Latest / Blind Guys Chat / #111: Hey Bert!!

Transcript

#111: Hey Bert!! · Blind Guys Chat

• 0:14
  Welcome to Blind Guys Chat, where this guy, Orin O'Neill. Hello. And this guy, Jan Bloom. Hello. And our guest host, Mohammed Lashear.
• 0:24
  Hi there.
• 0:25
  Talk about the A to Z of life. Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to triple one.
• 0:34
  Yay.
• 0:40
  This is episode 111. Now we might as well keep in the Peugeot theme. Peugeot did not make a Peugeot 111. No, I don't even, I don't know of any car. Let's call it 111.
• 0:52
  I, I don't think Peugeot makes any car that doesn't have zero in the middle. So it's 208.
• 0:58
  That's probably true.
• 0:59
  106.
• 1:00
  Also true.
• 1:01
  Yeah, yeah. I think 405.
• 1:04
  Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I've got two zeros. 3,008.
• 1:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that might happen. But it's never like a one one.
• 1:11
  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But, but other car brands with one one one.
• 1:16
  No, I don't think so. Anyway, thank you to than SeaWorld. Diving with dolphins. Mr. Muhammad Lashir. It is just freshly back from San Diego. Isn't that right, Mo? Enjoying the sun there with the dolphins. Swimming with the dolphins.
• 1:37
  I swim everywhere.
• 1:38
  Oh, you swim everywhere. We don't care. We don't care. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43
  With my dolphin friends, I just swim everywhere, so.
• 1:46
  Okay.
• 1:47
  Okay, well, thank, thanks for filling in when I was, when I was unwell and thank you for coming back again.
• 1:52
  I, I want to make also. Yeah, or, or, or a comment. Here we are enjoying almost spring again. You know, last yesterday it was freezing cold. Rain, hail, snow, whatever. And today, mo, it was 15 degrees, 16.
• 2:12
  But only today though, it's going to get.
• 2:15
  You are definitely getting our weather because we had a beautiful day.
• 2:20
  Oh.
• 2:20
  Earlier in the week.
• 2:22
  Yeah.
• 2:23
  It was about 15, 16 degrees about Wednesday or Thursday. Now we have storm Bert coming through. Yeah. Who started to come through on Friday, Hubert. And put out 60, 000 homes without electricity on the west coast of Ireland. And we thought that was it for Saturday morning. But no, he's been rolling through all day today in Dublin and it's quite, it's quite breezy in Dublin.
• 2:53
  Even you have nowhere, so it's a wonder we are have contact with you.
• 2:58
  I know we have power in Dublin. No, we couldn't not have power in Dublin. It's, you know, it's all right for the people who live in the west.
• 3:04
  You know, I think England and Wales got hit pretty bad as well.
• 3:09
  I think they're gonna get hit pretty bad. Yeah.
• 3:11
  Yeah.
• 3:12
  And I hope Blind Gordon actually is Able to open his door because Scotland has gotten a lot of snow.
• 3:17
  Oh, yes, I believe.
• 3:18
  Yeah, yeah. One of my relations in this living. One of my relations is doing a college course in Glasgow and said during the week that it is. There's snow in Glasgow. And they were in. Funny enough, they were in Spain a couple of days beforehand and it was 22 degrees and then they flew to.
• 3:39
  That's a disaster then. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:41
  Well, blind Gordon, please call in and tell us.
• 3:44
  Yeah, let's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:47
  And also South Africa, I think they are moving in into summer, you know.
• 3:52
  Yes.
• 3:52
  Coming in. Yeah.
• 3:54
  You know the funny part though is that that storm got named by Khan Ami, which is the Dutch weather service.
• 4:00
  B E R T. Yeah.
• 4:02
  So we actually. We actually work together. I think the Irish, the British and the Dutch weather services work together to name the storms.
• 4:11
  Yeah.
• 4:11
  This time it was the Netherlands turn.
• 4:13
  So it's Bert.
• 4:15
  I like Bert.
• 4:17
  Yeah, you like Bert. Ernie, Bernie. Hey, but that's also Bert and Ernie from. From Sesame Street.
• 4:25
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:25
  You have that as well in the island.
• 4:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:28
  They have it everywhere.
• 4:29
  Yeah.
• 4:30
  Sesame street is everywhere.
• 4:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:32
  And well, the good thing about today for us anyway, well, for me certainly was we are rolling into the last week of election campaigning because there. I don't. I don't know if it was because. But I'm saying because of storm Bert rolling through today, we didn't have any electioneering today at our doorstep. Sort of stayed at home. Home. Okay, but.
• 4:58
  Yeah, yeah, but how is the election fever? Is it. It's funny what the direction day you're heading.
• 5:04
  I was listening to the radio this morning and there were some journalists talking about how dull it has been and they made one. Somebody made the observation that it's been a very quick election. So it's only been three weeks. So rather than a longer run in maybe of about five weeks or so, they've. They've just, they called it. And it's really. There was really only three weeks, three or four weeks to the actual election day. So there hasn't been too much controversy except over. Over the last couple of days where our current. The shock. Simon Harris was canvassing down south southwest in County Cork and he was in a supermarket and he was talking to. Now this is how interesting it gets. So this will tell you how dull it is.
• 5:52
  Yeah.
• 5:53
  He was talking to a woman who. Care worker.
• 5:57
  Yeah.
• 5:59
  And she wanted to talk to him about what he was going to do if she voted for him. For care workers in the Future. And he started talking to her. I haven't seen the clip, but he started talking to her and she said something like, well, I don't really know if I vote for you because I'm not sure I like you.
• 6:19
  Oh.
• 6:19
  Then he just turned and walked away. That's been front page news since Friday. So if you remember, a few years ago, Gordon Brown was going for election in the uk.
• 6:32
  Yeah.
• 6:32
  And he had a conversation with a woman and when he got into the, into back into his government car, he didn't realize his radio mic was still on.
• 6:41
  Exactly.
• 6:42
  They were recording and he said that that woman was a stupid woman and whatever. Exactly. And then they played it. A few minutes later, he went to a radio station to do an interview and they played this in and he was totally surprised and he had to go ring the call the woman, call to the woman's house and apologize in that. So Simon Harris has had to do the same thing in that he's had to call the woman this morning and apologize profusely. And when journalists asked him, is it. Did he do that because he was tired? He said, no, no, it's just part of election campaigning. But clearly the guy, I'd say is absolutely wrecked. And just, it was, it was at night time, it was kind of wrapping up, I think his canvassing for the day and just kind of went, I've had enough of this, so I'm just going to. So he has to, he's, he's made an apology tour and he's also going to meet her in person. But that's, that shows you how, how interesting this election campaign has been.
• 7:37
  Yeah.
• 7:37
  I'm not a politician, but it seems to me that politicians need to be able to take quite a bit of, quite a bit of heat. Oh, yeah. And then respond like they like it. For example, if someone says to me, I don't like you, I would probably myself walk away. They're like, okay, well, I guess not a politician obviously, because they're looking for votes. They just have to take it and say, you don't like me. That's great. I love it. I love that you don't like me.
• 8:04
  Yeah. When you have to campaign against Trump or here like Wilders or whatever, sometimes you don't need to use their same way of debating or the way of polarization. You know, you should just be yourself and choose your own strong points and, and, and what you say, Mo. Yeah, well, okay, if you don't like me.
• 8:26
  Okay, bye.
• 8:27
  Bye.
• 8:28
  Good friends.
• 8:29
  Well, whatever.
• 8:30
  There are basically three parties that are that are going to be able to form a government with any other party. So none of the, none of the three main parties are going to be able to form a government because they don't have enough candidates. So you've got the Fine Gael Party, the Fina Fall Party and Sinn. Now Sinn were the political wing of the ira. Exactly. To a certain extent. Have kind of cleaned up their ways a bit. Well, you know, some people would say they haven't, but. But anyway. Okay, so they're the, they're the three parties that once the election, once the votes have been cast, they're. They are the three parties that are going to be going to Independence or to the Labour Party or to the Green Party or to the other parties that exist in, in Ireland to go and do a deal with them to put Fine Gael or Finna Fall or Sinn because you need 88 seats to get over the line. And so it's only going to be Fine or Sinn Fein that are going to be able to do a deal with another party. And Fine Gael and Fina Fall have said that they will not do a deal with Sinn Fein.
• 9:39
  Okay.
• 9:40
  So they may do a deal with themselves Finna Fall like they did before, and they brought in the Greens, but nobody seems to know. But it's. Yeah. The interesting thing I also heard this morning and the Netherlands was being mentioned was that there are loads of journalists calling statisticians and political science guys here in Ireland, asking them to explain the political system in Ireland because they can't understand how are there so many parties in Ireland.
• 10:15
  We have tiny parties, so we have parties that have maybe two seats.
• 10:19
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:20
  Or one seat even.
• 10:22
  Yeah, we have that too. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:24
  But. But in the Netherlands mode, they belong to a kind of right wing or left wing, you know.
• 10:30
  Well, sort of. Well, but that's probably the case in Ireland too, right. The independents that get chosen do have a leaning.
• 10:39
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot, A lot of the independents, not all of them, of course, but a lot of the independents would have come from Sinnoh or Fine Gale and would have decided at one point, you know, I'm not happy with the way this. My party is going. I'm going to leave and then I'm going to run as an independent in the next election.
• 10:59
  They create their own party then in a way.
• 11:02
  Well, but you see, they're not creating their own party because they're, they're, they're. They stay independent and independent. But they did try some time ago. There is, there was a group of independents that now Call them. Call themselves the Social Democrats. So they were a group of independents that kind of had the same values as each other. So they agreed a few years ago that they would form a new party called the Social Democrats. But there are still quite a large number of independents.
• 11:35
  We wobble from crisis to crisis, and it's every single week that some minister or some other government or parliamentarian from one of the coalition parties says something stupid and something has to be repaired again. It's just.
• 11:53
  It's a big laugh. It's.
• 11:55
  It is a cloud show. It is. I mean, I guess. I guess you can sort of guess my idea, ideological leanings from what I just said, but I don't care. It is. I mean, it's horrible. Every single month we have a major crisis.
• 12:10
  Yeah. And they. And they accomplish nothing, you know, those idiots.
• 12:15
  You know, actually I was listening to a podcast with two or, no, three political journalists, and they said, you know, there's been no law of any significance that's gone from the government to Parliament.
• 12:26
  No. But I learned also Mo and Oren, you know, those populists, you know, what we have in our government, they are also not accounted for what they achieve by. In new laws or whatever or new.
• 12:41
  Policy about what they say and how they.
• 12:44
  And how loud they scream. Because I have done this too, for you, my voters, you know, but that.
• 12:52
  That, that only works for a limited amount of time. At some point, people are going to wake up.
• 12:58
  Yeah, I hope so, too. And when is the actual election date?
• 13:02
  So the election date is. Well, we, we publish on a Thursday. So the election date for voting is tomorrow, the 29th of November.
• 13:13
  Oh, and is it accessible?
• 13:16
  Can I butt in here?
• 13:17
  Oh, hello. Hello.
• 13:25
  Welcome.
• 13:26
  So, hi. Yeah, so the last election that we had was a local election. It was accessible. No, no, it was accessible. They have these braille overlays that you can put over the election paper now, our election papers, because we've so many.
• 13:43
  Like a mall. Like, like. Yeah. How is that correct? English mole on top of it.
• 13:50
  It's a plastic thing that goes.
• 13:51
  Plastic thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:52
  And it's got. It's got braille on it and it's got a little hole for you to put your.
• 13:58
  Putting your. Yeah, your, your red pencil or your.
• 14:03
  Number, depending on what way the voting is. And, and yeah, so there's braille. And all of the polixations were supposed to have those. Now, not all of them knew they had them and not all of them knew where to find them, but most of them did. And in fact, when I went to vote the last time. The first thing I saw was behind this woman on the windowsill was this braille overlay thing.
• 14:26
  And this is each election place or.
• 14:29
  Is it in several?
• 14:30
  In a certain one.
• 14:31
  The problem is that some of the people running those places don't know what it is or what it's for. So it's just cast aside and nobody knows about it. You know, I've actually just looked it up and it says they've three different ways of getting assistance for to cast your vote. You can bring a companion. You can ask the presiding officer within the voting place to help you, or you can use the ballot paper template is what they call it, and it's a transparent plastic device that's placed on top of the ballot paper and the template has raised print and braille on it so that people, visually impaired people can vote independently.
• 15:05
  All right, well, let's, let's move on from political side because I want to talk about, I want to talk about. No, you're very welcome to say if you wish. Of course you are. I want to talk about.
• 15:13
  Have a nice time.
• 15:14
  Mo's holiday. Mo's been on holiday and you might be interested in listening to this, Claudia, because we haven't been on any holiday except I was on holiday in a hospital for about two weeks. Where were you? Come on, what were you doing?
• 15:29
  So happy to hear you're back, Oren.
• 15:32
  Thank you.
• 15:32
  It was sort of a pilgrimage slash holiday. So I went to Medina and Mecca. Ah, In Saudi Arabia. So those are the two holiest cities in Islam. One of them, One of them is where the prophet Muhammad got, got his first, got his first messages. And that's Mecca, of course. So that's the holy city. You've got Medina. And that's where he fled to when the people of Mecca decided to kill him. He ran away, obviously, which I think is something that everybody would do. But yeah, so he went to Medina and lived in Medina until his death. He only went back to Mecca for the Hajj, but he never went back and lived there again.
• 16:17
  And was it a particular festival or something you were going for?
• 16:22
  Yeah. So in Islam you have two types of pilgrimages. The first one you probably do know, it's the Hajj.
• 16:28
  Yes.
• 16:28
  And the Hajj is the big one where all the people go and it gets really, really crowded. It takes a couple days, six, I think six to eight days. And then the second one is the umbra, which is also known as the little Hajj or the mini Hajj. And that only takes a couple hours for the actual umbra, but that you can do year round. So one of the things that. At least even when, when it's the off season, which it was this time, it's very, very, very full. And Medina is doable, but Mecca is just insanely crowded.
• 17:09
  When you mean full. When you mean full mo, what kind of numbers are we talking about?
• 17:14
  I know that there is space for around a million, but by space I mean you can sort of, you can sort of be there and not die. By space, I do not mean comfortable space.
• 17:29
  So literally elbow to elbow with people.
• 17:32
  Yes, so because even now in the off season, you know, the evening prayer will be done, you'll go to eat, and it is literally so full that sometimes you have to stand still and wait for the crowd to dissipate, make sure that you don't get jostled and fall down just to be able to get place.
• 17:55
  Yeah, that's terrifying. And especially as a vision impaired person, I would imagine that would be extremely terrible. Like.
• 18:03
  Yeah, so I had sighted guides, obviously.
• 18:07
  Good.
• 18:07
  Okay.
• 18:08
  Which is, I think the only way you can really do it. You might try it with a cane, but I think especially with the mix of people there and also just the sheer number of people there, it is very difficult. And I would suspect that even some of them don't really know what a cane means.
• 18:24
  Okay.
• 18:25
  They might be able to. They might be able to figure it out. And probably most of them will figure it out.
• 18:30
  It's not that difficult, especially when you walk into a river accidentally or something.
• 18:33
  Yeah, well, it's the desert, so there's no rivers. That's good.
• 18:36
  Okay, so is it Al Kaaba? Is that. I don't know how to pronounce it. The.
• 18:40
  Yeah, so the. Yeah, it's the Kaaba, which is the. The. It's a little building, just really tiny that. That represents the house of God on earth, essentially. And that's also. The Muslims pray towards the Kaaba always. Even when I'm here, there's this little.
• 19:04
  Compass that you can use that's the east. So you need to face to the east in that way.
• 19:09
  But it's not just generally east, it's actually. No, actually to the. To this particular building.
• 19:14
  Yes, yes.
• 19:15
  That's interesting. I didn't know that before.
• 19:16
  So how do you. Excuse my ignorance, but how do you. Okay, I can. I know which way is east, but I wouldn't. How. How do you know it's that you're facing towards Kaba?
• 19:26
  There are apps that can help you do that. You call it the Qibla. The Qibla is the way. The way you need to pray. The orientation. The orientation. And there are apps to actually help you.
• 19:42
  What are the facilities like in terms of the accessibility? You said. I know you said you had sighted guide with you, but did you notice that it would have been. Would you have been able to get from Jeddah to Medina on your own, either traveling by train or plane? Would it have been fairly accessible or. Not really.
• 20:03
  I didn't look too hard, but I know that in Medina, for example, towards the Prophet Mosque, which is the biggest mosque in Medina, they're actually. There are actually lines, so guidelines on the ground to use.
• 20:17
  Okay.
• 20:18
  However, the problem with that is, is that you cannot use your cane inside the mosque. So if you. If you remember inside the mosque, you actually have to take out your. You take off your shoes.
• 20:27
  Yeah, yeah.
• 20:29
  So because you can't walk there with anything that touches the ground outside.
• 20:33
  Okay.
• 20:34
  And this happens. And so your cane won't work either. You'd have to have sort of almost a secondary cane that you only use inside. But if you have that, it's actually very possible to go there on your own. Mecca is harder. And I think because Mecca, they're still building, so it's less accessible there.
• 20:54
  So in terms of other facilities, I mean, you're talking about potentially a million people in Medina. So I'm kind of imagining it's a fairly big town or city. I mean, is there accommodation available or are people's. How are you? Like, were you in a hotel? Were you in a.
• 21:14
  Good question.
• 21:15
  Airbnb, how are you? You know, to imagine a million people in one kind of areas, kind of overwhelming.
• 21:24
  There are plenty of hotels and they're still building. So there are a lot of hotels. We had indeed two hotels. Each of them was around 10 minutes from the main mosque there on foot. So walking. And there are plenty, plenty of hotels around that area. The cities themselves are fairly big, though the concentration of people is mostly in those holy sites. So it's the big Prophet Mosque, Majid Nabawi in Medina, and it's the Kaaba in Mecca. That's where people want to be because remember, it's also very hot there, so you don't want to walk.
• 22:02
  What's the weather like?
• 22:03
  What is the weather there?
• 22:04
  Yeah.
• 22:05
  So the weather there In November was 34 to 36 degrees Celsius day and 23 to 25 degrees Celsius by night.
• 22:16
  Wow.
• 22:17
  So you're having air conditioning in your hotel, etc.
• 22:20
  Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
• 22:21
  How did you cope with that, Mo?
• 22:23
  I can handle the heat just fine. I'm of course originally from Morocco.
• 22:27
  Yeah.
• 22:28
  Not really used to it. I mean, I, I was born in the Netherlands. I am used to Dutch weather. It's actually what you wear also.
• 22:35
  Oh.
• 22:36
  Oh, tell me, what did you wear?
• 22:39
  Yeah, so what you wear, what you wear. And I also do this in Morocco, especially when it's warm because it's, it's great to have that thing. It's basically just a dress.
• 22:49
  Are you using the kafta? Yeah, it's sort of a Nigeria as well.
• 22:54
  Yeah, it's a gilleba, we call it in Moroccan Arabic. And it's, it's essentially a really wide, loose fitting dress that means that your whole body, almost your whole body is covered so that the sun can't get.
• 23:10
  You're not getting sunburned, but there is.
• 23:12
  Enough air going through such that you keep cool.
• 23:15
  Really?
• 23:16
  Yeah, yes.
• 23:18
  Okay.
• 23:19
  So it's, it's really thin and it's loose fitting and. Yeah, so that's what you wear.
• 23:26
  But presumably you're wearing a bit of. You know what I mean? You can't, it's not like a Scottish kilt, you know what I mean?
• 23:32
  Look behind you, there's a line there you weren't supposed to cross.
• 23:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it's a good.
• 23:45
  I'll cut that bit out perhaps. No, I won't.
• 23:50
  I just looked it up. Mo. We have a kind of a place of pilgrimage in Ireland called Knock and it will be our. We have a few of them actually, but Knock would be the biggest one. And I just looked up and it says there's 1.5 million pilgrims visit Knock every year. So you guys get more than that in a weekend. And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they were slightly exaggerating. I'd say the numbers have dropped quite a lot in the last few decades.
• 24:15
  How would a Westerner, Westerners like myself and Jan, let's say, or Clodagh, be received in Medina?
• 24:20
  It's perhaps perfectly fine if you want to come as a tourist in Mecca. I would expect as well. However, there are of course a couple of rules. So there were these ladies, these tourists, I think they were Chinese, but they wanted to enter the mosque without their hair covered and that will not be allowed. So they will not let you in if you don't. And I think even they won't let you into the mosque at all if you're not a Muslim because it's very heavily used yeah. And so having people around, snapping pictures.
• 24:58
  We have a good few mosques in Dublin, but there's one near where Orin's mom lives, and they're very open to people visiting people of other cultures and other religions.
• 25:09
  Mo, can I ask one last question on this? Did you. Would you. Did you find it an enjoyable experience?
• 25:15
  What this allows you to do is think. So it forces you because we have in Arabic and in Islam something called the dua. And a dua is essentially begging God for what you need in life. And what it forces you to be is humble, and it forces you to think. And I think those two things are things that you really need, I think even more when you're successful than when you're unsuccessful. But I think in both cases, they help a lot because they put you with you, with both feet on the ground, and they let you think about, okay, what do I not have power over? And you actually realize that there's a lot in this life that you do not have power over. When my eyes decided to stop working, there was nothing I could do. And I think our faith, I don't know about Christianity probably does, and Judaism probably does as well, and all the others probably do as well. But what it teaches you, one of the things it teaches you is acceptance. And I think a lot of that helps. Even in our specific cases, once you accept what is happening to you and what's happening with your eyes, a world opens for you that stays closed if you're sitting there hoping for a cure. And it's, It's. It's never been hard for me to accept my blindness. So it's.
• 26:34
  It's.
• 26:34
  This trip was not about my blindness, but it is always hard for people to accept certain things in their lives. It is always good to think about.
• 26:43
  That and to think about, Reflect on it.
• 26:46
  You know, reflect on yourself, reflect on. Reflect on what you do, what you don't have power over, and how you want to live your life and who you want to be. And in that sense, that trip has been amazing.
• 27:01
  You can email blindguyschatgmail.com or tweet us at Blind Guys Chat if you've any comments or questions.
• 27:09
  I have a challenge for you guys because the relation to this email. So I'm not going to play the email jingle. I'm going to hand straight over to Claudia with an email.
• 27:18
  Yes. Now, this email came in ages ago. Yeah, it came in ages ago. And between one thing and another and. Or and me in a hospital and all sorts of other things happening and we did not read it out. So it's from the lovely Patty Murphy, who has been a regular listener and she emails quite often. So thank you, Patty. You're very good. We really appreciate it, and in particular, thank you for your patience, because I've been hanging on to this email for ages. So I'm sorry about that, but I think it's gonna be worth the wait. So Patty says. Hey, there. In a recent episode of BGC, Oren mentioned that he thought WhatsApp AI did a better job at interpreting pictures than other apps with AI. So I thought I would send you two test pictures and see what happens. Now we're going to pause there and I'll read the rest of it. But she says, I'm curious to know how AI interprets the pictures and what your take on the interpretation will be. Lots of love, Patty. We'll come back to this in a minute.
• 28:12
  So what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do is I have four files to play for you of two photographs that Patty sent us. Okay. I have used Be My Eyes, and I have used PictureSmart to interpret what these pictures are showing. Okay.
• 28:31
  Okay.
• 28:32
  I'm not going to tell you which one is Be My Eyes and which one is Picture Smart, and I'm talking about Jaws. Picture smart. Okay.
• 28:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:41
  Now don't. I don't want you guys to be fooled by the fact that one is reading in eloquence voice and the other is a more realistic voice that won't necessarily give the game away as to which one is which.
• 28:57
  You have also eloquence for iOS. Yeah, that's also true.
• 29:00
  Yeah, that's also true. So I'm gonna play the first one, and then I will. I'll. I'll stop and then I'll play the second one and we'll have a talk about it.
• 29:08
  And this is about one picture right here.
• 29:10
  This is about the first picture. Yeah, one picture, which is which Patty calls in her email. The easy one.
• 29:16
  Yeah.
• 29:16
  Oh, okay. So I'm gonna play it now. Here we go.
• 29:20
  The image depicts three people standing outdoors, posing for a photo. On the left, a person is wearing an orange polo shirt and light pants. In the center, another individual is wearing a blue cap, sunglasses, and a blue shirt. On the right, the third person is dressed in a dark jacket, pink shirt, and patterned pants, carrying a floral bag. Behind them, there are trees, a wooden fence with signs, and some outdoor equipment.
• 29:43
  I'm gonna play the same AI for the same image again. Here we go.
• 29:47
  The image Shows three people standing closely together outdoors with trees and a wooden fence in the background. On the left is an elderly woman with short gray hair wearing an orange polo shirt and light colored pants. She has sunglasses resting on her head. In the middle is a man with long hair and a mustache, wearing a blue baseball cap, a blue T shirt and jeans. On the right is another woman wearing a white brimmed hat, a dark blue cardigan and a pink shirt. She has a floral pattern bag slung over her shoulder. Behind them, there is a sign on the fence that reads Allstate Paving with additional text about their services, including asphalt, brick and concrete. There are also logs stacked against the fence and some outdoor equipment visible.
• 30:12
  So that's the first picture read out by two different AI engines. And I'd like you to. I'd like to just you to discuss before I play the next one, which is a little bit more complicated.
• 30:23
  I think both descriptions gave you an overview which is good. The first one was a little bit more concise and the second one was a little bit more detail. Was a little bit more detailed. I think they both have their place. That's one of the reasons why. And this is a cheap plug. I know, but why? In Jaws, we have two ways of actually getting the description. One is shorter and one is longer. So the user can actually choose which one they want.
• 30:51
  And is that a verbosity thing? Mo? Yeah.
• 30:54
  No, it's a keystroke thing. So if you use the shift keystroke, you get descriptions from two AI, two AI engines. But also the first AI engine that we use, ChatGPT, has some restrictions put on it when you use the normal keystrokes that are not shifted because then we tell it to actually use a certain amount of words or less to describe a picture.
• 31:19
  Oh, that's interesting. So which one do you think is which?
• 31:23
  Yeah, Mo, you are the expert because you are the genius behind pictures.
• 31:29
  I wouldn't call myself a genius. I am not.
• 31:32
  Okay. Okay. Well, may I?
• 31:35
  Go ahead.
• 31:35
  Recording.
• 31:38
  So I think the first one was Jaws because I think you weren't using the shifted commands.
• 31:45
  I was thinking the other way around.
• 31:47
  Were you?
• 31:49
  Yeah.
• 31:50
  Okay, let me continue on and I'm going to play the next two files. Again, it's a different image and again it's AI for two different engines for the same image. I'm going to play the first one now.
• 32:04
  The image shows a small vintage red car loaded onto a black metal trailer. The car has a unique compact design with a bubble like roof and a single door on the side visible in the image, the trailer is parked on a paved driveway in front of a large light colored house with a porch and decorative railings. There is a ladder leaning against the porch and various items are stored underneath it. The area is shaded by trees and sunlight filters through the leaves casting dappled shadows on the ground.
• 32:20
  Let's play it again.
• 32:21
  The image shows a red three wheeled micro car parked on a flatbed trailer. The trailer is situated in front of a large two story house with a porch and white detailing in the background. There is a metal ladder leaning against the porch and some gardening items can be seen underneath. Tree surf the area casting shadows on the ground and part of the house.
• 32:39
  Now gentlemen, I think now the last one is Jaws and the first one is Be My Eyes.
• 32:45
  Now again, the last one is a little bit more detailed.
• 32:48
  Yeah.
• 32:50
  And the first one is a little bit more concise and both have useful information for the exact same reason. I think the first one is again Jaws.
• 32:58
  Okay, very interesting. Right, well, I'll give you the results before Clodagh reads out the rest of Paddy's text. The. In the first one, which was the image of three people together, the first recording. Sorry, the first playout was using Picture Smart from Jaws.
• 33:19
  Oh, he's good.
• 33:21
  The second version was Be My Eyes. And in the second image, which was the little car, which is a BMW, it's a tiny little three wheel car. It's three wheels. Yeah. The first one, the first play out of AI was with Be My Eyes.
• 33:39
  Interesting.
• 33:39
  And the second version was with Picturesmart, so.
• 33:43
  Oh yeah, Simo got it right first time, right?
• 33:46
  Yeah, right. First time I got it wrong second time.
• 33:49
  Yeah.
• 33:51
  But it's interesting. I find this more and more interesting to try it with different AI engines. To see what.
• 33:58
  Because the more detailed version was in the second one and that was then.
• 34:04
  And that's what I thought, I thought, I thought the very first one, the first image with the three people in it. The Be My Eyes did a much better job than Picture Smart. But yet I thought Picture Smart did a better job with the second image.
• 34:18
  Patty's explanation of these photos, the first one she calls the easy one, is a picture of Aunt Mim Otis Stroop, who we know well, and Karen Stroop from a gig they did last Saturday around the corner in a small outdoor venue. They played and we ate barbecue and Thai food on a lovely October evening in Catonsville. And I have to say it's a, it's a lovely photo. It's really a nice photo. Or I know Patty is a cousin of some kind of yours. And so.
• 34:45
  Yeah, so is Mim.
• 34:48
  Yeah.
• 34:49
  Except for Otis and Kathy.
• 34:52
  Karen.
• 34:52
  Karen. Sorry, Karen.
• 34:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 34:54
  Okay.
• 34:55
  But it's a lovely photo and I thought it was really interesting that the first one, which was the Jaws one. Right. Didn't gender the people. It was non gender language they used, which I thought was very interesting and probably very clever because you know how easy it might be to misgender people by accident. So I thought that was interesting. Whereas the second one did gender them.
• 35:14
  Yeah.
• 35:16
  So then Patty's explanation of the second image, she calls the second, the hard one, is a picture of my father's 1957 BMW Isetta. Is it Isetta Izetta? I don't know. Loaded onto a trailer ready to be towed off to the fancy car dealer in hopes of a big sale. And Patty, you're gonna have to tell us what happened with that because that's, that's. It's a beautiful car. It's tiny. I looked it up and it actually is a four wheel car, but the two wheels at the back are very, very close together.
• 35:47
  Oh, okay. Oh, that's, that's where I thought it was, the three wheeler.
• 35:50
  Yeah, it's a two. It's a four wheel car. But it's so cute. It's a really gorgeous car. I would never have guessed was a BMW. It looks kind of more like a. A vw. Some of them are Duotone. So like cream and red or white and yellow. So they look quite. They look quite.
• 36:08
  Basically looks like a child's toy. Do you know some of those, Those.
• 36:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:12
  Those cars, you know, the big Range Rovers are mercy. That's what you see a child have. Battery Operator 1 It's like that because.
• 36:18
  But it's like a one person car. Maybe two people, but one person and one bag of shopping maybe.
• 36:24
  Okay.
• 36:24
  One bag of tiny little things. Very cute.
• 36:26
  Yeah. But I think this, it's interesting. And thank you, Patty, for sending those images.
• 36:32
  Brilliant question.
• 36:33
  I think this is an interesting topic that we might widen out at a later date to talk more about AI, particularly about images and what we want, you know, even. Because we're talking now about, you know, Be My Eyes has just released. I saw the email a week or so ago, but the Be My Eyes now has officially been released on the Meta Ray Bans. And the video side of that is yet to come. But it will come. But I think we are gearing ourselves in the blind community. We are gearing ourselves to get ready for video live video Description when we are out and about. And I think that this opens up a very interesting conversation about how much detail do you actually want or require when you're moving about, you know, even if it's just in your house or whatever, you know, where is the cutoff point and will these developers offer you, like with Jaws, different levels, different levels to different engines, basically?
• 37:37
  I think a lot of this has to be personalizable as well. And one of the things also, it's very heavily context dependent. So. So if you are looking at a family picture and you are in the mood to just, you know, reminisce and look at it and think about when the picture was taken, you might want a whole lot of detail, but when you, when you don't, when you just quickly want to know something, you may want only that piece. We got a lot of feedback when we created PictureSmart. And one of the first things people asked us was, you know, we can't just look back and glance at a picture again to remind ourselves of a certain part of that picture. So we have to listen to your descriptions over and over and over again. Why don't you give us the opportunity to, you know, ask a question before sending the picture? And of course, now you can do that in Jaws.
• 38:28
  I have to say the interesting thing about that, and it was just a picture smart. I use, I didn't do use the shift key, but once the description of the three people in the photograph popped up and finished reading and it said, you know, whatever it says, want to know more? Click this link or whatever, and the little dialogue popped up. I did ask it deliberately because it didn't tell me how many male or female people were in the picture. I did say how many males are in this picture? And the picture smart came back with, I can't, I can't give you something like, I can't give you the information to that or don't have the information in that image for that, for that. So I seem to have kind of stumped it a bit and it was a fairly, fairly reasonable question. I would have thought to.
• 39:15
  No, it was.
• 39:16
  Whereas be. My eyes just went, okay, there's a male with a mustache in his picture. Long hair, long hair, etc. So I suppose it just takes a bit of playing around with.
• 39:29
  It's interesting though, and a brilliant idea from Patty to give us this as an exercise. Really interesting.
• 39:36
  Yeah. Anyway, that's it for the show, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming on the show.
• 39:41
  Yeah, many things moving a little bit.
• 39:43
  Poorly and we're sorry. You're feeling better soon. Feel better soon. Thank you for, for all the information about.
• 39:52
  Yeah, very interesting.
• 39:53
  Very, very interesting. And don't forget, send your pictures if you want us to analyze them to.
• 39:59
  Blank any of questions or whatever. Yeah.
• 40:02
  Voicemails or whatever, please do it and we'll see you in two weeks time.
• 40:06
  Yep.
• 40:06
  Bye.
• 40:06
  Bye.
• 40:07
  Thank you.
• 40:08
  Bye.