Ian's Tumour

Busy getting cured

2012-11-18T09:51:00.000+01:00

As usual, my blog is taking a back seat. Much of this is due to various types of therapy radio, chemo, speech (including reading) and occupational.

But first I need to congratulate Carol on her belated (21st October) Birthday, so her it goes......... Happy Birthday Carol ......... A very nice surprise around Carol's celebration was a visit from my little sister Marion and her daughter, my niece Claire. This was the first we have seen her in Switzerland for 20 years!

Radiotherapy

I started radiotherapy with concurrent chemo on 10th October. About the only difference since my radiotherapy back in 2007 was the mask had been improved to incorporate a dentat holder which improves the position accuracy and removes the nose hole for breathing. I will try and get a picture of me in the new mask if I can. See the previous blog entries for how it was 5 years ago.

Diagnosis & Treatment

The Chemo Man (Oncologist)

Concurrent Radiation and Chemo therapy

Radiation Therapy Ends

I started off on the Radiotherapy badly, I decided to try taking the Chemo before going to bed with the idea that any nausea I would have would be hidden by sleep. This was a big mistake, at around 3am in the morning I woke up and had to go straight to the bathroom to empty my stomach. This continued on an off until around lunch time. I was not sure wether or not this was caused by the regime or chemo body shock, but either way going (back) to the old trusted, morning regime, seemed to fixed the serious nausea, and I have not seen anything like that since.

I had thought that the side effecs were worse this time around; Nausea and radiotherapie burns, but looking back to the blog I can see that, as Carol had already said, that is just not true. In fact the only thing that is worse is my head sore all over due to, not only the burns on both sides, but also the scalp scars soreness. These keep me awake at nite.

Well at least there is only another week to go before The radio therapy ends and I get a few weeks reprieve from chemo.

Otha Therapies

By now I should have been doing regular Speech, Occupational and Neurological therapies, but due to a cock-up at the hospital my insurer has only just given their permission. So I have only just started speech therapy last week. The first couple of sessions were more about analysis rarther than therapy but finally I got a useful tool today. This was a simple tool that forces you to contextualize a sentence by covering up the bottom of the sentence while trying to read it. This lack of information forces you to take into the sentence context to fill out the missing information. I was sceptical at first but after a few sentences is really started to improve my reading.

Printed page to Speech

Earlier I had mentioned a dream tool for OCR to speach. In fact it turns out I can actually build up this using a couple of iPhone apps. The first is an OCR app called TextGrabber that uses the built in Camera (or existing photo), the second piece is the iPhone built-in Text to speech. I was astounded at how OCR has improved over the past few years when I last used it. The really cool feature of TextGrabber is built in language translation, so I can scan a German document and speak back in English!

Of course this solution is not perfect due to the camera weekness. If I use a scan from my scanner transfered via PhotoStream the OCR is almost perfect but a lot less convenient than the camera. That said we are talking a CHF3 ($3) iPhone app versus a CHF80 equivalent Mac app.

The Wall

No not the Pink Floyd album, a real wall. Over the last 6 weeks we have had builders / gardeners replacing a 40m (30m x 10m) retaining wall around our garden. I wanted to get a new car this year but we had to do this instead because The old one was falling down. I'd like to thank the workmen for doing such a great job (amazing eh) and our neighbours for put-ing up with this work except those neighbours who stole a big chunk of our garden.

Just about me

Very very tired,
tired of traveling to hospital,
tired of radiotherapy,
tired of the pills,
tired of trying to read,
tired that I can not read,
tired this blog takes 10 times than it used to,
tired of having to ask for help,
tired of what is till to come,
tired of not sleeping,
just simply tired of life but...….
The glimpse of life at the end of the tunnel makes it worthwile.

Lots of updates

2012-09-30T17:14:00.000+02:00

Latest MRI Sample

Shows before and after surgery. In the post pictures there is a lot of swelling still visible but this was only a day after surgery so that is no surprise. In the vertical post picture you can see a fair ammount of tumour still left so it is essential to get the radio and chemo therapies going as quiclkly as possible.

Prior to surgery - shows solid tumour

Post Surgery - most of tumour removed

Staples and Stitches Removed

On monday I went to my local doctor (gp) to get the stitches and staples removed. I was surprised at how painless the stapel removal procedure was, especially the way the the stapels just squeeze and lifted away". The only problem in this area Is the length of time the scars seem to be taking to heal, and the longer this takes, the later the radiology and Chemo treatment can start and the later this starts the longer time the tumour has to grow.

Radiology and Oncology Discussions

On last Monday and Wednesday I had discussions with my new Radiologist and my old Oncologist (same guy that looked after me 5 years ago.

Given the repeat performance of a Glioblastoma Multiforme , the tumour board had already decided to recommend standard treatment accordingly. This consists of 6 weeks of conformal 3D Radiation therapy to a total dosage of 60 Gray (maximum allowable dosage) concurrently with Temozolomid Chemo therapy followed by a further 6 cycles of Temozolomid (1 week in every 4) for the next six months.

Note that this is identical to the treatment I had for my original tumour. I can get the full dosage because, luckily the new radio beams will not cross over the old beams.

Interestingly, the lady raduiologist is English and ex NHS and used to work in Hertfordshire, where Caroll and I grew up. She had worked in the QUE2 hospital in Welwyn Garden City the hospital that our daughters were born in, and ironically the hospital in which my mother was diagnosed with her Brain Tumour! Given that and an ex NHS Neurolosurgeon also from Hertfordshire (Watford) it feels like I am back home :-)

How's the Brain?

Enough of my physical condition and up and coming treatments but how's my brain?

The best news is nothing is worse since the operation and the worst news is that nothing is much butter. I still cannot really read and I still have these peripheral visual anomalies which confuse my attenpts to relearn reading and improve writing

I have seen some improvement in finding my way arounb my machines. I believe that this is due to re-learning rarther than regaining capability although, of course, I cannot be certain. As I have previously mentioned I am much better at reading symbols and icons than words I believe thad is because they do not have to actually be read. Ironically in the past I was a words man and had a lot of contempt for Icons. Now, without them my life would be almost unliveable.

You can not imagine how hard it is to live in our modern world without the skill of reading. Withot text to speech my quality of life would de approaching zero.

Technology keeps me sane, by providing me the tools to navigate the written world.

A device that could do real time OCR (optical character recognition) to speech is on my wish list then I would be able to read the printed word as well as just the electronic word.

Horror Show

2012-09-22T15:20:00.000+02:00

This is my second post since surgery, and is all of my own work
(last one was dictated to Amber)

In order to put this together, I needed some tools
As my reading is somewhat worsened due to some peripheral vision issues.

So to write this I make short sections and then play them back using my iPad's "text to speech" utility.

I think my reading seems to be getting better but omly symbol recognision. For example, i had lost the ability to read an analog clock but that has come back. My ability to use a keyboard seems also improved

My general health is OK although I feel rather tired.
Emotionally I am much more stable.

For your entertaimment here is the official horror show from the 9th of September.
Please forgive Carol's shaking hands, but you can agree the pictures are pretty grizzly.

The new scar and its 24 stapers

The repair job, I hope it worth it

The pair

On Monday morning I shouid get my staples (new scar) and stitches (dent repair) removed. In the afternoon I have a pre Oncology check up to see if I am fit enough to be poisoned and radiated.

By the way, writing this blog is a very slow and stressfull process and consequently the result loses much of it's personality, and I apologise for that,

Ian

It's alive! It's alive!

2012-09-08T15:54:00.000+02:00

(Hello this is Amber writing, because my dad can't write at the moment. This will hopefully change in the near future, but in the meantime dictating to me has to suffice.) Just a short note. Entered the hospital on wednesday the 5.9.12 and was operated on on thursday. The tumor was bigger than expected, but much of it has been removed. I haven't seen a picture of it as yet, so no idea how much bigger. The first couple of days after the op were bad, death wishes etc. But today I have my will to live back...even with the strange things I have to work around such as weird visual effects (the right eye has been effected so my eyesight seems to have gotten worse), disembodied body parts and having to relearn how to use the ipad and phone. I am also now titanium man thanks to a newly aquired titanium plate. (for the swiss readers: I upgraded to halbprivat, to enjoy the two beds per room and the coffee and cake trolley). Hoping to leave on monday if all goes well and will give you an update when I get home.

Busy day preparung for Op

2012-09-05T17:58:00.000+02:00

Seemed to have seen everybody today.

First off I got all the usual checks. Blood tests, Blood Pressure, body temperature and quick strength tests

Next the neurosurgeon came in and told me the show would start at 9 in the morning he then explained the procedure (drill hole, remove gunk, seal up), and offered me a bonus.

My last operation (the Biopsy) five years ago left me with a significant dent in my head. Although this can be used as the base of endless jokes involvingik pick axes and places to store your haircream it has often brought too much attention from kids much to the embarasment of their parents. But more annoyingly it has became a hair trap requiring judicious use of a nose hair trimmer to keed it clear (too much info?)

Anyway the surgeon offered to me a bit if cosmetic work and I accepted on the condition it did not add any risk, I am not that vain.

And of course the last thing the surgeon did was was to get out the marker pen and mark the position of entry (I kid you not, its procedure)

Next along I got an ECG to check to my heart was par for the op and then the anistathist to explain her process. This seems to be by far the most important of all
the processes and the one that more than anything will keep me alive. Of course I am in no way demeaning the man with the knife and the steady hand (i hope).

Last up was a whole bunch of eye tests including, strength, peripheral, colour etc. Because tumour 2 is sitting close to the vision centre of my left eye that wanted chech on any recent damage and later if it gets better or worse. Getting any worse would be a major suprise seeing as I am pretty much blind in my left eye already!

Just had my last Pre-op meal, now its only water until the op is over.
Think I'll grab a shower and cudle up wish a movie and aim for an early night.

Good Night

In Hospital

2012-09-05T11:20:00.000+02:00

Settling down in hospital, just a quick post to make sure that I can post from the pad.
Should go to theartre tomorrow morning, today will be checking that I am healthy enough for the operation.

The Aniethesist and Neurosurgeon should come in this afternoon for a chat.

My "Nuchtern" (no food) sign, tights (anti thrombosis) and bumless gown are already sitting on the side.

But for now, at least I can have lunch.

Surgery on Thursday

2012-09-04T16:29:00.002+02:00

Just a quick post.

Going into hospital tomorrow for surgery on Thursday to get as much of tumour 2 out as possible. Should not get too many side effect from this one because of a clean entry from the back. Could get some peripheral sight issues on the left but given that I am already pretty blind on that side I probably won't notice it. But of course brain surgery is is never without risks.

If all goes well I will be in for about a week. Hopefully I'll be able to post a couple of short notes while I am in hospital.

Wish me luck.
Ian

About Reading

2012-09-03T16:30:00.000+02:00

I have been trying to figure out what has gone wrong with my reading and in doing so having some fun finding out some interesting things about reading in general. These are some hypotheses I have based purely on observation.

The fundamental unit of reading is the word
A sentence context is used to build each sentence from words
Letters are only used where word templates cannot be found
There are two word mechanisms and I call them Juvenile and Adult (for reasons which will become clear).
"Juvenile" is a one to one word lookup. This is the initial look up method used for a word
"Adult" uses a fuzzy algorithm from the sentence contect to match an initial template to a vocabulary. THIS IS THE BIT THAT IS BROKEN IN MY READING
Spelling can be used when there is a missing template or a badly formed template (misspelled word).
The juvenile mechanism and it's associated vocabulary is formed in early life (perhaps up to 12 years old) and one that age is passed new words are not added
Reading and Writing (and speaking) use totally separate mechanisms
I believe that reading, writing and speaking are joined together through an Information Context containing Information Snippets which are not word or sentence based but based upon a categorised memory mechanism

This is my picture of what I think it might look, but of course the clever stuff is going on in the Sentence Context (which holds on to a few sentences I thing) & The Information context (which is the heart of our memory processing). I would love to play with this stuff if I have the time.

So here is my reasoning from observation.

The fundamental unit of reading is the word

Hard to explain : Without a word there is no context (that is you cannot move forward in the sentence). With my problem I cannot read an "Adult" word without context , spelling alone will not provide context.

A sentence context is used to build each sentence from words

See previous explanation

Letters are only used where word templates cannot be found

This is a bit of a guess, but my spelling mechanism at the moment is explicit. That is I have to force it and therefore recognise is use. For juvenile words it is never forced, and for adult I have to force spelling when I need.

There are two word mechanisms and I call them Juvenile and Adult (for reasons which will become clear).

I am pretty sure on this one (see research below). The juvenile words work for me with no problem like simple lookup. These are all very familiar words that were probably learnt in my first 10 years of life. I stumble only on those later learnt words (unfortunately / fortunately my drugs have improved my reading and I can not test as easily now) where context is needed to see the words (adult mechanism).

Further evidence : I did read german but I seem to have NO juvenile words forcing me to use context to get going in a sentence (this was very hard with my broken template mechanism)

"Juvenile" is a one to one word lookup. This is the initial look up method used for a word

See discussions about, I can just read these straight through without impediment

"Adult" uses a fuzzy algorithm from the sentence context to match an initial template to a vocabulary. THIS IS THE BIT THAT IS BROKEN IN MY READING

If I find a word I do not understand it DOES NOT APPEAR SPELT CORRECTLY. Once the context is brought in by scanning the sentence the correct spelling magically appears. Spelling alone will not do this!! Very strange to see but true it is like watching a spell checker at work.

Spelling can be used when there is a missing template or a badly formed template (misspelled word).

See above, mechanise not at all clear

The juvenile mechanism and it's associated vocabulary is formed in early life (perhaps up to 12 years old) and one that age is passed new words are not added

See the twin mechanism argument above

Reading and Writing (and speaking) use totally separate mechanisms

Easy one, I could not read properly but I could speak perfectly and write OK except where I had to read to "help"

I believe that reading, writing and speaking are joined together through an Information Context containing Information Snippets which are not word or sentence based but based upon a categorised memory mechanism

This is on the edge, but I believe this because once I moved on a couple of sentences (perhaps a paragraph?) I could no longer use the context to re-read the sentence (it hat been forgotten). However the information had not been lost, I remembered the information content in a different context. It had all gone into a differently structured "Memory"

I got some confirmation of the Juvenile / Adult mechanism theory in current research from the speech therapist who spoke to me (we had great fun talking about this stuff and she thought it might be useful for here current Masters work).

TOTALLY FASCINATING

Wish me luck for next weeks surgery.

Tumour 2

2012-08-31T22:00:00.004+02:00

So here is the next insatmenr of "Ian's Tumour" But now it's Tumour 2. But more about this in a while.

Got rushed into accident at my favourite hospital on Tuesday at around 5pm. That was strange because although I was sent by Professor Neuro I had to go through "standard accident" stuff like blood sugar, ECG (but not EEG) and the obligatory saline drip etc.

Went through a bunch manual tests while I was waiting for the CAT scan, which of course I was really waiting for Got the result (with picture, below) at about 8pm.

The result was unsurprising but still shocking a huge (to me it seemed) new tumour on the left hand site behind where the old one had been. I was now, awaiting confirmation, Recurrent GBM

I was kept in hospital and after an event in accident that Carol and I will never want to see again I got to a normal ward at lights out with no shower or wash and still with my drip that I did not need. The night was very restless, possibly my worst night in hospital. The second day, wednesday, consisted of an MRI which confirmed everything we had first seen in the CAT, and an EEG to see how manic my brane was (no too bad).

On the morning of day three I had four of Aarau's finest brain girls and guys at my bedside to put forward the options to me. At 3pm, on my request (to have a quite weekend at home) I was discharge with the report, and appoints for Monday an open ended sickness certificate a prescription for a pile of drugs (my old friend Timonil that prevents seizures, Cortesone for getting the swelling down and 2 others to counter effect cortisone)

Welcome again to the big C emotional roller coster.

------

For those of you who have not been paying attention I was diagnosed on 5th September 2007with a Glioblastoma Multiforme brain tumour, a primary tumour. After Radiation and Chemo treatment I was cleared of that tumour by the end of September 2009

Most beloved friends and family, of course, prefer to ignore that this is an currently incurable disease and nearly always recurs. For me it has jest recurred, the 1st recurrence and therefore Tumour 2 with clearly more exciting side effects. So after being risen from the dead, I am to die again. Unfortunately the great god of statistics shows us that no 2 is not so easy to get rid of and puts my chances of continued survival at less than 2 years. So those are the facts (statistics).

LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!!!

and now a lot more of my (and Carol) decisions than last time. So the dream team (the famous Tumour Bord) met on Wednesday and gave me some options, so I and Carol have decided to go for all of them (best value for money)

First Line of Attack

Surgery : Some time next week I will probably go in for my second round of brain surgery, and remembering my 1st bout I am not looking forward to this again. The purpose of this exercise is to remove as much of the tumour with as little brain as possible. Three is a 5% chance that I will not survive this and I have already done it once (no smart ass statistics on this one from anyone its stills worse) but at least we know I have done it once.

Second and Third lines of Attack

Because the surgery will leave stuff around no matter how clean (do not want to take out too much brain)

We will probably go for what I had for the primary tumour conformal 3D Radiation therapy concurrently with Temozolomid Chemo therapy followed by a further 6 cycles of Temozolomid

There is another option I would like to discuss on Monday (Gliadel Wafer) before the final decision-

THE PICTURE -------------------

And for those that like picture, take a gander at this CAT span.

The big dark thing in the bottom right is the new tumour (actually on the left) the wide ring is fluid build up. I am already taking cortisone to reduce that fluid and drop the pressure on the brain (shown by the darker material in the lest brain (right of the picture). The other anomalies above the new tumour are the left over material from the old tumour not, we are pretty sure, additional tumours. Bit of a mess don't you think?

Talk to you soon I hope

p.s. if this is a bit hard to understand, imagine what it is like trying to write blindfold (actually not that bad as I have devised a way or reading with my broken mechanism see the next blog post).

Still cannot read properly

2012-08-28T15:25:00.001+02:00

Still cannot read properly.
No worse, no better.
Headache seems to me better.
Frustration is preventing me to anything useful

Called my doctor but he was in a consultancy (sprechstunde) awaiting for him to call.
Total frustration: can't seem to be able to do anything (reading or otherwise)

Canceled all my work appointments as I cannot concentrate and of course it is difficult to do my kind of work without being able to read (screwed something up in the sentence sentence b.......

.....got a phone call from somebody selling newspapers and I have lost track of the track think I was talking about problems of working when you cant read... well you can't.

Strangely I can fix stuff in the sentences I am writing but as soon I have finnish it it goes in to past mode and it becomes very hard to read. It is better to rewrite than correct after.

Write only memory..... it is like writing on a ticker-tape with invisible ink.

I really want my reading to come back very soon otherwise I might go mad.

Reading Difficulties

2012-08-27T23:48:00.000+02:00

Sorry about the lack of blog entries
But at least I am still posting entries for the original goal.

Yesterday I was reading a magazine article and I realised that I was having a bit of trouble reading. But I put this down to a bit of tiredness and the odd journalistic style of Uncut.

But then this morning I picked up my pad to do my usual monday morning e-mail session and I realised that I was having problems reading my e-mail's. I tried a few e-mails because I could not believe this, but I found the same problem for each e-mail.

I could read the start of the mail but at some word I would stumble and then I would have to spell the word out in my mind and make sure I could understand what it said. Once that started to happen every few words would stump me.

These were not complex words e.g. "spent" "interesting" would cause me to stumble and once I stumbled frustration came on and then the whole thing would go gaga. Often I could get on a run and get through whole sentences and then an unexpected word would catch me out.

Sometimes I just could not get going at the beginning of a sentence and I would have to take a run at it somehow.

Using a ruler seems to help as reducing the number of words at one time to deal reduces confusing.
By the way I do not know how the post looks because I have trouble reading the post back !!
Writing is OK, reading is awful.

I am quite scared at the moment.

-------

I have decided to try again in the morning (putting it down to a cold and tiredness). If there is no improvement in the morning I guess I will be talking to Professor Neuron for the first non-regular time in five years.

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T17:23:00.000+01:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all.

Usual apologies about not doing the blog for such a long time, no excuses.
I even managed to completely forget to talk about our trip to China in August. I guess I should put something retrospective in on that very strange visit (not so much a holiday as an educational revelation).

So what else has been going on.

Leon
Leading up to Christmas my eldest grandson, Leon, has been sick with some digestive system problems, even spending some days in hospital a couple of weeks before christmas. He has been getting nausea and stomach aches and losing weight (mainly because he does not want to eat). After any number of tests, the doctors are none the wiser than they were at the beginning. This reminds me so much of the the "Crohn's" saga with Amber back in 1997/8. We are hoping the result will not be the same. At least he was back with us over Christmas, poor little fella.

Christmas with the Gardiner-Smith's
As usual we had the typical Anglo-Swiss holiday season which allows us to start eating on the 6th of December (Niklaustag / St. Nicolas) and to start dieting on 6th January (Dreikönigstag/12th Night). And just to make sure there is no letting up on the gluttony we stick in a baking day (2nd Sunday in December) and a 2nd festive birthday for our lady Kayleigh of the prolific procreation (15th December).

Do you think the people that decided that 12th night was on 6th January could count?

With 10 at the Christmas table there was little time to get bored, no time to play with the new toys (except for the kids of all ages, yes you know who you are) and absolutely no traditional style TV blobbing that is so popular in the UK.

Pads
The favourite presents this year were Pads, or tablets, or slates (depending on whether or not you want to admit that Apple defined the market or not). My vote is with pad, Joss is a tablet guy, I reckon tablets are what you need when you are sick and slates, who would call a piece of hi-tech a "fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock." But a pad, that is what you come home to, that comfortable place where you feel totally at home.....man.

I still have my vintage i-pad (and still happy with it, thank you very much), but we seem to have a new proliferation of i-pads around the house at any given time. And there is the one Sony Tablet "an Android tablet like no other", because it's like a pad maybe?

Thanks for the Presents
Thanks to everybody for this years presents - The soft face, the Port I cannot drink until the puzzle has been solved, the well charged mouse, the prospect of floating above the earth without an engine (but with a parachute) and the the upgrade to being a complete Apple convert. Finally the Windows Notebook can be replaced by my a brand spanking new Air). Apologies to anybody I missed out.

Carol the Artist
Over the past year Carol has added painting to her hobbies. She sneaks off to our bedroom as early as she can to can to dabble the night away in the company of her watercolours and acrylics. I am one of the few, if not the only, person to have seen the results of this enterprise. Give here another year and we'll be looking for exhibition halls.

The 9 to 5
On the work side there have been a lot of changes recently that were out of my control, including the redefinition of my role in the department I work in. I have not been very happy with the changes and have therefore been looking for something more appropriate to my skills (and with the potential for a bit more fun). It looks as though I have found something with my current employer so I will not need to go through the non trivial hassle of changing employers. (Imagine, looking for somebody who would be be prepared to hire me at 30% and handle all of the "organisational" hassle of hiring an invalid). So next year I will be probably doing a lot less trips to Paris but a few more further afield. I will miss my Parisian friends and will need to find some excuses to make the odd visit now and then. More on the new job when things are more or less settled.

Epilogue
I am sure I have missed out on a ton of things that we have been up to in the last 3 months but at the moment in my current drugged up state ( I have a cold) I cannot think of what.

I have already started working on my best of 2011 music list and hope to get this posted before the end of this week, and if I get the chance I might even look at moving the blog later in the week, because if I don't do it this week I think it may be a while.

gardiner-smith.com, new home

2011-09-17T01:17:00.001+02:00

The gardiner-smith.com domain and hosting (mostly used for the our mail addresses) have been hosted by the same service for over 10 years and the services have not change one iota in that time and I was still paying the same price.

Nowadays, e-mail messages are much larger and I had been having quota problems so I decided that I would look if I could get a better deal. I first tried my existing mail/web host service (flump.net) and discovered that they were still talking about the same packages as I got 6 years ago with spaces measured in MB still!! What is more they have not updated their site in 4 years, I think maybe they have lost interest.

After a quick look around it looked like hostpapa had one of the best deals with pretty much unlimited space/bandwidth and a great set of services for €2.95/month. Compared to my 250MB limit for about twice that. They also offered a free domain for life (as long as you stay with them I guess) so I was able to transfer gardiner-smith.com from from register.com to tucows (host papa's registry) at no cost. Their pre-sales on-line support was excellent and instructions for set was clear

Planning the move was quite nerve wracking making sure that the break in service was as short as possible but I need not of worried. I was given an ip address at host papa which allowed me to set up mail accounts and stuff, then once the auth code had been requested & received from the old registry (requiring a phone call and them pleading with me to stay for 10 minutes) and passed on to the new registry all I had to do was wait. I backed up the old mailboxes and up a redirect on my old mailbox so I knew when that stopped redirecting the new domain address had been propagated. It all took 4 days from signing up to being transferred (with no loss as far as I know). Most of that time was just waiting for the internet to propagate my new address through the global DNS. Now a lll I need to do is shut down the old service.

Upshot is I am now running gardiner-smith with hostpapa. No homepage yet, but you can look at some photos of my new grandson and our China holiday at http://gardiner-smith.com/pictures/.

If all goes well over the next few weeks I might go back to hosting my own blog rather than using bloodspot. Mainly depends on how difficult the migration is.

p.s. The more observant may have noticed a few posts from my old 2002/2003 architecture blog just for nostalgia's sake.

Your Good Healtth

2011-09-08T00:06:00.000+02:00

Or mine actually.

Given the origins of this blog I thought I should mention the current state of my health four years on from that fateful day 1n 1997.

I am still alive: This in itself is more than I could have hoped for and I seem to well into the long tail of the morbidity statistics for my condition. Sometimes it is hard to imagine that I am terminally ill.
Side Effects from my condition or treatments: It is difficult for me to tell which is which, and the doctors can't tell either.
- My Brain-Speech connection still has problems and I lose words and forget names more than is normal (or was normal for me). It may be getting worse, but it is definitely a slow progression ifit is. It is the only thing that still scares me, the idea that I might at some time lose my ability to communicate.
- I still have some insensitivity on my right side but either it has got better or I have gotten used to it, I think this was a by-product of my biopsy, but as I said nobody can prove it one way or another.
- I still get headaches on the left side of my head in the mornings, on waking, several times a week, but they are not severe and they usually go away within 30 minutes.
Drugs: I only take Timonil (Carbamazepine) 300 twice a day as a precautionary measure against seizures. This to make sure that my regular EEG doesn't show too much craziness in the damage areas (see plot below) because if it did I would be banned from driving. (Given the drugs I am more likely to get banned for other reasons, but more of that in another post perhaps).
Monitoring: I am now down to 2 check ups a year which comes down to alternate EEG / MRI appointments. Sometimes I feel embarassed taking up the time of the guys and gals at the hospital just so that Professor Neuro can say "No Change"

Just in case anybody is interested here is my latest EEG from yesterday:

Interesting bit is around 3:47 where the sensors (FP1-F7, F7-T3, T3-T5, T5-O1) around my damage get a little crazy,
but not crazy enough to worry Prof. Neuro thank goodness

P.S. I have added a tag Health so you can track just the health stuff

More Ooh & Aah pictures from Jayden

2011-09-06T16:13:00.000+02:00

Just Me

Me Again

Just me and Mum

with Mum and siblings

with Nanny (& u. Joss)

Nanny Again

With Aunty Amber

Extending th Moser arm - Jayden Tyler

2011-09-04T10:27:00.002+02:00

Just a quick blog to announce:

Jayden Tyler Moser

Arrived at 12.02am in Baden Weighing in at 3.3kg (7lb 4oz for the imperalists), 49cm long, quick birth mother (Kayleigh) and baby are fine.

This extends the Moser arm of the Gardiner-Smith's to 3.

My Dad

2011-07-23T21:26:00.000+02:00

I just noticed I did not publish my dad's Eulogy from back in April. Pretty embarrassed actually.
Sorry Dad.

Goodbye Amy

2011-07-23T20:14:00.001+02:00

Shocked by the news of Amy Winehouse's death, even if it was somehow inevitable that she should die young. Such a wonderful songwriter and an incredible singer. I am almost ashamed that on the day after such atrocities in Norway that it was this news that brought me to tears.

I have not felt quiet this way since John Lennon died and I was so much less of a jaded character in those days.

You will be sorely missed Amy, by this fan and millions of others. Rest in peace my lovely.

Weather On-Line Part 2

2011-07-17T23:53:00.000+02:00

Since April, when Carol gave me the Weather station, way too much of my time (and not to mention cash) has been spent on this new hobby and I haven't even got started yet. So far I have just mentioned that I got the station, now I will bore you with the details.

The most important part of the set-up is a Davis Vantage Pro 2. This consists of two major pieces, the ISS (Integrated sensor system) which contains most of the sensors and has to be mounted around 1.2m off the ground. It looks like this:

ISS


ISS, mounting & owner

The Console

The console (shown left) gives you access to all of the data from the ISS (including some basic graphs) keeps history and is where all the system set-up is managed.

The console is also where you plug in the data logger for connecting to the outside world (more on that later).

The ISS contains sensors for:

Temperature & Humidity (in the white thing underneath) and a powered transpiration unit (fan) to keep the air flowing around them. The power comes from the large set of solar cells on the right of the aspirator.
Rain (the big black thing which is the rain collector)
Solar & UV detectors (behind the rain detector, you can only see solar here)
Wind speed & direction (on the arm to the left of the post)

The console adds sensors for (inside) temperature and humidity.

On the front of the ISS there is a little white box where everything is connected together and then sent via wireless to the console and powered by the little set of solar cells on the front. Together that gives you a great standalone weather station.

Hello World
This is all very well if you want to keep yourself to yourself but this weather thing becomes much more fun if you get connected to the internet and onward to the rest of the world.

To do that you can plug a USB data logger into the console and connect it to a PC. The Davis WeatherLink software that came with the data logger was pretty crappy on the MAC so I got a copy of Lightsoft Weather Center which has a wonderful set of graphing tools and all the connections to the Internet Weather Networks you could want.

What is a Weather Network?
Weather networks allow you to provide your weather information to them so that anybody can gain access to your weather data. There are around 20 such networks around but most of them have some kind of local focus. Exceptionally the Weather Underground is global.

In the top right hand widget of this blog page you can see, updating every few seconds, data from my weather station via the Weather Underground (WUG) in almost real time! Now isn't that cool? More than that, if you go to my station on the Weather Underground website (try it by just clicking on the widget) you can look at historical data and statistics from the day the station went on line (around 4pm CET on the 30/4/2011).

WUG also uses sets of data from around the area to provide extended info, almanac's and forecasts. You can look at this here or just go to "current conditions" from my station's (IAGKINDH2) site.

Always on
So all that sounds pretty cool, so what is all this extra stuff that has been taking up my time during May, June and July? Well first up, was I didn't want to have my Mac on all the time to feed information into WUG. In theory I could have could switched it off and update less often, but that kind of defeats the object of real time don't you think? To fix this a clever German guy (Hi Boris) had already thought of this (and much much more) and produced a piece of linux based software (meteohub) that can run on tiny headless PC's to handle all of your weather data requirements. This sounded perfect and would run on one of the little Alix boxes which I had already experience with when building my firewall a couple of years ago.

After a few issues trying to get the software image on a CF card the Alix motherboard was put into a box, the CF card put in and the Alix booted up. I was pretty nervous about the changeover from LWC to meteohub but once the meteohub was set up and running the changeover went like clockwork. So what you see on WUG is being supplied by my very own 24x7 weather server since 5.6.2011.

Not enough wind (unusual for me)
As you can see from the ISS photos, the anemometer and wind direction sensors are mounted on the same pole. Given our shielded garden this was not good enough for accurate wind readings so the sensors had to go to the roof.

Of course, this is nowhere near the ISS so I had to either run a long cable across the garden or use a Davis wireless kit to have the wind sensors talk directly to the console, I went for the latter. So the 3m mast was delivered along with the wireless kit and I was ready to go.

Disaster, on my first explorations for an appropriate site I discovered the house was falling down (OK exaggeration) due to a split beam that should have been fixed nearly 4 years ago (when I was more interested in staying alive than anything else)! So in came the builders to fix that before the mast could go up.


The split beam

One advantage to this small disaster was that the builders were able to build me a mount for the mast on which the wind stuff was to be mounted saving me the trouble.

So on Saturday 7th July I got out my big scary ladder and with a bit of help from Joss and a few prayers to the patron saint of ladder climbers (St. Jacob, I think) up went the mast and my wind readings became official.

The next day out came the my little ladder to help me mount the wireless box. Unfortunately I didn't spend as much time stabilizing this ladder and forgot my prayers so while I was up putting in the last screw, the ladder decided to leave me hanging on the balcony to which the box was attached. I still have some of the bruises caused by the ladder which I had to land on because their was nowhere else for me to go.


Mast with Anemometer

Wireless Box

No bones broken so I was able to stand back and admire my work and to check if everything was working. After a few days I could tell (and you can check too if you like) somewhat higher wind speeds and significantly more consistent wind directions.

So what else was there still to do?
Well, when I went over to meteohub from LWC although WUG didn't lose any data (as the data logger was still on line to the console and recording until meteohub came online), meteohub itself didn't have any of the LWC data from the previous month and that was needed for other purposes (graphs, pc dashboards etc.

So after finding out the LWC and meteohub respective data formats with some help from Boris (Hi Boris) I set out to brush off my Perl skills (which apparently had gone down the drain) to get my lost data into meteohub. This is a work in progress as I keep finding myself some new weather maths to play with on the way.

So when that is finished I will be able to sit back and enjoy my weather station .....
or maybe not ......
here is stuff on the to do list so far:

Getting my Meteohub on the Web - so you too can look at all the fun I am having
Adding a weather (360 degree) CAM so I have records of cloud formations
Before the winter sets in get my rain sensor heater so as I can measure water content of snow fall too (don't believe me?)
Virtual cloud sensor for meteohub to record cloud classifications (a whole subject on its own)
Lobby LWC to support meteohub (I do love their graphs)
Learn more about weather forecasting

That should keep me busy for a while.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
HINT: The cheap way to feed you interest in the weather:

Buy an i-Pad or use one that you have lying around
Download weather Pro-HD (CHF 6)
Enjoy

Storm in a Teacup

2011-07-17T18:05:00.000+02:00

The repeat performance of Wednesday morning's storm didn't occur on Thursday, no lightning, no hail and almost no rain. We went out for a walk with the dogs on Friday and many of the large footpaths in the woods around our house were impassable and we had to wander off to get around.

Yet another blow for the trees but at least not as bad as Orkan (Hurricane) Lothar from Christmas 1999 the remnants of that devastation still scar our landscape.

Here are some of the pictures I took of the damage we saw within a km from the house last Friday.
No Comment Necessary


I know there was a path here last week (really)

About the Dog(s)

2011-07-13T18:42:00.000+02:00

Ah yes, you remember back in January I finally introduced Pepper, well we liked her so much Carol decided she needed a new friend to play with so last week we went looking for soft toy:

And here it is, she is called Daisy (mostly, but I preferred Chilli as in Chilli & Pepper)

Turned out to be another dog.

She is from Italy (can't you tell) and is around 3 years old. She was found tied up at a parking stop next to a motorway. Can anybody understand what kind of person would do that?

Like pepper she loves us all and vice versa but she does seem to be especially attached to Carol, almost literally. So here they all are together (Pepper, Carol & Daisy) in their favorite place, the Kitchen. Actually Carol's second favourite place next to the Garden.

Weathering the Storm

2011-07-13T17:39:00.000+02:00

It seems I have weather on the brain and after the storms we had here last night (see Heftige Regenfälle in der Schweiz), who wouldn't have.

At around 2am, the whole household was awakened instantaneously by the sound of almond sized hail dropping on our roof. As our roof is large and we have no attic this sounded like somebody throwing 1000's of rocks on it. This was accompanied by and the most spectacular thunder and lightning I have ever seen and heard. Most of it was fork but was was going between clouds and the multiple concurrent strikes were unending. Just as we were checking that the dogs were OK (er plural, more on that later) the power went down and the search for candles and torches proceeded. The dogs were actually scared ****less but thankfully without ****.

My weather machine recorded over 30mm of rain (including melted hail, I guess) in the last day and wind gusts of up to 66km/hr. The main storm passed us in about 20 minutes but left a trail of devastation, and I spent sometime afterwards transfixed by its eastward journey carrying with it that extraordinary lightning. You can click on the Metric Underground widget at the right to get the story in numbers.

This morning we had some cleanup to do, but we were lucky, all the slates are still on the roof!
Carol's garden was a mess though with broken plant material littering every corner. The tomato house I built was still standing and had no extra holes which I think is some kind of miracle. Apart from the plants (poor old Carol), the most damage was two broken garden lights (hail had just smashed the covers to pieces) and some quite artistic almond shaped dents in one of our blinds (see the nice pictures I took for the insurance man below).

Now there is just time to batten down the hatches for tonight's expected repeat performance.

Weather on-line

2011-05-01T16:41:00.001+02:00

Carol bought me a brilliant present for my Birthday. A Davis Weather station.
More on this later, but for now just admire the new gadget on this page, just click on it to get the full details of the weather in Kindhausen now! (Ignore wind stuff, anemometer mouting not properly done yet)

BTW, last MRI shows no change in my health, beating the stats by miles now.

Eulogy to my Dad

2011-04-19T21:00:00.000+02:00

A Family’s Eulogy to their dad, Frank Edward Smith,
on the occasion of his funeral,

presented by his son Ian on 19^th April 2011

at St. Peter’s Church, Marymead, Stevenage, England

I spend much of my working life standing in front of people and explaining abstract concepts to them in order to help them to use such concepts in their professional lives.

So why is it that when preparing for what I wanted to say today, to describe the great love that one man had for his family, I found myself mentally dumbstruck? Perhaps it is that that love was so profound and all encompassing that it was almost impossible to put into words. I still feel uncomfortable presenting what I want to express and I hope you will forgive me if I flounder like some babbling idiot. Just to remind you of how I feel to day I would like to wear this, I hope your god doesn't mind (cub cap on head).

Today I feel small, scared and somehow excited, very much like how I felt on one evening in my early life, a Wednesday I think, when my dad took me to a little event that was an experience to spark of in me a lifetimes worth of interest in the world around me; and for my dad it was the start of a renaissance.

But those emotions that I felt that day have a very different significance today:

I feel very small
- Compared to the memory of my father, a great man

I feel a little scared
- That what few words I have found will be an injustice to that memory

I feel somewhat excited
- at the prospect of eulogising such a wonderful warm and loving man

and I feel sad , very sad - that my dad is no longer with us

One cannot talk about my Dad's life without mentioning the Scout Movement. Dad was involved in the Scout's both before and after the Second world war, but after the war, as for many young men returning from their service, dad came back to a different world, and the Scout movement, I guess, had reduced its relevance to him at that time. He married my mum in the last year of the war and a couple of years later she gave birth to their first daughter, my big sister Janet, followed a few years later by our tiny explosion Carol, I followed at the end of the 50's, the only boy in this quartet, and our sixties sister Marion arrives just as the sixties were getting interesting and completing my dad's first family.

On that evening in the mid sixties, the one I mentioned earlier, the day I joined the Cubs, I remember looking for him to take me home only to find him talking to a visiting scout leader in another room, dad had signed back into the movement and the movement would never look back.

My sisters and I have many fond memories of our dad and I asked each of the girls for just one to put into this eulogy. At first, I was a little surprised, by the seemingly small events that they retold and that those events had stuck so long in their minds and grown to such enormity.

Marion remembered

A drive in Wales on our way to one of our adventures where dad, as always, eager to help leaped out of the Transit van, that we were in, to provide guidance for our driver's particularly difficult manoeuvrings round a narrow country lane. Dad disappeared into a ditch taller than his 5'6" and the driver drove on only to be stopped by our plaintive cries from the back.

Carol remembered

Her wedding day; everybody was waiting at the registry office and dad had not yet arrived. A quick phone call confirmed he had decided to wash the kitchen floor as "he had the time". Anyway, sure enough, he arrived on time on his moped in his leathers and like some festive superman he peeled them off to reveal his Wedding suit beneath.

I also remember him burning his nose on the Iron while ironing shirts "Just testing if it was hot enough", the Red nose was there for weeks.

Were we remembering how accident-prone or absent minded dad was? I think not, I think it was the sense of fun that he exuded especially at times like these when he would laugh with us and at himself. Something I think we all inherited just a little from him.

Janet, the elder, remembered helping dad with Sunday dinner, this was our mum's day off, by order of dad, probably the only order he ever gave to her. Jan also has fond memories of hanging wallpaper with him as I think we all did. Was she remembering the chores we had to do? I think not, I think it was all about the quality time he spent with each of us in the gang of four and the love that he showed us all in every action he took. After my mum died in 1969 he did not pull into himself as he could well have done, but just poured more love out of his ever-full cup.

What we all remember is his gentle way of dealing with all of us and that tiny push of encouragement he gave to us to step outside of our comfort zone and thus make as much out of lives as we wished to. We also remember his impeccable morals, and the manners that he showed to every man woman and child of every creed and colour.

My dad had so much love in his heart to give, one family was not enough so he had to give this and his massive enthusiasm for living life to the full, to the many lads and lasses who sought adventure and fun through the scout movement which became his second family, this only added to his first families lives.

After we, the gang of four, were well on the paths to our own lives he re-married and took on yet one more family by marrying our step-mum Doris and bringing in our two step brothers Frank & Ian, you can imagine the name confusion with brother-in-law Ian and my wife to be, another Carol, as well.

We all miss you dad, but you will forever stay in our hearts, minds and actions. We all hope that we have taught our kids just a fraction of what you have taught us because if we have, they will turn out to be great citizens of this world, our earth.

So I'd now like to take this hat off to him for the last time, and wish from all of us to you, god speed dad.

Frank Edward Smith: 29th December 1919 - 29th March 2011

2011-04-03T20:27:00.000+02:00

Announcing the death of my father at 91 years.
Too much pain to say much else at this time.