11.25.07
Posted in PC Gain, WM PDA Phone at 9:39 pm by emerym
Thanks to Vodafone’s minor OS upgrade and repair of my HTC TyTN I find it’s now got Internet Connection Sharing (“ICS”) installed. I’ve got a USB cable in the rucksack. I plugged it in, told ICS to connect, and wonder what to do next. ipconfig on the PC reports a new IP address and default gateway so I pinged Google and got a reply. Sweet!
I logged into the office remote access portal just to see how well it works over ICS with a 3G connection. The ~6MB Citrix ICA Client for Windows downloaded in a few minutes and I was soon logged in looking at a lab server. I was very surprised at how well it all worked. There was far less latency than I’d expected. It’s no wonder so many carriers are now doing 3G USB Wireless Broadband. They’ve got to recover their 3G license costs somehow, nobody’s doing video calls.
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Posted in Health at 9:36 pm by emerym
“Time to Kill” as the saying goes. Four hours of it.
My daughter is appearing in Panto this year at the Hazlett theater in Maidstone. Today is one of the few remaining rehearsals. With only hourly trains and a 70 minute journey door to door there’s no way I can get home and back in time to do anything useful at home, so I’ve no option but to wait it out.
I walked around the shops for a bit until my fatigue started. It’s not been too bad tolday, but I don’t like being out in busy crowds feeling like the brains under-clocked. Some things work on auto-pilot, but my reactions are a lot slower. I got myself back to the theater, but as parents are not allowed in during rehearsals I have to sit in the ticket lobby of the Exchange
I brought along my old laptop to tinker with, and my daughters old MP3 player now that she’s the happy owner of a 3rd Gen iPod Nano. I’d rather run down a AAA cell than the phone. I should have packed a good book, boy does the time drag by!
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10.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:48 am by emerym
I took a few snaps of the park with my phone while doing my walk this moring. The images dont line up as I had to point the camera at different heights to get the lighting right. Using Paintshop I’ve then used the clone tool to pick part of one image and overlay it on the other. I’ve spent two minutes on this test but will return to it and spend more time on it as I think the results will be worth the effort.
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09.19.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 8:03 pm by emerym
Trey Ratcliff and his HDR photography was recently given some air time thanks to Kate Russell and BBC News 24’s “Click”. See http://stuckincustoms.com/ for some fantastic images.
I used to have a Canon T90 but gave up on 35mm film. As I’ve yet to replace it with an EOS 30D I have to make do with “snaps” from my Canon 4MP SureShot or 2MP HTC TyTN.
One nice thing about the TyTN is that I can control the camera via MortScript to give me some exposure bracketing. The not-so-nice thing about the TyTN is that it’s exposure compensation controls don’t give you quite the results you’d expect. To the naked eye many of the shots look the same. Even so, Photomatix is able to take two or more of the images, create an HDR image and then tone compress it down to something that can be displayed or printed.
In the quick 2-image test I did tonight it’s easy to see how the colours are pulled back into the shot. It looks much closer to the real thing.
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08.20.07
Posted in Health at 8:39 am by emerym
I’d like to say a MASSIVE THANKS! to the many Doctors, Nurses and Specialists who have helped me get over my illness and it’s side effects, getting me fit for my return to work. There were a few I never got to know by name, but to those I did:
Christopher, Paul, Hamid, Phil, Andrew, Karin, Belinda, David, Jeremy and Daniel. Thank you so very much.
An equally MASSIVE THANKS! to all the friends and family who helped me through the past six months.
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08.18.07
Posted in Health at 5:14 pm by emerym
In the words of Faithless, “This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts”
For the last month and a bit I’ve done an hours walking first thing in the morning, 4 days a week. Come rain or shine I’m out there powering around my seven laps, listening to tracks such as The Chemical Brothers: Galvanize, The Boxer and Believe. Doing the walking 06:00-07:00 is also a great way to see the sun rise and day starting, cloud cover permitting. Using Google Maps and a ruler it looks like I do ~ 1.5Km including the walk to the park from our house. It’s been a great help getting me back into a routine ready for my return to the office.
I’ll be back from Monday 20th August, part time at first to prove I’m okay.
The walking has had a positive effect on my waist. I’ve had to dig out some old jeans as I’ve gone from a 38inch waist down to 33 inches. I’ve also dropped from 14 stone down to 13 stone 10.5
A good steady beat helps keep up the momentum. I’m going to have to resurrect one of my old HP Jornada’s for power walking music as my TyTN phone was declared dead on Friday morning after I’d spent hours trying to get it back to life. It’s been handed over to Vodafone for repair.
While shopping in Bromley at the Glades today I walked past a Bungee Trampoline and couldn’t resist parting with the £5 to prove to myself how much fitter I am these days. Not only could I do a 360 flip over, I managed a double-flip several times and attracted a small crowd. 
Half were probably thinking “What’s that old git up to?” 
I don’t want to know what the other half were thinking..
That’s it for this post. Lets see how Mark 2.0 does back at the office!
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07.16.07
Posted in Books at 7:48 am by emerym
A line I’ve taken from a good book I’ve read recently is:
“Feel the fear, do it anyway”
which I prefer to other shorter things like “Just do it” or “No Fear”. Now I’ve Googled the line I find a lot of people are using it in songs, self help books and CDs. I wonder who came up with it first?
I’ve recently finished Stephen King’s “Cell”. A very addictive book that I was given by my Mother. Thanks Mum! I read it in about a week.
I think I’ll start “Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth” soon.
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Posted in Health at 7:26 am by emerym
I didn’t get to go swimming on the Friday 29th June. My mother in-law asked if I could do some driving to help move things out of the house she’s just sold and I did that instead. It felt very odd sitting back watching my brother in-law do the hard lifting work for a change. I’m sure I could have helped but the kid-gloves were on.
Denise and I then got the head cold that Laurence had and swimming had to go on hold.
By July 10th I felt better and took Sophie swimming with me. I managed a few of my “Matrix Moment” laps underwater (“You think that’s air your breathing?”) in the hour we were there. A few strong surface swimmers saw what I’d achieved and tried it themselves. The furtherest they could get was 3/4 of the length. My swimming style under water is more relaxed, almost whale like and burns oxygen slower. The other swimmers are too aggressive, trying to use their surface style and run out of air too quickly. The faster you go the less chance you have of getting to the other end.
Towards the end of the swimming my neck and throat were tightening up, which was rather disappointing. Thanks to the recent help I’ve been getting I’m feeling much better, in the week that’s passed I’ve only had the problem a few times and with less severity. I can also manage an hours power walking (0600 start, part of my recovery program) and have a much more positive mindset – People saying I won’t be back for months doesn’t bother me anymore (partly due me thinking they’re wrong, my recovery is better than they realize, partly my acceptance that I have a few more trips to the specialist to make before I’m given the all-clear to return to the office). My wages dropping is just an annoying event that will be dealt with if and when it happens. As it probably will I’ve taken steps to reduce it’s impact.
Steve in NY had made the comment that he hoped things returned to better than normal. I’d like to think he’s right, what I hope people will see when I return is Mark 2.0, a Marked improvement on the old version.
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06.28.07
Posted in Health at 8:25 am by emerym
This morning I had to do the school run and without a car. As normal Sophie took ages to get ready and we left late, despite being woken up early. We had to move at a faster than normal pace but we got there just in time. From the chest down I feel fit and fine. My shoulders are not too bad, but my neck is making clicking and grinding noises and my throat felt like it was closing up. Thankfully it’s already calming down.
The remaining problem with the shoulders, neck and throat have all been put down to the same cause by three doctors. What I hope will be my final set of treatment starts Monday 10AM in London. At the moment I’ve no idea how many times I’ll need to see the specialist and how long it will all take to resolve. Hopefully it will move along as quickly as the days when lymphoma was first suspected.
I hope to start my return to office after the first couple of treatments, interleaving any further treatment with trips to the office.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since I had bad fatigue. Last Thursday I had to take a nap for a couple of hours as I felt extremely tired and couldn’t fight it any more, but there was no aching or pain with it and I’ve only reached for the tablets a couple of times since due to headaches.
As my strength has been steadily coming back I’m going to start some gentle swimming tomorrow. I was talking to someone about swimming last weekend when one of their kids piped up saying “It’s good for the body and soul!”. Such young words of wisdom
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06.24.07
Posted in Hardware at 10:58 am by emerym
Last night I was going to write another post about my recovery, and how I’m so close to returning to the office but still get a “Not quite yet” from the Doctor. I’d just rebooted my old laptop to find it crashing when starting Win2k. I tried Linux and found that in a total mess too.
I’ve had 4 drives fail in the last 12 months, 1 SCSI, 1 IDE and 2 Laptop drives. I got me thinking about solid state drives. There are some nice Flash ATA drives on the market, but they cost quite a lot. As I’ve got a number of Compact Flash drives still from my HP Jornada, I thought I’d go looking for a Laptop IDE/CF module. I’ve found one from Addonics!
It allows you to use two CF cards. I’ll only have 3GB with my existing cards, but it won’t make a sound or have a head crash. I’ll update this post when I’ve got one and have it working.
UPDATE: I’ve got the parts, but have held off using one in my laptop until I have a larger CF card. The desktop ones work fine.
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