The Blog Readability Test. What level of education is required to understand your blog?
The Blog Readability Test. What level of education is required to understand your blog?
Umm, need to simplify…
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Leaving Chapel Hill
I’ve lived in Chapel Hill for over 10 years, encompassing a Ph. D, a marriage, a few jobs, cats, many wonderful friends and a blog that to this day proceeds in fits and starts. But, my time here is finally at an end. I accepted a job offer to move to Victoria, BC. It’s on Vancouver Island and quite breathtakingly beautiful in an almost throwaway fashion!
Photo Courtesy flickr – Allie Wojtaszek’s photo stream.
I am not kidding, the island’s just incredibly beautiful.
Anyways, I will be heading out for a long vacation in Chennai, back for 10 days or so, then leaving end of March to start work. Blogging for the next week or so should be normal (as in, no rhythm, rhyme or reason!). Once I get to Chennai, blogging will be sporadic as my parents don’t have internet and I am too lazy to set up a connection for a month!
Once I get to Victoria, blogging will, of course, resume, though I guess I’ll still remain pseudo anonymous (not that too many people care!). I will be working for a company that works very closely with the EPA and Environment Canada and things get delicate when you work with the government and criticize them! It will be interesting to see where this blog goes, though I will refrain from the usual gee whiz look at that beautiful scenery posting!
If you know people on Vancouver island you can hook me up with, please email /leave a comment. I don’t move that often, and I can’t rely on seeing familiar faces on Franklin Street and the Weaver Street Market any more!
S. is staying in Chapel Hill for a little longer, she loves her work and just started it!
It’s been fun living here, but all good things must pass.
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Lasers shooting into irises
I did not think my first minor surgery would involve someone shooting lasers to make holes in my iris. It sounds like more fun than it actually was, but was mostly painless and here I am, looking at a computer screen 3 hours later. My eyes feel like they’ve had about 5 hours of sleep, which is good considering they’re now sporting two brand new drain holes.
Laser iridotomy is also performed prophylactically(preventively) on asymptomatic individuals with narrow angles and those with pigment dispersion. Individuals with a narrow angle are at higher risk of an acute angle closure, especially upon dilation of the eye
http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/La-Pa/Laser-Iridotomy.html
I also just started reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which is about the use and misuse of the banner of science by a large group of people including nutritionists, pharmaceutical companies and “alternative” treatment specialists. It has a great chapter on the “placebo” effect, how much of it is culturally mediated, and how much doctor demeanour and confidence in their skills and outcome affects results. The doctor shooting holes in my eye was extremely confident in their skills and their results, and normally, my brain would be sending off all kinds of hubris warnings. In this case, their confidence reassured me a bit, and Bad Science definitely helped. It was also interesting to see a large section on homeopathy in the book, since I’ve written about my contact with homeopathy and felt that the cultural practices of a good homeopath can be of some use to people as long as they don’t go too far. The book confirmed some of that.
Tracking my mail
On the sidebar, you will find a new donut chart which is a simple cumulative count of the mail we get at home. The measurement started on the 19th of March, 2012, so not much data yet 🙂  Useful – Mail I will find useful (yes, including bills). Solicited – Mail I find marginally useful, but comes from organisations I support, so I guess it is okay? Junk – Well, you know it when you see it; RTS – Return to Sender, addressed to previous occupant. Canada Post charges quite a bit for mail forwarding, whereas the USPS does it free for a year, so people get better at updating addresses and not missing a couple. I have lived in my current place for 18 months now, still get mail for multiple different people.
No particular reason to do this, I was just curious, and this article about the US postal service starting to solicit more direct mail (what most people regard as junk) customers just triggered me to post the results online. My perception is that the signal/noise ratio on my mail is very low, let’s see… The underlying data is in a simple google spreadsheet and the image is linked dynamically, so should always be current.
Update: I don’t have a red dot on my mailbox, no particular reason, just supporting my economy and increasing the GDP, perhaps? More seriously, I would like a green dot campaign, where unsolicited mail is not welcome unless I place a green dot on my mail box for all unsolicited mail, and an amber dot for not-for profit, advocacy, political and generally non-commercial mail.
Update:Â Not tracking my mail any more, as you can see. It was remarkably stable at around 58-50% “junk”. Interesting…
Featured image is of a letter box from Nepal, from flickr user manc72 used under a creative commons licence.
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very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
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