Through Our Eyes Project

iConverse Awesome News!

2009-03-23T08:06:00.001-07:00

While it is sometimes depressing when someone or another team beats you to an idea that you have had, and been trying reach. This is far beyond depressing. It is great news that the iconverse team has come out with a app for kids with no speech.

It is the iconverse app for iphone. This little app allows for a child or non verbal person to relay basic information to a person. The app is 4.99. We heard about this app from another blog site:

http://blog.robbclan.com/?p=388&cpage=1#comment-233

And I encourage those to get the info that learned from the blogger, and also to get more info from the iconverse site iconverseapp.com....

Slow but better than zero

2009-02-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Well, we have our .org registered now the website has to be built, but in the meantime we are going to continue with postings on blogger while we devise a website. we will be setting up twitter too and changing the twits to post on here so no worries if you do not have a twitter account you can keep up with our progress on blogger.

As far as the pc thing goes we have not moved forward just yet. We have 4 kids and work so most of that will take place at night but mostly on the weekends. Hopefully we get things going fairly soon though.

Crucial Update!!!

2009-02-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

So my wife and I got into a discussion about the direction I am headed in with this and we came to the conclusion that I am going about things in the wrong way. We have decided that I need to change direction a little and start off for writing apps for the ipod touch.

just to backup for a sec....We decided to call the non-profit the Through Our Eyes Project Organization. Well my wife actually as started this through her t-shirt shop on cafepress.com, and it just seemed to be a good fit for what I am looking to do. So we will just incoporate the tech thing under the same umbrella.

Through Our eyes will encompass a number of things for the Autism and disability community aiming specifically at the schools that are providing the necessary education for Autistic individuals to function in the world. We will use a vendor that is cenralized and well known to give people access to making donations to the various schools in form of financial gifts or purchasing things on a wish list and sending them directly to the school. This will take the handling of goods off our hands while providing a vehicle for the schools to get the things on their list. These things will be limited to a certain value to help promote the giving of donations. Some of the cash given will support the shipping of the items to the individual schools all over the country.

As for the technical aspect, we will continue to work on things and try to provide necessary software to individuals through ipod touch applications. We figure that the ipod touch is the better candidate than the iphone, but the software could be ported over to the iphone as well. ipod touch would be one of the gifts for the individuals if they cant afford it, but the software could be bought and donated as well. The way we look at it is that we could provide this to those that needed it as a low cost and donations would be given in some form maybe through paypal or something similar. There maybe changes to this. Remember these are just brainstorms and could be adjusted accordingly.

As for volunteers, we are looking for anybody that can program the ipod touch or many other devices. We hope that this grows so that we can help people as soon possible. We will be doing a web page soon, and will start some type of community for those that wish to help, but dont hesitate to email us at throughoureyesproject@gmail.com. We will be getting an official email soon, but for now this is the best place.

back to the story....

We did some research and found that we needed a Mac to really get the job done without hacking the phone and things of that sort. While this was a good idea, we set off to the mac store to do research on which mac we were going to purchase and such and found that it was pretty pricey to buy one. After asking an apple store employee a bunch of questions we left the store to rethink if there was anyway for us to do this without dropping tons of money on a mac.

Well during a brainstorm session i figured that we could set up a virtual machine and run a mac. So with that I began more research on the proper software to do this. Being a Unix Admin, I started looking at all of the open source programs out there. While vmware seems to be one of the better choices, I continued to search and found XEN and virtualbox. Both seemed to be what I wanted. Easy to setup and get started asap. So I decided to go with Virtualbox. If Virtualbox does not cut it, Ill move on to XEn and so on until I find a fit.

So far VirtualBox has been pretty simple. I got a Mac Instance setup, but am lacking the OS to fully bring it up. Did some searching and found a beta that really didnt seem to give me what I needed so most likely I will be off to purchase OS X Leopard in the very near future.

Oh C++ how I love you so

2009-01-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

Well.. its been rough the last couple of weeks, but I have to check in to keep the blog going.. Must reach goal...anyways... I have been switched to day shift which I really hate, and it has been really affecting my family life and studying..

Switching to days have been tough.. for some reason working nights I was thinking a lot clearer, and maybe that is because it was against the norm..

I have been really struggling to find time to study C and also anything else I need that will take me to the next level of my goal, and that is to write a program that would help people with no speech.

I am off to the book store to try and find a book that well assist in me learning C++ and stuff about algorithms. Why algorithms? well not only does it go hand and hand with C and databases, but it appears that GOOGLE has contacted me for an interview..

Just so you know, I am not the smartest person in the world and from what I hear..their test are off the charts. It seems to me that you have to be a super Wiley coyote smart like genius to get in..but I cant turn down an interview with the big G...This is a once in a life time chance..so I must prepare for the battle or conquest to climb mount GOOGLE..

Steady Progress C++

2009-01-02T04:06:00.000-08:00

I have managed to make some progress with C++ but still have a way to go. I am studying creating strings. As far as the taking the trip video / slide show.. hopefully I can have one up on youtube after about a week. Im going to be asking my wife and sister inlaw to help me take this on.

Well up and atom or adam! the day is short and I have a lot to do...

Highway Robbery

2009-01-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

I decided to do some research to see what companies or organizations are out there that I may be able to collaborate with to get faster production or maybe add to what they already have existing. I guess I don't like to" reinvent the wheel" as they say, but I have to tell you that so far tonight I have gone to about 5 websites that claim to help kids with Autism and other disabilities. I know I have stated this in a previous blog but I am kinda peeved right now as I read through some of the prices. There are companies that are selling computers for 1000 bucks or more saying that it is the most updated for kids autism. Well that is really nice but I can get a machine from some of the corporate giants for about half of that at this time. I also so a site that says that it has written programs / software for kids of special needs, and all it is is repackaged crap that they actually use for ESL students. I am sure that it would help Autistic kids a little but all of these people. companies and organizations are missing the point.

You cant just lump autistic kids into a category with other disabilities and expect them to respond as the others. It isnt that way at all. They fail on so many levels. You have to write specifically for the autism community. Everything that is done should have these kids and adults in mind. You have to understand how they learn or process information. In addition to that these companies want to charge crazy amounts of money for their software and services. No doubt that some of the software will help like "travel with me". That software prepares a autistic child for travel. Is there any reason we should be charging 60 or more for it though?

These companies are exploiting parents and taking them for a ride big time. Most parents with autistic children don't have that kinda cash to put out like that, and I'm going to do something about it cause it is ridiculous that these people want to basically steal money from people that are struggling. I cant even say that it is the American way cause some of the companies are from the UK.

The funny thing is that all of these people are wondering why the world economy is the way it is now. Well its pretty simple to see that greed was in the drivers seat, and what makes it worse is that we all have to pay for it while greed continues to consume everything.

Well got new things on my list to do which should help take some stress off of those parents.

update**

create travel medium
write facial expression program.
write pecs program for nds
write pecs program for touch based devices.

as said before I have a lot of work to do and if anyone out there has experience and wants to assist me please let me know email is blue.disaster@gmail.com.

Santa stole my brain

2009-01-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

Since last post I have been trying to swallow c++ as fast as possible to try and get the show on the road, but the holidays have really been whipping up on me. Has been so hard to focus basically cause there are so many things to do and not enough time.

Voice of the Voiceless - Choices

2008-12-30T02:26:00.000-08:00

OK so with some research it seems as though I am not going to get to far unless I learn some C++. So that is on the to do list immediately. I have also found that it looks like iphone and the NDS lite are going to be the choices to write the program for. Reason for the two pieces of hardware are because the main target audience I want to do this for typically have some fine motor skill limitations. Being able to use something that it touch screen versus keypad is very important. The NDS and the iphone gives the kind of versatility that is needed. These two pieces of hardware are my choice and maybe we can port these over into new things once these two are tackled. Technology is changing constantly and maybe down the road I will find something better, but the main goal is to make these devices as portable and accessible to those that need them on a financial level.

I know it is going to be a long and daunting task but I know if I chip at it little by little I will arrive at my goal soon enough. The main part of the challenge is just finding the time between work and family to do this.

I don't know if quitting smoking at this point was a good thing. :\

Giving a Voice to the Voiceless

2008-12-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Ok so I have not been around a lot lately. I have been pretty busy with work and family and such, but as always I find myself back again with new projects and things that need to get done. Last thing I left you with was the whole mythtv thing and I have to admit that I dropped the ball, but there are a lot of websites out there that should point you in the right directions. So I must apologize, but not too much cause if you were seriously interested you probably have already done the research and have a system up and running at this point. Enough with that!

For those of you that dont know, I have a son and two nieces that are autistic. Lately I have been thinking about them and how I could make their lives easier. My son has no speech at this time, and I would love to some way give him a voice. There are devices out there, but they are very expensive for even people that have money, and only those people can afford them. The manufacturers should be ashamed for how much they charge for these devices cause all theyare doing is exploiting the community of the disabled. Before I get too rooted in ranting, I have some ideas to develope cheaper affordable devices for this community that would definitely benefit them, and a bunch others that have no speech.

I have decided to use my blog to try and give me some structure and organization. If anyone of you have read my other blogs you would probably see that I need something to focus cause typically I am all over the place (like now :) )

So at this point I have a lot to do.

Figure out language to write applications. - Picking a language that is small but yet portable to many devices and easy for me to learn is very important. (ie. mp3 players, cell phones, game devices.

what devices do I want to port this over to, and which would be the most functional and easiest ( For those of you that dont know, many autistic people have so level of motor function disability, So using the right device is very important.)
Developer kits or applications - this all depends on what devices we use

The list is small so far but important. I am pretty sure it will grow as time goes on, but nailing these down should help me be on my way a lot faster.

Btw - if anyone should like to help please let me know. Or if you have any ideas I am wide open to them right now.

So far I have been thinking about using java, but really dont know a lot, but also know there are applications that will help me write the basics and develope the rest. The application is pretty simple, and I have a bunch of them that I want to write for different systems and know that I will probably have to get permissions from some companies once I get further on the way, but I want to get something up and running as fast as possible. Time does not wait for these kids and every day spent trying to develope brings them closer to having a voice