Optician Online - The Big Optometry Blog

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:57:18 +0000

Another staple optical debate to be tackled by the Optician office in the wake of going to print is the listing of famous monocle wearers. Immediately obvious are Sir Patrick Moore and former boxer Chris Eubank, while another monocled celebrity is Lord Bath who gained fame through turning his family seat into a safari park, popularised by the BBC television series Animal Park. Another boxer to sport a monocle was Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter whose wrongful imprisonment became a cause celebre thanks to Bob Dylan's protest song The Hurricane. The King of Tuvalu is also reputed to be a wearer. Fictional characters memorable for their monocles include Batman's nemesis The Penguin, Colonel Clink of Hogan's Heroes and on one occasion Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army who was operating a slide projector while wearing one. Afterwards in private, Captain Mainwaring threatened to stop Wilson wearing the monocle, but Wilson responded by threatening to tell everyone that Mainwaring wore arch supports for his feet. Despite being sure that Allo Allo featured a few monocled cast members, we discovered that neither General von Klinkerhoffen or Herr Otto Flick wore a monocle. Penguin.bmp

Opticians get all frisky

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:40:20 +0000

Forgive me if this entry is a bit brief but I have already created it once and it disappeared into cyberspace so I'm not best pleased. Anyway with all this Olympic hysteria going on and British people winning medals willy nilly it seems opticians are joining in. Since the Optician Ironman foray the team members ( pictured) don't seem to be able to stop. Since the original event there have been fell races, triathlons, dragon boat racing and all sorts of things. To round the season off I have asked some of the South East based members of the team to join me in the Crawley Late Summer Triathlon. This will please VAO's. Jeremy Jalie. Crawley is local to him so he won't have to do all of the travelling supporting the team has so far involved. with his help the team raised £7,500 for VAO. If you haven't donated you can here . If you are in the Crawley area come along to K2 on September 21st and cheer us on.

Games and Glasses

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:09:55 +0000

Olympic fever in the Optician office has moved to broader sporting conversation and an attempt to recall sportsmen who wear glasses while playing their sport. Our list so far stands at New Zealand cricket captain, Daniel Vettori Former Ajax, Juventus, Milan, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Tottenham and Holland midfield pitbull, Edgar Davids. Horace Grant, a forward in the legendary Chicago Bulls team that included Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. And that's as far as we got aside from the rather predictable inclusions of former world snooker champion Dennis Taylor and former GB Olympic ski jumper Eddie the Eagle Edwards.

Photography in practice

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:34:56 +0000

Still on the subject of photography, even opticians practices can provide plenty of photo opportunities, as demonstrated by the pictures below. Any intersting photos of your own practice? Please email them to alex.thomas@rbi.co.uk

Optometry related photoshop tutorial

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:55:49 +0000

During my time working for Optician, I have spoken to a fair few practitioners for whom a passion for optometry has broadened to encompass another area of optics, photography. It is these people who may find the following photoshop tutorial about how to design a contact lens of interest or may even find some practical application for it.

Casting the spell

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Seth Belson of Essex thought the following link might prove interesting/amusing to Optician readers. As someone who works with words I take no pleasure in typographical errors. There are the obvious effects/affects, in optics the missing first 'h' in ophthalmology etc. Hong Kong is always worth a second look and we alsomost had a bit of pubic scrutiny in Optician last week. This has to be one of the classics though.

Holy Opticians Robin

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:18:42 +0000

Na na na na na nana.......Bat(e)Man

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:04:51 +0000

What with all the latest excitement about Bat Man I stumbled across the picture below and couldn't resist. Unfortunately ( see Optician on friday) not something that is likley to happen again in the future.

Gratuitous female nudity

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:03:48 +0000

I am not often moved to comment on rivals but I was shocked and dismayed by OT 's decision last week to publish a story about a 19 year old woman posing naked in adverts for an optician. Not only did OT not specify if she was a registered optometrist but they didn't publish the advert in question. If you are going to indulge in that sort of tawdry, gutter journalism at least publish the pictures of the woman in the buff. If you want to see Sara Nicoletti's pose please carry on reading....

Economics for breakfast

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:50:02 +0000

Credit crunch.bmp

In the land of the blind...

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:05:50 +0000

Having recently enjoyed reading Portuguese author José Saramago's novel Blindness, I thought it worth a post as not only does it deal with a epidemic of ocular disorder on a grand scale but has also been made into a film that features Mark Ruffalo as a ophthalmologist. The film version is directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose previous credits include City of God and The Constant Gardener, and also stars Julianne Moore as the only person left with sight after a wave of blindness and attendant chaos sweeps across a unspecified city. Despite a lukewarm critical reception at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year, this is surely a must-see for optical folk?

Radar Love

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:59:08 +0000

One of the great things about being the editor of Optician is the chance to try out the various bits of eyewear that pass through the office. As a cyclist I find I get through more than my fair share of specs. You would be amazed how many lenses disintegrate when faced with a daily dose of road spray and lens cleaner. Every now and again a piece comes along that is a dream to wear and I thought I would share with you. Oakley's Radar. I have had a fair bit of fun with this frame. In its first outing I wore the frame when I was a bouncer at my kids' school disco. I wore a DJ and this frame and the kids loved it. As a consequence I had to wear it for the cycle home, I'm using Ortho K at the moment so all of my cycling specs are Rx'ed, it was great so it sort of stuck! If you have any cyclists coming into your practice complaining of problems with wind/dust/bugs in the eyes on fast descents point them in the direction of this. Sadly the frame is only on loan so my Radar love will be over.

Funny optical video

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:21:29 +0000

A recent post linking comedy and optics has really got people going. Have a look at this clip. Who says optics isn't funny

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:08:39 +0000

Anyone attending Independents Day last week will have seen optometrist and staff development consultant Sarah Morgan in full voice. Here is a short clip of her at the Nivea funny women awards. If anyone has the full version from ID '08 put it on You Tube and I'll create a link. There was more than a hint of theatricality at ID 08. Fellow presenter Wendy Sethi also broke out into song. Unfortunately she wasn't on You Tube so I can't share that with you. Her performance was pretty steamy I can tell you and very popular with some male sections of the audience.

Optical professionals lag behind doctors and dentists

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:00:11 +0000

Optometrists are generally perceived to have received poorer treatment than doctors and dentists over their NHS contracts, but government contracts are not the only area in which optics receives a worse deal in comparison to other health services. Optics in the arts is another area which could lead practitioners to feel aggrieved over the indifference shown to their profession by filmmakers and musicians. Television doctors are extremely common with some prominent examples being Dr Karl Kennedy in Neighbours, Star Trek's Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy and Dick Van Dyke's Dr Mark Sloan from Diagnosis Murder. Doctors in film are similar common with portrayals of the profession in such classics as Frankenstein and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Set in the Vietnam war, M*A*S*H's Hawkeye and Hot Lips bought screen fame to physicians. Even dentistry is reasonably represented on screen, with the character of Jennifer Aniston's husband being a dentist in the television series Friends, while who can forget Lawrence Olivier's chilling portrayal of a Nazi dentist in Marathon Man? A similarly memorable performance of a German dentist came from Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes. In fact a search on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for dentist brings up 39 films with the term dentist actually in the title, including six films simply titled The Dentist, 2006's Vampire Dentist as well as The Avenging Dentist and The Kaiser's New Dentist. However the Swedish Dentist does not sound like mainstream cinema. An IMDB search for optician or optometrist does not yield any results at all and if anybody can remember an optical professional in film or television please add a comment. A lyric search for optician or optometrist show that the profession has not been referenced by any musicians of greater note than Ulster punk band, Stiff Little Fingers who sang: 'I want to be dead the optician said 20 20 but you stumbled round like you were blind.' So what to you make of this imbalance? While the drama of a casualty ward might naturally inspire writers, horror films aside surely optometry deserves as much screen devotion as dentistry?