I used to love you. You were always there for me. What changed?

You know we were meant to meet on Tuesday 24th July 2012, but instead you’ve pushed that appointment back to Tuesday 15 January 2013 with no reason given? Yes I understand you are busy, and the fact you are merging trusts but you did not even care to inform me of that fact. It’s just that I know it’s the case and that you changed the headed notepaper you use and took a look online.

Over the years you were there for me, looking back at medical notes I can see how I ended up being a patient of the Royal National Throat, Nose & Ear hospital (RNTNE):

2001: Right ear ossiculoplasty (Reconstructive surgery to my right middle ear)
April 2010: Neurology, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery – Seeking a cause for my deafness.
June 2010: CT Scan of facial bones
July 2010: Adult Audilogy, RNTNE
July 2010: Post CT scan advised that further surgery would be risky, and to retry hearing aids
August 2010: Hearing Therapy, RNTNE – Preparing to be open about my deafness
September 2010: Audiolovestibular Medicine, RNTNE – Seeking a cause for chronic sinusitis
September 2010: Further CT scans
October 2010: Right functional endoscopic sinus surgery
November 2010: Post operation checkup
November 2010: Fitting of hearing aids (behind the ears [BTEs])
February 2011: Checkup on hearing aids
April 2011: Offered new in the ear hearings aids [ITEs]
May 2011: Fitting of hearing aids (in the ears [ITEs])
…. Regular checkups on hearing aids and my general hearing/sinuses

You cared for me so well, when I ended up at RNTNE you helped treat some longstanding issues – you were the perfect hospital and I sang your praises.

To then find that you shift my appointment back by 6 months without giving a reason. Then when I turn up to get new hearing aid batteries to be faced with an receptionist who had no manners. How do you think this makes me feel?

I hope you realise how lovely your hospital can be when things go right, the seamless interactions between the different departments was amazing to see. With staff who truly cared about my health. Though lately you make me wish I was being treated privately.

Let’s see if things change, but if this was a relationship it would be dead in the water by now.

Neil.

One of the benefits of the new Oticon Vigo Pro ITE hearing aids (see previous post comparing them back to my BTEs) is the fact that they are Bluetooth compatible. 

They operate their own low power network which means that whenever you alter the audio program on one hearing aid, then the other reflects that change. They are also compatible with the Oticon Connectline range of products, and for me the killer feature has been the use of the Oticon Streamer. Once paired with the hearing aids it then works as a remote for them, whether changing between programmes up or alteringthe volume. 

It also has Bluetooth, which means it can be paired to a device and stream the audio channel direct into the hearing aids. So, I’m probably a rare ‘use case’ in which my iPad is paired to my hearing aids. As I write this I’m on a plane to Edinburgh and listening to music wirelessly, no wires, no need to remove the hearing aids and put in headphones. Ace right?

Whilst volume changing and audio programme (i.e Normal, Meeting, Phone, Club programmes in my case) can be done with the remote/streamer in the pocket.  The Bluetooth streaming only seems to work when the streamer device is worn in conjunction with the neck loop – but that’s no hardship as it’s super light and most people assume it’s a phone of some sort.

So the 123 of setting it up on an iPad:
Turn Bluetooth on iPad
‘long press’ the Bluetooth symbol on the streamer until it blinks
Ask the iPad to attempt to connect
Enter the access code 

It’s as simple as that, and I’ve repeated that process on a Lenovo x200 laptop and an Apple MacBook. In total the device can remember 8 pairings. 

Then to listen to music just ‘long press’ the music icon on the streamer, in my case I’ve got Spotify playing.  Also you get the choice between letting the hearing aids pickup the normal external audio channel (I.e the world around you), which is at a reduced Db level; or just turning the outside world off and listening solely to music (just one long press on the up or down arrow can switch between those settings).

Of course, if you have an iPhone you can pair it to the streamer. It opens up more access than just listing to music. You can use the streamer to receive calls. 

When paired any incoming calls will cause the hearing aids to ring, and by pressing the phone icon on the streamer you can pick up the call. Wth the neck loop on, or the streamer handheld it has the required microphone pickup!

I must say I’m pretty impressed with how far technology has come, obviously my experiences of using the devices are but it can be hooked up to a TV or landline phone as well. 

A lot of my friends of normal hearing are a tad jealous, but it’s interesting to consider that maybe in the future headphones will all be discreet and wireless. After all if you wish you can get headphones made with the bud being custom fitted ear mould (like my BTE mould).

The difference? Behind The Ear and In The Ear.  The name says it all the BTEs had all the technology sat behind the ear, and a little tube taking the amplified sound into the earmould.  With the new ones, all the technology is contained ITE.

Take a look at the difference (Top – BTE, Bottom – ITE)

It’s quite odd to get used to them as you may be able to see from the picture they go further into the ear canal than the BTE moulds.  Plus the little challenge that your ear canal isn’t straight so it taken me a while to get the right technique!

With these Vigo Pro Connect ITEs they have this little BLUETOOTH functionality which means once I purchase the Oticon Streamer, that I’ll be able to listen to calls without lifting up the phone! As well as streaming music into them from the iPod etc.

It also means that if I change one of the aids to a different programme (I have them setup for: Normal, Telecoil/Phone, Meetings, Clubbing) the other one automically detects it and changes as well!

This is me with them in:

Many thanks to the NHS!

Alastair Dant (Recommended!)
Head of Interactive Development at The Guardian
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21911927

Mark Graham
Geomapping expert
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21886943

Andrew Walkingshaw
Co-founder of Timetric
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21856570

Brock Craft
Research Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21912974

Thomas Down
Creator of the genome browser Dalliance
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21914592

Noah Iliinsky
Co-author of Beautiful Visualisation
http://vimeo.com/channels/sameas#21914387

It may have involved some tears, some nasal surgery, and a couple of oticon hearing aids; though now I am fixed. To some degree of normality.

Hearing things is still odd. The fact that I can’t bear my favourite coffee shop, as it now seems too loud. The fact that I can hear 8 different conversations going on around me, when I just want to read the paper. Luckily there’s a volume control, but with time I’ll get used to that.

Overall with hearing, it’s all been great. The only things I don’t like are
- The fact that I have hearing aids (yes I know you lot don’t care, but I do).
- I can’t easily listen to my iPod with them in.
- The way it makes my tinnitus seem much more profound when I don’t have them in. So waking up in bed, and getting to sleep can drive me mad!

The good things though:
- I can hear.
- I don’t need to blag conversations.
- I’m more aware of my surroundings.
- I don’t feel broken.

• UK UX Freelancers Rate Review 2010 – The Inaugural Report | disambiguity –
• The Political Power of Social Media | Foreign Affairs – Clay Shirky on The Political Power of Social Media – Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change
• http://mashable.com/2010/12/13/facebook-members-visualization/ – Facebook Intern Paul Butler was interested in the locations of friendships, so he decided to create a visualization of Facebook connections around the globe. How local are our friends? Where are the highest concentration of friendships? How do political and geological boundaries affect them?

• Network&Society – Redrawing the map of Great Britain from a network of human interactions. <br />
  Do regional boundaries defined by governments respect the more natural ways that people interact across space? This paper proposes a novel, fine-grained approach to regional delineation, based on analyzing networks of billions of individual human transactions.
• Rank « Gareth Holt – A series of 13 charts and graphs produced with Ben Branagan for the UK traveling exhibition ‘Rank’: Picturing The Social Order 1516 – 2009. Commissioned by curator Alistair Robinson and exhibited at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Leeds.
• http://bokardo.com/archives/the-behavior-youve-designed-for/ – I’ve given a few talks recently and by far and away the one idea that is resonating with people is the idea that the behavior you’re seeing is the behavior you’ve designed for
• Metricly – Aggregated Dashboards for Every Business – Dive deep into your data<br />
  With your data in one place, Metricly provides a consistent and powerful set of tools to analyze your metrics – with subtotals, rollups, filters, and insights that help you take action.
• Muddy – Muddy is an indexing and categorisation tool for use by people and companies with lots of content. Using information derived from Wikipedia, Muddy finds notable people, places and organisations in any webpage,

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

The Wikileaks team had performed some analysis of the data. Around where the cables had been sent from, and what classification given to them. As well as looking at what the most popular ‘tags’ for the cables were. Unfortunately their analysis that they placed on Tableau Public was removed, see here for the Tableau Statement.

This seems a bit odd, considering the analysis was at a summary and statistical level. For instance, there were X number cables sent by Y. Though not revealing the actual content of them, which is obviously in some cases secret, or classified. This is in contrast to the analysis I performed of the Wikileaks Afghanistan War Diaries. Which shows both a summary level, and further detail about the confidential files. This analysis is also hosted on Tableau Public.

So take a peak at the analysis I performed and placed on Tableau Public (the links click through to the Tableau Public versions).

Cables by Origin

Tags Used

• Extract colors from photos and make color schemes | ColorSuckr – A handy way to choose colour schemes.
• SQL injection with raw MD5 hashes (Leet More CTF 2010 injection 300) – cvk | nc -l -p 80 – SQL injection with raw MD5 hashes
• CTOvision.com – Disruptive IT – This list reviews the companies regarded as having very high potential to change the way IT is done in large enterprises. It was compiled by Bob Gourley based on personal research. For more on methodologies see the note at the bottom of the list.
• BBC – 5 live blog: Radio 5 live and our use of Twitter – Radio5 talking about their use of Twitter to engage with their audience.
• Never Wait For The Website To Be Ready – FeverBee – The Online Community Guide – You can spend a lot of time waiting for the platform to be just right. Everything has to look perfect right? …or members wont participate?<br />
  <br />
  Wrong. 

I’ve come across some advice, which covers both how some deaf people cope, and some general advice about what might work when talking to them – it’s a handy PDF, and well worth a gander. Somethings you might not know, or may surprise you.

Anyway, a week ago I got fitted with my ‘new ears’. Or Ears 2.0 as I like to call them. The are a pair of ear moulds with a behind the ear (BTE) aid. The fancy ‘Oticon Spirit Zest P/Mini’ or some catchy name like that. My first impression is that the actual unit is much smaller than when I last used a hearing aid.

So this hearing malarky. It’s a bit overrated right? Well not quite. but this was my first impression:

In general, this week has made be realise:

• The world is noisier than I thought.
• Somethings make sounds, that I never was aware of.

For the first point, I’m now much more aware of noises on my peripheray.  The only downside is that I’m obviously also hearing a lot more noise around me, that I need to get used to and tune out.

The second point is the funniest, my iPhone keypad makes noises when you dial a number.  I had never heard that, or had an inkling it did that.  I can hear the fan on my Macbook whirring away as I type, I can hear the sounds of me tapping away on keys!  I can listen to music on the Macbook without needing speakers or headphones, even if it’s only half way up (before I could never hear it).

As you can imagine it’s a bit of aural overload at the moment, but it has been great.  I’ve not needed to ‘blag’ a conversation at all; I can hold down a conversation without needing to focus all my efforts on the person talking to me – a success.

I’m learning day by day what ‘normal noises’ sound like.  Curtains screeching along a curtain poll, leafs crunched underfoot, that the toilet flush is a bloody loud noise. A lot of the time has been spent with me just listening, and looking to work out what is making the noise. Like when I heard a printer churning out pages slowly, 20m away!

So whilst it is early days. I’m looking forward to seeing what technology is out there to assist, and generally provide more functionality. I know bluetooth exists in some hearing aids! My current task is to workout the best way to listen to my iPhone/MP3s, and whether I get telecoil style earloops, or bluetooth neckloops, to use with the aids, or just remove them etc.