January 2008 Archives

Jack's birthday cake

This awesome Lego Star Wars cake was made by Kim (and matches the awesome Lego Star Wars party invitation I designed - I should blog that too).

Jack's birthday party

jack5thparty_gowerton_svw_072.jpg, originally uploaded by samwebster.

Disco! (He's dressed as a Star Wars Clone Trooper, by the way, but is dancing without the mask).

The sun is back!

Oh my God! It's the sun! I haven't seen it in weeks!

Annabel's (brief) trip to work.

Aaaaah. Annabel and Kim in Rhiannon's office.

Bigfoot spotted, on Mars

I love the internet. A recent image from the Spirit Mars Rover of yet more red rocks that includes a small, funny shaped rock has emerged as proof of humanoid life on Mars. (Can you see it? Middle left).

Be careful that what you see is not only what you want to see. Bloody nutters.

BBC article.

Work stress 'changes your body'

The BBC report that, "A stressful job has a direct biological impact on the body, raising the risk of heart disease, research has indicated.

"The study reported in the European Heart Journal focused on more than 10,000 British civil servants."

I would agree, indeed.

BBC article.

Lego

jacks5thbirthday_home_svw_070, originally uploaded by samwebster.

We're building Jabba's Lego sail barge tonight. I'm looking forward to it!

Lego standoff

jacks5thbirthday_home_svw_111, originally uploaded by samwebster.

For his birthday, Jack got lots of Lego. I think he likes playing with the Star Wars characters even more than building.

Jack is 5 today

jacks5thbirthday_home_svw_019, originally uploaded by samwebster.

Happy Birthday Jack! He's 5 today!

Annabel due

Annabel is due to be born today.

Wet

It has been like this all week, really wet. Huge, deep puddles on the cycle path to work and fast, overflowing streams (rivers?). The forecast says this is going to continue. No golf for me.

> 1TB

I'm working from home today, and the MacBook Pro is properly plugged in to all the bits on my desk, now that I've finally cleared it off again (Kim tidies up the house by dumping stuff she finds on my desk). I've been working from my lap wherever I find myself at home until now. So moving stuff off my MacBook on to an external disk (that has disappeared under a pile of tax return paperwork) and reorganising large files (podcasts, collections of photos from the Gambia scoping visit, etc) has almost filled this external hard disk. The podcast that Rhi and I recorded yesterday is 0.8GB. My standard memory card for my camera is 4GB now.

This is getting daft. I've got over 1.5TB (terabytes, thats about 1,500 GB) of storage space in this house and it's almost full. I've got almost 1TB on my desk at work (but there's lots of free space there at the moment). It looks like I need to get another disk, and probably one that's 0.5TB to 1TB in size. Crikey. How they hell am I to keep all this organised and ensure that it's all backed up? I need to get rid of some computers I think, and centralise stuff.

The big, new expensive Apple Time Capsule is starting to look like a really good idea. The big one has 1TB of storage, automatically baks up all your Macs, it replaces your WiFi router and speeds up your network. Quality kit too.

I've got too many hard disks ad I'm getting confused. Apple may be the way, but I think I'd need a windfall to pay for it all.

By the way, my note about Apple TV and Apple's Hi-Def film rentals defeating HD-DVD and Blu-ray didn't mention the really important bit: all the major networks will provide HD films through this online rental system. Unite and conquer?

You're still going to be paying a premium for being an "early adopter" and viewing HD films from Apple, as in all other delivery mediums. Come on, we've been told to buy high definition TVs for years now, and yet you're still treating us like this is a new technology? How many people do you know with an HD-ready TV? But how many people do you know with Sky HD, Blu-ray or HD-DVD? Exactly. It's a ridiculous situation. Drop the price for HD content and get people using it at last!

HD movies on Apple TV

That's it, the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray argument has just been rendered null and void. Apple are now letting you rent HD films through your Apple TV box.

Updated Apple TV page.

Bear in mind that I am biased and usually completely wrong in predicting tech trends...

Buuuurp!

annabel+kim_home_svw_054, originally uploaded by samwebster.

It may be wind making her smile, but it makes her mum smile too.

Looking at Daddy

She now has eyes for Daddy too.

Fiery Tesco

I spend my life in and out of Tescos these days.

Jamie Oliver

Kim's been pulling down her Jamie Oliver books again. She spent hours creating a risotto the other night (which was very nice, but surprisingly had roasted nuts in it). The Sony Ericsson cameras in phones these days are awesome. I'd have been reasonably happy if I'd taken this with a bigger camera.

So Tired

I'm so tired today. I skipped a seminar because I didn't think I could stay awake in it. I thought I'd feel more awake after my 30 minute bike ride in heavy rain and wind, but all it did was make me damp and smelly.

Having babies is great fun, and you expect to lose some sleep. And it's Kim that does all the work in the night. I thought I had a better night's sleep last night, so why am I so tired today? If I didn't have to concentrate I probably wouldn't feel so bad.

Medical abbreviations 'pose risk'

The Medical Defense Union (MDU?) and the BBC commented at the weekend on the problems caused by using abbreviations in patients' notes. Abbreviating drug names and drug doses seems to be particularly bad news, but I say that this goes for anatomy too. When teaching you'll usually find clinicians using far more abbreviations than anatomists. Watch out!

BBC article

Rhiannon and Sam's Embryology, episode 3.

Not only did I fix the podcasts, but we finished and uploaded the latest episode to iTunes and to the Medicine page. In this episode we look at the early development of the embryo, starting just after fertilisation and following it through implantation into the uterine wall, the beginnings of the placenta, to the formation of recognisable cavities and gastrulation.

Podcasts and elearning

I think I've fixed all the problems with the podcasts and the elearning modules. It might take several hours for the fixes to trickle through to iTunes, so if you can't get them today try again tomorrow.

Green is White

I played golf at my club with my brother Nick on Saturday. Luckily, he had just finished resoundly thrashing me when it started hailing. We legged it off the 18th, and retired to the clubhouse for a beer. This is what the 18th green looked like from the clubhouse. Cool, eh? The temporary greens were white too.

Jack's tutorial

If you see some cryptic scribblings on the whiteboards in my office (well, more cryptic than usual) they're probably Jack's. He gave me a tutorial on Friday.

Blank

Wow, what a blank blog. You can see that I've had a very quiet couple of Christmas and New Year holiday weeks. It is normally the only time of year that I get a proper break. I guess I should make a New Year's resolution of some sort about that.

I'm back at work today, and while teaching was fun this morning I'm again struggling with the realities of being an academic far too involved with teaching. I'm not publishing papers, I'm not applying for grant money, I'm not in the lab, and yet I'm ridiculously busy. How come? The medicine teaching year, and in particular the post-graduate, fast-track medicine teaching year is longer than normal BSc or BA teaching years. Too long. Barely do we finish summer resit exam boards before we start teaching again. Anatomy is taught all year long, and it's a big, main-stay, foundation of medicine-type subject. There's only so much you can "omit" from teaching. Also, my research has become "industrial". Which is good, but means patents rather than papers and investors rather than grants. It feels less scholarly, but puts you closer to producing a product that would directly benefit a patient. Which is nice (if it ever happens).

So, as with every new year, I've been setting goals for my sporting efforts. Should I do the same for work? Would they help, and what should they be? How can I prioritise research over teaching or vice versa?

Too many ideas and a love of cortisol.

Missing files

Apologies to anyone that may have been trying to find some files on my website, but part of my hosting has disappeared. The podcasts are affected by this. I'll fix this next week when I go back to work.