Category Archives: random_stuff

Feb24

Change of pace.

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Change of pace.

I spent the past ten days without my laptop, very interesting. I had my trusty EEE pc and my phone to fall back on, however, mostly just for the basics. My workflow on my macbook did not fit the EEE (for one, I really missed TextExpander)

I mostly rested, having an RA-flare, and did some decluttering (which I intend to continue). I also worked out a small plan to start a new sleeping-schedule. After trying for months to fit back in the 'normal world' I decided to revisit my afternoon naps. Not sure if I feel better, but I like the idea of getting up early, do stuff, then go to have a three or four hour nap in the afternoon and then do things in the evening as well. None of that power-nap stuff, I need solid hours. This way, I hope to spread my energy more evenly and to still participate in the 'normal world'.

I tried it out today, and though I feel sleepy and tired and slightly confused, I did very much enjoy my afternoon nap. I also made a drawing this morning, during my first wake. Always good :)

Feb14

Broken laptop.

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Broken laptop.

Annoyingly, my laptop broke. I've narrowed it down to a broken video-chip and that might still fall under warranty (an extended one, due to known factory defect). Originally I planned to take it to the Apple Store this weekend, but Apple Stores during the weekend usually get a bit crowded. Current plan means going in as soon as I feel up to it (tomorrow maybe) and see if they can fix it.

For now, this means using my trusty little EEE for irc and (barely) browsing, and my phone a little. It feels very basic and simple.

Dec20

Nano loves the snow.

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Nano loves the snow.

It started snowing a few days ago, a fairly rare event judging from how the trains stopped going. On the other hand, that says more about the trains than the actual weather.

Nano enjoys the snow very much and randomly barks at it when she sees it falling. She loves rolling around in it, for some reason, sticking her nose in it and getting covered with snow. It sticks to her fur a lot, she needed a shower to get it all out. She looked like one of those cotton-ball-sheep :)

Dec3

The supermarket broke my iPhone

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The supermarket broke my iPhone
Crap. :(
broken iPhone

Today I ran some errands. I got prints from my lab-work and then headed to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. My MTX(Methotrexate) went up in dosage so I had to get new prepared syringes. I left my prescription there on Saturday and they told me then to pick it up on Tuesday / Wednesday. So I went today. Unfortunately, when I got there and after waiting for a bit, they told me they wouldn’t give me more because I picked up my prescription two weeks ago already. I explained that I got a new prescription for a higher dosage right after I picked the other one up. The girl at first thought the prescription said 15mg (old dose) but upon closer look, it did indeed say 20mg. The note, made by the person accepting my prescription Saturday, said 15mg however — someone screwed up. She did promise me to order it right away and to come back tomorrow. A bit annoying.

I then went to the supermarket around the corner to buy some fruit (tangerines and bananas) and some crackers. I happily listened to my music, feeling slightly annoyed by the pharmacy thing but also looking forward to some nice tangerines. When I got outside and checked my iPhone for the time, the screen had gone nuts. All the while my music played, but the screen won’t display anything sensible.

I suspect tangerine-envy.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to the store to have it repaired. I miss it already.

Nov30

Away with the nausea.

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Away with the nausea.

When I woke up from surgery, about half an hour after they sewed me up again, I felt nauseous. They gave me an injection of something which helped a little, though I did stay nauseous all the time in the hospital.

I have an anecdote there: I got this medication that didn't help so much, so one of the nurses (bless her) switched me to something else, and that worked great. This after exclaiming:

bq. But this stuff relaxes your stomach! You don't have that anymore, I will give you something else.

The stuff I got after that worked great. The next time they wanted to give me that other stuff again, but I and TG protested heavily and I got the other stuff again. They also turned down the epidural (took away one of the opiates) to help with the nausea.

It never went away completely.

Now that I've removed certain foods from my diet (wheat-products and milk) and have stopped taking the Plaquenil I have a lot less nausea. It hasn't gone away completely (yet), however, it has gone away a lot. Instead of mostly nauseous with some nausea-free hours, the reverse happens most of the time. I only have the last week or two to look at, so I won't yet do a little victory dance. It looks good, though, and that makes me happy.

Nov1

You can’t ‘be’, unless you do.

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You can’t ‘be’, unless you do.

Procrastinating from my Nanowrimo-novel (3471 words) I found Hugh Macleod's article ' don't worry about being an artist. just worry about getting the work made. '.

It reminded me of how I know some people that graduate in something or the other, and then say 'Oh, now I am a real <insert random profession>'.
When then asked what they really do then, they usually don't have an answer to that. But at least they can say 'I'm a <insert random profession> now!.

Apart from these, a lot of people also seem to think that creativity (in any shape and form) requires talent. They don't really know what this talent actually means, but clearly some people have it and some don't. You get born with it, or maybe some fairy comes by at night and sprinkles it on you.

I don't believe in talent (or that evil cousin called 'luck'). I believe in (hard) work. I believe in doing. I believe that when you have an interest in a subject you need to dig in and put in the hours and hours of work to get 'good' or 'great' at it. Getting good / great requires work more than this vague talent. Sure, some people seem to do it more easily, however, most of these creative things take practice. And practice means work. It means failing and loving your failure because of the unexpected result. It means hating your failure and deciding you want to do the opposite. It means challenging yourself. It means stretching out to the borders of your sanity to see if you can, and then crossing it. It means stretching to the edges of your ability and finding you can go further than you thought you could go.

So I make this bold statement that you cannot be unless you do.
You can call yourself a writer, an artist, a whatnot. But if you don't actually do it, then you just stuck a label on yourself. Ask yourself what you would like more.

Oct25

Dear Nano, don’t scare me like that.

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Dear Nano, don’t scare me like that.
Stuck under the sofa.

This morning I got up and walked into the livingroom, finding Nano (looking smug) on the sofa with an empty chocolate-bar wrapper between her paws. I thought I had stored the bar away, cause I always do that. Not last night, unfortunately, so when I saw her looking at me and the leftovers of the wrapper, I freaked out a little. A call to the vet calmed me down (kudos to the other person on the line), as we calculated how much she had and what type. She had about half of the ‘minimal toxic (not lethal)’ dose, the vet said.

The vet told me to keep an eye on Nano, feed her some extra to dilute the chocolate somewhat and check to see if Nano drank enough. She drank a lot today, and spent some time on the sofa making small whining noises (I suspect a tummy ache) and seems otherwise fine.

This of course happens right after boyfriend suggested poisoning the dog in my Nanowrimo-novel.

Oct14

Another year, another Nanowrimo

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Another year, another Nanowrimo

November lurks around the corner, so I had to join Nanowrimo again. I decided to try a different approach this year and have slowly outlined my planned novel. Initially I wanted to go for horror, with brutal murders and such (I blame this on watching the entire 'Friday the 13th' series, as well as 'Nightmare on Elmstreet', and ending it with 'Freddy vs Jason'), but my story seems to have converted more into a regular thriller with no supernatural murderer.

Ah well.

And it'll have a dog.

Sep7

Create a new task in a project

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Create a new task in a project

For completion sake, I decided to post the bit to create a new task in a new or existing project in OmniFocus through AppleScript. I have this in my script that creates tasks from my mail.

If you know a bit of AppleScript, this should help out. If I have the energy, I might post the entire script later and explain the parts.

In this case, it took longest to figure out the following part:

tell MyProject set theTask to make new task with properties¬ {name:MyTaskTopic, context:MyContext, note:ThisNote} end tell

Apparently, when creating a new task you have to tell the project. If you want to set the context, you instead tell the task to set its context property to something.

This does make sense, in the way that you always tell the containing item to do something.

(more...)

Sep7

Applescripts for OmniFocus: change the context or project of selected tasks.

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Applescripts for OmniFocus: change the context or project of selected tasks.

I use OmniFocus a lot, and have recently tweaked some more AppleScripts to make my workflow even more smooth. I can add any mail to OmniFocus for replies, add confirmation of orders from mail to OmniFocus which will automatically go into my project-shoebox for orders, with a 'waiting for' context and a due date set to 1 week into the future, unless I've changed or added MailTags with a project, a keyword and a due date. In that case it'll take the project, the first keyword and the due date and use them to set up the OmniFocus task. I have a few more scripts:

  • in OmniWeb I can take and add a URL for later reading, it'll go into my inbox by default
  • in OmniWeb I can take and add a URL to my 'wish-list' project (with a start date for at 2 weeks in the future)
  • in OmniFocus I have scripts to easily change the context or the project of selected tasks
  • in Mail I can press a key and have the selected e-mail(s) sent to OmniFocus with a 'Respond to: ' before the subject line, sorting into either a default project or the one specified in MailTags, with the context set to 'mail' and the message URL in the note-field
  • in OmniFocus I can select such a task, press a key to run a script that will open the message and immediately create a reply (I have a separate one for just opening, in case I have to read it thoroughly first)

All these scripts make the integration between all these programs very easy. That and FastScripts.
I found useful scripts over at Curtis Clifton's site. His scripts use Growl notification so if you have Growl installed you get a small notification.

I had some trouble putting my own scripts together, so I decided to paste the info here, just in case I need it later on, or someone else runs into similar issues. I found it quite hard to figure out how to add a task to an existing project or to move it from inbox / other project. In the end, it only took a few lines.

(more...)