From my Internet Travels…

I know, I'm behind on my posts.For the last two weeks or so, I have started to realize that I do in fact have need for more home automation. Especially because winter is coming. So for the last while I've been directing my efforts to researching some of my needs. I will post more about this a little later. Suffice to say I found some interesting stuff ;-)

That said, I've come across two very interesting pieces of software that I feel are worth mention.

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Alternative Voice Recognition.

I've been using Dragon dictate software quite a bit over the last few months and I discussed my usage of it here: Dragon gamer post . for the most part I find it works extremely well. It's dictation functionality is far superior to the speech recognition that comes with Windows7.

One of the reasons that helps me decide to buy it is that there was an option to purchase a gamer pack which would give you voice access to various games. My particular interest was World of Warcraft. This gamer pack was provided by a company called Vox enable and up until recently it work really quite well. However with the latest war craft expansion pack, I seem to have lost my voice functionality from Vox enable. I've tried numerous times to a hold of some support from the website, reinstalling and updating Vox enable. But to no avail.

From what I can tell, the version of Vox enable that I purchased his version 6 and with the WoW expansion they patched it to version 7. This seems to indicate to me that I will have to repurchase Vox enable to maintain the plug-in to war craft. In other words this will cost me another €20.

Needless to say I'm not terribly happy about this, nor am I pleased with the customer support. I have had zero responses to date.

This is led me on a bit of the quest to try and find some alternatives for voice integration to war craft.

I've tried playing around with the windows speech macros on my own to get some idea as to what I could do. I've had some success with it, but only really just gotten started…

But a piece of free software I found it seems to work very well is by a group called killers software (don't let the icon fool you). It seems to work very well but does require you to create your own templates. Once are provided are kind of tailored to their own characters. That said creating your own template is pretty easy.

I've only used it a little bit so far, but it does work really quite well and seems to be more responsive than a Vox enable. It also has a whole bunch of additional functionality for other games and software such as iTunes.

All in all, for the price of a free this software seems to be very good and well worth a try.

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Camera Mouse.

Now, this piece of software I've not actually tried and then kind of hoping to not need to try it in the near future world for that matter… Nonetheless, dealing with ALS means that I might have to consider it at some point.

This free software offers you an alternative to using your mouse through the use of the WebCam.

By moving your head around, tipping it left or right or up and down, the camera mouse translates these movements into mouse action. To send a mouseclick this is done with a supporting program (also available through this website for free) called dwell click.

All that's required to get this working is your PC, a web cam and the free camera mouse software.

Now, I do realize that this software will not work for everybody with ALS as all our symptoms progression's are somewhat different. However if your situation is similar to mine and you seem to be losing the use of your hands first but still retain control of your head and neck (no bulbar symptoms really) software like this may just help you stay active for that much longer.

And like I said, it's free. So what you have to lose?

Finding a good Shillelagh

It turns out that finding a good walking stick or cane is not easy as you might think.

When I first started using a cane I was having only slight balance issues, but my psychologists suggested that I start using one more as a social signal to people around me rather than an actual mobility aid as at the time I was just starting to have enough difficulty to make me feel uncomfortable. But not enough for the people around me to realize there was in fact something wrong and I wasn't just drunk or stoned.

So on his advice I went out and bought an MS Society cane that I thought would be good for me. You know the type, you see a lot of elderly people using base. Cast aluminum tube, formed handle and a wide foot. This is probably the most common type of cane you will find houses sold in just about every drugstore. Consequently these are also contains you will most likely be suggested to start using…

I started with the one shown in the image. It only cost about $25, and for the price it worked okay. I did find it a bit heavy and awkward to control. This is also largely to do with the fact I was starting to have quite a bit of atrophy in my arms and hands.

So, not being terribly happy with this cane and actually starting to need it more at this point. I started to look around for alternatives. What I really needed was something that was light, well-balanced and within T-shaped handle.

I found very little that would work for me in handicap retail stores or that was actually being offered to me through my rehabilitation facility. So I decided to start looking at trekking poles. Thus when I stumbled across the wanderfreund-speed-lock by LEKI. I only found this particular model for sale in one retail store here in Montréal. It seems to be a less popular version and consequently not many people have stock. However for my needs this cane was perfect.

This cane was very light and easy for me to manipulate. The best thing about it places the balance point was much higher making it easier for me to keep away from my foot. The other MS canes tended to be heavier out at the end which would cause me to occasionally kick them as I walked. Needless to say this is kind of dangerous.

The  wanderfreund-speed-lock length is very easily adjustable as wherewith the MS Cains I would have to have someone do it for me. Not to mention it is designed to be collapsible, which is really handy for when you're out saith the movie or show and you don't want it sticking out into the aisle. You can collapse it down to a length of about 65 cm.

Not shown in the image is actually was under the rubber foot, which is a carbide tipped. The rubber foot is actually just a You can place over it to use or generally. Living in a city where the weather can be pretty cold and crappy for part of the year, this is really handy. If things are slippery hiking use the carbide tip to guarantee that I will bite into whatever surface I stick it on to.

so that's where my cane went…

I really liked this cane and wish I could continue to use it. Unfortunately my hands have degraded to the point right can't really hold it anymore without some sort of help. For a long time I was using a wrist wrap to attach myself to the cane, however the attending short in my right hand has made this no longer a viable option as it is a bit painful to do so.

For the cost of about $70, I got a lot of miles on this cane. The one thing to be concerned of is that the foot is substantially smaller than the MS cane and if you're not careful can easily fit through things like the gap at the elevator door or a sewer grate.

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As I felt I still needed the use of a cane, hyped this to my rehabilitation people. Explain to them the problems with the grip and that I would need something to help me grasp the cane. Unfortunately the solution was less than satisfactory. They came back to me with another team that was very much like those from the MS Society mentioned above, only with a custom grip to which they riveted some neoprene and some Velcro so I can wrap it to my hand.

This only sort of worked as now I'm considerably weaker than I was and this cane although a little more comfortable hold was far too heavy. Despite requests to remove the handle from this new came and adding it to my LEKI one, they would not.

Needless to say, this would not do for me. So it's a little bit of help from my social worker, we chopped the ends off of my LEKI and the new right hand cane and using a little bit of epoxy we glued the right-hand grip on to the LEKI. For a time this worked out quite well, with the continued atrophy even this modification has started to become less useful. But nonetheless I managed to get a few more miles out of it…

The next option I considered was the  Side Stix crutches. These are more ergonomically designed for obtains are made of carbon fiber and are extremely light. they even have a shock absorbing spring the shaft. They are quite expensive, costing between $600 and $800 for a pair. But they will sell them as individuals for half the price.

When I was back in Vancouver, I tried one out for a bit and they are far superior to the regular forearm canes. Sadly, given the atrophy in my hand I still have the same grip problems and would require myself to be attached to the cane, both at the hand and forearm. For forearm canes this is quite dangerous, should I happen to fall I could probably severely hurt myself and possibly even break my forearm. This is quite a disappointment to me as I did find these canes to be very good. Even with my limited dexterity I was able to maintain far more control over the cane than any of the others I had tried to date.

Sadly the side stix canes did not work for me, but if you have the budget they could well work for you. Definitely check them out…

Alternative to the Sticky Mouse

Windows 7 has a very large number of accessibility settings to help people with disabilities use their computers.but sometimes the settings you're looking for might not be where you would think. For example when I started to need the use of a sticky mouse function I looked through easy access settings under "change how your mouse works"and found a couple of interesting settings, but none really useful to me. So I went about creating this sticky mouse auto hotkey script.

Then, the other day I was having a conversation with the tech person for my rehabilitation facility and begun to talking about my sticky mouse script. She was very impressed with it and thought it worked very well. But she also pointed out that window 7 already had a similar function built-in which I did not know about. It is called "click lock" which you can find under the mouse settings. This surprised me because I really expected this type of function to be under "ease of access".

When you open those properties, you'll find it under the activities tab. Just turn on the little check box. Let's click lock is enabled, you will be able to modify the timing before click lock activates the settings tab. It's controlled by little slider, in the same way that the sticky mouse auto hotkey script is. There is however one key difference and that is click lock does not give you any cute to indicate that it has locked your click. It is however more closely integrated into the Windows 7 operating system, consequently I would expect that it may have additional functionality/support that sticky mouse auto hotkey script does not.

Admittedly, I'm probably a little biased to my sticky mouse script but there's one thing that I very much prefer. I don't need the sticky mouse functionality 100% of the time, therefore it's very easy for me to click off from the taskbar. Simply right-click, exit script. If I were to try and disable click lock, well I have to navigate through the space control panel down to mouse properties every time I would want to turn it on or off. I know this is minor, but there are more steps involved and thus making it a bit more inconvenient.

In any case, it's well worth trying…

Stupid Solutions to Stupid Problems

As my ALS progresses I'm losing function and strengthen my hands causing doors to start to become part of the problem, and this is been ongoing for around about a year. The regular round doorknobs I just don't have the strength to really hold onto anymore and turn. So a number of the doors in the house I replaced with a standard lever handle. And for the most part this worked out just fine, each door costing me about C$25. Not too much and I kind of prefer the look of the new doorknobs anyway. However, I do have a little 2 1/2-year-old running around the house, and if the lever makes the door it easier for me, then it sure makes it easier for him as well.

There's a few rooms we don't really want him to have access to… Like the stairway to the basement for example. So up until recently he wasn't able to deal with the standard doorknobs but of course I still wanted access, and of course if I put any child safety doorknob thing on there's no possible way I could open the door. What I needed was a way to apply extra grip to the door for my weakening hands, and it occurred to me the old trick for opening jars of spaghetti sauce would work just as well for opening a door knob… Add a rubber band… Duh!

This is of course a stupidly simple solution, but sometimes these stupid solutions stare us in the face and we just don't realize them and this can be just as true for the experts we invite to help. I even had a conversation with one of them about this issue and they handed me a strip of no slip plastic that I would have to carry around and place on the door, and then turned the doorknob.

The rubber band solution is so much easier.

Anyway, for the moment this is working quite well and the rubber band very rarely needs to be repositioned and it's only been in the last month or so my son is been able to actually open the door at this point is pretty good at the stairs I'm not terribly worried…

Environmental Controls, The First Attempt

As my hands lose dexterity, one of the things I've been thinking about for a long time is to have various options to control my environment.I've been looking into all sorts of remote control options but the first one I decided to try was a little bit of an impulse buy called the Beacon by Griffin technologies. It's a device that allows you to turn your iPhone (there's also an android version) or iPad into a very powerful remote control for your home entertainment.

It's an IR repeater that you controlled via Bluetooth from your iPhone or iPad. It is very easy to control and set up and have managed to get it working for my sharp TV, my PVR and my Xbox 360 with nearly no difficulties. And by signing in all of my settings are synced across my IOS devices… Which is really cool as I have an iPhone and a iPad.

As I mentioned it was a bit of an impulse buy one day wandering to the Apple Store. The also had another device that turns the iPhone into an IR controller called the VOOMOTE. This was interesting but a plugged into the bottom of the iPhone and seemed rather small and fidgety. So for this reason I opted to try the Beacon instead. I felt that I would spend too much time looking for the remote and of course with failing dexterity, trying to plug it in would no doubt frustrate me and this is exactly the problem I was trying to solve. I'm finding the regular remote control is becoming rather fidgety and difficult to hold onto and the buttons are not that easy to press most of the time. My iPhone however is still nice and easy to hold on to and is usually never too far from me. Being a touch sensitive screen requires no force to press down and even though my hands right now are starting to curl up, I could still hold a stylus.

One feature I really like about the Beacon is that once you installed the free DIJITE app which you need to operate it, you specify your television service provider and your iPhone will actually update with the TV Guide for what's on. This is a great way to browse without actually flipping the channels.

For me the biggest downside about the Beacon is the fact that is battery powered only, requiring four AA's. On the surface this is really sound like that much of the big deal until you realize that as long as your Bluetooth is on on the iPhone the Beacon will try and stay connected. It will only shut itself off after his been out of contact with your Bluetooth device for one hour. What this means is that even if you are not actively using it, there is a "keep alive" heartbeat going on between the Beacon and your iPhone gradually diminishing the battery. Not to mention if you happen to forget to shut off your Bluetooth connection after you shut off your TV, or have them for bait you go to bed.

Consequently the beacon in my experience tends to eat batteries and because of this I tend not to use it as much as I would otherwise like to. With my hands the way they are, changing batteries by myself is a pain in the butt. It's sad that this is the unfortunate reality because I really do like the device. It's very easy to set up and use and can be used across a wide variety of IR devices. the Beacon can even learn IR signals so it can operate devices that wasn't originally intended for, like your air conditioner for example.

Cost: C$70
Pro:

• relatively inexpensive way to use your smart phone or tablet to control your devices
• very easy to set up and use
• I love having the TV Guide on my iPhone or iPad

Con:

• the Beacon eats batteries

Recommendation: although the Beacon works extremely well and a very much like it, however I cannot recommend it because of the ridiculous battery consumption and what I consider to be a rather large design flaw with the keep alive between the iPhone and the beacon.

Loose Change and Sanity

Occasionally getting out of the house to maintain contact with the rest of the world is often a good thing. Even if it is just to be around other people. One of my preferred destinations is to go to Starbucks just to grab a cup of coffee.

Now as you may have noticed from previous posts, I like my coffee.
I do have to admit that I have a certain bias to Starbucks. My first serious girlfriend worked as a barista their, so let's just say I  have a certain Pavlovian conditioning to the smell and the green aprons ;-)

One of the problems I tend to have is that for small transactions, you have a tendency to paying cash. It just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to bust out the credit card for $1.50. This then of course means that you are getting a handful of change back, and with the state of my hands this is very difficult to manage. I usually end up dropping it and if nothing else trying to figure out what to do with it later on… And I can pretty much forget about trying to use it to pay for my coffee the next time around…

Because of this, I decided to start using the Starbucks prepaid card thinking that fumbling with the card from my wallet would be much easier to manage than a whole bunch of coins. For the most part this proved to be pretty much the case.

Shortly after I discovered the Starbucks iPhone app which is really pretty cool. Not only does it have a whole bunch of extra features for things like finding the nearest Starbucks, but you can actually link to your prepaid card/account and then use your phone to pay for your purchase.

For me this is great, it eliminates with all the dexterity issues associated with dealing with cash and coins. Not to mention to a lesser degree, the prepaid card itself. On top of that, my phone is usually in the side pouch of my grab it pack and being much larger it is much easier for me to manipulate. The only pain in the but I would give it is a from time to time I have to re-login and enter my password… Which is now become a bit fidgety to do.

There are a few things about this that I find a particularly cool:

1. the iPhone app will show you the running balance on your card.
2. There are several options to reload dollars onto your card either via the Internet or via the app itself.
3. Starbucks offers a pretty good reward program starting with free refills and syrup, and ending with some free coffee :-)
   of course you can see how many rewards points it accumulated via the app as well.

Now some of you might be thinking "well duh! I've been using prepaid cards for ages". But sometimes we just don't see the obvious solutions that are staring us right in the face, and dealing with ALS a friendly little nudge can be really helpful… More stories on that one later ;-)

Autohotkey… Update to the sticky mouse

As opposed to writing in different article this time around, there are few things I want to finish off/added to the sticky mouse script. So this is more of an update to last week's post…

The functionality of sticky mouse is pretty much the same, but I've added an options page which will allow you to tweak the time delay between 0.1 and 1 second for the sticky mouse to activate. I've also added a toggle to the audio queue. Whatever you choose to set is also saved out to an INI file so that you will keep your settings on future runs of the script.

I've been using it fairly regularly this week and it seems to be pretty solid. I will however recommend not to set the sticky on delay to two small a time frame. For me about half a second seems to be a good value.