all the world's a stage...
I'm a Computer Science undergraduate in my final year studying at Reading University. I like music, movies, photography, reading and if I can ever get around to it, writing. Also a fan of horror, sci-fi and fantasy so there's plenty of re/blogging on those areas.
I write gig/event reviews at From The Pit
Elsewhere on the web:
Many tweaks to this and web presence in general in the pipeline... when I get around to it.
Weekly Top Artists (via Last.fm):
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Avengers cocktails! :D
Makes me want to try them out!
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Facebook’s initial public offering has many people asking:...
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For the full story behind this, see this.
November-Present
Things have got pretty bad. Towards the end of November I was seeing the GP repeatedly, trying to get him to give me something to stop me being so debilitatingly tired all the time.
The only thing he was willing to offer was to increase my dose of sertraline from 50mg to 100mg- because I found that the 50mg dose seemed to stop me getting headaches as much or as often, so maybe increasing the dose might help in other ways.
I repeat, while it may be an antidepressant I was not taking it because I was depressed, but rather I was taking it because it seemed to help with my headaches- which is one of the symptoms of my ME. Something is better than nothing, I figured, so I agreed to the increased dosage.
As I went through this new packet, I didn’t find that I was getting any additional improvement from the increased dosage.
So I’d take one pill a day but sometimes I’d miss a day but as I’d still have boosted serotonin levels in my system, I could just top up the next day and carry on as normal. Thus, it would be one tablet a day or at least one every other day. No big deal.
But as my condition seemed to take a turn for the worst, there would be more and days that I’d lose to sleeping because I’d be so tired and that was all I could do. This eventually led me to missing more than one day at time. It was at this point I realised that this was not working. Because on the second day without sertraline, I got the mother of all headaches.
It occurred to me that I was locking myself into a drug that provided minimal benefit which if I ever stopped taking, there would be a small bit of hell to pay. If I was benefiting more substantially, then it would be a different story. I’ve concluded that I would rather risk the occasional headache without sertraline than the guaranteed mega headache if I were on it and discontinued it.
I think I’ll see how things go without sertraline. Going onto 100mg tablets was counter-productive. If occasional headaches become a problem, I’ll consider taking a low dose as a prophylactic but otherwise I think the SSRI angle is a dead end.
Damn.
What I’d really like is for the doctor to let me try something else. Screw the “official guidelines”. Given that there’s no cure for ME/CFS anyway, lets forget about the diagnosis for a moment and focus on alleviating the actual symptoms. What I’d like is to be able to take something to fight off the constant tiredness and need to sleep.
Sittingbourne Carnival Association blamed the sign makers. Surely of all people, sign makers ought to know how to spell? If that’s the case then someone at SCA can’t spell and the sign maker was simply producing the signs as ordered. Otherwise, I think they should use a different sign maker next time.
Me and my sister, who are (obviously) HUGE Whovians, went to a cocktail party tonight. Both of us have TARDIS iPhone cases.
While at the party, we were introduced to our father’s partner’s son (who, sadly, is closer in age with my sister).
As we talked with him, he asked “Is that a police box on your phone?”. Expecting to (as usual) have to explain why we have Police Public Call Boxes on our phones, he surprised us by finishing “I love Doctor Who!”.
Our reactions:
Followed shortly by:
I should be studying but Tumblr is so much more interesting, lol. FAIL. The day that works as a pick up line for me is probably the day I meet “the one”. I’m not holding my breath. ><
To follow up on my previous post, it seems the article is question has been updated.
It’s still at http://www.bsckids.com/2011/08/90210s-mark-sheppard-joins-supernatural-this-season/ and it’s STILL erroneous, even ignoring the URL.
There’s a big photo of James Patrick Stuart but that doesn’t distract from the fact that it still refers to writer/producer Sera Gamble as a co-star:
“Former 90210 star James Patrick Stuart will be appearing on the upcoming season of Supernatural. While he has stayed pretty mum on the show, his co-star Sera Gamble said that he will play a charming role.”
I know she’s very talented but I’m pretty sure she’s not taking up a regular starring role.
Nice try Ms. Peel. Third time lucky perhaps?
(via @Mark_Sheppard)
Behold! An article so badly researched, it’s not even funny. Fans of Mark Sheppard and Supernatural will have no trouble picking out the numerous errors in this article. I’m preserving it here for posterity so that we can all marvel at what a gargantuan fail it is.
Check it out for yourself if they’ve not removed the evidence by the time you read this: http://www.bsckids.com/2011/08/90210s-mark-sheppard-joins-supernatural-this-season/
I’m aware that including a link may be sending traffic to this site so to balance things out I guess if you do pay them a visit, you can add to the growing list of comments on the article. Also, watch out for that annoying auto-play video advertisement on the upper right.
Apparently, “Sarah Peel is a freelance writer/blogger who has written for many sites”. Wonder if the rest of her articles are this factually accurate.
It’s horrendously unreliable. It typically makes it past the “preparing data” phase and then stalls.
I deal with it with some combination of:
- Clearing browser cache
- Doing garbage collection in the java console
- Rebooting computer
I’m not actually sure which one or combination of those resolves the problem. If anyone knows of a foolproof way of getting it to work first time then let me know!
Hopefully when I next check it, it will have finished uploading the first batch of photos.
Ooh… the story is spreading? :p
(Follow-up to http://atwas.tumblr.com/post/408967400/talk-talk-spotify-email-privacy-fail-now )
You know, sometimes I do feel like I’m talking to myself… Then again… maybe not.
From the looks of it, starting after around 2pm, we seem to have a little discussion list going- courtesy of Spotify. Do I get any prizes for blogging about it at 12:18?
A reply from Spotify arrived at 18:43 - obviously having got the hint this time, it didn’t include all our email addresses:
We of the discussion list have other ideas… Spotify Premium Accounts please!
There’s a Facebook group for this now: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=316834627083
Talk Talk / Spotify Email : Privacy Fail
Now, you’d think a big company like Talk Talk or Spotify would know how to send a mass/marketing email properly.
Talk Talk/Spotify have been running a competition where every day you can submit the Spotify URI of your favourite track for a chance to win one of 24 Spotify Premium accounts at http://talktalkpremiumcomp.com.
In the few days leading up to the launch of the competition, you could enter your email address to receive a reminder by email when the competition was open… I didn’t think it would do any harm so I entered my email address.
“Privacy policies” typically assure you something along the lines that any information you supply will only be used for the purpose which was intended and will not be shared with any third parties.
In the spirit of this, email addresses are one thing that should be kept private. Whomever sent this email either didn’t understand this or perhaps more likely (aren’t I charitable? :p) accidentally put everyone’s email addresses into the To: field.
At first I looked at the sender’s address, and seeing that it comes from a gmail address raised an eyebrow- bit unprofessional to not use a domain email address. Then again, they have shared my email address with over 250 other people…
On further investigation, I reckon this email is legit. In any case, I don’t see why anyone would fake this kind of email. It’s a poor phishing email if that’s what it was meant to be, because there isn’t any link in the email at all- despite what the “Click here to enter” button image might suggest, the entire email simply consists of “reminder.jpg” and doesn’t link to anything.
The mailed-by header indicates it was sent from spotify.com… and looking at the full headers, the return-path is greg@spotify.com (Spotify account manager)
Sharing 250 email addresses between those people in a mass mailing like this is such a rookie mistake. Very unprofessional!
This is so very annoying… Still having this problem. Have looked around the net and haven’t been able to find any concrete explanation or fix.
I’ve been getting this crash ever since I upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows XP. I wiped the partition and did a clean install. Before the upgrade, I was running Windows XP on this machine for 4-5 years without problems.
The processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ and no, nothing is overclocked.
The graphics card is a nvidia geforce 7800 gtx, with the latest drivers.
A new computer is possibly in the pipeline but in the meantime… any suggestions?
