A: Musing

Well, life begins at 50, so the cliches say. Blogging does too, so it seems. As the name implies (and names can imply a lot, as the makers of the old Aeroplane Jelly commercial well knew), this little blog is inspired by braille. It’s also being written using braille, because I’m a braille user: that’s a user of braille, not user made of braille (although the distinction is a subtle one). I’ve been using braille since age 5, and it’s been a year or two since then. I use it to read, write, play the piano, play scrabble, cook, and all manner of things. One of my current projects is to find a way of integrating it into ceramic pieces. All of my posts will be written using refreshable braille, although I’ll muse on other topics too. Web accessibility will probably get a cameo role. Like, for example: Myspace doesn’t allow blind people to join, because we can’t complete the captcha test (where you have to copy distorted letters and numbers from a picture into a text box). Captchas are supposed to tell computers and humans apart. So if you can’t pass the test, you’re a non-human. Hmm. So that’s why I’m like I am. It’s a good thing we aliens can still appreciate single malt whisky. But Myspace isn’t my space (is “cyber-apartheid” in the dictionary yet), so I’ll just stay around here for a while, and maybe phone home when I get low on the Lagavulin.