The Two Truths (aka Maati)

Heyho!

Sorry; despite my best attempts I have still lost track of this place & have moved almost entirely to Facebook.

Since I last posted...

In November I had a good photography month, shooting four events all of which I pretty much enjoyed. I have a few good leads to follow up, in order to get even more business this year.

In December I had an operation in hospital, removing about 20-30cm of my small intestines and fixing the more severe damage from my Crohn's Disease (including two obstructions and one fistula).

That op meant that I had to take things easy for a while; it was mid-January before I went back to work and I was not able to do any heavy lifting etc during my first couple of weeks back... hence why there are no photos on Flickr since my op (3+ kg camera gear).

Throughout the remainder of January I have been organising the Imbolc festivities, preparing for Beltane, plus a couple of other BFS associated things.

I am now on a drugs trial to use 6MP (immunosuppressant) as a preventative medicine, in order to stop my Crohn's from coming back again. The last couple of weeks I have been a bit ill and I worried that this is reaction to the 6MP - or - it could be a continuation of my Crohn's. However it may alternatively be because I have not been very sensitive to what I have been eating.

Since my op I have been working up to a full and wide diet - however - I am now going to restrict myself partially again ... avoiding insoluble fibres (e.g. sweetcorn / peppers), yeast extract, MSG, and chilli. For the time being I will be avoiding alcohol as well.

I have my next check up at the start of March. If I keep being ill despite restricting my diet then I may well be taken off the drugs trial.

Amanda Palmer at the Cabaret Voltaire
Tuesday 30th September 2008


Please click for my photo set from Amanda Palmer's gig on Tuesday night.

(Or click here if the slide-show does not show properly on your browser.)

I started looking through the list of friends on my user info, thinking to myself "who are these people?" So; I did that thing that people do so often on LJ, I culled the list down somewhat.

My apologies if I have insulted anyone by removing them. My main reason for removing anyone was simply that I have no idea who you are!

Taken
This film is much alike to the Bourne films, including that the main character is a US secret agent who is very much alone as he takes on impossible numbers of heavily armed bad guys. I would have rated it four stars except for a few glaring faults;

( ... )

The Wave
This is a German film (subtitled) about a school project looking at autocracy (a la Nazi Germany). In order for the teacher to persuade his pupils that autocracy remains a real threat to democracy, he persuades them to take part in a class dictatorship. The key difference between this and your average school classroom is that he convinces the pupils not just to obey but also to want his every command. Of course the project turns bad and things get scary.

( ... )

I am amused by how many people have cough/cold bugs, whilst I have none! The reason for my amusement is rather twisted; I am on immunosuppressants and have to have my white blood count routinely checked to ensure that it is not dangerously low. If it were low then a mere cold or cough bug could be extremely dangerous for me.

During the last few months whilst I have been on these, my white blood count has never been low. In fact it has been consistently high, something which has always puzzled the doctors.

Strange but true!

How is everyone? It has come to my attention that I know very little about so many of you who read this.

Kate asked me to link her to the following article -> Complexity of Crohn's disease revealed

I am not an Adobe person myself, out of principle because their software is always extortionately expensive & you do not get what you pay for.

However an interesting thing is about to happen next week;

Adobe's next incarnation of their imaging softare (CS 4) will support CUDA, Nvidia's programming language that utilises the raw number-crunching power of their GPUs (8- series, 9- series, Quadros, and Teslas). This should mean ludicrous speed increases for demanding image processing tasks, such as performing 16-bit HDR from 24MP images, or even just for batch processing a large number of RAW images (with a suitably fast RAID drive set up).

The software is out on 23rd September & I am very interested to see where the photography industry goes from here. Personally I am looking out for what Bibble does more than Adobe. Unfortunately Bibble has only just caught up with Adobe by offering 64-bit and multi-core support.

Reading up on the BBC's world news this morning, I was outsanded by the amount of articles that were about governmental corruption. It seems like every government is corrupt and I have no doubt that includes ours.

I believe that we should use a National Lottery-esk system of government;

( Please read on... )

I weigh at least two kilograms more than I did at the start of this month; 75kg on my GP's weighing scales. The last weight taken on those scales had me at 72kg, whereas the one a week before that put me at 73kg. In February, the same scales had put me at 65kg.

(These were all taken whilst I was fully dressed, fed, and hydrated... which adds about two or three kilograms.)

It's all good! Firstly it shows that I am still gaining weight. Secondly it means that my rate of weight-gain is reasonably healthy and not *too* fast.

My target is 80kg.

I have just finished processing & uploading my photos from May's Balkanarma... which was somewhat of a mammoth task (there being 130 of them!)... so go look!!!


May Balkanarama

I really do not like Npower, who I have now been with for over two years. I much preferred Powergen.

What I dislike about Npower is their poor customer services; their casual "opps, oh well" attitude about every error that they have made and then failed to correct, despite all of my attempts over the past two years. I dislike the twenty minute call waiting times, and the non-existent "call back" service that puts you back in the queue every time you try to use it.

The problem is; Npower are cheap.

Even with Alex leaving the oven & boiler & half the lights in the flat on for extended periods of time, they still work out cheaper than anyone else. Their annual £80 discount is still the best offer around for us.

I would love to switch to someone else - but - I cannot find anyone to switch to!