Inguinal (groin) hernia repair info

I recently had an open inguinal hernia repair on my right side. After surgery, I wanted some straight answers such as technical details of the surgery, statistics, complications, etc. It took me a long time to find these articles so I figured I'd post them. Most everything else I found has been unsupported hearsay. These articles, AFAICT, are written/checked by doctors and supported by medical journals/papers. They have put my mind at ease about fears of recurrence etc.

Articles:

• Medscape Reference - Lichtenstein Hernioplasty: This is the most common type of open repair performed where mesh is sutured over the abdominal wall opening.
• Medscape Reference - Open Inguinal Hernia Repair
• Medscape Reference - Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair

If you are looking for advice on surgery, I can tell you this: from all the different articles I've read, your best chance for a successful recovery is to get a surgeon that specializes in hernia repair or has performed a lot of them. The more experience and skill the surgeon has with hernia repair, the better. The type of surgery obviously matters too, but this is the biggest factor. Get someone who knows what they're doing.

Update 5/13/2013:
Got a copy of the surgery report. It seems that the ilioinguinal nerve was in the way when they cut me open so they "resected" it. From what I can tell, this means that they cut it and buried the ends in surrounding tissue. It could also mean they took out a section of it. Apparently this is routine. Here's a study about it: Ilioinguinal nerve excision in open mesh repair of inguinal hernia.

My mesh is made of Prolene (polypropylene), and manufactured by Herniamesh out of Italy. Prolene is not absorbed by your body; it stays forever.

Update 5/23/2013:
Another good reference: Long-term results of open tension-free or tension repair of inguinal hernias

Office 2013 and Internet Explorer 10 instantly crashing on Windows 7 x64

Recently I set up a new computer at work and ran in to the strangest thing. Office 2013 programs and also Internet Explorer were instantly going to the "___ has stopped working" messages. Tried repairing Office, tried reinstalling IE10, etc. Nothing worked.

Finally, I noticed that these programs worked fine over Remote Desktop, so I figured it had to be something local. After trying a few things, I uninstalled the software for the DisplayLink USB display adapter being used for the 2nd monitor. The adapter is a Plugable UGA-125 for reference. Simply unplugging it did not fix the problem, I had to uninstall the software completely. Then everything worked fine.

m2f90: An incomplete MATLAB to Fortran source code translator/compiler

A little over a year ago, I was frustrated by the speed of GNU Octave vs. its paid competitor, MATLAB. Having programmed in Fortran 90/95 before, I realized the similarities and thought that a simple and limited source-to-source compiler should be possible. Well, I started coding away in Python and accomplished quite a bit for the amount of code I wrote and then realized that limitations of the Fortran language would prevent me from direct, pretty, and simple translation of source code. I no longer have the time or really the desire to try and find simple solutions to the problems I ran into, so I am releasing the source code under the BSD 3-clause ("Modified") license.

Download m2f90.zip

Usage is simple. I have 3 test files to test the lexing/parsing capabilities of m2f90. The program creates Fortran source files and a makefile to create executables. The makefile supports POSIX and Windows compilation with GNU Fortran (gfortran) and Intel Fortran Compiler (ifort). Here's an example:

python m2f90.py test1.m test2.m test3.m
make
./test1
./test2
./test3

m2f90 works for the 3 test files and the output matches that of MATLAB and Octave.

If you have questions about the source code, you may ask them here or post your email address (better that you just ask here for fear of spam).

Besides translating source code, m2f90's code can be picked apart and may be useful for other related applications, such as simple lexing of MATLAB/Octave code, source code reformatting, etc.

Of notable interest is that McLAB of McGill University has a similar, more in depth initiative to translate MATLAB code to Fortran. I searched for existing translators before beginning work on m2f90 and McFor seemed to be the most promising. Everything else was outdated, convoluted, or not worth the time. The idea I had in making m2f90 was that once the syntax was converted, most MATLAB functions could be rewritten in Fortran and added into m2f90.