The highlight of the past few days was attending a Lunar New Year party hosted by tabouli. It was mostly attended by her friends in Toastmasters and a writing group, which were all lovely company and with cherry conversation. I've even made a couple of new friends out of the event. Tabouli really provided a wonderful reading of "The Great Race: The ( Read more... )

Starting with the good news, it turns out that I do not have cancer on the chronic wound. Indeed, the wound itself is dissipating with the application of antibiotics, ointments, and now steroids. Apparently, my immune system is hyper-responsive to any infections in my lower legs and adopts a 'scorched earth policy which can make matters worse. At ( Read more... )

After a couple of joyous journal entries, the wheel turns to one more grim. Several years ago I experienced a bad case of cellulitis on my lower legs. I eventually visited the doctor who, with some concern, conducted blood tests and dosed me up antibiotics to prevent it from developing into necrotizing fasciitis. Their wise advice was that next ( Read more... )

Yesterday I finished a rather hefty essay, "The Political Economy of Growth and Technology", that draws heavily on my current studies at the LSE on macroeconomics. There is an interesting econometric and conceptual history in the subject that eventually came to the realisation that the real determinant of long-run economic growth wasn't labour and ( Read more... )

"You talking to me? Or chewing a brick? Either way, you'll lose teeth". Ahh, Viz comics such memorable lines. Yes, yesterday I visited my dentist for a tooth removal. As mentioned previously, my teeth are well-cared for in waking hours. I hadn't been to the dentist in over ten years, but I have no signs of decay. Instead, courtesy of recent ( Read more... )

In the last entry, I mentioned that I had been undergoing a severe toothache. Well, that's now subsided into a dull roar, a constant feeling of moderate background pain. I have been to the dentist and their diagnosis was not good. I have one tooth definitely lost, one tooth possibly lost, a third needs fillings at least, all at the back. Whilst I ( Read more... )

I must confess, I am a little overwhelmed by the wishes for a speedy recovery that I have received from many people, especially on Facebook. Now a week after I was under the knife, recovery from the operation is going really well with no complications and with a gradual removal of dressings. There are of course limitations on what I am allowed to ( Read more... )

The past few days I've been mostly offline, courtesy of an emergency visit to the local public hospital (St Vincents) to have a highly inflamed gall bladder removed, a relatively useless organ, at least in a modern context. OK, not entirely useless, but in my case more trouble than what it's worth, and despite my better diet in the past year, still ( Read more... )

I've recently had a few data issues with the hosting company that I have several websites with; I used a block reseller account and a little while ago they shifted the main account without shifting the various domains underneath it. This has caused a few issues, to say the least, and the most recent being the discovery of many old mailing list ( Read more... )

The past few days have been particularly productive, work-wise. I managed to craft two abstracts for potential presentations at eResearch Australasia, one on the recent architecture changes to Spartan, and another on curriculum development for the international HPC Certification Forum. Another activity that has taken a modicum of time has been ( Read more... )