Anti-abortion protestors in Gloucester (by alaric)

I nipped into the center of Gloucester at lunchtime today. Doing so takes me past Gloucester Royal Hospital, and on my way in, I saw two men outside the sexual health clinic clinic (Hope House), with a big banner on the railings reading "Pray to end abortion". Looks like it's made the local news: Women using Hope House reassured that an anti-abortion protest will not affect their treatment.

On the way back, standing in front of them was a woman holding up a bit of cardboard upon which had been written "YOUR BODY, YOUR CHOICE". I gave her a grin as I passed; one of the men was muttering something inaudible to her, and I heard her start to respond with "It's been shown in studies that...".

Is this going to get worse? Are we going to need a clinic escort system, like they have in America? I work just opposite the hospital, and am not afraid to get shouted at or attacked while protecting people's rights; so if anybody does feel intimidated about visiting Hope House, I'll happily walk you in/out if I've got any break time free. You can ask me on Twitter.

How I’m managing my life with emacs org-mode (by alaric)

It's no secret that I'm a busy person; often, when I decide to do something, a few years pass before I actually get to do it. So the only way I keep afloat is by the judicious use of computers to track my task lists. I rely on automatic systems to make sure I always know what I need to do today, and what are the most important things I need to do "sometime" that I can do right now. There's no way I could keep all that in my head without forgetting about things and letting people down, or feeling stressed because I'm juggling too much in my mind, or not being able to find the best thing to do when I have a free moment.

As I've mentioned before on here, I want a personal information management system based on predicate logic, so I can express complex relationships between things easily, and tell the system how to infer knowledge automatically. However, "build one of those" has yet to hit the top of my TODO list, so for now I'm using emacs' legendary org-mode. This lacks the rich semantic power of my proposed PIM, but it's already implemented and has a nice editing interface 🙂

A few people have asked about what I've done, so here's my attempt to document it.

Read more »

12 years… (by sarah)

So today I went to the Drs to see how the weight loss was going and stuff, I was convinced I had piled it on over Christmas I felt a lot stockier than before Christmas and to be honest I ate a lot reaching 1600 on alot of the days. This is about the 1400 stable and 1200 weight loss that I sorted with the nurse. 1600 is what I was eating before I went to the Drs, the amount I was eating and wondering why my weight was creeping up as everyone knows women have 2000 calories a day - unless you are me. I am short, had a boarderline thyroid for a decade or so and as it turns out have the lighter Asian skeleton like my dad (as well as the afro-carrabean spin from my mum) - add in the low mobility and I was screwed.

But between tablets and the discovery that I can't eat wheat and sticking to the low calorie counts to loose the excess weight, I have been loosing weight but I seriously ate some food over the holiday and then my birthday and so on.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I go and find I have lost weight, not much but I have lost weight still. The key being that due to pelvis being a lot more stable I have been out doing more stuff, doing running games with the cubs and even managing a 20 minute climb. And then they said my bloods were all good, all the tests were normal!!!

That is the first time that has been said to me, no not sures, or a bit high, or oooo that's not goods or it's boarderline or here's a tablet to help control this. So amazing!

And that is the first time in about 12 years possibly more.

One of the conversations I had with the Dr recently was that I don't know what energy level I am supposed to have - I've not had "me" energy since I was 18, I don't think 30+ normally have the same the energy as a teen so I have no idea if I am back to normal or not and to a certain extent I kind of don't care either as I am so much better than I have been for so long. I feel a little bit sad that that bit of life is kind of missing for me but at the same time I have the girls and though maybe I could have taken them to more things if I'd been weller I also know they love snuggly time watching films and colouring and stuff and I still took them to parks it was just some days I couldn't and when I did it was the outing for the day.

Interestingly I came home thinking about what I was doing last time it looked like I might get better with all the back treatments and exclusion diets at Chelsea and Westminster. That was like 12 years ago as was me trying to get a PhD place, the one I really really wanted was with the Open University, but it relied on Beagle2 landing and collecting data. It didn't happen, the beagle disappeared and today I watched the press-conference live of how they've found it sitting there on the surface of Mars. It made me smile, bitter sweet and poetically lovely.

Maybe when I have a cyborg body I can fly to Mars and say hi to it 🙂

Of course with hindsight I think it was for the best for me, I became so very sick and my friend who got the PhD funding did far more with the chance than I think I would have because fundamentally I am a shyer person and just not as good at Chemistry and form filling!

And anyway I am not sure I wouldn't be in a similar place to were I am now anyway.

2015 is kind of gearing up to be an amazing year.

Day 15 – Pinterest (by sarah)

It is day 15 of Advent and so I painted an Ice Tunnel - well actually I painted it like a fortnight ago but I am putting it up now 🙂 Yes I was behind, yes I have back blogged!

I kind of got obsessed with this colour scheme.

Also I found an interesting article on what happens if you try and live by Pinterest for a week - Pinterest is an image sharing platform. I discovered it existed as people where putting my photos on there and my friend saw some cakes I'd made and nagged me (still have not blogged nor pinned the cakes).

I was a bit sad to see that there is a Pinterest stereotype - Mummy Blogger, White middle class housewife etc... and some people have found it depressing as they are not crafty enough 🙁 I'm kind of sad that I now know this. I also have a horrible feeling that this is me and yet not me. I know tattoos and nail art where on there as I like those things and occassionally look them up! I still don't know what the hell a Mason jar is and I write craft tutorials :/

I use pinterest mainly to gather inspiration for me and other writers and to discover potential artists for book covers or to post my own images or find science peeps etc.. I would not have gotten through her experiment! Well not unless someone was sponsoring me anyway!

Anyway this is my Pinterest, for those who are interested.

Advent 12 (by sarah)

This painting is of a snowman's fire place and will def. be part of a story at some point 🙂

Jean's statements about Hogwarts and LoTR

1) Hermione is only there to keep the boys safe, that is her function, to look after them and solve the problems in ALL the stories.

2) Why is everyone pale? Where are the brown people, there is snow you get brown people where there is snow but no ones even got a suntan.... later hmmmm even the people with the elephants aren't really that dark and why are they all bad?

This opened some interesting discussions about the climates and things in fantasy worlds and how we imaging things differently when we read things.