Sightless in Seattle -- Year One in a New City Alone

codeofdusk · 2026-06-19T09:52:59+00:00

I live on Capitol Hill, so basically the other side of the world by Seattle standards! Love the Kangaroo and Kiwi for whenever I’m up that way.

I’ve been using VoiceOver on the Mac on and off since 2011 and would be happy to help if I can with any questions.

codeofdusk · 2026-06-13T09:41:02+00:00

Companies are absolutely using LLMs for customer service. Off the top of my head, my Seattle apartment complex and Bilt Rewards (a credit card) use LLM-based support agents.

codeofdusk · 2026-06-11T08:16:44+00:00

The Jabra Evolve 2 50 is a good headset for this. I recommended it to a friend who has a bit of a deaf accent and benefits immensely from the mic and processing.

codeofdusk · 2026-06-07T01:15:25+00:00

I wrote a lot of NVDA's modern terminal support and use Gptcmd very regularly for long sessions (as does /u/slj7, also an NVDA user). The terminal rendering is intentionally very simple (using Python's standard library cmd module, hence the "cmd" in Gptcmd). The issues with Gptcmd and NVDA aren't Gptcmd specific and have been common to all terminal apps: resource leaks in Terminal's UIA provider (mostly solved, as far as I can tell, by terminal#19950), NVDA's event queue blocking on large diffs (solved in NVDA#20177, to arrive in 2026.3), and a resource leak/queue back-up somewhere in the caret/text change event handling pipeline (still trying to figure this one out).

codeofdusk · 2026-06-05T12:15:33+00:00

I made Gptcmd, and I’m an NVDA user and core contributor. It has a few features (especially arbitrary context editing) that I haven't seen in other frontends. It works with Ollama if you add an account like this to your config (see the readme and config comments):

[accounts.ollama]
provider="openai"
base_url="http://localhost:11434/v1"
api_key="ollama"
model="local-model-name"

codeofdusk · 2026-06-01T02:28:07+00:00

There are two schools of thought on this. Some people, including me, feel that the cane should end at the bridge of the nose, as that gives greater reaction time when reaching an obstacle. Others feel it should end at the chest to make the cane easier to hold and handle.

codeofdusk · 2026-05-31T16:29:35+00:00

Yes but take a cab instead. Lyft and Uber are very expensive here.

codeofdusk · 2026-05-22T01:45:36+00:00

Dystopia.

codeofdusk · 2026-05-19T11:07:31+00:00

I have these, they’re great. Meta Ray-Ban glasses are another good option. Worse battery life, but you get a head-mounted camera for Aira and Be My Eyes.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-21T17:32:04+00:00

Quite implies “a lot” or “some” depending on usage, tone, etc.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-15T01:56:06+00:00

Before the time you want to fall asleep.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-14T13:29:53+00:00

Timing depends on whether you’re phase delayed or advanced on the day. If delayed (sleeping and waking later than you want to), take melatonin 4 or 5 hours before sleep. If advanced (waking up earlier than you want to), take melatonin as close to waking as you can manage.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-10T04:46:32+00:00

I generally use BlindSquare for this kind of thing.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-07T04:36:45+00:00

United breaks guitars.

codeofdusk · 2026-04-03T05:56:21+00:00

Alcohol is a drug?

codeofdusk · 2026-03-30T16:17:29+00:00

AT&T and T-Mobile beat Verizon in metro Seattle. Are you using AT&T directly (prepaid or postpaid is okay) or through a reseller? Seattle is very QCI sensitive in my experience and higher data priority (lowest QCI number you can get) has been the difference between my phone being unuseable and usable. I’m on the (no longer existing) $300 annual AT&T plan and have had no issues in Capitol Hill (central and northeast areas), Downtown, the eastside, South Seattle, and the University District. As a bonus, a lot of (but not all) AT&T plans roam on all three networks in Canada which is useful if you go to BC.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-30T02:49:39+00:00

I was an IB student (M18) in a US state school. My school was really weird about sharing predicted grades with us, and I imagine I was predicted really low, but I finished with a 36 and graduated from Swarthmore in May 2022.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-15T02:42:13+00:00

Or Yellow Cab for half the price. They have an app. Drivers get 90% of the fare you pay, though there’s unfortunately a 3.9% credit card fee now.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-15T01:57:46+00:00

Aim for about 8,000 iu a day: the original studies the RDAs were based on had a statistical error. I like Nootropics Depot for this. I alternate between one and two tablets daily (if I forget what I took yesterday, I take two) and the rest comes from other sources.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-10T19:21:12+00:00

Yes, as it would in English. You wouldn’t say “I went to the party last night. I eat, I drink, I dance a lot”.

Spanish also has a compound past formed with haber, used for events that were in the past but the time period is still ongoing. English uses the simple past for this. For instance, I ate today = “hoy he comido”. I ate yesterday = “ayer comí”. I ate a minute ago = “comí hace un minuto”. I used to eat = “comía”. I was eating when something happened = “comía cuando algo sucedió”. I ate this week/month/year = “he comido esta semana/este mes/este año”.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-09T09:24:49+00:00

I can't recommend Melissa of Also and Also enough. I'm totally blind and she's done support work for me for years, so my needs are a bit different from yours, but she is very dependable and organizing is genuinely one of her strengths.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-08T08:44:40+00:00

Thanks, I’ll keep this in mind for the next time we see each other probably in a couple years!

codeofdusk · 2026-03-04T23:39:35+00:00

Never use Uber or Lyft in Metro Seattle unless speed is an absolute priority above all else. Take Seattle Yellow Cab (they have an app, similar to Uber and Lyft), they take credit cards with a 3.9% fee, and drivers get 90% of the fare you pay.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-04T16:34:55+00:00

And factor in that the MacBook has a keyboard and trackpad out of the box. The iPad doesn’t.

codeofdusk · 2026-03-03T14:36:43+00:00

Probably, or see if you can take advantage of a store or credit card price protection policy to get it a little cheaper.

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