New handy Dani gadget: I was visiting with my brother and sister-in-law last evening and she showed me a really cool little gadget. It is a handheld, rechargeable, vacuum bag sealer. I've always wanted to explore these, but was unsure if I could use the ones that are like a countertop device that seals with heat. So, this was an attractive option. It's only about $14 and so I got it on Amazon and it came today, and has four starter bags that are about 8 x 8". You put your food or whatever inside, and in this case I had sesame sticks. I was sure to make sure it was sealed with the Ziploc type sealer at the top. Then you put the nozzle of the device over the little hole in the bag as you lay it flat on the counter. Then you just press a button and it sucks all the air out of the bag. Now, I could probably injure someone by tossing these sesame sticks because the bag is hard as a rock, no air. I've ordered some extra bags and I'm really going to get into this way of keeping my food fresher and taking up less space. The nice thing about this model is that it works with many brands of these type of bags. You can reuse them by washing them so that's a good deal too.
Remote
Chris Cooke
@CreativeChris@tweesecake.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-08-15+glitchI am a woman who happens to be blind and teach for a rehab agency. I love to exercise both halves of my brain! Learning new technology is a thrill and I live on most of the platforms including PC, Mac, iOS, android, and dabble in chrome. I am an avid braille reader! I balance this out with cooking, reading, listening to podcasts, knitting, writing and playing and arranging music. Spending time with my two cats is a true pleasure.
140 Followers
91 Following
43 Posts
Joined May 18, 2023
Replying to
@frogglin @FreakyFwoof Me too. In 2000, the librarian at my grad school suggested that I start using this fantastic simple webpage for searching the Internet. Boy Howdy! I miss those days too and I'm often reverting to ChatGPT for searching.
Replying to
@mcourcel@allovertheplace.ca @bmoore123@tweesecake.social @technocounselor@caneandable.social @JonathanMosen@caneandable.social @Jage@mas.to Oh, about 30 years ago on a tech-support call on the phone, I was trying to resolve an issue and I don't even remember which company I called. When I told the tech-support person I was blind, they said, well, you don't sound blind. I was incredulous. What does that mean!
in case anyone wants any hints, tips, tricks, etc. for solving Wordle or other types of games, here is your treasure trove! This collection has all the past Wordle answers back to June 2021! There is even a link you can click on to get hints for today's word. By the way, the word finder app is not accessible with voiceover, even with screen recognition on, so in case you're tempted, don't download it. But, this is a fun resource to access. List of Past Wordle Answers & Archive (Updated Daily) https://wordfinder.yourdictionary.com/wordle/answers/
Replying to
@wiljames@tweesecake.social Congratulations! I found this one today particularly hard and had a little help from my friend so I wouldn't end my 20 days streak. So, glad you got it without any help from a friend! :-)
Got the Wordle in four tries. Where did they come up with these words?
Replying to
@ricky_enger @Lisasali Hi. A couple of the reviewers were concerned about suctioning liquid. In some directions I read, it did say to pat chicken dry, for instance. The top is apparently removable so you can clean it easily, but I've not had to do that since I've just used it with dry ingredients. It comes with two different nozzles and can be used with other brands of reusable bags. For under $20, it was a good experiment which has worked so far. Here is the link in case you'd like to check it out. https://a.co/d/0hgL0JWk
Replying to
@JamiePauls Hi. It is really cool. I have the round one that looks a little like a small beach ball. I have older ones that look like hockey pucks and they do not have them.
Spacious, water-resistant rolling backpack with padded laptop compartment and ample organization for overnight trips, college, and work. You don't want to miss it! https://a.co/d/05HIu8G1 https://a.co/d/05HIu8G1
Replying to
@Lisasali I have these and forgot about them until you mentioned them. They're a little fiddly because you have to take them out of the headband to charge them, but they were pretty comfortable and the sound was good. The company is called acoustic sheep which I thought was a very clever name. Here is the Amazon listing with head sizes and fabric types. I have the breeze fabric which is thin, but there's also a fleece fabric.https://a.co/d/00NsIahG
Replying to
@afewbugs@social.coop @pawpower@beige.party I hope the cassette dries out and is playable again. I had a very special cassette tape from 40 years ago that started to fail so I sent it off to a place in California called audio restorations. They did a wonderful job of making sure my tape was playable again. I don't know if that company is still in existence, but they were great. It wasn't too expensive.
Hi. Uber is looking for people to be a part of a pilot study from October 28 through December 6. If you ride with a service animal and you wanna participate, you take rides and report in on how your rides are impacted by disclosing that you have a service animal. They will give gift cards and compensation at the end amounting to $270 to compensate people for the price of the rights they took. Here's a survey that you can fill out as a first step to qualifying for participation. SurveyMonkey Powered Online Survey https://uber.surveymonkey.com/r/7MQ9H7C?e=ext
EchoVision glasses out for a spin today: For various reasons, I've stalled out on my use of the EchoVision glasses. I'm on vacation for a few days, so have the bandwidth to think about them just now. I charged and updated them. I headed out on a little shopping trip to Fred Meyers with two blind friends, making us the three blind mice, as my friend quipped. OK with me! I connected to the store's guest wi-fi and envoked the Live AI mode. I heard often about one of the friends who was wearing a grey beannie. The AI told me that he had moved to the right and was looking at the shelves. The cool thing is that you can interrupt the AI and ask a question and it responds. While standing in the deli food area, I was told that there was hot food in the cases and that there was a $5 meal, etc. So, I chatted with the real person behind the counter and asked about this. Real person told me that there was also a $7 meal which I got with 4 chicken tenders, a roll, and two sides (cole slaw and mashed potatoes.). The only thing I found was that occasionally, other people talking interrupted the AI description. Hopefully, they can train it to just listen for my voice like Siri is supposed to do. Anyway, it was fun to be back using smart glasses again.
Replying to
Replying to
@JonathanMosen@tweesecake.social I would miss your content on my timeline, as well. I still don't know how to make sure that I can find you. Glad you're finding something that works better for you!
Replying to
@JonathanMosen@caneandable.social Oh no! This is very sad. If the cloud services go away, does this render it completely useless, even from a sided person's perspective? I would assume the oven would have to communicate with the cloud to pull down the recipe in the first place. I wondered why I hadn't seen any updates lately.
@baxaphobia@caneandable.social hi there. Did you happen to figure out the Wordle for today? It was really tough and I went to that website to get a couple hints in order to figure it out on the sixth try. Funny how some days are like that!
Replying to
@wiljames@tweesecake.social Congratulations, great score! I got it in five, and I'll take it. :-)
Replying to
Got the Wordle in three tries today! Makes up for the poor showing on some other days! Yay!
Replying to
@Lisasali @ricky_enger Oh, so sorry to be late in responding. I was napping. Smiley anyway, you lineup the nozzle with the disc, no need to peel anything back or puncture because the disc has a hole in it. Go ahead and lay the bag flat on the counter after you fill it, but leave some headspace at the top. It may take a little longer than you think but if you hold it down with one hand and feel with the other, you'll notice that things are really getting compacted in the bag and the air is leaving!
Replying to
@bitsacb@dragonscave.space You do want to go to All Commands to see all the categories of possible commands that you can reassign. Perhaps this is shown in the video.
Replying to
@Lisasali @ricky_enger You know, I'm not sure exactly, but I would think you might want to use the bigger nozzle if you have a bigger bag. But, I don't know beyond that. Doesn't hurt to experiment. I happened to choose the smaller nozzle because the bags are fairly small compared to larger ones you could get. Perhaps that's also why it took a little longer to suck all the airr out.
Replying to
@JonathanMosen@caneandable.social A couple questions that maybe you don't know the answer to: they have our email addresses. Why didn't they let us know this was happening? Also, if some other company has bought them out, I wonder what they're going to do with it? I wonder why they bought them if they're not going to move forward with some kind of operation.
Chris is a very happy Tech girl! My new 14 inch Lenovo laptop is really sweet! It's pretty snappy and it now has Jaws installed, along with Microsoft office 365, with two email accounts, GoldWave audio editor, and team viewer. I'm very happy and have spent a lovely time with Aira who helped me a great deal in streamlining all these processes. The function keys are a tad bit small so I managed to just barely put some very small bump dots on them. These are the little clear Locdots. The laptop has 2 USBA and two USBC ports along with a micro SD, I believe, a headphone jack and an HDMI port. One of the USB-C is a thunderbolt 4. Seems to have pretty long battery life for a smaller laptop at about four or five hours. Of course that depends on what you're doing. :-) I'm very happy once again to have a dedicated windows machine without fiddling around with a virtual one. It was a nice idea for my Mac mini, but I'll just be happier with a PC operating system on its own. I'll be excited to test out Jaws 2026 since I had not previously updated yet. Now with my favorite MacBook Air, and this 14-inch laptop, I'm set. Thank you very much to those who recommended Lenovo. Now, the Braille displays will need to line up for their turn to pair and connect with these devices.
Replying to
@Lisasali @ricky_enger That's great! Let me know how you like it. It took a little bit longer than I thought to seal the bag, so press down and wait about 20 seconds or so and see things change. It didn't happen to automatically shut off, though maybe I didn't wait long enough. Those sesame sticks were pretty compact in there, so I just stopped it in all is well.
Replying to
@BorrisInABox @DavidGoldfield I love this! Thanks so much for creating this! After my original unit bit the dust, I acquired another one of these Language Masters a few years ago and it's really fun to have it back. I got an original one around the time when it came out.
Replying to
@Jage Hi. What is the Web address for that page? I love, love, love word games! Thanks for the suggestion!
Replying to on tweesecake.social
@bmoore123@tweesecake.social @DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca That's appalling that the person thought your dog alerting you was the only way you knew about the audible stop announcements. My last guy dog did recognize audible announcements and every time he heard my stop he would jump up and the passengers always got a real kick out of it. One time the announcement didn't go off so he didn't jump up.
Replying to
@JonathanMosen@caneandable.social Wow, thanks so much for this research! That was fascinating. I understood most of it! By the way, I was commenting to my brother that this whole NASA adventure reminds me that when I was a young girl, Pink Floyd produced dark side of the moon. Too bad they can't hear that during the 30 minute blackout. :-)
Basic question about posting to one of my followers: I'm using the Mona app and have been on here for almost three years. You'd think I'd know this by now. I mostly reply to messages. But, if I want to send an original message to someone, what is the most efficient way to do this on my iPhone? I've gone to a post authored by the person, gone to their profile, selected the choice to post to them, etc. There has to be a more efficient way? Thanks for any suggestions which should be obvious to me but isn't.
My new Lenovo has arrived and I am now doing a ton of security and other updates. So thankful for Aira who help me skip a lot of bloatware in the beginning. I've got narrator running but of course that did not help me when I needed to connect to my Wi-Fi network before I could even set things up. So thankful for Aira.
Replying to
@Lisasali@mindly.social Yep, it couldn't be easier and it is so small. You can hold the little device in the palm of your hand. It looks like a cylinder and is about as long as my hand is.
Replying to
@technocounselor@caneandable.social @JonathanMosen@caneandable.social @DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca When are they supposed to reach the backside of the moon? Is it tomorrow, Sunday?
Replying to
@Woody@dragonscave.space Well, maybe one of the things on their list will be making multiline Braille displays completely accessible to the Mac and iPhone. Maybe dictation could also learn the word braille. It often writes the word brow instead. I often have to make a big deal out of the word and say it as two very long syllables. For going the cynicism here: I love what you write and do always, and especially around these Apple events!
Replying to
@alpuzz@mastodon.social @DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca Oh, I like that much better thanWee-fy as some screen-readers say!
Alexa interrupted: it doesn't take much to amuse me over here! I was asking my A lady device what the inside temperature was. I gotta love that feature. Until someone posted here, I didn't know that my device had a temperature censor. So, after I asked the question, she started to answer and then my Zoe kitty meowed. That interrupted Alexa and I had to ask the question again! Who knew she could be interrupted by the cat's meow.
Replying to
@jakobrosin @technocounselor I love this tracker! Thank you so much for making it so accessible and easy to read! I love reading all those details!
Free Remote Incident Manager, underscoring independence, for the rest of July. https://social.pneumasolutions.com/@pneumasolutions/116859711412335391