Gregory J. Rosmaita

Sex: Male
Occupation: dadaist, muckraker, gadfly, knight of standards & practices, web accessibillity guerilla (WAG), & prematurely old codger
Member since: Feb 2007
Forum posts: 67
IRC oedipus
Jabber: oedipusnj [at] jabber.org
Skype oedipusnj
Web site: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/

About me

my avatar is a photograph of Man Ray's nail-studded flat-iron, of which he wrote: Anyone can make an iron adorned with a row of tacks, but only one person can come up with the original idea.

my personal photograph is courtesy of joe clark, and was taken in january 2003, on joe's trip to new york city, on which he made a side-visit to joisey city, where i was then located... the section of joe's blog post concerning his visit to me features 4 photographs, and the one i chose is the one captioned: Greg Rosmaita in hat with fag. Blindfold lends that hard-night-at-CBGBs air

moreover the filename of the photo is: "Greg-in-hat-and-fag", and the alternative text provided for the image is "Greg, hat, fag", so how could i possibly resist using it as my world-wide identifier?

as for a long description of my photo, it is a three-quarters view of my head and upper torso, taken from joe's left (my right) -- i have about 2 or 3 weeks' worth of facial hair (mustache and sideburns-bleeding-into-but-not-quite-forming-a-beard, and am wearing a south african hat, made of water-buffalo hide, with a hatband of antelope skin (i forget which type of antelope), and, of course, there is an unfiltered cigarette (most likely a gitane or a lucky strike) dangling from my mouth... i'm also wearing a black wool jacket, an off-white shirt, and a tie which no one has been able to identify with any certainty, only that it has a red background overlayed with an indistinguishable design... as the owner of well over a thousand neck-ties -- many of which date from the 1930s through the 1970s, my collection runs the gamut from skinny hand-painted art deco ties to gargantuan polyester ties with bizarre psychedelic patterns -- so i can't blame those with ties that bind to me for failing to precisely identify which tie i am wearing...

Fast facts

At the movies I like to see:originally a huge silent film fan, these days i'll listen to pretty much anything for which Descriptive Video Services (DVS) is available, just so i can call up the broadcaster and let them know that someone is listening and that it IS worth the bother...
Last movie seen:in a movie theather? The Simpsons Movie (the first audio described film i've "seen" in a movie theater!)
Music I listen to:african, medieval, jazz, (roots) reggae, dub, blues, cumbia, baroque, gamelan, hokum, western swing, klezmer, chant (gregorian & otherwise), ska, rock steady, 2Tone, most things percussive, polyrhythmic, and/or polyphonic
Best album right now:Grupo Naidy: ¡Arriba Suena Marimba! (Currulao marimba music from Colombia's pacific coast)
Favorite author:Crockett Johnson, AE Houseman, T Paine, H Fielding, Rabelais, Gogol, A Bierce, HH Munro, J Hašek, JP Martin, Thoreau, Chaucer, Gregory of Tours, Gerald of Wales, PG Wodehouse, T Wilder, S Lewis, Boris Vian, ZN Hurston, Billy Collins, H. Murakami, P Carey
Last book read:fiction: The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster [NLS DB 54907] / non-fiction: American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, by William Kauffman [NLS DB 64131 / LA HC372]
I'm passionate about:equal rights and justice (see: Peter Tosh)
I wish I could:help revive medieval bee-keeping
Favorite travel destination:anywhere, amsterdam, africa, oz
If I won 1 million dollars, I would:start a micro-lending bank for the blind so that no matter where they are, there's someone ready to lend something a bit more tangible than merely a helping hand
My worst purchase ever:there isn't an edit box large enough to list 'em...
I want my coffee..:black, like my humor
Food I like:sea urchin, eel, most things to which i'm not allergic
I don't like:soy (i'm allergic)
Software I use:Speakup, Orca, JAWS, NVDA, various DAISY/Digital Talking Book readers, Eclipse, dojotoolkit, OpenSocial
Hardware I use:BookPort,BookPortPlus,DoubleTalkLT,DECTalk Express,NLS Digital Media Player
I discovered My Opera from:the caped crusader for accessibility, a.k.a. chaals

Why I choose the Opera browser

1. because it is committed to implementing to standards;

2. because it is committed to ensuring that assistive technologies -- such as screen-readers, screen-magnifiers, alternate keybords, mouth-pointers, etc. -- work seamlessly with Opera, obtaining all they need from the DOM;

3. because it is committed to ensuring that Opera's user interface is universally accessible;

4. because i respect hakon and chaals;

5. because they LISTEN to their users;