Mystic Access Podcast

By Chris Nova, Kim NovaTechnology Education How To

Mystic Access Podcast episodes

November 14, 2023 Calorie Free
Welcome to our annual food edition! Our friend and former co-host Lisa Salinger joins us to share in all things delicious. Get ready for fun, laughter, and easy recipes to love both during the holiday season and throughout the year. All recipes can be found below.
First, though, a couple quick event-related announcements. Our phone comparison event is being made available as a download rather than a live event. Registrations were very low, so we made the decision to just put this up as a free download as soon as possible. I’ll send an announcement to our free Events mailing list as soon as the audio is available. If you had hoped or intended to join us live, and you had questions, please send them to us via email and we’ll do our best to answer in the audio.
And speaking of events, we will be holding our annual open house on Friday, November 24, between 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM eastern time. You must register to join us at the event. To do so, please visit:
https://www.mysticaccess.com/openhouse
This is an annual event, and is always so much fun. Feel free to come for 20 minutes or stay for the entire time, it’s all up to you. And no, you don’t need to talk if you’d rather not. This event is never recorded, and we look forward to it every year.
To make this episode even better, Kesel Wilson, editorial director with National Braille Press comes by the castle to talk about 2023 holiday picks. Is there much better to celebrate all things festive than books and food? We think not!
Hope the start to your holiday festivities is simply wonderful! Now, on to the recipes!
Citrus Rainbow Carrots
(Excerpted from: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/citrus-rainbow-carrots/)
Makes
6 servings
Prep/Total Time: 25 min.
Ingredients
2 pounds medium rainbow or regular carrots, diagonally sliced
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons grated orange zest
2 tablespoons orange juice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Directions
1. Place carrots and enough water to cover in a large saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cook, uncovered, until tender, 8-10 minutes. Drain; return to pan.
2. Add remaining ingredients. Cook over medium-high heat until carrots are glazed, 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Test Kitchen Tips
Rainbow carrots can be deep burgundy, golden yellow, jeweled orange or creamy white in color.
Be careful to only zest the outer layer of orange peel. The white part underneath is bitter.
One medium orange will yield about 4 teaspoons grated orange zest.
Nutrition Facts
2/3 cup: 132 calories, 6g fat (4g saturated fat), 15mg cholesterol, 445mg sodium, 19g carbohydrate (12g sugars, 4g fiber), 2g protein.
Lemony rice
One and 3/4 cups chicken broth
or
1 3/4 cups of water and two bouillon cubes or the equivalent
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup white rice, not instant or minute rice.
Bring the broth and lemon juice to a boil in a saucepan. Add the rice, turn to low, cover and cook for about 18 minutes. If you normally cook your rice for 22 minutes, cook it for 20 instead. The acid in the lemon juice breaks down the rice a bit, and if you cook it for the normal amount of time, it will be too mushy.
Applesauce Sweet Potatoes
(Excerpted from: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/applesauce-sweet-potatoes/)
Makes
8 servings
Prep: 15 min.
Cook: 4 hours
Ingredients
3 pounds sweet potatoes (about 5 medium), peeled and sliced
1-1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup glazed pecans, chopped, optional
Directions
1. Place sweet potatoes in a 4-qt. slow cooker. In a small bowl, mix applesauce, brown sugar, melted butter and cinnamon; pour over potatoes.
2. Cook, covered, on low 4-5 hours or until potatoes are tender. If desired, sprinkle with pecans before serving. Serve with a slotted spoon.
Nutrition Facts
3/4 cup (calculated without pecans): 303 calories,
1 hr 1 min
October 31, 2023 When Everything Goes Wrong
Happy Halloween, everyone. To finish off the spooky season, we reminisce about favorite costumes from our pasts, fond Halloween memories, and Halloween mishaps. We bet this segment brings back fun memories for you, too.
If you enjoyed our discussion of the Kapsys smart Vision 3 phone last week, don’t forget we’re having a free event comparing multiple accessible cell phone options. It’s on November 16, and you must register to attend. Please paste the following link into your favorite browser to get started:
https://www.mysticaccess.com/phoneclass
We think we may have provided the wrong impression to you in the past, and we hope to change that with a story. Our technology can have epic failures, and not all our outings are fun or stress-free, either. Learn more in this episode. What should you do when technology goes wrong?
Thanks, as always, for listening! Talk to you in November!
28 min
October 17, 2023 A Twix Girl
In today’s episode we begin by sharing our spooky finds for the Halloween season, including coffee mugs and animated friends. All our new goodies are from Target’s Hide and Eek Boutique Collection. Have you done or purchased anything for enjoying spooky season?
We also demo the Smart Vision 3 cell phone from Kapsys. How does it differ from other popular cell phones with speech? What cool features does it offer? While you’ll hear a lot about it in today’s episode, we’re also happy to invite you to a free event in November where we’ll do further comparisons and answer your questions about the phone. If you’re part of our Events newsletter, you’ll receive joining info soon.
Thanks, as always, for listening.
54 min
October 03, 2023 Couples Rules
In this episode we share about our trip to the Apple store. While we went there to help out a family member, we ended up coming home with goodies for ourselves, too. We talk about our impressions of the experience, the items we purchased, and Kim shares some vocal thoughts on Watch OS 10.
Speaking of Apple watch, we have a sad and sudden announcement about our Apple Watch audio tutorial. Stay tuned for more news on that topic in the new year.
We also provide a few demos from our new Apple HomePod mini for your enjoyment.
As always, thanks for listening! Happy October!
38 min
September 19, 2023 Over the Moon
We have two demos in this episode that we hope will be useful and fun for you. First, Chris explains why he bought a pair of Bluetooth glasses and demos how they work with both the Stellar Trek from HumanWare and his iPhone 14 Pro. We show how they sound by a busy street, on a phone call, and more. To check out the WGP Smart Audio Glasses with Anti-Blue Light and Open Ear Speakers with Bluetooth Connectivity, please visit our Amazon affiliate link. We receive a small commission if you choose to order via this link.
Next, Kim has a super exciting update to share about the Philo streaming service. Not only does it offer about 70 channels for $25 monthly, but it also now includes audio description on some of its live channels. Visit Philo at this link. To learn more about the audio description Philo offers and how it works, visit this page in their Help center.
What content would you like us to cover in future episodes of the podcast? What do you want to hear more or less of? We’ll soon be offering polls on our site so you can share your thoughts. Our first one should be ready by our next episode and we’ll share a link in the show notes. In the meantime, thanks as always for listening and spreading the word. We appreciate you.
52 min
September 05, 2023 Superman is on The Sub
This action-packed episode begins with some updates. Chris shares an exciting announcement about AB Commander, a really cool file manager/explorer replacement that we discussed in our last episode. Kim also shares that the course-buying site she talked about last time, Udemy, regularly holds big sales where you can learn about topics of interest at amazing prices. So if you’re interested, stay tuned to their app or site.
We devote most of the episode to discussing our vacation and all the amazing local discoveries we made. We discuss how we planned ahead to receive assistance at the places we visited, how that worked, transportation to/from, and most importantly, all the cool experiences we had and people we met along the journey. If you want to learn more, especially if you’re in/hope to visit Western NY, here are links to the places we visited, all of which we definitely highly recommend for education and fun!
Buffalo Naval Park
Buffalo River History Tours
Liberty Hound (restaurant)
Buffalo History Museum
Buffalo History Museum Podcast
Buffalo Museum of Science
The Naval Park and Museum of Science both have YouTube channels, as well, which you may enjoy. There’s also a really cool virtual tour on the Naval Park site that may be interesting to ship lovers in general. Fascinating stuff. We took the tour before we went and found them incredibly educational about the vessels we were going to see.
Happy September, everyone, and thanks for listening and spreading the word about us. We appreciate you.
49 min
August 22, 2023 I Can Learn to Bake a Pie
What can you learn from this podcast episode? Well, quite a lot, actually. Chris introduces you to three handy pieces of software; a file manager, a file encrypting utility, and a neat folder manager that can also temporarily make your files disappear from prying eyes. Activate this link to visit the Winability site to learn more, enjoy free trials, and purchase licenses. You may be hearing more about this company from us soon, because they have some very cool software!
Speaking of learning, Kim demonstrates Udemy, a site that offers thousands of video courses on any topic under the sun. We tour the iOS version of the Udemy app, check out a couple of course pages, preview content, and more. Learn more about Udemy by activating this link.
Thanks for listening and learning with us.
48 min
August 14, 2023 bonus episode HumanWare and Mystic Access Stream 3 tutorial announcement
In this bonus episode Chris, Kim, and Mathieu from HumanWare hold a webinar on the newly released Stream 3 audio tutorial.
We also take listener questions.
This webinar was held on August 10, 2023.
1 hr 3 min
August 08, 2023 Pull the Curtain Back
We begin this episode by sharing some exciting news about our Stream 3 audio documentation. It will be released on Thursday, August 10. You’ll be able to download it at either support.humanware.com (and then go to the Stream 3 page), or mysticaccessdownloads.com in the HumanWare category. You may download in DAISY and/or MP3. The documentation is twelve and a half hours in duration.
We’re also holding a webinar about the new audio at 8:00 PM ET on August 10. Register for free to join us on this page. We’ll be joined by Mathieu Paquette of HumanWare, and will look forward to answering your questions.
Our main topic for this time is receiving accommodations when traveling to places such as museums, parks, etc. How do you receive assistance? What steps should you take in advance? We talk about some upcoming destinations we hope to visit in the next few weeks and how we’re working with those places to make sure we have fun visits while not frustrating the staff. There are ways to have a great visit while making sure both you and your assistant(s) have a smooth experience.
Thanks, as always, for listening. If you know others whom you think will enjoy the podcast, please pass on the recommendation with our appreciation.
33 min
July 25, 2023 Back to Boston
In this episode we announce why the previous episode was late in more details.
Next we demonstrate the Expedia app on iOS.
We then discuss the Accessible power bank from AT Guys.
Finally we take a look at the menus for all app.
Thanks so much for being a podcast listener.
47 min

About Mystic Access Podcast

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The Mystic Access Podcast features discussions on assistive technology, as well as products and services we’re excited about. We focus on empowering people who are blind or visually impaired with…