Year: 2012

I have a feeling that the hangfire might have been due to two rockets being set off at the same time – I think one fuse went quick but the rocket didn't go because it was tethered to a rocket with a much slower fuse …

I do like the odd dramatic moment during a firework 'display' but that rocket (or lack thereof) certainly took the biscuit this year!

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the infection that had hold of my legs and various bits of the rest of me …

Hopefully that little segment of my life is coming to a close 🙂

Since the doctor trip on Wednesday there’s been some quite dramatic improvement. I’m not clear of signs of inflammation yet but it’s getting so close that I’ll soon have difficulty picking places to put the medicine cream. It’s improved that much and that’s coming from it affecting maybe 20-30% of me.

I hadn’t said exactly how much it had affected me had I ? Well, as well as the big patches on my legs being joined by patches around my elbows, the infection had spread to my hip, ribs area, bum, ears, a patch under my eye. Probably about 20-30% of me, some bits worse than others.

But it’s now considerably better. I’m hoping that when I next see the doctor in 9 days, I can walk into her office with a big grin and show completely healed legs and arms. But I’m not counting my chickens just yet, it’s improved before and then come right back. Hopefully I’ve identified why with thinking that I’m allergic to a few things :

Orange Juice – think I have a citrus allergy which was setting off bad breathing and the excema.
White bread – I can mostly avoid this because brown bread seems fine. Pizza’s a problem but as long as I keep that in moderation I’ll be fine 🙂
Office – dry air is promoting the excema I think. Can’t do much about that except try and get moisture in to me.

So yeah – I’m hoping this little chapter is coming to a close so I can concentrate on getting things done and moving forward again 🙂 I’ve let a lot of things drift lately because I’ve had my whole essence focused on trying to get healthy again.

BOOM !

We had our annual Crazie Fireworks combined with birthdays last night, hosted by the BionicDwarf. I’ll hopefully get this house in order for a bit of hosting soon, that’s another thing put on hold by the infection.

I have to say, Sainsburys rockets are much better than Tescos rockets although we did get one “interesting” rocket which hangfired. And we had one of the mortar boxes decide to start shooting sideways.

Great little display though, CK, BD and I chipped in with £270 worth of fireworks which gave us just over half an hour of :

Cracking fireworks too.

We followed that with pizza (yey!) and a couple of movies after handing out of a decent selection of birthday presents. Tis birthday season at the moment, with BD, CQ and mine coming in quick succession. Mine’s not until the 13th (born on a Wednesday). Oh – movies, I’m watching one of my new ones at the moment : Beastmaster. Old classic.

After that – Strictly results. Yep. I watch Strictly Come Dancing. First year watching it as a regular and I’m quite enjoying it.

And with that admission (coinciding with the dinner gong from the kitchen), time to sign off with the shreds of leftover dignity 🙂

Yeah – new episodes for a tenth season. It's better than the 3 part thing we had a little while ago but it's still a fairly tired series now.

As in NEW episodes of Red Dwarf??

I’ve managed to almost get everything in the library listened to 🙂

There’s a full 1.6 days of new stuff in the library, or so iTunes tells me. Maybe I kinda went a little overboard in acquiring all those soundtracks …

It’s not all soundtracks though – here’s some of what came in :

Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted To Sin. Not bad, kinda more of the same. Tori Amos is a very talented singer songwriter and also extremely prolific. Being prolific isn’t always a good thing, as it can mean that too much of the not so good stuff gets unleashed. Abnormally Attracted to Sin is better than American Doll Posse but isn’t as good as some of her best material. Still worth a look though.

Smash Mouth – All Star Greatest Hits. Lol 🙂 This is fun. Again, nothing classic here although the I’m A Believer cover excels.

Alone In The Dark soundtracks – I grabbed all three of these games in a cutprice ultra bargain deal at Good Old Games.Com. IIRC it was about $3 for all three. We weren’t convinced about AITD 2 but the first game kept us busy at uni for months before we had it cracked. This was in the dim and distant days before Wiki captured all the walkthroughs and before the Internet and Google really took off so it was tougher to find hints and tips. It’s from when Hint Telephone Lines could make money.

I’m listening to the AITD3 soundtrack at the moment and it’s … got character 🙂 Liking it.

Morcheeba’s Charango – Morcheeba are pretty different to what I usually listen to. They’ll be different to what most people listen to. But that’s mainly because they put a lot of variation into their albums. Charango is no different and there’s a good selection of good tracks here. Check them out, there’s a good chance they’ll have something you like.

Fallout soundtrack – another from GoG.com, this time I saw a “sign up and get this game free!” So I did. The Fallout games have always had their own unique character charm to them. They’re set in a Post Apocalyptic alternate reality Earth where those kitsch 70s ads hung around way past their time. It lets them put a certain degree of very dark humour into their games to offset the post apocalyptic thing.

Faster Than Light soundtrack – this one is available on Bandcamp from Ben Prunty music. Game soundtracks have a specific job to do – they set and reinforce the mood and then submerge under the game to become subliminal. The Mass Effect and Deus Ex HR soundtracks are very good at doing that and this one is the same. Will be looking out for more from Ben Prunty in the future.

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan. Another very different pop group. I first listened to their Elephant album. Different is definitely good when it comes to music, it sets groups apart from mainstream tat and gets them noticed. I’ve definitely noticed The White Stripes and will be looking for more, they’re worth it. This album appeared courtesy of Head doing offers 🙂

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man. It’s good. There’s some decent tracks here but not as many stand out tracks as on her previous albums. I’ve yet to listen to it as a pure album though, maybe in the next few days when I get round to it.

Independence War soundtracks. These are another couple of game soundtracks picked up for peanuts from GOG.com. One thing about GoG is that you get lots of freebies with the game. Things like pdf copies of the manuals (when game manuals were worth having), pictures of material like spellbooks and best of all – soundtracks. Oh ! I-War 1 + 2 – two games that unfortunately for them came around at the same time as when the X-Wing games were going strong and which therefore didn’t get the chance they deserved.

Last Night Of The Proms. I’m a Prom fan, I try and watch every year’s Last Night if I can. I like music and this is as uplifting as it comes. Perhaps this recording isn’t as good as most though, I suspect it was the one where the organisers went “We’re recording this, keep it quiet” and therefore missed the whole Audience Participation thing where the off-time audience additions make the whole show.

Lisa Hannigan – Passenger and Sea Sew. Oh. Character. This girl has it. Lisa Hannigan had the misfortune to emerge at the same time as Little Boots, who at the time was on a mission and was blowing away all the competition. Yet here was delicate and very precious Lisa Hannigan coming along with that unique and deliberately fragile voice. Little Boots doesn’t hold my attention as much now but Lisa Hannigan singing I Don’t Know ? You may have heard that one so here’s a different link : What’ll I do ?

Very glad I gave Lisa Hannigan a second look courtesy of some cheap Amazon deals 🙂

Oh dear. I seem to have been distracted into listening to as many Lisa Hannigan videos off Youtube as I can find. Time to close and maybe leave room for a Part 2 of new stuff 🙂

But before I go :

Something old – Red Dwarf’s back. Not quite sure what I think, the concept is extremely tired now and overdone canned audience laughter detracts from the comedy value.

Something new – watched the first couple of episodes of Arrow tonight. Not convinced I’ll stick with this one, it has great TV actors in it but the concept is weak …

Something different – watched the first episode of Elementary. This one has more of a future than Arrow I think, if the networks stick with it. But … concept has been overdone, there’s about 4 different Sherlock Holmes going on at the moment – the BBC one, Elementary, the films and the really bad ones we see on the movie channels occasionally.

PS I think they gave me Strong pills this time. They’ve certainly had a very fast and decisive effect. Need to figure out something to have with the ones I’ll have tomorrow morning … (6 little pills with food that masks a nasty aftertaste)

Yep. After having yes/no’s last night, I paid them a visit today.

Doctor’s worried too … She got me to make a repeat appointment in a fortnight. Gotta say, I was worried too after what the legs were looking like this morning (I’m saying nothing here in case people are reading in lunch break).

Result ?

More pills, even more pills, more cream and … even more cream. And I need to be using the moisturiser more too.

It seems to be having an effect already though 🙂

I’ve had a bunch of the pills, used the cream once, had a shower and … my legs still look very angry with me (they deserve to to be honest) but my arms look improved already. Fingers crossed that I improve over the next few days, at least enough to wear long sleeves ?

Why long sleeves do I hear you ask ?

Normally at the weekend, at the moment at least, I’d be hibernating inside trying to take it easy cos of this skin thing. This weekend ?

BOOM !

It’s birthday season at the moment. Bionicdwarf’s was last week, Craziequeen’s is in a few days and mine’s in a fortnight. Mine means cakes for people at work on the Monday or Wednesday, I can’t bring them in on my actual birthday because that’s when the next doctor appointment is.

We’re celebrating by making lots of things explode over the weekend. I have the presents wrapped but still need to acquire the fun stuff. Setting off the loud bangs involves being outside though, hence hoping to be able to wear those long sleeves so I don’t completely freeze.

Oh it also means Pizza. YEY !

PS I’ve also had to activate word verification for comments, which is a huge shame. Over the past couple of days, someone’s been trying to sell stuff by slamming lots of spam comments in. I won’t tolerate that and neither will Google (they canned the first account before I could report it). But they appear to be able to get around Google’s spam detection (dunno how, the comments have been near identical). If I have to enable comment moderation, this will be why.

It’s definitely got a lot colder over the last half week or so.

I’m really noticing the cold snap come in. My current state of health is a lot to do with that for a few good reasons :

I think fighting bugs keeps me warm. Kinda like there maybe being a good side to being ill. The fever means you have your own little internal personal electric heater. I think the antibiotics have cleared out all the bugs though (definitely judging by my ankles being bony again).

It’s definitely colder – the car is telling me the temperature is down below 10 degrees C often, last week it was 13-18 degrees C. In work, there are little thermo reactive strips in strategic places on the pillars. Those typically read 27 degrees C (ish – they’re not exactly precise!), today they were reading 23.

Most important is that skin condition, it’s meaning I can’t wear long sleeves right now (although I possibly could have for second half of today – improvement !). I’m actively considering wearing a t-shirt under my shirt tomorrow as a kind of vest. I’ve not done that since school !

Getting really cold at the moment from having to leave certain bits of skin exposed to help them heal. I’ve turned the heating up at home (and have the PC doing work for SETI etc) but can’t do much of that at work. Spookily enough, I think the atmospherics at work are actually helping me at the moment. It tends to be quite a dry atmosphere and that drying out seems to be helping the healing.

I know someone who used to be on the same project as me who’d feel cold on a hot day, she must be absolutely freezing at the moment. Hope she’s ok. Not spotted her for ages, which is a shame cos that Sunshine smile she has brightens up the day.

I’m sparing a thought though for people across the Pond.

It’s just cold over here at the moment, we’re not having to contend with snow (yet) or other adverse weather. Yet there’s Superstorm Sandy battering the Eastern parts of the USA. The USA is pretty huge, for a storm to be battering so much of it says a lot about how spectacular a storm it is.

Nature is a truly awesome power.

And I’ll leave it there – hope the storm over the sea doesn’t have too many lasting effects.

Oh – I’m in a quandary at the moment as to whether to go see the Doctor again. I had genuine improvement today after a scary (messy) evening yesterday. Let’s just say the cream probably made things worse. What I need to do is leave things alone long enough for them to get quality healing. As for the Doctor today, let’s just say GB’s healthcare may be a lot cheaper than other countries but it’s definitely not as accessible as it could be.

But it’s a lot more accessible than a few places I could mention right now !

Still working on my list….. [grin]

PS How on earth did I forget to put Battleship into this post ? It was the inspiration for it!