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Welcome to my homepage. I became blind at birth from retinopathy of prematurity. I developed an early interest in computers and radio. I use Linux, MacOS, and iOS. I have an extra class amateur radio license. I practice Qigong daily. I consider myself a Taoist. I don't drink alcohol, eat meat, or gluten. It makes me feel optimal, and helps with migraines, which I also have to deal with. For the rest, you'll have to read my articles.
A Tribute to Stuart Olson
September 10, 2025My Taoism teacher Stuart Olson recently passed away. The Sanctuary of Tao wrote a tribute to him. I wanted to write my own.
I first encountered Stuart during the 2019 Qigong Global Summit. The Shift Network used to do them. Stuart gave a talk about Taoism. In it, he described it as an inherently antisocial philosophy. I perked up and thought:
“What? An inherently antisocial philosophy? I have to sign up to this guy’s newsletter!”
I did during the break. When I moved into the city, I thought that I would really do it! I would try to make myself get out and socialize. I even referred to it as social yoga. Even though I had some valuable encounters and good times, ultimately it burned me out. This led me to acupuncture, which led me to Qigong, which led me to the Qigong Global Summit where I heard this talk. I knew that Taoism served as the base for Qigong, and now I understood it as the opposite of the thing I tried which failed. I knew I had found my path and my teacher.
A few weeks later, the Sanctuary of Tao offered a course in a seated form of Qigong called the Eight Seated Brocades. Many have heard of the Eight Standing Brocades, but the seated form doesn’t get as much attention. It actually came first, from around 2000 years ago and has more to do with cultivating what we call the three Treasures.
The body has three types of energy: Jing (the fluids of the body, like water), Qi (the life force of the body accessed with the breath, like fire). Combining water and fire results in Shen (the spirit or consciousness). The Seated Brocades especially cultivated the Jing and Qi, which will naturally generate Shen. Just as Taoism serves as the foundation for Qigong, the Seated Brocades serve as the foundation for doing further internal work.
I loved the course. Stuart and his assistant Patrick did a great job teaching the course, and answered all my questions.
Shortly after the course ended, the Sanctuary of Tao sent out another email. They offered the opportunity to become what they traditionally call a Closed Door Student. This means a teacher and student having a one-on-one relationship for intense spiritual work. In modern times it meant regular group lectures, and meetings every two weeks on Zoom. I took it!
We began, and I learned so much. Eventually we each had to select a text which we would go over in detail during our private classes. I chose the Secret of the Golden Flower. This book talks about cultivating in the third eye, and I felt drawn to it immediately.
Taoists remind me a lot of Unix users. They write obfuscated manuals for other initiates with a lot of assumed knowledge. The Secret of the Golden Flower definitely has this quality. I would never have understood it without Stuart’s guidance and commentary. Even then I considered it a privilege. We would say that this happened because of our past actions, or karma.
Meanwhile, I realized that I had to move out of the city. I found a perfect house and they accepted my offer. Three days before settlement I had my regular meeting with Stuart. I came with a lot of random questions, and moving on my mind. He said, “I will answer your random questions, but next time I really want to get into the Secret of the Golden Flower.” I said, “That sounds good! Golden Flower! Next time.” Next time never came.
I packed with a lot of help from my family and friends. Right before I shut down my computer I checked email for the last time for real. I got a message from the Sanctuary of Tao that Stuart had cancer, and had to stop teaching. That did it for the city!
I made the move, then finally had time to contemplate the message. Previusly, they announced that Stuart had an infected kidney and had to take a break from teaching. Now the diagnosis shifted to cancer. I felt shocked and sad. I had a lot going on after the move, and just kept practicing. I held the vision of him recovering and of us talking again.
Sadly that did not happen. In early August, they sent out an email announcing that Stuart had entered hospice care. He passed away on the fourteenth. We had a memorial for him on the thirty-first. The Sanctuary of Tao wrote an article exploring why someone who practices longevity would die at age 75. Chapter 33 of the Dao De Jing says:
“Those who die without losing their power have longevity.”
Stuart did that. Now we have to continue. He wanted his students to understand things well enough to become teachers. I will let you know when I start offering classes. Even though we can’t have our regular chats on Zoom, I know that he still exists, and can still answer my endless questions.
How to Copy Files to a Broken Linux Server
July 21, 2024I recently began upgrading a Slackware Linux VPS using Linode. I thought I would upgrade OpenSSL to prevent GPG from crashing later. Bad move. It broke everything! Suddenly I had a broken server. I could not use SSHFS to copy a file, and didn’t have an FTP server running. I needed to get the proper packages onto the server, but how?
I came up with a clever solution. Download the packages locally. Encode the package file to base64 to turn it into text. Copy it to the clipboard. Finally, paste it into a text file on the server, decode it, and install the package.
First, you need to download the appropriate packages. I use Slackware, so went to packages.slackware.com. Go to the web site for your distribution. Find the package version closest to the version on your system. It needs to find all its required libraries. Download the file and encode it into base64. For example, to encode the file openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.tgz, run a command such as:
base64 openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.tgz > openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.b64
This saves it to a file named openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.b64. Copy it to your clipboard with:
xclip -selection clipboard openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.b64
You can combine these two commands if you wish:
base64 openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.tgz | xclip -selection clipboard
If for some reason you cannot encode the file locally, you may use www.base64encode.org.
Now you have a text encoded version copied to your clipboard. Go to your broken system and paste the contents into a file.
cat > openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.b64
Paste with ctrl-shift-V or by selecting Edit | Paste in your terminal. Hit ctrl-d to end the file. Now decode it:
base64 -d openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.b64 > openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64-1.tgz
And you will have the package, which you can install. In Slackware you would run:
installpkg openssl-solibs-1.1.1za-x86_64.tgz
For Debian and Ubuntu systems, run:
apt install openssl-solibs-1.1.1za.x86_64-1.deb
Redhat would use:
rpm -i openssl-solibs-1.1.1za.x86_64-1.rpm
Arch Linux would use:
pacman -U openssl-solibs-1.1.1za.x86_64-1.zst
and OpenSUSE would use:
zyp install openssl-solibs-1.1.1za.x86_64-1.rpm
And that should do it. Repeat the procedure for the other broken packages.
I hope this saves some poor sysadmin in a panic.
I Got my Extra!
March 16, 2024I passed my extra class amateur radio license exam on Saturday night! I took the exam remotely. It took almost a year of study. I feel so happy.
Ham radio requires a license, like driving. Our signals can travel around the world or into outer space. When I started at age twelve in 1989, we had five license classes: novice, technician, general, advanced, and extra. We now have three: technician, general, and extra. Each class gives you more frequencies you can use, and other privileges. The exams get progressively harder. Most people could get their technician class license. The general requires more knowledge, but it opens up the world of HF, the high frequency signals which travel around the world. Both of those require taking a 35-question multiple choice exam. The extra exam has 50 questions. You need to get 74% to pass.
I remember when I touched and heard a ham radio for the first time. It happened at the Franklin Institute Science Museum, which had a radio room at the time. I pleaded with my parents to get me a ham radio on the way back home. They explained that I needed to pass a test. That didn’t phase me, since I took tests all the time. I got some four track tapes for the blind called Tune IN the World, and listened to them constantly.
A few years later I got my novice. I remember the VEs, the volunteer examiners, came to my house. They gave me the test, including tactile block diagrams, and I also had to pass a 5 WPM Morse Code test. Somehow I did.
A few years later I wanted to upgrade to technician and general. I went to a radio camp run by Handiham in Malibu, California. I had a wonderful time relaxing with ham radio friends in the sun. I failed.
The next year they had another radio camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. I remember flying into Minneapolis. I had to take a terrifying plane flight in sub zero temperatures, and landed in an airport the size of a kitchen. I passed.
Sadly I got out of the hobby when I went off to college, but I didn’t let my license expire. I got back into ham radio in 2019 as part of my healing journey. I needed my hobby back. I brushed up on my technician and general theory, and got back on air.
I knew that I wanted my extra. I made a few starts. Finally last May I started in earnest. I went back to my old friend, Gordon West. He does an entertaining audio presentation. I used his tapes during childhood, and bought his CDs when getting back into the hobby so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot when I got back on air. I also purchased the No Nonsense Study Guide from Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, after working him on 40 meters. It really helped, especially when it came time to cram and take practice exams. I also used ChatGPT. I chose ChatGPT because I started studying in May of 2023. Better alternatives may exist now.
Learning from an AI really did feel like living in the future. I saw its potential and its limitations. I struggled for years to understand exactly what happens when I hit transmit on my radio, and how that results in sending out an electromagnetic wave. I got it in one night with an AI. It still makes mistakes. For example it told me that a half wave antenna for 60 meters measures 56 feet. My primitive human brain didn’t immediately know the exact number, but I knew that it got it wrong. A half wave antenna for 40 meters measures 66 ft. A quick calculation revealed the right answer of around 87.5 ft. It got a lot of stuff right though.
I finished Gordo’s audio course a little over a month ago. I started taking practice exams. I tried a few tools, and settled on the Exam Review tool from the ARRL. It lets you suppress questions with images, an exemption which blind people can request. I began using the No Nonsense Study Guides a lot at this point. My score started improving. Once I started scoring 90% I decided that the time had come to bite the bullet and take the test.
I belong to the Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club. They administer testing sessions, but I didn’t feel like going out to Willow Grove. I decided to try a remote exam. They became popular during the pandemic. I heard good things about the Greater Las Angeles Amateur Radio Group, so decided to try them.
I emailed the AD4VE testing team, and asked if they could accommodate a blind applicant. I got a quick reply from Dave that they could, and he suggested using my iPhone for video and a desktop computer to share the screen to take the exam. He couldn’t attend live, but assured me that I would have a strong team
I made the appointment for the next night. I felt nervous but confident. I hadn’t taken a test in a long time. I thought about how far we’ve come. When I got my novice in 1989, we didn’t have practice exams. You had to study, then hope for the best.
I woke up on Saturday feeling OK. I didn’t have any signs of a migraine. I took a practice exam, and got 74%, the minimum passing score. That made me more nervous, but I reminded myself that I needed to get my brain going. I tried one later in the afternoon and got 90%, more like what I had hoped for. I had taken all the practice exams I could take. I had dinner and prepared myself.
I had Zoom ready on my iPhone and on my Mac. I had my photo ID, which they require for verification. I had a bottle of water. I joined on time. They greeted me.
“Someone named Art is already in there. He says he knows you.”
I didn’t know which Art he meant, as I’ve contacted a few, but should have.
“Well! You didn’t want to go to Willow Grove, but you ended up with me anyway!” I recognized the enthusiastic voice of Art, N8BLK. He belongs to both Phil-mont and Holmesburg, two local radio clubs. I felt even more at ease. The three volunteer examiners introduced themselves.
“We are going to need more light.” The sudden words froze me. I turned on the light switch, but the bulb must have burned out, and of course I didn’t notice. I started to panic, but kept it under control. I brought over a 15 Watt red salt lamp, but that didn’t really do it. I thought about apologizing and rescheduling in embarrassment, but they persevered
One of the volunteer examiners said, “Art, if you can verify that that is Austin, then we are OK with that.”
“Oh, that’s definitely Austin!” he proclaimed. He saved me. World’s greatest hobby!.
I battled with Zoom on my phone. I had VoiceOver focus issues sharing a web URL, so switched to the Mac for the exam. I shared the screen. Art asked me why I had an Emacs window open. I said that I would use it for its calculator. He laughed. They asked me to hold the phone up to the screen of the Mac. I had the monitor hooked up to my Linux machine. I apologized again for the weird situation, and started crawling under my desk to unplug the cable. I heard them calling me back. They decided not to worry about it. They did ask me to slow down my speech so they could understand it. Finally we had video on the iPhone, the shared screen with Safari on my Mac, and slower speech. Suddenly I found myself taking the exam.
I filled out the form without any issues. Each question had four radio buttons for choices. At one point I began to get thirsty. I felt scared to make any moves after everything that had happen, so asked if I could drink some water.
“You can drink all you want!” replied Art happily. I made my way through the questions and felt good about my answers.
“Of course, you can always go back and edit any of your choices.” he said, but I didn’t want to change a thing. I took a big breath and hit the Submit Exam button.
The page loaded, but before I could begin reading it, Art said, “Well, now you can annoy everyone on Holmesburg and Phil-Mont by calling yourself KA3TTT/AE!!!” He referred to the rule that if you have upgraded your license and received your Certificate of Successful Completion (CSCE), you can append /AG or /AE to your call for General or Extra until you get your license.
“I passed?” I asked. I still couldn’t quite believe it.
“You passed!” they all confirmed. I scrolled down and saw my score. I got 45 questions correct, for a score of 90%!
“Those were five that you don’t need to know.” said one of the examiners. “Now comes the fun part.” I had to fill out the form to submit to the FCC. Everything worked fine until I got to the electronic signature. VoiceOver only read the signature area as an image. Unfortunately screen reader users often have issues with electronic signatures. We tried on the Mac using the Magic Track pad, but then Art suggested trying it on my iPhone. I battled again with Zoom to share the web URL, and after several attempts I made a line in the field. The submit button undimmed. They excitedly yelled for me to hurry and submit it before we had another focus issue. I quickly hit the button. It asked me to confirm my submission. “Hurry! Hurry!” they yelled again. This had become the final test. I hit the submit button. It went through.! We cheered.
I felt so happy. They thanked me for not giving up on them. I said that I wanted to thank them for the same reason. They assured me that they would have found a way to make it work no matter what. They had more good news.
“Everyone in tonight’s session passed.”
I asked how many.
“Only seven.” That amazed me. Remote testing has really opened things up, and GLARC does great work. After more congratulations they moved me to the exit room. I heard them congratulating a new ham. They then congratulated me. Someone suggested that I become a volunteer examiner, since extras can do that. I hadn’t considered it.
“You can’t see to verify if someone is cheating, but there is plenty to do.” I asked if they knew of any blind VEs.
Art responded, “KS3X.”
“Of course.” Enoch lives in Philadelphia and checks into the net which I run.
“And there was Carl Owens, W0CPR, formerly WB0CPR, but he passed.”
“Carl passed away?”
“Yeah. He moved to Michigan to live with his brother, and passed about two years ago.”
The celebration stopped for a moment. I knew Carl during middle school and high school. He gave me stern guidance, but also loved to laugh. He made sure my license didn’t expire. One time I gave him a broken laptop, the first Keynote talking laptop for the blind. I don’t know what I had done to it, but I believe it involved battery acid. I complained about the broken machine.
“Of course you broke it. You’re a kid.” he stated. That hurt, and I held it against him for many years, until my younger sisters trashed the family computer with spyware. They infected it with a nasty virus which altered the BIOS. The machine barely ran. They cursed at it and called it slow, and told Mom that they needed a new computer instead of this broken one.
“Of course you broke it. You’re a kid.” As the words left my mouth I heard Carl’s voice echoing through time, like in a movie. I instantly forgave him. I never got to tell him as an adult. He would often end our conversations by saying, “Keep a smile.” I found his obituary.
I left the session with a strange mixture of emotions. I felt happy I passed, though still couldn’t believe it. I felt annoyed about the lighting issue. I felt sad about Carl. I felt relieved that I wouldn’t need to study anymore for the exam. Getting an extra class license feels like the Return of the King – the grand third installment of a trilogy which explains everything.
I had to work a station. Luckily we had a contest going on. I quickly found Bud, AA3B, in the extra portion of 80 meters. He spoke at Holmesburg, and I worked him many times. This time I answered sending KA3TTT/AE. I had made my first contact as an extra.
I want to thank everyone for making this possible. Gordon and Dan made excellent study guides. ChatGPT helped me understand concepts, and showed me the potential of AI in education. Everyone at GLARG went above and beyond to accommodate me. See you on the extra bands!
Good Luck in the Contest
July 15, 2023By Austin Seraphin, KA3TTT and ChatGPT 4 In the Style of Douglas Adams
In a typically nondescript laboratory, somewhere between the international dateline and the price of tea in China, a group of scientists were contemplating an extraordinary event. They had picked up an extraterrestrial radio signal. This was momentous, revolutionary, the crowning achievement of human endeavor. Also, it was a Tuesday, and there were fresh scones in the break room.
After numerous caffeine-fueled nights, the team had managed to decode the signal. The room was electric with anticipation as Dr. Humphrey Jones, a man of considerable intelligence and less considerable hair, prepared to reveal the decoded message to the world.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, his voice echoing off the sterile white walls, “our new extraterrestrial friends have sent us a message that reads… ‘CQ TEST’.”
Silence.
“CQ TEST?” queried Dr. Samantha Lewis, her eyebrows inching up her forehead with skepticism. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Jones confirmed, feeling an uncomfortable itch he attributed to existential disappointment.
Mystified, the scientists turned to their most powerful radio transmitter, dubbed “The Mouth of Humanity” (to which the janitor retorted, “More like the backchat of humanity”). They transmitted back, asking the question that has plagued humans for millennia, “What is the meaning of life?”
After a pause long enough to create an anthology of uncomfortable glances, the response came: “TNX FER QSO. UR RST 599. PSE QSL.”
“What on Kepler-22b does that mean?” Samantha blurted out.
“It seems,” Jones sighed, “that we have not made contact with a wise and ancient alien race. Instead, we’ve stumbled upon… alien ham radio contesters.”
The rest of the week saw the scientists fervently trying to hold meaningful conversations with the aliens, who were more interested in signal reports, confirming the contact, and generally boosting their contest scores.
“What about the mysteries of the universe?” pleaded Samantha in one transmission. “What’s out there?”
“PSE QSL VIA BURO,” the aliens promptly responded, completely uninterested in deep philosophical discussion. They wanted a QSL card from Earth - a veritable trophy given the planet’s rarity in the contesting scene.
With a final “GL IN TEST, 73 ES HPE CUAGN SN,” the aliens stopped replying. They had moved on, no doubt, to collect more QSOs from distant, exotic parts of the universe, leaving the scientists in their radio-silent wake.
As the echoes of the alien’s final “good luck” faded into the ether, the scientists could only look at each other, bemused and somewhat hungry.
“Tuesday,” Jones finally remarked, “scones in the break room.”
“And maybe,” Samantha added, “a bit of humility for dessert.”
How to Tell a Driver You are Blind
June 16, 2023Ridesharing companies like Lyft and Uber have a problem. Many times, a blind passenger needs to tell their driver that they cannot see, but the driver does not understand due to the language barrier. At best it will work out. At worst it can present a physical safety issue. The blind have no other way to communicate.
Recently, I had an idea. I asked ChatGPT 4:
I am blind. Often when I get a Lyft I get an immigrant who cannot speak English well, and does not understand the situation. I would like you to make a table of how to say “I am blind.” in all of the languages commonly used by drivers from other countries. The table should include the language, the text, and an approximate pronunciation for American English speakers.
In less than a minute it had produced the following table. In another fifteen seconds it rendered it into Markdown for my blog. Welcome to 2023
| Language | Translation | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Soy ciego. | Soy cee-ay-go |
| Mandarin Chinese | 我是盲人。 (Wǒ shì máng rén.) | Wo shi mang ren |
| Hindi | मैं अंधा हूँ। (Main andha hoon.) | Main and-ha hoon |
| Arabic | أنا أعمى. (Ana a’ma.) | Ana a’ma |
| French | Je suis aveugle. | Je swi aveugle |
| Russian | Я слепой. (Ya slepoy.) | Ya slep-oy |
| Portuguese | Eu sou cego. | Eh-o soo se-go |
| Bengali | আমি অন্ধ (Ami ondho) | Ami on-dho |
| Punjabi | ਮੈਂ ਅੰਧਾ ਹਾਂ। (Main andha haan.) | Main and-ha haan |
| Japanese | 私は盲目です。 (Watashi wa mōmoku desu.) | Wa-ta-shi wa mo-mo-ku des |
| German | Ich bin blind. | Ich bin blind |
| Vietnamese | Tôi mù. | Toy moo |
| Turkish | Ben körüm. | Ben kor-um |
| Polish | Jestem niewidomy. | Yes-tem niewi-domy |
| Dutch | Ik ben blind. | Ik ben blind |
| Greek | Είμαι τυφλός. (Eimai tyflos.) | Ee-mai ti-flos |
I would like to see ridesharing companies do more to train their drivers to better accommodate people with disabilities. Until then, I hope this table will help. I just hope it doesn’t end up like Monty Python’s Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch!