Hey @JonathanMosen, I recently acquired an H1 essential and am trying to follow the tutorial you created for the #LivingBlindfully podcast. I’m trying to set it up, but I’m stuck on the year. I can’t seem to progress beyond 2024. Could you please let me know which buttons you use as arrows when navigating menus?

Well, the ham is going into the crockpot now and we'll be adding field peas to that in a few hours as part of our traditional New Year's dinner. Before we move on to 2025, I just want to send a shoutout to that #LivingBlindfully family and this wonderful community here on Mastodon. Wherever you are, thanks for being you and sharing your life with all of the rest of us. Happy New Year, y'all, from South Carolina!

Here are some reflections about blindness and the sense of sight I had recently, prompted by some discussions on #DoubleTap and #LivingBlindfully. I was born completely blind, and if I was somehow offered complete eyesight, I would not think of it as restoring something I was missing, but rather giving me something extra. For example, I would think of it the same way if I was offered the power that the Inquisitors have in the Mistborn series, which allowed them to sense metals around them to such a degree that they could sense the shapes of all the objects around them, including other people, from the small amounts of metal in their bodies. The Inquisitors had this sense instead of sight, because their power came from spikes that were driven into their eye sockets. This power would be just as new to me as the sense of sight would be, and would require just as much practice to use effectively. Also, both the sense of sight and the power of the Inquisitors would probably be just as useful to me in gaining information about my environment, so either one would have similar value as an extra tool. I know that sighted people also gain aesthetic value from the visual world, for example the beauty of a sunset or in someone's face, but I think an Inquisitor would also see beauty in different things, even if what they find beautiful with their sense is not related at all to what sighted people find beautiful. The Inquisitors would not sense color, but they would sense the inside of every object in addition to only the outside, and they would also sense the different metals and the amounts of all these metals and their variations throughout everything. In fact, the power of an Inquisitor would be more useful than the sense of sight for certain things, such as figuring out what's wrong inside of a computer, or finding a specific object in a drawer that's made of metal. Inquisitors also do not need light for their sense like sighted people do. Yet people do not see it as a hardship to lack the power of the Inquisitors, even though it would be extremely useful and provide additional sources of aesthetic beauty. The reasons for this difference seem to be that people who have sight, or people who have lost it, are used to having it, and the power of the Inquisitors is completely unfamiliar to them, and because society is designed around the sense of sight to a large extent, and not around the sense that the Inquisitors have. If an Inquisitor lost their power, and was offered either the sense of sight or the return of their power, I think they would definitely choose to have their power back. And if I was offered either eyes or Inquisitor spikes, it would be a hard decision for me to make, and I might end up choosing the spikes because of their additional benefits. I do often wish that some apps were more accessible, or that there were better public transportation near where I live, or that more intersections had beeping stop lights, or that I could more easily know if people are around me and who they are and any visual social cues, but I don't really feel the lack of sight by itself as a hardship. I've always thought of issues like these more as deficiencies in society or technology rather than in myself, except if there was some skill that I didn't know that I should learn. I think a sighted person in an Inquisitor's world, or an Inquisitor in a sighted world, would encounter many barriers, and would need to learn alternative techniques, just like blind people need to do in this world.

It looks like I, and every other Mastodon instance admin who has federated with #LivingBlindfully will be cleaning up their retries queue for some time to come, hopefully not in perpetuity. Does #Masto.Host not execute self-destruct on instances that go away? Seems like a basic thing to do. Or maybe I'm wrong? Ugh.

Greetings from Charleston, South Carolina, USA! Thanks to #LivingBlindfully I am finally getting around to joining Mastodon and adding my first post to the #Introductions. I am really looking forward to being part of this network and staying in touch with our global Blind community. My profile, like me, is a work in progress, so thanks for your patience as I familiarize myself with the user interface. Happy tooting, yall!

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 305, OneCourt strives to bring a new dimension to our appreciation of sports, legendary BBC broadcaster Peter White, and goodbye from Living Blindfully - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0305transcript/

I finished hearing the last Living Blindfully episode this afternoon. I'll miss the show dearly, but what a high note to go out on. Well done to @JonathanMosen and everyone who has helped make the show as special as it was.
#LivingBlindfully

#LivingBlindfully Episode 305:OneCourt strives to bring a new dimension to our appreciation of sports, legendary BBC broadcaster Peter White, and goodbye from Living Blindfully - https://www.livingblindfully.com/episode-305onecourt-strives-to-bring-a-new-dimension-to-our-appreciation-of-sports-legendary-bbc-broadcaster-peter-white-and-goodbye-from-living-blindfully/

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 304, stay fit with Achilles, improve your financial literacy with Penny Forward, and when screen readers duplicate OS functions - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0304transcript/

#LivingBlindfully Coming up on Living Blindfully episode 305, OneCourt strives to bring a new dimension to our appreciation of sports, legendary BBC broadcaster Peter White, and goodbye from Living Blindfully - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lbpreview0305/

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 303, Unboxing an iPhone 16 Pro, victory for United Blind Leaders, and Steve Tyler on the blindness agency leadership crisis - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0303transcript/

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 304, stay fit with Achilles, improve your financial literacy with Penny Forward, and when screen readers duplicate OS functions - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0304transcript/

#LivingBlindfully Coming up on Living Blindfully episode 305, OneCourt strives to bring a new dimension to our appreciation of sports, legendary BBC broadcaster Peter White, and goodbye from Living Blindfully - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lbpreview0305/

My iPhone arrived just as we started eating dinner. The dinner was delicious, but eaten with somewhat unintended haste. I'll now begin the process of transferring to this new iPhone. Thanks to everyone who contributed and to those who would cheerfully have contributed to make this possible. #LivingBlindfully #JonathanMosen

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 303, Unboxing an iPhone 16 Pro, victory for United Blind Leaders, and Steve Tyler on the blindness agency leadership crisis - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0303transcript/

#LivingBlindfully Coming up on Living Blindfully episode 304, stay fit with Achilles, improve your financial literacy with Penny Forward, and when screen readers duplicate OS functions - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lbpreview0304/

#LivingBlindfully Transcript, Living Blindfully episode 302, censorship of the spoken word in a world of AI, a walk with the Seleste Smart Glasses, and the Day One Journaling app - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0302transcript/

#LivingBlindfully Episode 304:stay fit with Achilles, improve your financial literacy with Penny Forward, and when screen readers duplicate OS functions - https://www.livingblindfully.com/episode-304stay-fit-with-achilles-improve-your-financial-literacy-with-penny-forward-and-when-screen-readers-duplicate-os-functions/

#LivingBlindfully Coming up on Living Blindfully episode 304, stay fit with Achilles, improve your financial literacy with Penny Forward, and when screen readers duplicate OS functions - https://www.livingblindfully.com/lbpreview0304/

#LivingBlindfully Episode 303:Unboxing an iPhone 16 Pro, victory for United Blind Leaders, and Steve Tyler on the blindness agency leadership crisis - https://www.livingblindfully.com/episode-303unboxing-an-iphone-16-pro-victory-for-united-blind-leaders-and-steve-tyler-on-the-blindness-agency-leadership-crisis/