Today's solar lesson

I just subscribed to NASA's weekly podcasts, and learned that:

• sunspots were first seen by Chinese astronomers around 28 BC,


• this year marks a solar minimum (which happens every 11 years) meaning no sunspots for most of the year.

In Year 12 I did a physics experiment involving working out the speed of the sun's rotation, which relies entirely on sunspot measurements. It was really cool to actually draw several pictures of the sunspots (projected onto paper via binoculars) then, through careful measurements (and way more equations than I really needed to use) coming up with an answer very close to the value calculated by real scientists. Would have been a huge anti-climax trying it this year!

Half a brain

I've run out of comedy podcasts to listen to, due to all the walking I've been doing, and so converted to The Science Show a few days back. And I'm loving it. Between the ages of 5 and 17, I loved so many science-y things, particularly astronomy, dinosaurs, nuclear physics and maths. Then I found religion (Antioch) and left my scientific wonder behind.

That last bit isn't actually true at all :)

Through Antioch I made a whole heap of new friends, who I spent every waking hour (i.e. 22 hours a day) with, leaving little spare time to read/listen. My life became more about people than concepts and things (which hasn't been a bad thing). Then uni almost entirely killed my interest in learning the fun parts of science, drowning me in differential equations and mathematical proofs. I happily discarded organised religion again, while keeping my friends, but now focused on finishing my assignments, getting projects done, and learning only what's relevant to my day to day work.

What I've discovered the past few weeks is that my love of science is certainly not dead, and hearing about why "intelligent design" is a load of crap, a 10th planet in our solar system (take 7), the anthropic universe, and growing tomatoes on Mars has been awesome. Along with reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Simon Singh's latest book, The Big Bang, it's great to have something in my spare time other than watching comedy DVDs. Something which actually makes my brain work!

Medical update

I just realised that I hadn't posted about my specialist visit (probably because I've talked to so many people about it since) but basically the upshot of it is that I'll be getting a gastroscopy on April 5, at 2.15pm. An afternoon appointment which would be fine if I didn't have to fast for at least 8 hours beforehand. No food or water for 8 hours during the day? Hmmm...

Considering that going more than a few hours without a snack currently makes me extremely nauseous (even during the night), I'm not really looking forward to recovering from that fast. Luckily I'm on holidays as of April 1, giving me more flexibility in my sleeping, so I'm planning to stay awake as long as possible in the wee hours of April 5 and sleep most of the time until the appointment.

And then, magically, I'll know what's wrong with me :)

Splendiferous

After my craptacular start to the day, it's ended up being awesome. Spending the afternoon with B always jumps up the fun quota, I bought some new shoes (making 3 new pairs in 6 days) and still managed to fit in my evening walk. Add to that ber-T's Bag o' songs 01 which I've been listening to over the past few weeks, and I'm super-cheerful. I'm still feeling almost constantly sick, but it seems that I've finally learned to keep on living even with nausea, the same way I learned to deal with fatigue, crappy knees and baldness.

The stuff that dreams are made of

There are some sounds which are a pleasure to wake up to at 8.30am on a day off. A light rain tinkling on the window, a favourite song, Eliza Dushku saying good morning... What did I get today? My neighbour having their driveway urgently painted. How bad could that be, you ask? What it actually sounds like is a diesel generator running a power drill running a car with no muffler! And it's been going for more than half an hour already!! For a painted FREAKING DRIVEWAY!!!

Hard work

I've gone for my hour long evening walk on 5 of the last 6 nights (and 9 of the last 14), which I had imagined would have me feeling fit and hearty. It has seemed to help my mood stay on a more even keel, along with the (fool's?) gold promise of some kind of diagnosis of what the hell's wrong with me. Sadly, I still don't have a time for my gastroscoping. I have to wait till Friday just for a consultation with the specialist, and I'll hopefully get a timeframe for the actual test then. In the meantime, I continue with my tuna and rice, try to stay positive, and drag myself through my work days, exhausted despite sleeping well and having some interesting work to do right now and really enjoying my team, which will start breaking up in 3 weeks (when I start my holiday).

Power on!

I got a letter a fortnight ago warning me my power would be off all day today. Not really a problem, since I had to work anyway. What makes it noteworthy (at least in my thrill-a-minute life) is that the power came back on the instant I walked through the door when I got home. I heard the trill of my answering machine powering on, and the hum of my fridge restarting, and it made me smile, knowing at least 2 good things happened to me today (the other was a work visit from my former 2IC and her new baby).

Tests = nothing

Well I finally went back to the doctor to find out what my blood tests showed, and the answer was a resounding... nothing. My blood and all the things running around in it are fine. Which would be great if I didn't still feel sick. So the next step in the evolving process of working out what's wrong with me (other than the many obvious things :) is to get a camera tube shoved down my throat. Maybe this time I'll get an answer...

The next dietary step I've been considering is going vegetarian. I haven't had any red meat for over 18 months anyway, and very rarely eat chicken, so it would only involve cutting out the third of my meals each day which is tuna. I'll wait to see what the gastroenterologist finds first, but if he finds nothing "mechanically" wrong I'm running out of things to remove from my diet. Animal protein is harder to digest, and so the vege option has advantages anyway, but if I'm not adding back in some gluten-based products at the same time I cut out tuna it's pretty restrictive.

Ricky Gervais podcast

Sunday-Tuesday evenings this week, my hour long walk was made infinitely more enjoyable by listening to this hilarious piece of British comedy as I walked. If you enjoy The Office, I think there's a good chance this will speak to you.

Basically, it's Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant (co-creator of The Office) and Karl Pilkingon, rabbiting on about nothing in particular. While Monkey News is obviously a segment they've been running into the ground long before this podcast series started, Karl's Diary made me laugh harder than I have in years. If my diary had been 1% as interesting to me, I would not have let it die a natural (if overdue) death last year. Recounting my days events and thoughts purely for my own benefit lost its appeal soon after this blog began.

[Book] The Green Hills of Earth

Originally published in 1955, this collection of short stories from Robert Heinlein is waaay dated. I only got through the first two stories, the second of which ended with the following:

"Pemberton came out of the booth whistling. Good girl, Phyllis. Staunch. He wondered why he had ever doubted her."

which perfectly sums up the antiquated gender balance of the preceding 35 pages. That was enough for me to cut my losses and not read any further (and I don't set aside books lightly).

More walking

I'd gone 6 days without any more evening walks, and was really missing them, so tonight I finally got back to walking. This time I took some photos, the start of a Walking set which will hopefully grow as I vary my path.

I'm 2 days into a self-enforced 6 day break from work, because my fatigue has just been too frustrating, and even short work days have exhausted me. Ironically, given my tiredness, I haven't been able to sleep, which hasn't done my health any favours. So my hope is that a slightly extended break will give me the energy reserves I need to power (rather than limp) through the remaining weeks till my April off. Certainly trying to push through the fatigue by continuing with normal work hours wasn't getting me anywhere. Yesterday morning I went for 7.30am blood tests (I had to fast for them, so wanted to get them done as early as possible, removing the barrier to breakfast). Hopefully the results of the tests will show something which I can work on to improve my health. There has to be more than just my dietary problems going on, 'cause it's been 4 weeks since I had some bread with yeast and if that was all that was wrong I would have been better within a week.

These knees aren't made for walking

Rather than remaining a victim to my latest spell of ill health, I've tried to continue the exercise kick I started last year with a return to weights. While I haven't been able to do any weights for the past few weeks, due to a shoulder/neck problem, I have taken to long evening walks. From last Tuesday night till last night (Sunday) I had 6 consecutive days of walks purely dedicated to exercise (rather than just my usual wander to the Mall for groceries and second-hand CDs). 4 of those walks were for an hour or more, and I even managed a half hour on Friday night when I felt like absolute crap for the entire day.

So what has all the walking gotten me? I had hoped I would magically sleep well, but that hasn't eventuated, even with cooler temperatures returning. I do feel that it's helping me manage stress a bit better, although I still have plenty of work to do in that area. Surprisingly, I quickly started to look forward to an hour of walking, spending the day on Saturday keenly waiting till the sun was almost down (around 8pm) and really enjoying the walk. I even covered 50% more ground in the same time than I had on Wednesday (which was encouraging). I'm hopeful that continuing with the walking, returning to weights and supplementing with a little backyard basketball will continue my weight loss, fitness gain, base health improvement, and that it will translate to better health eventually.

Just some more (literal) steps on the path to action :)

Creativity has a home

I've been planning for a while to create a dedicated blog home for any creative stuff I do, and rather than over-thinking yet another aspect of my life, I've just gone ahead and created Bertie's Media Empire. I'll hopefully keep adding stuff here too (it's not like I'm going to run out of things to complain about, or impressive weights graphs to display) but I like the idea of having a spot whose clear and only purpose is for me to do creative stuff.

If trying to maintain an interest in this blog isn't already waaaay too much for you, check it out!

Old Smokey

Back in the days when VHS videos were new-fangled technology, each member of our family had a single video tape with which to record their favourite shows. If you found a new favourite, you had to lose an old one. It's a little hard for me to comprehend, with 530+ DVDs and climbing, that I could ever have coped with only one movie to depend on. I must certainly have had more hobbies and interests to fill the time which now gets absorbed in devouring DVDs.

In 1986, and for several years afterwards, my one and only movie was Back To The Future. I never actually taped over that, but over the years saved up the small fortune necessary to buy a second blank tape, to keep Michael J. Fox and his Delorean available for regular watching. But before Mr. Fox's movie classic, my single video contained Smokey and The Bandit, and I loved that movie. My Dad was a truck driver, so imagining that his job was anything like Burt Reynold's exploits was pretty cool. After watching the latest Clerks 2 making-of clip yesterday, with the "Reynold's Style" theme, and discovering a conveniently priced copy of the DVD at lunchtime today, I'm once again in possession of one of my fondest childhood movie memories. Will it stand up to close inspection? I say it will. Prepare to be bombarded with "Breaker, breaker. 10-4 good buddy." for weeks to come :)

A journey

I walked and walked and walked until, suddenly, I ran out of suburb. At that moment, a menacing flash of lightning. Those clouds are awfully dark, aren't they? Half an hour's walk away from home. My very un-waterproof walkman in my pocket. Was I struck by lightning? Did a single drop of rain hit me on my sweaty, bald head?

Actually, no... But I did have an enjoyable 70 minute stroll along a path I'd never been on before :) I like that I can spend that long strolling (well, usually marching) with only a few minutes of that time spent in sight of a road. The edge of suburbia is a comfortable place to be.

[DVD] Dead Like Me - Season 1

A real gem that my sister discovered for me, all 14 episodes of which I devoured in a few days. All the characters have genuine depth, and the actors that bring them to life use all the many opportunities the concept provides to create people I actually cared about. I won't actually say much about the concept itself, since my favourite part of watching a new show is working out what the hell is going on, other than to say that it's a really interesting take on death, grief, life, monotonous office work and family. The emotions are often powerfully involving, the coarse language is "in context" (i.e. it sounds to me like real people talking) and Mandy Patinkin is one of the main players, so how can you go wrong?

Of course, the show has been cancelled now, like any other quality TV, but luckily not before a second season was produced, so at least I have the promise of another 15 episodes to look forward to.

Subtitles

A few weeks back I was watching some stuff from the Montreux Jazz Festival that was showing on ABC2. I was amused to see the following text used to describe the lyrics:

Thank you falettinme
Be mice elf again

This repeated several times as the song faded to the end, leaving me with cheery visions of mice elf :)

The songs in my head

Because I haven't added a new link to something "My ..." for at least two weeks, I thought I'd add my new music tracking account. Basically it monitors every song that runs through Media Player and adds it to my profile, working out any others with similar tastes. Very "Big Brother", but easy to turn off if I develop a taste for The Wiggles, or something, that I'm not willing to be public about. Right now it's heavily biased towards the handful of CDs I bought yesterday, but once I return to full shuffle it should hopefully display an eclectic mix. I can also post journal entries there, although for now I'll probably keep my content on this one site.

UPDATE: I just discovered that it only displays the last 10 tracks I listened to, so the comment above won't be very relevant. But I also found that I can type in an artist name and have, automatically streamed to my PC, a radio station with artists similar to (and including) my selected artist. So, for example with Soul Coughing, I get Beck, TMBG, Weezer, Miles Davis, Ben Folds Five, Beastie Boys and others. No ads, just lots and lots of new music to discover. Awesome!!!

Marking time

After such an enthusiastic burst of blogging I've been waylaid by my health. For the first time in over 6 months I needed to take a couple of sick days, and probably wouldn't have worked at all the past 2 weeks if I wasn't acting Director while my boss is away. While it's good to feel needed, and to know that I can tough my illness out if needed, it's slowing down my recovery badly, and persistent headaches, nausea and fatigue can only keep going so long before the thrill is gone... Except for the 15 hours I worked last week, I spent almost 7 full days in bed (or at least reclining), dizzy and ill, but still not sleeping much. So it's felt like a reeeaaalllly long 9 days, which seems to be the perverse nature of illness (for me anyway), that it stretches out the time I can't do anything much in, while the joyful, energetic times fly by too fast.

On the positive side, I've had lots of new DVDs to distract me in my insomnia, and thankfully my headache is only worsened by moving, rather than TV. So Simpsons Season 6 (including all the commentaries and the first quarter of Season 7), the first half of Roswell Season 3, the Clerks Animated Series and Dead Like Me Season 1, have all been demolished in the past fortnight. Plus I still have the Sin City Special Edition to watch, hopefully on Thursday since I have to work tomorrow (at least in the morning). With that in mind, time to go lie down again :)

When one won't win

Blanksby pottered interminably behind the desk, muttering incomprehensibilities to himself. Ostriches, long since dead, plumed arrogantly at the wakening dawn.
  Who was he? they asked.
  Merely himself, vaguely did the docket reply.
Yet still the rumbling continued, transitory as eternal stone, endless as the ephemeral winds. Oh, how they screeched! It was delightful! No, more than delightful! It was horrible!
  Harrumph came the desk-hidden grunt of a suddenly eloquent Blanksby, I needed two...