My New Web Site

As a joke, I renamed my project Stanza Reader - after George Costanza on Seinfield. Then I saw that another reader program had that name. So I had to renamed it again. This time I chose Simultaneous Stanza Reader - which doesn't show-up in a google search:-). Additionally, I have set-up a new site:

https://sites.google.com/site/mikeybeesoftware/

So take a look, download the source or the binary, and try the program. It's free.

Free Reader for the Blind

I have written a simple program in xcode on Apple Mac OS X that reads text files out loud and displays the text line by line in a huge font. I want to make the program available free to people with sight problems - and everyone else for that matter. Please let me know if you have any interest in distributing the program from your site. Here is the source code:

-- HyperReader.applescript

-- Simultaneous Stanza Reader

-- Created by Mike Bee on 6/7/09.

on clicked theObject

tell window "hyperReaderMainWindow"

set theStartingParagraph to contents of text field "startingParagraph"

set theNumberOfParagraphsToRead to contents of text field "numberOfParagraphs"

-- set contents of text field "endingParagraph" to theStartingParagraph + theNumberOfParagraphsToRead

set theFileToRead to (choose file with prompt "SELECT A TEXT FILE:")

set contents of text field "myTextFile" to theFileToRead

end tell

tell application "TextEdit"

activate

open theFileToRead

set docName to name of document 1

set selDoc to document 1

set viewDoc to (make new document)

set viewWindow to the first window

set the bounds of viewWindow to {44, 44, 1900, 980}

set x to theStartingParagraph

set y to theNumberOfParagraphsToRead

end tell

repeat y times

tell application "TextEdit"

set text of viewDoc to get paragraph (x as integer) of selDoc

set size of text of viewDoc to 150

set font of text of viewDoc to "Arial"

say (get paragraph 1 of viewDoc) using "Alex"

set x to x + 1

end tell

tell window "hyperReaderMainWindow"

set contents of text field "endingParagraph" to x

end tell

end repeat

tell application "TextEdit"

close document 2 saving no

close document 1 saving no

quit

end tell

end clicked

Dark Matter

I thought that dark matter was matter not illuminated by light, but I was wrong. Dark matter is not visible to us, but for other reasons besides a paucity of photons. Dark matter remains, therefore, like every other part of nature, a mystery. We think it exists because nature acts strangely. A vortex at the center spins faster than its outer parts. As a skater pulls in her arms, her rotation quickens. In some spiraling galaxies, we have not observed this same expected phenomenon. Instead, the speed of the outside of the galaxy is the same as the speed at the center. To our minds, it seems that only additional unobserved mass could account for this strange behavior; hence scientists have hypothesized dark matter - strange unobservable mass. 

So then, why not believe that some essence that animates us exists in these ideas of the mind. Plato's rings or lapis philosophorum may indeed house the weight that, en fin, produces the music of the spheres.