28 September 2009

Subaru gone

My beautiful car TUZ442 has gone.
Over the past few years I have been unable to hear the clutch and had to replace the clutch about a year ago. I'm going to go for something smaller and automatic. Probably a Toyota Yaris or similar.



I had my green Subaru for about 9 years. It was the best car to drive in the wet and was great to/from Byron and around town too.

Goodbye - enjoy your new life, hopefully rust-free.

23 September 2009

What I did

On Tuesday at Better Hearing Australia [where I do my lip-reading classes] I gave a little presentation to the massed audience [of about 20] which consisted of the pictures from my Europe 09 expedition.

I imported the images from the trip from my digital camera into my computer, using a program called iPhoto. [On a Mac]
Then I edited the keywords for the final sets. Once the sets were established I uploaded the sets and pictures to my web album.
They are available on Picasa in the various sets. [link]

The next export was different. I created a slide show from the images, no music, 5 second duration for each image and exported the entire set's slideshow as a quicktime movie, to a file on my desktop.

At this point I might have imported it to iMovie to add captions, titles and other stuff. But I didn't this time.

I imported the exported slideshow to iTunes and then converted it to iPhone friendly. The iPhone friendly version was then synchronised [sent to] with the iPhone and is available on the phone for viewing.

But how to show it to 20 people? Bit too close for comfort.

I have a cable which connects the iPhone to a TV. So, I could play the movie starting and stopping as appropriate, using the iPhone as a wired remote, and giving my commentary.

Also at BHA they have an audio loop so those of us with the appropriate hearing device can hear what's said. That made it all very easy to get the message across.

It all worked quite well!

14 September 2009

Head underwater

The operation of August has been pronounced a success as previously reported.
The CochProf has now advised that I may get my left ear wet.

This is momentous
  • I don't need to wear earplugs in the shower surf or swimming pool
  • I can swim unhindered, although I willbe completely deaf while doing so - no waterproof speech processors for implants
  • It has been 7.5 years since I was able to do that
  • Grab your boogie boards and let's head on down to surfside!