20/20 Vision

Life

A fortnight ago on a Wednesday, I felt as though I had something in my eye. No matter how many times I washed it, blinked or rubbed it, it persisted. At the time, I figured it’ll sort itself out and go away in a day or two.

Fast forward to that Friday and I woke up and my eye was quite red and it still felt as though I had something in my eye. After close inspection in the mirror, I could see a mark on the edge of my iris – which prompted a rather quick trip to the optometrist.

The optometrist that I had was great and confirmed what I could see in the mirror to be an ulcer. We went through the standard set of eye tests and one that that shot three bursts of air at my eye. I didn’t realise it at the time but it measure the pressure in your eyes – which I was happy that he checked since Jude came down with acute glaucomer many years ago. The optometrist also put a dye in my eye to get a closer look, it was absorbed into the eye instead of glossing over it like a drop of water, which indicated some sort of damage to the surface of my eye. He’d said that the mere presence of that behaviour was enough for an immediate referral to an ophthalmologist, which got me a little nervous.

I was lucky enough to get into the ophthalmologist that afternoon and fortunately Lucy was able to drive me in. When I arrived, I went through two different sets of staff – firstly another optometrist. He did a standard eye test, which I passed with better than 20/20 vision. That was followed by the first set of eye drops, which was an anesthetic to numb the surface of my eye. Second was a set of drops that relaxed the muscles in my eye to make my pupil expand. What a bazaar feeling that was, I was trying as hard as I could to focus on something and just couldn’t – hence Lucy chauffeuring me. Once the pupil expanded he had a really good look around and in my eyes. That was really hard on my left eye, as it was sensitive to light and he was shining a bright light into it at close range and I couldn’t blink.

Next up was the ophthalmologist, who put in another set of eye drops to numb the surface of my eye again. He also looked in the back of my eyes to make sure nothing was wrong, which there wasn’t thank god. The specialist however had a new instrument, something fitted to the front of his normal machine which literally touches the surface of your eye. Touching the surface of my eye was another way of testing the pressure in my eyes and he reconfirmed it was okay. Now for someone that hasn’t needed glasses or even a visit to an optometrist for as long as I can remember, I can’t tell you how strong the urge was to pull away from the machine as it got closer and closer to my eye!

After all was said and done, the ophthalmologist informs me I have something known as marginal keratitis. Keratitis is an infection in the eye, can be caused by any number of things and comes in various types and severities. In my instance, I was lucky as the infection was on the edge of my iris, so had no impact on my vision while infected and no chance of long term damage to my eye sight.

Treatment for it was quite straight forward, the doctor prescribed me with two different sets of eye drops which I had to take four times a day. Putting drops in my eye was a new experience as well, again not used to putting things that close to my eye and I was a horrible aim for the first few attempts!

A week on and I’ve now had a follow up appointment with the specialist and he is really pleased with how well my eye has healed in the week. In fact, the second appointment was nearly a non-event as I was in his office for less than 10 minutes and not all of that time he was in the room. I now have another week of using the drops but only twice a day instead of four times daily.

I have taken my sight for granted, like most people do, for such a long time. It was a frightening thought when I was referred to the ophthalmologist that it was that serious. I’m so thankful that the infection was minor and wasn’t going to impact my vision going forward.

Comparison Shopping Websites, A Consumers Best Friend

Internet, Websites

Claire & I have recently been on the look out for a new compact digital camera, to replace our aging Canon Ixus 65. During our research process, we’ve looked a countless cameras on the internet, via the manufacturers’ websites, consumer electronic web sites such as cnet and read countless reviews.

When it came time to actually buy a digital camera though, we were going to buy it in person at a local Gold Coast retailer such as Harvey Norman, The Good Guys or similar. What we found was, while they had prices that were better than the recommended retail price by the manufacturer and some were going to be flexible on price, they were still quite expensive.

Inevitably when people start researching online for a product, they’ll start with a search engine with looking for the best compact digital cameras. The results will yield sites such as a digital camera product round up on cnet and a number of companies will be paying for advertising on Google & co. as well. While possible, it was going to take a lot of time to sift through all those sites to find the best deal and this is where the comparison shopping websites become the consumers best friend!

Comparison shopping web sites crawl over literally tens or hundreds of different ecommerce web sites, cataloging what they find and how much each product costs. Of course, the comparison shopping websites aren’t just for digital cameras – you can buy all manner of things via them from fridges to perfume, pet supplies to furniture, there aren’t a lot of things you can’t find. As a consumer, you enter the product name or product category into these sites and see dozens of different companies selling the same product, with wild variances in price.

In Australia, the three most prominent shopping comparison websites are probably:

  1. Getprice
  2. Shopbot
  3. My Shopping

They all have a similar feel about them, however the interface and how the products are cataloged and organised differs by site – which makes some easier to use then others. In the case of the Canon Ixus 200 IS digital camera we purchased, it retails for approximately $600 for the bare camera chassis. Claire bought it via Shopping Square, a massive online store that we’d never heard of before but discovered by the comparison shopping sites. For less than half the retail price of the camera on its own, we managed to get the camera, a 16Gb memory card & prompt postage.

Next time you’re looking for a product that you can buy online, I highly recommend that you do yourself and your wallet a favour and visit one of the above sites before you spend a whole lot more money than you need to.

Windows Live Profiles & Twitter Integration

Software, Websites

Last year I wrote about Microsoft Windows Live getting smarter, specifically that Microsoft were gearing the new Windows Live profiles as a one stop shop for social web site aggregation. In a few quick clicks of your mouse, you could consolidate down dozens of your social networks and personal services into a single place, removing your need to visit each of them independently – fantastic!

One of the social networks that the Windows Live profiles had a web activity for was Twitter. Without any hesitation, I configured the Twitter web activity and all of my tweets were seamlessly imported into my activity stream within Windows Live. My only criticism at the time was that Twitter is a real time service, however my tweets were slow/sluggish to appear in my activity stream – sometimes taking a few hours to show up.

I was disappointed to receive an email on 30 June from the Windows Live team stating that they were no longer able to support the Twitter web activity and that they’d be disabling that functionality, until such a time as they could work with Twitter on their policy change which meant that Microsoft could no longer use the service.

Fortunately, Microsoft provide a generic web activity named “Blog RSS Feed” which will import any valid RSS or Atom XML feed into the Live profile activity steam. Of course, Twitter being the good netizen that they are, also provide an individual RSS stream for each user. Joining the dots and it means that Windows Live profiles and Twitter integration is still possible.

The downside is that because it is using a ‘generic’ web activity, how it is displayed within my activity steam isn’t as elegant and neat as it was prior – bug beggers cant be choosers.

Suncorp Bank, Looking Out For Clients

Internet, Websites

Last week I unexpectedly received an email purporting to be from Suncorp Bank. In the last year or so of banking with Suncorp and using their online banking system countless times, I don’t ever recall receiving an email from them about anything.

It doesn’t surprise me that I haven’t received an email from Suncorp before, given the prevalence of phishing attacks these days. For those unaware, phishing is an attempt to fraudulently acquire personal information from someone by getting them to enter it into a web site that looks familiar, that is in fact just a shallow replica of a real site. Phishing attacks are one of the reasons you’ll read and hear major institutions state that they will never ask you for your username and password, ever.

Just to checkout what the latest phishing attempt looked like, I thought I’d investigate the email to see if the spammers had gotten any smarter over the years. First thing I noticed was it was from an email address that was clearly related to their online banking system and at the correct domain. Secondly, the subject had to do with BPay – so I though how fantastic that the spammers now use brands or products related to the local country to garner trust with the user.

After opening the email, I suddenly realised that the email was legitimate and I couldn’t believe it! It turns out that Claire had just paid our rates online, through the Suncorp internet banking web site using BPay. The email was a notification, to let me know that a large payment had just been processed and if I hadn’t arranged it to call them immediately.

What I love about the email though:

  1. The subject was clear, it was a BPay notification
  2. They sent it to both of the email addresses I’d provided Suncorp, not just my primary one in case I didn’t check it immediately.
  3. It was a plain text email, so no fancy images or design – just the message. That meant that you needed to read the content of the email to see what it was about and not blindly clicking on something because it used the familiar Suncorp branding.
  4. The first line stated what it was about (high value BPay transaction), the second contained what action to take (phone Suncorp) and for full details you could check the transaction on their site.
  5. Suncorp include their business name, address, ABN, contact information in the footer
  6. Most importantly, there isn’t a single hyperlink anywhere to be seen in the email. As such, you can’t just ‘click the obvious link’ to go to their site.

A lot of the things above seem pretty small things to a lot of people, however I’m really impressed that they’ve chosen a lot of those options – especially the plain text email. Nefarious individuals and companies that use phishing attacks prey on people reacting to a familiar company and brand, such as from their bank to take an action. By providing it in plain text, it removes the familiarity aspect away to make you read the email. By not providing any hyperlinks, you need to open your browser yourself and go to their web site.

All round, a great email from Suncorp and they should be congratulated for doing their part in helping keep their clients information private and their money safe. If I were to make a single change to it, it’d be to remove the phone number and direct the user to their web site (no hyperlink) to get the phone number if they don’t already have it on hand. That way, all of the contact information needs to be entered by the user on their own behalf, which would all but remove the risk of a phishing attack.

Hogs Breath Cafe

Food

Another thing that was a happy coincidence after eating dinner at Hogs Breath Cafe last night was they have their 21st birthday celebration on until the 21st August.

The 21st birthday celebration means if you eat at Hogs Breath and order one of their signature steaks, they’ll give you a frequent diners card for free that entitles you to 21% off your next meal at Hogs Breath. If you’re a current frequent diners card holder, you’re entitled to your normal frequent diners card discount and they’ll give you a Hogs Breath steak knife for each prime rib meal as well.

Since Claire and I have had Hogs Breath cards for a long time, they were still happy to give them to us so we signed up Lorraine & Sterle – fantastic. I’m now thinking we should go back before the end of the month, get a couple more frequent diners cards for some other friends that don’t have them and get another pair of steak knives!