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.
Tuesday 24 June 2014
Sunday 1 June 2014
Sunday 25 May 2014
Wednesday 14 May 2014
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...
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...
Sunday 9 March 2014
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.
Sunday 2 March 2014
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.
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.
Sunday 23 February 2014
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.
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.
Monday 17 February 2014
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.
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.
Sunday 16 February 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday 21 January 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday 8 January 2014
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.
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.
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