Monday, July 05, 2004
Tuning My Peripherals
I bought a basic ergo keyboard and trackball for my laptop, so along with my 17" LCD monitor I have a nearly silent (fan-less!) desktop computer about the size of a VHS tape which not only has a built in 5 hour backup power supply, but also a built in backup keyboard, screen, and mouse.
And since I spend so many damned hours staring at the thing...
A little over a year ago, I bought some reading glasses for an experiment in preventative optometry. Follow that link for background and details. I got my eyes checked a couple days ago, and after years of steady decline, for the first time they have actually improved--from a correction (worst axis) of -1.75 down to -1.25, with a corresponding unaided vision improvement from about 20/30 to 20/25. Disappointingly, my optometrist was as mentally impervious to the whole concept as the last two were, even in light of my vision improvement. Seems "prevention" in optometry is as dirty a word as "consciousness" was in AI a few years ago. Maybe it's too much to ask them to think outside the box, but with time perhaps they'll make a bigger box?
The photo at the top of this entry is the Auckland sky tower where we had dinner with Pete and Reichart*
the other day (in the slowly rotating restaurant--it felt like dining inside one of those
optical illusions of apparent motion). Keep an eye to Reichart*'s journal for more from
down under.