Software engineer @pneumasolutions, prolific open-source contributor, wannabe musician, and huge bookworm.
Blind, but I’ve seen more than most. Snarky and strongly opinionated, but friendly by default and always willing to help. Open to disagreement; closed to MAGA.
Views my own.

Pronouns: they/them
GitHub: https://github.com/trypsynth
Paperback: accessible, free, and open source ebook and document reader: https://paperback.dev
Backtalk, speedy and modern fork of TalkBack:: https://github.com/trypsynth/backtalk

Last Notes

It's finally here: Paperback 1.0! My fast, fully accessible ebook and document reader is now out on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with iOS following the second Apple decides to actually look at it. The changelog is once again way too big for any post, so here are the highlights:
New platform: Linux! As an AppImage or a tarball, with desktop integration so documents open straight from your file manager.
New formats:<li>Comic book archives (.cbz).</li><li>M4B and MP3 audiobooks, split into their chapters.</li><li>Man pages, both man and BSD mdoc, gzipped or not.</li><li>reStructuredText.</li><li>Windows Write (.wri) files. Thanks, Mastodon.</li><li>WinHelp (.hlp) files. Yes, really.</li><li>Word 6 and Word 95 documents.</li>
Big new stuff:<li>OCR for scanned PDFs, using the engine built into Windows and macOS. Press Enter on a scanned page, or batch OCR a whole range of pages with Ctrl+Shift+O.</li><li>MathML in EPUB and HTML is now rendered as AsciiMath via MathCAT. Jump between formulas with M and Shift+M, and open the original MathML in a formula view with enter or space.</li><li>Find All, listing every matching line so you can jump right to the one you want.</li><li>Tables, Lists, and Pages views in the elements dialog.</li><li>Mark a spot with Alt+F9 and copy everything from there to where you are with Alt+F10, no more shift-arrowing through 40 pages.</li><li>Audio book playback speed, from half speed to 3x.</li><li>Any document can now be opened in the web view.</li><li>Headings are drawn at a size matching their level.</li><li>Relative Go To: +n and -n in Go to Line, Page, and Percent.</li><li>Heading navigation from the table of contents for EPUB, MOBI, and CHM books with no headings of their own.</li><li>A Ukrainian translation.</li>
Plus a mountain of fixes, especially to PDF (I still hate PDF), MOBI/AZW3 books, which are now much faster and no longer cut off at 20 MB, FictionBook, and large books in general.
And of course, the mobile apps. They open every format the desktop does, with seamless read aloud using your choice of voice, background audio book playback, navigation by headings, pages, links, tables and more, a sleep timer, export, and keyboard shortcuts that match the desktop. They're $19.99, once, per platform, and buying them is what pays for the work on Paperback. The desktop versions stay free.
Desktop downloads: https://paperback.dev/downloads
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.paperback.android
Full changelog: https://paperback.dev/readme.html
Huge thanks to everyone who tested, filed bugs, translated, and put up with me during this development cycle. Enjoy! #Paperback #accessibility #blind

2026-10-01 13:09:22 GMT

- reply

The talkback foss project seemed unmaintained last I looked at it, with no commits this year. Didn't know about Graphine's fork though, will have to give that a look.

2026-10-01 01:37:10 GMT

RE: https://dragonscave.space/@TheQuinbox/117363088965321376
In other news: https://github.com/trypsynth/backtalk
#note17w9…c62y

2026-10-01 01:36:58 GMT

Why are you looking at me like that! I would never fork TalkBack to try and improve it with another blind Android hacker friend!

2026-03-22 17:44:46 GMT

I got super tired of Microsoft seemingly being determined to make the app you turn to when your computer locks up and is laggy laggy itself with screen readers, so I wrote my own task manager. It's pure C ,not even linking against a CRT, meaning the current binary is around 20 KB including a complete, sortable process list. You can also customize what columns the list shows and how often you want it to refresh, if at all. I personally keep auto refresh off and just manually refresh with f5, and the list keeps your exact place whenever it refreshes. Pressing escape minimizes it to the system tray, while alt+f4 closes it. I want to do much more with this, such as binding it to a hotkey, but I think it's good enough for a first release. Source code: https://github.com/trypsynth/taskmon , 0.1.0 release: https://github.com/trypsynth/taskmon/releases/download/0.1.0/taskmon.exe , Enjoy!
Edit since this is blowing up: if you like all the hacking I do in my downtime, please consider donating on PayPal or GitHub sponsors so I can keep making teeny pieces of software that just work exactly as they should. GitHub: https://github.com/sponsors/trypsynth PayPal: https://paypal.me/tygillespie05 Thanks everyone!

2026-02-20 13:37:41 GMT

If my home timeline is any indication, the number of Move orders Ableton has gotten from blind people across the world in the past 24 hours has gone up by like 300%.

2026-01-13 15:03:43 GMT

Google is so bad at audio that they literally put up songs on YouTube music (normally ones that are mastered pretty hot, like -9 to -6 LUFS), that clip, when the versions on actual Youtube.com do not. You had one job, and this is a fucking music streaming service! Why don't you just, uh, like, use the same playback method across both? #WTF

2025-11-29 01:56:05 GMT

Sad to see the the @npub1n6l…4ths forum uses HCaptcha, thus preventing me as a blind user from signing up and posting my projects there. I'd like to escalate this to the right people, but it's hard to do so without an account on the forums. Anyone got any suggestions/know who I can reach about this? #Rust #Rustlang #Accessibility

2025-08-18 22:33:42 GMT

Programming is such a weird job, because when my sibling gets home from their job making props and set pieces for the botanic\ gardens, I can listen and understand at least the basics of what they're talking about/what they did in a day. This also goes for my mom teaching, as well as many other jobs. But when I finish my workday as a software developer and they ask me what I did/how my day was, I have to basically just be like uuuh, well, it was a nice and productive day. I got a lot done. Because the second I start even remotely going off into the weeds their eyes glaze over, and when asked what I do, my parents response is always "uh, IDK, some fancy computer shit". Almost never is that the response for any other profession.

2024-09-16 22:24:07 GMT

My dad's on a business trip, and just sent me a picture of the view out of his hotel room's window. I ran it through Be My AI, and got a description that was later confirmed to be completely accurate. This is where this research needs to keep going, it unlocks an entire other layer of the world for blind people.

2024-06-12 22:43:08 GMT

fun fact, if you replace google assistant with gemini as your Pixel's assistant, the name that tune feature gets you a description of the gameshow. It also tells you to use shazam when you ask it "what song is this?" #AIIsTheFuture #ThisTotallyDidn'tJustWorkBefore #FixItIfItsNotBroke