Steve's Seaside Life

Tagged: Kids

All Posts

Some memories of Hospital

The operation went very well and the girls recovered very fast and got very bored even faster.  I continue to be somewhat amazed at the lack of organisation in Hospitals, a few examples follow:

 

  1. The welcome letter says to ring the ward before you leave home to check a bed is available,  the letter says you need to arrive at the ward by 7:30, but in fact they don’t staff the ward until about 7:30.  Not many people live that close to the hospital!

  2. When we arrived at the ward the notice above the WHITE phone said use the RED phone to request entry

  3. We arrived at 7:25, bearing in mind the fact that the letter said arrive by 7:30.  However the ward did not open until 7:30

  4. The ward was only half full

  5. In the end they decided to close it and moved us downstairs into another ward

  6. The hospital have out-sourced the TV’s, Phones and Parking.  Most of my interactions with the staff revolved around resolving issues with TV’s, Phones and Parking, and also private medical insurance refunds.

  7. Probably ½ of all nurse and doctor time was spent gathering and/or checking previously …

All Posts

The Tyranny of too much choice.

An article in Scientific American, titled The Tyranny of Choice has sparked a considerable debate on the web about the problems faced by western societies as a result of too much choice.  In fact the idea is a very old one, I came cross it years ago but it is not mentioned very often by your every day Happiness literature which tends to talk more about internal changes that people can make to the way they think rather than factors from their external environment.

 

You can sum up the material prior to this article as follows:

 

  • The intent of advertising is to make us dissatisfied with what we have

  • If we meet people who have more than we have, or have different spending priorities or saving priorities then we tend to be dissatisfied with what we have

 

These two factors are the main environmental factors that effect happiness.  In my experience they are even more powerful than having somewhere warm and dry to live and enough food to eat, which I soon got used to.  However some people disagree with this and consider these to be essential, (Hygiene factors in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs…

All Posts

Tablet PC for Jennifer

This is a short article that I wrote for the occupational therapist who works with one of my daughters who has Raynauds and Scleroderma.

 

There are a variety of different types of technology assistance that would benefit Jennifer in an educational setting.  My perception is that a range of techniques will be required that reflect the unpredictable nature of her symptoms and the variety of different tasks that she needs to perform.  There is no magic bullet solution that meets all of her needs.

 

Writing

 

When Jennifer has to write for extended periods there are a number of issues that need to be considered:

 

1.       Her ability to dictate in a fluent fashion is limited at this age

2.       Her hands get cold

3.       Her hands get tired

4.       Sometimes the movement/dexterity of her hands is limited

 

What solution options are available in addition to traditional pen and paper?

 

1.       Voice recognition

2.       Hand writing recognition

3.       Simple gesture recognition

4.       Different types of keyboard

5.       text substitution

 

Each option is considered in brief below:

 

Voice recognition

 

Voice recognition is …