msb-0108 1st Anniversary Show
Yup, I started doing this podcast Feb 2nd, 2006.
This show is to celebrate the first anniversary of MSBPodcast.
I have seen my future, and its on a podcast.
But its not just my future.
Its about the people I've met through email, through blogs, through Skype.
People like Miss Chris and MDMHvonPA and Friday's Child and ... and ...
Its about those of you who wrote comments and emails.
Its about people like Allison Reynolds with whom recorded my first interview.
Its about some of the musicians and some other podcasters, who, maybe not believing in me but believing in the power of hope and positive thinking, have "all' helped me grow as a person; helped me get over my anger at my disability, find a focus to my life and get back to living it again.
To all of you, I sincerely say: "Thank you".
----
"Feedback" Comes first, so...
I'd got a comment on my msb-0107 post on the multiple sclerosis blog before I'd even finished uploading the audio. That was surprising, but fun.
And I have to apologize to all the Australians out there.
I got it wrong.
(It takes a big man to admit he's wrong... I'm only 5'8" [1.74m] . Prtrtrtrtd! :-P)
Its "Vegemite" not "Marmite."
(That's the glop that the "British" feed to their kids.
The only reason their kids eat it is, apart from a bloody-minded death-wish, because its got enough salt in it to remind you of Lot's wife, while raising their blood pressures to where they have to breathe helium or risk the bends.
And all of this, while tasting like the northern-end of a south-bound dog. ["Mais, c't à taper au cul d'un chien, bon Dieux!"])
Regardless, they're "both" definitely acquired tastes, which my Gallic palate will "never" acquire.
Still, one must be fair...
I am getting a "lot" of interest from the "Land Down Under" from the interview with "Allison Reynolds."
But, I have got to report that iTunes is definitely under-represented for my downloads.
They're mostly off of web browsers.
---- The New Year Love = Action http://www.myspace.com/loveisaction
"Feed Forward" comes next so...
I'm still reading "The Elusive Obvious" by "Moshe Feldenkrais" ISBN: 0-916990-09-5.
It includes an illustration about a simple floor exercise that I'm still trying to master. (Heck! That I'm still trying to get through. :-)
It looks deceptively simple but I suspect that its actually exercising all of my muscles.
Its not just the exercise, its the coordination required to execute the transitions soothly.
Man, its surprising how I still have most of the muscles but I haven't used them in such a coordinated fashion in years.
Getting to "smooth" is "hard"!
---
My wife was asking about a Yoga move, as she just was not "getting it" at all.
So I demonstrated the move.
"Big friggin' mistake!"
No, I didn't fall over or anything, but I proceeded to pull on my ham-strings way more than I wanted to.
I really "felt the burn" after being basically chair-bound (a polite way of saying I sit on my ass way-y too much) or after merely walking around for the past ten or twelve years.
Holy "crap," that smarted...
I thought somebody had strung a piano with my calf muscles.
I'll never do "that" again without warming up first, that's for damn sure.
---- Year of Glad Maximum Angel http://www.maximumangel.com/
"Feed Me!" comes third, so...
Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?
Consider advertising on this podcast.
Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)
It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.
That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)
But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.
No play, no pay.
Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...
---- The Year thefro no UIRL
Main topic: "The Importance of Knowing What the Doctor Is Talking About"
The New York Times had an article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/health/30brody.html ) on "The Importance of Being Ernest." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest )
I'm not a stupid man.
I'm not an ignorant man.
But half-an-hour with a doctor, and my ears feel life they want to bleed, copiously, and my brain is trying to make an end run out my ass-hole to escape.
Its the unrelenting verbiage.
I know, and I can appreciate, that they're trying to be precise, but its as exhausting as being a "Stranger in a Strange Land" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land ) having to pay vital attention to sounds you aren't used to, in order to "grok" them later; if only your lesion befuddled brain could just remember them.
(I'd feel more for foreign nationals trying to live here, but I'm French and I had to learn English in high-school, at arm's length, where the fists are! ["Oh, the humanity!"]. Let 'em go through what I went through.)
Its unfortunate but my doctors, in fact most doctors I've ever encountered, don't pull, or maybe they don't even know, the beginning teacher's trick of asking you to "repeat something in your own words," to make sure that you heard and maybe, even, understood.
I suspect that they would be horrified with the results. (Maybe they'd be terrified of the sheer number of impending law suits. Well, if only they weren't able to just "bury their mistakes" that is...)
Doctors as communicators?
Definitely "not!"
---- this is the year.mp3 Hilary Grist http://www.hilarygrist.com/
Main topic, part deux:
I had barely finished my upload of msb-0107, when the latest issue of "Inside MS" showed up at my door.
In it, on page 44, is an article on "Stem Cells and MS".
Just what I was on about in the "remyelination" part of my piece on "The Elephant in the Room."
How "dead-on" is that for timing?
Something in it really caught my eye: "Prospects for 'endogenous' stem cells." (See the previous section for my views concerning the use of "endogenous" [If they mean "Originating or produced within an organism, tissue, or cell." they should be able to "simply say so". The search for, and use of a "mot-juste" is often not as effective as the right "tour-de-phrase".{ That's the difference between "Shakespeare," who made up words that "sounded right", and "baffle-gabble" which makes up words that sound like "bull-shit!" (If you've got to think about it, it slows down the rhythm and it "stops" being a conversation.)}] :-)
In the article, they said that they are studying stem cells for exactly what I said they should be studying them for: remyelination.
"Scary, isn't it?"
(Maybe they'll twig onto the fact that we want them to start a trial for inhalable forms of their therapies because we "hate" their friggin' needles, [poking holes into your integumen's a mistake to start with! {There's a reason why we try to avoid it and it the same as the medicos. (Pain "hurts!" Putting holes in your skin is definitely something to be "avoided!")}])
I'm not going to quote the article, you should be subscribed to "Inside MS" yourselves. (If not, why not? Go to http://NationalMSSociety.org/ and join up. And pick up a copy of the article too. :-)
---- Gladiator Soundtrack SPIRIT PSI-KO Spirit http://www.betarecords.com/psi-ko
Well... Here's to another year, or two, or ten, or ...
"Tata" I'm off to Tai-Chi.
Outro
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
msb-0107 The Elephant in the Room
msb-0107 The Elephant in the Room
Feed back come first, so...
This is where I go into what "so-and-so" told me about previous shows.
Things have been pretty quiet at the "Casa di Chaos" this week.
I just got an email from a podcaster in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where Dr. William E. Code hailed from, before he moved out to BC.
DJ Jeff ( http://confessionsofadj.libsyn.com/ ) is one of the best podcast DJs I've heard in a while. He's got a kick-ass taste in music.
His wife was recently diagnosed with MS and he's been subscribed to the MSBPodcast for a little while. (When will "she" get in touch and drop me an email? :-)
I've just downloaded his shows, sent him my Don Lafontaine promo and we'll see what happens.
We traded a couple of emails and he's right.
Apart from event specific podcasts, like the "Race for MS" and the "Walk for MS", which don't need to come out more than a couple of times a year, and the MSBPodcast, the other MS related podcasts seem to all have podfaded.
Its tragic really.
But I'm hoping to get another interview, with him, or to entice him into producing a show for us. He's got some really kick-ass taste in music and, being in Canada, he's got a different series of artists to choose from, and they are "great."
----
From another blogger DiditalKaren ( http://www.digitalkaren.com/ ) I've discovered that her husband Norm has a podcast ( http://normradio.com/ )
(Well, he's actually got an "on demand" audio webcast, not a podcast.
I didn't see any RSS feed mechanism.
RSS is the last bit of the podcasting mosaic allowing a podcatcher program to just ask a podcaster site for "any new episodes since [date]" and then to download them automagically.)
You just know I'm going to try to get in touch with them with the same offer.
----
I'm still waiting on "Chris" ( http://www.chrishasms.org/ ) for a mascot to stick on people's websites as a "button" to get to my site.
Dang, people with MS are talented.
----
The stats for the show of the interview with Allison Reynolds ( http://www.netxperiment.com/ ) are telling me that its one of the fastest pickups I've had since I started this train wreck of a podcast.
"Krikey! Oy guess oy'm going to practice my Auzie speak.
But I won't eat me no "marmite."
Stuff's just foul, mate. :-)"
---- "Elephants Trunk Up Yours Remix" by: "Sir Shree" http://www.sirshree.com/
Feed-forward comes, so...
This is where I go into what I discovered that is quaint, curious, weird and/or wonderful.
I just bought "The Elusive Obvious" by "Moshe Feldenkrais" ISBN: 0-916990-09-5.
I haven't time to do more than do more than unwrap it. (Okay, okay, I just read a chapter or so.)
I remember hearing about Feldenkrais from the seventies. "Awareness through movement" was published in 1972, and I remember reading it about the same time I was interested in "Jean Piaget" and his "Theory of cognitive Development."
(Tol'dja I was weird.
I was into dance, architecture, music, mobiles and movement.
Other guys my age were wondering what girls really looked like under their clothes.
I knew, so I could focus on different crap; like the cognitive development, which lead people from "Moi", to "me".:
Basically, I'm about to investigate it for its potential to help me improve past this physical, emotional, cognitive and neurological plateau that I seem to be stuck on.
Today I just read about "The Importance of Knowing What the Doctor Is Talking About" in the New York Times, ( ) but I'm saving that whole rant about it until next episode.
This feed-forward section is "also" where I go into what "so-and-so" told "me" to tell "you".
---- "Donkeys and Elephants" by: "Gecko 3" http://www.gecko3.com/
Reminder ads come next, (I guess if the first two sections are called "FeedBack" and "Feed-Forward", I guess I could call this section "Feed Me!" :-) so...
This is where I go into what "so-and-so" is "paying me" to tell us all.
This is really cheap. $0.03 per reminder, per download of this episode of the show. (I will pre-record these, or use their own voice-overs, and make the links "hot.")
(Click on a "particular reminder" link,
Since I'm also giving away to anyone that asks "deep linking" capacity, I don't necessarily get any money from the reminders, (but at $0.03 each, I figure I can afford it.)
"So-and-so" could, or make that should, also bought advert space on MSBPodcasts.com, and if you go and download their ad, you have got to be really interested, so its $3.00 per download.
---- "Elephant Island" by: "Pilotdrift" http://www.pilotdrift.com/
Main Topic: "The Elephant in the Room".
MS, the exhibiting of multiple sclera on the central nervous system, comes in two basic flavours:
There whole a series of factors, of triggers, which influence the initiation of the formation of sclera.
These tend to be chemical and/or biotic in nature, operating deep within our white blood cells and acting in combinations with the oligodendrocytes which produce the myelin which sheathes our nerves.
An attack, whatever its causes, has to be matched by an ineffectual response at "remyelination" by the oligodendrocytes.
(Otherwise there would be no sclera formed and therefore problem because there's no M.S.
M.S. is caused as much by the cascade of non-reactions to it, as it is caused by the initial insult to our system. [This may be where stem-cell research could perhaps offer the best result, by illuminating the mechanisms of myelination.]
No sclera, no M.S., regardless of the actual "cause".)
There are also a whole series of factors, of triggers, which influence the onsets of "demyelination". (The "cause" I just referred to.)
Some of these triggers are environmental, some of these triggers are genetic predispositions to reactions acting in concert with some offending agent.
That's why there are a whole bunch of drug regimens out there.
Some "suppress" the immune system, which has its own consequences. (For instance, I wouldn't want to trade my "Multiple Sclerosis" for, say, "Kaposi's Sarcoma". [That's why I not too trilled with immuno-suppressants.])
(I'm not going to name names.
That's not the point of these shows.
There here to entertain and inform, not to suddenly decide and declare that any regimen is better than any other.
That's impossible to do in any case because it depends on an individual's reaction which causes the M.S. in the first place. Talk to your neurologist and your physician.)
Some "promote" or "revitalize" the oligodendrocytes, which has its own consequence.
(Again, I'm not going to name names. [Actually, I don't know of any off-hand; which is a damn shame as I might sign up for a trial myself. {Google helps me find things, (say, http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v4/n11/abs/ncb1102-e253.html) but I don't pretend to really understand them.} I'm reduced to eating fatty lamb chops, just in case, {and besides, they taste "mighty good". :-} I also eat duck, but that's just out of revenge for giving us the influenza virus.]
As I said, that's not the point of these shows.
There here to entertain first and inform next.)
---- "RAMPAGING ELEPHANTS ATE MY SOUP" by: "NEIL SMITH" http://www.myspace.com/neilsmithmusic
Main topic "part deux": "The Other Elephant in the Room"
Man its getting crowded in here.
Positively pachydermian.
There was a fascinating article in the New York Times about food and nutrition. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html)
Food and nutrition have been separated by a yawning gulf since 1977 by something that shouldn't even exist, started as a mere comma on a document that told people to eat less red meat.
And then the fires of the beef producers started to roast Senator McGovern's ass.
Since then we have been in a spiral of "good" news that has turned out obese children, obese adults, deaths from diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, other ailments related to our "avoir-du-poid" and general confusion about what we eat.
The insanity, as Susan Powter ( http://www.susanpowtershow.com ) put it in those annoying info-mercials, was not about to stop.
It was instead to get diced, chopped, refined and blended into "nutrition speak."
Now we have "gurus" who speak to us about all these ingredients (like Dr. Perricone, [ http://www.nvperriconemd.com/ {After one his PBS fund raiser shows, I feel like I should get a degree in organic chemistry.}])
These are supposed to make up for the fact that we're eating processed crap, because the FDA got swept into the same processing crap, so that now we almost don't have any choice but chowing down on processed "swill".
Nutrients aren't "food".
"Food" is food.
Lydia's Family Table show on PBS ( http://www.lidiasitaly.com/index2.htm ) is about food, not chemicals, reactants and unpronounceable crap. (Don't mind me, I just had a great meal. None of that processed "yeurk" for me. :-)
People wouldn't be so unhealthy, and/or so fat, if they took some time to eat some food instead of a pile of processed nutrients.
I've made it a rule to never eat anything anything that my late father, a chemist and micro-biologist, would recommend as an excellent preservative.
For all I know, he caused my immune system weakness and my propensity for inappropriate immune system reaction to the flu virus, leading to my M.S., by baking all of my milk bottles in the oven instead of letting me get a little sick like all the other kids.
The rise in juvenile asthma in North America is being blamed on the parents' over protectiveness.
Kids never get exposed to air borne environmental hazards because parents keep the environment too sterile.
Kids are "supposed" to get their immune systems stressed by childhood diseases, when they're still young enough to make complete recoveries.
Instead, now they get asthma (and possibly worse things, like MS!)
---- "Elephant" by: "Jason Brock" http://www.jasonbrockmusic.com/
And now a throughly geeky thought about MS combined with what I do as a software designer.
Given that Boolean algebra divines a whole system of logic based on the foundation of zero (none) and one, the fact that there are two types on MS gets us, post-facto, into a third type of reductionist system: many.
That gives a complete system based on "none, one and many."
Many is a simple, though essential, system of describing relationships.
Viz:
Relationship joins
(0|1|N) (Object{,Object}) and
(0|1|M) (Object{,Object}).
All relationships are fundamentally "N:M".
0|1 on either side of the ":" are merely existential, evanescent stages.
That's all there is to it.
My job as a software design engineer consists of divining which things are objects and which things are, uh, merely relationships. Here's a "BIG" hint, I always ask who, what, where, when, why and everything is subclassed off of that or its a relationship.
Recursively viz:
Relationship joins
(0|1|N) (Object|Relationship{,Object|Relationship}) and
(0|1|M) (Object|Relationship{,Object|Relationship}).
Outro.
Feed back come first, so...
This is where I go into what "so-and-so" told me about previous shows.
Things have been pretty quiet at the "Casa di Chaos" this week.
I just got an email from a podcaster in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where Dr. William E. Code hailed from, before he moved out to BC.
DJ Jeff ( http://confessionsofadj.libsyn.com/ ) is one of the best podcast DJs I've heard in a while. He's got a kick-ass taste in music.
His wife was recently diagnosed with MS and he's been subscribed to the MSBPodcast for a little while. (When will "she" get in touch and drop me an email? :-)
I've just downloaded his shows, sent him my Don Lafontaine promo and we'll see what happens.
We traded a couple of emails and he's right.
Apart from event specific podcasts, like the "Race for MS" and the "Walk for MS", which don't need to come out more than a couple of times a year, and the MSBPodcast, the other MS related podcasts seem to all have podfaded.
Its tragic really.
But I'm hoping to get another interview, with him, or to entice him into producing a show for us. He's got some really kick-ass taste in music and, being in Canada, he's got a different series of artists to choose from, and they are "great."
----
From another blogger DiditalKaren ( http://www.digitalkaren.com/ ) I've discovered that her husband Norm has a podcast ( http://normradio.com/ )
(Well, he's actually got an "on demand" audio webcast, not a podcast.
I didn't see any RSS feed mechanism.
RSS is the last bit of the podcasting mosaic allowing a podcatcher program to just ask a podcaster site for "any new episodes since [date]" and then to download them automagically.)
You just know I'm going to try to get in touch with them with the same offer.
----
I'm still waiting on "Chris" ( http://www.chrishasms.org/ ) for a mascot to stick on people's websites as a "button" to get to my site.
Dang, people with MS are talented.
----
The stats for the show of the interview with Allison Reynolds ( http://www.netxperiment.com/ ) are telling me that its one of the fastest pickups I've had since I started this train wreck of a podcast.
"Krikey! Oy guess oy'm going to practice my Auzie speak.
But I won't eat me no "marmite."
Stuff's just foul, mate. :-)"
---- "Elephants Trunk Up Yours Remix" by: "Sir Shree" http://www.sirshree.com/
Feed-forward comes, so...
This is where I go into what I discovered that is quaint, curious, weird and/or wonderful.
I just bought "The Elusive Obvious" by "Moshe Feldenkrais" ISBN: 0-916990-09-5.
I haven't time to do more than do more than unwrap it. (Okay, okay, I just read a chapter or so.)
I remember hearing about Feldenkrais from the seventies. "Awareness through movement" was published in 1972, and I remember reading it about the same time I was interested in "Jean Piaget" and his "Theory of cognitive Development."
(Tol'dja I was weird.
I was into dance, architecture, music, mobiles and movement.
Other guys my age were wondering what girls really looked like under their clothes.
I knew, so I could focus on different crap; like the cognitive development, which lead people from "Moi", to "me".:
- Sensorimotor stage [years 0-2]
- Preoperational stage [years 2-7]
- Concrete operational stage [years 7-11]
- Formal operational stage [years 11-adulthood]
Basically, I'm about to investigate it for its potential to help me improve past this physical, emotional, cognitive and neurological plateau that I seem to be stuck on.
Today I just read about "The Importance of Knowing What the Doctor Is Talking About" in the New York Times, ( ) but I'm saving that whole rant about it until next episode.
This feed-forward section is "also" where I go into what "so-and-so" told "me" to tell "you".
---- "Donkeys and Elephants" by: "Gecko 3" http://www.gecko3.com/
Reminder ads come next, (I guess if the first two sections are called "FeedBack" and "Feed-Forward", I guess I could call this section "Feed Me!" :-) so...
This is where I go into what "so-and-so" is "paying me" to tell us all.
This is really cheap. $0.03 per reminder, per download of this episode of the show. (I will pre-record these, or use their own voice-overs, and make the links "hot.")
(Click on a "particular reminder" link,
- on the show notes in the multiplesclerosisblog.blogger.com blog entry, or
- on the show notes in the MSBPodcast.com blog entry, or
- on the iTunes window while the show is playing, or
- on copying the URL from the lyrics tab in the associated iTunes "Get Info" window,
Since I'm also giving away to anyone that asks "deep linking" capacity, I don't necessarily get any money from the reminders, (but at $0.03 each, I figure I can afford it.)
"So-and-so" could, or make that should, also bought advert space on MSBPodcasts.com, and if you go and download their ad, you have got to be really interested, so its $3.00 per download.
---- "Elephant Island" by: "Pilotdrift" http://www.pilotdrift.com/
Main Topic: "The Elephant in the Room".
MS, the exhibiting of multiple sclera on the central nervous system, comes in two basic flavours:
- relapsing/remitting and
- chronic/progressive.
There whole a series of factors, of triggers, which influence the initiation of the formation of sclera.
These tend to be chemical and/or biotic in nature, operating deep within our white blood cells and acting in combinations with the oligodendrocytes which produce the myelin which sheathes our nerves.
An attack, whatever its causes, has to be matched by an ineffectual response at "remyelination" by the oligodendrocytes.
(Otherwise there would be no sclera formed and therefore problem because there's no M.S.
M.S. is caused as much by the cascade of non-reactions to it, as it is caused by the initial insult to our system. [This may be where stem-cell research could perhaps offer the best result, by illuminating the mechanisms of myelination.]
No sclera, no M.S., regardless of the actual "cause".)
There are also a whole series of factors, of triggers, which influence the onsets of "demyelination". (The "cause" I just referred to.)
Some of these triggers are environmental, some of these triggers are genetic predispositions to reactions acting in concert with some offending agent.
That's why there are a whole bunch of drug regimens out there.
Some "suppress" the immune system, which has its own consequences. (For instance, I wouldn't want to trade my "Multiple Sclerosis" for, say, "Kaposi's Sarcoma". [That's why I not too trilled with immuno-suppressants.])
(I'm not going to name names.
That's not the point of these shows.
There here to entertain and inform, not to suddenly decide and declare that any regimen is better than any other.
That's impossible to do in any case because it depends on an individual's reaction which causes the M.S. in the first place. Talk to your neurologist and your physician.)
Some "promote" or "revitalize" the oligodendrocytes, which has its own consequence.
(Again, I'm not going to name names. [Actually, I don't know of any off-hand; which is a damn shame as I might sign up for a trial myself. {Google helps me find things, (say, http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v4/n11/abs/ncb1102-e253.html) but I don't pretend to really understand them.} I'm reduced to eating fatty lamb chops, just in case, {and besides, they taste "mighty good". :-} I also eat duck, but that's just out of revenge for giving us the influenza virus.]
As I said, that's not the point of these shows.
There here to entertain first and inform next.)
---- "RAMPAGING ELEPHANTS ATE MY SOUP" by: "NEIL SMITH" http://www.myspace.com/neilsmithmusic
Main topic "part deux": "The Other Elephant in the Room"
Man its getting crowded in here.
Positively pachydermian.
There was a fascinating article in the New York Times about food and nutrition. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html)
Food and nutrition have been separated by a yawning gulf since 1977 by something that shouldn't even exist, started as a mere comma on a document that told people to eat less red meat.
And then the fires of the beef producers started to roast Senator McGovern's ass.
Since then we have been in a spiral of "good" news that has turned out obese children, obese adults, deaths from diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, other ailments related to our "avoir-du-poid" and general confusion about what we eat.
The insanity, as Susan Powter ( http://www.susanpowtershow.com ) put it in those annoying info-mercials, was not about to stop.
It was instead to get diced, chopped, refined and blended into "nutrition speak."
Now we have "gurus" who speak to us about all these ingredients (like Dr. Perricone, [ http://www.nvperriconemd.com/ {After one his PBS fund raiser shows, I feel like I should get a degree in organic chemistry.}])
These are supposed to make up for the fact that we're eating processed crap, because the FDA got swept into the same processing crap, so that now we almost don't have any choice but chowing down on processed "swill".
Nutrients aren't "food".
"Food" is food.
Lydia's Family Table show on PBS ( http://www.lidiasitaly.com/index2.htm ) is about food, not chemicals, reactants and unpronounceable crap. (Don't mind me, I just had a great meal. None of that processed "yeurk" for me. :-)
People wouldn't be so unhealthy, and/or so fat, if they took some time to eat some food instead of a pile of processed nutrients.
I've made it a rule to never eat anything anything that my late father, a chemist and micro-biologist, would recommend as an excellent preservative.
For all I know, he caused my immune system weakness and my propensity for inappropriate immune system reaction to the flu virus, leading to my M.S., by baking all of my milk bottles in the oven instead of letting me get a little sick like all the other kids.
The rise in juvenile asthma in North America is being blamed on the parents' over protectiveness.
Kids never get exposed to air borne environmental hazards because parents keep the environment too sterile.
Kids are "supposed" to get their immune systems stressed by childhood diseases, when they're still young enough to make complete recoveries.
Instead, now they get asthma (and possibly worse things, like MS!)
---- "Elephant" by: "Jason Brock" http://www.jasonbrockmusic.com/
And now a throughly geeky thought about MS combined with what I do as a software designer.
Given that Boolean algebra divines a whole system of logic based on the foundation of zero (none) and one, the fact that there are two types on MS gets us, post-facto, into a third type of reductionist system: many.
That gives a complete system based on "none, one and many."
Many is a simple, though essential, system of describing relationships.
Viz:
Relationship joins
(0|1|N) (Object{,Object}) and
(0|1|M) (Object{,Object}).
All relationships are fundamentally "N:M".
0|1 on either side of the ":" are merely existential, evanescent stages.
That's all there is to it.
My job as a software design engineer consists of divining which things are objects and which things are, uh, merely relationships. Here's a "BIG" hint, I always ask who, what, where, when, why and everything is subclassed off of that or its a relationship.
Recursively viz:
Relationship joins
(0|1|N) (Object|Relationship{,Object|Relationship}) and
(0|1|M) (Object|Relationship{,Object|Relationship}).
Outro.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
msb-0106 NetXPeriment & Allison Reynolds
msb-0106 NetXPeriment & Allison Reynolds
This is the podcast interview of Allison Reynolds of the NetXPeriment.
I am extremely pleased, and thankful for the opportunity to interview her.
I have to apologize for the poor audio quality.
It won't happen again, but it was a new "learning experience".
I think I will have the pleasure of touching base with her at least three more times throughout the coming year.
This is the podcast interview of Allison Reynolds of the NetXPeriment.
I am extremely pleased, and thankful for the opportunity to interview her.
I have to apologize for the poor audio quality.
It won't happen again, but it was a new "learning experience".
I think I will have the pleasure of touching base with her at least three more times throughout the coming year.
Monday, January 22, 2007
msb-0105 Tempting Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos
msb-0105 Tempting Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos
Feedback comes first, so...
Allison's Reynold's interview is proceeding apace.
There are problems with "echo" on my end which means that post-production is taking me a lot longer since I have to re-record my end of it.
But Allison is lively, sweet, sassy and smart.
I'm going to try and talk her into being a (ir)regular "fund raising feature."
I will be featuring that show, that interview, next and I'm going to give her the same capability as the advertisers get: to download the interviews "on demand".
(She'll be able to have links to the specific episodes featuring herself and the "NetXPeriment project" files on her web site.)
----
The feedback I've received from "MDMHvonPA", "Friday's Child" and some testing on my own, about downloading the "commercial trial balloon", tells me that the "last yard" problems is consistent on PCs and quite solvable.
Just make sure that you've installed iTunes (and QuickTime) on your PC (its already on your Mac if that's what you're using,) and the problems disappear "automagically".
----
On the job front, I believe I am making progress finding "the next client". "Phew!"
Thank heavens. Its getting harder and harder to find work in my field (IT) and at my level (Project Management) in this part of the country.
---- "Business As Usual" by: "Sudden Death"
Feedforward comes next, so...
I'm discovering that giving things up, in fact, isn't giving up anything.
The topic of my last show was collaboration, and, when you have someone to collaborate with, its wonderful.
The mechanisms for turning this show into a going concern are all in place, on my end anyway.
If you have iTunes installed on your PC, (it come with the Mac,) they're all in place on your end too. (And from the pace with which the podcasts are getting picked up, I'd say many of you are starting to use it.)
----
I've finished "Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8.
It really is well worth the read. Its a really eye-, and mind-, -opening book about how to use the internet for "US".
MDMHvonPA is all kinds of helpful.
He's already found a problem with the PC end of that download of msb-0046 that I'm asking all of you to do for me.
The link, the site and the stats all work.
Even the downloading works.
The problem comes just after that.
If you don't have the .mv4 file type registered in your browser (something that happens automagically when you install iTunes [or iPodder?]) your PC then has a problem with what the heck do you do with the file?
---- "business as usual" by: "andy pratt"
Reminder ads come next, safely sandwiched in between the "feed" sections of the show and the main topic.
But apart from reminding people that I'm still stress testing my stat keeping mechanism, the download mechanism and the feedback mechanism that people have about and around msb-0046.
I'm working on some people's perceptions and trying to get them to hear and see the potential of advertising on upbeat, positive shows that are "just for us" because they're "just by us".
And the potential exists for the other dread and orphan diseases.
---- "All For Business" by: "Byther Smith"
Main topic: "Tempting Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos
Who the heck were they?
CLOTHO spun the Thread of Life,
LACHESIS alloted the length of the yarn, and
ATROPOS did the snip (the final one).
( http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/greek-mythology.php?deity=FATES )
I am trying to do something with this podcast that no sane person would ever attempt.
I have begun something that I can only hope "Clotho" is still spinning yarn for and leaving "Lachesis" and "Atropos" tapping their feet, waiting.
I will end, eventually, because we all do, but MSBPodcast doesn't have to.
In MSBPodcast is my opportunity (there are so many diseases which need their own channel like this one,) and my legacy.
Its a Web 2.x mash up that put us, we few, we pitifully few, in charge of our destiny. We don't have to fade into obscurity.
The channels that were open to us were fundamentally limiting us in ways that were, quite frankly, quite cruel.
Oh they didn't think they were set up cruelly, but they were.
Amongst the limitations they created were limitations on our own expression.
They were never for us, they were "about" our disease, but they were never "for us".
We were discussed, talked around, and effectively shut out of any dialog we could have had, even if its only with ourselves.
MSBPodcast is a Web 2.x application of hardware and software that open up a channel for us, the MSers.
It serves as an example of what we can achieve when we don't have to compete with the "norms" for our own interests.
If it takes off, (and why shouldn't it?) it should revolutionize how MSers see themselves and their place in the world.
Its a idea who's time has come, and it will happen, because I am "making" it happen.
---- "Business Aint Music" by: "Maria Daines"
I feel like another New Yorker, Cyrus Field, the man who laid the first Trans-Atlantic cable.
I am lucky in that I have all the heavy lifting done for me already.
I am not laying down cable.
I am laying down an idea.
To use the wire we all have, the internet, to unite us MSers in a single global network where we can all communicate and get news, views, reviews and missives.
And wherein people who's business it is to reach us can and will reach us, but on our terms, (and not by boring our asses off with homilies, or by scaring the shit out of us either. :-)
Demographically, we're too widely geographically distributed to make a difference.
We're only 0.0833% of the population, but there exist a channel for us to be together.
A channel for us all to communicate.
A Channel where advertising for products, goods and services can all share in without choking us by taking up our bandwidth and by being inefficient and scattering their message to those who don't need to read or hear or see it.
Its a question of overall mass, which we have.
There's over 300,000 of us in the United States alone. There are millions of us world-wide.
It is no longer a question of density.
The internet does away with that demographic dimension.
---- "Mr. Business Man" by: "The Babylon Cowboys"
I'm putting together the interview with Allison Reynolds as you hear this.
I'm also working on getting the New Jersey Chapter's "Walk for MS" and the "Race for MS" to use this podcast as a forum for spreading the word and spreading information.
I will also provide access to the same "deep linking" mechanism for those show episodes that I'm making available to Allison Reynolds.
That's for me. I have to edit down Allison's interview.
Look for that episode on Wednesday.
Feedback comes first, so...
Allison's Reynold's interview is proceeding apace.
There are problems with "echo" on my end which means that post-production is taking me a lot longer since I have to re-record my end of it.
But Allison is lively, sweet, sassy and smart.
I'm going to try and talk her into being a (ir)regular "fund raising feature."
I will be featuring that show, that interview, next and I'm going to give her the same capability as the advertisers get: to download the interviews "on demand".
(She'll be able to have links to the specific episodes featuring herself and the "NetXPeriment project" files on her web site.)
----
The feedback I've received from "MDMHvonPA", "Friday's Child" and some testing on my own, about downloading the "commercial trial balloon", tells me that the "last yard" problems is consistent on PCs and quite solvable.
Just make sure that you've installed iTunes (and QuickTime) on your PC (its already on your Mac if that's what you're using,) and the problems disappear "automagically".
----
On the job front, I believe I am making progress finding "the next client". "Phew!"
Thank heavens. Its getting harder and harder to find work in my field (IT) and at my level (Project Management) in this part of the country.
---- "Business As Usual" by: "Sudden Death"
Feedforward comes next, so...
I'm discovering that giving things up, in fact, isn't giving up anything.
The topic of my last show was collaboration, and, when you have someone to collaborate with, its wonderful.
The mechanisms for turning this show into a going concern are all in place, on my end anyway.
If you have iTunes installed on your PC, (it come with the Mac,) they're all in place on your end too. (And from the pace with which the podcasts are getting picked up, I'd say many of you are starting to use it.)
----
I've finished "Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8.
It really is well worth the read. Its a really eye-, and mind-, -opening book about how to use the internet for "US".
MDMHvonPA is all kinds of helpful.
He's already found a problem with the PC end of that download of msb-0046 that I'm asking all of you to do for me.
The link, the site and the stats all work.
Even the downloading works.
The problem comes just after that.
If you don't have the .mv4 file type registered in your browser (something that happens automagically when you install iTunes [or iPodder?]) your PC then has a problem with what the heck do you do with the file?
---- "business as usual" by: "andy pratt"
Reminder ads come next, safely sandwiched in between the "feed" sections of the show and the main topic.
But apart from reminding people that I'm still stress testing my stat keeping mechanism, the download mechanism and the feedback mechanism that people have about and around msb-0046.
I'm working on some people's perceptions and trying to get them to hear and see the potential of advertising on upbeat, positive shows that are "just for us" because they're "just by us".
And the potential exists for the other dread and orphan diseases.
---- "All For Business" by: "Byther Smith"
Main topic: "Tempting Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos
Who the heck were they?
CLOTHO spun the Thread of Life,
LACHESIS alloted the length of the yarn, and
ATROPOS did the snip (the final one).
( http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/greek-mythology.php?deity=FATES )
I am trying to do something with this podcast that no sane person would ever attempt.
I have begun something that I can only hope "Clotho" is still spinning yarn for and leaving "Lachesis" and "Atropos" tapping their feet, waiting.
I will end, eventually, because we all do, but MSBPodcast doesn't have to.
In MSBPodcast is my opportunity (there are so many diseases which need their own channel like this one,) and my legacy.
Its a Web 2.x mash up that put us, we few, we pitifully few, in charge of our destiny. We don't have to fade into obscurity.
The channels that were open to us were fundamentally limiting us in ways that were, quite frankly, quite cruel.
Oh they didn't think they were set up cruelly, but they were.
Amongst the limitations they created were limitations on our own expression.
They were never for us, they were "about" our disease, but they were never "for us".
We were discussed, talked around, and effectively shut out of any dialog we could have had, even if its only with ourselves.
MSBPodcast is a Web 2.x application of hardware and software that open up a channel for us, the MSers.
It serves as an example of what we can achieve when we don't have to compete with the "norms" for our own interests.
If it takes off, (and why shouldn't it?) it should revolutionize how MSers see themselves and their place in the world.
Its a idea who's time has come, and it will happen, because I am "making" it happen.
---- "Business Aint Music" by: "Maria Daines"
I feel like another New Yorker, Cyrus Field, the man who laid the first Trans-Atlantic cable.
I am lucky in that I have all the heavy lifting done for me already.
I am not laying down cable.
I am laying down an idea.
To use the wire we all have, the internet, to unite us MSers in a single global network where we can all communicate and get news, views, reviews and missives.
And wherein people who's business it is to reach us can and will reach us, but on our terms, (and not by boring our asses off with homilies, or by scaring the shit out of us either. :-)
Demographically, we're too widely geographically distributed to make a difference.
We're only 0.0833% of the population, but there exist a channel for us to be together.
A channel for us all to communicate.
A Channel where advertising for products, goods and services can all share in without choking us by taking up our bandwidth and by being inefficient and scattering their message to those who don't need to read or hear or see it.
Its a question of overall mass, which we have.
There's over 300,000 of us in the United States alone. There are millions of us world-wide.
It is no longer a question of density.
The internet does away with that demographic dimension.
---- "Mr. Business Man" by: "The Babylon Cowboys"
I'm putting together the interview with Allison Reynolds as you hear this.
I'm also working on getting the New Jersey Chapter's "Walk for MS" and the "Race for MS" to use this podcast as a forum for spreading the word and spreading information.
I will also provide access to the same "deep linking" mechanism for those show episodes that I'm making available to Allison Reynolds.
That's for me. I have to edit down Allison's interview.
Look for that episode on Wednesday.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
msb-0103 Collaboration Is Key.
msb-0103 Collaboration Is Key.
Feedback comes first, so...
I held a test interview with Allison Reynolds (for the link disabled, that's at http://www.netxperiment.com/ ) to make sure that our equipment was compatible, that software at my end was entirely functional (Audio Hijack Pro [for the link disabled, that's at http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ ] is one sophisticated but incredibly easy-to-use piece of software!) and after dealing with some technical issues, we're getting something happening.
Look for that in an upcoming episode. She was charming and gracious.
I'm not going to bug him about it but MDMHvonPA should be working on his roundup of the blog-o-sphere. (I go there myself, but not as often as I'd like. This podcast eats up a lot of my time, and I've got a lot of other things on my plate, like finding another client [or another job, which I'd rather not do,] all of which takes a lot of schmoozing and face time)
I'm carrying on a debate, nay an intellectual exercise, with a guy who's pissed off at ebay. (There's nothing as sobering as the realization that I may be an ass-hole. Then again, maybe not... :-)
---- One Day In New York City by: Atomica
Feedforward comes next, so ...
First, I've discovered Jooly's Joint, (for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at http://www.mswebpals.org/ ,) courtesy of the BBC Ouch! Podcast, (again for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch ).
Its a British web site, (though it has some, heck, a lot of, Americans in there.) Its sub-titled "People With MS Supporting Each Other."
I've reached out to Jooly by email to see if she'd like to do an interview about why she started the site, its successes (and maybe its failures, [uh, strike that. Like in project management and job interviews, there are "no failures", only "learning opportunities".])
Next is "Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything." by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8, is a phenomenal book.
It explained what I was doing that seemed to work and what I had done that was just not getting any traction.
What was impressive was that I was able to "grok" why some things worked and some things just wont ... ever.
Its not that my goal was entirely wrong but my timing and approach weren't going to work until I had the right "people pool" to swim in.
It explained things about how people are using technology to reinvent the web, the work place and themselves from the bottom up and finding way to get things accomplished in the face of reality.
Being a technophile myself. I'm doing pretty well. Some of this stuff has been around for years (wikis for one, podcasts for another, blogs for yet another,) and I've been lucky to be an early adopter for a lot of it.
People who aren't technophiles are doing what they need to to accomplish things.
The book provides lots of examples, and the reasons why the adoption of simple data manipulation tools are working in ways never anticipated by the tools creators.
The book gives examples of small humble beginnings that led to great things. (Like ebay, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Linux, (the LAMP stack,) IBM's changes over the past decade, wikis, open APIs, Sun Microsystems, yaddah, yaddah.)
For all its shortness, its only a few hundred pages, it manages to cover a lot of ground and convey a lot of information.
---- New York is Burning by: Camelia Ashbach
Right now the content producers on this train wreck of a podcast are MDMHvonPA with the Roundup, Allison Reynolds with an interview, and "moi" with my blathering.
I will be sending them a part of my revenue (when I finally get some,) for the number of times the episode featuring them gets downloaded.
The expenditure part of podcasting, as an enterprise, is based a remunerative model to thank them for being on the show and telling me what's happening in their respective bailiwick. And if any of "you" have something to contribute, you'll get the same remuneration. As MSBPodcast grows, so do the opportunities.)
The revenue part of podcasting, as an enterprise, comes from the number of times a particular "commercial" gets downloaded.
Since its a "pull model," instead of the current, "in-your-face, eating-up-the-clock, push model" of advertising, my rates are going to seem outrageous to the unconnected.
I figure $3.00 per download of the ad and $0.03 per "reminder" per download of an episode.
Because of the focus of this podcast, it compare quite favorably to what other things are out there for the advertisers.
---- New York Winter by: Dorian Spencer
MDMHvonPA is an MSer. He's great with blogging and I should support his efforts in the blog-o-sphere, instead of pestering him about doing a 'cast with me. (And if I ever see a dime off of this insane venture, he should [will, will, I gotta keep a proper, positive mental attitude] uh, will see some of that dime.)
Allison Reynolds is another MSer. She had Skype and didn't mind doing an interview using it. But she's into raising her million bucks and I won't repeat the pestering I did with MDMH. Not to mention that she's in a radically different time zone, like seven hours ago, tomorrow.
---- A German in New York by: Monika Herzig
I am putting together:
Every download of an "ad" episode, whenever it happens, brings MSBPodcast $3.00. Every download of a "reminder" in an episode brings MSBPodcast $0.03.
By measuring the difference in downloads stats from one month to the next, I can bill the companies for the number of "ad" downloads for that month. (The relationship is "one-to-one", meaning that every download went to every person who asked for it.)
By measuring the difference in download stats from one month to the next, I can bill the companies for the number of "reminder" downloads for that month, where they were featured on one of my episodes. (The relationship is "many-to-many" meaning many shows can feature many reminders.)
This beats the heck out of the broadcast advertising model which merely pushes ad content at a possible audience, who are quite possibly not interested, not paying attention, or in the crapper or doing their toes at that very moment. (And, in broadcasting, if you're not there, you missed it, [and the ad missed you.])
---- I Heart New York by: Sudden Death
Because no plan ever survives contact with reality, I'm hoping you are willing to help me test something out.
The following link is to a five minute test episode, MSB-0046, (for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at "http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0046_Berlex_trial_balloon.m4v" ) and see if you can download it and play it.
Then email me what happened. Please.
Its important that you all do.
Feedback comes first, so...
I held a test interview with Allison Reynolds (for the link disabled, that's at http://www.netxperiment.com/ ) to make sure that our equipment was compatible, that software at my end was entirely functional (Audio Hijack Pro [for the link disabled, that's at http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ ] is one sophisticated but incredibly easy-to-use piece of software!) and after dealing with some technical issues, we're getting something happening.
Look for that in an upcoming episode. She was charming and gracious.
I'm not going to bug him about it but MDMHvonPA should be working on his roundup of the blog-o-sphere. (I go there myself, but not as often as I'd like. This podcast eats up a lot of my time, and I've got a lot of other things on my plate, like finding another client [or another job, which I'd rather not do,] all of which takes a lot of schmoozing and face time)
I'm carrying on a debate, nay an intellectual exercise, with a guy who's pissed off at ebay. (There's nothing as sobering as the realization that I may be an ass-hole. Then again, maybe not... :-)
---- One Day In New York City by: Atomica
Feedforward comes next, so ...
First, I've discovered Jooly's Joint, (for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at http://www.mswebpals.org/ ,) courtesy of the BBC Ouch! Podcast, (again for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch ).
Its a British web site, (though it has some, heck, a lot of, Americans in there.) Its sub-titled "People With MS Supporting Each Other."
I've reached out to Jooly by email to see if she'd like to do an interview about why she started the site, its successes (and maybe its failures, [uh, strike that. Like in project management and job interviews, there are "no failures", only "learning opportunities".])
Next is "Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything." by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8, is a phenomenal book.
It explained what I was doing that seemed to work and what I had done that was just not getting any traction.
What was impressive was that I was able to "grok" why some things worked and some things just wont ... ever.
Its not that my goal was entirely wrong but my timing and approach weren't going to work until I had the right "people pool" to swim in.
It explained things about how people are using technology to reinvent the web, the work place and themselves from the bottom up and finding way to get things accomplished in the face of reality.
Being a technophile myself. I'm doing pretty well. Some of this stuff has been around for years (wikis for one, podcasts for another, blogs for yet another,) and I've been lucky to be an early adopter for a lot of it.
People who aren't technophiles are doing what they need to to accomplish things.
The book provides lots of examples, and the reasons why the adoption of simple data manipulation tools are working in ways never anticipated by the tools creators.
The book gives examples of small humble beginnings that led to great things. (Like ebay, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Linux, (the LAMP stack,) IBM's changes over the past decade, wikis, open APIs, Sun Microsystems, yaddah, yaddah.)
For all its shortness, its only a few hundred pages, it manages to cover a lot of ground and convey a lot of information.
---- New York is Burning by: Camelia Ashbach
Right now the content producers on this train wreck of a podcast are MDMHvonPA with the Roundup, Allison Reynolds with an interview, and "moi" with my blathering.
I will be sending them a part of my revenue (when I finally get some,) for the number of times the episode featuring them gets downloaded.
The expenditure part of podcasting, as an enterprise, is based a remunerative model to thank them for being on the show and telling me what's happening in their respective bailiwick. And if any of "you" have something to contribute, you'll get the same remuneration. As MSBPodcast grows, so do the opportunities.)
The revenue part of podcasting, as an enterprise, comes from the number of times a particular "commercial" gets downloaded.
Since its a "pull model," instead of the current, "in-your-face, eating-up-the-clock, push model" of advertising, my rates are going to seem outrageous to the unconnected.
I figure $3.00 per download of the ad and $0.03 per "reminder" per download of an episode.
Because of the focus of this podcast, it compare quite favorably to what other things are out there for the advertisers.
---- New York Winter by: Dorian Spencer
MDMHvonPA is an MSer. He's great with blogging and I should support his efforts in the blog-o-sphere, instead of pestering him about doing a 'cast with me. (And if I ever see a dime off of this insane venture, he should [will, will, I gotta keep a proper, positive mental attitude] uh, will see some of that dime.)
Allison Reynolds is another MSer. She had Skype and didn't mind doing an interview using it. But she's into raising her million bucks and I won't repeat the pestering I did with MDMH. Not to mention that she's in a radically different time zone, like seven hours ago, tomorrow.
---- A German in New York by: Monika Herzig
I am putting together:
- a rate sheet (plan ahead, you can always change it later,) for carrying the episodes (their ads) on my server and
- a rate sheet for carrying "remiders" on my casts to the ad episodes.
Every download of an "ad" episode, whenever it happens, brings MSBPodcast $3.00. Every download of a "reminder" in an episode brings MSBPodcast $0.03.
By measuring the difference in downloads stats from one month to the next, I can bill the companies for the number of "ad" downloads for that month. (The relationship is "one-to-one", meaning that every download went to every person who asked for it.)
By measuring the difference in download stats from one month to the next, I can bill the companies for the number of "reminder" downloads for that month, where they were featured on one of my episodes. (The relationship is "many-to-many" meaning many shows can feature many reminders.)
This beats the heck out of the broadcast advertising model which merely pushes ad content at a possible audience, who are quite possibly not interested, not paying attention, or in the crapper or doing their toes at that very moment. (And, in broadcasting, if you're not there, you missed it, [and the ad missed you.])
---- I Heart New York by: Sudden Death
Because no plan ever survives contact with reality, I'm hoping you are willing to help me test something out.
The following link is to a five minute test episode, MSB-0046, (for the non-iTunes link disabled, that's at "http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0046_Berlex_trial_balloon.m4v" ) and see if you can download it and play it.
Then email me what happened. Please.
Its important that you all do.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
msb-0102 Paraphrasing Lord Tyrell ...
msb-0102 Paraphrasing Lord Tyrell ...
"We take pride in observing that there is not a single episode that deals with the burning issues of the hour."
And that's something to be "proud" of? What a [expletives deleted]!
Feedback comes first, so ...
I'm running my promo once again because I'm so friggin' thrilled with it.
---- MSBPodcast promo by: Don Lafontaine
I've sent it out to a few of fellow podcasters, too:
Josh Jacobson of "The Just Joshin" Podcast,
C.C. Chapman of "Accident Hash", (he's run it already! :-)
Keyz of "The Awful Show", (he's run it already! :-)
Travis Goss of the "UnRadio show",
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff of the "PacificCoastHellway," (he's run it already! :-)
and, of course, my first and my main inspiration for taking up the gauntlet of podcasting in the first place, Adam Curry of the "Daily Source Code" (he's run it already! :-)
I am going to send it to Mat Frazer at the "BBC Ouch Podcast," maybe to P.W. Fenton at "Digital Flotsam" and I'm going down the list of the podcasts I'm subscribed to seeing if there is, or might be, any interest.
Its not everyday that you get a podcast promo done by Don Lafontaine.
It sounds great doesn't it?
I took a quick look at my download stats and I am holding steady, slowly climbing, dipping a little now and then climbing back again.
Its still "day one" so, I'm a bit hopeful.
My name becoming known, and I'm achieving fame, not notoriety.
I seem to be keeping some people happy, which keeps me happy.
---- California by: Barb Carbon
Feedforward come next.
Two discoveries this podcast.
The first comes from "Can You Hear Me Now?" (for the link disabled, that's at http://donna.innereyes.com/).
In her blog entry for 2007/01/15, here's a link to an MS Disability Simulator. (For the link disabled, that's at http://www.ms-gateway.com/understanding-ms/ms-simulator-53.htm )
It gives you a real feeling of what I go through when I have an exacerbation. If I have one complaint its that you aren't experiencing the "noise" (its the only way to describe it, even though I get noisy "skin".)
Of course, none of these sites and tests can give you an appreciation of how it actually "feels" to be , uh, mobility challenged, nah, make that schlepping around with a cane.
The second, I'm in fact going to reserve apart from giving you the title and ISBN:
It deserves its own show and I'm going to return to the topic next episode because it deserves its own episode.
"Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything." by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8.
This book is fuckin' "brilliant".
It gives examples of collaboration which I can directly relate to my own efforts (As it turns out, I am not too far wrong. The phenomena that are Linux, Yahoo!, Flicker, Google, PodShow and a host of other sites were created by reaching a certain a tipping point of acceptance.
Everything depends on reaching "critical mass" of MSers and others wo work in health care (the real thing, not health "don't" care.)
Seeing as, until things improve, ten percent of the world population is disabled, that's six hundred million people, twice the entire population of the United States, we can take that as a base line for the size of the market.
---- California by: Lost In Rome
We, screw it, "I" have no real competition in this space because the ads for "Viagra" and "Cymbalta" (and all of the fuckin' spam I'm getting for "Viagara") that clog our airways are aimed at ailments, real or imagined, that aren't "disabling".
The costs per person are over four buck four direct mail, per single packet.
The costs are up $15,000 a page for something that only appears once every couple of months in specialized newsletters ( < 500,000 issues") and those publications are usually couched in such esoteric terms, (read jargon a.k.a. "med school speech",) or hold out hope, (but not for "you", they're selling 'someday",) that they might as well be written in "Arameic" or some other dead language.
The costs on this podcast are so low that I am able to do it myself, with the help of fellow MSers like MDMHvonPA and Allison Reynolds. (co-content producers.)
Look for an interview, by me, with her as a shameless act of self promotion on her part.
And why not?
We're both trying to raise some visibility for MS.
In her case, she's also being ambitious and trying to raise a million bucks for MS research.
Its better that sitting down and shutting up, so MS doesn't notice and rain down its wrath upon us for getting "above ourselves."
Screw that!
I am a Québecois and we put up with that crap for 300 years, fighting "La Guerre des Berceaux" (The war of the Cradles) until we'd screwed enough to screw up the demographics in Canada.
Say it now and say it loud!
We got hit by a bus with the license plate MS and we're still proud!
And if we have to drag the pharma cos and other goods and services providers by the hair, kicking and screaming into the internet enabled and enabling twenty first century, then they'd better all watch their scalps, 'cause I'm reaching and I'm just the first.
---- California by: Ryan Smith
So how are you all doing? (Email me charles (at) MSBPodcast.com)
We're putting the 'heck" in hectic, 'round the ole homestead.
As I said, I'm getting some traction with the promo recorded by Don Lafontaine.
I'm so happy with that.
Now if only I could speak like that instead of this nasal squeak. I can do somethings with a console but it can't correct the basic fact that I don't have a voice.
We've started a new year. We're counting down the weeks until the next one.
A year of challenges and hopes.
A year of whines and mopes.
A year of stumbles and lopes.
A year of crimes and lousy rhymes.
I'm still looking for a contract, a customer, a bill payer.
What can you do? Life is tough.
If it wasn't, everybody'd be doing it, uh, that didn't come out right... [sigh]
---- california FEAT Jackson Browne w/p-tac by: pc muno
As is my want, I was listening back at my filler episodes. (I had recorded the episodes but I hadn't really had the time to really hear them because I was taking off the next day and had to put three shows on the server "fast".)
Damn. "The Muggs'" "White Boy Blues" really rocked on X-Mas Filler 02 - "White" (msb-0096.)
Actually all of the bands I played on those shows were stellar.
I'm a bit depressed about that actually.
It seem the less I talk, the more rushed I am and the less I can sculpt a show around a theme, the better it sounds.
Maybe I'll do that some more and give you a rest from me.
---- Stop writing songs about California by: gentlemens gun club
I have been thinking of advertising.
I got the rates for "Inside MS" and its about many more times than I though. ($1,333 for one of those of those marketplace ads, for 6 ads. Do the math. That $8.000 for a year. That's a lot of money.)
Now apart from the fact that my significant other, Lee, gave me a l-o-n-g talk about why we can't go about wasting money when my employment is so uncertain, I've decided that I just cant afford it (unless I discover a rock sitting a huge pile of cash, of course.)
Damn mass media. I can't buy a TV ad because the rate of return would be too small and I can't afford a print media ad in a specialized magazine because, despite the fact that these bozos only come out six times a year and focus on other things than I do, their rates must be utterly outrageous.
Not to mention that this would place certain other constraints on me.
While I could cope with even twice the number of actual questions I'm getting and would be delighted with having a slow and controlled growth of my audience, the problems of barely controlled growth is that it would require me to change.
Unplanned change, organic change, paced change is a great deal easier for me, and for us all, to cope with that the quantum jump that the kind change that advertising in that magazine would impose.
----
That's for me this episode.
"We take pride in observing that there is not a single episode that deals with the burning issues of the hour."
And that's something to be "proud" of? What a [expletives deleted]!
Feedback comes first, so ...
I'm running my promo once again because I'm so friggin' thrilled with it.
---- MSBPodcast promo by: Don Lafontaine
I've sent it out to a few of fellow podcasters, too:
Josh Jacobson of "The Just Joshin" Podcast,
C.C. Chapman of "Accident Hash", (he's run it already! :-)
Keyz of "The Awful Show", (he's run it already! :-)
Travis Goss of the "UnRadio show",
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff of the "PacificCoastHellway," (he's run it already! :-)
and, of course, my first and my main inspiration for taking up the gauntlet of podcasting in the first place, Adam Curry of the "Daily Source Code" (he's run it already! :-)
I am going to send it to Mat Frazer at the "BBC Ouch Podcast," maybe to P.W. Fenton at "Digital Flotsam" and I'm going down the list of the podcasts I'm subscribed to seeing if there is, or might be, any interest.
Its not everyday that you get a podcast promo done by Don Lafontaine.
It sounds great doesn't it?
I took a quick look at my download stats and I am holding steady, slowly climbing, dipping a little now and then climbing back again.
Its still "day one" so, I'm a bit hopeful.
My name becoming known, and I'm achieving fame, not notoriety.
I seem to be keeping some people happy, which keeps me happy.
---- California by: Barb Carbon
Feedforward come next.
Two discoveries this podcast.
The first comes from "Can You Hear Me Now?" (for the link disabled, that's at http://donna.innereyes.com/).
In her blog entry for 2007/01/15, here's a link to an MS Disability Simulator. (For the link disabled, that's at http://www.ms-gateway.com/understanding-ms/ms-simulator-53.htm )
It gives you a real feeling of what I go through when I have an exacerbation. If I have one complaint its that you aren't experiencing the "noise" (its the only way to describe it, even though I get noisy "skin".)
Of course, none of these sites and tests can give you an appreciation of how it actually "feels" to be , uh, mobility challenged, nah, make that schlepping around with a cane.
The second, I'm in fact going to reserve apart from giving you the title and ISBN:
It deserves its own show and I'm going to return to the topic next episode because it deserves its own episode.
"Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything." by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8.
This book is fuckin' "brilliant".
It gives examples of collaboration which I can directly relate to my own efforts (As it turns out, I am not too far wrong. The phenomena that are Linux, Yahoo!, Flicker, Google, PodShow and a host of other sites were created by reaching a certain a tipping point of acceptance.
Everything depends on reaching "critical mass" of MSers and others wo work in health care (the real thing, not health "don't" care.)
Seeing as, until things improve, ten percent of the world population is disabled, that's six hundred million people, twice the entire population of the United States, we can take that as a base line for the size of the market.
---- California by: Lost In Rome
We, screw it, "I" have no real competition in this space because the ads for "Viagra" and "Cymbalta" (and all of the fuckin' spam I'm getting for "Viagara") that clog our airways are aimed at ailments, real or imagined, that aren't "disabling".
The costs per person are over four buck four direct mail, per single packet.
The costs are up $15,000 a page for something that only appears once every couple of months in specialized newsletters ( < 500,000 issues") and those publications are usually couched in such esoteric terms, (read jargon a.k.a. "med school speech",) or hold out hope, (but not for "you", they're selling 'someday",) that they might as well be written in "Arameic" or some other dead language.
The costs on this podcast are so low that I am able to do it myself, with the help of fellow MSers like MDMHvonPA and Allison Reynolds. (co-content producers.)
Look for an interview, by me, with her as a shameless act of self promotion on her part.
And why not?
We're both trying to raise some visibility for MS.
In her case, she's also being ambitious and trying to raise a million bucks for MS research.
Its better that sitting down and shutting up, so MS doesn't notice and rain down its wrath upon us for getting "above ourselves."
Screw that!
I am a Québecois and we put up with that crap for 300 years, fighting "La Guerre des Berceaux" (The war of the Cradles) until we'd screwed enough to screw up the demographics in Canada.
Say it now and say it loud!
We got hit by a bus with the license plate MS and we're still proud!
And if we have to drag the pharma cos and other goods and services providers by the hair, kicking and screaming into the internet enabled and enabling twenty first century, then they'd better all watch their scalps, 'cause I'm reaching and I'm just the first.
---- California by: Ryan Smith
So how are you all doing? (Email me charles (at) MSBPodcast.com)
We're putting the 'heck" in hectic, 'round the ole homestead.
As I said, I'm getting some traction with the promo recorded by Don Lafontaine.
I'm so happy with that.
Now if only I could speak like that instead of this nasal squeak. I can do somethings with a console but it can't correct the basic fact that I don't have a voice.
We've started a new year. We're counting down the weeks until the next one.
A year of challenges and hopes.
A year of whines and mopes.
A year of stumbles and lopes.
A year of crimes and lousy rhymes.
I'm still looking for a contract, a customer, a bill payer.
What can you do? Life is tough.
If it wasn't, everybody'd be doing it, uh, that didn't come out right... [sigh]
---- california FEAT Jackson Browne w/p-tac by: pc muno
As is my want, I was listening back at my filler episodes. (I had recorded the episodes but I hadn't really had the time to really hear them because I was taking off the next day and had to put three shows on the server "fast".)
Damn. "The Muggs'" "White Boy Blues" really rocked on X-Mas Filler 02 - "White" (msb-0096.)
Actually all of the bands I played on those shows were stellar.
I'm a bit depressed about that actually.
It seem the less I talk, the more rushed I am and the less I can sculpt a show around a theme, the better it sounds.
Maybe I'll do that some more and give you a rest from me.
---- Stop writing songs about California by: gentlemens gun club
I have been thinking of advertising.
I got the rates for "Inside MS" and its about many more times than I though. ($1,333 for one of those of those marketplace ads, for 6 ads. Do the math. That $8.000 for a year. That's a lot of money.)
Now apart from the fact that my significant other, Lee, gave me a l-o-n-g talk about why we can't go about wasting money when my employment is so uncertain, I've decided that I just cant afford it (unless I discover a rock sitting a huge pile of cash, of course.)
Damn mass media. I can't buy a TV ad because the rate of return would be too small and I can't afford a print media ad in a specialized magazine because, despite the fact that these bozos only come out six times a year and focus on other things than I do, their rates must be utterly outrageous.
Not to mention that this would place certain other constraints on me.
While I could cope with even twice the number of actual questions I'm getting and would be delighted with having a slow and controlled growth of my audience, the problems of barely controlled growth is that it would require me to change.
Unplanned change, organic change, paced change is a great deal easier for me, and for us all, to cope with that the quantum jump that the kind change that advertising in that magazine would impose.
----
That's for me this episode.
Friday, January 05, 2007
msb-0100 ADD is a serious ... ooo ... shiny!
msb-0100 ADD is a serious ... ooo ... shiny!
feedback comes first ...
There isn't any ... yet ...
I'm still awaiting word from MDMHvonPA on his Roundup of the Haupertonian MS Cabal.
I want to thank Brian [name withheld by request] of the procrasticast ( http://procrasticast.com/ for the link disabled,) for the donation.
You can find him on the iTunes Music Store as "Audio Attitude" and subscribe that way.
I've downloaded what I could (#27 on,) and I'm still forming an opinion. I think I like the show.
I just heard from, and talked to, somebody with the New Jersey chapter about podcasting their annual "Race For MS" and possibly doing some web-casting for some other events. (There is a difference. Podasting is still perceived mobile and having zero interaction, while web-casting is still perceived as podcasting with no possibility of capture [and any hacker worthy of the name {and I know quite a few} will tell you that's like waiving a red flag in front of a bull.])
The biggest changes are to the server software, not to the content or to the process. I've downloaded NiceCast from RogueAmoeba (that's http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ for the link disabled,) as an experiment.
I'll see what they made as their business case and for what.
I've been in touch with Allison Reynolds of the NetXPeriment.com about doing an interview with her. (Poor dear, I don't think she realizes how complicated it gets. If you're just talking its sounds simple, but doing an actual interview is quite a process. [Just to get interviewed on the five o'clock news for a bit about being a witness to something involves a lot. Imagine being the driving force behind a campaign to raise a million dollars.])
But I've just downloaded Audio Hijack Pro, also from Rogue Amoeba (thats still http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ for the link disabled,) for my iMac and I'm figuring out how to work it with Skype so the interview can be recorded to an MP3, pulled into GarageBand and made into a show for podcast. (If we use the video parts of Skype, you will be able to 'sit in' on a webcast with our shining faces beaming out at you. [Ugh! I think we'll stick to audio. My office is a shameful mess.])
---- Making Me Nervous by Brad Sucks http://bradsucks.net
Since none of you gave me any suggestions about any favorites from the thousand or so songs I've played for you so far,
(except for "Making me nervous" by Brad Sucks, a repeat of that song which was actually requested, once, a long time ago, by a member of the audience in Everet WA, USA.
[Yo! DasGimp, how are you doing? Drop an email.]
[you just know I played it first on this episode {notice, I said episode, not rotation. This ain't radio and I don't share a friggin' playlist with other DJs.}]
[Oh, that's at http://www.bradsucks.net/ for the link disabled, non iTunes using segment of the audience,
{don't feel bad ... about half of you listening who pick the show off the wire with nothing more than a browser.}])
You know who you are, on my all too sparsely populated Frapper Map; the link's on the page folks, look down the left hand side ... go and add yourselves. :-)
I'm now going to play the first tunes that I find interesting off of the PMN (the Podsafe Music Network,)
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
I'm starting a new section called "Feed Forward" which will feature my recent discoveries or "kewl!" moments that I wish to share with you;
This last discovery is a book titled "An Egg Is Quiet" by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long (ISBN: 10-0-8118-4428-5 and/or ISBN: 13-978-0-8118-4428-4)
I don't really remember what brought the book to my attention, I must been fascinated by the authoresses description of the process of creating this work, but I'm so glad I got onto Amazon.com and ordered it.
Its very inexpensive, very thin and the illustrations it contains are absolutely precious.
Its absolutely delightful in its oviparous illustrations.
Its a children's book that's just too pretty to hand over to a three year old.
Between the eggs and the creatures that lay them, its a wonderfully illustrated little book.
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
The title of this episode implies short attention spans and the cognitive dissonance associated with the easily distracted mind. (Yes, I know that I'm not supposed to dispense medical advice, and I'm not going to, apart from pestering you to ask a health care professional about your specific conditions.)
Part of the problem with MS and its brain lesions, is that, coming as it does from the inside of our perceptions, denial comes as part of the package.
Not only do we not see with our own eyes what seems obvious to others (I hate walking in to the clinic with a sniffle and asking "How sick am I, doc?" because the answer might be a whole lot longer and more complicated than: "You have a cold. Take a couple of these and call me if it doesn't clear up",) but we have an additional barrier in that that we may not recognize or understand what we see.
I'm using "denial" as a generic "catch-all" term here for three conditions, so let me clear that up right now.
Denial the first, as in "I don't have this disease see ... I can get around fine, see ... (trips over a "gravity warp" in the floor, crashes into an umbrella stand, slips and falls flat on face,)" is one thing.
It is the willful act of saying "No! It ain't so!" It may be the stupid, stubborn, destructive to the self and to others, act of the terrified child in all of us, but its quite natural and it can be dealt with. Not easily, but it can be "dealt" with.
Denial the second, as in "Uh, no I don't do that ... do I?" is not a willful act. It may not even be a conscious act. This is specially pernicious because, as this disease progresses, it affects what we can affect.
Our out-going apparatus, our effector nerves, get full of cruft as sclera accumulate and interfere with the signals our mind sends to our body. (This wonderful syndrome manifests itself as spasticity; knocked over drink glasses, a lack of hand-eye coordination, bad gait, difficulty rising out of chairs, etcetera.)
Our in-coming appparatus, out sensory nerves, also get full of cruft as sclera accumulate and interfere with the signals our body sends to our mind. (This wonderful syndrome manifests itself as "phantom pain"; the itch that can't be scratched because it isn't real, or reported in some place than where its supposed to be. Phantom pain can be a whole lot more distressing than that and it can hurt a whole lot worse than an itch.)
Denial, the third, is what this show is actually about. It is the cognitive dissonance between our actual bodies and our "soma", or perceived selves.
This one's a bit of a bitch because, everything we do and everything we are, as well as everything we think we do and everything we think we are, are caught up in a jumbled, scarred mess of sensation that is the result of the jumbled, scarred mess of our neural network.
(Thank [insert name of deity here] that I don't do that kind of work, cognitive science, for a living. Its get awfully hard to keep things straight.)
One saving grace of the processing of sensation from a physical reaction into a cognitive one is that, if you take a figurative step back, you can distance your self from your soma and begin to live in the half second separation between the actual sensation, (this is itchy or this hurts, or I'm twisting wrong, or she looks good,) and the perception, (which kicks off a reaction, a scratch, or an ouch, or a readjustment of position, or something you might have to, uh, cope with. :-)
I've covered the "half second delay" way back in "MSB-0011 Its not a free pass, dummy" (Don't bother looking for a podcast. Its gone... I expunged it from the servers.)
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
Actually, I think about how I think a great deal.
What are the mechanisms of thought?
What do we connect with?
How do we formulate a thought?
What neural pathways are there between an idea, the electrical resonance of the idea, and the meat-me that thought up the idea. (Told ya, on several occasions, that I was weird!)
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
I think I'll just shut up and end here.
feedback comes first ...
There isn't any ... yet ...
I'm still awaiting word from MDMHvonPA on his Roundup of the Haupertonian MS Cabal.
I want to thank Brian [name withheld by request] of the procrasticast ( http://procrasticast.com/ for the link disabled,) for the donation.
You can find him on the iTunes Music Store as "Audio Attitude" and subscribe that way.
I've downloaded what I could (#27 on,) and I'm still forming an opinion. I think I like the show.
I just heard from, and talked to, somebody with the New Jersey chapter about podcasting their annual "Race For MS" and possibly doing some web-casting for some other events. (There is a difference. Podasting is still perceived mobile and having zero interaction, while web-casting is still perceived as podcasting with no possibility of capture [and any hacker worthy of the name {and I know quite a few} will tell you that's like waiving a red flag in front of a bull.])
The biggest changes are to the server software, not to the content or to the process. I've downloaded NiceCast from RogueAmoeba (that's http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ for the link disabled,) as an experiment.
I'll see what they made as their business case and for what.
I've been in touch with Allison Reynolds of the NetXPeriment.com about doing an interview with her. (Poor dear, I don't think she realizes how complicated it gets. If you're just talking its sounds simple, but doing an actual interview is quite a process. [Just to get interviewed on the five o'clock news for a bit about being a witness to something involves a lot. Imagine being the driving force behind a campaign to raise a million dollars.])
But I've just downloaded Audio Hijack Pro, also from Rogue Amoeba (thats still http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ for the link disabled,) for my iMac and I'm figuring out how to work it with Skype so the interview can be recorded to an MP3, pulled into GarageBand and made into a show for podcast. (If we use the video parts of Skype, you will be able to 'sit in' on a webcast with our shining faces beaming out at you. [Ugh! I think we'll stick to audio. My office is a shameful mess.])
---- Making Me Nervous by Brad Sucks http://bradsucks.net
Since none of you gave me any suggestions about any favorites from the thousand or so songs I've played for you so far,
(except for "Making me nervous" by Brad Sucks, a repeat of that song which was actually requested, once, a long time ago, by a member of the audience in Everet WA, USA.
[Yo! DasGimp, how are you doing? Drop an email.]
[you just know I played it first on this episode {notice, I said episode, not rotation. This ain't radio and I don't share a friggin' playlist with other DJs.}]
[Oh, that's at http://www.bradsucks.net/ for the link disabled, non iTunes using segment of the audience,
{don't feel bad ... about half of you listening who pick the show off the wire with nothing more than a browser.}])
You know who you are, on my all too sparsely populated Frapper Map; the link's on the page folks, look down the left hand side ... go and add yourselves. :-)
I'm now going to play the first tunes that I find interesting off of the PMN (the Podsafe Music Network,)
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
I'm starting a new section called "Feed Forward" which will feature my recent discoveries or "kewl!" moments that I wish to share with you;
This last discovery is a book titled "An Egg Is Quiet" by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long (ISBN: 10-0-8118-4428-5 and/or ISBN: 13-978-0-8118-4428-4)
I don't really remember what brought the book to my attention, I must been fascinated by the authoresses description of the process of creating this work, but I'm so glad I got onto Amazon.com and ordered it.
Its very inexpensive, very thin and the illustrations it contains are absolutely precious.
Its absolutely delightful in its oviparous illustrations.
Its a children's book that's just too pretty to hand over to a three year old.
Between the eggs and the creatures that lay them, its a wonderfully illustrated little book.
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
The title of this episode implies short attention spans and the cognitive dissonance associated with the easily distracted mind. (Yes, I know that I'm not supposed to dispense medical advice, and I'm not going to, apart from pestering you to ask a health care professional about your specific conditions.)
Part of the problem with MS and its brain lesions, is that, coming as it does from the inside of our perceptions, denial comes as part of the package.
Not only do we not see with our own eyes what seems obvious to others (I hate walking in to the clinic with a sniffle and asking "How sick am I, doc?" because the answer might be a whole lot longer and more complicated than: "You have a cold. Take a couple of these and call me if it doesn't clear up",) but we have an additional barrier in that that we may not recognize or understand what we see.
I'm using "denial" as a generic "catch-all" term here for three conditions, so let me clear that up right now.
Denial the first, as in "I don't have this disease see ... I can get around fine, see ... (trips over a "gravity warp" in the floor, crashes into an umbrella stand, slips and falls flat on face,)" is one thing.
It is the willful act of saying "No! It ain't so!" It may be the stupid, stubborn, destructive to the self and to others, act of the terrified child in all of us, but its quite natural and it can be dealt with. Not easily, but it can be "dealt" with.
Denial the second, as in "Uh, no I don't do that ... do I?" is not a willful act. It may not even be a conscious act. This is specially pernicious because, as this disease progresses, it affects what we can affect.
Our out-going apparatus, our effector nerves, get full of cruft as sclera accumulate and interfere with the signals our mind sends to our body. (This wonderful syndrome manifests itself as spasticity; knocked over drink glasses, a lack of hand-eye coordination, bad gait, difficulty rising out of chairs, etcetera.)
Our in-coming appparatus, out sensory nerves, also get full of cruft as sclera accumulate and interfere with the signals our body sends to our mind. (This wonderful syndrome manifests itself as "phantom pain"; the itch that can't be scratched because it isn't real, or reported in some place than where its supposed to be. Phantom pain can be a whole lot more distressing than that and it can hurt a whole lot worse than an itch.)
Denial, the third, is what this show is actually about. It is the cognitive dissonance between our actual bodies and our "soma", or perceived selves.
This one's a bit of a bitch because, everything we do and everything we are, as well as everything we think we do and everything we think we are, are caught up in a jumbled, scarred mess of sensation that is the result of the jumbled, scarred mess of our neural network.
(Thank [insert name of deity here] that I don't do that kind of work, cognitive science, for a living. Its get awfully hard to keep things straight.)
One saving grace of the processing of sensation from a physical reaction into a cognitive one is that, if you take a figurative step back, you can distance your self from your soma and begin to live in the half second separation between the actual sensation, (this is itchy or this hurts, or I'm twisting wrong, or she looks good,) and the perception, (which kicks off a reaction, a scratch, or an ouch, or a readjustment of position, or something you might have to, uh, cope with. :-)
I've covered the "half second delay" way back in "MSB-0011 Its not a free pass, dummy" (Don't bother looking for a podcast. Its gone... I expunged it from the servers.)
Dylan William, in a short, 8 page paper called "The half-second delay: what follows?" for Kings College London School of Education says that there is an enormous disparity betwen our sensory data, which he estimates is processed by the unconscious mind at about 11 million bits per second and our conscious mind which he estimates only handles about 50 bits per second.In that episode I talked about the disparity between our senses (visual, auditory and tactile [regardless of the actual bandwidth consumption,]) are our conscious reaction to whatever has been presented to them.
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
Actually, I think about how I think a great deal.
What are the mechanisms of thought?
What do we connect with?
How do we formulate a thought?
What neural pathways are there between an idea, the electrical resonance of the idea, and the meat-me that thought up the idea. (Told ya, on several occasions, that I was weird!)
---- ?? by: ?? http://??
I think I'll just shut up and end here.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
msb-0099 There's others out there.
msb-0099 There's others out there.
Feedback come first so...
I got some from afar that kept me up late into the night last Tuesday/Wednesday.
Allison Reynolds started the site:
and keeps a blog at:
She is an ambitious MSer who is trying to use the power of the internet to raise a million dollars for MS research.
Of course, I don't know if that's in
Actually, she replied in my blog:
Then again you might want to help her make her total real fast and pay her a million in Turkish Lira. (Hint: 1,000,000 TRL is about $0.71 USD. :-)
I'm also trying to work out an interview with her or to give her an episode on my podcast.
I can stay up late on a Friday while she gets up early on a Saturday (There's a lot of time zones between New South Wales and New Jersey,) and I can use Skype so it doesn't cost me too much.
Or if she wants to she can record her own show on her Sony cam.
---- Mercury Poisoning by: izzie Voodoo
I can't help but be reminded of my own MS symptoms from that song.
I got some feedback from a band, "Dead Leaf Echo," and I'm going to review a song by them.
The instruments are well played, the band is technically competent, the music is paced at a tempo that is a little slow and the leads singer is a bit too emo for my tastes.
But lets see what "you" think of them.
---- Poison Lips by Dead Leaf Eco
I discovered a, new to me, blog: The Idiotprogrammer .
There was an entry which was definitely worth the read: Caterpillar in the Pudding (for the link disabled its http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398410 )
I love language and I love what people do with it. Things like:
Its a whole l-o-n-g list of expressions that had me ROTF, LMAO.
---- Poison Like Your Own by: Rookie Of The Year (Is that emo enuf fir yaw?)
We're sneaking up on a century mark.
I have absolutely no idea of what I'm going to do to highlight the occasion.
I know its not a full calendar year yet.
Episode 0001 of this train wreck of a podcast started on February 2nd, 2006, (That's Imbolc for any Wiccan's in the audience. [I don't believe in any religion, but that's because I know so many.] :-)
Heck, why don't I ask you?
Send me some suggestions to Charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.
I've probably played over a thousand songs since I started.
Is there anything you want to hear again? (I know, how 'bout "Lars Need Women"? I hear a shouted "NO!" from a certain member of the audience. :-)
---- POISON by: lockdown
That last piece of ear candy was just something eurotrashy that I just loved.
It brought back fond memories of the early seventies. Those magical hormonally hyper-charged pre-aids days of my youth.
I was a boy with a reputation.
Once one girl had had enough, she passed me onto her friends with a warning (or was that a recommendation?) "He's all hands, and other things... Enjoy!"
It didn't make for stable relationships but I did get laid, a lot, unlike the nerds, bad boys in trench coats and the school jocks who were all talk and very little action.
My friend Eugene had something to say about that once at a Linux group meeting. :-) "You have all merely existed. But this man has lived!"
---- Am I Not Poisoned? by: Sonic Deviant
Okay. Stick a fork in me, 'cause I'm done for this episode.
Feedback come first so...
I got some from afar that kept me up late into the night last Tuesday/Wednesday.
Allison Reynolds started the site:
and keeps a blog at:
She is an ambitious MSer who is trying to use the power of the internet to raise a million dollars for MS research.
Of course, I don't know if that's in
- Australian dollars,
- Bahamian dollars,
- Belize dollars,
- Brunei dollars,
- Canadian dollars,
- Cayman Island dollars,
- East Caribbean dollars,
- Fiji dollars,
- Guyanese dollars,
- Hong Kong dollars,
- Jamaican dollars,
- Liberian dollars,
- Namibian dollars,
- New Zealand dollars,
- Singapore dollars,
- Solomon Island dollars,
- Suriname dollars,
- Taiwan dollars,
- Trinidad/Tobago dollars,
- US dollars or
- Zimbabwe dollars.
"The displayed amount and target amount [are] in Australian dollars, but everyone donates in US Dollars. The difference in exchange rates means the PayPal fees are covered" *taps side of the nose*If there are any people of means, or who just mean well, who happen to check out her site, make a donation to help out our Australian brethren and fellow MSers.
Then again you might want to help her make her total real fast and pay her a million in Turkish Lira. (Hint: 1,000,000 TRL is about $0.71 USD. :-)
I'm also trying to work out an interview with her or to give her an episode on my podcast.
I can stay up late on a Friday while she gets up early on a Saturday (There's a lot of time zones between New South Wales and New Jersey,) and I can use Skype so it doesn't cost me too much.
Or if she wants to she can record her own show on her Sony cam.
---- Mercury Poisoning by: izzie Voodoo
I can't help but be reminded of my own MS symptoms from that song.
I got some feedback from a band, "Dead Leaf Echo," and I'm going to review a song by them.
The instruments are well played, the band is technically competent, the music is paced at a tempo that is a little slow and the leads singer is a bit too emo for my tastes.
But lets see what "you" think of them.
---- Poison Lips by Dead Leaf Eco
I discovered a, new to me, blog: The Idiotprogrammer .
There was an entry which was definitely worth the read: Caterpillar in the Pudding (for the link disabled its http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398410 )
I love language and I love what people do with it. Things like:
kindernetzi: One who believes in and advocates the notion that all public net content should be family friendly. Specifically, one who believes that the realities of sex and drugs need to be kept hidden from kids for as long as possible.or
Mule eating briars: A guilty person trying to look not guilty.One of my favorites is:
Example: He did it. He looks like a mule eating briars!
one shy of a turkey: When somebody asks how you feel and you’re not too good you can say, One shy of a turkey.or how about:
Comes from bowling, where a turkey is three strikes in a row.
If you get two strikes and on the third you leave one pin standing you are one shy of a turkey and you don’t feel so hot afterwards.
Example: Q: How you feelin’ morning?
A: Oh, one shy of a turkey.
rocks-for-jocks: Geology 101 in any undergraduate program.I laughed so hard at "unable to count his fingers without giving himself a hemorrhage" that I got an "ice cream headache".
Thought to be the easiest the science requirements.
Example: He’s unable to count his fingers without giving himself a hemorrhage, so he took rocks-for-jocks as his science.
Its a whole l-o-n-g list of expressions that had me ROTF, LMAO.
---- Poison Like Your Own by: Rookie Of The Year (Is that emo enuf fir yaw?)
We're sneaking up on a century mark.
I have absolutely no idea of what I'm going to do to highlight the occasion.
I know its not a full calendar year yet.
Episode 0001 of this train wreck of a podcast started on February 2nd, 2006, (That's Imbolc for any Wiccan's in the audience. [I don't believe in any religion, but that's because I know so many.] :-)
Heck, why don't I ask you?
Send me some suggestions to Charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.
I've probably played over a thousand songs since I started.
Is there anything you want to hear again? (I know, how 'bout "Lars Need Women"? I hear a shouted "NO!" from a certain member of the audience. :-)
---- POISON by: lockdown
That last piece of ear candy was just something eurotrashy that I just loved.
It brought back fond memories of the early seventies. Those magical hormonally hyper-charged pre-aids days of my youth.
I was a boy with a reputation.
Once one girl had had enough, she passed me onto her friends with a warning (or was that a recommendation?) "He's all hands, and other things... Enjoy!"
It didn't make for stable relationships but I did get laid, a lot, unlike the nerds, bad boys in trench coats and the school jocks who were all talk and very little action.
My friend Eugene had something to say about that once at a Linux group meeting. :-) "You have all merely existed. But this man has lived!"
---- Am I Not Poisoned? by: Sonic Deviant
Okay. Stick a fork in me, 'cause I'm done for this episode.
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