Major Changes For Guitar4Blind.com

A number of years ago, I developed a site called Guitar4Blind.com. It was a website designed to teach blind people how to play guitar chords with the use of screen reading software. It was developed with the assistance of a blind guitarist from the United Kingdom named Terry Hopwood-Jackson.

I would create a page and send it over to Terry for testing. Terry would test the site and inform me of whatever typos or mistakes may have been in the page. i would make the necessary changes and he would test the page again. After all necessary corrections were made to a page, we would move on to the next one until the site was eventually finished.

Recently, another blind guitarist reached out to me, named Casey Harper from the state of Virginia. he made some additional suggestions regarding navigation and features to be added to the site.s so with Casey's assistance, I made some changes and added some features. I would inform Casey that a page or section was completed and Casey would test them.

One of the biggest changes to the site was navigation. I added links that would allow people to skip over certain sections that had various descriptions and explanations. This was specifically added so that return visitors could skip over the parts they have already read and familiarized themselves with. The entire site was basically optimized for quicker and easier navigation for return visitors.

I also added a new chord finding feature/ before, the site only allowed people to learn chords by key. Casey suggested also listing them by their root note name. This is a feature I had thought of doing prior to Casey suggesting it but never quite got around to it. I figured that since I was already making major changes to the site as far as navigation goes, I might as well make even more changes.

With Casey's assistance, the site more than doubled in size. I thought that now that a third person (Casey) has been added among the list of contributors, it seems more like the beginning of an organization dedicating to teaching blind people music online.

Maybe more features will be added over time. However, for the meantime, there are already plenty of features there. If anyone reading this blog knows of someone who is blind or visually impaired, use screen reading software and want to learn guitar, please pass on the information. The whole idea behind the website is to give the blind more opportunities to learn music online. In fact, the site has not been optimized to earn money at all. It's not about money, it's about giving more people an opportunity to enjoy making music. Here is the link: http://guitar4blind.com

Bob Craypoe, also known as R.L. Crepeau 

DrPsychotic.com Celebrates Fifteen Years Online

As of December 31st 2015, DrPsychotic.com celebrates fifteen years online. It was all the byproduct of a failed local arts magazine.

You see, In 1999, I decided to try to do a local arts magazine that would include humor and some of my cartoons as well as a few other things. It was supposed to be sort of the local arts scene meets Mad Magazine. Unfortunately, it only survived three issues and a fourth was finished but never went to print.

After the magazine went under, I took what was left of some of the content and created a website with it. At first, it was a little lean on features and maybe had a dozen pages or so. Since then, It has grown to be over 3,000 pages and includes features like guitar lessons, mandolin, banjo, balalaika, piano and mandola chords, as well as harmonica and soprano recorder songs.

The biggest section of the site is the classic poetry section, which is about 1,800 pages itself. Then we also have jokes, a photo gallery and a cartoon gallery. That's not all either. Just check the site out for yourself to see what all is there. Just log on to DrPsychotic.com.

After the creation of DrPsychotic.com, I decided to create more websites. Some did well and others did not. I eventually created Craypoe.com to be a centralized location where all of my websites may be accessed from. Now I refer to it all as the Craypoe.com network of websites.

Originally, the Doctor Psychotic character was just a 2D cartoon as displayed on the left. You can see how he was actually developed in stages. A few years ago, I decided to create a 3D version like the one you see above. Doctor Psychotic was the beginning of my internet presence and it has grown significantly since December 31st 2000. I have written hundreds of blog posts and online articles. I've created a number of videos and posted them on my YouTube page. I have my music online as well too.

I am not bragging about all of the things I have done and continue to do or the things I have achieved. The point is that it all really started as a result of one of my failures. I could never have foreseen back in December of 2000 what would eventually become of it all, up to this point. After the failure of the magazine, it was pretty hard to imagine that all that much would come from that failure. As I look at it all now, I am so glad I didn't give up on everything.

So if you attempt something and fail, try to think of what you might be able to salvage from it. Start over again and build up from there. Learn from your mistakes and keep plugging away at things. You just never know what might happen in the end. Good luck with salvaging your failures.

Bob Craypoe, also known as R. L. Crepeau