One Blog to Rule Them All

Visiting the blogs again, trying to marshal scattered thoughts and wondering what the hell has happened to my life. I cracked open an old Twitter account today that I'd abandoned about 7 years ago. I've re-activated it to go with the games blog that I've resurrected (Womblings). An American gaming friend has also come back to the web and a shared series of games, so it seems like a good omen.

Something in my head seems to be obsessed with consolidation, sorting things out, organising. I think that's partly the time of year - the end of summer does seem to kick that feeling off - but part of this at the moment is wanting all my scattered, fragmented parts back in one place. Not sure if this is some kind of yearning for kintsugi or just the recognition that my brain can't do what it once did - things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, and I feel like far flung parts of me are fading into darkness around the edges, like fog. Partly perhaps a need to take stock - surely the little I remember can't be all there is? What have I been doing for the past 20 years? - and try to temper the corrosive sense that I've wasted the better part of my life.

The only thing that helps a bit at the moment is the realisation that a lot of people have very full and successful lives and still feel like this when they hit fifty. As the saying goes, you spend decades climbing the ladder of success only to find that it's leaning up against the wrong wall. So there's natural work to be done there, and I'm doing it (mostly offline). And maybe if I keep doing it, I'll get some direction.

Meanwhile, I want to corral and organise these dozen-plus blogs - there is significant overlap in places - in to one cohesive blog to map out the past couple of decades. I'm sure there would be a lot of stuff that isn't moved over - a friend suggested just do it as a retrospective, pick out the best blog posts and re-post with preface, so I may do that. It may well help with the processing. Watch this space.

Well. This is... well. I dunno.

I fired up an old Windows 7 laptop today and had a wander through an old browser on it. It turns out that I had entirely forgotten not one, but two entire blogs. This takes some doing, even for me. This is an increasingly common occurrence; a disturbing side-effect of peri-menopause and, in a lesser way I suppose, just getting older. 

It boggles my mind that I can have a routine, habit, behaviour or pastime that I visit regularly and then, one day, just stop - and rapidly, I then just forget I ever had it. I don't think I used to be like this, but I can't honestly remember. It makes putting new habits in place pretty much impossible, because the habits never form. Anything can just get dropped at will, at which point it will pretty much disappear from the psyche in short order.

Seeds

This is one for the glutblog really, but as I can't track it down right now I shall put it here for later.

It's that time of year when (despite the snow outside) thoughts turn to the garden, and impending seedage.  Some interesting info from a bit of trawling round the web:

In 2014, Monsanto started buying up heritage seed companies, and started trademarking the names of heritage varieties.  So if you buy organicallly grown heritage seed from an independent grower, they may still have to pay royalties to Monsanto if the variety name has been trademarked.  Example: Black Beauty aubergines.

Some seed companies are more ethical than others.  I can't find out if any of the standard (non-agricultural) UK ones are owned by Monsanto or other big pharmaceutical companies, but I was already aware that some "brands" are owned by the same company (although, confusingly, the two different brands often have different customer satisfaction - presumably a result of the historical culture of the company before it was bought out).  There's an ethical ranking of seed companies at Ethical Consumer, although you'll need to subscribe to see the reasons for the rankings.  Unsurprisingly though, companies like Tamar Organics are towards the top while the big names are towards the bottom.

As to brands owned by companies, here are the groupings I've found so far:

Suttons = Dobies = B&Q's own-brand seed = Jekka McVicar herbs = James Wong
Marshalls = Unwins (both owned by SE Marshall, itself owned by Westland)
Johnsons = Mr Fothergill's = Wilkinson's own-brand seed

Revisited

The blog is back up (you're reading it!)  Twitter, however, is going down.  The issues I blogged about over a year ago are still there, and I've realised that part of the problem is that it's really easy to be negative in 140 characters.  It's not enough to properly big someone up, but it is enough to vent, which makes the whole damn thing depressing.

So - there is a new rule.  Inspired by Mark Manson, if I can be arsed to sit down long enough to pen a thoughtful blog post on an aggravating topic, I can bitch about it here.  Otherwise, no go.  (And if it's still too bloody depressing, I'll stick it in the Oubliette - see menu to the right.)

Now, I could dedicate my purified Twitter account to unicorns and rainbows and kittens and fluffy bunnies but, frankly, it's a big enough time sink as it is.  And that's the second reason - really the main one - why Twitter is going down: it's a horrific time sink.  A "what the feck have I done for the last four hours and how did it get to be 3am?!" kind of time sink.  This would be bad enough if it were only a procrastination tool, but there are actually things I want to get done now: exams I need to pass, language stuff I want to study, a garden I want to develop.  We still need to properly move into this house, and we've been living here over two years.

I'm not going entirely cold turkey; Twitter is useful for fast communication, and there are things I would have missed, information-wise, in the last couple of years had I not been on it.  So the work account (@southbridgeit) stays open; but I'm going to regulate my access pretty strictly.  For those people who have blogs, I'll probably touch base there; otherwise DM on Twitter, otherwise I may miss you (I'll have it set so DMs come straight through on e-mail.)

Mug cake

Best mug cake recipe so far - it still needs tweaking though, as it's a bit too moist, and inclined to mash to a lump under the pressure of the spoon.  Needs a little less liquid. 

4 tbsp self-raising flour
1 tbsp oil
2.5 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp milk
1 tsp (!) of vanilla extract

It may be cheaper to use vanilla sugar.  The extract is expensive.
(Must try a chocolate version of this - I'm thinking 4 of flour, 2 of cocoa, 3 or 4 of sugar, leave out the vanilla but add 1/4 tsp cinnamon, but more experimentation required.)

You'll notice there is no egg.  This is not a mis-print.  Leaving out the egg removes the rubbery sponginess that often results if the cake is over-cooked.  (I'm not sure if this was an innovation by Julie at Table for Two, but that was where I first saw an eggless mug cake so she gets the props for it.)

Mix all together, transfer to a large, greased cup, and cook on high power for 90 seconds.
(Our microwave is 800W, your mileage (and cake) may vary.)  Get it out of the cup and into a bowl ASAP so that steam can evaporate from it and not condense and make it soggy.

Pomo ideology in a nutshell

Had a convo with a friend on Twitter that just about summed up post-modern theory in half a dozen tweets.  It was prompted by her remark that she was ashamed of being a human and would like to change species - something I can relate to.  Further convo went as follows:

S: Have you heard of Otherkin...?

V: I have. I don't know much about it, mind. What I have heard sounds slightly barmy.

S: Post-modern subjectivity trumps everything. If you feel like an elf, then you *are* an elf.

V: But who knows what an elf actually feels like??

S: It doesn't matter what an elf feels like. What matters is your subjective belief that you feel like an elf.

V: There is so much wrong with that concept, isn't there?

Yes, yes there is. 

Sunday Morning at the Church of the Poisoned Mind

Mirror neurons are brain connections which trigger both when you do something, and when you see someone else doing that thing.  They're implicit in the empathy response.  You see someone else hurt and, if your mirror neurons are functioning correctly, you'll wince.

I've come to the conclusions that either a) mirror neurons are completely atrophied in most modern humans or b) most modern humans have devolved to the point where they see all other humans as "Other".  I've been led to that conclusion by the increase in the everyday acceptability of graphic violence; its value now is not to shock, but merely tittilate.

I think this is partly the result of violence-as-entertainment.  Most of the violence we see is "Hollywood" violence; it's made up for camera.  No-one really hits anyone, the bruises are make-up, the gore is red paint, the bullets are blanks.  At the end of the shoot, the director bids the dead to rise and they do, no physical harm done.

Looking around on social media these days though, and it seems that people in general view all violence as make-believe: it elicits no empathy response; it doesn't horrify, it merely thrills, in a toxic, shadenfreud kind of way.  At worst, images of real hurt, real distress, real violence, get thrown around to justify the wallowing in a kind of collective vainglorious morality: people RTing pictures of dead babies to show how much they suddenly "care" about a conflict that's been going on for over 4 years.

On a more everyday level, people share pictures of real severed limbs, real dead bodies, real flayed skin, real agony.  What is going on in their brains that they think this is OK?  They can't be genuinely affected or they wouldn't be able to keep looking at this stuff, much less want to share it.  The only reason I can think of - seen mostly on animal activist feeds - is that you want to hurt the people you see as being responsible for the harm by forcing them to view it.  But that's not a relevant explanation for most of the images that are shared.  Mostly it seems to be enjoyment. There seems to be an evil thrill of glee that goes far beyond shadenfreud: joy in someone's real distress, and joy in the power to cause distress in others by forcing them to view it.  All the while claiming "I'm promoting this because I care".  What utter bullshit.

There's a parallel here with the virus hoaxes that were very popular about 10 years ago.  Ignorant people wilfully frightening others while claiming the moral high ground while they did so. But no-one controls what you believe; and many people were educated when I got those e-mails because I'd hit "Reply all" and set them straight.

But you can't control what someone dumps in your social media feed, and if someone hasn't done it before you're going to get hit at least once before you can block them.  For those few of us whose mirror neurons are working fine or working double shifts, someone springing a vile image has consequences, whether that image turns out to be real or not.  And I do wonder if this is, ultimately, what's driving the practice.  In an individualistic, violently capitalist, consumer-driven culture, empathy isn't just uncool, it's actively threatening.  For the person committing violence-by-graphic-image, most of the people they hit won't, long-term, be any more affected than they are.  The people who will be damaged are likely the people who are damaged already, either through mental/emotional sensitivity or because they've experienced actual harm in the past.  The practice weeds out the first group, keeps the seond group down, and ensures everyone else stays desensitised.

Overdose

Putting this here for reference.  Because I've had an intolerance to MSG/aspartame/glutamate for years and this is the second time I've been caught out in the last few months.  Note for anyone finding this via Google: these are my symptoms; others' may vary.

Classic MSG symptom: extreme skin soreness, especially on upper arms.  Oversensitive teeth.

Classic glutamate toxicity: flushing (to the point of feeling like sunburn), headache, palpitations, throbbing teeth.

It now appears there may be other glutamate toxicity symptoms: pins and needles, muscle twitches, potentially visual disturbances.

Treatment: orange juice (contains high free glutamate but other chemicals in there protect against it), Andrews salts, Epsom salts.  Epsom salts are said to be the most effective treatment.  Also taurine (Red Bull) but as that can cause health problems I don't fancy trying it.

Testing Epsom salts today - the muscle twitches have stopped and the palpitations seem much reduced.

Have previously tried orange juice and Andrews salts, that took a 2-3 day attack down to 3 hours.

Possible natural causes: do NOT eat these multiple days running, or in combination:

Cheese
Mushrooms
Slow-cooked (or repeatedly re-heated) red meat - think a pot of chilli, for example
Grapes
Tomatoes
Peas
Nori (the seaweed covering on sushi rolls)

Twitter: doesn't play well with others

I went back to Twitter a while ago.  I do like it, there are some people I only ever see on there, and it's very, very good for certain types of information, and staying in touch fast.  There's also the mental challenge of getting what you want to say into 140 characters, if possible.

However.  There's a lot that's a pain in the arse about Twitter as well.  When I revisited it this last time, I decided that 1) I'd use it for work, if I decided to go in that direction, and 2) it had to be fun.  That hasn't quite worked out.

It has been really useful for getting some types of info that I wouldn't have come across otherwise.  Unfortunately, it all started hitting the fan again and I wasn't sure why.  (It was also taking up a shed-load of time.)  I uninstalled Twidere from my phone and stayed off for a few days, and had a think.

I'm fairly introverted. (This may qualify for the understatement of 2015.) I can be, and am, social, but it has to be with smaller groups, of the right people: I don't need agreement but I do need good faith; I can do small talk but really don't see the point; I would rather spend my time with people who think about stuff.  In "real life", so-called, I employ filters pretty rigorously, carefully control how much time I spend in groups, police boundaries and ensure recovery time.  Even good groups and fun times can lead to overload (and illness) surprisingly quickly.

What occurred to me was that, regarding Twitter, I'd pretty much abandoned all of that, relying on the "distanced" nature of textual communication to provide the necessary filters and barriers.  Of course, it doesn't work like that; it's a recipe for rapid overload.

So I've gone back, unfollowed a few people there was no point following, put about 95% of people I follow on one list or another, and muted pretty much everyone who isn't humourous, interesting, or a personal friend.  Some of those lists require more mental/emotional energy than others; at least this way I can dip into them as and when I feel able, and limit my exposure.  The signal-to-noise on the main feed should improve, which means I shouldn't miss the posts I actually want to read, and the people I want to interact with.

I've also realised that "armchair activism" is perilously close to no bloody activism at all - especially when it's linked to Twitter's tendency to preach to the choir (as most people tend to follow those of a similar belief set).  This was re-inforced by a friend who said, pretty much - yes, it's shit and you need to do something about it, but you need to choose where to put your energy.  Get out there and make the changes - and that doesn't have to be activism per se, just working out where your energy is best put to use, i.e. work from the ground up.  So I shall try that, I think, and try to make a real small difference where it's safer to do so.  Which isn't to say I won't be active online, but I'll be trying to order my online life far more like my offline one.  If I go quiet, you can always send me an e-mail.

A heads-up for Blogger users

It has come to my attention (the hard way) that Blogger has started using an insane new style of  captcha.  The sound version is incomprehensible and the written one may take a dozen tries to get through.  I don't have captchas turned on for this blog (I never usually get comments anyway, and moderation is turned on for any post over 14 days) but if you do, you might like to check that, depending on the number of comments you get; if you have "word verification" enabled, it might well deter human commenters.

I was quite surprised, checking the settings, that moderation isn't particularly granular; unlike other systems, there's no way, for example, to specify you want to moderate commenters for the first post or two, after which they're considered ok.  Moderation is either always on, or based on age of post (by default, posts aged over 14 days).  If you have a high-traffic blog, that makes moderation almost useless to keep spam at bay, leaving word verification as your only option.  I have a nasty (and rather cynical, but not necessarily incorrect) feeling that this particularly user-unfriendly captcha is a ploy by Google to get people to take anti-spam measures off their blogs - as making money through spamming is what Google is all about.

Edit: I've had a Google fan point me at a link to Google's new no-captcha captcha system, which sounds grand in principle but clearly is not fully operational.  It's still not clear why I was presented with a captcha in the first place as I was logged in, commenting on a blog where I'd commented before, and the post was a recent one.

Moving again, metaphorically

Not actually, thank the gods.  Both Paul and I have discussed this, and have decided we never want to move again.  We'll make do with what we've got.

But that doesn't mean we can't improve it - and those changes are finally under way.  Having waited since last October, a couple of weeks ago we got the plumbers in and the maze of pipes crossing the dining room walls have gone, replaced by one neat copper rising main and two neat water pipes coming down in the far corner to enter the kitchen.  Unfortunately, one gas cap was on a T-piece, and so couldn't be buried in the wall; but that's the wall with the two water pipes that need boxing, so we might just batten and plasterboard it, and skim over - swapping 30mm for a smooth wall.  The ceiling's an horrendous mess, but that was always going to need re-doing. 

We're now waiting on the builder to fix the roof and take part of a wall down.  (He was supposed to do us a quote back in January. We're still waiting.)  This is somewhat embarrassing to the plumber, who recommended him, and is poking him with a stick on our behalf.  The only reason I'm not pushing it is that the next couple of weeks are going to be mental, work-wise; and I'd rather space the stressful events out a bit, much as I'd like everything to just be done.  We should get there by summer, fingers crossed.  (The garden is a different matter, but you can usually get away with letting it ride for the first year, just to see what comes up.  The forsythia we didn't know we had was a nice surprise when it started flowering last week!)

Quire of Paper

We didn't get to do Pancake Day this year.  We vaguely remembered, late, but Paul wasn't bothered and I was unwell.  Finally we got round to it today - mainly because we'd been in the market for a decent omelette pan for a while, and actually went out today and got one.

This year I'd seen a couple of recipes for old-fashioned (read: 18th century) thin pancakes, including a recipe for Thin Cream Pancakes (otherwise known as the "Quire of Paper") in Mary Norwak's book on English puddings.  I changed the propertions of the book's recipe.... just because, really.  It looked like it might be a bit greasy with the butter, but it didn't seem to have enough egg in it.  The following made about 20 thin pancakes in an 8" omelette pan.

Ingredients
1/4 pint (5 fluid ounces) thick or double cream
1/4 pint milk
2 ounces butter
3 ounces plain flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons brandy - a bit more wouldn't hurt.
Vanilla sugar (granulated or caster) for sprinkling

Optionally, you could add a little orange juice or grated orange zest for flavouring.
You could use half a pint of single cream instead of the double + milk, but that was what I had.

Method
Melt the butter and allow to cool (though not re-solidify).
Put the milk and cream together in a jug and whisk to mix.
Put the flour in a bowl.  Add the beaten egg and mix.  Whisk in the milk and cream mixture.
Add the zest of an orange if using.
Whisking constantly, pour the butter into the mixture in a thin stream.
Add the brandy and whisk again.  

There's no need to let the batter rest before cooking.

Warm a plate (or individual serving plates).  Sprinkle with a small amount of vanilla sugar.

Pre-heat the omelette pan to a little over medium (say, 4 out of 6) and melt a little butter in it.  Put a small amount (about a tablespoon) of batter in the pan and swirl around to cover the base very thinly (it probably won't reach the edge).  Expect this pancake to fail horribly, but it's soaking up excess fat in the pan and helping stabilise the temperature.  You can eat this mini-pancake if it cooks successfully, but otherwise don't worry too much.  The batter is very rich so you shouldn't need to add any more fat to the pan.

Pour about 3 tablespoons of batter into the pan and swirl around to thinly coat the base. (This was fairly easy for me as I've got a mini ladle holding that amount; failing that, use a 1/4 cup measure but don't fill it to the top - 1/4 cup = 4 tablespoons, or 60ml.)

Leave it.  Don't touch it.  The edges will start to dry rapidly and start to curl up like paper.  Wait until the surface sets, then the pancake will appear to "sweat".  When this happens, run a thin spatula round the edge of the pancake and loosen it from the pan.  If the pancake starts to bubble before the surface dries, the pan is too hot.  Turn down the heat a notch and/or remove the pan from the heat.  It's no biggie, just be aware the pancake will colour faster.

When the pancake can be shaken easily around the pan, use the spatula to gently flip it over.  It won't take long on the other side.  When it can be shaken easily in the pan again, gently transfer to the plate.  Get the next pancake on the go, and while it is setting, sprinkle a little sugar over the previous pancake, now on the plate.

Repeat in this fashion, piling up a stack of pancakes, sprinkling a little sugar in between each one.  Depending on how long you cook them, they will look either like paper or parchment, complete with crackly, curly bits round the edges.

According to Mary Norwak, the original had over a pint of cream and 9 eggs in it, as well as more butter, but the same amount of flour.  That would make an incredibly thin batter; this version is rich (but not overly so) and not too difficult to work - though I wouldn't try tossing these pancakes.  Take care when you turn them as they do have a tendency to flop about.

A Celtic Blessing

I weave the cincture of protection from the nine threads of life:

Peace of mind
Truth of speech
Timeliness of action
Success of deed
Prosperity of work
Health of body
Courage of spirit
Compassion of heart
Wisdom of soul.

These nine threads be my belt
Wherever I walk.

Time is a wheel in constant motion,
Always rolling us along.
Tell me, who wants to look back on their youth and wonder
Where those years have gone?

25/5

Worth waiting for? Yes;
Finally, after five years,
A happy birthday.

Still pending...

Oh lordy, I'm so crap at this regular updating lark.  Has it really been 2 months? 

The house situation is progressing, in that we've found one, and are now awaiting the survey.  As that has starting moving again (having got caught on the hook of finance and communications part-way), my own situation has hit a snag.  What I took to be an arthritis flare-up when it started, or maybe RSI from overuse, may be neither; it seems like it could be related to a mash-up of hormones and stress (and the stress then affects the hormones, so it's a bit of a nasty cycle).  Given the stress levels in the past month or so, this would make sense.  It does highlight how I really need to be eating better and exercising, and just generally trying to do the whole mindfulness thing a bit more... mindfully?

Along with that plan, I've finally got round to investigating Buddhism a bit more thoroughly, starting with the info over at Free Buddhist Audio (having met a number of the Triratna Buddhists, they seem like a pretty sound bunch.)  A retreat this year is looking unlikely now with the impending move, but it's nice to fill in some of the gaps with a bit more structured stuff.  Just have to start meditating again now...

Pending...

There's a blog post brewing, about space - physical, mental and emotional - but it's not quite there yet.  I'm at that stage where I know what I mean, but can't nail it down enough to give anyone else a clue!  Tomorrow I've got some serious e-mailing to do, and a work visit in the morning, but the blog will get done at some point.  House hunting continues, although having to deal with sociopathic types has already started to make me ill.  Don't know what to do about that, short of telling them all to bog off and postponing things till later in the year.  Neither Paul nor I feel that's an option though; it takes a good couple of months to buy a house (always assuming no chain issues) and you've got to find it first.  Timing is everything, as we've signed the lease on our current place for another 6 months and are hence responsible for the rent on it.  It'd be nice to have at least a month's overlap to get the new place sorted before moving in, and this one cleaned before handing back, but too much of an overlap could be expensive.

Growling from the pan...

Paul broached the subject of parkin the other day.  He'd come across the James Martin parkin-and-rhubarb recipe and thought it looked interesting.  It'd been many years since I made parkin, and the only recipe I had was so laden with black treacle (and not much else) that it was unpleasantly aniseed-y, and I'd never re-made it.

Doing a quick search for the recipe Paul had seen turned up several related versions by James Martin himself, and that led me to look for a few more to see what (if anything) they had in common - as they all varied a lot from the recipe I had (in Hamlyn's New All-Colour Cookbook).  There was some interesting info to be gleaned along the way.

My dad's family came from Lancashire.  When I first heard reference to parkin (in the Fivepenny Piece song "Stalybridge Wakes") and asked my dad about it, he told me it was a dark type of gingerbread.  Not much more information was forthcoming, so I do wonder if my grannie made it much, if at all; her apple pies, rice pudding and 2-3-4 cakes had already gone into family folklore.  According to what I can find online, the Hamlyn's recipe is more like Yorkshire parkin although, according to Effie Perine on Mumsnet (and a few others), the real thing should be made with lard, bicarb and vinegar, and no eggs.  Lancashire parkin is paler, with egg and more golden syrup.  Having done the research, it seems that James Martin's version is a slightly chewier gingerbread rather than Yorkshire parkin proper.

After all this, I ended up with several recipes, all with varying amounts of varying ingredients.  I picked out what sounded good, averaged out amounts of ingredients, and headed to the cooker.  It turned out remarkably well (and that's out of the pan; I don't know what it'll be like if it improves with keeping, but I suspect it won't last long enough for me to find out), although it could've done with a bit more ginger.  The small amount of black treacle in the recipe is due to me running out.  The lack of treacle and thirstiness of rolled oats meant I added a bit more milk.  The dark brown sugar means the treacle-y taste comes through, but it's not overly sweet.  It's also surprisingly light (at this early stage), which I'm putting down to the bicarb and vinegar.

Ingredients
2 oz lard
3 oz butter
1 oz black treacle (was going to use 3 oz, but didn't have any more!)
6 oz golden syrup
4 oz dark brown soft sugar
6 oz plain flour
6 oz rolled oats (the chunky sort; I used Jordan's but Scott's would do just as well)
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1-2 tsp vinegar
6 fluid oz milk

Butter (and, ideally, line) an 8" or 9" square cake tin.
Put oven on to pre-heat, gas mark 3 (325F, 170C, 150C fan-assisted).
Put lard, butter, black treacle and golden syrup into a pan over a low heat.  Warm through until the fats have melted, but do not boil.
In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, oats and spices.  Make a well in the centre.
Pour the syrup mixture into the centre, the put the milk into the pan and put back on the heat (this is just to dissolve the last of the syrup into the milk.  Waste not, want not.)
Before stirring, drop the teaspoon of bicarb into the mixture.  Then pour in 1 or 2 teaspoons of vinegar and watch it fizz merrily.
Pour in the milk, and stir well.  It will be a very loose, battery mixture.  Pour into the prepared tin, and bake for one hour.  Allow to cool in the pan before turning out.

According to many sources, once cool the parkin should be divided into two, well wrapped into greaseproof paper and stored in an airtight tin for a week before eating.  As one commentator remarks, "if you can get it off your teeth in less than 10 minutes, it's too young".

This will definitely get made again, but I'll tweak it with a bit more treacle.  If I remember rightly, my sister has our Lancashire grannie's old cookery book; I do wonder if there's a parkin recipe in there.  I suspect there is, even if she didn't make it often.  It'd be interesting to ring the changes with that, having now made parkin in the Yorkshire style.

NHS care.data - update

Following the accumulated doo-dah hitting the fan, the NHS has now done a back-pedal on plans to start extracting patient data from medical records and has delayed extraction for another 6 months.

Dissent Codes
As it stands, code 9Nu0 stops any data being uploaded.  If data has already been uploaded (either from your GP, or elsewhere in the NHS), code 9Nu4 only stops the HSCIC selling on your (full, easily identifiable) red data.  However, it does not stop them releasing red data to certain research organisations, or using that information in, say, the event of an epidemic.  Code 9Nu4 also does not stop the release of so-called "pseudonymised" or amber data - data which still has your NHS number, postcode, gender and age attached, and which is easily identifiable with by cross-referencing with other data sets, for example the electoral roll.  The only way to stop commercial organisations from getting this information is to prevent the upload of that information in the first place.  If you've informed your GP you want to opt-out, it's worth leaving it a few weeks and then checking that they've actually made the changes as requested.

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that there was talk of changing dissent codes so that 9Nu4 stopped the release of all data, replacing it with the NHS number and a dissent notice (which is, arguable, how an opt-out ought to work.)  However, I cannot find the link to that now so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt, unless someone can provide me with up-to-date info.

Summary Care
If you didn't opt-out of the Summary Care record (allowing different NHS providers - surgeries, hospitals etc. - to share your data between them purely for facilitating your medical care) then now would be a good time.  As far as I can make out, you can have an opt-out code for care.data on your record, but if you've not also got the code for the Summary Care opt-out, your information can be transferred to another provider via Summary Care who may then upload it to HSCIC.

Dissent codes for Summary Care: on the old system, 93C3. or XaKRy; on the new system, 9Ndo. or XaXj6.

Interesting Links
There's a new website set up by volunteers to ease the opt-out process: Fax Your GP

MedConfidential have published the board papers of HSCIC - including the board members' register of interests.  A lot of fat fingers in a lot of juicy pies there, which should come as a surprise to no-one.

Annoyed now - care.data

Twitter, j'accuse.  Also, I appear to have lost a morning to this, and it's left me with a headache and now an anxiety attack.  I need to get out and walk, but will post this first, so my annoyance and headache will not have been in vain.

There is a plan ("care.data") to transfer medical records in their entirity from GP surgeries to a central repository called the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).  Once your data is there, they can sell it off; not just "green" truly anonymised data, but also "red" (directly identifiable) and "amber" (easily identifiable with cross-referencing) data as well.  Once your data is at the HSCIC, you have no say in how it is used, and no way to delete it out of their databases.  You also have no say in how third parties use that data once they have access to it.

To opt out, you need to specify that two codes be added to your medical records. This should prevent amber and red data being extracted.  (The HSCIC always has access to green data.)  You don't need to make an appointment with the GP for this, just submit the request via letter to your GP.  Do it soon - the mass extraction is going to begin shortly, though I haven't seen a definite date quoted anywhere.

Also: don't expect anyone at your GP surgery to know about this.  Don't let them confuse it with the opt out for Summary Care records (sharing your records with other care providers like hospitals).  This is about opting out of secondary use of your data.  That's why it's important to give them the actual codes they need to add.

More information
A GP's take on the plans: http://www.care-data.info

Information on how to opt out, including a pro forma letter with the relevant database codes:
http://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out

The Information Commissioner's Office has information on how to submit a "subject access request" - this is a request to an organisation about the data they hold on you, under the terms of the Data Protection Act.  They can charge you for the information, and some medical information is exempt from the act anyway, but it should be a way to check what information HSCIC hold on you.
http://ico.org.uk/for_the_public/personal_information

Petitions
There have been a couple of petitions started against the sell-off of people's medical records in this way:

SumOfUs petition: http://action.sumofus.org/a/nhs-patient-corporations
Government e-petiton: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/53994

The latter is more important - the government are legally obliged to respond if enough people sign - but it could use some promotion.

All about the game

Note: this was sat in my drafts from 16th February 2014; published 27th August 2015.

Some of the thinking has been partially eclipsed by new info I've come across or - discovered? - regarding reality processing (for want of a better term) and systems of aesthetics, but that'll be for a later post.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Hiding from the sun.
Trying not to think about
The rest of my life.

Since when was WET a thing?

I grew up with GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, still the legal term in the UK) which was replaced for technical considerations by UTC (co-ordinated universal time) because the former isn't defined specifically enough in scientific terms.  UTC has become more obvious with the rise of the computer age because time servers use it to synchronise times between different computer systems.

WET is apparently "Western European Time," comprising the UK, Ireland, Portugal and a few other places - in other words, GMT, or UTC+0 in technical terms.  Presumably use of WET within the UK is at least in part political, wishing to identify a pro-European mindset (with a direct comparison to how different time zones are used in the US, for example).  In an international sense, using WET can only identify a pro-European mindset, as it makes more sense to use UTC+(hour) as a) it's already in common international usage, b) it ignores daylight saving fluctuations - not all WET area members will be on WET at the same time - and therefore c) it's obvious to anyone looking at UTC+(hour) what local time it actually represents, which is really the whole point.

The big downside to using neologistic terms like WET, CET, EET etc. is the same as the use of the US equivalents - if you're not American, do you know how many hours UTC differs from, say, Mountain Time?  Do you even know which areas of the US run on Mountain Time?  Tell me an area uses UTC-7 however, and I know exactly what time it is there, irrespective of the time of year.

Infrequent!

Happy New Year!  I knew it'd been a while since I posted but I didn't think it'd been a month.  Ho hum.

In my defence, there's a new blog in the blogosphere where I've been spending some of my time - the Haiku blog, which is a joint effort with my sister.  It's been surprisingly fun so far.  The only other outlet I've had for haikuing (good word, if a little vowel heavy) has been Creatures Caves, and those have really been only the creatures-related ones.  There's no reason they couldn't be posted here I suppose - but collaborative projects are always good.  (Well, I say always.  That might be a bit optimistic, but let's leave at that in the spirit of the season.)

No real resolutions this year: that always seems like a recipe for disaster.  The only thing I really did want to get done this year was read (on average) a book a week; this was prompted by cleaning the bookshelves before Christmas and seeing how many books I have that I either haven't read or want to read again.  So, this year is the year!  I'll create a new page to hold the details.

Thinking about it, there are several other things that I want to get done this year.  I've gone back to HabitRPG to try and keep focused on certain tasks; I'd given up on it when it went haywire with new updates before Christmas, but I've just cleared everything out and started again.  It's still very random in places, and working things break as frequently as other bugs are fixed (one gets the impression of infinite monkeys with infinite laptops) but once it settles down a bit (assuming it ever does) I'll do a review.  If I don't swear off it in frustration first, that is.

Also - once a month really isn't enough to update a blog.  It's not that I don't have things I want to blog about, it's that I'm not making time for it.  Partly this is because it falls into the "fun/frivolous" category.  That said, I want to work on being kinder to me and less type A this year, so maybe making time for blogging will help.

Looking better

It's bizarre.  I don't know what's happened to WordPress.  A few years ago, when LiveJournal was bought out by the Russians, a lot of people started looking for a new blogging platform.  At the time, Blogger was a bit of a joke, buggy and awful to use.  WordPress was fast, sleek, and while it definitely had a learning curve, it was worth it for the range of options it gave you.  Once it was set up, the interface was straightforward, and away you went.

Not any more.  It's a couple of years since I set up a WordPress blog, and it's gone south during that time.  I'd been aware of the interface getting worse for a while; I was never quite sure when clicking on something would catapult me out of the dashboard and into the guts of wordpress.com, from whence I'd struggle to get back.  They're obviously losing out to Tumblr now, as the basic options are pretty dire, and they're heavily pushing paid options, even for fairly basic customisations.  Custom CSS has always been a cost option, fair enough, but the free themes always used to have a range of customisable settings.  It seems far more restricted now, and a lot of the themes are downright ugly.

Last year, someone told me about Weebly and I had a play.  It's ok, with a very basic point-and-click interface aimed at people who know nothing about HTML, but it's aimed at people wanting websites, not blogs.  This month I've been corraling blogs from all over the place, and transfering them to one WordPress account, only to find that setting up a blog there is now painful, and not really worth the effort.

So I thought I'd have a go at Blogger again.  And - well.  Google have obviously been working on it since they bought it.  There's a fairly restricted set of themes, but most of them don't look too bad, and they are all easily customisable in a manner reminiscent of the old LJ setup - colours and fonts all available to change, along with column layouts and widths.  Custom CSS provided free.  Much as Google do appear to have gone to the dark side, they've done a very nice job in resurrecting Blogger.  It's certainly a lot less hassle setting up a blog here now.

Lordy, it's been a long time.

Not as long as it looks - there were 5 posts since the last one, but one is pending a re-write and the other 4 were no longer relevant.  It really has been a rollercoaster of a year; in some ways, everything's just the same: same challenges, same body, same brain.  In other ways - ideas about life, things I've learned or realised, things I'm still processing - there's a lot gone (and still going) on.

WordPress wouldn't let me use Garland - don't know why, it's still running for existing sites - and I'm rather disgruntled about it, as there are no decent free 3-column themes available any more.  So I'll have to pootle through over the next few days and tweak, not that much seems tweakable any more, unless you pay $$$.  I'd install the software to my website, apart from not wanting that kind of learning curve this close to a major holiday.

Is it that time again?

It's suddenly autumn. It's got cold, and it's dark early at both ends of the day. And I'm doing the weird organisational thing again. (Briefly, I was relieved to see that Deb Perelman at smitten kitchen also does this - then realised she has the excuse of a procrastination-inspiring book tour. No such excuse here.)

The weird organisational thing seems to happen every year, or often enough that there's a pattern emerging. It may be something to do with the September light, which is still bright but at a low angle, and highlights every single speck of dust on every vertical surface. (It may do the horizontal ones too, but I suspect I filter those out. There's only so much impending houseework you can safely become aware of at one time.) The housework urge gets rapidly transmuted into tidying up other, unrelated things - perhaps because they're not housework - and soon there are lists everywhere of unfinished projects, to-do lists, and grandiose organisational plans get written and rapidly forgotten. It may be that this is all distraction to get me away from looking at walls and cupboards until the light drops still further. If so, I suspect most years it succeeds. Looking back through my data on various computer systems at home, there's an awful lot of this stuff lying around with an October datestamp of one year or another.

This year, however, things have been a little bit different. Things are actually getting done, which is a bit freaky. (Things on a to-do list are to be done? Who knew?) The last couple of years have not been great, and this last year has been a sod, and I don't think I'm alone in that - there seem to have been a lot of people having a shitty time of it this year, and it can't just be the weather. The climate seems to have become a metaphor - how we can push systems till they break, or feel like systems are out of control because they work to a longer timescale than we do; we're not here for very long, and really know squat about what we're messing with, when it comes right down to it.

So - given that control (or at very least the illusion of it) is essential to a healthy mind, perhaps it's no wonder that the reorganisation has started with renewed zeal.

Caaaaaake!

Today's is Paul's birthday, so I baked a cake. This is the first cake I've made in months, and the first two-pan cake I've cooked in years - in fact, I can't remember the last time I did. It was our ninth wedding anniversary on Thursday, and I might have made a Victoria sponge at some point in the last nine years, but I don't remember.

Three years ago, for his 40th, I made a large carrot cake for the party. This year, I did coffee and walnut, just to ring the changes. It didn't turn out too badly...



...so I thought I'd put the recipe down so I can remember how I did it.

Reblogged from BigMouthedWoman

In fact, the ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting again all over again — never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment, but getting renewed and revived by some further transformation.

Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others."
~ Seamus Heaney | excerpt from his commencement ceremony speech at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | May 12, 1996

Re-blogged from BigMouthedWoman at Tumblr.

MOTH!!

(I apologise to anyone who thought that heading should've had a trigger warning.)

The thing no knitter wants to see. Having registered at Ravelry last night, I collected up some choice yarn and works in progress to take photos this morning so I've got a bit of non-identifiable content up there. Imagine my feelings when a dead moth - small, and very beige, but (at least) also very dead - fell out of my favourite skein of yarn.

Said moth was squished to oblivion (no point taking any chances) and the yarn is now soaking in the sink. Touch wood, there was no evidence of any larval activity. But it did make me think that, as my production speed isn't great at the minute and the lepidopteral season is upon us, I really ought to have the works-in-abeyance under cover. The thought of baby moths chomping through Paul's new aran before it's even done really doesn't bear thinking about.

(Although, it does make me wonder about The Kilt Hose That Will Not Die - that wool's been knocking around for the best part of 3 years, most of it spent out in the open or in open plastic bags, and nothing's touched it. A project's got to be bad if even moths avoid it.)

There was another clothes moth I found, up on one of the sealed stash boxes in the spare room. The fact that both were dead makes me wonder if there's some mystical guardian spirit in the house who sees its mission as the protection of all things yarny from voracious insects. One can fervently hope.

Edited to add: A moth just dropped out of another project - I think the kilt hose. Obviously this is a Sign that I need to take a bit more care, and spring clean the works in progress! (The only yarn that was out was the strokable stuff, and that's now going to be washed.) Again, no larval activity and the moth was dead, so it adds a bit more weight to the Yarn Guardian theory, at least.

Twisted butternut squash soup

Well, there is a post with actual content on the way, but wisdom teeth on the move resulted in me feeling like someone had punched me in the head today, so not much got done.  Late afternoon, @guineapig66 tweeted about making soup with butternut squash, which started me drooling so I decided to make some.  And it turned out so remarkably well - albeit more like purée than soup, but that's not a criticism - that I decided to write it down so I don't forget it.

The best go-to advice for cooking butternut squash I've found is at Kalyn's Kitchen.  I discovered this site a few years ago while low-carbing and, though Paul and I both fell off the wagon, there are a number of recipes on Kalyn's site that have become regulars, roast squash with Moroccan spices among them.

Ingredients

1 medium squash, peeled, deseeded and diced
2 tsp spice mix
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, quartered
2 sticks of celery, trimmed
2 medium (or 3 small) carrots
1 pint (or more) vegetable stock

Pre-heat oven to 200°C (about 400F, gas mark 6ish).
Mix the spices with the oil, and coat the squash with it.
Put the carrots and squash in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Then add the celery and onion and cook for a further 30 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes or so.
When the vegetables are soft (but not coloured, unless that's your thing), add to a saucepan, add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes - to help the flavours meld and make sure the veg is cooked right through.
When done, cool a little then blend with a stick blender. The soup will tend to thicken as the veg breaks down, so you may need to add more stock, or just hot water. If you don't have a blender you can mash the veg, though the onion might give you a bit of aggro. Stick blenders are well worth the money for soup-making.

My only slight criticism of this was that it was very sweet in the finish - probably from roasting all the veg, but partly from the squash being the type of squash it was. Younger celery, or more of it, might have offset this (as celery tends to be slightly bitter); alternatively, potatoes could be boiled in with the stock to make the flavour less intense. It's only a minor quibble though - with bread and butter this was a very good tea.

A quote from Devil Miyu

Too long for the "Quote of the Week Arbitrary Time Period" box, but I rather like this...

Some of us are paralysed at the possibility of making a mistake. We act as if our errors are like watercolours which, once brushed on, sink indelibly into the paper, set forever with no possibility of being rectified. Being so inclined, we make even insignificant decisions traumatic experiences. Eventually, such people ruled by their inactivity and indecision, must put their lives on hold.

On the other hand, there are those who see their errors as opportunities. When they make mistakes, they are not suspended in agony, nor do they stop trusting themselves.

It may be comforting to note that everyone, no matter how wise or sensitive, makes mistakes, and what is more, will probably continue to do so. So why not relax, accept your imperfections and join the human race?

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. This journal serves as a reminder of my mistakes. It is, after all, through mistakes that we gain experience in Life. I hope to learn from these mistakes whatever lessons there are to learn, gain more experience from learning and hopefully, by doing so, I won't repeat those mistakes ever again.

Quoted from the personal journal of Devil Miyu.

Not so much procrastinating as deciding.

The two can look remarkably similar, especially when the deciding takes time. Too many options + poor prioritising = pain in the arse. C'est la vie.

I seem to have spent much of this year trying (and failing) to sort myself out, specifically in the area of time management. Part of the problem is that, while I have an idea of what I should do, I'm less strong on what I need to do, and have little actual clue about what I want to do. The 'want' and 'should' seem to be diametrically opposed in terms of motivation, which explains why often, not a lot gets done.

Limbo

It occurs to me it is possible to limbo dance. Might have to give that one a bit more thought.

The Yarn Harlot has just put up a fairly amazing post about what she's been doing for the last few days. It's technically impressive stuff.

It's interesting, because reading that she'd decided to devote a whole day to spinning a week was, strangely, what helped me decide I wanted to go self-employed.