Fresh Perspectives

Driving with a Disability II

In my prior post, I gave you a summary overview about driving with a disability.  Today, I'd like to expand on that.

Again, primary driving controls are gas, brake and steering while secondary controls include everything else.  The systems I will be using come from 2 companies; Drive Master and EMC.  As you might imagine, there are not many companies around that manufacture products like this.  It is a specialty, and I'm sure the liability exposure, hence the cost of insurance, is considerable.  That applies to the dealer network as well.  Installing these systems requires specialized expertise, and generally the dealers offer driver training and evaluations as well as installation.  The company I'm working with locally has been doing this for well over 20 years, and they are indeed experts.  

I'll be using mechanical horizontal steering which connects to the steering column.  It can be adjusted on all planes.  Drive Master also retrofits steering boxes and rack and pinions for reduced and zero effort steering.  Among other innovative products, they offer backup steering systems as well.

I'll also be using the gas/brake system from EMC.  Their entire EMC system is called AEVIT (Advanced Electronic Vehicle Interface Technology).  They also offer secondary interface controls and "drive by wire" steering.  Their website is extremely informative.  This page gives a very nice overview of the AEVIT  driving system. 

Another very innovative company in this arena is MPD, Mobility Products and Design.  The hand control in my current van is an MPD product.  It is amazingly reliable, even after 11 years of use. 

Learning to drive with these devices is a little challenging and will require over 10 hours of training.  Mr. Keller has an older trainer van and is in the process of outfitting a new one.  You can imagine the expenses involved in such a specialty, hence the reason for the high cost at the consumer level. This is indeed a very specialized business, and the companies and dealers involved are indeed quite innovative.

I'm enjoyed doing this research.  I hope you enjoy it as well. 

Story Musgrave

The video below is compelling!  Story Musgrave was the astronaut who led the team charged with fixing the Hubble telescope several years back.  Although the main focus of the video is teamwork, it is compelling for other reasons.  To me, it shows that an astronaut, who one would assume would be an analytical person, can be creative.  Dr. Musgrave has advanced degrees in both arts and sciences.  Plus his presentation style is wonderful.  Worth watching:

Story Musgrave and the Hubbel - Click here for the most popular videos

Excellent TED Talk

On the Presentation Zen blog, Garr Reynolds posted this TED talk.  His comments were aimed at the presentation aspects of the talk, and I must agree the talk was engaging from that standpoint.  But the content of the talk was outstanding.  Check it out.

Presentation Zen - Worth Waiting For!

My copy of Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds arrived on Friday.  By Saturday evening, I had finished reading it, and I took notes along the way too.  This book was worth waiting for to say the least.  If enough people read it, the world of business presentations might be revolutionized!

This is much more than a "how to do" book; it is more appropriately a "how to think" book.  The writing is excellent and the supporting visuals are elegant.  The foreword by Guy Kawasaki is unexpected and effective.

This book didn't just change the way I think about presentations, it changed the way I look at our world.  Definitely worth reading, and a great reference tool!

Mac vs. PC

We’ve all seen the ads for Mac vs. PC. These are the most significant marketing works I’ve seen in quite some time.

My first computing experience was punched cards, FORTRAN and COBOL on a Honeywell computer that filled a room, so my golden age reveals itself! PC experience came with a Franklin PC running CP/M. I then escalated to an original DOS PC with WordPerfect and Lotus 123. I’m cut my teeth on a DOS PC, and I have always looked upon Apple computers as toys. I was the last person in my school to upgrade to Windows 95, and a GUI interface wasn’t something I embraced. I’m now of course running Windows XP systems exclusively.

I recently purchased a new laptop running XP, and I spent the greater part of a day installing Windows updates (72 of them), virus protection, spam filtering and all of the other amenities necessary to make a PC operate. Windows Vista isn’t something I am embracing, so this very innovative ad campaign by Apple has garnered my undivided attention and reinforces the fact that simplicity has impact!

At the career-tech school where I’m an administrator, we’re adding some new iMac and Mac Book systems in our Graphic Design training area. These will be the only Mac systems in the entire school and they will co-exist among approximately 200 PC systems. So that we can support the new systems, the Tech administrator and I are in the process of learning the systems. Here are some of my first impressions:

• The Mac Book I’m using is streamlined and elegant.
• The system was functional in 20 minutes. It easily found and configured my home wireless network, and I quickly was accessing the shared files on my PC.
• OS X is built on UNIX, an older multi-user operating system for mini computers. Partly because of its roots, OS X doesn’t share the same security issues as the PC running Windows. It is very stable.
• The operating system tools are intuitive and simple. I was navigating in it within a few minutes.
• A tour of iWork trial software (Keynote and Pages) demonstrated the astounding graphic capabilities of the system. PowerPoint is a Pontiac; Keynote is a Benz!
• I loaded a large spreadsheet from my networked PC into Office 2004 for the Mac without a hitch. I could get accustomed to using the Mac version of Office.

The Mac ads are 100% accurate! Matt May, author and consultant, wrote a book about Toyota called The Elegant Solution. To me, Mac systems exemplify “Elegant Solutions”. Simple usability (OS X) is elegant, and it always beats gizmo (Vista)!