#152: The Scotish Tech Army

Welcome to Blind Guy's Chat, where Oren O'Neill—

Hello!

Jan Bloem— Hello!

And Mohammed Lashir—

Hi there!

Talk about the A to Z of life.

Well, hello ladies and gentlemen, and you're very welcome to episode 152 of Blind Guys Chat. Now, before we go any further, let's hand over to our resident technical expert. Oh yeah, that's Mo. Uh, yeah, for an update.

Is that what I am?

Well, yes, that's what—

You're a lot of things. You're also our legal expert. Yeah, you're, you're lots of things.

You're our HR expert. You're everything.

All things.

I think I should just be called expert and then, you know, that's my role.

Well, we don't want to downgrade Jan, you know, especially when he's not here to stand up for himself.

That's true.

Yeah. Well, especially when he's here to not— he's not here to stand up for himself. We want to downgrade him as far as possible.

Anyway, you've got a little update on, for those people who, and I was one of them, who I think we were as well, we all were Apart from Claudia, using the Tierra app, and we had spoken to Liam Geschwind on the podcast a little while ago. But you have an update about the Tierra app for people.

Yes, indeed I do. It's a bit of sad news in this case, and the Tierra app has shut down. The company behind it has ceased operations, unfortunately.

Oh dear!

You know, this is sad news, yes, but it's also. how the world of startups works. You start a company and it either works, in which case it can continue to grow, or it does not work, in which case you need to pivot and try to do something else. And this happened to Tierra, unfortunately.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah, it is sad, but hopefully those people go on to do other great things. And of course, we will have to wait for a new and good navigation app. Other people are still working on that, GoodMaps and NaviLens and other companies are hard at work. In fact, maybe we should get some of them on too to talk about what they are up to. But yeah, Tierra unfortunately is no longer alive.

And so, you know, you never know what might happen, A, with the people, and B, with the technology they've already developed, you know. So maybe it'll be taken and developed further by somebody else, or you never know.

Yeah, it may show its head somewhere else.

It certainly happened with Soundscape where the Scottish Tech Army got involved, which is a nonprofit group and actually—

The Scottish Tech Army?

Yes.

No, not the Tech Army. It wasn't the army. It wasn't the Scottish Army.

Well, they are called the Scottish Tech Army though.

That's a brilliant name.

I love it.

Yeah.

I wonder, is Blind Gordon, I wonder, is he their general or their lieutenant?

No, he's a fighter pilot.

Oh yeah, that'd be good.

Mrs. Blind Gordon is the gunner. He's the pilot.

All right.

Well, that's the, that's the news on Tierra. So, uh, we shall, um, move on to our guest, uh, who is all the way from the US of A.

Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. We'll read it out loud in a song.

Well now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for our guest for this week. This week we have a wonderful gentleman who is the only man to be able to score a goal in the World Cup finals while eating a flapjack. He is also looking for his money back because he recently didn't realize he was buying lunch for 2 guys in the Netherlands who decided to buy— that they would order lobster— what do you call it? Lobster bisque, is it? Is that what it's called?

That's what it's called.

Is that what you bought?

Yeah, that's what I had. Yeah.

He didn't realize he was playing that, but Mr. Eric Damry, formerly the big boss of Vespero, is with us enjoying his retirement and speaking to us from— I presume you're in Florida, Eric.

I am.

And it's morning time. And just for the sake of the show, please tell us what the weather is like in Florida right now.

Wonderful to hear you guys. Nice to be back on. Been a while. Um, I am here in Florida on the Gulf Coast, uh, in the Tampa Bay area, and it's about probably 88, 89 Fahrenheit, uh, which is, which is pretty comfortable. I think you guys would even be comfortable today, and, uh, the humidity is up a bit.

Yeah, we're getting somewhat of a heat wave in Europe at the moment. It's 24 in Dublin at the moment. I don't know what it is in the Netherlands.

It's way warmer than here. I think here it's 20 or something, 21. So that translates to around 73. And for you, I think 78, 79.

My wife and I were there the first couple of weeks when we got to see Mohammed. And Jan Blum, and that we had beautiful weather while we were there. And as soon as we left, it got really hot for you.

Yeah.

And I think it was the Florida heat coming to get you, buddy.

Yeah.

Were you traveling around all of Europe, Eric?

Well, this is our year of the European tour, I guess, because yes, we did a, uh, something I'd always wanted to do what was on my bucket list, and that was a river cruise.

Ah.

And we went from Budapest up to Amsterdam, and then, uh, we did a little visit in Munich before the cruise and a couple of nights in Paris after the cruise. So it was fantastic. I got to see so many places that I've never been to before, and what a beautiful country over there. It's There's so many fascinating things to see.

You went through Hungary, Austria, then Germany and the Netherlands. And which, which area did you like the most?

We really enjoyed everything. Um, they're all a little bit different, uh, but, but I think they have one thing in common, and that is the old architecture, you know, the The, you know, we saw many buildings that were 1,000 years old, uh, so many places. And then at each one of the stops, they had these great locals that would take us on tours, generally walking tours if, if we were close enough to the city, and we usually were. And those local guides have so much information. So There was one place, Regensburg, in Germany. I think it was Germany or Austria, and I think that was probably my favorite town. They were having— it was a Saturday that we were there, and they were having weddings at the city hall in downtown, and they bring in a new group every 30 minutes. So that You know, you could see the brides and grooms kind of lined up out there and, uh, and the streets were full. So there were, you know, they may have had 20 or 30 of their friends there, but there were another 300 tourists walking around watching the festivities. So it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, I, I, I actually have been in city centers while that was going on and it's always an interesting spectacle. Because of course we've got a lot of migrant communities too. Like for example, the Moroccan community will bring along music players while they go there and it will be like one big party.

At night on the river cruise boat, they usually would bring in some local players to come on our boat and perform for an hour or so. You know, we were always going through locks so they could stop and the people could get on and off at the locks. So we had quite a, quite a variety of music, and food was fantastic, and the wine, just lovely white wine from some of those regions over there. We're going back in the— towards the second half of August and we're gonna visit Rome, and then we're taking a cruise boat that takes us over to, uh, to Istanbul in Turkey, and then back to Rome before we come home. So these are like our European vacations that, you know, and I want to take them now. I'm in my late 60s. For those of you who don't know me, I'm in my late 60s now, and before, uh, Before anything happens, I figured this would be a good time to go. So we really enjoy it. We do a lot of hiking around. And, um, you know, after working all those years, and I traveled a lot and saw a lot of places, but we were always working and I never really got out and did any vacationing.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna— I was thinking of there. You, you would have traveled quite a lot, but you would probably wouldn't have had time to, to look at the cities or the locations wherever it was that Because you're probably just in and out doing presentations.

That's— yeah, yeah. I can remember a trip, and I did a couple of trips down to Australia and New Zealand, but the first one I recall, I was there for probably 8 or 9 days, and we did Auckland, Christchurch, and then over to Australia, we did Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, which I believe is the capital.

Canberra.

Yeah, Canberra, Adelaide, and Brisbane. So we, you know, and we would have meetings during the daytime with the government organizations or educational people, and then at night we would do a user group. presentation and talk. So I loved the trip, but it was a lot of traveling and didn't really get to see much other than, you know, meetings and presentations. So it was—

Yeah, definitely. Those work trips aren't like— I went to the NFB conference, of course, in 2024 for Vispero, and all I saw was the inside of the hotel. Same for ACB the same year. And then when we go to Frankfurt for Sight City, you don't just see the inside of the hotel, but you definitely don't go explore the city either. Like, in the evenings, you'll be having dinner with dealers and talks with them. And like, by day also, you'll have talks with dealers and other people that are in the industry to try to, you know, listen to them and see what is needed for their specific markets. So, it's definitely a work trip, it's definitely not the same as a vacation. I can attest to that. So, Eric, Rome is fantastic, by the way. You're going to enjoy it a lot. I went in 2018 with my sister and we walked all around the city and it's just, it's just a fantastic city.

Every—

all the food is delicious and the sights are spectacular. So.

Yeah. So we'll have one day and we're staying pretty close to the Colosseum. And we'll have one day walking around there. I've kind of got it all mapped out. And then the second day we're in Rome, uh, we plan on going to Vatican City and, uh, see some of Vatican City. So it'll be, uh, we're looking forward to it. You know, it's, it's funny, when I was working, um, I think about this all the time, I kept a work calendar But I didn't really keep much of a personal calendar. And now, you know, where I'm not working, I have to put everything on my calendar. So it's very full, and I'm always planning and trying to plan ahead and do things. So I don't know how you get any of this stuff done when you're working. I was always so busy, and maybe that's why we never did anything, because I wasn't planning to go anywhere. and do anything. But Pauline and I are just loving seeing the world and, and trying to catch up with friends whenever we're traveling to different locations where we know people will be.

So I believe in the US you have like this nice camper that you take everywhere, right?

And that, yeah, we have, we have a, what's what they call a fifth wheel that I pull with the truck, and it's a pretty good-sized camper. And we try to stay in the Southeast because it is kind of big. It's one of those things where you want to set it up and stay someplace for a week or more. So we've been to a lot of the state parks in Florida, and I did get up the East Coast all the way to Maine the first year with it, but I haven't gone back up since.

Do you keep up a little bit with the accessibility industry, or have you let go completely?

I don't, uh, well, first of all, I had bought a laptop when I was retiring. I hadn't owned a computer computer myself because I always had computers from work and that's what I always used. But the laptop I bought wasn't very conducive for running JAWS. It wasn't, wasn't a very powerful one like some of the stuff I had had from work, some of the good quality stuff. So I haven't kept a screen reader running all this time. I've been away from it and I do listen to podcasts, uh, and I, and I read a bit, mainly about, you know, new technology or medical treatments, things like that that are being done. So kind of keep up with it from that perspective. But I haven't really kept up with the industry or the people in it, or maybe I should say that aren't in it anymore, because a lot of the people that I had worked with years ago That's very true.

Yeah, that's very true. And, and was that a deliberate choice to sort of disengage a little bit, um, and only keep a light tap on things?

No, it— I actually thought I would be the other way around. I thought I would never get away from it. And to be honest with you, in the very beginning I stayed more tied in, but I kind of I would be frustrated because it's like I, you know, you miss it, but if you can't impact it, you don't really want to be knowing what you can't get done. You know, things, some things were happening like within the company itself, some changes would happen and decisions would get made that, you know, I'm not sure I would have agreed with doing things a certain way, but I have no say in it anymore.

Right.

So I need to stay out of it. And so I've kind of stayed further away, and the longer you're away from it, the easier it becomes not to get involved. So—

Well, I also think—

And I experienced this with Ted Henter. You know, Ted was someone who had worked in the industry for so long And when he left the industry completely in 2022, I think, or 2021— I mean, excuse me, 2001 or 2002— he was pretty much completely out, um, for the most part. And so he really lost touch with what was going on. He wasn't keeping up with the changes. And when we would talk, he'd have a lot of questions that You know, oh wow, where have you been? We've been doing stuff like this for a while. So, uh, yeah, when you're not, when you're not working in it day to day, you don't know what's going on.

Can I ask you just a general question about retirement? Because this is, this has been talked about, uh, I've had small conversations about this, but is in the US, is there a, is there a system or is it like everywhere else in the world that you just retire or is there a period of Of like when you knew you were going to be, let's say, a year out from retirement, did you decide or did the company decide or is there any policy amongst organizations that you begin to what I would say or call wind down a little? You don't suddenly stop working.

There's not a real roadmap for something like that. I think everybody, it happens a little a little more, you know, differently. But in my case, I think I officially retired at 63. And lots of people— I mean, people I, I, I know of people who have retired in their mid-50s, but others that go to 75. Um, and I thought 63 was the— was as late probably as I wanted to go, and I had made my mind up about that a few years earlier.

Okay.

So while I didn't discuss this with the company, I had often thought about it, and I thought about, you know, who would be the right person to try and replace me. Not that it was going to be my choice, but I wanted to be able to make the recommendation, and when I did make the decision and finally shared it with the CEO, I told him about Ryan Jones and I said, I think Ryan's the, the right guy to kind of step in and pick up the reins where I was. As it turned out, the CEO agreed and was very happy with the choice that we made. I had spoken with him afterwards and it really worked out well. But I agreed and gave plenty of notice, so I was around for 3 months before I left. And then I was always available for a phone call anytime anybody had a question.

So I can definitely attest to Eric not being— to Eric not winding down. Just before retirement, we had some very lively discussions, him and I, and he was in it till the end. And then when he was gone, maybe he was available to some people, but he definitely did not show up in the major company discussions anymore. Of course, you're retired, so at that point, you kind of should let go. It's interesting, Eric, that you were able to let go because you were not fully in the industry. And of course, also, You don't really need the product.

Yeah, it was easier for me to walk away from it than it would be for some others. And, you know, over the years I always noticed that there were a lot of people that used the technology that were in the industry that never left the industry. They might leave one company, but they end up at another one. So It was different for me because I didn't use the technology and I didn't— and I was prepared. And that's the other thing. And just in general, for people who are, you know, wonder about retirement, what it takes, you want to have things that you're looking forward to doing. You want to have a plan. You want to be thinking about what it is I'm going to do. And obviously you have to map out What it's going to cost me to live. And that's what I spent quite a bit of time, especially that last year before I went, you know, really making sure that we would be able to, to retire and I wouldn't end up having to go back to work. So it's worked out pretty good. I got some things paid down and, and things went well, and I convinced Pauline to retire early. So now we're able to do that traveling. We picked the town we were going to live in, um, probably 2, 2 and a half years before I retired. We had decided this town, Dunedin, here on the Intracoastal Waterway on the Gulf of Mexico. We picked this town because it was fairly small. There's about 34,000 people in it. There's a golf course and this Lots of restaurants and, you know, wine bars and breweries, and it's just a very vibrant feel about this town. And everybody's got golf carts, you can drive them around on the street, so it's a lot of fun. So we, we bought this town a few years before I retired so we could be here when I did retire, and, uh, that's really worked out well. We love it. So I have a great golf course play. It's a 100-year-old Donald Ross course that we could walk. So, uh, I, I love my golf, and I still follow my Red Sox, who lost last night but had won 15 games in a row, which they hadn't done in 80 years. So they're on quite a streak.

And were you watching any of the World Cup?

Uh, I've watched quite a bit, yeah.

Did you go to any games? Are you any interest?

No games. I just I didn't attend any, and to be honest with you, it looked pretty hot in a lot of those stadiums.

It did.

But I did follow the sport while I was here for the World Cup, and I must admit I haven't spent a lot of time following that sport in the past, but it's really exciting. It's a lot of fun watching it. Spain played amazing.

Well, Eric, um, I am curious, from your like 30,000-foot perspective, what do you think is the biggest new thing in accessibility, if you'd have to, if you'd have to pick?

I think the biggest thing hasn't actually come yet. I think you guys are just on the verge of what could possibly happen with AI as the processing power gets faster and faster and access to information. I can just imagine how, you know, when I think about like when we first created PictureSmart, uh, and what it would take to process the picture and then try and spit out some information. Well, that's so much faster now and it's probably so much better already. And I could just imagine what you guys will be able to create with the AI technology that you haven't even thought of yet. I would imagine voice recognition has got to be continuing to improve quite a bit, and I haven't had any experience with it, but what do you think, Lon? Has it continued to evolve?

Oh yeah, um, it already It already is evolving quite quickly, actually. And I mean, we haven't done anything with it yet in JAWS. It is something, of course, that we're looking at. We're looking at all of this AI stuff. But I think trying ChatGPT Live and especially the new mode that they have right now, there are other models that are not yet out that they have demoed, that I've seen demos of that are very impressive. I think The time to talk to your computer is coming. Whether it will work that way everywhere, that I think is still a question that remains to be answered. But voice interaction is going to become, and already is actually if you use the right tools, a lot more natural. I liken the old voice command systems to the command line where you'd have to sort of have very rigid sentence structures. You could only say certain things, and if you didn't use the keyword just right, the system would not understand you. And it's now changing into a much more natural conversation where—

Absolutely.

Yeah, it can just understand what you're saying and it does not need keywords.

And it can look into so many things.

Yes.

There is one of my most enjoyable podcasts that I listen to each week. It's a weekly thing that comes out and it's called All In.

All In.

All In Podcast. And it's a group of guys that used to play poker, and that's why they called it All In, because they always played Texas Hold'em. And that's one of the big things you do, you go all in. Well, these guys had played a lot of poker, and back around COVID time, they started this podcast, and they're all very wealthy, highly technical, and entertaining to listen to. And they talk about and talk with other highly technical people out there in the field about where technology is going, what's holding it back, when they think things will change, what, you know, companies are making decisions. So for those of you who are really into things like understanding where technology is going to be in the future, I think this is a great podcast to listen to. Look that one up.

Let's have a listen to it. Yeah.

Thank you for that recommendation.

The other thing that's coming that I think is going to be fantastic, uh, is robots. Um, and, and I think, you know, within the next 5 to 10 years, most households will have access to an actual working robot. They're going to become very inexpensive. They'll be able to cut your lawn. They'll be able to, you know, water your plants. They'll vacuuming. They'll be able to do everything. And I think it's going to become very commonplace. And what, and what they're doing with space travel right now, I have a cousin that lives in Widler Beach, which is about 60 miles north of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic coast of Florida, and this is where they launch a lot of these big rockets from.

Yeah.

And some of that new stuff that Musk's group has done, it's just unbelievable. You're 60 miles away and you can hear it and you can see the fireball. And watch it go up. And then the booster drops off the rocket once it gets up there, and it comes down and it lands on a ship in the ocean upright, and they haul it back, and they could be launching another rocket with the same booster within a week.

Wow.

So the turnaround time is just fabulous, and that was the big cost When we used to, you know, before we had that technique and that technology to be able to bring the thing back to Earth, they used to just crash in the ocean and maybe they'd retrieve it, maybe they wouldn't, but they would never use it again. So they would have to build from scratch all over for each launch. And so it's really fascinating to, you know, see what people come up with.

Yeah.

And you couldn't imagine that they ever would 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

What do you think would have been the greatest advance if we take like 1993 or '94, whenever you started, and we go to 2022 when you retired?

Thinking along the way, as I recall going through our process, just The basic access to the internet to be able to download a program onto your computer and run it. I mean, we used to have to— when I started, JAWS for Windows was on 4 3.5-inch floppy disks. So you had to get those 4 diskettes, you had to load them in the right order, and install the software.

Right.

And the training materials off of that. And eventually we got to a CD drive, which was nice because then you only had one. But you know what, everybody doesn't have a CD drive on their computer, so that was a problem.

Yep.

And then, and then we got to be able to download our software. Now that was, that was some, that was a big breakthrough to be able to walk up to any computer anywhere and not have to worry about having to discs, and I could always get the latest software. Because remember, if you installed off the discs, 3 months later the software would be different and you had to get an update disc from the company so you could have the newer version. And then the other problem that we had when we started, or, you know, people had to overcome, was they had to have a synthesizer. They had to have something that would speak. It wasn't enough to have a speaker in your computer, you had to have a voice synthesizer, and they were all hardware technology at that time. And they would range from— I remember like DoubleTalks you could get for about $300 or just under $300. There was another one called an Accent that was around $400 or $500, and they went up to the DECtalk We had a DECtalk PC and later a DECtalk Express, a portable box that would plug in, and those were about $1,000.

Mm-hmm.

So if you were buying a screen reader and a synthesizer, you could easily have $2,000, and you had to add the stuff into your computer, whereas today it's all software synthesizers, it's built into the program itself, and it could download and install on your computer in a matter of minutes. So those were some big breakthroughs that really opened this up for a lot more people to be able to use. And then I think when we got to the ability to buy stuff online and process without having to maybe do something on a Business day. I mean, and this is true with screen reading to a degree, but much more so with other things that we buy off of Amazon, to be able to go online and order something from Amazon. And heck, half the time here in the U.S., it'll, it'll be here the next morning. Sometimes it'll even be here the same day. That was unheard of. And, and we got to that in the U.S. with the Home Use Program. where people could order, they could go online on a website and buy it and be running the license instantly. And they could do it on a Saturday night or a Sunday night, it didn't matter. It was all good stuff. Faster access to good quality stuff at a lot lower price.

Yeah, so it's interesting, right? Because you don't really, as you think back, you don't really realize how things used to go. Like, a humanist tends to look at things with nostalgia and thinks that everything is better or was better way back when. But then when you hear you describe like these changes, you're like, oh yeah, I guess at that time things were complicated and difficult.

Yeah.

I remember getting ZoomText in 1997. And yeah, I sat there with my dad and we fed floppy disk after floppy disk into my computer, which didn't even have a floppy drive. We had to have like an external one, and it took, it took ages to install the thing. Um, so yeah, the things are really much, much different, and it's so seamless now, and you don't even realize.

Yeah, and then along the way, of course, the, the product evolves, you get more features. And, you know, it's just, you know, look at Braille display technology. That really hadn't changed all that much as far as the pins go. I mean, it's the same piezoelectric pins on many of the displays today that we were using 30 years ago. But the devices got better, the key presses improved, you know, the the movement of the keys and the sound. Things just— and the size. I mean, I remember Braille displays were all, you know, desktop displays. They were huge. And today there's people walking around with little displays with 12 cells on them. So, and you know, you can connect them to your phone and run your phone from a little tiny Braille display. That was an amazing breakthrough. What you guys will create, and I know, Mohamed, I mean, sitting in your seat, I feel very happy for you because you're in a position where you're gonna see so many changes over the next 5 to 10 years that you'll be involved in. And, you know, the challenge for you, of course, is trying to think ahead far enough. Where are we? Where's the puck gonna be? And you got to move to the puck. That's what Wayne Gretzky used to say in hockey. The key to being good is to know where the puck is going to end up and go there first. So you've got to figure out where is the technology going to take us, so what can we start working on so we'll be ready for it.

Yep, that is in fact really the, the discussions we always have, like what do we do When do we do it and how do we do it? And, you know, does this make sense at this period in time? I mean, I've killed features that we were working on that were working, but where I decided, no, this was good 3 years ago, it's no longer good now after testing it and trying it out.

Right.

And so you have to— yeah, you have, especially in AI where things change so fast, you have to sort of be nimble and understand that what you're doing May change at any moment, really at any moment.

I mean, we always had a list of things that we would want to be able to do that we couldn't do them all, so we had to pick and choose the right things.

That's basically the, the real challenge of building software is to choose what you're actually going to build and what you're not going to build. What are you not doing? It's the same with bugs where you have bugs and you try to solve them all, but you still have to choose which one do I solve now and which one do I solve next month while also building this new feature, right? There's a balance there.

I'm just stunned really that Eric When he began this interview, he was saying that he wasn't really involved so much in the central technology, but he's clearly, his brain is still going and he's still thinking about these things. I think you might need to come back, Eric.

No, no, no. But you never really stop thinking about this stuff when you're on the edge of it and there's so much exposure to it. Everywhere you look. So that's a lot of fun. I'll tell you one of the things, one of the things I did when, uh, one of the first things I did when I retired, and I had joined this golf club. And there's, you know, most of the people in the golf club that are members are probably over 60, and a lot of them are over 70. And there's Maybe 150 golfers that belong to these different groups, and the groups play at certain times, you know, maybe 9 o'clock or noon, and different days of the week. And so there'll be maybe 12 or 20 people in each group that are going to play each day. So when they would get together and decide who's going play, they would send a text message or they would call somebody and say, I want to make sure I'm on the list. And somebody had to keep track of all these people and then put together the group. And nobody else had any insight into how many people were going to play that day. And my wife had used a program called TeamUp that we used to use at conferences For different people scheduling their get-togethers and so forth. And I thought that would work out really good for this too. So I took this free app called TeeMup, made a bunch of different block times that people could use for golfing, made, made of different colors, gave them their unique names for the different groups. And it took me about a year to convince everybody that this was a better way to do it.

Wow.

But I literally got everybody to install this app, and now everybody in the golf club uses TeeMup to schedule all their golfing. And so it was kind of a— it was a pretty simple little technology, and it worked great. I wrote to the company and I told them how thrilled we were to be using their free app to do all of this stuff, and the company was really happy, you know, that we were doing it. So you find little things to go get involved in.

Well, Eric, thanks very much for joining us. You're very good. And I hope you continue to— we hope that you continue to enjoy your retirement. And you said you're going to Rome very soonish. So you might see Mr. Jan Lund there. He's in Italy. We don't exactly know where he is.

Is he vacationing? He's on vacation.

He's on vacation.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I won't be there for a couple of weeks, so he'll be back to work by then, probably.

So he can't, he can't order another lobster bisque at that point.

Yeah, I don't think— I, I think I get there on the 16th or something. And, uh, and by the way, Ora, we'll make sure we pop in to see you guys because I will be back to Dublin over the next 2 or 3 years. We'll definitely do it. We're coming back to Ireland. We've really loved Ireland.

Oh, we'd love to meet up with you there.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for taking the time. And I know it's only— it's early in the US where you are. So as I say, thanks for taking the time and enjoy the rest of your day.

I will. Thanks, guys. It's good to talk.

Bye-bye. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. We'll read it out loud in a song.

Hehehe. I'm not singing the emails.

Is Jan a secret country artist? Did he sing this?

Yeah.

I'm so fatigued.

I, I, I'm not singing the emails in song. I'm sorry.

You're not? I'm disappointed.

No, no, draw the line.

It's the time to be silly. It's silly season. It's August.

Oh, if you want me to be silly, I can do that. No bother. Singing, that might involve danger money for our listeners.

So go on, have you got any emails for us?

I do, I do. I have 2. So, uh, the first one is a short one from Claire McLaughlin, our friend who runs Scene Unseen, which is a wonderful artistic, uh, event that she runs. So she says, good morning, Clodagh and everyone. I'm delighted to tell you there will be a scene—

How does she know it's morning?

Well, it was for her, obviously. I don't know.

How do you know it's not morning?

I know nothing.

Well, I suppose it's a bit like—

This is a very existential crisis you're putting me in.

It's probably morning everywhere. Probably morning somewhere.

Morning somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Okay. Maybe we should record different versions. Anyway, I am delighted to tell you there will be a Seen Unseen live from the Venice Biennale, which is, uh, one of the most prestigious international cultural and contemporary art exhibitions.

We have friends in high places, don't we?

I'll tell you something. Yeah. And that's happening on Friday, August 14th at 2:30 Irish time. And it will be an in-person and online Seen Unseen. And participation in the event is free of charge for people living with sight loss. Tactile packs will be posted also free of charge to those joining online via the Zoom platform. So you'd want to get registered pretty quickly. I'm going to put the link for the registration in the show notes. And Claire says she'd be most grateful if we could share this with our listeners. Well, consider that done. It sounds like a really interesting one, so I think we should— well, if you're into art or whatever, register as soon as you can so you can get your tactile pack in the post. So yeah, best of luck with that, Claire. That sounds brilliant.

Yeah, well done.

Very cool.

She's amazing. I don't know how she does it. She's really incredible.

Yeah.

And we have an email from one of our favorite listeners, although we don't have favorites, but we kind of do. No, we don't. No, we kind of do. From Gordon Anthony.

Oh, the very man we were talking about.

We were.

The very man.

Talk about him and he shall appear.

Exactly. That's it. Hello all, he says. I thought I'd give you an update on my battles with Meta Glasses. Oh dear. Pull up a chair, folks.

The Scottish Tech Army is now battling Meta Glasses.

There we go. Last week, after my phone updated to the latest iOS, My glasses start started playing up. When I asked them to make a call or send a message, they said open the Meta AI app to reconnect. If it's open, try restarting it. Well, I tried and tried. Even went so far as to delete the Meta AI app and reinstall it. Then setting up my glasses again. Still the same problem. I've sent in a report, but whether anything will ever get done about it, I can't say. I'm waiting for the next app update in the hope it will fix it. Mean I mean. It's such a hassle asking Siri to send a message via WhatsApp instead of asking my glasses. I know what you mean. I have witnessed Oren lose his temper entirely at Siri. She seems to be the dumbest AI assistant. Is she an AI assistant? Whatever she is, she's very stupid. She hasn't had any kind of increase in capacity since she started, which was when? How long ago did Siri get invented?

Oh, sometime in the 1800s.

2012.

I mean, God Almighty.

Back when we just learned to make fire.

Like, she isn't good, is she, Siri? Like, she's, you know, right?

Yeah, she's recognizing dialects and what she's not, and simple questions and, yeah, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, like, you don't have a strong accent, so you think she'd, you know— I think, I wonder, is it that you have to use specific kind of way, specific phrases to trigger her? I don't know, but she doesn't seem to be very cooperative with you anyway. Maybe it's just you, Warren. Anyway, Um, yes, so Gordon says, anyway, after all that hassle, I promptly walked into a cupboard door and smashed my Gen 2 Meta glasses. Oh my word. Mrs. Bl— was the cupboard door open, Gordon?

Uh-oh.

Probably was.

Possibly. Mrs. Blind Gordon kindly went on to the Meta website and ordered a pair of the new Meta Adventurer glasses for me on the grounds that they are £100 sterling cheaper than the Ray-Bans. That's interesting. And if I'm going to keep breaking them, in brackets, that's the second, that's the second pair I've smashed, he says. We might as well go cheap. Well, cheaper, I think, would be fair. But anyway, so here's a quick rundown of the differences between the Meta Adventurer and the Meta Ray-Bans. First, you don't add them to the Meta AI app by opening the app and tapping add device. Instead, there's a barcode on the inside of the cardboard box the glasses come in. Fortunately, Elaine, Mrs. Blindgordon, spotted this for me or I'd have been struggling. But as soon as I pointed my camera in the vague direction of the box, it recognized the glasses and began the pairing process. That sounds good, doesn't it?

Mm-hmm.

This was pretty straightforward, although there is an extra step to adjust the fit of the glasses. I thought they felt fine, so skipped it. Just as well they fitted because there doesn't seem to be a way of going back and refitting them if they're not comfortable. That's interesting.

Oh.

The charging case is very different. It more or less folds out flat, and there is a small T-bar connector in the center. The glasses slide into this connector to charge and need to be slid out. Do not attempt to pull them out like I did before being shouted at, Gordon says. When charging the case, it is USB-C, but the charging port is at the base of one side of the case. It took me a few moments to track it down. In feel and shape, the Adventurer glasses are pretty similar to the Ray-Bans, although to me they feel a bit more plastic. The sound quality is good, maybe with a little bit less bass than the Ray-Bans, but perfectly good for most purposes. The power switch is now on the inside of the right leg or arm, not the left, and it's smaller with a bit of a spiky feel. It works exactly the same as the Ray-Bans.

Oh.

There is an action button, which is another small spiky switch just behind the familiar camera button on the top of the right leg or arm. You can press this action button to invoke Meta AI without saying the wake word. In some countries it can have other purposes, but that's the only one that works for me. I only have— sorry, I've only had them for a few days, but they work just like the Ray-Bans, so I'm very happy with them as they have an alleged 8-hour battery life. Wow, that'd be good. Finally, I have now begun wearing a baseball cap when indoors in the hope that the cap's peak will collide with doors before my new glasses do. Elaine's patience with me smashing these expensive bits of kit is wearing thin. God love her. Yeah, I don't blame her. That's all for me. I'm not going to discuss the World Cup on the grounds that Scotland did their usual. I wasn't expecting much more, but the younger generation were very disappointed. Me, I'm used to it.

Thanks to Blind Gordon for that. I hope you get sorted with your issue.

One trick that I use, but it doesn't always help with cupboards, especially not if they're high up, but I walk around with my hands out in the house in case I've forgotten a door or something.

Oh, I do that.

Yeah, because otherwise, you know, I— yeah, otherwise I smash my heads. I don't have Ray-Bans. I have the Ally Solos, but I never put them on because they don't work. But the Ray-Bans, money well spent. Those, those are not good. Um, those were not a good investment. I gave them the benefit of the doubt back when I got them. Um, but in 6 months there were barely, barely any updates. They were not a good investment in the end.

So.

Well, no, I do hope you get sorted with your Meta, uh, on your iPhone, uh, issue.

Uh, yeah, Gordon.

I wonder, is it more an iOS problem than a Meta problem?

Well, I don't know. Gordon has been— he has asked me to check it out on mine, and mine are still working fine. So he might just need a new brand new phone. And Mrs. Blank.

Hey, I have an idea. I have— he's already smashed his Meta glasses. Maybe he needs to smash his phone too. Then everything will sort itself out.

Oh, no, Elaine. I've dropped my phone down this concrete set of stairs by accident.

I am a technical expert, remember? So you should follow me.

You are. This is true. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, well, Gordon, you listen to Mo, but make sure that Elaine isn't listening to this episode because I'm very gross.

Otherwise she'll kill me.

We don't want that. She will. But yeah, good email again.

Uh, okay folks, thank you very much for listening. Uh, as we are now starting a kind of tradition. Last year we took the month of August off, and as today is the last Thursday in July, we will be taking this month of August off. So we will be back in September, and I cannot remember the date, but you'll know. It'll pop up on your podcast feed.

3rd of September.

Is it the 3rd of September?

3rd of September is the first Thursday, unless you want to make it the 10th.

Well, we'll see. We'll keep them guessing. But thank, thank you for listening, and we shall—

You are very nice.

We shall see you in theoretically a month's time.

Okay, happy August!

Bye!

Happy August!