Still more horizontal lines

I went back to the optician for the dilation test this morning. Everything's normal, apparently. So, whatever's causing these horizontal lines, it isn't my retinae.

The eye drops played havoc with my ability to focus, as the optician had warned. Within a couple of minutes of having them put in, I was unable to focus properly in order to read, and the light in the room began to seem oppressive due to my dilated pupils letting too much of it in. I had to wait twenty minutes between having the drops put in and having the eye exam, so I sat in the waiting area with my glasses off; I found being unable to focus while wearing them to be uncomfortably disconcerting.

I got a lift home with some friends after the appointment. By that time, I couldn't focus on anything closer than a couple of feet, and even my long-distance vision was a bit peculiar. The sunlight was horribly bright on my eyes. Although I could have made it home on my own, it would have been very uncomfortable. Once I got home, I just sat in my front room with the curtains closed and listened to music for a bit. My focus returned to normal about two hours after the drops went in.

Music from the past: here's a track from my childhood, and here's another one. These tracks are from Sky's first album. My mother had the LP, and used to play it a fair bit when I was a kid.

I need to do another Rogue Galaxy entry before playing any more of the game, or I'll get too far behind!

Tired eyes

Got my eyes checked today, including having photos taken of the retinae. Everything seems fine, though I have to go back and have a more in-depth test done that will involve vision-impairing eye drops. I could've have that one done today, but decided to delay it so I can go back with a friend who can help me get home if the temporary vision impairment makes walking awkward.

I think my sight problems are probably due to eye strain. My eyes have been tired recently, and they hurt when I move them sometimes.

Rogue Galaxy, part 7

I play RPGs so you don't have to! Previous instalments: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6.

The "rules" I mention in these posts are, of course, taken from The Grand List of Console Role-Playing Game Clichés.

( Fetch quest, part 1 )

Glitches

We had a power cut at work today. It wasn't just us, either; the traffic lights outside weren't working. Probably some workmen drilled through a cable. Of course, in my line of work, not much work can be done when the power's out. It came back on again after a couple of hours, so the day wasn't a total loss.

My vision is acting up. When I move my eyes, I sometimes see horizontal lines, like the scanlines on a CRT television. They fade after a split second, and it doesn't happen all the time. I've been a bit tired and headachy today; it's probably all related.

Fuzzy fonts

I've been upgraded to a widescreen monitor at work. 20", 1680x1050. The screen can be rotated, so it's possible to run it in "portrait" mode, which I'd like to do; as a programmer, vertical real estate is more valuable than horizontal. However, rotating the screen also rotates the subpixels, and since ClearType can't cope with vertically-arranged subpixels, the anti-aliased fonts end up looking hideously blurry. Bah.

Rogue Galaxy, part 6

I play RPGs so you don't have to! Previous instalments: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.

The "rules" I mention in these posts are, of course, taken from The Grand List of Console Role-Playing Game Clichés.

( Rule 40 )

The moral of this story: don't lose your keys

On my way home from town today, I passed a sheepish-looking man talking to two policewomen. The man was holding:

• a locked bicycle lock;
• the two halves of a sawn-in-half bicycle.

Poor chap.

Weird day

Very nasty bout of insomnia last night. You know that the night is a lost cause when you're lying there and you hear the dawn chorus start up. Took the afternoon off work because I was pretty much dead on my feet by lunchtime.

I wasn't the only one feeling grim, either: coincidentally, my work PC had died overnight. We transplanted the HDD into an almost-identical PC so I was able to get some work done. The surrogate PC only has a third as much RAM, so I couldn't multitask several Visual Studio instances like normal, but it'll do until the nice man from Dell arrives on Monday to fix my main box.

dd if=/dev/random of=/var/log/stephen count=2

It's a long walk home when I'm carrying two bags of groceries and an umbrella.

The "top artists overall" section on my last.fm page is looking hilariously skewed these days. Heh.

Rogue Galaxy, part 5

I play RPGs so you don't have to! Previous instalments: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

The "rules" I mention in these posts are, of course, taken from The Grand List of Console Role-Playing Game Clichés.

( Rule 9: there's always a mine )