In Contact - December 2005
Best of the Web: 2005
The Green, Green Grass of Home?
This version of my traditional end of the year ?Best of the Web? comes to you from a very hot South Africa. Temperatures are in the high 30s and It's ?dry as?? Even the locals are complaining.
The day after I arrived, Pretoria had its hottest November day in forty years at 40?C but two days later we had a massive thunderstorm - the first rain in six months. A far cry from Auckland where in the same six-month time frame it rained for five of those months. The storm took down a tree that blocked the road outside my parents? place. It took 3 days to open the road and we were sans power for twenty four hours?
The grass is literally greener in NZ!
Speedy Gonzales?
Most Internet connections here are dialup and the local DSL services are still relatively new, slow and rather expensive. Trying to compile the following web sites had been slow but fortunately I gained access to a home DSL service running at around 200kbps. Pretty slow by NZ standards but a lot better than flaky dialups that run at 30kbps, with high latency and regular crashes. This experience has given me a new appreciation of our NZ ADSL.
As the iconic NZ advertisements regularly tell us; ?We don't know how lucky we are?.
One bonus of being in SA is that I get to watch all the grand slam All Blacks games at a decent time of day!
This Best of the Web edition allows us to look back over the past year; indeed the past decade or so of the evolution of the web. The Internet is constantly changing. With the advent and development of Broadband, websites are becoming much more ?content rich? with plenty of images and video. Reference sites provide incredible depth and there are some great resources.
Many thanks to those who send me links to some pretty impressive and useful sites.
As I have said before the days of free content and easy access are diminishing and some of the sites I refer to, although free, require you to create a login profile. Others require payment.
To save sites you would like to access in the future, remember to create a folder such as ?Eye Stuff? in your favourites and bookmark any site that appeals.
Enjoy.
Security issues continue to dominate our online lives. In the good old days of the web and email it was free and we carried on without a care in the world. Today the Net is a bit like HIV and safe sex issues?
The viruses are just virtual.
Make sure you are properly protected and patched. Watch out for spyware, keystroke loggers and data miners. The Firefox browser [FF] has proved much more secure then IE, but as time goes by FF is also proving vulnerable. Like many of you, I get really pissed off with popups and FF has a great popup blocker. An even better plugin you can download is one called adblock that blocks most banner adverts and other advertising with which one is constantly bombarded. If you use it cleverly you can eliminate most of these irritations.
From my point of view desktop computers are obsolete and for some years I've used a laptop for all home and business use. My files are synchronised with the server at work and available ?offline? so that I can access information or documents anywhere on the planet. Email is also synchronised via Exchange Server and I can VPN into the office, make or cancel appointments, contact patients and do most administrative task from wherever I am - provided I have a high speed connection.
EYE SITES: Education & Reference
As you know the CCLS website underwent a major rebuild. The site we created a few years ago was looking old and dated and my compliments go to the councillors and others who created the new look site. There are some excellent ?open source? downloadable resources for CL instruction, Meibomian gland dysfunction, blepharitis, disclaimers, heaps of useful links, an RGP calculator and so on.
MCLOSA is another CL and anterior segment association.
The Rigid Gas Permeable Institute [RGPLI] is also useful for RGP aficionados and those wanting to learn more. The CLMA and Cornea are worth a visit and the following site provides a useful list of Dk values and more.
The Association of Vision Science Librarians has a list of CL resources and links.
The Eye & Contact Lens Journal has many excellent CL related papers.
Soon diabetes and other conditions could be monitored via holographic technology applied to contact lenses!
Mouse over the eye images on the following pages to refresh your skills on ocular motility, cover testing, pupils and cranial nerves. They also have some fireworks and useful info on Nutraceuticals, a printable Amsler grid and heaps more. A great website from a group of Ophthalmologists and Optometrists: Spend some time browsing their site.
More useful stuff on Amsler here.
Sharp eye has some interesting info on imaging and adaptive optics.
Using or Abusing Viagra? Naai on.
Drugs.com is useful for accessing info on the myriad of drugs available on today?s market.
Try the Vaults of Erowid.
UK Based Optometry Today is also useful, as is the British College site.
Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics Journal.
Edoc interactive.
See what the Board has in store for you in the future?
Is it an illusion? More mind benders here.
Gonio?
Good Gonio stuff here too.
Retina?
Silicone Hydrogels?
Compare complications or si-hy and conventional hydrogels. You may be surprised.
Patanol is proving its worth.
UV exposure.
Interested in antique spectacles?
Who needs Optometrists when you can fix your vision with pinhole glasses?
vCJD?
Immunisation.
Magnesium deficiency: KC and other conditions.
Vision CRC for myopia research and much more.
Although previously featured Oxford Eye?s site has lots of new cases, trivia, art and more, as does emedicine.
Atlas of Ophthalmology is also worth revisiting as is PCON. Register for their regular updates to stay in touch with latest developments.
The Good Hope Eye Department has plenty of good stuff too.
Here?s a website that's almost an A-Z of eyesites with links to dozens of useful sites.
This one is an A-Z with dozens more.
Catch up with our local optometry and ophthalmology departments.
Irreverence and Other Odd Stuff
Clean Green or the Poisoning of New Zealand?
If you?re sensibly anti Uranium weapons check out this site.
Facelift gives us another [true?] perspective on some NZ celebs and pollies.
Maaahvelliss.
Check out some great magazines.
Excellent large format photography here.
For those of you into digital panoramic photography, I've found AutoStitch the best and easiest freeware to use.
You may want to enter your pix in the BBC ?Photographer of the Year? competition.
Avant-garde imagery at popexperiment. Browse the various sections for some interesting art.
Urban legends and hoax photographs.
Listen to the BBC online or try bFM for a more alternative experience.
Amazing images from Cassini- Huygens.
Plenty here from JPL NASA
More from Space and Hubble.
Auckland?s Stardome is worth a virtual and physical visit.
The Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand has impressive info.
Sometimes one?s web searches throw up some foreign language pages. Use Babelfish to get a reasonable translation. More translations here.
Collected quotes of Albert Einstein. More Einstein.
Common errors in English.
Check out George: Ten years ago and now?
Alphabet soup: A chronology of the development of our alphabet.
Check out 48 pages of delectable mouth watering African recipes. Yum.
Great Asian recipes here. don't CLICK THE POPUPS as they are more likely to be SPYWARE or a SALES GIMMIC than what they purport to be stopping!
Chilli freaks. More hot stuff here and there.
Make it at home.
Checkout the Lonely Planet guide to Auckland. Frustrated Jaffas should use this page to avoid traffic snarl-ups.
If the slow lane gets too much visit live timing and F1 news.
Check out the Mentawi Islands.
Tsunamis and earthquakes?
NZ quakes?
Meteora is also pretty amazing.
Try this site for amazing value accommodation.
Are you guilty of apostrophe abuse?
Everything you ever wanted to know about Mezcal, ?the worm? and Tequila.
A chemical love story?
Relative Risk?
Paranoid about Asian Bird Flu? Is Tamiflu for you?
Movie fonts and many more.
Network cams?
Traffic Cams?
NZ Volcano Cams
Skype is becoming popular.
50 million tons of alumino silicates?
Are you a wordsmith?
A cool, dynamic, virtual calendar clock.
Trouble keeping track of time in various time zones?
The transit of Venus, Cook?s travels, Waka voyages and other astronomic happenings from Auckland Uni.
Webstyle and design.
Download StumbleUpon for a random selection of awesome websites or tailor it to your areas of interest. Some of the sites featured in this section were discovered via this method.
Boobah is pretty cool. Rebels surf here. Divx: an MSFT alternative. Find sounds.
Keep track of the latest trends, what?s cool and a finger on the pulse.
Global Rich List: How do you rate? Be surprised.
Need some texture? Tears? Technical weirdness
Grand Illusions.
Table of condiments.
Encyclopaedia of Spices.
Low tech email alternative.
Money scarce? Make your own shirt.
Brush up on Yiddish.
Zappa is always worth a hit. Listen to Zappa Radio online too.
If you?ve found this ?Best of? useful, check out thousands more eye-sites at my 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 and new millennium versions.
C u @ BDO?
The last word.
Compliments of the season to all.
For more information or any comments email Alan at incontact@optom.co.nz.