Irreverence is Justified

I’ve not been posting much about my health for one main reason, that being that it has generally been a lot better of late. I note the irony that I’m posting about it today when I’ve had a bit of a brain fog day, but that’s just a coincidence, honest. The fog didn’t really last long; maybe I just felt tired, like everyone does from time to time.

So why have things been better? Well, clearly there’s absolutely no proof about this reason, but it’s a hell of a coincidence if it is unrelated. Quite simply, I’ve been getting fitter. Initially through running, then I got my new road bicycle, and then I started playing football again.

There’s not a chance I could have played football before I started running in January. My balance problems were not massively bad, but certainly bad enough to prevent me thinking about playing. The running, for some reason, made the balance problems pretty much disappear.

Cycling has also been pretty good and is keeping me fitter in different areas. I’ve started cycling to work again, it’s only 11km and I can get to work faster on my bike than I can in my car.

Football, well I’ve only played about three times in a couple of months because I managed to injure my left knee when playing one day, apparently three people decided to tackle me at once; but if you don’t get out there and try things, then what’s the point of living. I realised that the balance had improved, so decided to try football a shot again, and what do you know, the balance has either improved, or I’ve learnt how to cope with it. To be quite honest with you, I’m 99% sure it’s much improved, rather than learning to cope with it.

Today, brain fog, and I could argue that this is because I’ve not been out running for a few weeks now, since I damaged knee ligaments. Of course, there’s absolutely no proof of this at all, but I figure it’s a possible reason and if, psychologically, I believe that and it makes things better, then that’s good enough for me.

I’m half tempted to stop blogging altogether and remove this thing, but to be honest, I’m also sceptical that this will last forever and having a note of how things have gone over the months/years is probably going to be quite handy. So I’ll leave it as it is for the time being, and if I only post once every 6 months to say “yep, things are the same as before”, then I’ll be totally happy with that.

Cross those fingers for me, if you could.

I think I might have found a bug with the EGit tool when you try to use Eclipse on a Windows workstation, and have your Eclipse workspace on a remote linux machine. I created a new git repository with a new project I was going to work on, put it on my linux server and was wanting to check it out on my Windows workstation upon which I run Eclipse, y’see. It was all going swimmingly well until, well, it didn’t work. Eclipse successfully connected to the linux machine such that it looked like it was quite happy to check out of a remote git repository, but it couldn’t manage to create the files within my workspace (on linux). It worked quite happily if I had my workspace on the local Windows disk, but I don’t roll like that.

I’m going to guess that it’s down to file locking, but I’ve filed the bug and will see what the EGit people come back with.

The running this week has been a bit up and down. Last Friday, I went out and did 4.2 miles in 42 minutes. Then on Sunday I went out with my sister and we only did 3.2 miles, and it felt like we were hardly going above walking pace, but it turned out it only took us 36 minutes. I think it felt easier because we were running beside a canal and therefore it was very flat. On Tuesday I went out again to try to get to 4.9 miles, but had to stop after about 3 with some quite serious chest pains. It seemed like wind, but it wouldn’t shift unless I stopped running, so I had to walk the last mile and a half back. Thankfully, I managed to hit 4.9 miles yesterday, and did it in 49 minutes. According to my Garmin Forerunner 405, I was only 22 seconds behind 10 minutes per mile at the end of the run, which I’m pleased about.

I’m still on target for the 10km in terms of distance, that isn’t looking like it will be a problem. Here’s the distances I’ve run so far:

I need to try to increase my speed though, and apparently the best way to do that is with interval training. This sounds like some serious punishment, but in fairness, there’s a brilliant straight road near where I live where I can do this quite easily, using lamp-posts to measure out distances. It’s about a mile long and quite flat, so it’s perfect.

Aside from that, I collected my new bike yesterday. Been wanting to get a new one pretty much ever since I got my last one, which was when I was ill back in 2005. Psychologically, it’s always going to be connected with that time in my life, and I’d rather forget about that time, so a new bike was needed. Also, I don’t like mountain bikes, and I’ve gone back to a road bike. Decided to get a Specialized Secteur Triple, and it’s awesome. So light, and with flappy paddle gear shifters, which might take some getting used to. And the fact that the brakes are in a different place to the last road bike I had many years ago, that’ll also take some getting used to. Took it out for 2 minutes last night to make sure I could change gears, and this thing is fast. Going to head in to the bike shop tomorrow to pick up lights, and will ride in. Should be interesting to see what speeds I can get to on it.

So according to The Times, Dan Evans isn’t to blame for GB getting beat by Lithuania in the Davis Cup. I’m not entirely sure why that is, seeing as he got beat by a guy ranked well below him. The way I see it, of all the matches we lost, that was the one we should have won, according to the rankings and based on previous experience. Sorry, Dan, but you’re not blameless in my book.

GB lost to Lithuania in the Davis Cup today. Quite simply, that’s an embarrassment. John Lloyd must shoulder most of the blame; Dan Evans looked like a rabbit in headlights for his 4th straight Davis Cup match, this guy is clearly not feeling comfortable on court and John Lloyd sitting beside him should be providing assistance in this area. He’s clearly not. Time to go, John, before you’re pushed.

For no apparent reason, I decided a few weeks ago to start running to get a bit fitter. After a couple of runs, after which I felt terrible both times, I figured I’d enter the local 10km race which is in May. I’ve now been out over a dozen times and I’m able to run a lot further than before; the first four times I was out I couldn’t run for more than 12 minutes, whereas in the past 2 weeks I’ve doubled the amount of time I can run; for example, on Tuesday I went for 36 minutes. I’m not going fast at all yet, I’m clocking around 10 minute miles, but I figure I’ll get to the 10km distance and then stick with the distance and try to run faster.

The really useful thing about this is that it seems to have improved my balance somewhat. I didn’t think that running would be too much of a problem, because most of my balance related issues tend to be when I’m trying to change direction, or moving around without actually going anywhere, whereas when I attempt to go in a straight line, once I’m off it’s not a problem. Therefore, the running didn’t have me concerned. But the increase in my fitness and/or stamina really does seem to have improved things. I’m even wondering whether there’s a vague possibility that I might be able to play football again. I figure that I could have that as an aim and if I don’t manage to do it, I’ve not lost anything since I’ve not played for about 5 years. But if I could manage it…

On other news, I’m now 5 years without any alcohol and in April will be 10 years without any cigarettes. Man alive, that’s too much clean living. I shall have to find a vice.

I’d been having problems with my wireless router for quite some time, like about a year, and I really needed to get a new one. The old router was really quite old, probably about 5 years, and it just needed physically rebooted at least once a day, sometimes up to three times, to get the wireless function to work again, which was quite annoying. I have quite a number of devices throughout the house that use it, so the constant complaints about it from family members was getting to be a right pain.

After much deliberation, I decided to buy a Netgear WNDR3300, which is capable of 802.11n. Not only that, but it also dual band, which seemed cool, although ultimately wasn’t really going to bring me anything extra. What it did do, though, was make it clear to me which of my devices (PC, Xbox etc) was capable of the ‘n’ band, as it basically runs as two separate wireless routers with different names, so when I connected a device to the wireless router, older devices could only connect to the ‘g’ band while the newer ones preferred the ‘n’ band. So this was useful just so that I could see which devices supported ‘n’.

What a bad decision that was.

The problems were made very obvious by the fact that it was dual band – the faster band, the ‘n’ one, worked perfectly. I only have about 2 devices capable of connecting to the ‘n’ band, one being my main desktop, and they all connected no problem to it, and stayed connected to it.

However, the devices which couldn’t connect to the ‘n’ band, which accounted for almost everything else, had the problems. They could all connect to the ‘g’ band fine, but they then disconnected from it within a few minutes, and although they reconnected themselves again within a couple of minutes, then disconnected again. And so on. I know the problem was with the wireless router because I had six separate devices all having the same problem, and it was a wide range of devices, too (multiple PCs, Xbox, PS3, Nokia N97).

So back to the shop it went, and PC World were good enough to just believe me that it needed returned, they didn’t even ask what was wrong with it. Maybe they had seen many coming back before.

Another couple of days research then made me consider a different device. While the Netgear one had been £110, I discovered one by a company called Edimax, model BR-6574n, which was only £50 but supported ‘n’ band. It doesn’t have two bands, but as I say, that wasn’t really bringing me anything; we don’t run video feeds over our connection much, if ever.

So I got this Edimax device and all I can say is that it is one of the best IT purchases ever. It was fairly simple to set up, the instructions did not quite match the questions that the installer ultimately asked, but I guessed at what to do and it was a breeze from then on. It’s been running for many weeks and I’ve only had to restart it once, and even then I’m not sure that it was at fault, because I reckon it might have been the cable modem behind it. It even allows me to set static DHCP leases based on MAC addresses, which is something that no other wireless router has allowed me to do before. I find this handy for reasons that I’ll not bore you with; 99.9% of you won’t need this feature so don’t worry about it.

The bottom line therefore is that if you’re looking for a new wireless router for a broadband connection, then I thoroughly recommend the Edimax BR-6574n.

If you’re used to using Windows, a Mac is a bit of a jump. If you know your way around linux or unix, it’s not quite so big a jump, but it’s still a jump.

I say this only as advice if anyone is considering getting a Mac and has been a Windows user up to now. Expect a learning curve. Basic things that you’re probably used to won’t work. Like copy and paste. Or your keyboard having such things as a delete key. Or your mouse having a right mouse button that reliably works.

To that end, I am planning on getting a bigger keyboard for the Mac, still a Mac keyboard since they come with that other key (hold on… aye, the cmd key) but one with a delete key, and maybe a page up and page down key would be nice. And I’ll switch to a normal mouse, because I’ve had it already with this Mac mouse and it’s tiny scroll wheel that makes my finger feel like the skin is being dragged under the plastic. It’s awful. But the Mac experience in general is going well to the point that I now sit at my Windows machine and wonder why I can no longer copy and paste and discover it’s because I’m using the Mac keyboard shortcuts.

I fully admit to being a keyboard shortcut junky, and I also know I’ve learnt about 0.3% of the keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, whereas I probably know about 70% of all the Windows ones (feels like I know 100%, but there are bound to be plenty I don’t know). Once I get a handle on them, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it. That said, I’m actually quite comfortable with the Mac already and I’ve only had it for, erm, a week? I honestly can’t recall when I got it, last week was weird and I never knew what day it was. It would have been either Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday, that was it, I think. Anyway, less than a week, and I’m getting there.

Trying to get my external audio equipment to work reliably with it has been a struggle though. On Sunday, it just wasn’t working at all and a reboot solved the problems, so I don’t know what was going on there but it is in some way reassuring to know that rebooting does fix things sometimes on a Mac. The audio setup includes an Alesis io|2, a Boss DR-880, a Pod X3 Live, a Fender strat, a Yamaha bass (man I need to replace it), an Ovation, a Yamaha Clavinova and a Shure SM58. I have managed to get it all working together, with relatively little pain, aside from MIDI. That took some effort. But I did get there, I can now get Logic to play the piano. It even creates sheet music as I play something, it’s totally awesome.

So all in all, it’s been some week and I’ve learnt a lot. Still a long way to go, but I’m definitely getting somewhere.

I just spent 20 minutes attempting to figure out how to install an SSH Server on Mac OS X (10.6.2). Turns out it was pretty much a waste of time, because it was already installed, it just needed turned on. I figure I will make a note of this in case anyone else tries to do it and also struggles. Maybe it’s only me that didn’t realise this at first.

Go to System Preferences, Sharing, then check the “Remote Login” box. Job done.

On this new iMac I have, I wanted to be able to download images from my Canon EOS 400D. Canon’s web site allows you to install updates, but not the actual software. Thankfully, someone found the easy way to get it installed from the update software on Canon’s website.

For well over a year now, I’ve been considering getting an iMac because I’ve been recording music on my Windows laptop and I’ve always known that Macs are apparently better for this kind of thing.

So I finally decided to make the jump and I’ve now got a 24″ iMac sitting on my music bench. Indeed, I’m using it to type this right now.

So the main thing I’m trying to do is to get music recorded. However, it’s fair to say that just understanding how this damn thing works is going to be a bit of a learning curve.

For a start, there are a number of small things that I’m still not sure about, 48 hours after getting it. For example, the keyboard doesn’t have a delete, page up or page down key. I think there are keyboard shortcuts for these, but I can’t quite remember them. Delete is function-backspace, although whether that works in all applications, I don’t know. It certainly seems to be working right now. And I used to swing between tabs in Firefox using CRTL-Page Up and Down, but I have yet to find out how to do that. I will find out, I just ain’t yet.

By far the hardest thing is working out how to get my audio devices to play through Logic Express 9. I went for it rather than Logic Studio mainly because the stuff that doesn’t come in Express 9 didn’t actually mean anything to me, and I know I can upgrade and only have to pay £10 more overall if I decide to do that. It took a day and a half just to get my guitar to play through Logic and my Pod X3 Live. Again, I got there in the end, but it was a heck of a lot of reading to get there.

Overall though, I do have to be honest and say that this iMac does have to be one of the most attractive things I’ve ever seen. That’s not the reason I bought it, but it certainly is a good additional bonus :)

Jo, who is now nearly 3, has had a pea sized lump behind her ear for the past week. It’s not reduced at all, which we thought it might if she had just bumped it. But considering the problem she had back in July 2008 when she had an infection of her salivary gland and it caused her to get an abcess in her submandibular gland, I’m now wondering whether she has something similar, since the lump appears to be exactly where the posterior auricular glands are, based on an image from Wikipedia.

So I’ll be off to the GP on Wednesday to see what they have to say. The wife is panicking about it being lymphoma, which of course it could be, but I’m attempting to not jump to worryingly bad conclusions just yet.

Had another MRI the other week, as I’ve been having some problems with my legs. Thankfully, the MRI has shown that my brain is in exactly the same condition as in 2007, when it was (as far as I know) in exactly the same state as in 2005. This is good news; I may be reading too much in to this, but if things are not changing on the brain front after 4 years, then that is a hopeful sign that I’m not going to be totally disabled any time soon.

I’ll be continuing to cross my fingers, though. You never know what’s around the corner. I might get hit by a bus!

Y’know, that title would have been more comical if lisinopril had been a diuretic rather than an ACE inhibitor. It was close, since both are used to treat similar conditions (hypertension, for example), but alas, not quite. Hey ho. The real reason it’s taking the piss follows.

There appears to be some news that ACE inhibitors might help us humans with MS, since they have managed to get mice with a similar (but importantly, not exactly the same) condition to radically improve when given lisinopril. So that’s good, right?

Well, it would be, except I have low blood pressure, a low heart rate (both from being somewhat fit all my life) and I am hypoglycaemic. Taking an ACE inhibitor ain’t going to do too much for me. I already have enough balance problems as it is with those conditions, not to mention the MS kicking my balance in the nuts, but ACE inhibitors are only going to make things much, much worse.

Still, I could always just eat lots of bacon to make up for it. I like the idea. The wife, not so much.

I got myself a Nokia N97 yesterday. It’s rather nice, and I just wasn’t ever going to get an iPhone to tell you the truth. I’ve ventured away from Nokia in the past and regretted it, so I’ve been sticking with them solidly for the past couple of years and probably won’t go elsewhere unless there’s a really good reason.

So I got this N97. It’s so packaged full with features, I’ll never comment about all of them in one post, so here’s a post about the first main thing I’ve tried that didn’t work totally awesome – transferring music.

The thing comes with 32GB of disk space. Now that’s sweet. I don’t tend to carry about all my music with me, I currently have 17GB of music on my iPod so I figured I’d put that on my N97. The phone comes with various applications for your PC, one of which is called Nokia Music. It’s rather clunky, moreso than iTunes (no, really). And it’s not good at transferring the music over.

I started it going and after a heck of a long time it was still only 30% of the way through. I should have timed it, but the worrying part was that it said that there was 2 hours 42 mins to go, then later there was 3 hours to go, then later still 3hr 12min, then later still 3h 24min. It wasn’t looking hopeful. It got as far as transferring 1159 tracks, and I hit the cancel button.

At this point, those tracks were on my N97.

Later, I started it again, assuming that it would pick up where it left off. Except it seemed to start from the beginning. I let it get to about 73 tracks done and hit cancel – this time, no extra tracks were on the phone. Strange.

So I’ve given up and am transferring them by having the N97 connected as a mass storage device. It’s much quicker doing it this way – it’s transferring at around 3.5MB/sec. Which is still pathetic since USB 2.0 should allow 480Mbit/sec, but it’s massively faster than it was before.

The only potential is that it’ll transfer all the music over, but the N97 might not pick it up and I’ll have to use Nokia Music. I really hope not.

[ Added later ]

The transfer hasn’t finished yet, but I’ve spotted that this is a documented method of transferring the music, and if the N97 doesn’t immediately notice the music, I can refresh the library. Sweet.

Have You Seen This Cat? Or maybe you’ve seen this dog.

So my right calf muscle has been giving me a bit of grief for 2 days now, started on Thursday. At first I thought it was just because I’d done something to it, but it felt better on Friday morning. For about an hour, and then it came back again. Last night it was really quite uncomfortable and I wondered what would happen this morning after waking up. Same thing; it was OK for a short period, probably no more than half an hour, then it started to get sore again.

So I started to think about an hour ago as to what it could be. I figured it might be something MS related, so did a Google for that to see whether cramp, which is what it really feels like, could be an MS symptom. And of course, it could be.

I’m fully aware I’m having a relapse, it’s just a pain in the arse that I’m getting symptoms that I’ve not had before, that being the swallowing and now the cramp in my leg. Needless to say, a variety of my other symptoms are around too, not least the balance issues and I’ve had problems with my hands over the past few days too.

I posted back on 4-May that I was having a new symptom such that swallowing was causing me problems. I think that I am simply having a proper relapse, the first one for quite some number of months, as I am also having GERD problems and worsening balance issues. The swallowing issues resolved within about 3 days, but the others are still there. Unfortunately, my left hand has started to go downhill a bit, such that I’m losing feeling on the back of it. Usually it’s the palm of my hand that goes, but not this time.

Still, things could be worse. Much worse.

I like things that make life easier. Therefore, I found Lifehacker’s “Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities – Windows” article of interest. I suspect I’ll use Texter to correct my typing, mainly because “the” often gets typed as “teh” because I’m hitting the keys so fast.

I got a new car for the wife a couple of days ago, and as you have probably guessed from the title, it’s a Ford Focus 1.8 Tdci Titanium.

It’s rather nice. Much faster than her old Corsa, but then the engine is almost twice as powerful. Got it second hand, it’s a year old, and as such got it for half the price that we’d have had to pay for it brand new (£10.5K against £21.2K new; sweet). Strangely, it came with no user manual whatsoever. How odd to sell your car but you want to keep the manual? Weird.

It’s got a built in sat nav which is pretty nice, it has to be said. I’ve got a Garmin in my car, one of the type that you attach to your window, and I do like it, but the fact that this one is built in is really pretty sweet.

I believe you can get your phone to link up to the car via bluetooth. Tried to work out how to do it, but I have failed. I’ll need to get a manual, I reckon, to work it out. That said, I’ll try Googling around first, see if anyone has any tips on how to do it.