Trust Tommy

Been a crazy busy couple of days!

Was down in Cork on Thursday, working with TV3 on a programme about The Lives of Teenagers, which is due to be broadcast some time in June. I was among epic company with Enda Crowley, Siobhan McGettigan and James Whelton – and we made quite a diverse group of internet users. I mean, James is more into the “whitehacking” side of things more than the rest of us so he could bring something very unusual/original to the table. We briefly considered hacking Enda’s mobile phone voicemail on camera for the laugh, but it never came to pass. I also showed Foursquare to them; the more location-based social network. I’d love it to get mainstream like Facebook is, I really would.

I didn’t get back to Limerick until 23:20 that night, but my body seems to be adapting to being deprived of what is considered by many to be a human right. I’m sleeping less these nights because of the cast and I think my body is coming to terms with this.

I’ve been in the cast 3 of my 6 weeks. The days nights when I’d go without sleep in the beginning are luckily gone but I’m still not sleeping well or for long. Two graphs from the iPhone app Sleep Cycle can be seen in this post: one from castified me, one from cast-less me. You can see the obvious difference.

The problem is that the cast is a lot like a baby. It needs to get out of bed every 4 or so hours and be stretched and have a glass of water or else it gets restless and I can’t sleep.

There’s a clause in the Geneva convention against that!

The problem with last using Last.Fm is that it puts my obsessive music-listening habits out for the world to see. Then again, one could argue that I’m the one putting them up.. :)

I do love the service though – if my laptop got stolen/broken tomorrow and the hard drive got wiped, I’d love my music library. That’s not a massive problem, mind you – I back up my (admittedly small) music library on Dad’s external USB hard-drive pretty regularly.. but that doesn’t save play counts. In what I think is iTunes’ single greatest FAIL, play counts aren’t copied over when you move the files about the place. That’s why Last.FM is so useful for me – remote play counts.

As you can see from the picture – the soundtrack from the musical “Chess” is being listened to a lot in my library these days… the cast wakes me almost without fail most nights around 3am. I’ll get up and stretch my leg by walking to the kitchen for a drink of water before going back to sleep. When I do that I like to listen to music and C for Chess seems to always be selected in my blind mouse jerks in iTunes.

If you wanna connect on Last.FM; I’m TrustTommy on there too.

There’s nothing like a Friday evening to get you in a really good mood. It was a reasonably good day down in Limerick here — not quite tshirt-and-shorts weather but it wasn’t pelting down. We even saw the sun for a while during the day! Mum’s right — Spring is here.

People talk about how their life dream is to achieve happiness.

They’re trying too hard.

Happiness isn’t some tiny dot on the horizon – it’s an every day thing attainable by all. Seriously, don’t be afraid to be happy. Or rather, recognize the fact that it’s possible to actually be happy in every day circumstances.

Photo owned by Daquella manera (cc)

I’ve been given a wheelchair for the period I’m in a cast for maneuvering through the school, which even I must admit makes some sense. There are 1,200 students at my school and the corridors at lunch breaks are quite hectic – I don’t know how anyone manages, actually.

I took it for a spin in school earlier today to get a feel for the ‘chair around the corridors. Whatever about my legs getting weak, my upper arms will be like rocks by the end of the 6 weeks. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a wheelchair so I’m relearning some old tricks I used to know.

I’m not talking about anything so drastic as wheelies but I totally had developed some knacks for turning corridors without stopping, turning 180 degrees and going through narrow doors (backwards, and then you use your hands to push yourself through). I’ve also dug up some gloves from the utility room which should stop my hands getting ripped to shreds.

I kind of mind having to use the wheelchair because it’s so annoying and intrusive. Then again, you know what else is annoying and intrusive?

Slipping somewhere, breaking your leg and winding up in hospital for a few weeks.

I think the wheelchair, therefore, is a good idea and I’ll definitely be using it.

Especially if it does what it’s supposed to — allow me to sleep the whole night through without waking up in pain. I miss sleeping well. The cast’s been on a week today and so far I’ve had one night of not-bad sleep. That night, I went to bed at 4am – not something I can really continue doing when I’ve school at 08.30 the next morning, is it?

6am starts have never been, are not and never will be welcomed in TommyLand. If I could pay money to never have to be woken early, I would.

I was awake that early because I was due in Cappagh Hospital at 9am for surgery. The car journey up passed in a haze of trying to sync videos to my iPhone and listening to music.

We arrived into the hospital around 08:45 and were shown to the day ward where we waited for the surgeon to call me. I changed into their hospital gown and passed the time watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (about halfway through now — very good movie) At about 11:20, I was called by the nurse. In true House style, I was brought down to the OR on a gurney. Not at speed though and not while Foreman, Chase, Cameron, Thirteen, Kutner or Taub briefed me about my condition. Hrrmph.

I waited outside the OR for a moment and slipped off my shoes and socks. Then it was time to go in. I was due to get cortisone injections into the patella tendon to relieve pain. I’d also have that leg put in a cast to prevent me from using it too much in the weeks following the injections.

The injections themselves made me really nauseous for a few minutes until one of the nurses brought me a glass of water, then it subsided. Apart from that, I’d no ill effects. I was wheeled back to the ward where I had some bread and jam and got dressed. After that it was learning what was the most effective hobbling method on the two crutches.

I slept a bit on the way down from Dublin (am home now) which was nice and should reset my body clock somewhat. I have all of tomorrow to get used to the cast and then it’s Wexford for the weekend! Seriously looking forward to that.

The cast is for 6 week and extends from mid-thigh to ankle. I can still wear the same clothes and shoes while it’s on, which is handy.

I’m going to miss drumming for 6 weeks. :( Although I do have a solution in mind it’s a bit of a pipe dream. It involves double bass pedals and bricks.

Shall also miss swimming, but that’s harder to work around.

I’ve always been a fiercely inquisitive person, which is totally something which has gotten me into trouble with people before. It seems to grate with them — something I don’t get. What’s seemingly considered cute in children becomes a ‘very annoying trait’ awfully quickly. What’s wrong with wondering?

Something, apparently.

I went to Boston in November, to visit John and Patrick. It was my first time traveling alone, although my only real periods alone were the airports. Still, it was a big leap in independence and more than one person asked me if I was nervous.

I wasn’t in the slightest. I was filled with excitement at the prospect of this new experience. I’m sure I could’ve found things to be nervous about — but what a fantastic waste of energy that would have been.

Mom briefly suggested taking a taxi to the café where I’d be meeting John and Patrick but where’s the fun in that? Taxis here are no different to taxis in Boston — I’d have gotten inside, stuck headphones in and let the journey pass in a haze of motor way signs and The Dresden Dolls. That would’ve been boring.

On a slightly related note, I’m currently working on a film. Nothing of Spielberg proportions (yet) but just something thrown together in iMovie based on that journey to Boston. It’s a composite of music, videos I shot while there and photos I took.

I love working on making things work for me.

I knew how the opening would be. First shot is a photo, zoomed in so far you can’t quite make out what it’s of. It pans out and you can see it’s the entire cast of RENT. Slowly dissolve to black and the words “Boston: November 2009″ appear. All this is accompanied by a few bars of one of my favourite songs.

Sounds easy enough, but isn’t. Drag the photo in, apply the zoom effect, easy enough. Add the title card and caption, again, not difficult. It’s the song that provides the difficulty. It’s only a 10 second segment I’m after, so we open it in QuickTime to trim it down either side until it’s just right. But, if we save it and try and drag that into iMovie, it won’t be recognized because QuickTime’s saved it in a different format. We’ve got to drag that new file into Garageband and convert it to an MP3 and then drag it into iMovie.

Doesn’t seem so simple now, does it? Still, this is the sort of thing I love. Interacting with computers and making them work for me. Think Dr. Dolittle with less fur.

As you do, right?

Taken in France in 2009.

If you’re wondering what I’m staring so intently at.. I can only equate the light show to…

I tried to catch up with the blue box but it got away :(

Yesterday, I stayed at home because I was feeling crappy. I was kept company by Rick O’Shea’s dulcet tones coming from my phone. No, he didn’t call me — I was availing of 2FM’s radio app.

From my phone — yeah. Anywhere in Ireland I have mobile signal I can now listen to pretty much any national radio station.

In The Simpsons episode entitled “Lisa’s Wedding”, which originally aired March 19, 1995, Lisa goes to a fortune teller who predicts Lisa’s true love – in 2010. It shows many popular stereotypes of what the future was going to be like — a flickering hologram of an oak with a plaque that reads “in memory of a real tree”, robots clattering past (although we later see they’re simply walking towards auditions for the Wizard of Oz) and cars hovering.

Of course, we still have trees and cars still need to touch the ground, but that totally doesn’t mean we’re not evolving.

Look at iPods as a prime example — launched in October 2001, see how much smaller they’ve become in just over 8 years.

I think that this is the way technology’s going — smaller and more intelligent. Our phones can now find us anywhere on the planet as well as acting as cookbooks, gaming devices and wheelchair remotes. We can receive SMS updates for just about anything nowadays and even control things like Sky+ with just a quick message.

While I’m sure that we will see some new inventions, I think that a lot of it will be improvements on what we already have.

To quote XKCD — The future’s pretty cool!

I was at home last night, reading my New Yorker, when this fell out from between the pages:

You’re meant to fill it out, and just stick it in the postbox. Am I the only one who sees the problem therein?

Obviously, since you’re writing your credit card details on it, you should put it in an envelope before sending it away, but what about the people who don’t realize what they’re doing?

It’d be nice if the New Yorker had a little note at the bottom telling you how to not be the victim of credit card fraud.

Recently, I’ve noticed that my old cane (picture) had been getting a wee bit small for me — to be expected; I’m in that age of rapid growth and the cane was fitted for me in June 2009.

So I went ahead and ordered a new cane from my cane website earlier this week. Thus followed the usual XKCD-style package tracking madness.

I decided not to order the same cane again for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted something different, simple as. Secondly, there are times when a cane with flames on it is unsuitable, and something more reserved is called for. Finally, experience played a part — the flamey-cane scratched a lot when it fell or brushed against a wall, so I wanted to go for something that wouldn’t mark so easily.

From the brief bit of walking that I did today, I can tell that I was pretty on-the-mark with the height (from your wrist joint to the floor — mine’s 35 inches) of this cane, and that the sturdier material (wood versus carbon fibre) will be a bonus. The website tells me that the wooden cane is .2 of a pound heavier than my old cane — though it feels more.

All in all, a great success :)