Newest thoughts →

October 2023

Oh dear. I've been having intermittent problems with the reverse osmosis machine in my home dialysis setup. Today, it wouldn't even spin up, so have renal techs coming tomorrow, but if they can't fix it immediately, I'm back in hospital 😕

Day 2 went OK, although I had a water supply alarm go off on the reverse osmosis machine and the renal techs need to come out to investigate. Happened yesterday, too. Got my Airflow script working during the session.

Preparing the haemodialysis machine for its first home run tomorrow. Freedom beckons. But I am also disappointed in myself. I made several silly mistakes during setup today on my last day in hospital. Nothing life threatening, but nonetheless frustrating.

Today might well be my last day in hospital for haemodialysis before I start doing it at home! Of course, I'm not going to avoid the hospital. I'll have to go back in in the near future to learn how to needle the fistula, but it will still be a huge improvement!

Risk balancing in insurance sure is an interesting and necessarily opaque practice. Of course, insurers want to get better at appraising risk. But if they get too good, or were they perfect, their product would become worthless.

Always a good reminder: BACKUP YOUR WORK AUTOMATICALLY.

My PC suffered a catastrophic hard drive (well, SSD) failure on Sunday. Now well on the way to having the system repaired and thanks to good backups I think I have lost a whole 30 minutes of work, total.

Ever wondered why Microsoft charges money?

It's certainly not for the costs of people developing Windows. You can literally fit a copy of the whole OS on a single DVD!

So, what's the money for? Inquiring minds want to know..

Linux's ext4 is clever as it backs up the superblock to several other locations. You can find the offsets using mkfs -n on the partition and then use fsck to repair the fs enough to rip most data off it. I've now got everything I can and after surgery will install a new SSD.

Tomorrow brings the joy of more vascular surgery for dialysis access. Not hugely looking forward to this given that I came out last time looking like a butcher's block, but oh well.

According to the Minister for Health, the #Forgotten500k campaign that I spearheaded last year with @NikolaBrigden, @MarkOak04974342, and @drlennardlee generated more political questions than any other matter in recent history.

Had some energy to play around with some music. I have not felt I have had the energy or inclination to play with synthesizers or instruments for many months. When I tried previously, it went badly as I was too tired. Today though was fun!

HONK

Periodic reminder of why the taxpayer argument for OA ain't great:

* it encourages nationalism in research. "Why should non-taxpayers from elsewhere get access?"
* not everyone in every country pays taxes anyway
* lots of research is not taxpayer funded

The cover to the OUP Chinese translation of The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (数字人文与文学研究, trans. by 王丽丽 等 译).

UK politicians when asked "is this a war crime?" often respond "I'm not a lawyer".

Does this work for identifying all crimes?

"Did you steal this jewel?"
"I'm sorry, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know"

OK, @Se_Railway is back to being a joke. All trains the other day were diverted to Dover Priory because Canterbury West had a tree on the line. They didn't update the records and I was stranded, but because they claim this train was going to Canterbury West, refusing refund.

The morning drug collection for rheumatoid arthritis and kidney failure. There are 2 more dissolved in the water. Then I will have 2x immunoglobulin injections, an iron injection, EPO hormone injection, and some days a tocilizumab injection. Also a fentanyl patch.

Fellow patient on my renal ward refused MRSA swab the other day. "I don't want to know about covid or things like that". I despair. This protects OTHER PATIENTS. And it's nothing to do with Covid. Hospitals are blamed for its outbreak.

Oh no. The hospital has changed my dialysis schedule and I now will need to Zoom into an external examination board meeting on Monday... While having haemodialysis 😬🩸

Watching ADVANTAGEOUS on Netflix and the progress of actual AI has negated the SF of the piece. So an interesting question: does SF where the speculations demonstrably failed still have the power to pose cognitive estrangements? Obviously, most eventually do. But how quickly?

It's often said that consolidation is bad for customers/users. It reduces choice and competition etc. But, when network effects are in play, centralization can work better even without an incentive to improve. I'm now managing 4 social networks instead of 2.

Meanwhile, the trolls have hit Bluesky. In response to posting that study showing how large an additional covid burden immunocompromised people bear, I've been told that it's a "culling disease" and we should just expect it. Great eugenics 😕

Dialysis this morning has left me shivering and feeling freezing. We've upped the temperature of the returned blood (the machine reheats it to try to avoid inducing shock) and I have this fetching blanket setup.

Prof Eve believes enforcing face masks again would be “difficult”... However, he believes they should be mandatory in hospital and healthcare settings as they are supposed to be “places to heal and not make you sick”.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/covid-hasnt-gone-away-were-still-shielding-three-years-294873/

I added to this in the interview: some contexts require patients to remove masks, such as when nauseated. Other contexts, such as frightened Alzheimer's patients, might benefit from clinicians showing faces. But there's no good reason in the majority of cases.

One of the bad things about kidney failure - it turns out that there are many - is the severe anemia. Unbelievable fatigue, nausea, and skin rashes. I now need IV iron 3x per week as well as EPO hormone (the Lance Armstrong cheat drug!), B12 supplements, folic acid, and more.

Musk's new game:

1 propose outlandish changes to twitter
2 revel in having baited reasonable users who think your proposed change is bad
3 never actually make the change

The next few weeks are challenging with work. Having my final home haemodialysis training and assessments and further fistula surgery for venous access. Off to hospital now. I am grateful to my employer who has humanely told me to look after myself. Hopefully the end is in sight.

I reckon the superpower I would like most would be medical healing of any ailment that the recipient wanted. You'd need some kind of anti-coercion mechanism to prevent it being used for torture, of course...

More random haemodialysis facts to enlighten and entertain. Most people don't know that you have to keep quite still during HD as otherwise you upset the blood pressures. This clip is one of the best things I own (!) as it allows for more movement without dislodging the line.

It's classic how Conservative policy is "educating people is the worst thing done to this country in the last 50 years".

I got to Broadstairs station on Monday to see my train labelled as "cancelled". I was going to a lifesaving hospital dialysis appointment and had urgently to drive instead. @Se_Railway then refused to pay a reclaim because they did run the train they told me was cancelled. Joke.

I am quite badly unwell with a rheumatoid arthritis flare today. Can hardly walk, my shoulders & neck are burning with pain, and my hands are shaky and not working. Hopefully it will improve as the day goes on.

Takeaways from the Vs Arthritis study on shielding:

* It was crucial to save lives
* It was extremely mentally tough on those who had to shield
* The worst part was when it was abandoned with no support or protection remaining

An awful day today. Just after this photo was taken, Luka startled Robyn and she fell behind a sofa, cutting herself badly on the radiator. She's had to have a general anaesthetic and stitches.