A place for all my thoughts and projects
A few weeks ago I was able to get along to the Wings Over Shellharbour 2026 air show . Of course it helped that it was literally just down the road. While I was there I thought I would try and get some video and put together something that could be semi-coherent. So here's the first part. It's not perfect by any means, but I think I've learnt a bunch about planning BEFORE I go out with the…
So as mentioned in my previous post, Wings Over Shellharbour is coming next week and I thought I would take a Roll About to test the gear I’m planning on using to document the day. For this test I thought I would go down to one of the ponds around where I live where there is excellent opportunities for Bird photography. In some ways I’m extremely lucky, I live in a nexus between creeping suburbia,…
Wings Over Shellharbour is coming! I have been/am/will always be an airplane fan (both the movie and the vehicle class). Being so close to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Museum at Shellharbour Airport has kept a lid on my nerdery somewhat, but now that we're going to be seeing things like Australia's only flying De Havilland Vampire (a project that was worked on and completed…
So I dual boot my computer. For my everday use, I use Linux (Ubuntu specifically) and for gaming and some video foo I use Windows 11. I’ve got a nice big 8TB drive and I thought it would be a good idea to format the drive using the windows NTFS format, that way both OS’s would be able to share the full space and so on and so on. Best laid plans and all that. Turns out then when you do this, it…
Pondering getting into photography competitions. So a couple of years back I entered a photo competition with this image I did pretty well, I got a honourable mention, but me being me, I decided to leave it at that for the moment. Now I’m looking at maybe getting a bit more serious about it. I’m also going to try and get out of my comfort zone a bit more and do more planned photoshoots. Set myself…
Soooo, I may have accidentally rm'd something that I wasn't meant to and I've had to rebuild the instance hosting this blog. For some reason the photography section is throwing errors so that's something I need to fix. Oh and Tech and Disability got wiped so I have to build that again. Sigh.
Got out of the house today and went down to Bass Point to have lunch with Awesome Wife. While I was there, I decided to take some photos of the Bass Point Gravel Loader. The Gravel Loader is connected to a nearby Quarry and used to allow the quarry to load directly onto ships. Unfortunately it hasn't operated since 2011 and they're talking about pulling it down/rebuilding it due to structural…
So we're day two into the new year and I am cautiously optimistic about entering day three. In the mean time, I put out a couple of video things, both from the time I went up to Lithgow late last year. The first is an ad hoc Wheelchair Photography video I did where I visit Hassans Walls , an accessible lookout that gives you amazing views of the Hartley Valley The second was a short vertical…
If you're reading this, then I have been kidnapped and the kidnappers are demanding the release of ALL of the Star Trek Ships as Lego kits. Not saying I agree with them, but yeah? Well actually no, I'm just testing the cms for the Angrybeanie site now that it's all be brought across from Linode.com to Binarylane.com.au
I was going through my library of photos and I came across these from 2022. I have thousands of photos that I need to go through and get the best out of (not counting my daughters Netball game photos of which I also have many)
https://themarkup.org/on-borrowed-time/2025/10/14/is-the-patient-black-check-this-box-for-yes “That always raised a flag for me,” he says. “So, we’re different from the rest of the world? I got Black kidneys, and everybody else got white kidneys. It never set well with me.” Craig Merrit The story I linked above is a prime example of why every time I hear an AI Booster talk about the power for AI…
The below is a thread I posted to Bluesky and Mastodon off the back of a discussion I had with a mother at my local doctors surgery. I want to expand on some of this in future posts, but I'm just sticking this here for the moment. Just had an interesting discussion with a woman who's son has Muscular Distrophy. He's using a power assist chair at the moment but is going to be needing a full power…
Okay so it's been almost two months since my last post, I figured I should post SOMETHING at least. So here's a brief update. ProminART Went down to Shellharbour Marina and took some photos of the ProminART display that is running until the 31st October. I've created a gallery of some of the photos I took, which you can find here: Selfhosting Finally got Nextcloud and forgejo working behind an…
Wasn’t sure whether to put this in the Tech and Disability feed or just the general feed, eh I'll put it in both (footpaths count as technology don't they?). I was reading this blog post by the inestimable El Gibbs about the Cost of Exclusion [ https://www.bluntshovels.au/the-cost-of-exclusion/ ] and it helped to concentrate a cloud of thoughts I’ve had circling in my head for a while now. I…
I was struggling for something to blog about when I went onto LinkedIn (I know, I really shouldn't) and I saw another post about how the age of the API has passed, and we're all going to be using AI Agents to talk to each other instead. Ha ha, it is to guffaw. I know it's probably someone's AI generated "LOOK AT MOI" post but something about it just irked me. The more I think about it, the dumber…
* So for todays entertainment I decided to test out a couple of things. Firstly, would my el cheapo light stand carry the weight of my flash, a bowens mount AND the giant softbox that I got off facebook marketplace about four years ago. Secondly I would have a crack and see if I could use the softbox and try and get a rim lit portrait. On the first it succeeded admirably. The stand (which I got as…
So about a week ago I was fiddling with the drone and I wanted to test out the way point flight mode that comes with it. Essentially what you do is set up points along a flight path and then tell the drone to go and fly that route. It's pretty cool, not only can you set things like height and speed, but every way point allows you to set things like gimbal tilt, zoom to be using etc. The drone then…
https://rexasi-pro.spindoxlabs.com/ What is it: It’s a project that ostensibly wants to develop a “Swarm AI Navigation/Self Driving” system for power wheelchairs. This would involve not only an onboard system of sensors and computers to drive the chair, but a pair of small drones to continually scan the area around the chair enabling what they call “Collaborative Navigation”, that is using the…
So I was recently able to get my hands on a drone. A DJI Mini 4 Pro to be exact. Over the past couple of weeks I've been taking it out and playing/practising with it. Just taking it down to the local park and flying it around and my inner 12 year old is absolutely squeeing with delight. I've put up a video from some of my recent flights below. There is so much I need to learn but I'm already…
Took a few pictures of the local duck flock when I went on a roll about the other day. I've got a few decent ones so I thought I would see what they look like in monochrome
Part of the fun that is needing a mobility aid (be it a wheelchair or walking frame or even just a stick) is the lottery you play when you leave the house to go to an event, or even just to the shops. That lottery is called “Will I be able to get into the place I intend to visit or am I going to be stuck spinning my wheels outside?” Information about how accessible a venue is can be hard to find,…
Okay so today I had plans for doing a good chunk of work on the new Front End for the Angry Beanie website (the current one is a mess of "oh how do you do this in react/js?" and needs to be replaced) However what I did INSTEAD was: Finally put together a real backup solution for the site Upgrade to docker compose over docker-compose (I told you this was computer touching) Setup mariabackup Look at…
So I finally managed to get out of the house with the camera for a roll about with the power chair. I took the 100-400mm lens because I figured I should drive by one of the local catchment ponds and see what sort of bird life was paddling about. I'm so glad I did, because in amongst the ducks and water fowl, there was a pair of Black Swans.
So it appears the blogging appears to be on the rise again. Nothing ever good comes from that.
Just a quick update on the self hosting blog that I wrote a little while back. Since then I've - Bought myself a little GMKtec Mini PC that I can run the self hosting software on. I'm still trying to come up with a name for it. Successfully managed to migrate the experimental Nextcloud instance I had running on my desktop, to the Mini PC. Set up Forgejo (a fork of Gitea) on the Mini PC. I've…
A couple of weeks ago I was testing out a table mount for my camera that would allow me to put the camera in the overhead position, or mount lights for different shots etc. As I was doing so I also noticed the last of the seasons fruit mince pies and decided to use them as the models for the test. So I made a video of the process which you can watch below: I've also created a gallery with some of…
So I finally got around to releasing that Wheelchair Photography video that I’d been agonising over. You can see it here I also did a short of some of the images that I’ve taken using the extension tubes and the 50mm lens. https://www.tiktok.com/@angrybeanie/video/7456617866192882952 (Still working on the Tiktok embedding) So that brings me to what next for Wheelchair Photography? See I originally…
What effect is AI going to have on Disability? That’s an excellent question and the answer is really simple. It’s going to be absolutely terrible. Oh or is it going to enable People With Disabilities to live fuller lives and regain lost abilities? Or is it both? Yessss? Look, this is going to get a bit nit picky but I think it’s going to be important to work out exactly what we mean by AI when…
So yesterday I actually sat down and recorded a 7 minute video about using extension tubes to turn my 50mm lens into a macro lens. I was all set to edit it along with the photos that I took during it, and then I watched it again and immediately went nope, that's not good enough so I'm going to do it again, and this time I'm going to plan it rather than just ramble at the camera for 7 minutes.…
So I was browsing through Linkedin (I know, it’s a terrible habit) when I came across a post about an LLM that I wanted to have a look at (hush). So I clicked on the link and was taken to a page that was very flashy. On the surface of it, there was nothing to write home about design wise. It was more brochure ware than anything else, with all of the deep dive goodness contained in links off to…
Okay so I recently decided to properly try and setup a home network with alternatives to the various free services that I use currently. So with that in mind I mapped out all of the things that I use on a regular to semi regular basis: Email: Mostly self hosted with a Gmail for signing into stuff I don’t want to hear from Documents: I rarely use it, but generally I’ll use Google Docs when I want…
So I'm in an interesting position at the moment. I have a Wheelchair Photography Roll About video I need to finish (finishing involves doing some extra recording and then putting it all together) and at the same time I have a list of Self Hosted software I want to test out in order to move off things like Google Docs. Oh and there's a list of things I need to fix on the website as well. Ah and…
I was scrolling along Tiktok the other day when I came across this video In the video, disability advocate Shane Hryhorec takes us through a tour of a very impressive public toilet and shower facility down at Largs Bay in Port Adelaide, South Australia. The new facilities have: 2 Male toilets 2 Female toilets 2 Disabled access toilets 4 Gender Neutral toilets A baby change room A Changing Places…
So Tesla held what I think was meant to be a big reveal for their new Robotaxi project . As was usual for these things, it was big on hype and incredibly short on any sort of detail. What, for me, was especially lacking was any word on accessibility. The newly revealed Tesla Robotaxi is a two door Tesla with a trunk. Sleek and beige, it has gull wing doors and a headlight ripped straight from the…
So I started writing this post earlier and it very quickly turned into a stream of consciousness blast about everything that I'm feeling at the moment, and, while cathartic, I thought I would put something a little bit more filtered up here in public. Yesterday, the 8th October 2024 was the fifth anniversary of my arrival at Prince of Wales hospital . It was the start of something that saw 3…
I don't know about you but sometimes I just need to take a picture. I need to pick up the camera and snap away on SOMETHING. Well most of the time the pictures turn out a bit rubbish but sometimes they're okay. So I've created a new Album called Playing Around Type Pictures I'll be adding more as I get bored and take more photos.
I've added a new album to my photography here with some of the photos I took on my recent Roll About I've also created a short video using some of them which you can view here:
So it's been a while and I thought I would do a post with some of the photos I've taken on my Roll Abouts. I do enjoy living this close to a water source. The bird life is wonderful
I have an Oculus Rift S. It was a gift from my younger brothers and I've loved using it for Flight Simming (mainly for things like War Thunder and MS Flight Sim). However the other day I saw a fitness game pop up on the Oculus store called Punch Fit. Now it's not really the kind of game I usually go for, I'm not a huge boxing fan, but at the time I was in the mood for something different, and I…
Soooo it's been a while. Christmas happened, then I got sick and then I never got back into the routine of exercising (there's a whole story about breaking routines and inability to start again that goes beyond this post), and I can feel the effects. I'm having more pain and spasms and my ability to walk is being affected. I managed to start again on Friday. Just five minutes on the arms and five…
So after a comment by someone over on Mastodon I had another look at my Flickr account. I really haven't done much with it since I downgraded it from a Pro account to a free one a couple of years back, so I thought I would clean it up a little, add some more photos etc. While I was looking at it I had this question going through the back of my head. Where actually do I want to display my photo…
I recently set myself a little project to try and build a work flow that would allow to me produce the following: Podcast Videos: It seems to be all the rage these days so I thought I would have a look at what would be needed to make a Podcast available via Youtube. Podcast Transcripts: I've been meaning to look at this for a while now. Mostly for accessibility reasons but now that Apple has…
Looking at the stories I've picked out for this weeks News post I'm thinking I should deep dive a bit more on some of the topics presented here. Even before the current AI Hype cycle started we've had ongoing research into so called "Companion" apps and bots. Artificial services that would help the elderly or disabled to live their best lives. But what does this actually mean for everyone…
So it's been a bit of a busy week in the world and the stories I'm presenting below are just a sample of what's going on. What I find particularly interesting is the fact that accessibility tech is being drawn into the "Great AI Frenzy". I mean I suppose it was inevitable, and (to the shock of some I think) there are actually genuine use cases for Machine Learning/AI both in the medical fields AND…
Apologies for missing last week, lack of spoons etc etc. Lets see what we have going on this week As always if you have any news, or recommendations for people, organisations, blogs etc to follow then please let me know at any of these: Email: james AT angrybeanie DOT com Mastodon: @aus.social@purserj Bluesky: purserj.bsky.social Threads: @purserj Twitter: @purserj Honda Rolls Out…
Almost didn't get this one out today but managed to sit down for a few minutes and get it sorted. As always if you have any news, or recommendations for people, organisations, blogs etc to follow then please let me know at any of these: Email: james AT angrybeanie DOT com Mastodon: @aus.social@purserj Bluesky: purserj.bsky.social Threads: @purserj Twitter: @purserj Man with Cerebral Palsy paints…
Robots, Launchers and Flying high for this update. I've always wanted to learn how to fly (I blew an awesome opportunity when I was younger and if I could I'd still be kicking myself) so seeing that there are groups who can assist people with disabilities to get their feet off the ground is very cool. Remarkable Launcher 2024 Cohort has been announced Remarkable is a "startup venture arm of the…
Welcome to the third instalment of the Tech and Disability News from Around the Globe blog thingy. I'm still on the look out for more feeds and places to get stories, so please let me know. Neuralink starts human trials It's been an interesting week, with the news that Elon Musks' Neuralink has started human trials. In this post I explore some of my feelings about it and highlight some of the work…
Well folks, Elon Musk and Neuralink have announced the first human implantation of the device that they're calling "Telepathy". Now this isn't the full blown "you will become one with the internet and we will fix your brain" device that Musk has been touting, rather it's a step in that direction. Part of the Prime study, Telepathy is a more specific version of the device, allowing Neuralink to…
Welcome to the second Tech and Disability News from Around the Globe. For this weeks news we have everything from Stair Assists to new voices for Welsh children. Remember if you have a story you think would be good here, please let me know at james AT angrybeanie DOT com Mobile stair climbers for wheelchair users Exactly what it says on the box. As much as we would like it to be, the world is not…