Category: General

Quick update

Just a quick note to say that while I have been gone, I hope I’ve not been forgotten! I have had a fair share of personal life crises in the last few weeks and even hand (wrist) surgery yesterday for an injury a few months ago, so I need to keep this brief. I just felt bad letting one more day go without at least posting SOMETHING for passers by/feeds/etc to see some activity to know that the blog hasn’t shut down.

Let me get another day or two post-op and I’ll share some of what’s been going on lately. And remember: I’m always posting something on Twitter, so remember you can always follow me there (and read excerpts in the sidebar to the right). More soon!

Welcome Medscape Readers!

For all of you who read my pre-rounds interview in the Medscape MedPulse mailing, welcome! In spite of having upgraded to a tag-enabled version of WordPress some time ago, I have not yet gone back and content tagged many of my older posts from last year. I am in the middle of doing that now and will be adding some resources on the sidebars to assist with navigation, for example, all posts dealing with my previous medical school or clinical experiences, etc.

So in addition to a general “welcome,” I wanted to invite you to come back since this blog is always a work in progress.  I hope you had a chance to read last week’s Grand Rounds edition hosted by me and found it an enjoyable read. Make sure you read the current edition at Sharp Brains which will be featured in next week’s Medscape mailing.

Thanks again, and I will be back as a student this coming year–I just can’t say where or as what, exactly. I’ll be blogging soon about some of my future decision points on this topic, so feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed to keep abreast of current posts.  Cheers!

GR: Don’t forget your submissions!!

Just a reminder about the Grand Rounds submission timeframe ending this evening! If you haven’t given me a post and want to be included, time’s running out!  I might consider a post later than the posted time today, but tomorrow will be too late so don’t delay!

5-Fingered by NPR!!

Hello all! Yes, I know it’s been too long since I posted anything of personal substance, and yes, I know I said it wouldn’t happen again anytime soon, but you love me anyway, right? I actually have a really good reason (two, really) which I’ll get into just after this post, but this travesty I’m writing about now would be reason enough for scandal.

I’ve been robbed–ROBBED–I say! Celeste, a long time commenter and reader of this blog, pointed out to me that National Public Radio (NPR) has taken one of my old posts and stolen it, without reference, without a “hat tip,” without anything, in their feature entitled “Playing Five Beats To The Measure.”  My post entitled “5/4″ obviously is the victim of an NPR five-finger discount. Now it stands to reason with NPR you’re going to get a much more polished product than with lil’ ol’ me, but the spirit of my post clearly comes through, and with the added literary/dramatic touch of a second, autobiographical voice feeling an “odd” kinship with this asymmetric time signature.

I invite you to read mine first, then see the NPR feature. Afterwards, tell me whether or not mine gives those thieves a run for their money! :P  heh

 

Veni, Vidi, Video!

Welcome to my first video blog posting!  I thought this would be appropriate to welcome myself back to my own blog (nobody else was gonna throw me a party) by giving you, my readers–now worthy of a medal of loyalty at this point–a little somethin’ somethin’ extra for your patience.  Here it is, or rather, here I am in moving pictures:

That was fun! I was honest when I said I did it in one take, believe it or not. I’m a pretty nim quick-witted person, and I actually thought of the whole “effect”/”transition” thing as I was talking up to that point. I filmed the “extra” scene separately, of course, but the rest of it was one take. The “goodies” were added in post, of course, and if it didn’t work I simply would have re-recorded another, less-silly take to replace this. I think it was a success!

I really, really have to give a shout out to Dr. Anonymous who pioneered so much multimedia for us medbloggers and who does his own video blogs about his radio show (before and after) as well as his own personal topics. Emily McGee, aka crzegrl, is also a pioneering medical vblogger whom I’ve admired greatly for putting herself out there and talking about her job and life in informative, silly, and touching ways.  Lastly, Vijay aka Scanman, had a brief foray into this area, but I think he dropped it in favor of audio ‘casts. It’s all good–I think anything we do to reach out to readers and each other in new and different ways just makes our social and professional networks that much stronger and more fulfilling.  Cheers to all of you, and now me, too! :)

As I mentioned in the spot above, a lot will be coming soon of a personal, and at times, difficult nature. I know I need to finish my personal illness story, and believe me when I say it has the highest priority.  After a week or so when I’m far more “caught up” with posting my narratives (I’m not going to inundate the blog all at once) I think you’ll understand where I’m coming from. I think you’ll also see that if after all that I’m still around, then I’m not going anywhere!  On to more posts, and thank you, thank you, thank you for caring enough to still be around–you’re the best!

Perl Boredom, Domain Hunting

The other day, registrars began opening up domain registrations to .me TLDs.  I became aware of this because Beth at PixelRN had a quandary about a domain she was trying to register and the TLD .me obviously caught my eye.  From what I can gather, tons of .me domains are being snagged by the hour at premium prices.  GoDaddy and other registrars are reportedly screwing the pooch either because of higher-than-expected demand or because there has been too much bullshit with front-running where searches basically ‘tip off’ a registrar (and, in my conspiracy-theory-addled brain, an elite group of insider clients who will snag it in the precious waiting period while one decides if they want it or not).

I probably won’t get one, but in complete boredom I wondered what kind of games could be played with to see what domains could be listed.  Here is a Perl one-liner from a shell CLI querying the UNIX (in this case, Mac OSX) generic words flat-file database. (another common location for this file would be /usr/dict/words):

enrico@AppleCore:~$ perl -ne 'if (/^(.*)me$/) \
{ print "$1me ($1.me)\n"; }' /usr/share/dict/words


abrocome (abroco.me)
absume (absu.me)
academe (acade.me)
acetoxime (acetoxi.me)
achime (achi.me)
acme (ac.me)
acrodrome (acrodro.me)
acrosome (acroso.me)
actiniochrome (actiniochro.me)
actinodrome (actinodro.me)
actinosome (actinoso.me)
actinostome (actinosto.me)
adarme (adar.me)
adenochrome (adenochro.me)
adenomatome (adenomato.me)
adenotome (adenoto.me)
adrenochrome (adrenochro.me)
adventuresome (adventureso.me)
aerodrome (aerodro.me)
aflame (afla.me)
aforetime (aforeti.me)
afterchrome (afterchro.me)
aftercome (afterco.me)
afterfame (afterfa.me)
aftergame (afterga.me)
afterlifetime (afterlifeti.me)
aftertime (afterti.me)
agname (agna.me)
agoranome (agorano.me)
agronome (agrono.me)
airdrome (airdro.me)
airframe (airfra.me)
Akhlame (Akhla.me)
aldime (aldi.me)
aldoxime (aldoxi.me)
allosome (alloso.me)
alme (al.me)
ame (a.me)
amidoxime (amidoxi.me)
Read more »

Updates, Bags, and Social Networks

Blog Updates:
I’m happy to report all is well. The blog software is updated, making room for all the “current” plug-ins, themes, etc. and most importantly, the security fixes applied so that I don’t get h4×0r5 hijacking the site to something hideous and embarrassing like an online yarn shop. I’d never live that one down. Regarding the slick black theme: yes, it’s understated, and surprisingly, yes, it’s pretty much done. I downloaded it of course, because I can’t create much of anything, but I can always edit and tweak. (which I need to do because I want my links underlined and my blogroll subcategorized) However, I really like the minimal, clean look. Maybe in a month or two I’ll think to add a graphic here and there, but the day you see a flash ad at the top (for yarn and fabric!) is the day you know for sure I’ve been abducted. Thanks Vijay and TinyShrink MD (heh) for the shout outs.

Bags:
As I wrote on Twitter the other day, I have a serious thing for bags. I am, in fact, completely indistinguishable from a woman shopping for purses with the level of scrutiny that I investigate pockets, seams, zippers and compartments. However, the presence of my Y chromosome does mean that I must depart somewhat from my inner female in that looks and it matching anything else I have are nearly irrelevant. I don’t care if the bag looks like a freak accident that escaped the Coach genetic testing labs–I care about function,form, and feel, ONLY and in that order.

So my brother was here last week, and I saw a bag he had that I don’t recall his having this last Christmas. I asked what it was, and he said “Weren’t you the one that told me about this?” Disgustedly, I gave a look like, “You fool! Do you think I’d forget something like this?!?” as I pawed The Precious.

Here is the object of my desire. It’s different from my brother’s, but our gear needs are different. Yes I know the orange isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing color, but just look at that removable DSLR camera bag attachment. Yes, I know the whole “snake” theme is a bit odd, but that’s some sexy stuff. YeSSSSS!

Obviously, I’m not getting this anytime soon, but my current eBags laptop backback is not doing too well (in fact, it’s nearly unrecognizable from the online pictures). It’s also surprisingly heavy all by itself–something I found recently as I emptied it to have it be managed by Claudia when I was last in the hospital. “Honey, I need this because, like, you know, the next time I might be in the the hospital–what? yes, I know the doctor said all would be fine, but you never know…ok!–I’m just saying, the next time, if I have this, it won’t be as heavy for you when you have to manage it,” just isn’t very convincing. I’ll work on it.

Social Networking:
In my previous life, I was a senior-level IT person/consultant. It should come as no surprise, then, that when faced with a “SIGN UP NOW” email from a relative, friend, or annoying co-worker–it matters not–in order to see their pictures or whatever online with some proprietary service, I normally would hit “delete” without a second thought (and might even be annoyed that thanks to them, they at least have my email address). Why on earth would I want to give away my information to a business that I have nothing to do with who, upon trying to make ends meet, will be like so many others and whore their user data to the highest bidder, maybe even sinking so low as to start putting up yarn ads. (If you got that reference, you’ve read this all the way through and I thank you from the bottom of my ad-less heart)

Maybe it’s the sweltering Texas summer heat, maybe it’s having some burnable time on my hands, but I seem to be trying out new services sites like it’s going out of style. Normally meticulously recorded in SplashID on my Blackberry (encrypted of course), I have yet to keep up with all the usernames/sites I’m registering. It’s like I have Daddy’s credit card and going on a registration/shopping spree and don’t care about amounts or receipts, wadding them up and throwing them on the floor as I search the next target. There’s a ton of redundancy and overlap in these things, and I think I’ve reached the limit of what I’m willing to try. I think with each useful service, there is a “best of breed” product; that’s the one I’ll sign up with.

And what it is with the lack of vowels in these names? Flickr. Stumblr. Feedlr. Tumblr. Mastrbatr. I gotta pull back before some 21-year-old CIO in the Bay Area tweets to his other entrepreneur buddies and with all their collective information figures out the exact position of all the constellations at the time of my birth. On their iPhones.

(Medical stuff–personal and news/commentary–coming in a jiffy, I promise!)

Belated GR 4:11 and My Pre-rounds

This week’s Grand Rounds is up at Doctor Geek, aka Dr. Enoch Choi.

It’s been a couple of weeks, but with the move and being stuck in dial-up land I failed to pass along the URL for my interview at Medscape with Dr. Genes. If you get weekly mailings from Medscape, this was included somewhere in last week’s issue, but if you don’t or missed it, here it is (registration required).

Grand Rounds 4:2

A Dr. Seuss-themed Grand Rounds is up at Musings of a Distractible Mind. Dr. Rob really outdid himself on this one.

How to achieve Blog Nirvana

Om….

I think the whole Venn diagram thing is hilarious. Personally, in my recent hiatus, I was actually thinking about what I could do to make my own site better, more appealing, not just for readers but for myself. The simple obvious answer is “POST, moron!” but I like the long, complicated answers. :P

To that end, I bought a book while in the States: The Forest For the Trees, because I thought, written by a professional editor, that it would help my get past all my perfectionistic “stop” energy to “let it flow.” Well, it turns out not to be what I needed, as the book deals more with career writers (or those who wish to be) and writers of books/thos involved in a formal publishing process. I was more looking for something along the lines of How To Stop Procrastinating Blogging Simple Things You Know Others Will Enjoy Because You Keep Saying “Later”, but I just didn’t find that on Amazon.

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