Two months with eagle eye vision
American Bald Eagle Close-up Portrait by Beverly & Pack / CC BY 2.0
It’s been two months now since I had my EPI-LASIK surgery and I have to say I’m extremely happy with the result. I’m beginning to see things clearly now and have a different perspective on things!
EPI-LASIK isn’t like the traditional LASIK where they cut a slit in your cornea and operate with laser behind the lid. Instead, EPI-LASIK operates straight on the surface of the eye. This means that it’s much safer (no need to cut in the eye!), and as a result, you don’t risk cutting the nerves that control eye fluids, something which tends to make LASIK patients suffer from dry eyes. More info about EPI-LASIK can be found here (warning: marketing material).
To anyone who is considering going through this procedure, here’s a bit of info on how it works and what to expect:
- The actual surgery was completely painless and not at all as scary as I thought. The machine handled everything itself, and the only thing the doctor actually did was dropping cooling and disinfecting drops into the eyes before and after the laser did its job.
- After the laser was done, they put a protective contact lens on the eye. Immediately after the surgery, I could see much better than I could without glasses before.
- About 20 minutes after the surgery, the eyes started to itch and I became sensitive to light.
- The following 48 hours were pretty tough with tears running down my cheeks, extreme light sensitivity and itching/painful eyes. I spent most of the time just lying in bed listening to music with my eyes shut. (Christina Aguilera’s Hurt was played more often that I would like to admit; maybe my state of mind made me more receptive to emotional lyrics?)
- After these 48 hours, I woke up with essentially no pain at all. It felt a bit like wearing contact lenses for too many hours, which of course was exactly the case too, since I had to wear the protective contact lens for about five days.
- I was still sensitive to light during the third day, but on day four it was all gone.
- After five days (the day before Christmas Eve), I visited the optician again and could finally remove the protective contact lens. From there on, it was as if the surgery never happened!
This is easily the best investment I’ve ever done to myself (aside from making Sofie my girlfriend). So far, the vision hasn’t really stabilized, and some days my left eye is better than the right, and then the next day it has changed. I still don’t see perfectly, but it’s good enough that I almost never think about it. If Ken pushed me to give a number, I’d say my vision is at 97% right now.
According to the doctor, the healing process can take up to a whole year, so it’s too early to tell what the end result will be — we will see! But even if it doesn’t get any better than this, it’s still better than I had with contact lenses, and without the dry eyes and hassle of taking them in and out of your eyes every day.
See you later!
Nokia N900 impressions
I’ve been using the Nokia N900 for a couple of weeks now and I have both good and bad things to say about it. To give you an idea of what I’m comparing with, my previous phone was a Nokia N95. Here’s my list of impressions:
Pros
- The screen is pretty good, and I rarely have a problem clicking on links and buttons using my thumbs. The fact that it’s resistive feels like an advantage in this incredibly cold Swedish winter. Next to a Nexus One, however, it’s obvious that the color reproduction could be better.
- The Mozilla-based MicroB browser really is awesome. Scrolling and zooming is so smooth and quick that it feels like surfing on the iPhone, only this time you’re using the real web. By far the best web browsing experience I’ve had on a mobile device.
- The fact that I can use it to call VoIP, Skype, Gtalk, and regular cellular networks is amazing.
- The Conversations application seamlessly integrates IM and SMS in an intuitive manner.
- The media player handles almost anything you throw at it after installing a few extra software packages.
- Great synchronization with Exchange-based mail services (e.g. Zimbra, which Mozilla uses).
- Nice multiple desktop solution (though lacks useful widgets).
- Battery life is impressive in active use such as in a phone call. Though see the standby time below…
- The “one-click” (actually a few clicks) publishing of both photos and videos to services like Facebook and Flickr is really neat. Though see below about the camera quality…
- It really is fun to use it. And it’s open source! And it can run Firefox!
Cons
- This thing is heavy! I thought my N95 was heavy, but this is significantly heavier. It definitely feels like a solid device, for better or worse.
- The camera is actually worse than the 3-year-old N95 camera in a number of ways: terrible colors in low light, terrible metering, light leaks making the subject in focus appear washed out, and the field of view is narrower than the N95 camera. In comparison, here’s a photo taken by the N95. Both are 5-megapixel cameras.
- The standby time is a joke. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but sometimes I can just keep the phone in my pocket during the whole day and it will discharge in less than 8 hours. I first kept all accounts logged in (Skype, VoIP, Jabber), but have since then compromised a bit and only keep Jabber online. Still, the battery isn’t impressive.
- The horizontal layout is annoying most of the time. When I’m out and about, it feels awkward that I can’t use the phone with one hand. I understand the “handheld computer” legacy (I even owned an N810), but feel that my typical use is much more like a regular smartphone than a portable computer. Ideally, all applications should support both layouts.
- The keyboard, while certainly better than the N810, is still not really good. It’s too easy to click on the wrong keys, and there’s no auto complete feature that can detect (and correct) common spelling mistakes.
- The auto suggest feature only shows one suggestion, so 90% of the time it’s not suggesting the word you want and as a result you end up ignoring the suggestions altogether.
- The physical unlock switch is only comfortable to use when in horizontal layout. It’s nearly impossible to reach with one hand if you just want to make a quick call.
djst’s nest, a microblog?
I’m thinking of turning this blog into a microblog. What that actually means is simply that I would write more often on the blog without feeling that every blog post needs to be substantial, clever, and proof-read.
I’ve found that I blog much less nowadays and the main reason for it is a lack of time — it’s so much simpler to just post a Facebook status update, or tweet. But at the same time, I often feel that I could write at least a few sentences about any given topic, which immediately makes the 140 character limit somewhat… limiting.
In the Mozilla world, I recently worked in the Paris office for a week, interviewed some really strong candidates for the Support Community Manager role, hung out with my Mozilla community friends at FOSDEM 2010, and sang songs about nukeador — all of which are topics worthy of (micro)blog posts on their own.
So, rather than letting this blog slowly die, I will start to write briefer blog posts and get them out more frequently. Consider this my Sunday morning promise (whatever that means).
Improve your karma: Help some Firefox users today!
Today, Firefox 3.6 will be released. From a support perspective, the big highlights of 3.6 are
- Less crashes
- Automatic plug-in update notifications
- More win
It’s certainly a time for celebration (perhaps I’ll even have a beer despite the fact that it’s only Thursday!) — but it’s also an opportunity to help the many people that will try Firefox for the first time today, or the even higher number of people who will upgrade from older versions of Firefox.
Do you think you know more about Firefox than the average user? (Hint: if you’re reading Planet Mozilla or my blog, the answer is most probably yes.) Then you can make a huge difference to a lot of people by helping them have a better experience on the web!
All it takes is a few minutes in our Firefox support forum. Simply browse through the questions asked by users of Firefox and see if you know the answer to some of them. If you do, make someone’s day by posting the answer!
On behalf of Mozilla and the 350 million Firefox users out there: Thank you.
Five years ago, Firefox was born
09 Nov 2009 at 23:59
David Tenser
firefox, firefox5, IE, Internet Explorer, microsoft, Mozilla, tiger, windows
When I blogged about the launch of Firefox 1.0 five years ago, I knew it was a big day that we would look back at in the future. However, I would be lying if I said back then that I knew what kind of impact Firefox would have on the web as a whole.
Five years ago, you couldn’t choose what type of computer of device you wanted to use to browse the web because all websites were designed to work with IE on Windows. Something as basic as surfing from your mobile device — we take this for granted today — was completely out of the question. Microsoft was in full control of the Internet and your web experience.
This all changed when Firefox was released on November 9th 2004. Finally, web developers could design web sites according to standards instead of designing them to work for IE. Finally, users could experience web sites the way they were meant to be. Finally, the web was accessible to everyone.
In a nutshell, Firefox is the reason why we can surf the web using our iPhones, Linux netbooks, or OpenSolaris PCs.
Firefox set the web free.
Director and actor
One is the director of the browser formerly known as Phoenix — the other one is Phoenix.
As Commodus once said: “Are we so different, you and I?”
žomg it’s a small community!
There is an old saying that we live in a small world. It turns out that this is true for the Mozilla community as well — and definitely in that same good way!
Matjaž with his excellent taste
Matjaž Horvat is a perfect example: I’ve seen the guy at various Mozilla events such as MozCamp Barcelona, MozCamp Prague, and the Mozilla Summit in Whistler, and I’ve always admired his great taste of fashion.
But it wasn’t until today during a chat with him about how we could kickstart Slovenian SUMO localization that I finally realized it: this guy with the same unbelievably stylish Diesel sneakers as I was wearing in Barcelona actually worked with me on Firebird Help way back in 2003! Indeed, Matjaž was the Slovenian translator of the site, and his excellent work is still up for public viewing in the Internet Archive — only with a little bit less style.
Just for the record, Matjaž reminded me today that we actually talked about this in Whistler, and I apparently managed to completely forget that… Not sure what to say in defense other than the fact that I’ve never met as many new faces before as I did in Whistler.
Sometimes the Mozilla community is just so cool. Or as Matjaž said during our chat: “it’s amazing how good this community feels!”
I can’t wait to work with you on Firefox support again, Matjaž!
I have four words for you
Meeting fellow Mozillians at events like MozCamp is very much like meeting old friends: it’s familiar, energizing, and fun. MozCamp 2009 in Prague was no exception and left me with a lot of extra enthusiasm about being part of Mozilla.
This event was extra special from a SUMO point of view, because for the first time, we were able to invite a number of non-localization contributors of SUMO. I was very pleased to finally meet European Live Chat experts Tobbi and mzz in real life (to be fair, we did invite many more SUMO community members, but unfortunately most of them were unable to join). You can chat with both Tobbi and mzz in the #sumo channel of irc.mozilla.org.
Another SUMO contributor I had never met before is Milos from Mozilla Serbia. He is an incredibly multi-talented contributor helping out with things like Serbian localization, QA of new SUMO features, web QA, market share analysis and many other things. As always during events like this, time really flies and I wish I had more time to hang out with Tobbi, mzz, and Milos.
Of course, it was also great to meet long-time SUMO contributors Simone from Mozilla Italia, and Thomas from Mozilla Germany again. I had really productive chats with them about which things to improve with SUMO l10n and I’m hoping we can get these fixes in early in 2010. More on that soon.
My photos from the event can be found on Flickr. Some random things I liked about MozCamp 2009 in Prague:
- Iacopo Benesperi from Mozilla Italia talking about how to be a nice person if you represent Mozilla at public conferences – couldn’t agree more!
- My brand new Firefox amulet from ArtZilla superstar Tobias Leingruber
- Robert Nyman’s beard
- Discussing Internet history with Glyn Moody
- Celebrating my fellow Eskilstunian Patrick’s birthday
One of the absolute highlights of the event was something I had been fantasizing about for almost two years. The idea actually formed at FOSDEM 2008, when Seth and I had a brief moment of genius (or just a strong hangover) and started to play with the idea of having Chris Hofmann come up on stage and do the Ballmer dance, Mozilla-style. When I blogged last year about the almost painful laughs during the Sunday dinner with Seth, Mark Finkle, Mic and Zbigniew, this idea of “I love this community” was the primary reason for the pain. 
So it was with pure joy, pride and excitement that I finally got to experience it for real — it felt like giving birth to a child (or not even close; what do I know?). Thanks Seth and chofmann for making it happen!
I really do love this community.
Update: A blog post about MozCamp 2009 without acknowledging the incredible work by the people who organized it is not cool. William, Irina and the track leaders Patrick Finch, Marcia Knous, Paul Rouget, Gandalf and Brian King all did an amazing job. Thank you!
Recent Comments