Valley of Song was every bit as wonderful as I thought it would be. It's the first time, though, that I ever saw a Novello play without any of his own songs. Christopher Hassall did such a good job finishing it that I couldn't tell where one man's work ended and the other's began. What really touched my heart, though, is that this took place in Wales, where Ivor was born. More so, was that some of the songs I know as a fact were sung by the Royal Welsh Ladies Choir, and probably by the Novello Davis Choir, both of which were conducted by his mother. It is the closest I will ever come to hearing them, other than one recording I have under another conductor. I almost cried when they sang Ar Hyd y Nos (All Through the Night), which I know they sung and even recorded in 1915 (I don't have it). And of course, there was a beautiful love story, too, as always.

#ChristopherHassall #ClaraNovelloDavis #IvorNovello #ValleyofSong

(Everything I have, except Glamorous Night, and The Dancing Years, can be found on Youtube.)
Tomorrow is my birthday, so I've decided to treat myself to an Ivor Novello film. I must be very careful with these, as he only made a few. I'm not counting the silent ones, since I'm blind and obviously can't watch them. I've already seen, and loved, I Lived with You. I'm missing Symphony in Two Flats, But the Flesh is Weak (wrote but not in), and The Truth Game (wrote but not in). But I still have Once A Lady, The Lodger, Sleeping Car, and Autumn Crocus. Which one should I watch?

As for his plays, they are ridiculously difficult to find with full dialogue. If you know of any, please let me know! I managed to locate Perchance to Dream, and King's Rhapsody, both amateur but wonderful. King's Rhapsody was actually performed by the Knowle Operatic Society in 1981. How they managed to capture that in sound I have no idea, since I can't imagine it was a professional recording. Maybe, they used Super8mm. I believe some of those cameras had sound. Anyway, I also watched the film version of Glamorous Night, whose only saving graces were Mary Ellis and Trefor Jones, and I'm waiting on the 1950 version of The Dancing Years, with none other than Olive Gilbert! Finding anything with her speaking in it is almost a miracle. If anyone knows where I can find a film called Ivor Novello, from 1956 or so, please let me know. Many of his people are in it, and I would absolutely love to see it, particularly for that reason! I also have a delightful version of Valley of Song, recorded in 1955! This is a special and poignant, as the play was left unfinished at Novello's death and was completed by his librettist, Christopher Hassall, the one man I think should have done it, since he, more than anyone, knew Novello's style and thought process in such matters. A museum actually uploaded it from an audiocassette, but this is not a radio performance. It appears to be the film, which made me laugh, since now, the sighted get to experience how I see films without audio description! But it's really not fair to laugh when the ones suffering are my peers who fight like hell to get anything from/by Novello! It would be amazing, though, to have what does exist audio-described. I think, though, that I will listen to Valley of Song tonight. I am very curious about it. I'll save tomorrow for the film.

#audiodescription #blind #ChristopherHassall #cinema #films #IvorNovello #MaryEllis #OliveGilbert #operettas #plays #talkies #theatre

vm.tiktok.com/ZMhENB3AA/

#cw

It has just come to my attention that there is only one developer of Friendica. It's a truly wonderful site, with a lot of potential, particularly for those of us coming from Facebook. It allows for extremely long posts, local posting, and you can follow and interact with people from various sites in the Fediverse. But there are a few issues regarding screen reader accessibility, and perhaps some things that I'm not aware of. I have therefore decided to create a Friendica development tag, in order to find people who are willing and able to help resolve these issues.

#accessibility #accessibilitytesting #Android #blind #blindness #Facebook #Fediverse #Friendica #FriendicaDevelopment #html #NVDA #screenreaders #Talkback #websites #Windows

Hello. I joined Friendica in October of 2024, after Facebook closed their Basic Mobile site (not app). I live in New Jersey and am forty years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Received Pronunciation, and the Regency. I like coffees, teas, and nasal snuffs, and enjoy cooking, reading, nature and historical documentaries, and gardening. I like Baroque through Classical and a bit of early Romantic music. I love theatre (mostly English and Viennese operettas, and some Regency/Georgian plays). I prefer antique menswear and accessories. It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. My parents are lesbians, and I am a huge gay rights supporter. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.

I am happily childfree and am not religious. I respect those who are, as long as they don't try to convert me, or base their lives around it. The same is true of vegans. I also have no time for mind games, drama, or political correctness/sugar coating, and I hardly ever write about politics. I tend to get along better with people older than I, but I will accept friends twenty-one and over. I don't have any understanding of chronic illness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, etc. so if you need someone who could help you through those on a personal level, I'm not the one for that. I enjoy hearing about cats, cooking or gardening adventures, antiques, and interesting life stories.

For those who would like to know more about me, this is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member. Almost all entries are clean. Anything adult-oriented is always marked as such and is put behind a cut. If you're a straight or bisexual, childfree man, preferably over sixty (forty at the absolute youngest) and are single, you may be interested in my dating post, (link in the About Me post near top of page).

dandylover1.dreamwidth.org
#antiquemensware #antiques #blind #books #British #Britishliterature #BeauBrummell #cards #cats #childfree #coffee #cooking #classicalmusic #crafts #dandies #dandyism #ClaraNovelloDavies #dice #dinnerparties #documentaries #Dreamwidth #Edwardian #England #English #Eton #Facebook #Friendica #friends #friendship #gayrights #gardening #grammar #highculture #humor #humour #introduction #Latinlanguage #LordAlvanley #men #MS-DOS #nasalsnuff #nature #NewJersey #IvorNovello #oldermen #operettas #reading #ReceivedPronunciation #Regency #relationships #seniors #silverfork #singing #singles #tea #theater #theatre #Wales #Windows #writing

Friendica seriously needs to do something about their accessibility. I was able to edit one post directly on the site, but it was apparently a lucky click. I keep trying, but though there is an "edit" option,, when I hit it, it never sends me to an edit page. There is some kind of dialogue and I can never get into it. Even the homepage doesn't have normal links. It's some kind of menu bar, and if I go to profile, for example, it reads as a link, but I had to tab through everything else to get out of it. Why can't people just make normal links! This is why I use TweeseCake.

#accessibility #blind #blindness #friendica #html #menus #NVDA #technology #TweeseCake #websites

Usually, I post from TweeseCake, but I saw something interesting on the Friendica site itself. What is the difference between "Reshare" and "quote share"?

#Friendica #terminology

"The western world and mainstream media have once again jumped on an opportunity to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism after Israeli football hooligans, protected by the Mossad, wreaked havoc on the streets of Amsterdam, deliberately provoking a harsh response."

thecradle.co/articles/the-manu…

The manufactured 'pogrom': Weaponizing chaos in Amsterdam

The western world and mainstream media have once again jumped on an opportunity to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism after Israeli football hooligans, protected by the Mossad, wreaked havoc on the streets of Amsterdam, deliberately provoking a …

^thecradle.co

Un intendente bonaerense quedo con un gran vuelto...era para caminos rurales.

lanacion.com.ar/economia/campo…

#Argentina

To my fellow blind DOS users. I have some real machines and genuine hardware synthesizers, but at the moment, they're not available. I have a Windows 3.1 virtual machine with ASAP installed. Someone gave it to me a few years ago. But I think there's a problem with com0com. I have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. I think the older one I used wouldn't work on 64-bit systems. Regardless, I forget how to use it. I know I need to set it to com9, so that ASAP thinks I'm using a Braille-N-Speak, when it's really NVDA that's outputting the speech. Can anyone help me? Also, I know that many developments have taken place since the last official version of MS-DOS, from FreeDOs, to FreeDOS-32, to Enhanced DR-DOS. I also know that the Provox screen reader has been made open source. To my knowledge, it's the only one that has. Has anyone tried to update it or use it with the later versions of DOS? What about real software synthesizers? Is there any way for me to obtain a full version of Vocal-Eyes, now that the company that made it isn't even around anymore, let alone supporting it?

#accessibility #ASAP #blind #DOS #EnhancedDRDOS #FreeDOS #FreeDOS-32 #MS-DOS #Provox #screenreaders #speech #virtualmachines

Stages of a Dos-Lover's Linux Journey
1. Ooh! There's an operating system I haven't tried, and it has a screen reader!
2. Yay! I chose one. Let's download it.
3. Hurray! It's installed. Wait. It's not talking. What's wrong? let's try another. Okay, that one talks.
4. Why isn't it seeing my shared folder from VMware? Never mind, I'll just ask Perplexity.
5. Great. It gave me some commands, let's try them.
6. What the hell is this! Why are there no drive letters? What is that command? Why is it a mile long? Why must I always enter sudo for everything?
7. Okay. Several hours have passed. This is maybe my third or fourth attempt in the last two months or so. Even Perplexity admits that it was giving me the wrong commands! sigh Let's try this one.
8. Yay! It finally sees my folders! At last, I can learn the operating system!
9. What the bloody hell! It sees my text file as an executable? How the hell can a .txt file be an executable? How do I fix this to make all .txt files be seen as... normal text files!
10. Back to the commandline,again, because people can't figure out how to do this graphically! Why do Linux commands give me a headache when I can work with DOS all day? Why don't these make any sense?
11. Even Noel Coward would be blushing at my hypothetical vocabulary right now, so I won't type the rest. I'm going back to XP, 7, and DOS! On second thought, I'm going to make a cup of tea, watch an operetta, and forget that computers exist at all!

#accessibility #commandline #Debian #Linux #DOS #Orca