Jolly ole England

We spent Easter Sunday travelling… We left reasonably late and were on the road by about noon. We stopped for lunch along the way, our last French meal for a while, and then Calais, put the car on the Shuttle, under the Chunnel and off to England. When we got to Calais we had practically no petrol left, the light on the dashboard was blinking and we were actually at the beeping stage when we got to the Shuttle ticket booth. We had two surprises: there was no where to get petrol once at the ticket booth until the other side of the channel and the ticket price was much more expensive than it was when pre-purchased on the Internet. We had no choice in both matters and just crossed our fingers…

We got petrol on the other side and drove up, around London and up towards Leamington. We stopped off at the first services wee could but that was hours from Ashford. We finally arrived at the family home in Whitnash at around 23:00. Long trip…

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday dear me,
Happy Birthday to me

and many more!

I've made it this far! WHEN I make it to my next birthday (45) I will be well past the "2 years after treatment" hurdle and will have already beaten a good portion of the odds. Of course when I turn 48 I'll be well past the "5 years after treatment" hurdle and many of the medical profession will consider me cured.

Another year gone by... onwards and upwards!

Tonsil Cancer Support eGroup

A few days ago I received an invitation to join yet another eGroup. As usual I put this on hold. But I was very pleasantly surprised when I came back to it a couple of days later...

When I was going through the beginnings of my cancer experience (diagnosis, surgery and then treatments) I was starving for information as regards others who had already been through what I was about to go through or was going through. At that time the best site I found was Raph's Tonsil Cancer Page. Raph had been diagnosed with tonsil cancer in August 2003 and had already gone through most of what I was going through. His page was presented like a blog, with some photos and such, and was a great reassurance for me.

The invitation I received a few days ago was from this very same Raph and I knew I had to join. He, and his wife Lee, had created the first Tonsil Cancer Support eGroup. I joined the eGroup, read a few of the stories or others who have been through the same type of experience as I have, or are going through it now, or know others who have/wiil go(ne) through it. It was a wonderful experience. Although I now consider myself a cancer survivor I also know it ain't over yet (or until the proverbial fat lady sings). As you all know I am still going through my regular checkups, tests and scans and I often think what would I do if it came back. I'm therefore still part of the cancer survival experience. I am just now starting to realise that my story is rapidly becoming the sort of good news factual experience I was looking for when I was first diagnosed. I am becoming living proof that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I do not know how long that light will stay lit or how brightly but I'm in the light somehow. When I read others stories it confirms much of what I had said during the beginning of my treatment: every single cancer is different and unique; every single cancer treatment is differenta nd unique; every single cancer victim/survivor is different and unique. When I read of others experiences, and when I go back and look at my blog entries of only a year or so ago, I realise how lucky I am. I eat very well (with slight limitations), I drink well, I taste reasonably well, I speak well (and too much), I swallow well, I suffer from the lack of saliva but not as bad as many and I am generally a happy, heallthy and optimistic survivor. I am still obsessed with such morbid figures as survival rate charts and I smugly place myself in those minority positions on the lower right-hand side of these charts in the "post 2-year survival" positions and I am looking forward to being a proud member of the tiny lower right-hand side of these charts in the "post 5-year survival" positions... I'm counting on it so much you can write my name in the list already.

The eGroup is a very interesting experience for me. It is the first discussion forum which I have foudn which is so specifically related to my experiences. I have found various oral cancer sites, groups and forums. But never anything this specific. It is a bizarre "team" to be a member of. Nonetheless I feel that I am a vital part of this type of group and there is an important exchange in that I feel I have something to share with the group and I know that I enjoy reading from the others in the group. Although I now try to spend the vast majority of my day-to-day life forgetting cancer and trying to make that part of my life an unforgettable and painful "souvenir" or memory it is this type of group that reminds me that cancer will always be part of me and I will always be part of the cancer survivors.

BBC Prime is back!

I was zapping through the television this afternoon, a bit groggy after a few days or relatively little sleep, and for some reason I stopped on the channel which used to be BBC Prime on our cable stations. Lo and behold it worked!

BBC Prime used to be about 80% of our television viewing and when it disappeared at the beginning of this year we mourned for quite some time. Now it is magically back and a jolt of happiness and joy has passed through our television hearts.

Another discovery, while zapping amongst the myriad of channels, which could take up an awful lot of my time: The Poker Channel!

Talk, talk, talk

In the past 3 nights I've talked more than in the past 3 months!

This to the great dismay of the rest of my family...

We have had friends visiting from the States: the infamous (Life of Dave) David and his lovely wife Sasha. They arrived on Thursday afternoon and I haven't shutup since. I don't really know why but I feel incredibly comfortable with these 2 people, and we have a lot of similar references in our cultural backgrounds which eliminates the need for a lot of explanations often, and I truly enjoy talking with them. I obviously spend too much time alone in front of a computer and these moments of comradery and communication become an explosion of verbal diarrhea as my friends have referred to my condition before. But with the slight memory of so many months where talking was difficult I guess I appreciate it even more.

They would go out and play tourist during the day and the rest of the family would get on with their lives. I say "play tourist" as they used to live here so it's not exactly their first trip to the area. In the evenings we would eat, drink, talk, drink and talk some more. Well... everyone would eat and drink and I would eat, drink and talk, talk, talk...

We would go to sleep relatively late (about 1:30) ending each night with long discussions in the living room while the rest of the family slept or tried to. It was one of the most enjoyable 3 nights I've had in a very long time and I was very sad to let them go this morning...

Back to reality...

VoD and Regenesis

I started using Video On Demand (VoD) rather accidentally several months ago. I watched the first episode of a Canadian television series on Arte in VoST (version originale – sous-titrée (in the original language with subtitles in comparison to being dubbed in French like the vast majority of programming)). Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I missed the airing of the second episode. But I found the show itself interesting and intriguing (more on that below) and I went to Arte’s web site to find out more about the show. There before me was the Holy Grail.

I had been reading about VoD for quite some time now. But I always thought this was yet another example of modern technology available in the Anglophone countries (America, UK, …) and not (yet) available here in France due to our various isolationist policies and our reluctance to import anything Anglophone and, God forbid, popular. However Arte has its own VoD site where one can download and watch documentaries and certain television shows they air. This series was the first they were offering on VoD and I was certainly going to be one of the first to test it out and show them that there is an interested public.

We have a computer hooked up to the (big) television in the living room. We have a wireless keyboard and mouse which we use from the couch. This is the first step towards a Media Centre and provides a certain amount of functionality which I personally greatly appreciate. As you can imagine I love being able to access the Internet from the living room without having to go to my office or my Blackberry. But we also have replaced the separate DVD player with the computer and run all of our DVDs through the computer. This also gives us the mouse to control the DVD features rather than yet another remote control. We also have a TV tuner card in the computer (Hauppage WinTV-HVR1300) which allows us to watch TV on the computer. But more importantly it allows us to record from the television to the computer. This allows us to record as much television as we want, to watch it over and over again without any notion of wear and tear on the medium (video cassette, DVD, …) and to be able to copy or back it up to other media as often as we wish. Unfortunately I am having a bit of difficulty getting the scheduling feature to work. This is yet another case of the cobbler’s barefoot children as I do not have a lot of time to work on the living room computer as I am spending all my time working on my clients’ computers. Nevertheless we can, and do, manually record television shows and they work wonderfully. When recording from the television, however, the quality of the recording can only be as good as the quality of the broadcast. This depends on the channel we are recording from more than anything else. I have personally always hated the idea that I have to plan recording from television, even in these days of wonderfully automated electronic programming guides (EPGs), one had to pre-plan and pre-think so much so as to choose what one wants to record and when that often much excellent programming gets lost in the mass of media.

One of the fun aspects has been to download and collect various video clips on the computer we can watch whenever we want. These include video clips from enhanced CDs, movie trailers, fun Flash/Shockwave animations and even bits and pieces from our home movies. This has obviously been improved upon, and almost revolutionised, by having You Tube available on our living room television.

But for me personally the Holy Grail, the epitome of the home entertainment experience, has been the notion of the online electronic entertainment library. I have been talking about this in my computing classes for a few years now as my vision of the future of entertainment and we are getting there bit by bit. In my mind the ability to watch what I want when I want, even at a price, is exactly what the convergence of the entertainment system and the Internet should be. I should be able to sit down in my living room, check out a library of programming and movies, pick out what I want to watch, download it and watch it (sometimes simultaneously). I shouldn’t have to have shelves and shelves of DVDs like I have. I shouldn’t have to pre-plan my week finding out what programming is available, scheduling the recording and then finding time to watch what I’ve recorded afterwards. I shouldn’t have to be told when to watch the screen and have to plan it. To repeat: I should be able to sit down when I want and watch what I want.

I guess our digital music system is really spoiling me. With all of our CDs inside of a music server we can all listen to what we want without having to find the specific CD or the song on a CD. With a combination of Sonos and Squeezebox players throughout the house we have the entire music collection everywhere. The Sonos system even plays the Podcasts I download so I don’t have to listen to them on my computer or download them to my iPod first. Nevertheless now that my iPod connects to the car stereo I also no longer have to burn my Podcasts to CDs to be able to listen to them in the car either. The only remaining limitation, and it’s a huge one, is that the current Music on Demand (MoD?) system, whether it be via iTunes or any other online music store, is handicapped by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and crippled quality.

Here on Arte’s VoD site I found I could watch every episode of this television series whenever I wanted. I pick the episode I want, I pay for it (2.49 € per episode) and I download and watch it. I had to try this out. To my great surprise it worked the first time and perfectly. Not only was I able to watch the show immediately, in full-screen looking exactly like a film rather than a computer file, but it was also of a better quality than when I watched the show via cable broadcast. Excellent! This is revolutionary for me. I don’t have to remember to schedule a recording, or find out when the show is on, or make sure no one else is watching something at the same time, or plan on when I will watch it after I record it. I just sit down, decide I feel like watching the next episode and in 7 minutes it’s on and I’m watching it. I watched episode 11, out of 13, last night!

I obviously realised that VoD could be more than just television series. About 95% of Arte’s offerings actually are documentaries many of which are excellent. I then started to look around, without much hope, as I dreamed of being able to have VoD cinema in France like I’ve read about elsewhere. It’s happening slowly but surely. Of course even when I do find French VoD sites the first great limitation is VoST. Most French sites only offer French films or films dubbed in to French. Very few offer films in VoST and when they do the selection is very limited. But it does exist and recently we’ve expanded our family arguments about what to watch on a Friday night to include the VoD offers as well. We’ve watched several movies now from the VoD sites and have been quite pleased with what we’ve seen. I am under whelmed by the selection and choice at the moment. But I hope that will evolve and improve with time. Some of the sites we use:

• Canal Play: Canal Plus’ VoD site with a reasonable selection of films in VoST and the ability to search/filter for just those --- television series (dubbed), most films are for rental and a (relatively small) selection of films for purchase


• Virgin Mega VoD: A very good selection of films, some in VoST but no way to search for those separately, some documentaries --- most programming is for rental with a very small selection of films for purchase


• TF1 Vision: No films in VoST --- most films are for rental and a very small selection of films for purchase


• Imineo: Huge selection, very few in VoST, all films available for purchase and not rental


• M6 Video: Lots of television series, a few movies, everything in French or dubbed with nothing in VoST --- all for rental only


• Vodeo: Exclusively documentaries, almost exclusively in French or dubbed --- all programming available for rental or purchase.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
DRM is what has killed commercial music downloading for me as well as commercial eBooks. DRM may even kill electronic media distribution completely if it continues to evolve in the direction it is going at the moment. We, the consumers, need to revolt against DRM.

I purchased hundreds of songs from iTunes over the years. Then I got my digital music systems and realised I can’t play my iTunes songs. Then Desney got an MP3 player which is not an iPod and I realised I can’t give her any of these songs either. I want to buy music online. I want to be able to get the music I want immediately and I want to pay the artists, not necessarily the music labels but that’s a different story, for the music I listen to. But I expect to get the same, if not an actually better, experience from this purchase as I would if I had gone to a store and purchased a CD. The fact that I can not use the iTunes songs I purchased nearly as easily, flexibly and on various media as I can with songs I rip myself from my CDs has completely removed me as a customer of DRM-protected musical content. I even went so far as to burn all of my iTunes songs on to CDs and then rip them in to MP3 files so as to add them to my digital music collection. But never again.

In addition the best I can purchase and download (192 kbps) is almost half the quality of what I get when I rip the songs myself from a CD (320 kbps). With digital music at least I have another option: I can always procure a CD and rip the music as I wish. I have to admit that I am now a rather regular customer at our local libraries’ mediathèques where I borrow 7 CDs at a time and rip them to our digital music library.

With eBooks unfortunately there is no other choice. Either I purchase DRM-protected commercial eBooks or I purchase the paper version (hardcover or paperback). There are a certain number of DRM-free eBooks. But these tend to be older (public domain) publications or textbooks. As an avid Palm user I purchased over 70 eBooks over the years. I adored reading them on my Palm and especially being able to carry a dozen books or more with me wherever I may be. Then I got a Blackberry. The same would be true if I got a Windows Mobile device instead which I will more than likely be doing in the relatively near future. I found out that I could not transfer the eBooks I had purchased for my Palm on to my Blackberry. I then realised there were very few places I could transfer my DRM-protected eBooks at all. There are some I can’t even read on my Tablet PC! That decided it for me. eBooks could have been the electronic revolution to get people like me reading again by providing the “always available” convenience of having books with me wherever my handheld device was. The other great advantage for me personally was being able to buy English language books as soon as they came out rather than having to wait a very long time, sometimes years, for them to come out in France if ever. But I will no longer purchase a DRM-protected eBook.

As regards VoD there are 2 choices: either we can rent a film which we can watch for a limited time (generally 48 to 72 hours after the first viewing or in some cases up to 7 days) or we can purchase the film. In my opinion the rental prices should be the same as, or actually cheaper than, renting videos in a video rental store. This is especially true as there is no media production price nor the need for handling back and forth. However VoD rentals are actually a bit more expensive than normal video rentals. Most films run around 5 € for a VoD rental. Generally you can rent the DVD for about 3 or 4 € for a day or two and you can buy the DVD for about 20 €. Purchasing a move via VoD, on the other hand, does tend to be cheaper than buying the DVD: about 12 or 14 € in comparison to 20 to 25 €. Where it falls apart for me is the aspect that I find the most interesting: individual television episodes. I pay 2.49 € per episode to watch my favourite series. I can watch each episode for 48 hours after that my file is no longer valid. At the end of a 13-episode season rented this way I will have paid 32.37 € and can not watch the episodes again. But I can generally buy an entire season of a given series on DVD, which I can watch as often as I want and as long as it lasts, for about 25 €. Even though this isn’t going to be stop me, as I am currently willing to pay the price for this type of freedom and flexibility, this is the type of thing that needs to evolve and change.


The PC as a game console
One of the other reasons I had hooked up a computer to our computer, aside from professional reasons which were appropriate at the time, was to prove that the PC could be a better game console than a Playstation (now PS3), a GameCube or even an Xbox 360 who's graphics I find unbeatable. I went out and got 2 wireless gamepads (Logitech Cordless Rumblepads), spent a weekend trying to get them to work simultaneously and tried out a few PC games. Every now and then, hopefully more then than now, I have to admit it: I was wrong. The PC, at the moment, just does not live up to the game consoles for the gaming experience. It should. It's got better graphics, better connectivity and better processing power. But it just has not been oriented towards games (yet). The games look great on the screen and, in my opinion, better than on most consoles. The XBox 360 comes close. But it's practically impossible to play with more than one person at a time and almost all of the games appear to be designed for one person sitting in front of a screen with a mouse and a keyboard in front of them. It just doesn't work as a living room game experience.

I have been reading about Nintendo's Wii for quite some time now and finally got the chance to actually play with one in a store. Having spoken to many people who have used it I was intellectually prepared for the experience. But the feeling itself is just plain wonderful. The revolution is the gamepads, or remote controls, which completely immerse the player in the game and (finally) get the player off of his/her ass to play. This is not the couch potato's game console. I had seen the advert. When you play golf you get up and swing the club; when you play baseball you stand and swing the bat; when you bowl you... well... bowl. But without the heavy ball. This is what the game playing experience should be like. You'll find one in our living room sometime soon...



Regenesis
All of this started because I watched the first episode of a Canadian series called Regenesis. My children recognised immediately that this was going to be my kind of show. In their minds it’s all about a bunch of scientists who work with modern technology and talk gibberish. The show is about a bunch of bioscientists (geeks), who are workaholics obsessed with their jobs, experts in their field and who work solving problems under stress every day of their lives. I admit it. I can relate. But the major enjoyment for me is that these are geeks with lives. There is one stereotypical geek who is unable to properly live and communicate in the real world with people and is much more comfortable in the science lab. But there is only one of those! The lead character is an internationally-renowned bioscientific expert (Ubergeek) who, in addition to finding viruses and cures and genetic advances, actually is quite cool: he curses like a truck driver, drinks regularly, smokes grass and has sex with most of the sexiest females who appear in the episodes (scientists, victims, intelligence agents, …). That is what a geek should be like and that is what *I* watch the show for! These people may work with biotechnology rather than computers and converged tech but I can definitely relate. The dialogue tends to be quite intelligent, sometimes a bit too scientific or technical for most people’s tastes I can assume, and it is a real pleasure for me to watch. Their web site ain’t bad either and I’ve just started listening to their Podcast. I’m a fan.

My eyes are older than I am

I went to the eye doctor today... just a checkup... I knew my eyeglasses needed replacing... it's been a long time...

The last time I went, about 2 years ago, I was getting contact lenses. Unfortunately not too longer after getting the contact lenses I got sick and stopped wearing them. I therefore went back to my old eyeglasses. However it's been obvious lately, for several months now, that I have to take my eyeglasses off when I want to see something close and if something's too far away it gets even more blurry than usual.

Because she askedm I explained to the doctor what I had been through since I had last seen her. She was rather compassionate about everything, gentle and kind. She said that because of the combination of radiation therapy and chemotherapy my eyes were going to be too dry for contacts for at least another 3 years. She also had a look at the back of my eyes, with some special drops which sting like hell, and said that my left eye will now always age quicker than my right eye. She could see scars from the radiation therapy behind my left eye as they went right up to behind my ear both surgically and with the radiation.

Apparently my eyes are about 47 to 50 years old now... so I need "progressive lenses". I think the closest translation would probably be bifocals. I'm going to be getting new eyeglasses as soon as possible... I will probably go with something bright-coloured and cheery to take attention away from the rest of my face and to more than likely embarass my children...

I'll post pix here with my new look...

Life WITHOUT cancer goes on...

Today was my horrific quarterly checkup. Same old, Same old.

Anesthesia in the nostrils and throat; cameras up the nose and down the throat; stick out my tongue and let him shove his rubber-gloved finger down my throat without gagging, ... the routine.

Even with the Xanax beforehand and all the relaxation techniques I could think of it still is ridiculously torturous.

But it is (almost) worth it when it ends in good news. This is what I wait 4 months for. This is what I worry about at least several times a week which is already an improvement over daily. This is the only reassurance, albeit temporary, I can get.

He found nothing suspicious in me at all. No cancer there!

He was very pleased with everything he saw which means I was even more pleased. He nonchalantly gave me the rest of the schedule in his mind:

Quarterly checkup in July;
CAT scan in September;
Quarterly checkup in November

If the CAT scan results look good in November then I get to reduce my checkup to twice a year rather than three times a year which is nothing but good news.

After my CAT scan results I can also go back to my beloved general practitioner and start talking about getting them to remove the catheter port from my chest. Another hope...

I also spoke to him about sun as we are starting to have beautiful days here. Unfortunately I still have to avoid the sun as much as possible and he was unable/not willing to tell me for how long. I will have to wear a total screen cream on my scar and my irradiated neck skin, cover it with Biafine in the evening and drink twice as much water when exposed to the sun. There had to be some not so good news along with the rest.

I got out of there feeling physically awful as always but with a big stupid grin on my face. Back home to sleep of the anesthesia for a while. Unfortunately as the anesthesia starts to wear off my nostrils start to remind me that they just had a camera pumped through them and they're not happy. But I really don't care and pain is nothing if not relative...

Today is March 13th, 2007 and I do not have cancer!

Power tools are for the young

As many of you are aware Desney is redoing our garden(s). I obviously should be helping about a thousand times more than I do. But today was just one of those manly events I could not miss out on.


We are replacing our old brick terrace in the back garden. We are still deciding what we are replacing it with. But we are certain that it is going. It was a beautiful morning so I had no excuse. I went off to Kiloutou and rented a Jackhammer to start some serious destruction. This was the first time I ever used one of these and probably the last. This power tool is basically every boy's dream: a powerful machine which allows me to break things, make a big mess, crush and shatter, make a lot of noise and show man's absolute power over naturally big and hard things such as rocks and stone. I have to admit it was a great feeling breaking up the stone in to little bits.

Feeling as healthy as I do lately, in sharp comparison to how I felt a year ago, I forget that I am not Superman or even just a man about 20 years younger than I actually am. About 10 minutes after starting I knew I had made a mistake. However I had rented this thing for the day, the job needed doing no matter what and I was damned if I was going to give up. Sheer stubborness has got to be the cause of the greatest number of accidents and physical ailments. The jackhammer itself weighed a ton (actually about 18 kg but it felt like a ton). Lifting the thing, holding it in place precisely where one needed and then angling it to displace the pieces and such while the shuttering operation was basically slowly destroying my lower back was just plain painful. I went upstairs and got my "back belt" and I would break up rock for 10 minutes, bend over and pick out the pieces from the rubble and pile them up, sit down for 5 minutes in lower back agony leaning up against the wall, and repeat the process over and over again. Sheer stubborness won over and the job was done. I'm sure a younger man, or one if reasonable physical shape and not a physically lazy office worker such as myself, would have finished the job in an hour and a half, gone off and had a couple of beers and then gone off and tackled another rock quarry somewhere else. I, on the other hand, finished the job, took a shower and immediately took a couple of pain relievers and lied down. I knew perfectly well who I would be calling first thing Monday morning: my beloved chiropractor.

I will be seeing my chiropractor as quickly as possible as of Monday morning. I haven't seen him since I was sick so he's in for a bit of a shock and a story. But I am really hoping he's going to put me back in shape quickly. However I've learned a bit more about just how bad chimotherapy was. Up until cancer treatment the worst pain I had ever felt was my various episodes with sciatica and my herniated disc in my lower vertebrae. Not being able to stand up straight, not being able to walk without a crutch sometimes, painfuly in the slightest movement. That was really some of the worst pain I had felt. Some of my back episodes were worse than what I recall of appendicitis. Severe back pain was just plain deblitating and crippling. This is the first time I've had it again since my cancer treatments. Although it is extremely painful, and probably just as much as before, it has made me realise how bad chemo was because this is nothing in comparison. Everything in life has become even more relative than before, even pain and maybe pain more than anything else, as I know for certain... this too shall pass.

That new car smell

As many of you loyal readers are aware I lease my car through my company. The lease ends at the end of 2 years and the car then gets replaced with a new leased car for another 2 years and so on and so forth.

Today was the exchange of cars. I was very impressed with the service as this time they actually came to our home, delivered the new car and drove off with the "old" one. I had been negotiating the various aspects of the new car for about 3 months now so I had a good idea what to expect. I had signed the contract at least 6 weeks ago. But it's always a pleasant surprise when a new car drives in to your garage and you know it's yours.

I took exactly the same model as before (Renault Mégane). The only major differences are that this one has one more horsepower (7 instead of 6) than the previous one and it's black instead of royal blue. I appear to be in the minority in my family as regards the choice of colour and they'll probably never forgive me for it.

As a loyal customer I was able to negotiate a few options while maintaining the same monthly price as I was paying before. One was just for fun: a sun roof. I haven't had a car with a sun roof since California and it was a lot of fun to sit in the garage, open it up and stare up at... uh... the ceiling. I'm sure it will be a lot more fun to look up at the stars or the sun whenever I finally get the nerve to pull this beautiful thing out of the garage and in to the frighteningly dangerous "real world".

The other option which I felt particularly strong about was a box to allow me to connect my iPod, or any other digital audio player). When I take long drives, to Normandy for example, I tend to download specific Podcasts and then I have to burn them to CDs to be able to listen to them in the car. There is even one which I particularly enjoy, the Engadget Podcast, which I can't even get to fit on CDs and therefore can't listen to it in the car. As many of you are aware I have a reasonably impressive digital music collection with currently over 1,000 albums or 18,000 songs. It seems ridiculous to me, in the 21st century, to have to burn my songs to CDs every time I want to listen to them in the car. As you can see the iPod connection was one of the most eagerly anticipated aspects of the new car. To summarise: it didn't work.

I found the box in the glove compartment, which the dealer had proudly showed to me but had never tested, and the 3 different cables for the 3 different types of connections. I plugged in the iPod and I could see that it recognized the connection. The Renault logo appeared on the screen of the iPod. But no sound came out. This was one of those rare cases where I actually cracked open the manual. I realise there are several readers who have known me for years who find this act completely unbelievable. But exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures. I followed exactly what it said in the manual, as well as a few bright (or not so bright) ideas of my own, and still no sound came out. I called the leasing company. They sent me off to the neared Renault dealership as it turns out this is the first time they have installed one of these new ultra-modern devices in one of their cars and they were unaware of the specific and complex functions. I was personally unaware that the concept of playing music from an iPod through a box which was supposedly designed specifically for that purpose was exceptional.

I found the nearest Renault dealership, in Asnières, and showed up with my iPod Nano, my iPod Shuffle and a USB Key with some MP3 files on them. After about a half-hour of talking to 3 different "technicians" they sent me to a bigger Renault dealership in Courbevoie. They were unhappy that I was coming to them with a problem with a system which they had not installed. They sent me to a total of 5 different departments (ateliers) before I finally just gave up and came home.

Once at home, in the pleasurably dry situation of my garage as it was raining outside, I started plugging in the various equipment to be able to report what I had tried and did not work.

• I plugged in the Nano and this did not work. I knew this already


• I plugged in the Shuffle, through the headphone jack, and... it worked!!!


• I plugged in the USB key, expecting it to work as the Shuffle had, and it did not work

I felt as though I had made a landmark discovery and should be congratulated by the entire Renault organisation throughout the world and immediately. However the iPod still did not work and I was not going to driving around with this amazing new contraption and only able to listen to the sounds stored on a Shuffle.

Looking through the manual they described, in several different languages, how there is a sort of priority system: if the headphone jack is plugged in to a device it works and the others don't; if the USB key is plugged in to a device then that works and the iPod does not; if the iPod is plugged in and nothing else is plugged in then it shoudl work. But this is what I had been doing. Each time I had only plugged in one device to its cable. A lightbulb lit above my head in my comic book universe...

I unplugged all 3 cables in the glove compartment and rolled them up neatly. I plugged in the Shuffle to the headphone jack cable and plugged it in to the box and it worked. This was a step sideways as this already worked. I unplugged that cable. I plugged the USB key to the USB cable and plugged it in to the box and it worked. A major step forward. I unplugged that cable. I plugged the iPod Nano to the iPod cable and with a hand shaking with excitement plugged it in to the box. Eureka! Sounds!!

The box works with only one cable plugged in at a time. Duh!

I left the Nano plugged in, neatly rolled up the 2 other cables for future use, pumped up the volume and bopped my head up and down in sheer audial pleasure for as long as I could stand it.

As you can see from this rather long explanation: For me a car needs to get me from A to B as easily and reliably as possible. Therefore I don't care that much about the motor, the innards, the mechanics and the various practical elements of the machine. It's the accessories that makes my car... mine!

GeMUN

I obviously should have written this as the event was happening as there are several days of wonderful experiences to write about and they are simply going to be forgotten. I am writing this a week later...

I accompanied 6 students from Jessica's school, including Jessica herself, to the Genoa Model United Nations (GeMUN) in Genoa, Italy. Through a various combination of political changes in our country and a personal need to get away for a while I ended up accompanying our student delegates rather than one of the school teachers. The event was happening during our school holidays.

It took us a half a day to get there (drive out to Beauvais airport, catch an incredibly cheap Ryan Air flight to Milan and take a minibus taxi from Milan to Genoa). We were greeted by the families who would be hosting the students and I was taken to register our school at the event. I was then left to wander around Genoa for the rest of the afternoon and that's exactly what I did. I walked and walked and walked for over 4 hours all over town. It was wonderful. The weather was nice and dry and neither too cold nor too hot... just right.

I listened to people talking while I ate my ice cream or coffee wherever I stopped and I tried to reply in my best pigeon Italian whenever possible. As always hand and body language is such a vital part of Italian communication, and everyone knows I have that down pact, that I could get my point across long before I ever opened my mouth. As everyone knows if you want to shut Derek up hit him with a serious dose of throat cancer, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. As you can see it takes weapons of mass destruction to shut me up. But, amazingly and wonderfully, even that is only temporary. If you really want to shut Derek up for the moment, and at any moment, just get him to put his hands in his pockets. Due to a wonderful combination of Italian and Eastern European Jewish ancestry the man is practically completely incapable of communication without his hands. In the evening I went out for dinner at a local pizzeria and just watched everyone else talking. The hands flying about the tables, with miraculously nothing being knocked over, and the wonderfully exaggerated facial expressions as everyone looks each other directly in the face as they speak. It was like my last trip to Israel... it just felt like home.

I spent whatever moments I wasn't at the event walking and walking and walking. I spent evenings eating wonderful food... I took breaks in the afternoon for amazing cups of coffee (cappucino generally) and I had ice cream as often as I could. I discovered that Italian ice cream is even better than Haagen Daaz for my throat as it seems to coat the inside of my throat thicker and for a longer time than Haagen Daaz. If I lived there I would get a doctor to prescribe a couple of scoops twice daily.

We spent the next 3 days with our students, including and especially the jewel in my crown in my obviuosly compltely unbiased opinion {vbg}, doing an absolutely brilliant job in the conferences of the model United Nations. There were private schools from around the world participating (Lebannon, Cyprus, Egypt, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Korea, Turkey and of course Italy) and our girls were just plain outstanding. In any given conference there are maybe 20% of the delegates who truly participate: standing up and defending their clauses, debatting the others' clauses and getting their resolutions through using all of the very realistic political methodology. In each of the 3 conferences our students participated in absolutely all of our 6 students were in that 20% and I was proud of them all at the end of every day and I'm not even their teacher. It was a particular pleasure to watch Jessica get up, quite regularly and sometimes annoyingly regularly {g}, and absolutely eloquently present her arguments with her wonderful English accent with bizarre American overtones every now and then.

At the end of the event, out of the several hundreds of delegates, 6 delegates are awarded Best Delegate for their specific conference. One of our students won a Best Delegate award!

The organisation of just about every aspect of the event was deplorably, ridiculously bad. But I will not go in to that... it's just not worth it and in the end we all managed to have a great time and nothing was penalised.

The event ended with a disco event for the kids which was ridiculous as these European adults weren't allowed alcohol and were thrown in to a tiny room to dance. They all ended up leaving and going elsewhere to drink and dance their Saturday night away. I then spent most of Sunday afternoon trying to find them around town and get them assembled together to prepare our departure.

After a quick visit to the Genoa Aquarium we made the reverse trip home on what was the hottest and most beautiful day of our trip. I don't believe anyone really wanted to go home including myself. Worst of all, for the students, was the knowledge that tomorrow morning was the first day back in school after a fortnight of holiday.

We got home a little after midnight and went to bed dreaming a bit about the days we had just passed and a bit about the future...

Greg Patillo

This guy is just plain amazing! Last week I went on to You Tube looking for something specific. I can't remember what it was. But there on the front page, in their most popular videos section, was this "beatbox flute player". The concept was certainly intriguing. I couldn't imagine how one person could do both: beatbox and flute. Then again I felt the same way about a lot of wind instruments before I first heard Rahsaan Roland Kirk. It turns out this guy has studied Kirk as well.

The video starts out pretty normally: he's adjusting his shirt, his trousers and his shirt again and then he's playing the theme song to Inspector Gadget. This is not exactly high-brow entertainment. Then, about 30 seconds in, everything changes. My head started bobbing and I knew I was in love.

I proceeded to find everything I could that this guy's done... first on You Tube:

• Inspector Gadget


• Sesame Street


• Super Mario


• Peter and the Wolf

I then realised I somehow had to add these tunes to my music collection. I would gladly buy and download these if I could. I looked all over and could not find him anywhere on iTunes, MP3.com, Napster or anywhere else for that matter. I listened to the tunes a few times and realised I had to do something. I Googled and found a system for converting You Tube videos to MP3 files: Vixy. They also convert the videos to video files (AVI (DivX) or MPEG4). But that's not what I was interested in. I can't play videos in my car for example. I converted all 4 of his Youtubes to MP3 and added them to our music server and I've listened to them over and over and over since.

I wrote to him to find out if there's anywhere one could find his music either electronically or commercially. I didn't mention that the quality of the You Tube video converted to MP3 is pretty lousy. Unfortunately I haven't heard back from him yet. Looking at how popular and famous he has become on You Tube it's unlikely I ever will hear back from him.

I then went looking for more. His My Space page has a couple of more tunes which are also quite good. But I can't figure out how to download them...

Googling his name again and getting past all of the You Tube references I found what felt like a gold mine: Aoka. This is a group he performs with and they've got 5 tunes on their web site which I quite enjoy as well. Haunting I guess is the first adjective which comes to mind. Again I can't figure out how to get the music from the site and on to my computer...

I wrote Aoka professing my love and adoration of their music and begging for some way of getting their music... I haven't heard back yet but I'm more hopeful...

These are exactly the sort of discoveries that I've always felt the Internet was developed for!

Stumble Upon

I was using Meebo the other day to talk to my kids. The only way to get through to my daughters is through IM and Meebo is a totally online solution which works with just about all of the IM clients (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, ...). I used to use Trillian but that requires software running on the computer itself which I like to avoid.


All of this to say that within Meebo they had a link to an article about the 25 Startups to Watch. Obviously the article was linked from Meebo because Meebo was one of those 25: number 4 to be precise. But I also checked out the others. Number one was a site called Stumble Upon which I have to admit looked interesting. I checked out the web site, signed up for my free account, installed their toolbar (talk about confidence! I never do that!!) and started playing around. Within about 10 minutes I was hooked. I did my part by going to all of my favourite sites which I visit regularly and giving my "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" where appropriate. This was fun and a bit ego-boosting. The Roman emperor gives his opinion which will change the world {vbg}.

But this actually became quite interesting, and actually useful, when I started clicking on the Stumble! button on the toolbar. I would choose one of my favourite topics and then it would stumble upon a site which fit that topic or tag. I wound up finding quite a few very interesting sites which I probably would not have found otherwise as well as hopefully steering others away from some I found and didn't like.

I find the concept quite interesting and because they have made it so easy to use I think it can work for the masses.

This does not replace search engines but it certainly compliments them in a way I had not anticipated.

Highly recommended!

Wha'd I eat??!?!?!

At about 5:30 in the morning I woke up in a sweat and feeling nauseous. I knew what that meant and I think the psychological dread was more painful than the physical pain. I went to the downstairs toilet, so as to make the least amount of noise while everyone else was sleeping, and spent the next couple of hours. First one end and then the other. As my family, and especially my wife, chide me for I am extremely loud when I throw up. We're sure that the entire neighbourhood was aware. The kids 2 stories above, through several closed doors, were aware. Finally I finished and crawled back in to bed. I don't have a fever or anything else so I don't think it's a gastro. I think I just ate something I should not have and my body said "Everybody out! All exits! Immediately! No stopping to prepare or grab your belongings! Everybody out!!!"

Today is therefore probably going to be a write off. I can't bring myself to eat and I have just about zero energy. The worst is of course my throat which most definitely did not appreciate the constant flow of stomach acids going the wrong way. My throat feels like I have just gone through 3 x-ray radiation treatments in one day.

Everything's relative... I've been through a hell of a lot worse... this is just a time and energy waster...

This too shall pass...

It was supposed to be a surprise...

The best laid plans...

Last week I decided I would try and do something a bit different for Valentine's Day this year. I rarely do anything special because it's only 3 days before Desney's birthday and it gets overly complicated and such...

So this year I thought that instead of the annual bouquet of flowers, which is always incredibly difficult to get properly delivered, I would take my wife out for lunch. I thought it would nice to surprise her with some time for just the two of us and break up her busy and stressful day.


I started looking around for restaurants near where she works (La Défense) last week and had difficult determining if any of them were a fancy restaurant or a simple café or anything in between. Finally I decided to ask for some secret help and I spoke to people I know who work in the same building as her and asked them to recommend a really nice place which was really close. After quite a lot of suggestions I decided to go with La Safranée which is a very fancy-looking place specialising in sea food. Desney mentions that we don't have fish that often so I thought this would go well. I gave them a call and reserved lunch for the two of us for Valentine's day at 12:30.

Then Monday night, over dinner, Desney just happens to mention that she's having lunch with a friend of hers on Wednesday. "Wednesday?" I reply. "Valentine's Day???" I add trying not to seem overly interested. However it's obvious that she's made plans and that she's not going to be available. I decide the only way to get out of this is to blow the surprise and just go for whatever it takes to get the same final result: a lunch for just the two of us on Valentine's day. After a bit of discussion she says she'll let me know if she can reschedule. Finally last night she confirmed that she has rescheduled her lunch with her friend and she's available.

Of course the photos of the place look beautiful, the terrasse looks peaceful and green and everything is just inviting. In reality the restaurant may be lovely... but the day itself is just plain grey, wet, cold, wet, windy, wet, cloudy, wet and just plain wet. Luckily our table was indoors.

We had a very nice lunch and it was a great moment to sit around eating and talking as just of the two of us adults without having to be hosts, or polite friends or parents.

A Valentine's moment which I'm sure you'll see in a Hallmark advert some day...

PS: I apologise for the overuse and abuse of the word "nice" in this post but I was simply not inspired...

Cabaret

Jessica wanted to watch a classic film that she hadn't seen yet. There are so many "references" that she hears about that she knows I've seen and that we have on DVD and that she hasn't seen (yet). Often this is because there are quite a lot of films that we have, that I watch, that will not work for a family Friday night film. Either they're too violent for Alexandra or there isn't enough action or one-liners in them for Desney. Films made from plays, for example, are generally considered to be way too boring and romantic comedies rarely make it to our Friday night cinema productions.

Jessica wanted to watch Apocalypse Now as that is definitely a film we would have to watch just the two of us as it's too violent for both Alexandra and Desney. However it is just too long to be starting on a Sunday night after dinner.

After perusing our rather large DVD catalogue of movies on the shelves Jessica decided upon Cabaret which we watched until rather late as it turned out to be not that short either.

I hadn't seen the movie in years. I remembered that it's probably one of the best, if not the best, things Liza's ever done in her life. I remembered that Michael York was wonderful. But I had forgotten just how much of a classic Bob Fosse masterpiece this was. Absolutely all of the dance numbers are just typical Fosse style down to being almost stereotypical. It was a real pleasure to watch.

They just don't make musicals any more...

Yo ho, Yo ho, A pirate's life for me

All week I knew what we were going to be watching on Friday night. I had pre-ordered Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - Dead Men's Chest long before it was released here in France and it arrived on Tuesday morning.

I had seen it in the movies, on my own, in London when it had first come out. Jessica had seen it in America, before the rest of us, last July. Alexandra had seen it in the movies and Desney had never seen it.

I must say that, although I always love Johnny Depp in everything he does, this was a very disappointing second showing. I think it's because we all remembered how wonderful the first episode was back when neither we nor they knew that it was going to become a trilogy. This episode was fun... but nothing more than that and very very very long.

After the film was over, and the kids had gone to bed, I watched the bloopers and the making of. Both of these where much better than the film itself.

Regardless of the film it was wonderfully relaxing to kick back in the living room, just the four of us, with some Chinese takeaway and watch a movie and laugh.

T.G.I.F.

Dance Class

There are basically two things I look forward to every week: Friday nights when the family and I just kick back, watch a movie and eat takeaway and Wednesday night when Desney and I go to our bebop dance class... just the two of us.

Now that I will no longer be going to London every month for 3 days we should no longer be missing one Wednesday a month and hopefully I can remember the routines better. No matter what it's still the most fun I have in the week and precious moments out with my lady. Sometimes we do really well and sometimes we make a fool of ourselves... as I'm leading however the foolishness tend to be very one-sided... nothing new.

;-)

Chemobrain
Ever since I started feeling better, which is for quite some time now, I've been learning to deal with the tiny handicaps which I've been left with and which may be temporary or permanent... only time will tell:

• Hyposalivation is obviously the most annoying as it prevents me from enjoying eating as I used to.


• The constant fungus on the rear of my tongue which persists.


• The soreness and tightness of my neck around my scar as well as the occasional weakness of the left-hand side of my body


• and the last handicap which I am only barely starting to accept and admit I have symptoms of: chemobrain.

Chemobrain is apparently a generic term for the basic symptoms as regards memory problems following chemotherapy. The descriptions can get quite technical and long and I have only starting looking for information on the subject. But it's actually quite reassuring to see that there is at least a good reason for it. For a while now I've been having difficulty, every now and then, remembering things I know I should be able to. I was thinking it was just part of the aging process, as I'm certainly in the second half of my life if not the final portions, especially since I know that this sort of thing runs in my family... even if some family members tends to forget this every now and then (pun intended). The symptomatic situation is actually almost more frustrating than the hyposalivation problem as it doesn't happen all the time. I can remember things very well very often and then all of a sudden there's just this grey hole in my thoughts and that moment is just gone... like it never happened. Luckily this does not seem to happen to me as regards technical work (yet?) as my memory and thought chains appear to still function wonderfully in those areas. But it definitely happens in my non-professional life which is both annoying and sad. All of this to try and blame the simple fact that I am having difficulty remembering our dance routines from one week to the next on chemobrain and not my own mismanagement of my thoughts and priorities.

This too shall pass...

Super Bowl Monday

Last night was Super Bowl Sunday and for me and the guys it was our annual guy's night out. I will not go in to too much of an explanation as I already wrote this all down last year. Go to last February's archive and scroll down to Super Bowl XL and you'll see what I mean.

This year was an improvement in so many ways that I should just be overjoyed!

First of all the guys all arrived on time so I didn't spend. Then we got excellent seats upstairs right at the bar directly where the strippers pass. Then we got really good, and even comfortable, seats downstairs in front of the giant screen for the game itself. The place was not as packed as last year so this may explain that.

One thing that was really enjoyable for the game itself was this year they ran it on NASN (North American Sports Network) which means it was all in English and no one was trying to translate the game. Unfortunately they can't show the American adverts and we got really sick and tired of seeing the same cut-ins over and over again and the station's jingle really got on our nerves after a couple of hours.

The game was a bit of a disappointment both in the quality of the game itself and the fact that the team I was rooting for did not win. But then again they truly did not deserve to even come close to winning. Their quarterback was just ridiculously bad. It made for a very long game.

It's always good for me to read entries from a year ago to try and appreciate how things have improved. I could anything and everything, except for the chips/fries of course which I'll probably never be able to get back to, and I could drink glug glug glug glug as I wished. Everything tastes great! And I could almost scream every now and then. I certainly tried quite often and by the end of the night, and today, I have very little voice left. No pain... just no voice. Actually quite a good feeling when I think about it.

No matter what a night out with Robbie and Jean-Philippe is definitely one of the most precious moments for me and I am learning to appreciate it more and more. I had just a great time and forgot about just about everything else for a while...

Smoking
As I mentioned last year this used to be my one night of smoking per year. Many people found that an extremely strange habit. But then again many people find a lot of things I do and say to be strange so that never really bothers me. There is no way I will ever be able to smoke anything ever again obviously. But I have to admit that somewhere around 2 o'clock in the morning after a few beers there were these ever so slight pangs of desire... Luckily, for some strange reason, people smoking around me still doesn't bother me or my throat to a great extent. But if I stupidly inhale too much when someone's smoking near me I obviously start to choke and the pain that burns down the inner walls of my throat obviously turns me off the idea of puffing anything. The reason all of this is interesting is that this is probably the last year that this will even be a discussion. Now that France has, slowly but surely, started to catch up with most other European countries and started to ban smoking in all public places this is probably the last year that there will be any smoking at the game at all. France has, in it's infinite wisdom and standard exception française, granted bars, clubs, restaurants and such an additional year before imposing the final absolute ban. Therefore although one can not smoke in public places any more one could still smoke at the club last night. But next year, probably just in time for the Super Bowl, this will no longer be possible. I can't possibly imagine sitting at a stripper bar with a beer in front of me, girls dancing on the poles on the bar and no smoke in the air. It will be an interesting and noteworthy experience and yet something else to make me look forward to next year!

I'm still here!

I know it's been a really long time... but I've been very busy.

I have gone from living each day with the idea that it might be one of my last to trying to live life as though nothing ever happened. I'm not sure it's the "right" approach or even the "best" approach for me. But I have definitely fallen back in to my workaholic ways for better or for worse.

Actually, after falling back in to these habits, I've been going through a bit of depressing times for a while. It's not that I haven't learned anything from my experiences. I still consider everything after September 2005 as Life version 2.0. But it's that the old habits I've gone back to are not that great and tend to show me that I hadn't really gotten life down that well in the first place.

Money
I had some serious problems with my banking accounts for a while which I am only just now pulling out of. It's not the bank's fault. But I do have an awful tendency to spend money that's coming long before it arrives. Then by the time it arrives it's already spent and it only goes to fill a cash-flow hole rather than actually producing something productive. I'm hoping that the concept that the bank doesn't want me to be overdrawn again will force me to learn how to keep my professional and personal bank accounts in the black rather than always in the red. Only time will tell if I've figured out how to change my lifestyle to allow for this.

Every now and then (actually daily) I briefly contemplate what I would do if the disease came back in some other form one day. The fact is that if it does and my cash flow is negative I'm not going to be able to survive financially through the battle and I'll be fighting two battles simultaneously which will only make things more difficult. If I can get my act together and keep my cash flow positive rather than in debt than it should reduce the battles I might have to fight in the future. Sounds great when I read what I'm writing...

Time
Imagine me standing in front of a room of bored and tired men and women like me. I start with "Good evening. My name is Derek and I am a workaholic." and I believe everyone replies with "Hi Derek" or some other such nonsense.

The fact is I am a workaholic and probably always have been from very early childhood. Again Life v2.0 should be different. I should have learned something from all of this. But here I am back in the same old routine of working most waking hours of the day and not much else. I should be spending more time with friends and family... especially my family. I would love to sit around with my wife and kids in the evening and talk or whatever it is that families do in the evening. But there I am back down in the office in front of my screen trying to get yet something else done for the next morning as the entire world will collapse if I do not.

I still haven't got this one figured out and I'm not really sure I can. I love my work, and always have, and I love my friends and family. I just can't seem to get my priorities straight. I think part of it comes from no longer being an employee and the feeling that I just have to constantly give that extra bit to keep my clients for if I lose my clients I lose everything. Every now and then I also realise that working all alone in my little office in my home is not always the healthiest of options either psychologically or physically. Every now and then I miss the days when I had other geeks working with or for me. At least I had someone to talk to, show off to and who understood...

Money and Time
This is where I've really just gotten everything all wrong. Although I have a very bad habit of spending money I don't (yet) have, which doesn't help, I certainly don't manage my business as I should. I am a genius technician, and ever so slightly self-confident in that area, but I am probably a lousy businessman. It's tough having to be both the salesman and the technical expert especially when the only thing I sell is my technical expertise. With the amount of hours I work and the complexity of what I do I should be a bloody millionaire by now or I should be earning a hell of a lot more money per annum than I do... several times as much. I work probably twice as many hours as most employees (70 instead of 35 per week) and yet I earn less money than most employees and certainly less regularly. This is mostly due to bad management on my part as I don't have actual contracts with any of my clients. There are no guarantees and there is no set down rules as to how they should be billed for my time. It's a tough call as I always want my clients coming back for more but I also don't want them worried to call upon me as they would a lawyer or another type of consultant even though my function is almost exactly the same.

Result
I guess like everyone else in the world, spoiled as I am or not, I just wish I had more time and more money. There were a lot of bugs in Life version 1.x and a lot of them are reappearing in Life version 2.0. I need to start thinking about Service Pack 1 to create an entirely new and improved Version 2.1 especially if life itself forces me to have to work towards a Version 3.0 some day.

;-(

I will not try and write about all that has happened since my last entry as I just don't have the time, or the memory, necessary.

I'll just start with today and move forward whenever I can.

iFit Sucks!

I went to go for a run on my treadmill on Sunday morning. I powered up the computer in our gym and went to iFit to do my workout (basic running with a pretty streaming video of the mountains or the Hawaiian surfside along with a nasally American female trainer voice pushing me along). I should say I tried to go to iFit. For the third time in a row their server was not available. It appears as though they do regular server maintenance and they carry it out at what they must assume are American off hours (i.e. European morning times). This makes the service useless to me, and probably quite a lot of other Europeans, and I have now cancelled my subscription.

Instead I powered up my iPod Nano, plugged it in to the gym speakers, selected my "Running" playlist and cranked up the volume. On the computer I put on a movie with subtitles without the sound (Star Wreck a great Star Trek parody movie made in Finland specifically) and ran until I could no more...

A great business idea: I've looked all over the net for this. A site where one can download videos of walking or jogging through beautiful scenery (forests, beaches, mountains, cities even...) from the point of view of the walker/jogger. I have found one or two sites with VHS or DVD versions but you have to buy a whole film and pay for shipping and handling before you find out whether it is worth it or not. The ability to download a quick short version of each film, allowing the client to get an idea as to the quality of the film and the choice of scenery, would be a must but not a big deal to put in place. What we need is a good athletic filmmaker with a Steadicam willing to run around some beautiful locations around the world for the benefit of all of us bored sedentary geeks everywhere!

Online Poker

I've been spending more and more of my free time playing poker online... I love it! At the moment I play in spurts of anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes and soon as I win a bit I leave the table. That means that at the end of any session I always go away ahead. A tiny bit each day...

A particularly wonderful combination is playing on my Tablet PC while hanging out on the couch in the living room. No wires, no keyboard, no mouse... just a stylus in one hand and the Tablet across my lap.

I've tried quite a few sites and I keep coming back to the same one which happened to be where I started.

I've tried the infamous Party Poker and even opened an account and made a deposit. That was silly. I should have tried the software first. I was overimpressed by the reputation of this site which is, as it declares, "The World's Largest Poker Room" and it also sponsors most of the poker tournaments or shows I see on television. Unfortunately it offers what has to be the worst software available for online poker. An extremely dull and dated interface. More importantly it lacks some of the functions I love such as remembering folded cards, and it doesn't show the chips and pot increasing until the end of each round. A boring interface just makes the game more boring. However they do have one very interesting, and dangerously enticing, Party Poker Anywhere feature which allows you to play poker with them without installing software. This means you can play on just about any computer. But it's still the same boring interface.

The other extreme is PKR which is almost like playing poker inside of Second Life or The Sims. Fully 3D avatars, full animation and sound, the ability to control the avatar's actions (swirl chips, thumbs up, ...) and facial expressions (sad, angry, happy, ...) with mouse clicks is pretty amazing. Although I enjoy playing with this one with "play money" I find the overly gamelike interface actually gets too much in the way of seroius gameplaying.

Along the same line is Full Tilt Poker which also has overly cute avatars and spacelike table settings. But again I find it really gets in the way of my playing when the guy across from the table is a shark and I'm sitting next to a monkey. Cute... but just not my idea of the poker experience.

The next one for me to try, maybe, is Poker Stars. But I doubt I will. I'm just too happy with my first choice that I'm no longer that interested in looking elsewhere. It's not an accident that the first place I looked for online poker was Betfair as that's where I do all the rest of my online gambling (horses mostly and a bit of big sports events (Super Bowl (of course), World Cup, ...)). What is pleasantly surprising is that Betfair Poker has turned out to be my favourite interface. It has all the features I want, including the aforementioned "remembering folded cards" which I had not even thought of as a possibility until I saw it there, and a great choice of tournaments and tables covering an extremely wide range of budgets which I definitely appreciate. For fun, and most of the time, you'll find me at the relatively cheap Texas Hold 'em No Limit Tables with a tiny average pot of about $5 or $7. I sit down, play a bit, win $5 or $10 and then leave and get back to whatever else was going on in the living. A bit of adrenaline rush with a few "all in" calls and I'm satisfied. The first time i played one of their tournaments I actually kicked ass and was in 6th place, out of about 90 players, before I finally just had to give up and go to bed. It was almost 2 o'clock in the morning (weekend night). I obviously need to try tournaments earlier in the day. But even going to bed I woke up $30 ahead. A lot of fun!

In addition to playing online every now and then I use CardPlayer.com's excellent site and their Poker Analyst for keeping track of my playing sessions. I'm slowly but surely recuperating the losses I incurred in one bad night back in September... I should break even in a week or so and maybe start making money again before Christmas. But that's almost irrelevant for the relatively small amounts of money I'm playing with. It's the overall sensation, excitement, risk and powerplay pleasure that keeps me coming back.

You know where to find me: Betfair Poker.

Christian McBride Band... Live!

Yet another bass player I have always wanted to see perform live!

I battled through Sunday evening traffic and was late when I met Robbie at the Gare de l'Est. We found parking relatively near by and I ran from the car to the New Morning. This was partially because I was excited to get to the concert and try and get some good seats but honestly it was mostly because I desperately needed their toilet more than anything else. The quantity of water, or other liquids, I drink constantly to keep my throat lubricated has the negative effect of requiring me to always know where the nearest toilet is as when I need it, which is often, the need is immediate.

Robbie and I got our seats, which were slightly better than those for the Ron Carter concert. We put our coats down and started on our first overpriced, but delicious, beer. About an hour later it was time...

What an incredible quartet this turned out to be! Terreon Gully on drums; Geoffrey Keezer on piano; Ron Blake on saxes (tenor and soprano) and flute and, of course, the one and only Christian McBride on bass and bass guitar. The concert was unusual in that it was one long set... no intermission. It moved from a smooth start with Christian's obvious classic jazz beginnings and just built and built in energy. It's incredible how modern Christian can make an upright bass sound. He also switches from plucking to bowing at unexpected places as the mood hits him. In addition to his obvious expertise (this man's got bass chops that most can bearly fathom!) he's a great showman. He's obviously having a great time and wants us to too. The show just kept getting hotter and hotter in mood and all the time without getting overly esotheric or just plain weird. The were whipping us slowly and surely in to a frenzy right up to their rendition of Joe Zawinul and Weather Report's "Boogie Woogie Waltz" which just brought the house down. It went on forever and we just kept wanting more. Finally it ended and we all caught our breath, yelled, screamed, applauded and begged for more. They finished up with Ron Blake's "Sonic Tonic" which actually got us all even more excited. We all applauded and it was over. We obviously begged for an encore. They came back, all with a glass of red wine in their hands, and gave us a quickie as they wanted to hurry to get "prepared for the after show" {vbg}.






Thanks to the wonders of the Internet you can actually download a video of the band performing "Boogie Woogie Waltz" HERE. It's a relatively big file (30 MB) and appears to be shot by a filmaker with a bit of a foot fetish. Believe it or not this is a relatively tame and short version of the performance in comparison to what we saw. We were blessed! I recommend checking it out though as it gives a general feel for the end of the concert. It starts off slow so you have to stick with it...

We left the club feeling rejuvenated and full of energy and a bit of awe at what we had just saw. We went looking for food and wound up at an Indian restaurant where we finished the evening with a bit of curry. I drove Robbie home and headed back to my place for sleep and preparation... back to work tomorrow!

Salon du Vin ... What a difference a year makes!

Today was the day I've been waiting for throughout the past few months: The Salon du Vin des Vignerons Independants de France. Our cellar is running empty and it desperately needs filling. Jess now drinks wine often with a meal, and I can enjoy more and more, so we are up to a bottle and a half during family meals which makes it disappear quicker.

Today was the opening. I got there as quick as I could but still spent over an hour parking. For those of you who don't remember here is the ARTICLE I wrote once upon a time about the Salon. It was a great day and Desney and I truly enjoyed seeing our old friends. Many of them were very kind and said how great I looked. Wanna get me to buy more of your wine? Stroke my ego a bit? Does it work? Wel... it certainly can't hurt {g}. I was especially pleased at how much I could taste and enjoy. My taste buds and tongue certainly aren't 100% restored. But I believe they're up around 80% which is way beyond acceptable. We went back to our classic suppliers (Moreau Naudet - Chablis; Ehrhart & Fils - Alsace; Domaine de Fleurie - Beaujolais Cru; Le Fagé - Bergerac; Granoupiac - Languedoc-Roussillon and Michelas - Crozes-Hermitage/Cornas) and spent way too much money refilling the cellar. But we had a great time. The biggest challenge, as always, was getting everything to the car. We were home relatively early and ready for dinner...

Later in the evening I started contemplating Last Year's Salon du Vin which was towards the end of my treatments and the first time my mother had been. Eternally morbid as I am I went back to my blog entry for November 2005 and checked out what life was like a year ago. The first, slightly anecdotal, point I noticed was that the Salon started on Thanksgiving last year just like this year. The rest was slightly depressing and painful to remember. But the end result was the same: I've come a long way baby!!! Looking back I realise now that my present condition is actually far better than I ever thought it would be back then...

I can't wait to look back at this year's entry... next year!

Another break in...

I get home late night from another long 3-day business trip to London and I go down to pick up my car in the Gare du Nord parking lot... unpleasant surprise...

They broke the read driver-side window (again) and broke in to the car (again). Unfortunately for them there wasn't anything to steal this time. I now take my Tom Tom 910 with me when I travel and I had coincidentally just emptied out the music CDs the night before leaving. They must have been pissed off! Unfortunately for me however it's going to be another waste of time as I'll have to go get the window replaced tomorrow...

My next car (coming soon hopefully) will have an alarm {duh}!

Another test... another exam... I PASSED!

I had difficulty sleeping last night... yet another exam today that I can't study for...

I tried to get some work done in the morning but my head just wasn't in to it...

Back to see Dr. Hagège again for my quarterly checkup.

We went through my PET scan results first which we both knew were good.

Then on to the exam. I had taken a Xanax an hour and a half before to prepare. But he brought out a new "toy". In addition to the cameras which go up my nostrils and then down the back of my throat he now has a bigger one which goes right in the mouth and down the throat. I'm afraid that didn't work and we both knew it wasn't going to. He therefore shot the anesthesia up my nostrils and talked to me a bit while waiting for it to kick in. He asked me some questions about his old Mac computer which was acting up and I gave him a few tips as best I could with cotton shoved up my nose.

Finally he went in for the kill and I believe my innards were broadcast on an enormous screen he has on his wall. I say "I believe" as I keep my eyes closed throughout these things. I tend to be crying during and after so I wouldn't see anything anyway. He knows me well enough to give me tissues even before we get started. He was apparently pleased with what he saw. He tried to get the new camera down my throat again but my body just wasn't having it. One hand holding the tip of my tongue and pulling it towards him and the other hand trying to shove, excuse me "slide", this camera tube down my throat. My throat still considers that nothing should go back there that can not be chewed first or squeezed in to nothingness by my throat muscles. In other words "solid objects are forbidden". He saw what he wanted to see and had me do my "eeeee" and "uuuuuuu" and "ohohohoh" sounds while he checked out my vocal chords on the big screen.

Finally it was over. It must have lasted just a few minutes... maybe 10 or 20 all together... but for me it always feels like an eternity.

We sat down at his desk and went over the status and the future. He was pleased to announce that my entire throat area and upper chest are clear of cancer and have been for a while. He then came out with the first bit of really good news: as it's been more than a year now since the surgery he feels we can now see each other every 4 months rather than every 3 months. Most of you reading this are probably thinking: "big deal... one more month". But that means I will see him 3 times a year rather than 4 and that makes a big difference to me!

As we talked it was obvious that there are aspects, as I've always known, that I'm just "going to have to live with": the eternal lack of saliva (hyposalivation) and the "champignons" on the back of my tongue.

We plan on my next appointment for March 2007. I'm not holding my breath!

I went home and went to bed and slept with the comfort that, at least for today, I am (still) cancer free!

MSIE 7 and Vista

I've been "playing around" with Vista more and more on my Tablet PC and I have to admit I really like what I see. Microsoft have "been inspired" by some of the best functionality of the other OSes out there (Mac and LINUX especially) and have implemented some pretty nice new functions. A lot of the most interesting functions are actually "under the bonnet" motor type function (such as being able to go back to previous versions of files, offline document synchronising, ...). But the interface is a definite major change and going to require getting used to. I see training money coming in for many IT companies out there.

MSIE 7 is definitely a pleasure and I have a lot of trouble going back and forth between MSIE 6 on all of my other computers ans MSIE 7 on my Vista Tablet. Tabbing, "inspired" directly from Firefox, is probably the most noticeable improvement and definitely the one I use most. They got this one right and I now have difficulty remembering how to work without it. Their management of Favourites is also greatly improved and again I have difficulty going back to MSIE 6 and finding my Favourites through the "old" procedures.

I will not go in to Office 2007 at the moment... I am basically lost in the new interface. I am sure new users will find this much more "friendly". But I am losing lots of time trying to find how to do the same simple things I used to do within the new "ribbons" and "tabs"... This too is going to require major training around the world. IT companies should be raking it in next year (2007). Thank you Microsoft!

Rate Your Music or MusicThing

My loyal readers will remember I mentioned Library Thing a while ago for online cataloguing of our book collection.

I asked several times on their forums and such if they were planning anything similar for music which I referred to as "Music Thing". It appears that they are working hard on new functions for Library Thing and, although Music Thing is a thought in the back of a few developers' minds, they do not have time to work on such a product. However someone on the forum recommend I check out Rate Your Music.

On first glance I figured that he had not understood what I was looking for: online management of my CD collection. It looked as though this was just a site for everyone to put up their ratings (up to 5 stars) and personal reviews of music (CDs, vinyl, tapes, ...). Although that looked like fun, and a vital part of Library Thing, it was not what I was looking for.

Luckily the account creation was free and I gave it a try. I quickly found out that you can "also" include your own music and declare that you "own" the music and in what form it is owned. This is even better than I had hoped for. I can actually note which CDs I have as CDs, which vinyls and, most importantly, which music I have "only" as MP3 files. This allows me to have all of my music collection in one piece of software and online... and it's free!

Windows Media Player, or iTunes, allow me to catalogue and manage my MP3 files. But they do not include music which I have not put in to the computer. Some other software such as Music Collection Pro allow me to manage my CDs, vinyls and tapes and such but not my MP3 files. This is the first program I have found which nicely manages both in one place.

The functions similar to Library Thing such as tags and "compatability lists" are a lot of fun. I found someone else out there who has almost exactly the same jazz CDs I have. The statistics part is really fun as well.

I have entered about 150 of my CDs at the moment and will continue to do so as time permits. That's probably about one tenth of my total collection. I hope to finish cataloguing everything sometime before I die... then everyone else can have fun looking at what's I "had" and start fighting over who gets what!

I've added a link to my music collection in the Links section in the menu over there on the right.