a view through my own eyes

The Library on campus has been having a little trouble over the last few years.

The trouble being that the front of the building is falling off, go to the top floor and you can clearly see cracks – big ones at that.

Anyway the Uni did an investigation as to the cause and the extent of the damage, this probably cost thousands and required hundreds of man hours to achieve.

The short version is that the foundations were being undermined and the building was descending of its own accord under the influence of gravity into the bowels of the earth.

The cause?

Bunnies.

Over the last few weeks, there has allegedly been a bunny cull. The building contractors have been in, and filled the void with hardcore, concrete, earth, chicken wire and laid a nice new turf.

It looks much better than it did before as it was literally a rabit warren underneath.

Anyway this is what the bunnies thought of it.

Surveying

Excavating

I have no idea why WordPress has generated these thumbnails in differing sizes. Click for full size versions.

After last weeks exciting installment in opthalmology, the NHS appointment booking system is in full flow. Within a week a letter arrives with the next appointment on.

21st September

Hmmm clearly there is a time warp or some such in the impending future as I was clearly told that by the consultants number one assistant that I would need to be seen again in six weeks.

Even the paperwork that I handed in at the end of the appointment said: “next appointment 6/52″, which I took to mean six weeks.

So I phone the hospital and talk to the consultants secretary, who tells me that something clearly is not right and that she will put me through to the appointments clerk.

I explain that I think that there has been a mistake, since as the consultant wanted to see me in six weeks on medical grounds, that surely he didn’t mean for it to actually be for ten weeks.

The clerk umm and errs and does a “well they are very busy, but since its on medical grounds” … (ITS A BLOODY HOSPITAL OF COURSE IT IS ON MEDICAL GROUNDS – thought I) …”I will see what I can do”.

Two minutes later I have a new appointment, 3rd August, six weeks after last weeks appointment, exactly when it should be.

I am asked if I want a letter, I reply that I would appreciate it – just in case. I decided not to add to that “someone balls things up”.

I really should not have to phone up and get appointments changed and chase them up. It does annoy me somewhat.

Wonder how long it will take for the letter to arrive.

There is something that bothers me, that really irates me. It annoys me as in order to be able to do this one thing legally you have to have practice, lessons and pass a test.

Its car parking. Now I am not talking about the just touching the white line, or having the tyres touching the kerb. They are examples that anyone is capable of.

The following couple of pictures (click on them for their full glory) are what I spotted earlier today.

I suspect that there will be more of these to come:

This fine example clearly demonstrates lack of fuel in tank and that they ran out of fuel, well either that or that they are lazy.

This is sheer class, clearly belting the curb wasn’t enough to make the driver realise that maybe they had reached the edge of the space. No shoving the bicycle in the hedge seemed to do the trick.

I have a feeling that there will be more of these coming soon…

I notice that the BBC is gleefully reporting that ITV is trying to save £100m, and to do so they are cutting production of “underperforming programmes” such as individual dramas, makeover shows, childrens programmes and will also review its production of documentaries and wildlife programmes.

Presumably this is because they can’t get viewers for the above and so the advertising revenue drops.

What they are aiming to invest in apparently is: US imports (Judge Wapner anyone), long term drama (Coronation Street) and long running entertainment formats (X Factor and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here).

This just about explains that the only time that I do watch ITV is for Formula 1 and football both of which are sport. Mrspao never to my knowledge watches ITV.

Does the lack of desire for a myriad of advert laden rubbish TV make me a TV snob?

For the non UK readers, ITV is the predominant commercial television provider. The BBC is funded via a compulsory TV licence and is intended to be a non profit making, politically unbiased (though that is debatable) broadcasting service.

Well back to the hospital today.

Appointment was booked for 4:10, I arrived early at 3:30ish on the off chance only to find a sign saying “Mr DeCocks surgery is running approximately 35 minutes late” – at least they let us know.

At 4:30 one of the consultants students appeared and we did an eye test, the vision is better than it was a couple of months ago and the student seemed quite impressed, I am really happy as with the pinhole glasses I could read all but the bottom two rows. I asked if it was possible to have a closeup photograph taken, and was not sure that she understood me (lack of english I think) and then she started going on about having a scan and that I would not understand it. She repeated that phrase a couple of times “You would not understand it”. I asked if she was implying that I am stupid, it was worth it to watch the colour drain from her face as she did the “Oh no I did not mean that”. Anyway that was the eye test so again I went to wait in the waiting room.

Some time later (not sure how long as I was engrossed in my book) I was called in. I didn’t get the consultant himself, I had his number one assistant by the look of it which was fine as I could tell he knew what he was doing.

We discussed the vision I was getting (which is very good), straightening out my eyes as one is lazy and this will be looked at later on when the graft has settled down. He did tell me that when the eyes are straightened out there is a possibility that I will have double vision, so in the meantime to use the lazy eye (grafted) as much as I can, as I will get used to using it, despite it being mental effort to do so at the moment.

I asked about the possibility of having a photograph done, fortunately he understood me and said that its possible but not today as they didn’t have all of the equipment with them today but that he would try and get it for the next appointment. In the meantime I have to stick with the steroid drops twice a day for the next three weeks and then down to once a week until I come in again. An appointment will be made to see me in six weeks time.

At this point things started to get exciting (well for me anyway), as I was told that they wanted to do a corneal topography on both my eyes. For the grafted eye to really measure how things were shaping up and for the other eye to measure how bad the keratoconus really is. So I sat at a bench with my head in a sling looking down what can only be likened to the time tunnel from the TV series of the same name. I was a cone with concentric rings alternating black and white with a red LED at the end. For the process it was lit for a few seconds so the white rings went bright yellow, the light was extinguished and a white LED thingy whizzed in front of my eye. All in all it took around ten seconds.

I noticed a big LCD screen at the side with loads of colour diagrams and has to ask what was going on. Apparently the piece of kit, measures the surface curvature of the cornea and the curvature of the innermost layers of the cornea and can work out how light is refracted inside the cornea. Amazing. Anyway I noticed colour print outs and asked if they could print two copies. Once again the junior did the “you would not understand” bit, and then the consultants voice was heard from the room next door to saying “give Mr Osborne a copy of the printouts” and so she did!

Armed with the printouts the number one assistant started to explain the diagrams to me, how they show the curvature and the light refraction, to which I chipped in with something like “so these figures are in diopters and becuase this area is all blue the surface at the back is fairly flat which is what we are after and shows that the keratoconus is not an issue in the grafted cornea, where with the other eye we can see the light being refracted all over the place?”, the assistant looked at me, smiled and said that that was exactly what the diagrams were showing. The junior in the background looked somewhat sheepish.

Anyway follows are some pictures:

This shows the surface curvature of the grafted eye, the high point being red is pretty much in the centre, there are chunks missing on the sides where the graft boundary and scarring confuse the machine (so it gives up).

This is fairly even (apart from the green spot) and shows the level of refraction through the cornea is pretty much consistent and so is sitting smoothly spreading light as it should do.

This is the cornea surface curvature on the right eye, the high point is over to the left, in both cases the oval shape shows the level of astigmatism.

This kaleidoscope picture (!) demonstrates that through the cornea the light is being refracted all over the place and shows the extent of the keratoconus in the eye. The left eye had it had these measurements taken before the operation would have looked much worse apparently.

Not a particularly happy bunny today.

I have an ear infection, actually I have probably had it for a while and tried to give it chance to clear on its own.

Went to see the GP (again – think I have seen one GP or another every two weeks since my eye op), who took a look and said I have an ear infection.

So now I have an antibiotic spray which should sort things out in a few days.

In the meantime I need to ensure that my ears are fully ventilated for the next seven days, which means I can’t use my hearing aids.

In the meantime I am resigned to my fate of living in a muffled aurally flat world for the next week, already I am starting to wonder how I managed before if indeed I managed at all.

Bah humbug.

Here is what you are supposed to do:
Go to Wikipedia. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year). 23rd October.

List three events that happened on your birthday.
4004 BC – On the preceding eve of this day (in the proleptic Julian calendar), the universe was created, according to the archbishop James Ussher in his Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.
1707 – The first Parliament of Great Britain meets.
1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow.

List two important birthdays.
1940 – Pelé, Brazilian footballer. Regarded by many as the greatest footballer of all time.
1978 – Steve Harmison, English cricketer

List one interesting death.
1915 – W. G. Grace, English cricketer (b. 1848)

One holiday or observance (if any).
Hungary – National Day (revolution of 1956 and the proclamation of the Republic of Hungary in 1989)

This recipe was blagged from the free Waitrose summer magazine:

Note to the American Ladeeze who read this blog – No I am not converting the measurements into imperial for you. We managed to move (partially) into the the 16th Century so, so can you! Heres a clue: 25g = 1ounce. Anyway on with the culinary delights….

100g of blueberries
200g of blackberries
100g of raspberries

If you can’t get the above just aim for a total of 400g of summer fruits – strawberries are rather good

100 grams if sugar, plus a bit extra to sprinkle over the top
75g of plain flour
75g of butter
50g of poridge oats

Preheat the oven to 200degs C (gas mark 6).

Lightly grease a shallow ovenproof dish

Add fruit and 50g of sugar and mix togther

In a separate bowl, rub the butter, flour until it resembles crumbs, then mix in the oats and the sugar.

Cover the fruit with the crumble and sprinkle sugar over the top.

Pop into the oven for 30 minutes by which time it should be golden brown on top.

Serve with icecream or custard.

Well it seems that the News Corporation is starting to feel the financial strain.

Another offer arrived from Sky today.

This weeks offering is:

Free Sky+ Box, Free Installation with Sky Movies & Sky Sports, for just £10 a month for the first three months.

After which I can either continue you to £42.50 a month for all of the above, or just £15 for the cheapest package.

Clearly my contract cancellation has got them worried. I love the sales pitch, “As a previous Sky TV Customer we want to make sure you’re not missing great TV entertainment”, clearly their definition of “great TV entertainment” differs somewhat from mine, why do you think I cancelled the contract?

Most of the programming on many of the channels is imported american rubbish for people with maybe as many as two braincells. Before any of the readers from across the pond start to take offence and prepare to lynch me, I would like to point out that there is some great American TV that we see here: Battlestar Galactica, Ally McBeal, Frasier, My Name is Earl, Six Feet Under, Scrubs, 24 and many more. The stuff I really detest is the daytime filler rubbish: Jerry Springer, Judge Wapners Animal Court, Oprah Winfrey etc you get the idea. I know why the channels here show this stuff, its because its cheap and probably cheaper than making our own rubbish TV.

Now I know that not every TV program can be great, that goes without saying and that at the end of the day the great stuff is great because the rest is rubbish and boy is there a lot of rubbish. But what I don’t want to do is pay for an extra couple of hundred channels of rubbish TV.

In the meantime I can quite happily manage with the free channels that we get here and in themselves they have a reasonable quantity of rubbish in their own right, but apart from the mandatory TV licence they are free.

So Mr Murdoch – bugger off.

Yesterday the cable arrived that allows me to connect the shoes for my hearing aids directly into any bit of equipment with a 3.5mm audio jack (an iPod for example).

It works very nicely and to be honest I am quite amazed. What this means is that I can hear my iPod etc a low sound levels and do not need to turn the sound up just to be able to hear it as I would with normal headphones, this is because the hearing aids can take the missing sound and amplify it to a level that I can hear.

However because the sound from hearing aids is fed through a little pipe, whilst I can hear things at a low sound level through the aids and the DAI stuff, it does mean that the dynamic range is not so good that I have noticed.

So all in all, perfect for listening to speech (yay for my audiobooksand Radio4/5) but not so great for music. But then to be honest I would use reasonable earphones for music so I can turn it up to a level where I can hear the full range of notes. Before anyone says anything I have asked the audiologist whether doing so will damage my hearing further and the answer was no, they can see from my audiogram how much I would need to turn it up, and that level is not that loud (I would never turn the iPod to full tilt for example).

As for the aids themselves, mostly an improvement though I do need to get a couple of minor adjustments done as there are some tones near the high end that are not quite as clear as before, but thats not a panic. Just don’t tell the wife that I can barely hear the reverse parking sensor now – good job there is a little flashy LED really.

Any Conevans deserve a plug for supplying the cable so promptly (ordered Wednesday, delivered Thursday) and if I need equipment again they will be the first place I go to.