More really huge changes for DigitalDarragh.

Aug 8, 2012 | ,

Change is finally here!

People who have read this blog for a long time will remember that over the past few years I’ve mentioned the idea of breaking up the website into two or even maybe three parts. Although it could be potentially difficult to keep all three parts up to date, people could focus on the parts that most interested them. Well, about six months ago I really started to give this some serious thought.

I approached a few design companies and I spoke to some leaders in the online media and social media areas. All agreed that breaking up the sites would strengthen my online brands and optimise the targeting of blog posts to interested audiences.
What this boils down to is money unfortunately. DigitalDarragh.com is a great hobby but it doesn’t make money. It possibly could if I added advertisements to the site but that’s not a route I’d like to go down. Basically, my online activity can be broken into three different parts:

  • Firstly, there’s the technology part that aims to promote me as an experienced technician and system administrator. I have had a company for the last while called Computer Support Services. I do business under this company name so it makes sense to push it’s brand more openly online.
  • The second part is music. I am a busy musician with a huge interest in Irish traditional music. It is time that I push the Darragh Ó Héiligh name on the web as being a musician ready to entertain and teach.
  • Finally, the DigitalDarragh part is where I get to relax and play around with new stuff. Therefore, it’s unlikely that this website will change much at all. It will continue to be my main blogging platform and my main online presents on social media sites such as Twitter will continue to be recognised by this name. The name and hey, lets face it, the brand of DigitalDarragh is valuable so it will remain the core of other websites that I run. For this reason, on other sites such as Computer Support Services and Darragh Ó Héiligh the DigitalDarragh.com site will always feature somewhere.

So, for technology or music, you know where to go now.

Achil island and Scoil Acla. My thought’s.

Aug 8, 2012 | ,

This post is written for The DarraghOHeiligh.ie website and blog. This site is focused on the Irish traditional music that Darragh plays with the aim of highlighting and promoting his music. More information regarding this site will be available shortly.

I’m just back after a really fantastic week in Achil. I attended the 26th Scoil Acla. It’s similar in a lot of ways to the willy Clancy week. A number of master musicians give up their time to teach tunes and technique to other musicians of varying degrees of experience. Someone like myself gets the opportunity to focus on learning new tunes and tightening up on technique and the beginners get the opportunity to play music with other people of the same level in a very friendly and helpful environment.

Scoil Acla is more focused on learning and music than other festivals I’ve been to of this type. This is probably due to the fact that Achil island is very rural. You really need a car to travel between the different venues and you are very lucky if you find a foot path.

Classes last about three hours with a half an hour break in the middle. There are classes for every Irish instrument you can think of I think.

When I got to Achil I was very worried at this remoteness because as I don’t drive for obvious reasons, it would mean that I had no choice but to rely on the people I was with. Fortunately, they couldn’t have been nicer so it wasn’t a problem. Still, people who know me will understand that I hate relying on people to get around. It took a while to get use to.

There were a few other things that took some time to get use to as well. I don’t want to seem big headed but I was well above the standard of the pipe classes in my opinion. It took me a few days to realise that I could still get something out of them. It was actually one of the friends I was traveling with who changed my outlook on the entire week with one simple statement. “It is what it is”. Yes. That simple. I decided after some thinking to make the best of it and from then on my outlook completely changed. I hovered around different classes for the rest of the week recording as many tunes as possible so I could learn them in my own time and I sat in on a class with my original Uilleann pipe teacher, Mick O’Brian. This was the best thing I could have done. He was very critical of my playing. That’s not to say it was bad, he just picked up on every possible thing that I could improve on. This is exactly what I wanted. He didn’t let me away with a thing! This meant that new tunes I learned were played exactly as he wanted with the technique he so expertly plays. It was really nice to push my playing and to find fault with the technique I have developed in the past twelve or thirteen years since my last lesson.

One thing I was surprised at was the lack of sessions in the afternoon. This was for two reasons. Firstly, because of the distance between each pub it was harder for sessions to start spontaniously. The second reason was that to my amusement, people were actually working on the tunes that they had learned in the morning. I was amused because at most other festivals people spend the morning learning and the afternoon meeting other people, playing music and socialising. I kind of admired the culture that has built up at Scoil Acla. Again, I think it is very related to the type of environment it is hosted in.

I met some lovely people over there. So many of the up and coming Irish musicians that I met were from other countries! France, Italy and even Japan had great representation. It’s so funny to introduce yourself to a lovely fiddle player or harpist at the end of a set of tunes to hear a foreign accent respond to your greeting.

I don’t think I’ll be back at Scoil Acla next year but I really enjoyed it this year! I really think every musician should be willing to go back for a lesson about every ten years. It’s a surprisingly rewarding experience to have new ideas to incorporate. No matter how good we think we are, there’s always someone who does something better. Someone asked me why I was bothering to take a class. My response was simple. The day I stop learning is the day I stop playing. No matter how experienced you are or no matter long your playing there’s always something new to try.

Uilleann pipes – Made in Japan.

Aug 6, 2012 | ,

It use to be a joke among musicians that it was only a matter of time that if you looked at a set of Uilleann pipes, sooner or alter you’d see a sticker saying made in Japan. well, that time has come! But it’s not what you think. A maker by the name of Makoto is making some of the nicest pipes I’ve ever played. Their such a comfortable set and they sound so nice that I knew I was going to come home and write a quick blog post as soon as I could. Go visit Makoto’s site and see for yourself.

A nice piper, a nice pipe maker and seriously, he slaggs as good as any Irish person. 🙂

Thought’s about the Mac; post 2 – Tips and tricks.

Jul 27, 2012 | , ,

It’s funny how easy it is to get motivated to write a new blog post when using such a comfortable keyboard. Sorry, Emma expects that I’ll mention the keyboard during every Mac related post… I aim to please. 🙂

I’m learning a lot about the Mac and the way OSX does things every day. I thought I should list some of the little tips and tricks I’ve picked up. I should give credit where credit is due of course. A lot of what I learn is shared freely by the Mac users on Twitter. Without them I think I would have found this process particularly difficult.

I’ll break these down into a list.

  • When using the YoruFukurou Twitter client with Voiceover, you will find that if quick nav is turned on replying to tweets can be a little hit and miss. Pressing enter on a tweet may result in the wrong name being added to the text field. The very simple solution to this is to turn off quick nav while in this application. This actually has the effect of making navigation around the various tables, tabs and edit fields much easier.
  • In mail, voiceover tells you that a conversation has a number of unread messages. Again, when using quick nag expanding the is conversation to read the messages in it is not as straight forward as you might think. You have to interact with the message, find a particular graphic and hit VO space to activate it. Again, it’s one of those situations where the message table works best if you turn off quick nav. To do this, press the left and right arrows together. Then you can expand the conversation by pressing right arrow. For some reason, Voiceover isn’t particularly responsive when reading messages and at times, if a conversation is collapsed it can fail to read anything at all. This could be something I’m doing wrong though. Of course, any comments regarding this or any other Mac post are more than welcome.
  • The widget area is cool! I’m still getting to grips with it but from what I’ve been able to figure out so far, widgets are reasonably accessible for the most part. I’m still looking for a nice RSS reader though but I’m sure I’ll find one eventually. I think the widget area is easier to use when the trackpad commander is turned on. Double tap the right side of the track pad to bring up a list of widgets. Configuring some of the widgets can be a little hit and miss but it’s certainly possible given some time. For example, the weather widget let me configure my locality but the done button wouldn’t work when I used the arrows in conjunction with the VO modifier to navigate to it. I found that I had to delete the county and country from the text box and re-add it again. This time, instead of using the arrows, I tabbed over to the done button and hit VO and space to activate it. I have no idea why but this works perfectly every time. By the way, when I say I hit VO, I mean that I am using the standard Voiceover modifier keys. These are control and option. Yes, unlike Windows and Even Linux screen readers that have just one modifier button, Voiceover has two that need to be pressed together. In my view, as a beginner I should add, this complicated modifier is just the start of what is one of the most mind bending keyboard command structures I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Seriously, I don’t know what the person who came up with these keyboard commands was smoking but it must have been some powerful stuff!
  • To bring up the notification bar, swipe with two fingers from right to left starting at the very edge of the track pad. Swiping from the middle or more accurately, not swiping from the very edge of the trackpad will cause voice over to stop interacting with the current control. I like this actually. To get out of the notification area, either scrub the trackpad with two fingers or press escape. Both actions do the same thing essentially.
  • To get the number sign, press command and 3.
  • To get the Euro sign, press command and 2.
  • In the menu extras area, you can’t just press space when using quick nav like you could in previous versions of OSX. I know that it was called something different in previous versions as well but it’s basically the same thing. I don’t know why they have broken the convention in this single area. It’s actually a bit frustrating. Anyway, as I’m sure you know, either press VO and space to activate the item or use the and down arrow combination.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of the Voiceover help. Press VO and h to launch this. Using the commands help is brilliant when getting started. Not only will it list the commands, you can press enter on one of the commands to perform that action. One of the commands I find most useful is in the general menu. It’s “Bring window to front.” So many windows are launched containing system messages but for some reason you can’t set focus to them using command and tab. Pressing VO, shift and F2 usually does it though. Oh, that brings me onto another irritation while using the Mac. On the Mac book pro and the Mac book air, a number of Voiceover commands such as this also require you to press the function key as well as for example, VO and shit. HOwever, it doesn’t actually say this in the commands list. It’s annoying to think a command doesn’t work only to find that it’s one of the few that requires the function button for some reason. I’m not even sure why! Almost all of the apple keyboards are the same. Why it would require the function key is a bit of a mystery to me.

Ok, my bus is getting to it’s stop so I have to go. Let me know if you have any questions or better yet, any suggestions.

Until next time!

Thought’s about the Mac; post 1

Jul 26, 2012 | , ,

Sorry for not posting yesterday, I’m still getting use to this Mac. Because OSX is very different My plan is to document my progress as I learn more about how OSX does things. of learning an entirely new screen reader at the same time. Because of this, a lot of my findings are from the perspective of a blind MAC user therefore unfortunately may not be as interesting to the sighted readers of my blog. However, stick around, you might learn something… It’s a huge learning curve and it’s compounded by the necessity of learning an entirely new screen reader at the same time.

As I was saying before, I’m comfortable with some of the more administration type tasks required on the Mac such as joining them to Active Directory, configuring group policy for them, installing different AntiVirus etc but actually using it from an end-users perspective was completely new to me. Fortunately I’m not starting at square one though.

Right, lets get started. The first thing I do when getting comfortable with a new system is install the applications that I use the most for day to day life. That’s a calendar, notes, Email, Twitter and some kind of text editor. A few years ago in the Linux world, I recorded a lot of audio tutorials to assist users with these tasks but I’m delighted to say that I don’t have to this time. I’m coming to the Mac game later than others so a brilliant website is doing a much better job than I ever could. It’s AppleVis. Go over there and listen to some of their podcasts. I couldn’t recommend them highly enough

Now that I have my mail, calendar, notes, text editor and twitter applications set up I am much more inclined to use the Mac over my PC. That’s not to say I think the Mac is better than the PC, I’m not sure about that yet but it means that I force myself to use the Mac to give it a fair chance.

For mail, notes, calendar and text editing, I’m using applications that are shipped with OSX. Thanks to OSX 10.8 Mountain lion, integration with iCloud is stronger than ever so notes, reminders and even files are shared across devices almost instantly.

For Twitter, I’m using YoruFukurou. Is that the right spelling? Ah who knows! I’m too lazy to go look. What kind of a name is that anyway? Don’t get me wrong though, It’s a brilliant application. Probably one of the best twitter clients I’ve ever used. The only thing I would say, and this is try across all applications on the Mac, consistency of keyboard navigation could do with some attention by the Voiceover developers. Sometimes quick nag is perfect, sometimes it’s absolutely terrible and actually causes applications to behave very erratically. In fairness to YoruFukurou the reason why this is such a brilliant Twitter client is it supports dozens of keyboard shortcuts making it very easy to reach almost every Twitter related task.

One application I didn’t mention is for messaging. It’s called Atium. Overall, this application is very good but if comparing it to the usability and efficiency of using Windows Live Messenger, I have to say that it’s lacking a lot. For example, in Windows and Linux, when I get a new message I expect the screen reader to announce it automatically. On the Mac, everything is very manual. That would be fine but without some kind of feedback, messages can and will be missed.

I will definitely blog in more detail about my experience on the Mac but I don’t want to make the posts too long. Come back again tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have had time to write some more thought’s down.

How lucky am I?

Jul 24, 2012 |

In films etc people talk about the luck of the Irish. Up until now I’ve dismissed this as being a lode of nonsense. That is until I actually thought about it this morning. What is luck anyway? I’ll tell you what luck is. In Ireland, the definition of luck is leaving your rain jacket in work because it’s lovely outside only to find that four hours later the rain poors from the sky before you have the chance to get home. Some how, you manage to get home then back to work the next morning without getting wet. See? This is the definition of luck. Surviving the Irish summer without getting any more wet than you would at any other time of the year.

It’s getting a little tiring though. I leave the house before 7AM and the weather is horrible. At 5PM when leaving work the weather is either all right or lovely. Commuting in Ireland means you need to dress for every season in the one day.

Sexy hardware.

Jul 23, 2012 |

People think I’m funny saying that a computer or something technical is sexy but I really don’t care. Look at the Mac book air! It’s sleek, smooth, light and strong. There’s nothing about the physical design of this tiny laptop I don’t like. I’ve been a fan of the Apple keyboards for years so it goes without saying that for me, this was one of the major selling points of this but I wasn’t expecting to find the entire package this appealing.

I have a good grasp of the basics of using OSX but equally as using a Mac as my primary non-work system I am forced to learn a lot more. Navigation around applications seems slow to me at the moment but this is very likely because I’m not using all the power of the Voiceover screen reader yet. Text editing is definitely the hardest thing to do at the moment. I am finding it hard to become comfortable with the way the cursor moves and it’s placement in relation to words and characters in comparison to the PC. Still, it’s an interesting and enjoyable learning process.

I’m still in the honeymoon stage but I plan to document my successes and failures as I come to grips with this new system.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I can’t promise that I’ll be much help but I’ll certainly try.

My first post from Mars edit.

Jul 22, 2012 |

I bought my first Mac on Friday. I couldn’t pass the opportunity. Now, I’m determined to use it as my primary non-work system. This means finding applications that I can use easily and efficiently for mail, Twitter, web browsing, RSS and of course, blogging. I could of course add posts using the browser but I like being able to write off line and posting later when I get the change. One thing I have to say at this stage though is I really love the keyboard on the mac platform. I’m using a Mac book air at the moment and I find it incredibly comfortable.

So, anyway, as I said in the title of this post, I’m writing this post using an application called Mars edit. This application costs just over 31 Euro and it seems to be worth it. I’m still getting use to it but already I’m writing a new post within seconds of opening it for the first time so it can’t be that difficult.

I’m going to keep this post short for the moment. Just a quick observation. When it automatically corrects a mistake, it makes a sound to let me know. Isn’t that cool?

Music or Technology.

Jun 22, 2012 | , , ,

Work to live. Don’t live to work and equally, play to live. Don’t live to play. This is my new aspiration. I’m lucky. I love my job but lately I’ve been spending far too much time working and not enough time playing. Finding a better balance is something I need to prioritise sooner rather than later.

I don’t mind saying that for a long time now I have been giving serious consideration to moving away from my career in computing into the life of a full time musician. It is a very attractive option but it would be a huge change with a lot of draw backs. My father once said that in his opinion. Being a musician carried limited opportunities for advancement. Once you reached a certain level there was no possibility for improvement. I’m sure he wasn’t just talking about musicianship, technical ability and skill. He was quite rightly pointing out that especially in Irish traditional music; there is a certain limit to the size of the proverbial ladders that someone and clime. Once you reach that peak there is nowhere else to go. In the Information technology industry, the ladder is much higher leading to many more possibilities for improvement, promotion and let’s faces it, increased remuneration. There is also a lot of competition in Irish music. That’s a great thing. Don’t get me wrong. It means that the quality of the music is constantly improving at a rate that can be described as nothing less than astounding. Just listen to the children being taught at the moment. Their incredible! It would mean that I would need to ensure that I actually practise once in a while though.

Working with computers every day is posing its own set of problems. I am continually hampered by the fact that the assistive technology that I depend on so much is in a constant state of catch up with the rest of the world. Almost every new application that is released by Microsoft, Symantec, Mcafee, Trend micro, HP, Dell, VMware and IBM causes yet another problem for me as a screen reader user. It has reached the stage that I need to regularly enlist the assistance of users of iPhones and iPads who can take the time to talk to me over face time so they can see the errors on the screen when my assistive technology cannot read them. I ask you this openly. How can we expect employers to see us as having the same potential as people who have sight when a new application is released and a screen reader user can’t access over 50% of the interface. When you administer dozens of systems, how can your employer be expected to look the other way while you struggle to use simple parts of applications because the screen reader can’t read what’s on the screen. I am frequently in the position where it probably looks like I’m just being lazy or wasting time but in actual fact, I’m prolonging a particular job because during my spare time I’m trying to write a script for my screen reader to get around some strange application. Or, worse, I’m waiting until I can get someone to quickly let me use their eyes for 2 minutes. See, I’m stubborn. I hate admitting that I can’t access systems. I’d rather be seen as incompetent, lazy and slow before letting people see that I’m struggling with accessibility. It’s probably silly and without doubt a lot of you think I’m crazy. It’s probably also true that a lot of you are wondering why I’m writing so bluntly with a basic admission that I’m finding it almost impossible to do my job. Simple. I find it almost impossible but I’m absolutely completely committed to doing the very best I can and until that stops, I know I will succeed. That’s not me being over confident or having a big head, I’m simply saying that I can’t afford to give up. I spoke to someone on Twitter two weeks ago and although he doesn’t know me, he was able to see my frustration within ten minutes. I don’t know who this person is really. I don’t’ know how much experience he has or even where he’s from. He however said something that hit home to me. He told me to be careful. “Constantly fighting accessibility battles can very easily burn you out”. How true this is! I would bet that all my stress is caused by trying desperately to access systems. I’m quite good under pressure. Outages, major changes, upgrades and problems don’t bother me too much. They all have a logical solution and it’s not like with the day to day work problems come up every day. Accessibility or the lack thereof is just driving me crazy. I sometimes fear that I may have hit a glass ceiling in this type of work. I can see… excuse the pun… what’s above me and I know how to get there but I can’t get past the step that I’m on now. It’s not like I couldn’t go in and configure a Dell KVM. It’s not difficult. But, the interface is QT based so I can’t access it. See what I mean? That brings me to a very quick point that I wanted to make: This is not the fault of the assistive technology developers. If leading companies such as Microsoft do not use good design practises in all of their applications how then can we hope for any other company to? Making an accessible application is not difficult. It just takes consideration. That’s a topic for another day though.

So, you can see my dilemma. Play music full time, earn less money with fewer prospects for promotion or enhancement or feel like I’m banging my head off a wall every day trying to make a square peg fit into a round whole. I’ve often said that I’m lucky. I love my job. I love working with computers but the more I achieve and the higher on that ladder I keep talking about I clime, the more I seem to hit this inaccessible wall.

Another very important point to consider is, music is my escape. I heard it described yesterday as like jumping off a peer into a deep river. You start off in one world but when you hit the water you are in a completely different world with different rules, different movements, different priorities and different goals. Hold breath under water. Breathe while swimming. Use different muscles. Music is like this. While playing music the same rules don’t apply as working. It’s a very focusing activity. I would be very afraid I’d lose that escape if I played music full time. Where would I go to relax then? Back to a computer? Could the worlds work in reverse?

My mother commented before that until I suddenly announced one day that I had made my mind up to go to college and study computing that she always felt that it was a fore gone conclusion that I would be a full time musician. That’s interesting isn’t it? Here’s a little known fact. Out of both my parents, I would consider my father to be the more musical one. So, that perspective surprised me a lot. In a way, I considered myself very lucky. By fourteen or fifteen, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I even knew the course number. DK054.

It’s an interesting question and an interesting choice. I don’t expect I’ll answer it any time soon. I’d still like your perspective though.