dead brains don't dance

nice deconstruction of The Times channeling the Home Office on Part III of RIPA, which would give the state the power to demand people hand over their private keys.

ETA: and ORG links to another Times article telling us that the BBFC wants to start censoringclassifying content on the net. How are they going to do that then, Ted?

OK, we cocked up: the BSFA web site disappearing into the void was down to us disposing of an old domain that we thought was redundant: it turns out that www.bsfa.co.uk (and a couple of other websites) were CNAMEd to a subdomain of it.

Mea maxima culpa.

We’ve actioned fixes from both ends (reinstating the domain, and arranging with the ISP responsible for the bsfa.co.uk domain to point the web site at a more sensible place for the future). Sadly, neither of these will happen instantly, so if anyone needs access to the BSFA website urgently in the interim, you can reach it at bsfa.site.ramtops.org.

ETA: corrected link. Also, someone with posting rights in bsfa_news might want to put a note in there.

Well, that was the first evidence of chaotic incompetence in the NHS in my brief series of encounters therewith.

After a client meeting in the morning[1] and a trip to Ikeal[2], we went in to the Eye Hospital for my appointment. I was seen pretty much straight away to have a quick vision check; the nurse said she would find my MRI results, bung ‘em in the back of my file and pass that on to whoever was going to see me.

So, we sat and waited for a bit. After that bit, the doctor appeared, with a senior nurse of some description (I don’t do uniform recognition) only to inform us that, nearly two weeks after the scan, the radiologist at BRI hadn’t signed the damned thing off. And had also buggered off out of the hospital.

Since the MRI results were the entire reason I was at the Eye Hospital at all, this was a little vexing. The doctor invited us in for a chat anyhow, to talk about what the results, when they finally materialised, would signify. Or not. It seems that current research suggests that a positive result would predict an approximately 50% chance of an MS episode of some sort in the next 10 years; a negative result (from my base point) would indicate a 25-28% chance of the same - not what I’d call a particularly reliable indicator, then.

While we were talking, the nurse appeared: it seems the errant radiologist had been tracked down and, with luck, we’d get the results in a half hour or so. We wandered off to sample the delights of the newly reconstructed bus station (can you feel the visceral excitement of life in the heart of Bristol here?). After another short wait on our return, the doctor called us back in: yes, I do have lesions; these either being indicative of MS or possibly maybe not.

He’s referred me for an appointment with a neurologist, for whatever good that might do, but that isn’t likely to materialise for months. I reckon I’ll just pootle along as before: there’s not really a lot of point in agonising over something that still has a 50% chance of never even happening and, in any case, the only thing I’m aware of that increases the odds of an episode, should I actually have MS, is stress. So worry is contraindicated, I think.

We consoled ourself with a brief book fix in Waterstones (3 for 2 is a dangerous thing[3]), and Whittards for some Russian Caravan tea[4] and succeeded in hitting the rush hour at its height. Took us the best part of an hour for ramtops to drive the six miles home; people do this every day... Mad.

[1] we were sacked. Actually, that’s unfair; they’re spending the year migrating their web presence to an offshoot of their new CRM system - we’ll actually be doing a fair bit of work for them to help manage and stage that migration.

[2] rugs for the hallways; rather fine bright scarlet rugs with yellow stripes. Some bed linen. A corner shelf unit. Nightlights. And ramtops found me a little bottle of Elch Blut, complete with a MOOOOOSE!!!! head top.

[3] a bit of a Neil Gaiman fest: Anansi Boys, Stardust and Smoke and Mirrors. Also Singularity Sky, Sophia McDougall’s Romanitas which might be crap but looks quite fun, and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

[4] don’t like it much on its own, but mixed 50/50 with Lapsang Souchong it’s wonderful.

[ETA minor fixen as pointed out to me by ramtops - an errant apostrophe(’) amongst them; I hadn’t realised I was that debilitated]

grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz (tap tap tap tap)
grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz grzzZRRZz (tap tap tap tap)

grmrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

(THUD)

One for hirez, I think; someone really should record and release the workings of an MRI scanner. Sort of techno/industrial crossover, it was quite entertaining.

The process itself all went as well as it could: ramtops drove us in to Trenchard and we walked down to BRI for yet another incidence of the NHS doing what it said it would, on time and efficiently. I really do seem to be getting the best of things, perhaps because I’m not suffering from anything unglamorous like arthritis.

There were a couple of minor irritations: one of the techs in the MRI room asked if I’d had a scan before; I told her that I had, about twenty years ago, and she basically said that I couldn’t have (presumably because medicine in those days mostly involved bleeding the patient, and nothing as sophisticated as thermometers, stethoscopes or NMR equipment existed). Also, when the scan was finished, the other tech said he couldn’t email me the results. Feh. Though apparently I might get a photocopy or something from the eye hospital if I ask nicely. Maybe.

It was more interesting last time round in Hull: It really was new technology in those days and I was invited into the control room to watch the images appear, slowly, scan line by scan line, after they’d finished. I don’t actually remember much other than the startlingly significant snippet of information that the equipment had a Tandberg keyboard: a minor variant on the lovely TDV2200s we were using at my then place of employment. The scanner this time was a Siemens, if anyone cares.

Now we just have to wait for the results.

The tragedy of the corporation, vile hypocrisy and on running cross-grain, prompted by thoughts here on this.

Meanwhile, danah boyd on global Information and local Interaction and the consequences of the culture of fear.

Also, tonight ramtops and I watched United 93, which was far better than I feared it might be. There were moments when it skated closer to uncritical hegemonic celebration than I would have liked, but there can be no denial of the courage of the passengers and crew (and their relatives). That the hijackers were portrayed as being human feels remarkable (even if it shouldn’t); no easy answers or explanations were offered to the viewer, which of itself might explain the film’s ‘R’ rating in the US.

Recommended.

ramtops and I are back from seeing The Blue NilePaul Buchanan at Colston Hall and, despite all problems, very fine it was too.

In their stripped down, lean configuration, they’re using a pair of keyboard controllers driving a pair of powerbooks for all keyboard sounds, and therein lied the rub: one of the macs was crashing with distressing regularity. We suspect a hard disk on its way out, but we didn’t venture on stage to do any diagnostics.

So, the set list went out of the window as Paul tried to stick with songs that put least strain on the software but, as far as I can work out, by the end and many reboots later we only lost one song out of the set. The (sadly small) audience was hugely supportive and after, finally, Tinseltown in the Rain was played through without a crash as the encore, delivered a well deserved standing ovation. I fear to think (as I suspect does Paul :) what will happen if things go Horribly Wrong in Glasgow at the weekend, so I hope that whatever the cause is, it’s fixed in the next two days :)

Sadly neither the hassles nor the size of the audience (I gather that none of the non-Glasgow gigs have sold out) is likely to make the next tour happen in the forseeable; I do hope that wasn’t the last time Paul will appear in Bristol. I wonder if the sparseness of the crowd was from not being able to call themselves the Nile, or if it runs deeper.

From On the Commons, a timely link:

If anything is going to jolt our political culture out of its deep and muddy ruts, it will be artists with wit, vision and humanity. I recently stumbled across a great example, a poster by Dan Thibodeau called “Markettheism: One World, One God.” The 24x36 inch poster skillfully riffs off of religious iconography to show how our fealty to The Market is essentially religious in nature. The illustration is available online at Thibodeau’s website, and contains 85 weblinks to enlarged portions of the poster and quotable quotations.

Three diagnoses in a week and a half; what’s next I wonder.

Since last reported, sight in my right eye has continued to deteriorate, to the extent that I can see virtually nothing through it directly and even what peripheral vision remains is much darkened. We ventured to SpecSavers in Nailsea this morning for both our due eye tests and, we hoped, some useful extra data on my problems.

The chap I saw there decided that I didn’t have vitreous detachment, but macular degeneration instead, and booked me back in the Bristol Eye Hospital straight away; ramtops drove me in as soon as she emerged from her own examination.

So. A repeat of the basic tests I had an hour earlier and a week ago, so they could fill in their tickboxes, and more pupil-expanding eyedrops. 2015 minutes later, I saw the doctor (he was waiting to clock off) and much more peerings into my ocular interiors, my third diagnosis: optic neuritis. I must say, I was a little disappointed that my macules aren’t degenerate after all.

Not that there’s anything that can be usefully done about any of the three conditions bar waiting for me to heal myself over time, but this last could possibly (20% chance apparently) be an MS symptom. So I’m being booked in for MRI as soon as a free slot appears - I’ve no idea at all what the waiting list for this is in Bristol. My immediate symptoms should, with luck, correct themselves over the next month or two.

Now I’m (again) waiting for my pupils to shrink back to a more functional size, before running the bar with ramtops at the local LD’s sausage’n’mash evening tonight.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

Well, that was fun. I’ve just returned from ( Bristol Eye Hospital )

Well... How long can Chuckles the Safety Elephant hang on? One hopes that it’s not for long; surely even in NooLabor terms, his position is becoming, as they say, untenable.

What frightens me most, though, is the question of what’s next in the sequence? With each of Straw and Blunkett, I thought the next would have to be an improvement, but each Home Secretary in turn has been a more authoritarian bastard than the last. Will we all come to see Chuckles with a smidgen of nostalgia as his successor’s stormtroopers bundle us all off to Belmarsh or worse?