Friday, December 27, 2013

Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses - Part 2

In the previous blog post Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses, I tried using the Sony Captioning Glasses for the first time. Then flash forward to recently, when I watched Frozen with the glasses.

This time, I found I missed something from the first time I used them. I didn't make an effort to adjust the noserests. Thus, the way the noserests were at the time, no wonder they caused me so much pain. I managed to adjust them just far enough so I wouldn't have the same problem as before, and it worked. I went the entire movie without the glasses hurting me too much, adjusting them here and there.

Still some room for improvements as I mentioned before. One additional suggestion would be adjustable captions color and font size. I'm wondering if this sort of thing would work with Google Glass with the right adjustments and programming.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Nelson Mandela's funeral interpreter fiasco

Sometimes I wonder about interpreters and their skills. Then we saw the one at Nelson Mandela's funeral. I took a quick look and thought I was seeing some South African sign language, but a second look and a closer watch had me thinking differently. No facial expressions? Just about every sign language, no matter where you go, uses facial expressions. It's an important part of signing.

Next, just one? For an event that went 3-4 hours with multiple speakers? We've seen terps that have difficulty going more than 1-2 hours in an educational setting, even if the instructor doesn't talk fast. With the funeral, at least two terps, more like 3-4, would work well if one can't continue or people have an issue with understanding the signing.

Someone failed majorly out there when they picked this guy. Seriously, a mental illness keeping him from doing clear signs? We've heard this before, and even a person who knows sign with a mental illness can still sign well. Kind of reminds me of an episode of Spin City (Deaf Becomes Her - season 1, episode 20) where they have an terp for the mayor's address. YouTube has a clip. In this case, the guy had no skills, said he was a terp on his resume, and it was a comedy show.

But the lesson is still there. Check out the terps more carefully and have more than one.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Recipe: Emeril's Christmas Bread

Imagine someone who doubled a bread recipe and the results nearly took over the kitchen with a lot of rising bread dough. If anyone's familiar with the classic I Love Lucy show when she was cornered by a huge loaf of bread coming out of the oven, this is kinda like this. The bread went BAM back...

But of course, Jamie and I had a good laugh reading this. We'll have to make it sometime.

Emeril's Christmas Bread: A story of 2 loaves, 3 colors, and 1 frightened baker

The recipe is at the end of the article.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 5

Back in mid-November, I had surgery to remove that wrecking ball of an antibiotic spacer and put in new joint hardware. I was only in the hospital for 3 days, and did well in my physical therapy tests, allowing me to go home sooner. This time, I don't quite remember being in the recovery room, only waking up in my hospital room.

Interestingly enough, it was the same room I had back in July, room 403.

I started again with in-home physical therapy the day after I got home. I'm still using the walker, with a restriction of 10% weightbearing on the left leg. I've been able to do things I wasn't able to do when I had the spacer in me. My house has a wall that separates the living room and foyer from the dining room and kitchen, allowing me to walk around it. I couldn't go more than 4 times around with the spacer. Now I've been able to get 6 times around and was able to get up on the exercise bed and do some exercises I wasn't able to do before. Another is that I'm able to sleep better. Of course, there's still some swelling in the leg and I have to keep them elevated, but the swelling's improved. Sleeping on my side I can do, but not for too long.

I was taking some antibiotics for a few weeks after discharge with pain meds. I've had the staples removed as well. Interestingly enough, the first surgery used Dermabond to close the incision, and the second used stitches. With this third surgery, the surgeon didn't reuse the anterior incisions due to the condition of the skin due to the infection, but used the lateral approach.

Still got a ways to go in terms of going from walker to cane. Next surgery could easily be late 2014.