Marble Madness Rides Again

TrackBalls: a Marble Madness clone for Win32 and Linux (and from what I see, could easily port to Mac OS X). Marble Madness was one of my favourtie arcade games ever, so I expect this one to result in quite a bit of lost productivity..

Another Op on the Horizon

After another consultation with ye consultant (a different one, this time) I have it confirmed what I'd more or less guessed: the business end of the implant (the bit with the electrodes that actually simulates the nerves) isn't properly sited in my inner ear. It 'fell out' or something. Which is a tad alarming, but no damage has actually been done to my ear. The consequence is that high power levels are needed to actually stimulate my nerves, hence the continous screeching rather than any sensible sound. Anyway, I go in for another op to try and reseat it on the 27th August. Fingers crossed.

What shall we do with the broken cyborg?

Bad news. Prior to the last tuning appointment I was shown an Xray of my skull and the implant. The implant isn't sited properly. A normal implant shows up as a spiral wound around itself three times, in the cochlea. Mine barely completes one half-turn and is mostly in the middle ear. Which means only the nerves that receive the highest pitch are being simulated and I hear nothing much below Upper C. I may even possibly be hearing pitches that humans usually don't recognise - being on the threshold of hearing. Which is an interesting experience, but doesn't make for a successful implantation. So it looks like I'm being handed back to the hardware boys (surgeons) because the software girls (tuning team) can't program their way around this one. Back to the drawing board....

Switch on.

Yes, the moment you have all been waiting for, folks..was a big disappointment. Four electrodes simply didn't work, two caused physical pain and had to be switched off. What sound I'm getting is far from recognisable. I expected to be able to hear and recognise environmental sounds, but most things just sound like screechy hearing aid feedback - something I thought I was well shot of. Very, very soft sounds like newspapers rustling, or the guitar being played softly sound very, very good. But anything above a whisper is just high - pitched screaming in my ear. It's bitterly disappointing. What makes it worse is that no-one takes it seriously. Even the audiologist says "oh, it's bound to sound a bit Donald duck at first.". I beg to differ madam, this isn't Donald duck - this is full on screaming tomcat having it's tail amputated while being scraped across a blackboard. I'm bitterly disappointed

That said, the fact I can hear those softer sounds indicates it might become usable with enough tuning and practice so I'm going to persevere. Engineers of both software and hardware are used to things not working right first time, which is handy, since I am one, sort of. However, if I go to the implant user group and get buttonholed by some Pollyanna going on about how wonderful it all is and how natural speech sounds, I'll give them the smack in the teeth they richly deserve...