Author Archives: tony

Hmm, Google SearchWiki, cool or chaos?

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Wiki’s are cool if everyone buys in and collaborates in a compatible manner.  Google is adding collaborative ‘editing’ of search results with SearchWiki.  It looks like the changes are specific to your own Google account, but you can also see what other people have added if you like.  You can add notes and promote or remote search results (using little icons next to each search result).  The little video says it won’t directly affect how others see searches or even how you see searches if you’re not logged in.

You can add websites you expected the search to return, but didn’t – which seems like it might be an interesting addition.

Is basic searching dead?  Is this really a Wiki (since it only truly affects your search results when you’re logged in) or just an attempt to hijack a currently popular terms?  Who knows.   But the little icons have appeared on my Google searches, and I plan to have a play and see how effect it is.

Maybe it’ll turn the entire Google search engine into the biggest set of bookmarks I ever had?  I guess at the back end, Google is collecting which results are removed and which are increased in rank and maybe using that to tune their pagerank algorithm?

I promise, no more Google posts for a few days from me.  Just wanted to let you know in case you don’t normally log in to use Google searches since you won’t see the little icons if you don’t.  It took me a few moments to realise there’s no new search page to go to – this stuff has been added to the main Google search pages.

Update: Thinking about it a bit more, this could be quite exciting.  It’s a bit like Reddit or Digg, but with all the world’s URL’s already submitted.  I guess it depends on whether the promotion or removal of URL’s eventually affects pagerank and if the notes people are adding become useful.

Bourne universally Universal

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Yeh, weak title but it was better than the ‘Bourne again’ ones.  Maybe.

Personally I loved the three Bourne movies, and I’m excited about the idea of a fourth.  If the screenplay is good, I’ll enjoy it.  So it’s interesting to hear (from Variety) that Universal have agreed with the Ludlum estate to secure exclusive rights to Bourne and first dibs on other Ludlum novels.  This means that if Universal want to turn Bourne into a long running franchise (longer than it already is) they’re one step closer.

The Estate remains involved and has contractual approval on actors, screenplays and characters.

Check out the full article.

ouch

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Yeh, I know you’re sick of reading about me being sick but hey, there you go.  So quick jaw update – it hurts.  It feels bruised and stretched and chewing hurts my jaw muscles.  The gum / tooth socket / whatever-the-hell-the-hole-is-called hurts but that’s more of a dull throb.  The good news is Nurofen fixes both of those pains for at least 4 or 5 hours once it kicks in, so it’s manageable.  Eating hurts even if I’ve taken pain killers so I think it’ll be soup and soft-stuff for a little while yet.

I’m nervous about how chewing is going to work on the right side of my mouth now I’ve had the tooth out.  Basically I’m expecting to struggle because I’ll be pushing food down into the gum since the molar on my upper jaw is still there.  I’ve not chewed anything on that side of my mouth for nearly a month now, and I always favoured the left side anyway, but I’d like to get at least some action going on on the right side sometime soon.

Slept ok last night, did wake up at 4:10am again, Bubbles was whining but I tricked her into going downstairs and then closed the bedroom door (yes, I am evil, thank you for asking).  That was fine until about 7:30 when Fizz decided she HAD TO BE IN THE BEDROOM and spent 10 minutes scratching at the door.  Anyway, when I first woke up I was worried I’d have too much pain to get back to sleep but it was actually okay and I was back asleep really quickly.  Considering how painful it was the night before I’m taking that as a good sign.

Grete’s cold seems a little better this morning which is good news.  We’re going roleplaying tonight which is a 40 minute drive each way and it sucks for her having to drive when she can hardly breathe.

Bubbles is ok after her vet visit and has some medication, it’s not cystitis, but more likely stress related.  Yes, even one of our cats is stressed.  In this household?  Who would have thought it.  So, vet bills and dentist bills mean it’s going to be a frugal Christmas.

I guess I need to look harder at finding NHS dental treatment.

edit: 15:14 21st November: So Grete’s cold had her fooled and it’s come out full force in the last couple of hours.  We’ve had to cancel roleplaying which sucks royally but I’m really sure driving 40 minutes each way and a 1am finish is not what Grete needs tonight.

Rare moment? Google actually shuts down a project.

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Google is shutting down Lively.  I only played with it about three times, and it didn’t really provide me with anything I thought would be worth sticking with.  In some ways I think it’s good that Google is prepared to shut down some stuff if it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, nothing worse than leaving a trail of half finished projects in your wake …

… like me 🙂

Pain Killers & Blood Sugar

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I usually take pain killers for a particular kind of nasty headache I get.  The pain killers take the edge off it, but don’t really get rid of the pain fully.  Since I don’t really suffer from any other pains (other than the thumb pain I had a while back) I don’t take a lot of pain killers.

However, the recent dentist work has left my jaw tired and achy from being stretched, my gum sore due to the tooth removal and the molar next to the new hole is sore from being wiggled during the tooth extraction.  I woke up this morning at 4:15am and the pain was pretty bad, so I got up and had some pain killers (second lot, I had some before I went to bed as well).

At work today I had some more, and then later on took some different pain killers (nurofen instead of the generic co-codamol I had earlier).

The weird thing, for me, is that since the pain is so acute, I can actually feel the pain killers working, because it dulls and then goes away entirely for a while and then comes back rather quickly.  Observing this in some ways helps take my mind off the actual pain because I feel more distanced from it.  I find it amazing that there’s a chemical I can imbibe which basically causes my brain to ignore the signals the little broken nerves in my mouth are sending it, and that they work so quickly.  I know I shouldn’t be amazed by this but I am none the less.

Blood sugar has been up the spout the last few days.  The lingering cold has a minor effect on my control, but stress also affects it badly.  On top of that, all I ate yesterday was soup and I felt pretty low when I got up this morning, then I had some white bread (yeh, I know), and soup for lunch and around 4:00pm my sugar felt like it plumeted (no testing kit at work), so obviously I countered and over compensated so now it’s a bit high again.  Being ill really screws with the control.

6:03pm edit : back to 5.6 mmol/l now, which is good.

Poor Bubbles

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She’s off to the vets again, we suspect cystitis.  Grete rang up to see what they could suggest and they had room to fit her in now, so we mugged her and Grete’s driven her straight over to the vets.

GMail Themes

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I love GMail, I’m man enough to admit it.  When all around me WebMail providers were doing horrible things and making stuff huge and ugly Google gave us small, quick (at the time), simple, IJustDoMail GMail.

And now they’ve added Awesome Sauce by adding GMail skins.

As usual, Google are rolling this out slowly, so the option may not be there for you yet, I’m going to go with Terminal for a while!  Story originally found on Life Hacker.

The Tooth

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My jaw is pretty sore now, both the muscles from holding it open for 20 minutes and having my lower jaw stressed hard when the tooth was pulled, and also the gum/jaw area where the tooth was removed now actively hurts (pulsing pain).

So, here’s a few pictures of the tooth I had extracted.  Feel free to show these to your kids, or your nieces and nephews as a reminder of why they should,

  1. brush their teeth more than they do
  2. take the advice of their dentist when he says ‘you should consider having your wisdom teeth out’

This tooth was impacted by one of my wisdom teeth growing into it at an angle, and basically got a cavity and decayed at the point of impact, until the hole you see was caused when that part of the tooth fell away a few weeks ago.  I was lucky, it didn’t hurt.

If you’re reading this on an RSS feed reader, sorry, you’re going to see the pictures.  If you’re reading it on the site’s front page, you can click the link to see the pictures.  If you’re reading the full article already, then you can’t avoid the pictures any longer.

Continue reading →

tooth update

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So I had a crap night’s sleep, couldn’t get my mind off the dental work.  But I was pretty much resigned to it all when I got out of bed.  Got there a bit early, went in at 10:50 and was out by 11:30.  Three quick injections (uncomfortable, but not painful) and a few moments later I had no sensation anywhere near the three teeth.  The dentist wiggled the broken tooth and then pulled it out.  That was pretty uncomfortable but not painful.  It popped my jaw a couple of times, and gave me a bigger headache than I already had, but didn’t actually hurt.  Then he spent about 5 minutes putting two fillings in.  I have to say, it was super-quick, nothing like the 40 minute epic tooth filling I remember as a kid.

I have two more cavities in the top teeth on that side which will need work and there’s the other side lower molar being impacted by my wisdom tooth which is showing signs of doing what the one I just had removed did.

Don’t feel so angry about the process this time, I told him i was nervous and he made efforts to make me feel more comfortable.

However, there’s still nothing nice about having two people shove hands, suction and drills in your mouth.

The oddest thing was feeling someone yanking a tooth out of your head but not having any directly associated pain.

I kept the tooth, I’ll post photo’s later (I’ll make sure you have to click to see them), you can show them to your kids and remind them to brush their teeth more often.

Overall I feel pretty sorry for myself, the gum is bleeding quite a lot, Grete had to go and get more gauze even though her cold is back full force, and I’m keeping the wound under a bit of compression.  I can’t swallow easily, my face is still numb (and the numbness is moving up my face), but I guess it’s my own fault for not taking care of my teeth.