Category Archives: personal

medical, memes, personal, science

Thing-a-Day – FAIL!

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Well to misquote Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I started with every intention of completing this year’s Thing-a-Day. Then everything went “castors up”!

Last Thursday I had a relatively routine medical procedure (trust me – you really don’t want to know the details!) as a day-care patient at our local private hospital. Everything appeared to go OK and I was discharged early that evening feeling surprisingly good despite the sedation.

By Friday morning I was in quite some abdominal discomfort and had a raging fever. To cut a long and tedious story short I got back to see the consultant at 2pm on Friday and he immediately re-admitted me to hospital with instructions to get a CT scan on the way. The scan showed that I had one of those 1 in 1000 complications: peritonitis. Major Gerry Bummer!

The upshot was that I spent the weekend connected up to drips (IV fluids, antibiotics and insulin), on a diet of “clear fluids” only and being disturbed every 1 hour 27 minutes (well it certainly wasn’t regular) round the clock to have everything measured. By Monday I was well on the way to recovery and was discharged, without a demob suit but with a box more antibiotics and an instruction to “take it easy for a few days”. So I am. And I’m still getting better; the discomfort has almost entirely gone; and I go back to see the surgeon on Friday for a check-up.

With a couple of notable exceptions I have to say the care I received was brilliant. My GP was on the ball, helpful and sympathetic. So was my consultant who actually came in to see me at 0830 on Sunday morning! The nursing staff were great and mostly friendly and chatty and had time for you. I did like the way when I was with him the consultant picked up his phone, asked when the Imaging Department would scan me and then told them that no, he wanted a scan now and not in 3 hours time! No-one was in any doubt who was in charge.

What wasn’t I impressed with? One of the night nurses didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but she was the only one of the many nurses I saw who didn’t. But worse was the reception from the Endoscopy Department when I called them on the Friday morning, clearly unwell: the best they could do was “go to your GP”. My GP nearly blew a gasket and I suspect someone got an Exocet suppository when I wasn’t there.

Let’s just hope things keep rolling downhill and there are no nasty surprises in the biopsy results.

Meanwhile having missed some days of Thing-a-Day I don’t have it in me to start over. This was not the intention. MAJOR FAIL.

Time to go and take the antibiotics!

memes, personal, photography

[2/28] Calendar Photo-Mosaic

Thing-a-Day Day 2.  Today I started making a photo-mosaic calendar using appropriate photos form Flickr.  I don’t intend to post this every day, although I will keep it up to date.  The intention is for it to provide a quick fallback for Thing-a-Day contribution on days when something more original is difficult (like maybe tomorrow when I’ll be at the hospital a lot of the day).

memes, personal, photography

[1/28] Stupidest Self Portrait in the History of Ever

OK, so here’s my first contribution for this year’s Thing-a-Day challenge.  Being day one I thought I should start with a photo self-portrait – actually I’ve not done a self-portrait in ages.  So I’ve made the Stupidest Self-Portrait in the History of Ever.

If this works correctly this should get posted to my Posterous, the TaD Posterous feed, my Zen Mischief weblog, my Flickr photostream and my Facebook stream.

Most of what I contribute to Thing-a-Day over the next month will be photographic, but hopefully I’ll manage a few other things as well.

amusements, music, personal, sexuality, thoughts

Tasmanian Liberation

Just today (where have I been?) I came across this song from Amanda Palmer & The Young Punx. It’s catchy. But more than that, the lyrics (at the bottom of this page on Amanda Palmer’s website if they’re not clear) are a hoot. (And they mostly accord with my view of the way the world should be. Hehe!)

There’s the background to the song (if you need an explanation) and a video of her original rendition on Amanda Palmer’s blog. And comment on SPIN amongst other sites.

Enjoy … but it’s probably NSFW!

[youtube

OMG! I’m turning into a punk rapper! At my age!?!? OMG!!!!!

amusements, beliefs, history, personal, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s selection …

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
[Denis Diderot]

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
[Dalai Lama]

[…] meeting at the College of Arms [with] Clarenceux King of Arms to discuss what might be appropriate [on a] coat of arms […] He suggests that though some people like to incorporate a play on their name in their Arms he was not sure a champagne bottle was on their approved list.
[Sir Stephen Bubb; http://bloggerbubb.blogspot.com/2011/01/arms-and-church.html]

In the movie Stardust Memories, Woody Allen meets some aliens and starts asking them all the Big Questions About Life. They tell him, “You’re asking the wrong questions. If you want to make the world a better place, tell funnier jokes!”
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

The next two are quite deep philosophically, but absolutely right logically …

I don’t know what’s waiting at the end of our lives. No one does. But it’s not the future that matters. Right now is what counts. If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you’re living through right now, is the afterlife.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

The present moment is eternal. It’s always there. It is unborn and it cannot die. And it does not reincarnate.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

A guy walks up to a Zen master and asks, “Is there life after death?
The Zen Master says, “How should I know?”
The guy replies indignantly, “Because you’re a Zen master!”
“Yes,” says the Zen master, “but not a dead one.”
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]

You cannot find reality inside a computer!
[Nishijima Roshi]

current affairs, personal, science

World Shattering

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster, when the space shuttle broke up just 73 seconds after launch killing all seven astronauts aboard.

Whether one agrees with manned space missions or not (and I have to say I’m divided on the matter) we should be mindful of the huge challenges which have been overcome to achieve this and admiring of those who have been a part of it. The spin-offs from space exploration have been tremendous and include such everyday things as smoke detectors, crash helmet design, digital imaging, ultra-sound scanning, satellite communications and whole swathes of computer and medical technology.

Thinking about the Challenger Disaster got me thinking further about the sheer number of world-changing events which have happened during my three-score years. Well let’s just restrict it to ones I remember (which rules out the Suez Crisis as it’s too hazy a memory).  In no particular order …

  • Challenger Disaster, 28 January 1986.
  • 9/11, 11 September 2001; al-Qaeda flew two planes into the World Trade Centre in New York.
  • Fall of Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989.
  • Assassination of John F Kennedy, 22 November 1963.
  • First Man on the Moon, 21 July 1969.
  • Sputnik, 4 October 1957. I think this is the first world event I really remember at all clearly. I recall my father taking me into the garden one night to see Sputnik 1, or one of it’s very early successors, as a tiny star passing quickly overhead.
  • Chernobyl Disaster, 26 April 1986.
  • Fall of Communist Russia, 1 July 1991. This was just one of a whole series of revolutions, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, which saw the dismantling of the Communist Bloc in the late ’80s and early ’90s; in many ways it is hard to tease them all apart.
  • Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. I don’t think I fully understood this but I remember how frightening it was.
  • Rhodesian UDI, 11 November 1965. This was probably the first world event I recall following properly and trying to understand. I think history will tell us that in realigning the politics of southern Africa UDI was seminal in the breakdown of apartheid.

These are just the events which spring immediately to mind; I’m sure there are many more. But looking at that list makes me wonder at the interesting times I’ve lived through even before one takes UK domestic events into account.  Leaving aside world wars and invasions (I’m thinking WWI, WWII, 1066, Civil War) few generations can have lived through such interesting and momentous times.

What about you? What events do you remember?

current affairs, personal, science

Class

Does class still matter in Britain today?

BBC Lab UK works with leading scientists to create real, ground-breaking scientific experiments. One of their current experiments is to find out if class still matters in modern Britain. And if so, what does the real class system look like?

You can contribute and find out how YOU wield power and influence by taking the BBC’s Britain’s Real Class System test.

At the end you’ll find out something about you and your place in British society today – and have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve contributed to research.

current affairs, history, memes, personal, photography

4/52 Katyn Memorial

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4/52 Katyn Memorial, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 4 of the 52 week challenge of a photo a week.

This is the memorial in Gunnersbury Cemetery, west London to the thousands of Poles murdered by the Russians at Katyn in 1940. I’ve inset the inscriptions as otherwise they are unreadable. Click on the picture to get a larger version.

The cemetery itself is rather interesting, if not a little OTT with competing acreages of black, white and brown polished marble. It is owned by the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, although it is actually in the LB of Ealing. Consequently it is the final resting place of many from the Polish and Armenian emigré communities. Many of the Armenian graves are written in Armenian script; and not all have a simultaneous translation. You will also find members of the Chinese community, at least one member of the French nobility and the expected English including architect Aston Webb. There is also a grave commemoration a number of members of the 24th Polish Lancers and a small group of twenty WWII war graves.

It is immaculately maintained and well worth a visit, even on a cold January day; it’ll look really pretty in the Spring when all the cherry blossom is out.

memes, music, personal, photography, topographical

3/52 Horns


3/52 Horns, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 3 of the 52 weeks photographic challenge and I almost didn’t get a decent picture this week. But then I saw this window display in Selfridge’s Department Store in London’s Oxford Street. All these brass instruments looked absolutely stunning – but impossible to photograph well because of all the reflections.