How to set up Android device for the visually impaired

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If you'd like to see the previous video Computers for the blind and visually impaired click here 

Read below for the full script:

Earlier this year I posted a “Just a lil Think” video called “computers for the blind and visually impaired – my 95 yr old grandfather’s road to new vision.

You see my grandfather has Best Syndrome which is a form of Macular Degeneration. I’m sure you know a few people who can’t see as well as they used to. And so this video will hopefully bring some ideas on how you can help them.

Just to keep you in touch on how my grandfather has done.

Last week he watched Frankenstein on YouTube, he chatted to all his grandchildren and children all around the world through WhatsApp, Played Checkers and has been enjoying keeping up to date with Facebook.

Since I posted the video, I’ve had quite a response from a lot of viewers.

The main question I was asked was “How exactly did I set up the tablet for him”.

And so, I’ve created this video to show you how to set up your

Android device for someone who’s visually impaired.

The tablet I used before was a 10.1 inch or a 25cm Lenovo tablet.

This time we ordered him a NABI Big Tab HD 20inch or 50.8cm.

This tablet costs $250. The NABI Big Tab HD is the world’s biggest HD tablet and is made mainly for children and families.

So, here’s how I turned it from a children’s tablet in to a normal everyday Android tablet for someone who battles to see.

First I took the NABI Big Tablet out of the box to find two cables.

One was a charger and the other was a cable with a USB to transfer data from your computer to the tablet.

Now when you switch on the tablet, you’ll be asked a couple of questions just to help you set it up.

Then is the boring part.

You literally have to wait a good hour or two for all the applications and processes to update and upgrade.

Once that’s all done, the tablet will immediately switch on to Nabi Mode or kid mode.

Don’t feel discouraged just yet. Go to parent mode which will take you to what looks more like an Android tablet.

Once you’re in parent mode you’ll want to set this mode to default for when you switch the tablet on and off.

To do this you’ll go to Settings – Security – and click on the box to set Parent Mode as default mode.

Go back to the home screen by clicking on the middle button.

Then click on Play Store and search for the Google Now Launcher.

Install it and choose the Google Now Launcher mode.

Right next Reset the tablet by pressing the off button and then switch it back on.

How awesome! You now have a normal tablet as it opened on Parent Mode and with Google Now Launcher.

Next you want to remove EVERY icon on the home and other pages except Play Store…

You’ll drag each icon and take it to the corner where the X is.

Your home screen should now look something like this…

Now it’s time to customise the tablet with BIG ICONS with the applications he or she will use.

To do this… Go to Google Play store and type in GigantIcon.

Download it and then you’re ready to add your BIG icon apps on the screen.

Go to the Home Page – Hold your finger down on any open space.

A window will open which will give you three options – Wallpaper, Widgets and Settings.

Click on Widget. Scroll down until you see Giganticon and press it.

Next, you’ll choose the app you want enlarged. And drag it to the home screen.

Then do this the same with all the other apps.

With my grandfather I’ve set up Checkers, YouTube, WhatsApp, Calculator, Gallery, Google News and Facebook.

That green Background is very bright and distracting for someone who can’t really see.

So you’ll want to add a dark background.

Go to Google and look up Black Background and save it as an image.

Then you want to set that Image as your wallpaper.

To do this go to Settings – Display – Wallpaper and then Gallery to choose the image.

Finally, you want a Black keyboard with White keys.

Go to Settings – Language and Input – Theme – then choose the Keyboard That’s Black with white keys.

And that’s it.

Click on the home screen and you’re ready to enjoy the tablet.

Thank you for taking the time to watch this video and feel free to like and subscribe for more videos just like these.

I’ll see you soon.

How to make a Frappe (Greek Ice-coffee)

Here's a video on how I make a Greek Frappé. Enjoy.

Ingredients:
1 cup water (250ml)
2 tsp Nescafe coffee (10ml)
1 tbs water (15 ml)
2 1/2 tsp white sugar (12.5ml).
Ice (cubes/crushed)
1 glass (250ml)
1 Frother
1 Straw

Method:
1. Add the coffee, sugar and 1tbs water to the glass
2. Froth the mixture well until creamy and light brown
3. Add the water to the glass and froth the mixture again slowly
4. Add the ice and then stir with a straw
5. Let the Frappé settle and enjoy!

Extra Information:
Song: Constantinos Argyros - h Agapi thelei pathos
           Κωνσταντίνος Αργυρός Η αγάπη θέλει πάθος

1. Greek Frappé or φραπές is a Greek foam covered ice coffee.

2. Frappé was invented in the city of Thessaloniki in 1957 by Dimitrios Vakondios.

3. The word Frappé comes from the French verb Frapper which means to ‘hit’. But in this context, it means the action of shaking the drink with ice.

4. Frappe is served in Greece and Cyprus and it’s become very popular world-wide.

Συνταγή για Φραπέ
1 φλιτζάνι νερό (250ml)
2 κουταλάκια του γλυκού Nescafe (10ml)
1 κουταλιά της σούπας νερό (15ml)
2 1/2 κουταλάκια του γλυκού λευκή ζάχαρη (12,5ml)
Πάγο (κυβάκια/θρυμματισμένο)
1 ποτήρι (250ml)
1 Αναδευτήρα
1 Καλαμάκι

1. Προσθέστε στο ποτήρι τον καφέ, τη ζάχαρη και 1 κουταλιά της σούπας νερό
2. Ανακατέψτε το μείγμα καλά μέχρι να γίνει κρεμώδες και ελαφρώς καφέ
3. Προσθέστε στο ποτήρι νερό και ανακατέψτε πάλι σιγά
4. Βάλτε τον πάγο και πάρτε ένα καλαμάκι για να ανακατεύετε
5. Περιμένετε να γίνει ο φραπές και απολαύστε!

Social media for the visually impaired - Story about my 95 year old grandfather

Feel free to read the transcript to the above video:

My 95-year-old grandfather's road to a new world of vision

The Just a lil think mission for the month, was to help an inspirational family member in my life enjoy the world of the Internet.

That man is my grandfather Jimmy.

Sometimes we take the smallest things for granted.

Like checking up on our Facebook page, reading the latest news and emails, playing games and just communicating with each other on a daily basis.

Well my grandfather unfortunately has very bad vision. So bad that he’s unable to read small texts and identify pictures very well.

And this is because of a rare condition called “Best Syndrome”.
“Best Syndrome” is a form of macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss.

Anyway, so my grandfather is 95 years of age and he doesn’t have the mobility and vision like he used to. So you can say that he was in a way, living in the dark with hardly any connection to the world.

And so it was my mission to help him enjoy the small pleasures in life that we enjoy every day.

It started off by taking a tablet that we don’t use, and organising it in a way that not only a visually impaired person can use but also someone who can’t see at all.

The process started off by organising all the apps that my grandfather would use on a daily basis.

And there are only 6 APPs.


Checkers – His favourite game

Indigo – A virtual assistant to read out the latest Headline news all around the world.

YouTube – So he can watch and listen to any video he desires.

Skype – So he can video call his family as we are often travelling and separated from each other

Google Voice – Which can help him set a timer, Define a word, Calculate any maths sum, Read out his messages and emails, Send out emails and WhatsApps through voice, answer any general knowledge question he has and many other things.

And finally, WhatsApp so he can send voice notes or voice call his loved ones.

The first challenge was that those six icons on his tablet were far too small to see and press.

And so, I simply downloaded a widget that helped make the icons bigger.

Next, I made sure that all his apps were located on only the Home page.

And if a screen went anywhere else, I simply told him to click on the middle button which will take him back to his home page.

I then sat with papou and showed him how his new tablet works.
On day one he was already playing his checkers and watching YouTube videos.

And every couple of days on Skype, I showed him another thing he can do on his tablet.

This is only the beginning for his improved quality of life as you can only get better with practice.

I’ve done this video because I feel that there are many more people out there who may suffer from macular degeneration and visual impairment.

If you know anybody who you would like to connect with the world and enjoy the small pleasures in life like my grandfather did then maybe now you have some kind of an idea on how you can do to help them.

And that’s what Just a lil think is all about.

If you enjoyed this video then don’t forget to give it the thumbs up and subscribe because there’ll be many more of these Just a lil Think videos coming your way.

Is marriage like musical chairs after 30?

Gravitational Waves - Explained simply - 12 February 2016

Written by Timon Rossolimos

Gravitational waves (ripples through space-time fabric of the universe) have been discovered by the collision of two massive black holes. As you know black holes are an enormous object of gravity so powerful, light cannot escape.

In another Galaxy, two black holes collided in a swirling movement around 1.3 billion years ago.

These black Holes were 150 km in diameter and 30 times the mass of our sun.

These two black holes crashed into each other at half the speed of light.

This caused a shudder through the universe.

And in that fraction of a second when they collided, this caused a HUGE impact.

This sent an enormous shockwave of gravitational waves (ripples) through the space-time fabric.

Before I continue we need to just picture what space-time fabric is…

Space-time fabric is like a trampoline… If you put a tennis ball on a trampoline you’ll see a small dent (depression) between the tennis ball and the trampoline fabric…

If you place a bowling ball on the trampoline, you’ll see a deeper depression in the trampoline…

Now what if you put the bowling ball in the middle and you roll the tennis ball around the trampoline?

The tennis ball will roll around the the heavier (more mass) bowling ball and will get closer to it.

Now let’s relate this to the universe.

If you place a bowling ball in the middle of the trampoline and you roll a whole bunch of marbles around from the top, you’ll see how they’ll revolve around the bowling balling until they meet the object.

If you throw a whole bunch of marbles in one direction and another bunch of marbles in the other direction, marbles will hit and fall towards the bowling ball quicker.

Other marbles will roll around and around until they reach the middle.

This is how the planets revolve the sun. And this is how moons revolve around the planets.

And we know the planets and objects around the galaxy, are falling into the sun.

This is how gravity works, with EVERYTHING. Basically, objects follow the curvature of space-time and attract everything to everything.

But here’s the mind blowing part.

The space-time fabric acts as liquid waves. So as the marbles are rolling around towards the bowling ball, ripples and waves are created around them.

Hence the dual particle-wave theory (Which we’ll save for another day).

And now we’ve detected ripples from the black holes, we’ve been able to detect them here on earth.

Similar to when you drop a rock in the water, it causes ripples. Well the collision of these two black holes caused ripples through the fabric of space-time. It started off as enormous waves and has been getting smaller and smaller since

And here on earth, scientists have finally discovered ONE of these ripples which they’ve been waiting for over 100 years.

Einstein proposed this gravitational waves theory. This was published in 1915 where he explained the General Theory of Relativity.

He proposed that any type of mass causes a mass distortion of the shape in the universe as well as time. Basically, gravity warps in space and time.

But he said that these ripples (gravitational waves) are tiny to detect with, back then, technology.

Because the further the ripples disperse, the smaller they become…

Gravity is also known as one of the weakest forces in the universe.

But finally scientists have physically found evidence to prove the last of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

And this month (February 2016) LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) announced that they found the ripple (wave).

But as you know the reverberation wave that reached us was tiny, (1/1,000th diameter of a Proton).

The experiment was done by using two labs.

One lab was in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington.

The labs lasers have 4 km long vacuum sealed tunnels. These devices are called interferometers.

When they shoot out laser beams, the light travels across those two arms. And with the interferometer, they can detect and read data which is 10,000 times smaller than a proton.

These laser beams were fired into two L-Shaped pipes.

This bounced off light around the series of mirrors. And when gravitational wave (ripples) passed, it would stretch the arms by different amounts.

These laser beams warped space-time, which made it appear that one mirror was closer to the other.  

The speed of light is the only medium which doesn’t get interfered with the stretching and squeezing of space-time. This is why we can’t measure the distance between a ruler from A to B. Because a Ruler and the distance from A to B gets stretched and squeezed simultaneously.

This was discovered by measuring the time it took for the laser to go from one mirror to the next.

And so scientists use this to measure the distances.

One tiny strain in space-time would change the timing of when lasers reach their destination. And that’s what happened on that one day.

The wiggles came about 7 mili-seconds apart. And these recordings were identical to what the super-computers predicted. And these recordings were based on the calculations of Einstein’s theory.

This data has been observed and scrutinized all around the world since September 2015, to find out if the result were gravitational waves.

And guess what, THEY ARE. Thanks to LIGO.

This discovery is just as exciting as when scientists discovered X-rays, gamma rays or even the telescope. And so it could result in another Nobel Prize.

These Gravitational Waves findings have opened a new window of opportunities onto the Universe and on our very lives.

We’ve identified radio, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays and now GRAVITIATIONAL WAVES.

This will help us understand black holes better, gravity, supernovas, fundamental laws of the universe and how the universe is expanding.

This will introduce us to new inventions, discoveries and new light to astrophysics and astronomy.

And by using these gravitational waves we’ll be able to move one step forward as to find out the beginning of the universe, how it came about and how it works.

We are living in very special times for science!

Written by Timon Rossolimos, 12 February 2016