of information there. It is iPhone-specific so some things are going to be different, but I think certainly initially, there’ll be a lot of overlap because the gestures are the same – how you navigate the screen, how you activate an icon on the screen, how you write is all going to be the same.
So Google’s probably your friend here, but I hope that does give you some starting points.
I think that AppleVis.com is probably the simplest and easiest starting point. They also have forums on there, so it’s a really good place to start, and it’s a well-maintained user community.
Good luck with your new iPad. Let us know how you get on with it, and what you think of it.
[music]
Advertisement: Transcripts of Living Blindfully are brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, a global leader in accessible cloud technologies. On the web at PneumaSolutions.com. That’s P-N-E-U-M-A solutions dot com.
Trouble With the Peacock App
Caller: Hey, Jonathan. This is Jim in sunny Florida. Hope you’re doing well.
I wanted to reach out to everyone and wish everyone a happy holiday season, wherever you are, and also to kind of give you an update.
I may have spoken about this in the past. As some of you may know, I and my family has decided to live in an RV. We’re not quite doing the Nomadland thing but you know, we’re kind of a little bit somewhere off the grid with all the components of home. And so I live in an RV park right smack dab between 2 communities.
And so, as a result of that, we get a little bit of good things from both of them, which is great. But we have Internet, and actually pretty good Internet, both in my cell service and the limited Wi-Fi that’s provided by the park.
I want to be able to watch my TV, in particular here in the US. But I’m sure this issue is probably an international one for everyone.
But in the US., I like my national broadcasting company. So for sure, I have my streaming things.
I’ve been trying to use Peacock, which is an app here in the US. that is a national broadcasting company app.
And I’ve tried to reach out to NBC, and they have an online chat. They don’t offer a call-in customer service, at least not that I’ve found.
I’ve called the local TV stations, and talked to their people, and tried to get some help with it. Not a lot of support yet.
I’ve tried to call New York City [laughs] – the people at their headquarters, and have been referred to the website, of course, which we’ve all dealt with those issues.
So what do I want? Okay. Sometimes, when I log into the app, (and I’ve had paid subscriptions and non-paid subscriptions to the app), what happens is you’re supposed to get your local channels. Well, what happens is at random, sometimes my local channel comes up. And sometimes, I’m in Florida, sometimes I will get offered the channels in Atlanta or Boston, Massachusetts or places like that. And even that’s okay if I can get it consistently to watch the primetime shows.
But that doesn’t always happen. And sometimes, it will put on one of the other channels like Hallmark or something like that, when I hit the channels button.
The app seems to be pretty accessible. I don’t know how much of the problem I’m having is the accessibility challenge. I use VoiceOver, and how much of the problem I’m having is just the app kind of being, you know, what you see is what you get, you know, at random.
But I’d like to hear what people are doing, and if anyone’s had that.
I have, with my own subscriptions in the past, and of course with agreements with friends, legally used cable services like Spectrum and Contour. Contour is part of the Cox family.
And sometimes, you get the local channel depending on where you are. And sometimes, it blocks it out because of broadcasting rights and things like that.
So basically, (and this can pertain to lots of channels), but my particular issue, I like watching the particular news shows and the primetime shows of NBC. So I want my NBC.
Yes, I know another great Station with Music has their similar catchphrase, MTV. I want my MTV, but I also want my NBC.
So if somebody out there has a good suggestion of an accessible way, (and I want to do this legal, on the up and up, you know).
And I also find their website though, unless you have your own subscription to a cable service. Like for instance, when I had an active Cox Contour or an active Spectrum, I could log in with the same log in that I would use that was mine, not someone else’s. And for some reason the app knows whether it’s yours or someone else’s, and the websites, and it would let you do it.
But now, you actually have to be the subscriber. You can’t just be an authorized user. You actually have to be the subscriber to go on to those sites and play that live content.
Jonathan: Hmm, I don’t have any direct experience obviously of Peacock. But I wonder whether this relates to your IP address, Jim, and the fact that it’s misidentifying an IP address as being connected to another part of the country. I know that a lot of these apps in the US now are getting very region-specific, and that you’ve just got some sort of diagnosis problem there.
But if anybody can help you out, we will certainly play anybody’s responses. opinion@LivingBlindfully.com, when we come back at the end of January. Our first episode for the new year will be on the 28th of January, 2024.
So we might think of this as the big cliffhanger ending to the current series, you see, just like they might do on NBC, where…
[notification sound]
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it, I tell you.
Where they have a big cliffhanger ending, you know, and you have to wait for the answer in the next season or something like that, because that is where we are wrapping up for Living Blindfully for 2023.
Closing for 2023
I’m going to close with something fun that was sent to me.
One of the big highlights for me of 2023 was to have the privilege of being asked to attend and speak at the National Convention of the National Federation of the Blind. It was so much fun to be back there and to reconnect with people, to meet new friends, and also to get some interviews that we’ve been playing on Living Blindfully subsequently.
The President of the National Federation of the Blind, Mark Riccobono, wrote to me and he said:
“A long-standing tradition among the staff at the Federation is to produce carols during this time of the year. Sometimes, these celebrate or poke fun at a colleague or board member, or work that has happened in the movement during that year.
This year, the committee went international for the first time, and they put this carol together.”
I understand Chris Danielsen is the chairman of this committee, at least for this year. They have a Federation thanksgiving which happened a couple of weeks ago where they sang this and other carols, apparently. I don’t have the other carols, but I do have this particular one about Living Blindfully and me, and I’m delighted and flattered to be the subject of this.
I said to Mark, can I share this with you?
He said you can share it, but please pass on the sentiment that the National Federation of the Blind sends its warmest wishes to all blind people around the world for a joyous holiday season, and spectacular 2024.
And all I can do is echo those sentiments.
Thank you very much to every single person who has listened, who has contributed, because it is the enormous amount of listener interaction that makes this podcast so special.
To our advertisers, our supporters of Living Blindfully plus, thank you all so much for making this such a special experience.
And of course, we end the year with a little Living Blindfully team.
So I want to thank Hannah Mae Aldeza for working the magic on the transcripts. You will have seen the quality of the transcripts improve substantially since we became Living Blindfully. Hannah is the reason for that. She does a meticulous and thorough job, and Hannah, I really appreciate it. If I had to listen to everything I say and type it all up, I think I would freak myself out. So thank you very much.
And also to Derek Lane, working the magic with the audio so I don’t have to listen to myself more than necessary for some of those long and complex interviews. Really appreciate your help and expertise, Derek as well.
We do have some stuff in the can that I could not get to before we all break up for the summer break, so that’ll be coming up in January.
And also, we will be accepting contributions written down or in audio to opinion@LivingBlindfully.com, or 864-60-Mosen over the break, so that we can come back with a full and vibrant episode when we return on the 28th of January, 2024. That is when plus subscribers get it. It’ll be available free to everybody else 3 days later.
So have a wonderful break.
I intend to recharge. I hope you get that opportunity as well.
And we’ll go out with this carol from the National Federation of the Blind.
[people singing]
Lyrics:
At National Convention in 2023,
Jonathan did present a speech on Living Blindfully.
He told us all to live with blindness unashamedly,
Oh tidings of wisdom and love, wisdom and love.
Oh tidings of wisdom and love.
Throughout his call to action, a common theme recurs.
Jonathan loves technology, to that we must return.
Our efforts like a story old—that of the little red hen.
Oh tidings of abstract metaphors, metaphors.
Oh tidings of abstract metaphors.
One more verse.
And in the end, he told us all to fight for equal rights.
Bake bread of usability—that is our constant fight.
But we’ll prevail because we do each day and ev’ry night.
Oh tidings of courage and hope, courage and hope.
Oh tidings of courage and hope.