Mumbling to myself: Dealing with what ails me...

Windows Speech Recognition Macros Technical Preview

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:03:36 GMT

Yay! Here is an neat program that was developed internally at Microsoft - which I have (at times) come to rely upon - and now it is finally available to the public, so I can actually talk about it.

Windows Speech Recognition Macros (available here: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fad62198-220c-4717-b044-829ae4f7c125&displaylang=en) is a nice little tool that allows you to create a variety of "macros" for Vista's built in speech recognition. What this specifically means is that you can set it up to simulate a series of key strokes, or run a program, in response to a specific phrase.

I have used this at times for nice little time-savers like "Insert my hotmail address" and "Insert my street address" - which is much faster than trying to dictate those items manually.

But my bigger use has been combining it with my SmartNav (http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/). SmartNav comes with a built-in "keyboard to click the mouse" function - and by augmenting this with voice macros for commands like "click mouse", "double click mouse", "right click mouse", etc... I have been able to use all aspects of a computer without needing to use my hands at all.

Cheers,
Ben

Darned allergies...

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:14:32 GMT

I appear to have a new allergy - but I do not know what it is. Over the last couple of weekends I have been having incredible stomach aches and gastro problems. Each time we have been able to trace it down to a new food that I had tried - but in each case there was nothing that I know I am allergic to in any of the foods.

So - it is time for me to head off to the allergist to get tested again - and it looks like I will need to avoid any new foods in the meantime.

Cheers,
Ben

Household vision

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:05:36 GMT

Well it has been a week of changes for vision in our household.

Werona has finally had her eyes lasered - which has been an interesting experience for us all. While the process itself was very short - the recovery has not been. The surgery was performed on Thursday morning. For most of Thursday and Friday Werona could not see much at all and slept most of the time. When she was not sleeping she needed to be guided around the house by hand. By Saturday she had enough vision that we could go out and get a coffee, and by now she can see well enough to do most things except read books and drive the car. Hopefully she will be at 20-20 vision soon.

At the same time - after not wearing glasses for about 10 years - I went to the optometrist and got told that I was far-sighted and would benefit from glasses for reading and computing (previously I had been short sighted). So now I have glasses and Werona does not. Though, to be honest, I do not mind having glasses again - for a couple of reasons:

Being far-sighted means that I only wear my glass when I am sitting at a computer or reading a book. This is nowhere as annoying as having to wear glasses when you are out and about doing things.
I have always been light sensitive and have made a habit of wearing sunglasses at most times when I am outside (yes, even in Seattle, the sun may not be as bright but boy is it glary). So I am quite used to wearing glasses.
As a major nerd, having glasses quite fits my own personal perception of my nature.

Cheers,
Ben (aka "Four Eyes")

Using the SmartNAV for mousing

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:57:40 GMT

When I started using voice recognition in order to control my computer, I found that I was able to do most things without any problems. But one of the most frustrating things was any operation that involved the mouse (dragging windows around, dragging and dropping files, etc). In order to help with this I started using the SmartNAV: http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/

This is a great device. It is able to track the motion of my head (or specifically, the motion of a sticker on the beam of my headset). Using this I've been able to get close to normal mouse control with very little frustration.

When I started using it I did have a sore neck for a day or two, but now I have no problems at all. It can be a little light sensitive but I've found that this is easy enough to adjust for (by closing/opening blinds). All in all I've found this to be very useful - and for $199 it is much cheaper than many alternative solutions.

Cheers,
Ben

The horrors of Humira

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:50:59 GMT

So for a while now I have been taking Enbrel for my rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately after month or so of being incredibly effective, Enbrel has started to have less and less affect on my rheumatoid arthritis (isn't a great to have a body with a robust immune system that can adapt itself around drugs that are introduced?). So my doctor has switched me over to Humira.

These two drugs are basically different approaches at the same solution, and we're hoping there is an outside chance that Humira will succeed where Enbrel has failed.

I received my new prescription for Humira on a Friday but I did not fill it immediately. The main reason for this is that we use an online chemist, where it is rather a pain to fill out prescriptions. Come Monday I was having a significant arthritis flare up and decided that I would head down to the local chemist to fill the prescription for the first one -and that I would use the online chemist after that.

Well I dropped the prescription off and was told to come back in a couple of days to pick up the medicine. I returned on Wednesday night, the night before I was due to have my next injection. To my horror, rather than having a pen style auto injector the chemist only had pre filled syringes.

At this stage I should point out that I am needle phobic. Using the auto injectors is hard enough for me, I can't even fathom the idea of sticking a syringe into myself (my wife actually applies the auto injector for me as it is). I nervously asked the chemist whether they had any auto injectors, and was told that this specific chemist can't order those in.

So I took the needles home and after a long discussion with my wife concluded that we could not use these. The directions for using the needles went along the lines of: pinch the skin of the site of injection, then insert the needle at a 45° angle with a sharp dart like jabbing motion, pull the plunger out slightly and look for blood in the solution to see if you've hit a vein, if you don't see blood then inject the rest of the medicine.

Yikes!

So after a bad night's sleep I called my doctor in the morning and was relieved to find that I could take my syringe down to the clinic and have a nurse inject it for me. This is what I did, but it was rather strange to turn up at the doctor's clinic with a syringe in hand asking for someone to stick it in me.

Here's hoping that I get auto injectors the next time around.

Cheers,
Ben

PS. For my American friends "chemist" equals "drug store"

Losing track of "normal"

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:07:45 GMT

One of the biggest problems I have found with having rheumatoid arthritis is that I lose track of what it is to feel "normal". I find that after a period of time with pain / stiffness / fatigue /etc... I soon develop a new assumption about what state is "normal" for me. This makes it very hard for me to give objective answers to questions about "how bad things are".

I can easily answer the question "Is today better than yesterday, or worse?" or "Is the pain bothering you?". But questions like "Rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10" and "How bad is it?" are really hard to answer.

This really struck me when I first went on Enbrel / Methotrexate. It wasn't until I was better that I realized how bad things had got. And now that these medications are losing their effect on me - I find that I am fretting about trying to remember what "normal" is for me - so that I can adjust my expectations of myself appropriately. Because I know that if I am not careful - I will beat myself up for not meeting my own personal "performance expectations" - even though they may not be appropriate given my medical state.

Cheers,
Ben

Bracing for some pain...

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:35:49 GMT

Well, after noticing that my rheumatoid arthritis medication was no longer being as effective as it used to be, I had a check up with my doctor. The result of which is that it appears that my methotrexate is destroying my liver. As such the doctor has asked me to cut this out immediately - and this means that I am going to be pretty manky from an arthritis point of view over the next couple of weeks.

The good / bad news is that I am going on vacation next week which means less keyboard use, but it also means that I will be a little grumpy during my vacation.

Sigh...

Cheers,
Ben

Catching up after dealing with arthritis

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 06:41:11 GMT

For a long time now I have had a dull, constant ache in my wrists and ankles. It was really no big deal - and did not even distract me most of the time. However, last October I was suddenly struck with severe pain in my wrists and forearms. This only got worse - and eventually I got to the point where:

I was in constant pain, with over half the time the pain being unbearable.
It took me half an hour in the morning to get out of bed, due to the pain.
Simple tasks like holding a coffee cup or doing a zipper were too painful for me to perform.

Eventually I was diagnosed with having rheumatoid arthritis. My symptoms were not typical - I did not have the swelling and stiffness normally associated with RA, and I suffered pain in areas other than joints (like my forearms) - but thankfully blood tests were able to positively confirm that it was indeed RA. Two months ago I started taking a combination of methotrexate and enbrel, and this has got me almost back to normal - with the exception of occasional flare ups.

However, during my time with RA I had to drastically change my usage of computers. I could not use a keyboard or mouse at all - and spent a bunch of time becoming very familiar with alternative input methods (which I intend to spend some time blogging about in the near future). Even with this - my computer throughput was cut to 30% of normal at best. As a result I had to stop reading public newsgroups, stop responding on Microsoft discussion lists and reduce the number of blog posts I made.

Now I have gotten back up to speed with blog posting, and I have gotten over the backlog of work related email. I am starting to work on catching up on the Microsoft discussion lists - and will hopefully return to the public newsgroups soon.

So if you have been wondering where I have been - you now know.

Cheers,
Ben