the blog of a bear

this is where a bear will post stuff.

Archives for March 2013

in response to an article I read, and a reminder to the TTC.

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I was scrolling twitter, and ran across
Blog shames TTC riders who take up extra seats
so I scrolled on over to this blog and while I agree with the centament, and the frustration, I don’t agree with some of the language being utalized. But since I can’t figure out the submission form, I’m just gonna post my thoughts here. Your comments in the comments section would rock. I’m blockquoting it because it was originally for that blog, but I couldn’t figure it out.

To those that crowd the front of the bus/streetcar when there’s clearly an entire back of said vehicle available. Kindly do us all a solid and move back and park your rear in an available seat, or hey you can even stand back their to! miracles! Oh, I’m sorry, that would be common curtisy. and some ttc riders are so all and mighty they’d rather not actually be curtius. DO not get me started on huge strolers, treatment of bus/streetcar drivers, etc. because I’d be here all day. Related: To you that think that not giving up a seat to a disabled rider is a good idea. how about you lose the use of your legs for a day and ride the TTC, then we’ll talk, k? thought so. In closing, learn you some common curtisy, you require one seat, put bag in your lap, or *gasp* under the seat, wear your children,leave the huge strollers at home, and use a smaller one. like duh, move to the back of the bus if it’s not crowded, or to prevent overcrowding, and if a disabled rider gets on, for the love of all that’s squeaky get your sighted non disabled bum out of the seat.

That’s all I have to say.
Comment away!

repost from an external source: A Professional Apology from your Web Host.

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the following was originally
over here
and is reposted here, because it’s absolutely funny.

A Professional Apology from your Web Host
So like. Ok check this out. We have this big data center right? And this big data center is like really big and stuff, and it uses a lot of this power stuff. Well like ok so you know when you have really important stuff like I dunno your computer or your Xbox or something and if the power goes out you want to keep it from just suddenly turning off right? Cause there’s nothing worse than when the power goes out during a game of Call of Duty and it’s like “Oh Crap man I was just about to win and shit just got real and the hell?”
So you plug it in to this thing like a UPS or something kinda like the dudes that deliver packages and I always have to sign for shit. I mean it’s no big deal anyways since I don’t work during the day and deliver pizzas at night and the UPS guy is always here around 2:30 or so. Oh yeah. So ok About that.
So our really big data center is supposed to have a UPS which it does… I think. But apparently like ok so some squirrel was like chewing on the wires again and it’s like “stop it damnit”, but anyways. So this squirrel is all up there omnomnoming the wires, and like zap! The squirrel is now like a McSquirrel or something which probably wouldn’t taste good even with cheese and mayo, but like the power got all funny and the data center went pop and apparently the UPS was never plugged in cause Joe was like all like “Dude I’ll do it tomorrow.”
So now our customers like can’t run their websites and stuff which sucks because now the world is all like “Omfg where’s all the websites with cat pictures”, and some 15-year-old can’t see lolcats or something and kills himself and then it’s like on the news abouthow we really fucked up and the headline is all like I Can has funeral and everyone laughs but it’s a real dick move.
So we’re trying to fix it, but it’s like difficult and we think we got it so we want to apologize if your site wasn’t working but it should work now so don’t cancel your service. We promise this won’t happen again. Until next week.

yeah, that’s so
dream host
as seen
over here
and why I’ll not go back to them again. Nice and stable, right? /sarc/

a response to my dropbox support ticket about accessibility.

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The following is the response posted to my
support ticket e-mail to dropbox
yesterday.

From: David M. – Dropbox Support
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:28 AM
To: Shane Davidson
Subject: Dropbox Support – Re: interface changes do not always mean accessibility.
## IMPORTANT ## Text below this line won’t be added to the ticket
You can add a response by replying to this email.
Please be sure to reply with the same email address that you used to originally contact us.
David M. – Dropbox Support, Mar 13 09:27 pm (PDT):
Hi Shane,
Thanks for contacting Dropbox.
Our engineers have been notified of this issue and are actively working towards fixing it. Unfortunately, I can’t give you an exact timeline that a fix will be available but I’ll be sure to notify you when it’s released!
If you have any additional questions or concerns please let me know.
Best,
David

I’m really hoping these aren’t just words and that this does mean dropbox devs are actually working towards a fix to bring back accessibility to dropbox 2.0.
We’ll see what happens in the coming days.

an open letter to dropbox, interface changes don't always mean it's accessible.

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update: a response was received on March 14, 2013.
as a longstanding user of dropbox, I’ve grown to love it, from it’s ease of use, to it’s support on so many platforms, windows, mac, android, and iphone. So when 2.0.0 was early released and put up as the perminant stable download I thought nothing of it, until I noticed the right click menu was no longer accessible.
I did some research and noticed I wasn’t the only user experiencing this issue, and not the only OS effected, as the mac was effected as well.
I tested with JAWS, window-eyes and NVDA and got the exact same results.
So like so many others, I decided to compose an e-mail to dropbox support, asking them to please fix these issues. I post it below for your reading. The comment boards await you.

From: Shane Davidson
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:42 AM
To: ‘[email protected]’
Subject: interface changes do not always mean accessibility.
Hello;
As a longtime user of dropbox, starting in 2009, and it’s paid service, becoming a paid user back in 2010, I’ve gotten used to storing important business and personal documents in the cloud, sharing folders with friends, and I referred people to your service since I highly recommended it.
It’s simplicity, ease of use, and ability to install it on everything, your computers, your iphone, your android, it was perfict.
Your recent doubling of paid users and adding more paid plans with more space screamed keep me, and I kept referring users, participating in contests, etc. earning more space.
Recently, you early released version 2.0.0 as a “stable” release to a select number of users, some of those users being totally blind that rely on screen access technologies, the three main ones being JAWS for windows from Freedom scientific, www.freedomscientific.com Window-eyes from GWMicro www.gwmicro.com and the free and open source NVDA www.nvda-project.org.
Reading your blog post at
https://blog.dropbox.com/2013/03/discover-the-new-dropbox-menu-on-your-computer/
and the forum post at
https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97895
I saw you had changed your dropbox menu. Ok, no big deal, right? Still able to right click. Actually no. The old style menu we were used to was gone. Utterly gone. I thought there was an issue with my access technology, in this case JAWS, but after discussion with other users via twitter, facebook, and seing this topic on the forums
https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97907&replies=1#post-533140
it seems that this is not the case and the latest version under both windows and mac, the menu is not accessible.
We still have the ability to move files around in explorer/finder depending on your OS, but this menu gave us access to the preferences, our space usage, recently changed files, and the ability if necessary to shut down the client if the need arose.
Myself, and others are begging, and imploring you to please, please fix this major accessibility issue before releasing to the public as a whole.
Your prompt attention to this matter would be greatly appreciated and a lot of users would thank you.
Your attention to this issue would show that a mainstream company is willing to listen to a group of people, and willing to keep accessibility in mind when making changes to a UI.
As a note, this e-mail, and any communications minus personally identifying information that may be included, will be posted as an open communication for all to read on my blog at
www.shaned.net
weather the feedback is positive or negative, it will be posted to the above linked blog to be read by all.
Thank you for your time and attention.

I and others await your comments. We’ll see what dropbox says in the coming days.