Project14 Blog

I’m bored of telling the story now, so when people ask me how my eye surgery went from now on, I’m just going to shout “Project14.co.uk/blog !” at them and leave it be. Unless I actually want to talk to that person, in which case I’ll memorise and repeat the below:

Dec 15th: The day it all went dark

Fairly dull start to the proceedings; sign form, get aftercare advice, have eyes swabbed in iodine, look like big ginger panda. Just another Friday night. I was then lead into a operating room with a swively bed and told to lie down. OK, nothing too harsh. Swivelled under an ER-style machine, one eye covered up and the other sellotaped open. Weird, but not too bad. Eye drops. COLD eye drops, but it could be worse. Small well of alcohol put in the centre of my open eye (to loosen the epithelials on the front of my eyeball) and PUSHED DOWN FOR 30 SECONDS WHILE EVERYTHING IN MY VISION WENT DARK GREY. Holy mother of fuck - it’s not a feeling I want ever again, but I know I’m only half way through. The well comes up and I can see again, but it’s a short lived pleasure, because at that point all I can see is the surgeon slicing a delecate arc around the centre of my vision, and then some gloopy stuff being pushed back with what can only be described as a small medical spatula. One you’d expect a smurf to use when baking cakes. Then comes the laser - unfortunately it sounded nothing like the X-Wing I was expecting - but it did smell like roast chicken flavour Walkers. Doesn’t hurt, and there’s not much you can see bar a pulsing red and green light above you. Contact lens, eye drop, blink and we’re done. Well, half way through - read the above for the second time, and you’ll get the picture, I’m not going to repeat myself. I’m not going to repeat myself.

Everything’s very cloudy initially when both eyes are done and you sit up, like you’re watching your life through blue vaseline smeared over your face. Interesting, but not exactly unexpected after eye surgery. The rest of the evening was spent in a dark room in front of the TV, listening but not watching. Looking at a candle from a mile away on the dark side of the moon would have been enough to send me in to a spasm at this point, my eyes were so sensitive and reluctant to open. That might be a slight exaggeration.

It gets better - the protective eyewear you have to wear to bed is a) sexy, b) comfortable and c) has to be stuck on with the most pleasant of medical sellotape.

Dec 16th: Bored already

Very blurry. On a scale of 1 to Helen Keller I was at about a 7. The thing about not being able to see properly is that I couldn’t do anything I normally do. No TV. No internet. No email. No reading. For those that know me, no TV for anything other than the 7 hours I’m asleep is like depriving an eagle of it’s wings, or taking away your hampster’s wheel. I might as well have drowned in my water bowl (true story, but one for another time). So Saturday was spent listening to the radio in bed, listening to the TV on the sofa, and listening to the radio in bed. More sexy eyewear to bed.

Dec 17th: “My eye! I’m not supposed to get jig in it!”

Waking up and having your eyes stuck together with gunk is not fun at the best of times (right Laura?), but when the protective contact lens’ you have in are itching and making your eyes red and puffy too, it’s not fun. The eye drops I was given did squat, so Sunday was a bad day. I couldn’t focus on my food (Goodfellas BBQ Chicken Solos), couldn’t tell if my toes were still there, didn’t know if I was still alive apart from the pain of listening to the Everton/Chelsea game and hearing Drogba score another stupid goal.

Dec 18th: Sweet relief

Another morning of agony, so I made an appointment with Ultralase to get my eyes checked out in the afternoon. Of course by the time I got there they were fine, but they gave me some stuff called VisLube to squirt in my face, which should have solved the problem (tight contact lens = itching + redness). Did it? Like an angry wank after a bad day, one spurt and i was cured - VisLube is like liquid silk for your eyes, whatever I’ve got left after all this is getting stored for when the Hayfever Gods decide to smite me down in June. It’s awesome - no more itching, no more bad mornings, no more death by eye pain. The rest of the day was more TV listening in the dark (thank god for daytime Paramount comedy channel), more radio, and more bed.

Dec 19th: I’m actually getting in to this..

Wake up at about noon, put my eye drops in and settle down for some more hardcore TV-sound-only-marathon. Fell asleep listing to Return Of the Jedi and felt like I was 11 again. AWESOME. Matt came round to watch the Arsenal/Liverpool Worthless Cup game (while I listened), only for us to find out it was cancelled as I turned the TV on to Sky Sports HD. Arse. I can just about focus on my feet now, and manage to sneak in the first 20 minutes of Saturday’s Match of the Day, to watch Arsenal draw with Pompey - although even with a 50″ plasma, it’s not entirely clear who’s who, and just how orange Gary Lineker is this week.

Dec 20th: Font size + 23897

I can just about read my email today, if I squint, and turn the fonts up to 40px (the “Hellen Keller size”). And push my nose up against the screen. My vision is getting better now, instead of the red standby light on my TV being a veritable nebula of lights and swishes as it was on Monday, it’s down to just 3 lights and a few arching trails of red. Not bad for 5 days post-op. Can just about watch TV, so watch the crap I don’t care about seeing (Las Vegas / Scrubs), more radio, and bed at a reasonable hour. Also, since I haven’t been able to shower, I haven’t had a shave for 6 days now, so I’ve got a full-on hobo look going on - I could be an extra in Eastenders with minimal make-up, easy.

Dec 21st: Want out. Can’t drive. Arseholes.

No more mornings of pain means I sleep until about 12, doze until about 2, and finally get out of bed at 3. Something must have clicked overnight, becuase I my vision is getting progressively better at quite a fast rate - it’s back now to about what it was pre-op, without glasses - the standby light is now just 2 versions of itself, with a bit of blur. The most annoying thing at this stage is that while I can now function like a human (Hellen Keller-lite, if you will), I still can’t drive, so while I want to go out to the pub for Lydia’s leaving drinks, I can’t get there, or back. Arse.

Dec 22nd: Focus! Bad Santa!

More and more focus coming back - I can actually look at people on TV without them having 4 eyes and a nose that joins with the side of their ear. Slowly getting back to normallity now, just a bit of blur, so I decided to watch an Xmas movie with Matt and Laura - Bad Santa. Hi-frigging-larious, and almost in focus. Luckily the size of it made up for that - thank god for 50″ plasmas. Something clicked again while I was in the bath at 1:30am - I could now read the “hot” / “cold” on the taps at my feet - just yesterday I couldn’t. It’s not perfect by any means yet, but just 7 days post-op, I’m well on the way to being a fighter pilot.

Dec 28th: Focus Daniel-san, focus!

Progress kinda plateau’d after the 22nd - I can now see very well - just a minimal bit of blur in my right eye, and a bit of up/down doubling in my left eye (which has always been about a day or two behind the other one. Close range screen reading isn’t as clear as it was yet (the blur is probably exaggerated at such short distances), but HD TV is very nearly the glorious event it was before, just in time for 24 and BattleStar in HD! I’m just about to go back to UltraLase for a checkup, and can finally stop wearing the sexy nightwear, can drive myself around again, and start showering instead of floating in my own filth in the bath. Horray.

Someone else seems to think so too, and suggests 10 ways to fix TV - I have to agree with most of them, especially number 1 - this season we’re got 6 episodes of Lost before Xmas, then a 3 month break. 3 MONTHS! FFS, I can barely wait a week to find out what’s not going to be answered, but 3 months? Just wait until January and show them all back to back, ala 24.

On another note, if anyone knows of a standalone dvd player that will connect to my network, play HD DivX, AND h.264 trailers, let me know - there’ll soon be a lot of stuff for me to leech and watch on my new 50″ plasma…

Good interview with Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, the screenwriters of the forthcoming Superman Returns over at In Focus (via). After the mildly dissapointing (near suckfest) that was X-Men 3 (Where’s my fucking sentinel army? Where’s my fucking flying, flame-engulfed phoenix?), I can’t wait to see Superman.

I hate being stumped (no, not cricket, cricket is lame) on something, so when I do stumble upon the answer, I tend to beam for oooooh, minutes before something else stumps me. Today it was jQuery and it’s ability to manipulate inputs in forms - it’s as well documented as the first draft of the declaration of independence “Errr, year, they can all have a slave if they want, no biggie.”. So here it is, check all checkboxes with jQuery - wonder at it and then go away.

$(’#CheckboxAll’).click( function() {
$(’input[@type=checkbox]’).not(’#CheckboxAll’).each(function() {
this.checked = “checked”;
});
});

Warning - nerd level 10 post ahead. If you don’t care about semantics, dynamic DOM manipulation or building websites, fuck off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now, jQuery. If you’ve ever wanted to seamlessly and unobtrusively add and remove classes, insert bits of text/code or fuck around with preventing people from submitting the default bit of text to your search box, then jQuery is for you. It’s almost too easy to get up and running, but once you do, you’ll be bloating sprinkling your site with useful enhancements and neat little tricks that make Marketing Managers go “Ooooohhh, Luc you’re brilliant!”, when it actually only took you 3 minutes to do, and 2 hours surfing round StyleGala and CSSBeauty.

It’s kind of like moo.fx but without the animations that you probably don’t need (although jQuery does do some simple ones), and far simpler to integrate. Go look at some examples or read the blog, it’s well worth it.

Being a fan of the newly launched NewsVine, I find myself constantly annoyed by how the predominantly american reporters/bloggers report on football from the Premiership (or “EPL”, if you’re being stupid) and around the world. Here’s a handy guide on where you’re going wrong:

1. Players are not “left off the roster”, they’re “not in the squad”
2. Teams are singular, you can’t say “Manchester City Advances to FA Quarters”, it’s “Manchester City Advance to the FA Cup Quarter-finals”
3. Similarly, you can’t say “Internazionale Beats Ajax 1-0 in Soccer”, it’s “Internazionale Beat Ajax 1-0″
4. Teams are also a plural group of people, not a thing, so you can’t say (and this is a long and horrible sentence): “United, which has won four straight league games and has 60 points, is 15 points behind leader Chelsea, which beat Tottenham 2-1 Saturday.” - it should be “United, who have won four straight league games and have 60 points, are 15 points behind leaders Chelsea, who beat Tottenham 2-1 on Saturday.”
5. No-one “ties” 1-1, you “draw” games.
6. There’s no such thing as a “penalty kick”, it’s just a “penalty”.

Feel free to submit all your football stories to me for editorial checks before you post them on your blog or to NewsVine - I’m more than happy to teach a whole continent how to write. Damn colonials.

It seems that everything I read at the minute has a post related to The IT Crowd and how brilliant it is - it was written by the guy who did Father Dead Ted and Black Books, so it must be another vintage bit of British sitcom. No. It’s shit.

Having watched the first 6 episodes now (yes, well done Channel 4 for letting me download it and watch it at work at lunchtime, welcome to 2001), I think I laughed twice, and both those moments were because it was Chris Morris - any other twat would have just looked like a twat, trying to do Morris’ character. Father Ted was funny. Black Books is hillarious. Even fucking Garth Marengi’s Dark Place was surreal enough to be good, but The ShIT Crowd is just weak. Weak like I’ve just dunked a teabag in the Atlantic ocean and expect a good brew.

Just because it’s the only sitcom dedicated to the people who sit in on Friday night watching TV (yes I’m one of them too), doesn’t make it Lord and Saviour of Geekwatch, and here’s why:

1. Periods aren’t funny
2. Adam or Joe aren’t funny when they try to act
3. Mad fat women who look like Hurley from Lost aren’t funny
4. Women aren’t funny

Thus endeth the lesson. Go watch something better like Family Guy, American Dad, Alan Partridge, even the fucking West Wing is funnier than The ShIT Crowd.

Or more to the point, why thefilmworks Wycombe 6 is shit. I finally got to see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang last night, at one of the two (total) showings this week, because some moron decided not to show this brilliant film during it’s initial release period sometime before Xmas. For a Tuesday showing at 7pm, there were more people in the shitty screen 1 than there were for Final Destination 3 on Friday night in the largest screen. Someone should be fired for not capitalising on what’s obviously a large draw, and something that could and should have done well. Doesn’t matter anymore, the DVD is out in a month, but it pissed me off. They did it with Doom too, no showings apart from two late night showings a month after is was meant to be out - that didn’t matter too much either, it’s probably not worth the £7 entry fee anyway, but I was still pissed.

And now guess what? Aeon Flux. Not on this week in Wycombe. Mother fuckers. If there was anything likely to draw in the hordes of 14 year old chavs and their mother of two pre-teen girlfriends, surely this is a no-brainer, when the alternative for them at the moment is Bum Mountain (I prefer Bareback Mountain, but Matt thinks ‘Bum’ is funnier).

Guess I’ll have to go spend my money elsewhere ODEON, you obviously don’t like me. You’ve got a point, but FUCK YOU.

Now this is just inspired > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ

Whist not doing anything constructive at work, I stumbled again upon designview, and this time specifically, Andy Rutledge’s Google Redux design. Google’s been in bad need of a redesign since about 1836, so Andy’s redux was just about needed. It looked cool, and was a definate improvement, but it only looked like that - it didn’t work. So during my boredom and as an exercise in how to go overboard with div naming, I CSS’d it up into a workable design (FF and IE6 anyway, it’s not like I get paid to care about Mac IE5 anymore). So anyway, here it is, Google Redux, designview/Project14 stylee.