Converting books to digital copies

Not being able to read books causes quite a few problems when they are not available digitally.  Publishers are required to provide an accessible copy of a book to the visually impaired, however this rarely happens in an acceptable timeframe.  I have been waiting for one book for university for 2 months now, so if this was term time I would of been 2/3 of the way through the term.  So I would be falling way behind.  So how do I solve this problem.

I will give a brief outline here then in subsquent posts break it down into further detail on how to do each step.

It all starts with buying the book you want to scan and going to a friendly print shop.  I get the spine of the book removed.  Now some print shops can get a little funny with this as they appear to care about the publishers copyrights.  All you need to do is highlight that copyright law actually allows a visually impaired person to do anything they want to a book in order to make it accessible for them.  the RNIB even have a section on their website dedicated to this. read more

Raspberry Pi, Raspbian, HFS+, AFP and Time Machine

Since getting my Raspberry Pi I have installed a few different operating systems and had a good little mess about.  One great use I have found for it is plugging in external drives and utilising it as a Time Machine / Time Capsule backup device for my Mac’s.  At such a low price point with a 2Tb drive you can have a working time capsule for under £100! Certainly an attractice prospect for backups!

(This little HOWTO assumes you are running Raspbian)

There are a few steps you need to take in order to get this working, as you will need the Raspberry Pi to support HFS+ as well as running AFP to enable Time Machine.

School visit

I did a little school visit today to a high school in Sheffield called High Storrs.  It was one of the nicest school visits I have done.

It was a secondary school so the children were a little more interested in how I do what I do, rather than just seeing an olympic torch.  So I went in and gave a talk on how I got to where I am and the entire journey.  The interesting bit however was the questions by the pupils, they seemed to ask great questions.

Ranging from how I lost my vision, whether it was genetic and some of the issues surrounding my training.  It really seemed like the pupils were interested in how I had got to where I am.  They also loved Ascot and my son, who also attended.  My son just ran around kicking a ball around the gym and playing peekaboo, this made Ascot want to join in so he was ready to bolt at any second.

A couple more schools and colleges have asked me to pop in and talk about my training so will be great to continue to share my story with the local school children. read more

Running Style

For the past 2 years I have been a data driven runner. I logged everything and basically always ran with the thought in mind to beat the last bit of data I had collected. This served me well for a long time, but with everything in life I need to add a little balance.

With a constant need to run for the data, I was spending large amount of time running outdoors. With lots of runs easily hitting the 6 hour mark. As a lot of runners will know balancing running and the other elements of your life is very difficult. So after this years surgeries and my recent chest infection I decided it was time for a new approach for my runs.

My wife and I went and bought a bike and a child seat. With the idea if I was going out for an hour or so the family could come along and enjoy a bike ride. This new approach to running has brought some wonderful benefits. For the first time in 2 years I have been able to change my training route. With my wife acting as a guide on the bike I can run along side and we can go wherever we like. We have managed to cover some trails close to my house and even run around a few of the local villages. read more

What a week

The last 7-10 days have been rough. Due to my surgeries and guide dog training I had delayed all my exams until august. Unfortunately that meant this week I had 3 exams on consecutive days.

So as well as compressing all my revision into 2 weeks I had to memorise all the information for consecutive days. So this week I used a few memory techniques to memorise around 12,000 words in essay format. Now there is now telling if I remembered the right 12,000 words but I certainly hit quantity! This resulted in the past few nights me sat rehearsing pretty much non stop, this can get a little tiresome. So I was thankful that today was the last of the consecutive exams. I still have one more exam to go but compared to the three I just had to cram for the revision should be relatively simple.

I did however get some great news this morning, I don’t really want to say too much about it yet as I am not sure it will pan out. But I will put a little pin here to say….. something great might be happening! read more

Races

This year was supposed to be my big year of racing. With plans to amass enough points to compete at the UTMB. However due to multiple surgeries and guide dog training that wasn’t meant to be. So I figured my 2012 racing wasn’t to be.

Until! A friend of mine Charlie told me that the Great North Run were using the commercial I shot in the emails they were sending out. This inspired me to email ASICS and ask for a slot at the GNR. ASICS granted me the slot and I will now be heading to the race and running with Charlie and a runner I met recently Bryan.

With my 2012 qualifying a wash, I decided to compete in 2013 to qualify for UTMB. Now in order to even get to the qualifying races I need to qualify for the qualifier! They don’t make this easy! So I will now also be running The Round Ripon again with Bryan. This will hopefully secure my slot at Thames Path 100 mile next year which makes up part of the Centurion Grand Slam, which in turns gives me the UTMB points. Stick with me here! read more

TR24 – The Story

A few months ago a friend of mine, May. Contacted me asking if I wanted to run the TR24 and could put a team together. The TR24 is a 24 hour relay race held on trails. I agreed and started looking at putting a team together.

I jumped on Twitter and just started asking for team members. Before I knew it we had a little team! Yay, team done now its time to enter. I usually end up ringing the race director of events just to discuss the fact I can’t see and if there would be any issues with the course and so on. I was warned; “it might be very difficult in sections” I fobbed this off agreed to do it and entered the team.

2 weeks from race day we lost 2 team members, injuries and work commitments meant they couldn’t make it. So quickly we had to find replacements, luckily a few days later an ultra runner who lives incredibly close by added me on twitter. I asked him if he was interested and he jumped at the chance, one slot filled. May was busy trying to fill the other slot and 3 days before she managed to find someone. Luckily they were local to the event so could even help with setting up camp. read more

Health

Ever since my last surgery I have had problems with being ill. I was never able to bounce back from surgery for some reason. The first surgery went great, I was literally running ready a little over 18 hours later.

I have had a cough now for nearly 2 months and I just can’t shake it. It has really been affecting my training and I noticed it on the run up to TR24. Out with Sian I was unable to cover 2 miles as I just couldn’t breathe. I figured at TR24 with it being race day I could up my game and all would be fine.

I did manage to do my laps but then needed to lay down straight away to try and recover. It was horrid and I certainly can’t do events like that while ill!

So the plan is to try and get healthy, I have been and had a chest x ray to see if there is anything underlying that is causing a cough to last this long. Hopefully it will all clear up soon and I will be training ready. read more

A Large Slice of Pi

Ever since leaving my job in IT i have had a diminished interested in the whole topic.  I have obviously continues to use my computers but merely to complete set tasks rather than as utilising them as a hobby and for something to enjoy.

All that has changed with the arrival of my Raspberry Pi.  In a week of owning the Pi I must of run more than 12 different operating systems.  I am trying to get a working version of AirTunes through libshairport, I thought this was going to be an easy task, it appears not!

But that has what kept me going, I found myself willing the latest change not to work.  Just so I had to spend some more time researching and fiddling.  That hasn’t happened with computing for a long time for me, perhaps I am just used to the Apple “It just works” philosophy nowadays.

But whatever it is I am really enjoying computing again.  The Raspberry Pi is so accessible in terms of cost.  At under £30 and SD cards being incredibly cheap I can have a fully working computer for just over £30! I wish such cheap computing had been available when I was younger! I used to have to save up for around 6 months just to afford an optical drive! read more

Post Surgery: A New Chapter

I have just recently had my last eye surgery, this time it was on my right eye. While the surgery was successful I am still unsure whether there is an improvement in my eye. I think it will take time to settle down and hopefully improve.

However these past 4 months have been difficult the number of things I have delayed for surgery and guide dog training has just grew larger. It is like my life has been on hold the past few months and I was hoping at the end there would be an instant improvement. Now surgery has come and gone its time to start working on everything I have delayed.

The amount of revision I have to get through is astounding, I have no idea if I will manage to attain the result I want. I just have to comfort myself with the fact that year 1 grades don’t count, its just there to get you through to year 2. There is of course a chance I can still come out of year one with a first, however that is quite unlikely with only a few days to do months of revision. read more