Hauling More Stuff… The Clinch Wallet

I, like probably most guys used to have a traditional leather wallet that was crammed full of cards and all that other junk that seems to somehow, magically end up in your wallet. It was sufficiently stuffed with plastic that was impossible to put in a pocket anyway, so I always carried it in a small sling bag (such as the these) with my other essentials...Keys, MP3 player, cell phone, bits of paper that wouldn't fit in my wallet… you know, essentials. I used this set up for most of my adult life and for the most part this worked out just fine… Right up until my dexterity started to go…

The traditional wallet became problematic for accessing any of the cards your ID, and being a fold wallet, it would often get stuck or hung up when I would try to pull it out. This started to become very inconvenient, and quickly quite frustrating.

The first thing that I was suggested to try was one of those "as seen on TV" aluminum fold wallets. This didn't really work for me, I will write more about it in another post.

The next wallet I found was the clinch wallet which I discovered while researching the grab it pack (discussed in another post here). At first I was a little skeptical that it would live up to all the claims it makes. But, I figured that it wasn't very expensive and worth a try. Besides, when I purchased it from http://www.clinchwallet.com/ they offered a package deal with a grab it pack which gives me free shipping… Essentially giving the wallet for just about free. So why not?

I have to admit, I am very pleased with the clinch wallet and grab it pack. The wallet really does hold as much as it says it does, everything remains easily accessible, and doesn't thicken up as the traditional fold wallet does. There are a few card pockets that are little tighter than others, these tend to be the plastic ones and getting things out is a little more tricky. But this is no big deal as I put things like my ID and cards I don't need often, or simply need to display in them.

It also has three nylon pockets for cards. These are great for the cards you need to use often, like your credit or debit cards. The nylon these cards slide in and out very easily.

The clinch wallet also comes with a lanyard chain, which I found to be quite cool but because of my dexterity limitations, it gets in the way. I removed that and replaced it with a large zipper pull tab which makes it just a little bit easier for me to fish out of the grab it pack. the great thing is that the wallet is actually designed for the large pouch of the grab it pack. It fits perfectly with room to spare, the enough so you can get your hand in to grab it quite easily, even with my messed up hands. Not to mention that both of these products being made of nylon means the slide against each other with very little resistance.

The one thing that I really had to do because of my dexterity limitations was reduce the amount of Velcro on the opening tab. This was simply done by sticking another piece of Velcro on for most of the opening tab, reducing the amount of contact when it's closed. Making it easier to open.

The clinch wallet is a great replacement to the traditional fold wallet. I can once again fit all my cards into one wallet and I find that with a slight modification made with to the opening tab, it works really well for me with my dexterity limitations… I highly recommend it.

Pro: 

• great, discreet looking wallet
• hold a huge number of cards and remains thin. You should never suffer from the exploding wallet again.
• fits perfectly with the grab it pack

Con:

At the moment, I don't really have any. I'm very pleased with the product and its price.

Cost:
If you were to purchase the wallet by itself it will cost you US8$ plus about 7$ for shipping. If you purchase it with the grab it pack, they pay for your shipping. I bought the package deal.

Recommendations:
The clinch wallet is well worth trying and I highly recommend the package deal with the grab it pack.

Hauling my Stuff…

For the next couple of posts, I thought I would talk about something that I'm sure we all have to do, which is periodically getting out of the house to run certain errands, visit the doctor and attend various appointments. One of the difficulties this poses us is bringing our  essentials with us. Things like your wallet, car keys, cell phone and so forth…

The problem I am often confronted with is:

1. how do I bring my stuff with me without too much difficulty.
2. once I get to my destination, how do I access it.

In the case of accessing I have very limited dexterity to access whatever is in the bag and my range of motion is also compromised, both of which make it near impossible to access regular pockets. This set me on a quest to try various products and homemade solutions. Some, more successful than others…

My current favorite solution is the Grab-it pack. I was a little unsure of it at first as I've never seen one in person and it does look kind of paramilitary/geeky. But I have to admit, I'm very pleased with… But the wife hates it…read "are you really going to wear that" ...LOL.

Essentially, it's a different take on the fanny pack. I like to think of it as a strap on  drop/cargo pocket, but with big difference being that it is reasonably secure to your leg and doesn't bang around. This is something that always drives me nuts when I'm walking is having things bumping up against me as I take a step. Even without the leg straps secured, it doesn't swing around that much.

As you can see from the image, it has three pockets. The narrow pocket on top of the large main pocket is zippered and due to my mobility restrictions I have not been able to find much use for it yet. It does however fit keys, loose change, hands-free Bluetooth easily. I also had to attach is a zipper pull. The large main pocket is great and is designed to fit the clinch wallet perfectly (which I'll discuss later) and being made of nylon anything placed in the pocket slides easily in and out.

But by far the third smaller pocket is my favorite and what made me actually decide to try the grabbed it pack. Its size fits an iPhone perfectly and when you are wearing it sits on top of your thigh, thus remaining accessible at all times.

This is quite important for reasons of safety, I had an incident before buying the grab it pack where I was walking the dog late one evening, and she pulled me over leaving me somewhat like the poor turtle shown here. I had fallen into a soft patch of grass on a very slight slope, I was unhurt but I had considerable difficulty in getting back up. I actually struggled for a few minutes…

Not having my phone with me scared me quite a bit as if I had not finally been able to get up, I could've been there for some time calling for help.  If I had been wearing the grab it pack, I simply would've had to roll onto my back or side, and because of the placement of the third pocket my phone would've been very accessible for me to call for help.

Because of this incident, I almost never go out by myself not wearing it or without some other option of accessing my phone.

There's a couple options for purchasing the grab it pack. You can order for the left or right side depending on your preference and you can also order the ultra version which is made from ballistic nylon and has a few more clips, but the same number of pockets and storage space.

Myself I bought the standard right side grab it pack bundled with the clinch wallet. I strongly recommend doing this. You will save a few dollars on shipping and as I mentioned above, the clinch wallet is designed for the grab it pack and fits perfectly. More on the wallet later...

Even though my dexterity limitations make it a little bit tricky at times to put on, I really do appreciate this product. It is most definitely helping me stay mobile.

You can also read more about it on Think Geek

Pro: 

• the pocket on top of the thigh ensures your phone remains accessible at all times.
• the large main pocket provides lots of storage, remains more ergonomically accessible and well secured to the leg.
• Large 2 inch slide clip used to attach around the waist is quite flexible and reasonably easy to undo, even with my significant dexterity and strength limitations
• it looks cool, kind of paramilitary

Con: 

• being made of nylon, it doesn't breathe very well and consequently can be a little bit warm on the leg. I don't find this to be too much of a problem.
• The other two slide clips on it are smaller and I find it much more difficult to undo. Fortunately the one on the leg can be left to done up and you can just step into it.
• It looks kind and paramilitary, and the wife might not like it ;-)

Cost: Between US$24 for the standard and US$40 for the ultra.

Recommendation: if you can spare the cash, it's well worth trying. I highly recommend including the  clinch wallet in your order as above only cost you about US5$ extra.

More Autohotkey Goodness

While paying one of my many visits to life hacker, which is one of my favorite sites they posted some new stuff for autohotkey scripts. I was really impressed with both of these scripts, they're too good not to share.

The first, is really a great way to get started with autohotkey. What life hacker has done, is created a webpage which will automatically generate your first autohotkey scripts allowing you to bind all sorts of commands to various buttons on the keyboard that don't really see a lot the use on a day-to-day basis. Not only is this a great way to create your first scripts, is really a great way to get started learning what autohotkey can do for you.

Check out how to Put Your Keyboard’s Unused Keys to Use (by Turning Them into Awesome Shortcuts)!

And as an added bonus, if you are using voice to text software such as DragonDictate these commands are now available to you via voice by simply saying "press F1" for example…

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The next tool they recently posted, is a story about how a fella out on the Internet has used autohotkey to modify the function of the number pad to interface with the Windows Aero snap feature.

For me the Windows Aero snap feature is something I used really quite a lot and with a 16:9 monitors, it's a great way to manage your screen space. For me I would always have what I'm writing on the left and my research/references on the right. This feature was really great for that.

; my first Windows hotkey override F2:: #Left F3:: #Right LAlt:: LWin  return

However once my hands started to not work so well, I found myself really unable to manage the screen the way I was accustomed. Not having easy access to this snap feature (via pressing the Windows key and the left or right cursor arrow) is in fact what drove me to find autohotkey in the first place… I was looking for a way that I could trigger the snap features via DragonDictate, and autohotkey was letting me do this. In fact, this was some of my first attempts at scripting. For fun I've posted them here:

This was a very, very basic. Nowhere near the level of function you'll see and window pad… But I was very quickly able to use F2 and F3 to stop the window to the left or right of my screen... And it was available to DragonDictate ;-)

Now window pad is considerably more complex to modify, and its default state won't really work with DragonDictate… Because Dragon dictate does not recognize the Windows key... also, I've not really had a chance to play with window pad much yet, but I sure am planning to look into it and figuring out how to change the hotkeys so don't rely on a dual key press is going to be my personal project ;-)

WindowPad Uses Your Number Pad to Snap Windows to the Screen Edge

Both of these scripts are free and well worth the time and effort to check amount… And I feel both of which will likely make your interactions with the computer far smoother. Especially if you have Dragon ;-)

One Touch Openers

I'm not really able to do much in the kitchen anymore, but a few things that I can do… I like to do. One of those things is a spaghetti sauce, but the real challenge is accessing all of the canned goods.

I can't operate a manual can opener anymore, don't have the strength or the dexterity for that and there's a whole ton of choices for electric can openers… And the one I have didn't work worth a damn and just ended up causing me far more aggravation than they need.


Then I discovered One Touch kitchen products. I must admit, I was quite skeptical at first that their advertised with that classy "as seen on TV" logo which usually serves to me as a warning of "this item is potentially crap". But I really have to say, these products are really quite good and ideal for someone with dexterity or strength issues.

I have the jar opener and the can opener. I've not yet tried the other products,but I really am interested in trying the vegetable slicer. I will post about it when I find. Both the jar opener in the can opener requires four AA batteries and they really do work as advertised. You put the over on top of the can or jar, push and hold the button for a few seconds, letting go and stand back and wait for your can to be opened.

I found both of these at Canadian tire, each priced at about C$20. On par with other openers, however I would say these are far superior in their function and would recommend them to anyone.

So if you still can dabbled in the kitchen and need an opener, I highly recommend these.

Cost: C$20
Pro: very easy to operate, and they work great. They also operate on batteries so there's no cable to mess with.
Con: they operate on batteries, and consequently will sometimes need to be changed.

DragonDictate voice-recognition

The computer for me is a bit of a lifeline, I spent most of my career working with it and very much enjoyed spending time entertaining myself surfing the web and playing video games. It's been a great escape for me. As my hands have been steadily getting worse for some time now I have found myself less and less able to manage the keyboard and mouse. I have lost most of the dexterity which tends to cause me to push random keys and my shoulders tire out very quickly.

This is caused me to go looking for alternative ways in which I could interface with my computer to maintain a degree of independence. fortunately I don't seem to be exhibiting much in the way of the bulbar symptoms and my the voice is still quite strong, so I started looking at voice recognition software. I first started by looking at the Windows 7 speech recognition which is built in to the operating system (even the home version I believe). The price was right (free) and it worked really quite well, but he did seem to have some consistent comprehension issues for me which I found particularly frustrating. I'll discuss more of the Windows 7 speech recognition in another blog…

I started looking at Nuance Dragon dictate software, which the home version is a reasonably priced but does have limitations to its functionality. Personally I bought the premium version which better suited my needs. There are a few things in particular but the premium version that makes it worthwhile.

• voice macros: you can create your own custom voice commands. This is a very handy feature, however it is limited to pasting formatted text. If you want to go for the full power version, you need professional… Which is $500… Ouch.
• upgrade support: when you upgrade to newer versions of Dragon, your profiles will go with you. The home version does not support this.
• headset included: whoopee... It is however a Plantronics which is very good quality. But I don't use it, I have a Logitech that I bought some time ago for about $30. More comfortable and still works just fine.
• Dragon remote microphone: this is kind of a cool little feature that allows you to use your iPhone as a dictation device. I've only used it once as I prefer the headset. Worked just fine.

The general integration of Dragon into the Windows environment is really quite good and you can access most functionality just by reading what says on tab. This is particularly true for any of the MS office products. Windows 7 did have one command which I kind of preferred called "show numbers" which would put in number over top of all of the buttons accessible on the screen. To access the command you simply said the appropriate number. Dragon doesn't quite have this, but everything is still quite accessible and I find it superior comprehension to the Windows speech recognition far more valuable.

me: "Galea" on server Executus

Perhaps one of my favorite features about the Dragon software is that you can order a software bundle which further extends Dragon's integration into other software's. personally I ordered the gaming speech pack as I still like to find an escape into the World of Warcraft. The software pack is called voxenable and exposes all of the common commands of the game to Dragon. Even some of the basic movement commands in many cases. There are many games that are covered, I've only tried warcraft and portal2 and it does work quite well, there is however a little bit of latency in execution of the command.

However in the case of World of Warcraft,   Nuance Dragon dictate and voxenable allowed me to continue to play the game and socialize with people online. It works really quite well for chat and covering your basic needs. I don't recommend it for PVP, and I've not really tried it on raids (personal choice).

Tip:   don't go buy a version in the local store, or order it directly online. Call the sales representative directly.   They gave me nearly a 50% discount just because I called them!

Over all I'm very satisfied with my purchase of Dragon, I use it just for just about everything on the computer now. As a matter of fact, nearly this entire blog is created using Dragon. It does however take a little bit to get used to using, I find it's nothing major but you do have to train Dragon to recognize your voice and you do have to learn to speak little bit more slowly. I tend to speak rather quickly at times, and well Dragon is usually very good about keeping up with me it does tend to make more mistakes when I do.

Dragon also learns your voice and speech pattern every time you make a correction or run the Accuracy Center, which I find to be very useful as no doubt my voice changes a little bit from day-to-day and will of course change of time. Dragon will adapt to this. I speak with a fairly typically Canadian accent and I've heard some stories about people having stronger accents than my own having some difficulties getting started with Dragon. That said, when you first create your profile there is a very large selection of "accents" you can choose from. This should help get you started…

Pro: very good voice recognition functionality as well integrated into the operating system.  voxenable   option is a huge plus in my book.
Also available for Mac!
Con:it does take a little bit to get used to, and if you've already started using the Windows 7 speech functionality it's a little tricky to break some of the old habits and commands
Cost: US$75 and up.
I paid about US$150 for the premium with the gamer speech pack and the training DVD. The best advertised value online right now is for the home version with gamer speech pack

It's official! Siri is coming to iPad

Siri Learns some new tricks and is coming to iPad

some general news about iOS 6 and some more details about the new siri update
http://lifehacker.com/5917484/the-new-features-coming-to-ios-6?tag=updates

The Friendly Mouse Autohotkey Script

When using the mouse, my right hand has a tendency to spasm and rather inconveniently pushes the right mouse button. Needless to say this is quite annoying...

This was one of the first questions I directed at the technology  group of my rehabilitation facility. They were a little short on options they did eventually find a program called "right off". While this program worked, I was quite dissatisfied with it, in particular the interface. There was no convenience to it. E.g. if my hand was working rather well at the moment I would have to navigate through task manager find the program and and its process. Also,this program gave no outward sign that it was actually running. Nothing showed the trail on the taskbar.

So I went about writing my own using autohotkey.

The Friendly Mouse the script is available here. It creates a nice, neat little interface where you can toggle on and off function of the mouse buttons and also swap them. Future functionality will include an optional sticky left mouse.

Just a reminder, be sure to have autohotkey installed on your system before attempting to run the script. You can find all the insatructions you need on the autohotkey page