Tag: 2010

5 years ago, while I learned to speak again

Ward at Alpha Hospital

Its the June 2nd and its about the time I could barely talk (due to a trach) but my memory was less hazy and I can remember much more. My sister tried to create a communication board, so I could communicate without saying the word. It was pretty frustrating and too be fair i did tell her. I did feel bad about it, as she really trying to help. I remember writing, this is stupid and there has to be a better way… Luckily I didn’t need to wait long before I could talk again.

Ross and Carly came and saw me a few times and certainly helped with the healing process, by making me laugh and cough a lot. I think I remember Adrian seeing me at one point too, he gave me the printed information on Google IO 2010 and the much talked about Google TV.

This about the time when I started going a little stir crazy, as it was ICU, you were not allowed to plug anything into the wall.  My saving grace was my old kindle full with ebooks which I meant to read at some point. I also had enough of the woman next to me with her kicking action to get attention. I must have read about 10 or so books while I was in ICU, unfortunately lights out was 8pm and I didn’t have the paperwhite kindle at the time.

My parents did offer to bring my laptop but I originally said no (believe it or not!). They did bring my pacemaker which I had a hard time re-learning in the first hour but gave rise to a number of mixes later.

Not being able to get out of bed was a real pain, even when I could actually stand. The nurses wouldn’t let me go to the toilet alone and it wasn’t till I pretty much pleaded with a male night nurse to please let me use the normal toilet so I could have some privacy. I finally was happy again. Privacy is something while going to the loo is something I certainly like and the doctors did wonder if my body was operating correctly.

Hospital food is pretty bad but try having complan as your main supply of food, by this point I only had to survive a day or two on it before than it was via the drip in my nose. Food via a drip was weird and interesting especially when you are fully aware of whats actually happening.

The last thing I certainly do remember is the injections of  Anticoagulants better known as Warfarin. It was either have it in the arm or in the stomach. Don’t ask me why remember I hadn’t had hypontherapy yet, but I decided the stomach was best because I couldn’t move it and have it scratch and theres quite a bit of fatty tissue… It was painful but honestly it wasn’t as bad as in the arm. Having every day got me slightly use to it but any chance I could avoid it, I did. Unfortunately it would only work for a short while before they would hunt me down for another fix!

Mum and Dad kept writing blog posts on carringbridge thanks to Sarah and Sharon.

 

By —

Ian had a very good day today!  He was able to stand for the nurses and was out of bed sitting in a chair for most of the day.  He was smiling a lot and laughing at jokes (which is helping to clear his chest).His breathing is continuing to improve and we hope the trach tube will be removed soon so he’ll be able to speak.

By —

Hi everyone,Ian is progressing well.  He is breathing with very little help now.  They are thinking of transferring him out from ICU to a High Dependency Unit tomorrow.

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Ian’s dad, sister and I have been back in Manchester with him since yesterday afternoon.The trach tube had to be resited and Ian is still having some ventilation through that just until his breathing improves.  They are reducing use of it and he is mostly breathing on his own.Ian’s sister has been reading him messages from the guestbook which are much appreciated.  However, at the moment we would still like visitors to be limited to family.  Ian is having ups and downs in his recovery, but on the whole is improving.  We want to make sure he rests and does not get frustrated with not being able to speak (this is temporary due to the trach tube).   He is communicating with us by blinking, nodding and occasionally writing, and he does understand everything that is going on.

By —

Ian’s ventilator was removed again this morning.  To avoid having the ventilator back in, he has had a tracheotomy to help him breathe.  This is just a temporary measure until his breathing is stabilised.  The drain has been removed from his head, so now it is just the feeding tube in his nose.He indicated he was in pain due to having the tracheotomy, so he has had some medication to help with that.I have travelled to Bristol this evening, but will drive back to Manchester with Ian’s dad on Saturday morning.  Ian’s sister will also be back up to see him on Saturday.More cards arrived for Ian today and they are all being stuck up to the wall near his bed.  Thanks to everyone for all the get well messages.

This was almost the last night of my life

About one year ago, I went to sleep after trying to stay up watching the National Elections of 2010. It must have been about 1am. I remember watching the election show on BBC one and falling a sleep a few times. So in the end I went to bed, not knowing who had won the election. Who would have thought the Liberal Democrats would have teamed up with the Conservatives to create a collation government?

When I woke up the next day, the bleed on my brain had already started to cause damage to my memory because the only thing I remember is the cleaner knocking on the door and me thinking well my flat mate will get up and let her in.

No doubt May will be a time for reflection for myself…

As always its great to be alive…

The history of BBC Backstage (the ebook)

At long last the Book charting the highlights of BBC Backstage is available for everyone to download and read.

Download in [PDF] [print ready PDF] [EPUB] [MOBI] [RTF]

Originally I wanted to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of backstage in May 2010 with a book made up with the contributions of the actual people who made it work over the years. So I contracted Suw Charman Anderson back in early 2010 to start work collecting the material for the backstage book and newspaper.

By April 2010, she collected and started to write up whole sections of the book with help from Kevin Anderson (Suw’s husband and good friend of Backstage). The whole thing was done over Gmail, Google Docs, Basecamp and Dropbox. The plan was to go to print with the book by Thinking Digital 2010, which was also the time when I was going to announce the closure of BBC Backstage. Of course we all know what happened in May/June to me (I had the bleed on the brain if you don’t remember).

This of course put everything in a tail spin and so we missed all the dates for printing, publishing and announcing the end of Backstage.

So fast forward to the point when I’m out of hospital and things are shifting at work. It made sense to pick up the large body of work which was almost finished back in May and put it out in the public domain. Of course this was easier said that done.

Brendan Crowther, Ant Miller and Adrian Woolard worked there socks off collecting together all the bits which were floating on these different services. Not only that, they built a small team of professionals who helped manage the process of making the ebook (as it became).

One of the things which I never got around to doing before my bleed was the design of the book. We had planned to use the newspaper club’s default templates with a little fix here and there. But Nicole Rowlands has done a amazing job stamping her distinct style into the ebook.The copy also had a rethink and re-edit by Bill Thompson and Production editor Jim McClellan. Between all these people and of course Sarah Mines everybodies favorite BBC publicist and PR Lady…

….We finally give the world Hacking the BBC: A Backstage retrospective.

BBC Backstage was a five year initiative to radically open up the BBC, publishing information and data feeds, connecting people both inside and outside the organisation, and building a developer community. The call was to “use our stuff to make your stuff” and people did, to the tune of over 500 prototypes.

This ebook is a snapshot of some of the projects and events that Backstage was involved in, from its launch at Open Tech 2005, through the triumph of Hack Day 2007 and the shot-for-web R&DTV, to current visualisation project DataArt. We take a diversion to Bangladesh to see how a Backstage hacker helped the World Service keep reporting through the horrendous Cyclone Sidr, and look at the impact of the ‘playground’ servers, used inside the BBC.

Backstage’s mandate, throughout its history, was for change. It changed the way people think, the way the BBC interacted with external designers and developers, and the way that they worked together. So what remains, now Backstage is no more? The legacy isn’t just a few data feeds and some blog posts. Backstage brought about permanent change, for the people who worked there, for its community of external developers and for the BBC. What better legacy could one ask for?

Download in [PDF] [print ready PDF] [EPUB] [MOBI] [RTF]

A review of last years resolutions 2010

Its that time of the year, so first up the review of last year.

  1. Go skiing on real snow
    Yes this has been on going and to be honest, with all the spare time I had this year I could have but it would have been against the doctors advice. Anyway this coming year it will happen for sure.
  2. Blog more
    Yep achieved
  3. A better routine and live more healthy
    Yeah this is certainly in effect, never guessed I would have ended up in hospital midway through the year. Crazy stuff.
  4. Kick off Manchester werewolf night again
    We did kick off another werewolf night but its always at the wrong days, so I need to do more about this.
  5. Find my perfect development stack
    Yeah to be fair I still need to work on this but I did end up buying XML Oxygen editor and played with PHP and Xquery. With mydreamscape I got into the type of development I rather liked. Stitching together things which work like lego bricks
  6. Playout live more
    Yeah I didn’t quite achieve this one but I have plans for 2011. I certainly like to play Trance out live.
  7. Use even more graphics
    This didn’t quite happen, but hopefully this will change
  8. Upgrade sooner if it makes a noticeable difference
    Yes this is working for me
  9. Be involved in a regular podcast
    Indeed this worked out great. Techgrumps is fantastic and hopefully we can develop this even further.
  10. Buy a flat in Central Manchester
    Yes I finally this year bought a 2 bedroom flat in Islington Wharf, just on the east edge of central Manchester. I owe my sister and Billie my amazing mortgage advisor greatly for this whole thing
  11. Avoid all online services which don’t perform to my acceptable levels of data portability
    I’ve done this but I certainly could do more in this area.
  12. Play more games
    This is certainly something I am still not doing enough of. I did buy a Xbox 360 a while ago and to be fair I did buy a whole selection of games when I was recovering from my bleed on the brain, thinking I would now finally have the time to invest in them.

New Year Resolutions 2010

Myself

So I’ve already done a review of 2009, so its time for my 2010 resolutions.

  1. Go skiing on real snow
    This is a carry over from 2009. I really need to just go do this, specially since there is a fake skiing place in Manchester’s Trafford Centre.
  2. Blog more
    Since Twitter, i’ve been blogging a lot less. This needs to stop as this is my base and twitter isn’t. Although I can aggregate with things like storytlr, i’m very interested the support for the twitter/open-microblogging api by wordpress/automatic.
  3. A better routine and live more healthy
    Goes without saying really but I’m already signed up to PureGym the 24hour Gym but need a doctors note saying I’m not going to die of a asthmatic attack if I use a running machine before I can go for the introduction. I’m also attempting to go to sleep before 2am every night and wake up at a decent time. I need to go to more comedy clubs too.
  4. Kick off Manchester werewolf night again
    We started playing werewolf in Manchester at the start of last year as a monthly thing in the BBC bar but moved it out to Space soon after as we got more people. I want to grow it a little and run a couple special one-off’s around events like FutureEverything and other conferences in the city. Actually the 1st one of the year will be Wednesday 3rd Feb if your interested.
  5. Find my perfect development stack
    I was meant to be learning Python but it just didn’t feel right for me. Apache Cocoon 2.1 is still my baby and I use it for all types of little bits and pieces but Cocoon 2.2 and 3.x are completely different. I could/maybe should learn how use them and the new Maven approach, Maven also seems to work well in Eclipse and Netbeans (didn’t I mention I like Netbeans).
    I like the idea of XQuery specially because it does most of the things I want to do in my web applications. Add in Exist DB the open source xml database and I got a complete backend stack. I’m also still liking the idea behind ZK to ease with the front end, although I know everyone is loving a javascript library over a complete framework. Lastly I’m looking more and more into XProc but I don’t feel this will help with my development stack.
  6. Playout live more
    I’m going out clubbing more which is great but I’m feeling the need to playout/dj out loud. There’s not many trance clubs in Manchester and I’ve already tried to join the Rong Trance night via a competition. So heck why not setup my own night? Well it looks like I found a venue (TV21 in the Trendy Northern Quarter) and a couple other djs who also want to play out live. So who knows…
  7. Use even more graphics
    Inkscape, napkin sketches, raytracing are all working for me. Now I’m sketching on my ebook reader in some meetings so I just need better ways to integrate them into my presentations and work.
  8. Upgrade sooner if it makes a noticeable difference
    Sometimes I wait too long to upgrade software and hardware. For example I waited till my old battery only holds 12% charge before getting a new one. This is fine but having to go to meetings next door with a power adapter is a pain. I should have bought a new battery ages ago. I also waited too long to upgrade to Gwibber 2.0 for sure. This also extends to other stuff for example I just bought some new trainers after 3+ years of wearing the last one to near collapse. All this stuff is worth just buying earlier to avoid all the stresses which go into keeping the previous generation alive. Talking of which I really should upgrade my camera to a DSLR soon.
  9. Be involved in a regular podcast
    I started one with a few friends but we never really got it off the ground due to our pretty hectic lifestyles. However now I know I can do skype over my Orange HSDPA connection and it still sounds great, I should be able to do it from anywhere I am. So its just a matter of being committed really.
  10. Buy a flat in Central Manchester
    People have been wondering what happened with this. Well it was all happening then the mortgage deposits when from 10% to 20% across all lenders, which ruled me out of buying a 2 bedroom place. However this year I’m confident that I’ll be on the property ladder again. Although I’m thinking maybe I should consider one bedroom places too.
  11. Avoid all online services which don’t perform to my acceptable levels of data portability
    Its 2010, theres no need for closed systems which don’t talk to anything else. No OpenID or OAuth? You won’t see me signing up in the future. Can’t get my data out on to my own site via some API? forget about it, I’m not even going to venture near it.
  12. Play more games
    I love games but never play enough of them. There’s a whole selection of great games which I’ve not played which I think I’m missing out on. For example I bought Portal the other day for a day when I’m sick and need to stay in. Theres some amazingly inspiring games out there which must be played.

Hello 2010, welcome to the new blog

2010

So I finally decided to switch my blog to wordpress and on top of that I was able to install storytlr open source.

I’m still in the process of doing all the redirects and general cleaning up but its coming together quite nicely. Once its all stable I’m hoping to spend some time sorting out the styles and themes.

Getting the entries out of Blojsom was easy as pie but then converting them into a format which WordPress wouldn’t barf on was a big problem. In the end I wrote a throw away XSL to do it, because it WordPress didn’t like namespaced elements or generally anything over the standard RSS 2.0 elements. I did manage to push over the Categories and Tags but had to split them apart in WordPress later.

My whole thing is hosted with GoDaddy on their new European Servers and will be quite slow while it caches all requests.

I love Blojsom but I never upgraded to version 3.x which required a database to work. With the need for a database, it meant the ground between WordPress and blojsom was a less so. Then add cheap hosting, amazing plugins, themes and community. And its pretty much a no brainer. I also found that less and less blog editors are supporting Blojsom (some kind of metaweblog xmlrpc category issue). So now I’m able to use Bilbo which is a KDE editor with support for pretty much everything WordPress allows. I’m also able to use Google Gears which is useful when offline.

This was also a chance to get a little more serious about my blogging and footprint online. Hence I’m really hoping to stretch what storytlr can do for me and some of the projects I have for it.

In the meantime, let me know if you see anything very weird which I may have missed….