Friday, December 6, 2013

Frozen Left Me Anything but Cold

Good Friday,

What did you do last night? I saw Frozen. It was very cute…. “Like little baby unicorn.”

You know you saw that coming.

I want an Olaf. That is all.

I also want Idina Menzel’s vocal cords, but I’ll take what I can get. That woman is amazing. I’m talking about the voice of Elsa. You might recognize her from this.

Or this.

Like I said, amazing.

Not that Kristen Bell was any slouch in the singing department. And for those of you who have seen/know a lot about WICKED the Musical, is there any irony in the fact that Idina Menzel is again put opposite a soprano named Kristen who is the girly one out of the two?

“For the First Time” was my favorite song, especially the section where Elsa and Anna sing together.

I kept feeling bad for the male characters in this movie. Then some of them did not-so-nice things, and I didn’t feel so bad anymore. Except for Kristoff. Poor Kristoff. First his occupation. Then Olaf can’t get his name right. Really, he was a bundle of sympathy waiting to happen. I won’t mention his, umm, family troubles.

Without giving away the ending…it surprised me, but in a good way. K, I might have seen it coming a little, but I didn’t expect Disney to go in that direction, and I applaud you, most amazing animated movie makers.

All in all, I really enjoyed Frozen. I think Tangled is still my favorite, but Frozen is definitely worth the movie theatre time for those who haven’t seen it yet.

And look at that, it’s Friday. Go see Frozen. Go on…go.

And have a wonderful weekend!

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I'm Breaking up with CAPTCHA

//rant//

K, I’ve had it. The last straw is broken. I went to comment on a blog the other day, and the audio version of the Completely Automatic Public Touring Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart (more commonly known as CAPTCHA…because no one wants to say the entire name) didn’t even work. How useful.

For those of you who haven’t read past posts where I’ve mentioned it, I’m legally blind and, thus, unable to operate the visual CAPTCHA challenge. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if the audio challenges worked. Actually, that’s a lie. They aren’t even helpful when they work. What would fix this? Oh I don’t know, maybe the audio challenges being the same difficulty as the visual challenges? As it is, I can’t comment on anything that uses CAPTCHA to “Please prove you’re not a robot” because the audio challenges are impossible.

Here’s how it works for me. I go to a site. I comment. I click publish (which in a normal universe publishes something). Then I think I’m set…but no. CAPTCHA pops up and asks me to prove I’m human. Fine. Click the “get an audio challenge button.” If I’m lucky, sound comes out. I’m greeted with either a series of beeps, presumably as a warning to get ready to listen, or a too-cheerful automated voice telling me to “please type every digit you hear. Spaces are not required.” Then some garbled-beyond-recognition noise starts up that I have to listen to while typing. Did I mention that my screen reader speaks everything I type? So now I’m trying to listen to the next number while I’m typing the previous number and….

Oeiorgiongieoghuiwegweiojgeiwgoiwengoiwejf!!!!! Owegowengoiewhguewbgowegoijwoef!!!

You get the idea.

And to top it all off, the audio CAPTCHA’s are barely understandable. Don’t believe me? Let’s sample a few.

Here’s an example of one that gives numbers.

I encounter this one somewhat often. It’s not too bad, but it’s not great. They give me the digits twice, and I always think I’ve got it right. Then I click submit, and it says to try again.

I heard the following numbers: 71385830257

You?

K, moving on. The one above was a sometimes. Unfortunately, what I get is more often like this.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

I think this is the type that asks me to “type every word you here.” And then gives me like ten words. Because the visual challenge asks its readers to read ten words. It’s what? 2, 3 at most?

I’m not even going to try and decipher this. Feel free to try and leave your guess as a comment.

Then there’s this one. Holy CAPTCHA, Bat Man! Is that understandable?

I’m pretty sure I got this one right.

54964342

Neat, huh?

And only found on YouTube.

Yes, the one that I’m the most certain of is the one I’ve never actually encountered in an actual CAPTCHA-necessary situation. Go figure.

“But, Mary. JAWS (Job Access with Speech) now comes with Convenient OCR, which is image recognition software that allows text to be read from pictures.”

Except not CAPTCHA images

Because reasons.

K, I’ve ranted and quite nicely if I do say so myself. This is usually the part where readers (either to me or in their minds) say something along the lines of “k, you’ve complained. What are you going to do now?”

Short answer—I’ll contact CAPTCHA, which I imagine will have little impact because I can’t be the only legally blind/blind person who’s ever complained. And look how much that’s done.

But then again, I can’t think of a better way to audio challenge people. My guess is that CAPTCHA can’t either, hence the stuff featured above. Rest assured, though, if I think of something better, you’ll see the MAPTCHA test all over the internet—Mary’s Apparently Possible Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Huzza!

//rant//

As always, thanks for reading. Shares of this one appreciated! 

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

Follow My Blog With Bloglovin

-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog