Disqus - Latest Comments for jeshyr

Re: Accessibility in VR: Why Head Height Matters

jeshyr — Sun, 24 Jul 2016 07:54:02 -0000

Fascinated to read this about accessibility in VR. Now I've read a lot but I haven't had any access at *all* to an actual VR headset as yet, so please forgive me if this is a totally solved problem or something!

My situation is that I'm almost entirely bedridden due to my disability. My computer screen is mounted over my bed, facing downwards and I pretty much always use the computer lying either flat on my back or with my torso elevated (hospital-style bed) between 0-30 degrees, so close to flat and staring pretty much at the ceiling. I have an extensive knowledge of ceilings in doctor's offices and hospitals in my city, and can tell you which ones remember to look up when removing spider's webs (fewer than you'd hope).

I have always assumed that when using VR this position would be far less of a barrier than it is in RL because, presumably, an 70-90 degree flip in orientation should be as easy as switching my phone screen between portrait and landscape ... but is that something that anybody actually implements? Will I be stuck staring at VR ceilings the same way I'm stuck staring at RL ceilings? Because that would suck really a lot ... I'm sure you can imagine that the opportunities VR offers for somebody who's bedridden are so enormous it's hard to even contemplate.

Re: Dr. Diana Driscoll interview: vagus nerve and POTS/mast cell activation

jeshyr — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 01:56:43 -0000

Ian, The VNS website only allows ordering of the ParaSym product, not the other two (nothing happens when clicking on the links). Since the international shipping is so crippling, ordering all three together would be vastly preferable. Could you please contact me ricky@notdoneliving.net about this?

Re: How To Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That’ll Keep Your Readers Reading

jeshyr — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 02:31:32 -0000

I rewrote an introduction today based on your post. I do technical writing so they're often a bit dry, but I thought you might like to see this:

Initial:
"For those who use Skype for Mac OS X and have trouble answering calls quickly enough, you can set Skype to answer for you automatically."

Final:
"You hear the Skype ringtone, there's a call! You reach out to grab your mouse, or keyboard ... but it takes a moment to do it. Oh no - by the time you've got to the answer button, your caller has hung up!

Sound familiar? Did you know that you can set up Skype for Mac OS X to answer for you automatically?"

THANK YOU for this lesson which, as you can see, I desperately needed :) My before-posting checklist now contains instructions to review this article!

Re: How Planning Your Blog Content Can Help You Get More Done

jeshyr — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 22:30:38 -0000

This seems like an argument that, like "Nature or nurture?" is best answered with "Both!"

I have a plan of what to publish when (In-depth article on tuesday, something short on Thirsday or Friday, and weekend link roundup on Sunday) and I have a bunch of articles in all states (from "I should probably write about ___" to "second draft done, needs polishing") and if nothing happens that will all proceed as planned. But on the other hand, if inspiration strikes or there's a sudden flurry of relevant things I want to respond to in the world then I can easily just shuffle all my planned stuff along further into the future (so easy with CoSchedule - thanks!) and post the unplanned stuff first.

I guess you could say I plan for unplanned events :)

Re: Smart Apps For Special Needs: Track airborne allergies and symptoms with ZYRTEC® ALLERGYCAST™

jeshyr — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 02:20:50 -0000

This looked really helpful for my severe allergies but upon further investigation its allergy forecasting function only works in three USA cities - New York, Chicago, and San Francisco! It's not noted at ALL on the iTunes listing and even the app gives me no error or warning message at all when I told it to use my current location (Melbourne, Australia) and it set my location to New York. Very bad form, Zyrtec!

Re: How to Effectively and Accurately Use Data to Inform Your Social Media Decisions

jeshyr — Sat, 13 Sep 2014 00:48:29 -0000

I'm Australian but at ATMac I write for a mostly-USA audience. This has made time-related data especially confusing and difficult to interpret as my social media audience includes people in two almost completely non-overlapping sets of timezones... I take everything I read with a pinch of salt and see what works for me!

Re: Time.com’s bounce rate down 15 percentage points since adopting continuous scroll

jeshyr — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:51:29 -0000

It's also worth noting that infinite scroll is *awful* for disability-type accessibility. It confuses much accessibility software including screen readers and speech input users - they try to list every link on the page for the user, which obviously doesn't work with infinite scroll. Also cognitively it's confusing for many readers. Please anybody who's implemented or considered implementing it read this, including the comments, to understand the issues: http://simplyaccessible.com...

Re: 20 WordPress Plugins You Can Install Today for Easier Sharing, Better Posting, and a More Powerful Blog

jeshyr — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 07:38:29 -0000

Your scroll triggered box *definitely* doesn't wait 30 days - I see it on every post (I checked just now, closing it each time). Very frustratingly it overlaps the text on my browser too, so every time it pops up I have to stop reading, find the mouse, click to dismiss the damm stupid box. I understand it's useful for converting people but it drives me nuts!! - Jeshyr from @atmacjournal

Re: Calling all serial citizen scientists!

jeshyr — Sat, 03 May 2014 00:49:33 -0000

not currently active? Survey Monkey says not.

Re: Don't read articles, listen to them

jeshyr — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:51:14 -0000

For anybody else who's looking, Earl offers "free access to 15 minutes of content per day or unlimited access for $9.99 per month, or get two months free when you sign up for a year—only $99.99".

Nothing wrong with asking for money for good software, but the information wasn't obvious on the front page when I clicked through and I want to save anyone else from having to dig. Also I was disappointed because it was way out of my teeny tiny price range and I would *love* and iOS-based way to read stuff from Pocket with less hassle.

Re: A quantified life, not a heartless one

jeshyr — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:06:18 -0000

“We are in danger of outsourcing the essential examination of life to a computer programme and reducing our wonderfully messy reality to numbers and a spread sheet. Relying on data to interpret our lives means we are giving up on doing it ourselves, through conversation, debate and private thought, through dreaming about what could be."

I feel like Jenkins' entire article was one huge strawman argument. I don't think most (any?) QS folks would try to argue that lifelogging in any way tries to interpret our lives. I think that treat the data that I have as another useful input that I can use for my introspection, not as a substitute for that introspection.

I also share your point that logging is getting less arduous. For me, it's not the QS folks generally who are missing out on being in the moment, it's people who live life stuck behind a camera. My most emotive "these people are missing out" moment was at one brother's wedding when the father of the bride spent the entire event filming the ceremony... that type of behaviour is far, far more intrusive than spending 10-20 minutes a day logging things!

Re: Interview with Jennifer Johnnesen, Author of “No Ordinary Boy” and “Fake Work” + Book Giveaway

jeshyr — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:22:59 -0000

It's hard for me to answer your questions because I'm not a parent of a kid with disabilities - I'm a person with disabilities myself, one who isn't a parent. I was pretty much able-bodied through my own childhood too, but I know for many of my disabled friends their childhoods were very much taken up with therapies and many of them seem to have been of little use. With physically disabled kids it seems to me that one of the biggest issues is always getting them to walk, and it seems that this is done even if the child is pretty much destined to never have a very useful level of walking. From what I hear from my friends, almost all of them have ended up as perfectly happy wheelchair or scooter users as adults - one thing I'd like to say to parents is that walking isn't actually that important to your quality of life! It's handy to be able to stand, at least momentarily, and being able to take a step or two helps a lot for independent transfers ... but honestly the difference in quality of life above that level seems to be minimal.

For me I can usually walk around my home but I need a wheelchair whenever I'm outside, and on really bad days I need it inside too. And it's fine, it really is! I'm not less happy or less fulfilled or less ... anything, as far as I can tell. Sometimes there are places I can't get into and that's a pain, but almost always I can grab a passer-by and get them to find me the shop attendant and they'll help me anyway! Or if it really matters I can go find a similar shop that *is* accessible, or I can shop online or by phone or ... there are always ways.

I'd really recommend to parents who have kids with disabilities when it's relevant, if you possibly can, find an adult with similar impairments and get to know them! Firstly it's a great experience for a disabled kid to realise there are adults out there like them - most disabled kids see other disabled kids but only able-bodied adults. But also I think it would be good for parents too, to realise that there are adults like this and they have good lives :)

Re: The Affect of Radical Political Change on People with Disabilities

jeshyr — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:53:06 -0000

That's scary as hell... I'm very glad I don't live in America, basically. I'm sorry they're trying to do this shit to all of my friends, and I don't understand it at all.

Re: 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following

jeshyr — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:23:51 -0000

Thanks for the screenshot. Fame is mine! :) Nice article, too.

Re: A Letter to Patients With Chronic Disease

jeshyr — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:13:58 -0000

That's a really good point about expectations - it made me think. I hope that my expectations are fairly reasonable - if it's a specialist I'm seeing for a particular issue I want them to have at least the list of relevant diagnoses (removed from binder as described above, so not a problem) so that they can ask about the relevant general stuff and then address the issue. I'll mention to them that I have more specifics if they need it, but not any more than that.

If it's a potential new primary doctor I tend to have pre-screened them through friends with chronic illness which helps a lot. I'll bring up the binder by making jokes about having it and see how they respond. Since a sense of humour is pretty much necessary to cope with severely chronically ill patients as a primary doctor that one does double duty :) And if a primary doctor can't cope with a complexly chronically ill patient keeping their own copy of records they aren't the doc for me, so that's OK.

From my perspective, the problem usually comes when the specialist says they'll need a specific test result that I have but have left in the binder. I want them not to run away screaming or excessively negatively categorise me (in a psychology-of-me sense) just because I *possess* the binder. This is the biggest problem I find. Unlike new primary doctors, I see new specialists often and because of the way the medical system runs here I have little choice about which specialists I see (or rather, choosing another one often involves a 3-12 month wait for an initial appointment so it's not usually feasible). So if a specialist gets an unduly negative opinion of me it's something I just have to deal with.

I've just acquired another semi-acute problem, so I'll need to be seeing another new specialist soon, possibly two of them, so practical advice would be very welcome.

Re: A Letter to Patients With Chronic Disease

jeshyr — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:44:42 -0000

MKirshMD, I totally take your point about doctors needing specific past test results and I do maintain my own "master record" at home... after 20 years of complex and mostly-incorrectly diagnosed illness and disability I have not one but two ring binders (about 4 inches tall each) both fairly full with the copied records of past tests and other useful things like the full list of operations I've had (why and where and who and when) and referral letters from doctors (the useful ones with actual information) and such. I suspect many of us long term severely ill/disabled patients are in the same boat.

Obviously, bringing two large ring binders to a first appointment is almost 100% guaranteed to get a chronically ill patient written off as having Munchausen's or being a first class hypochondriac, even if you don't pull them out until the doctor asks if you have a specific result.

I suspect even the executive summary of the medical records would be more than a few inches tall for most of us - I have to summarize to near uselessness to get it on 3-4 sheets of paper and even that is too much for most Drs to read in a "long" 15 minute consult.

My compromise at the moment is to lug along the two ring-binders, safely hidden in my bag, and a separate envelope - the one I pull out - with a copy of the referral letter (I'm sure you know how often it doesn't make it onto the doctor's desk at the right moment) and any test results that I anticipate the doctor will want. But I'm not a trained professional and I can't read doctor's minds (it'd be really handy...) so I'm often asked for something that's in those ring binders and not in my envelope. Do you have any advice about avoiding the situation where the doctor sees the sheer amount of paperwork you have filed and mentally adds you to their "crazy patient" list?

Re: A Letter to Patients With Chronic Disease

jeshyr — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:36:55 -0000

Another chronic patient here - been sick since I was in my teens, I'm 35 now so it's more than half my life I've been sick, and have been bedridden for the last 10 years. Doctors just see the size of my file and their hearts sink.

Your post made me cry, truly. I am blessed with recently finding a PCP (actually, we call them GPs down here in Australia - family doctors) who has a chronic illness herself. Although our diagnoses are completely different and there is almost no overlap in symptoms, the empathy she has for my situation is utterly priceless to me. When I come to her with a set of symptoms that the textbooks say never happen together, her response is to research it rather than to assume that I am malingering/lying/mis-reporting or misunderstanding my own body. When I tell her I am tired of fighting and struggling she knows, at a bone-deep level, what I mean. This is empathy that I have never had from the most understanding healthy doctor and I value it above any level of medical knowledge (luckily she's also a good doctor!).

Today an ultrasound confirmed that I have an inguinal hernia. I'm a 35 year old female, for heavens' sake! I came home from the hospital (after waiting 2 1/2 hours for a taxi that could take my powerchair) wishing that the universe would give me a break and I opened my mail and found a reference to your post and came here and read it and cried.

Thank you for knowing you don't understand.

Thank you for admitting the fear and insecurity that patients like me cause.

Thank you for helping me to have more tools to connect with doctors without inadvertently exacerbating that fear or insecurity.

Thank you for TRYING, most of all. Thank you for caring about us "heart sink" patients.

Ricky Buchanan. http://notdoneliving.net/op...

Re: Occupational Therapy

jeshyr — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 04:20:29 -0000

Yes yes yes!

Occupational therapists are the most focussed on quality of life of any profession I've come across. So glad you found good ones :)

Re: Peter Arnold: I don’t know

jeshyr — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:11:27 -0000

This may seem contradictory, but as a patient I find it immensely reassuring to find that my doctor is comfortable saying "I don't know". If I hear it from my doctor I feel reassured that I can trust that they DO know what they're talking about when they say they do, and that what they tell me is not bluster designed to cover up a fear of not knowing.

As a patient with a rare genetic disorder with several odd co-morbid conditions, "I don't know" is frequently the sanest thing to say. If I find a doctor is blustering or avoiding admitting a lack of knowledge then the first thing I'll be doing is trying to find an alternative doctor. Not feeling I can trust my doctor is one of the scariest feelings I know.

Re: An Iraqi Lament: 'We are Broken, Orphaned and Lost' - Kitabat, Iraq

jeshyr — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:16:05 -0000

It's really difficult to know how to interpret opinion pieces like these without knowing anything about the writer. Are the known to be liberal or conservative? Pro- or anti- the theme being discussed? Does this writer regularly denounce the Iraqui leaders in this way, or is it very out of character for them?

If it was a local newspaper I'd know, or be able to ask somebody at least. This feels very out of context, I'm not sure if I understand the import it has because I don't know enough.

Re: I Pissed Off A PR Spammer Today

jeshyr — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:14:36 -0000

So if a small tech website was, hypothetically, interested in getting somebody who actually knows about PR to write a press release or two for them ... how do I, erm this hypothetical website, identify the ones who are ethical and decent?

They tend to be, by their nature, rather invisible because (as Matthew said up there someplace) he writes about their clients and not them.

I did not know, before today, that prMac were not well regarded. I have their firehose of press releases filtered to a folder I almost never read because there's WAY TOO MANY for any sane human being to read if they want to actually work in the same day, but I had never tried to get off their list so I wasn't aware of their business practices.

Ricky

Re: Accessibility 25 Words

jeshyr — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:47:31 -0000

Since I'm on a roll, another one that drives me crazy is (legal) access to new movies. Everybody I know seems to be talking about "Avatar" but by the time it's available on DVD nobody'll give a toss about it or want to discuss it with me. That sucks.

Re: Accessibility 25 Words

jeshyr — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:46:04 -0000

My advice would be to reach out to your company's HR department

You're assuming the person is sufficiently able to work, with that statement, as well as stuff about employment status.

My most common accessibility problems in RL revolve around me being bedbound and therefore unable to physically go to places that generally require attendance for things - like banks to verify new bank accounts, and anywhere to get photo ID, etc.

There's also an access-to-information problem where there's a significant amount of information that's only distributed at conferences, workshops, keynote speeches, etc., and you have attend to get that information. Obviously I don't expect a conference to be held in my room for that purpose, but there's a lot of things that can be done to mitigate the information problem. It will never be the same as full access, but it can be significantly less than the currently zero access I have.

Re: Accessibility 25 Words

jeshyr — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:02:47 -0000

Where I got most stuck was it bugs me that most people are most aware of wheelchairs/blindness/deafness and not so much of obscure needs (like, say, mine) so I didn't want to mention specifics!

Re: We’re nominated for the Best App Ever Awards!

jeshyr — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:49:15 -0000

I love flight control to bits so I totally voted for all these, but even so I gotta debate about Flight Control being good for casual gaming "while waiting for your coffee to brew".

If I tried playing Flight Control while the coffee brewed I'm pretty sure it would lead inevitably to very burned coffee as I got immersed in the game and forgot the caffeine!