1 year ago
Friday Night Redesign
I had been meaning to redesign my site for quite some time now. In fact, I had become so disgusted with the previous design that at one point I took it offline completely. I ended up tossing a temporary page up a few days later, just to have something there, but a redesign was clearly in order.
I’ve been talking a lot lately about responsive design and the changing shape of the web, but my own site largely ignored many of those same principles (It’s still not quite there yet-I need to add high-res artwork for retina displays).
I have all kinds of excuses. Most of them have to do with being busy with work and being too blind to see to do any decent design work (until a fantastic doctor came to my rescue, that is)…. but it felt a bit hypocritical, that old layout.
Also, I wanted a new look, a better, cleaner look. I think I’ve found that now. I’m very happy with the new layout. It incorporates many things I believe strongly in - at least I think it does.
- It’s accessible.
- It’s easy to read.
- It’s fast and lightweight.
- It’s instantly communicative.
- It’s simple, but not boring.
It only took a few hours to execute, but I’ve been designing it in my head for weeks now.
I feel like it’s one of the best things I’ve designed in quite a while, and I’m very pleased by that. It’s good to have the old eyeball working well enough to do this sort of thing again.
(OK, that might be the under-statement of the year for me. After losing my sight to the point that walking down the street or cooking dinner was dangerous and nearly impossible to do, to being able to see better than I ever have, I’m ecstatic.)
1 year ago
Retinal Implant Brings Sight to the Blind
This is awesome, and very promising. I’ve been wondering for years why no one has tried to come up with an equivalent to the cochlear implant for vision. Now, it looks like someone has. It will be really interesting to see where this technology is in 10 years and whether the technique can be adapted for individuals with more severe retina damage (i.e. scarring due to retinopathy).
10 months ago
Post-Cataract Anterior Capsular Phimosis
For all of those times when I’ve thought to myself, “you know, six eye surgeries just isn’t really enough.”
10 months ago
Eye surgery No. 7 is in the books
Well, today’s laser capsulotomy went quite well. The procedure itself took about five minutes and my vision returned to normal after only a few hours. My eye felt irritated for a while, but that has gone away now. It does feel tired, though, and after using the computer for a bit this evening, it definitely feels like I need a break.
Laser eye surgery feels really weird. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It didn’t hurt at all, but I could definitely feel each laser pulse hitting my eye with a very sharp (as in quick, not painful) force. It would first hit inside my eye, which I would feel, and then the force, I guess, would travel through the soft tissue so that a fraction of a second later, I felt the same pulsing sensation in my top molars.
Anyway, it all went really well and I’m home and will take it easy tonight and tomorrow, and probably get back to work tomorrow evening for a couple of hours.
7 months ago
A somewhat random general update
Aside from reblogging a few things, I haven’t posted much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle-more the opposite, really.
I’ve been dealing with a minor eyelid infection - nothing serious and it cleared up quickly but it did make things blurry for a few days.
I’ve been head-down in some code on a fairly large project, learning a few new things along the way and dealing with some frustrations.
I’ve been learning Lua in my copious free time (read: I occasionally get to poke at Lua). I like it. I’ve barely had a chance to do anything with it, but picking it up seems like it will be super easy.
I have been (with the help of a very dear friend) re-examining myself, career-wise, and how I work. It’s a work in progress, but I’m getting some useful insights. I’m sure I’ll write more about it later.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past day or two about how projects evolve (or perhaps how they devolve) over time and some ways to deal with that, so I want to do a post about that, too.
I just need time. I’m looking forward to some time off over Thanksgiving. :)
