Yay for ergonomics!

I just rearranged my computer desk at home so that it is ergonomically more viable. I had my cable modem, router, and phone on a small table right behind where I sit. Now the cable modem is sitting on the floor, the phone and Vonage router are on the computer desk, the black box of doom (surge protector/battery backup) is under the desk on the left and the computer tower is under the desk to the right, leaving me room for my feet. This solves my cramped space problem and I don't have to type at an angle anymore. I still don't know what one cable goes to. My computer desk itself can't be moved; it's holding up two shelves of books. This is positively spacious!

A fun article

on mediaeval underwear. Yes, really.

Beautiful

1,500-year-old Mosaic Floor Unveiled in Ancient Synagogue Ruins

A Byzantine-era synagogue mosaic that had deteriorated terribly has been restored and is now available for viewing by the public. The pictures that accompany the article show some wonderful details of the mosaic.

I found an interesting blog

called Voyages Extraordinaires. Here is their description:

Voyages Extraordinaires is a weblog for people of intelligence and good breeding who enjoy Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romances and Retro-Futurism, Victoriana and Neo-Victorianism, Voyages Extraordinaires and Imperialist Romances, Gothic Horror, Pulp Fiction, the Golden Ages of Hollywood and of Travel, silent and early films, points suprêmes and real life adventures into places exotic and historic.

That website also led me to the Guild of Scientific Troubadours, Frankensteinia: the Frankenstein Blog, and Curious Expeditions. All piqued my interest.

I've been expanding my news reader subscriptions beyond library/tech/news to include history, primary sources in European history, and Latin language (I'm rusty in my Latin; I found a podcast series of readings of Latin lessons from a public domain book).

Anyway, that's what I've been doing for the last hour or so; checking up on my reader and finding new subscriptions. I liked the Voyages Extraordinaires blog so much I'm 'following' it through Blogger's system.

Now I'm going to go to bed. I have to get up early to work on game notes and then I'm looking at possibly a 12-hour workday, since no one was scheduled as a second person for tomorrow night and our truck was delayed to Saturday. I'm going in tomorrow at 10 am. I was supposed to leave at 6 pm, but I said I'd stay as long as I could. Depending on how I feel, that might be as late as 10 pm. Then there's grocery shopping of doom to do, followed by more work on notes. Sunday morning will come early, and then the game (yay!) I don't know if I mentioned that we started back up last weekend after a hiatus for remodelling, but we did. I really enjoyed being back together and the campaign continues. My character is badly hurt and I don't know if I'll be able to continue the adventure per se. I'm a little low on characters now. One is on maternity leave with a month-old baby, one is in the belly of Yog Sothoth (don't ask how that happened--it was sheer stupidity), one is away at training, and the rest are in a bubble reality technically not on earth, unable to leave without great danger. My last character created before the one on this mission sacrificed himself to save the world on the Antarctica campaign. Whew!

Speaking of Antarctica, did you see that an ice shelf is about to break away from Antarctica? There's a nice time-elapsed slideshow in that article.

In the slightly-Cthulhoid-or-at-least-vampiric-sci-fi/horror-medicine category, there's also something I came across in the general news, but it was also commented upon by the Guild of Scientific Troubadours. A biotech team in Canada have created a yeast-powered fuel cell that feeds on human blood. Now, the thing is, it was a story that 'broke' on April 1st, and one of the researchers is named Chin-Pang-Billy Siu, which seemed a bit improbable (no offence meant), but the story is apparently legit. This could help power implants in humans eventually.

Speaking of implants, there is also an interesting story regarding a telescopic eye implant the size of a pencil eraser that can help people with macular degeneration see. (Thanks to ScuttleMonkey on Slashdot for the link.)

I had a really good birthday

And no, I'm not still up in the wee hours of the morning--I just fell asleep in the comfy chair and woke up a little while ago and thought I would catch up on some news/blog before going back to sleep.

Let's see. As I told you before, I slept in a little and had a nice bath. I did some web surfing and blogging. Then I went to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D (warning, plot section contains spoilers in the Wikipedia article), using a gift card I'd been given for Yule. It was great! And it was so worth the extra $2.50 to get the 3D version. It really looked like you could just reach out and touch some things. 3D has changed a lot from the paper glasses with red and blue lenses. These looked like regular plastic-framed glasses, sort of like a pair of clear sunglasses, and you could recycle them at the end. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do if you actually wear glasses, as I don't know if they would have fit over all regular prescription ones (here's to having just gotten contacts!)

The movie had a decent plot, great special effects, humour for both children and adults, lots of sci-fi references, and even a little character development. How can you go wrong with a 50-foot tall woman (okay, 49' 11 1/2"), a blue blob, a mad scientist cockroach, an oversexed amphibian, and a giant grub, not to mention an evil overlord? They left plenty of room for a sequel as well. Well, as long as one little detail is averted. Oh, and it was so like the game in some ways, like when people get hung up on them destroying the Golden Gate bridge when they saved the world--that sort of thing.

The voice cast all do an excellent job, and the main cast is great, although Stephen Colbert's president tries to steal the show. This is definitely one for getting on DVD, for taking your kids to, for just going by yourself and having fun for an hour and a half, that sort of thing. Be sure to get the glasses if you can.

Then I went over to a friend's house and he took me out to eat at Masala, an Indian restaurant on the southwest side of town. It was great, as always. He urged me to try something new, but I really wanted the pakora, korma, and pishwari naan I normally have. Maybe next time. I have quite a bit left over for lunch tomorrow, too.

I got home a little after 10 and did some things around the house until about 11:15, when my mom called me and wished me a happy birthday. Then I went and got A from work, getting back around 12:30 am and falling to asleep in the comfy chair until about 4:30 am. Now it's time to go to bed.

So it really was a nice birthday. Food, friendship, and giant invading robots. Yay!

PS Here's the trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens for your viewing pleasure:

Not to bore the non-librarians out there

but as a medical librarian, I use PubMed a lot. Really a lot. PubMed is the free, government-based interface for searching MEDLINE and associated databases for articles in the health science literature. There are some major changes to how one searches PubMed coming up. Here's an excellent video showing how to use the new features to replicate what we do now. It is from the Mayo Clinic:


Thanks to David Rothman for including this video in a post.

Michelle Kraft also has an excellent summary post on her blog regarding the new changes. (She has a link to the above video presentation, but I didn't actually see the video until I read David's blog.)

Anyway, if you use PubMed either as a professional librarian, researcher, or just someone looking for health information, you might want to check out the video to learn more about the new Advanced Search on PubMed.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me

So today's my 42nd birthday. Does that mean I get the answers to life, the universe, and everything now? (Sorry, geeky Douglas Adams humour, there.)

So far it's been nice. I'm off both jobs. I slept in until 10 am (normally I have to get up by 9). I took a nice long bath. I've been listening to meditative music and looking up some stuff online. My plan is to take a gift card Margaret gave me for Yule and go to the cinema and watch Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D. Later in the evening a friend and I plan to go out for Indian food. Yay for vegetable pakora, korma, and pishwari naan!

Last night I treated myself to two very nice African violet plants from Kroger. One is a dark purple; the other a pretty medium one. They were 2/$5. I think I'll keep them at home rather than take them into the office and see how they do here. They've each got quite a few buds on them. Violets are so perky and uplifting, don't you think? I have one at the office in rest mode (not-presently-blooming) that has white blooms with purple edges, so they're all different.

I came across this true-crime story today (it's several years old now; I think the killing was in 2004)--and yes, I'm a true-crime junkie, I know. I cannot imagine a jury convicting the killer at all. I think justice was served--she plead guilty to manslaughter, was given credit for time served in jail awaiting trial, and was put on five-year probation in lieu of a 10-year sentence. I certainly don't believe she deserved life in prison or the death penalty. In 'He Was Never Going to Harm My Daughter Again', they give the details of the case. It was also presented on the show 'Snapped'. Her teenage daughter had accused her stepfather of sexually abusing her, but he convinced everyone, including the social workers, that she was lying--so well that the daughter was prosecuted for making a false claim. But a year later the daughter, now seven months' pregnant, told her mother about a videotape which the mother viewed which did, indeed, show him to be abusing her daughter. The woman took a 20-gauge shotgun and shot him in the head whilst he slept. Once the police found the tape, they let her go, but prosecutors brought the case forward, eventually making the plea offer, which she took. I think she could have gotten out of it without any conviction--a jury would not have convicted her of either murder or manslaughter for that matter, in my opinion. Especially since 1) her lawyer interviewed his sisters, whom he'd also sexually abused as both minors and adults and 2) the DNA test on the son born to the daughter showed that the stepfather was the father. He was a sick, sick bastard and although I hate to say that some people just need killing, this is a case that would be hard to argue against. I hope the family has been able to get a great deal of therapy. I know there was a potential lawsuit against the professionals who failed to believe the girl and remove the danger of more abuse, but I don't know how that has come out.

I do know I'd never agree to convict her of murder if I were on a jury, given the evidence. Yes, she did it, but given the abuse--both the heinous nature of the abuse against the daughter and then also the isolation and abuse the mother had endured, I can't call what she did cold-blooded murder, although of course she did kill him, and given her mental state at the time, manslaughter is probably appropriate. My opinion would be to let her walk, but I'd have had to have gone with manslaughter given the evidence. One thing I've learnt through jury service is you have to very carefully weigh the evidence and not let emotions sway you. Still, I'm glad I've only served on a civil case and not a murder trial. Not all cases are as easy as this one.

She was just a year younger than me. I understand how isolation and abuse can mess with your psychology--I've been there, trust me--and she's right, emotional abuse leaves some of the worst scars, even though many people see physical abuse as worse than mere words. But that's not necessarily the case at all. In my opinion, sexual abuse is the worst, but emotional abuse is a close second. It erodes self-esteem, changes how a person thinks and interacts, and can make someone nearly incapable of taking their fate into their own hands. But it's so freeing when you do get out from under the abuse, let me tell you. I'm just glad that in my own past I've been able to walk away, cut off ties, and not had to worry about being pursued further. Most abusers are cowards. But then you get the psychos who won't let go and do things like shoot up nursing homes trying to kill their ex-wife, that kind of thing.

And it's not just men--I once got caught up in a scary divorce where the wife snapped and 1) presented a false claim of threat to get an emergency protective order, listing me as a witness when there had been no threat of violence at all, 2) stalked her husband all around town (that EPO needed to be mutual, or at least against her, let me tell you), and 3) she even stole paperwork out of the records office and scribbled madly over the divorce documents, then got the commissioner to try to blackmail me into giving her back a repossessed car (she'd not made payments on) before the divorce could proceed. Fortunately everything worked out well in the end and she was exposed as the psycho crazy woman she was, the husband was able to get his divorce/remarry, and I got to keep the car. Moral of the story, never get involved with crazy people's divorces. By comparison mine was a piece of cake.

Gee, I've known a lot of crazy people in my life, people who make me seem terribly sane and rational. Fortunately they aren't in my life anymore, and let me tell you, that's a blessing.

This was a great mix of Dr Horrible and anime

The anime is from 'Death Note'. The song is 'Brand New Day' from Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Actually several 'Death Note' scenes have been woven into videos with Dr Horrible, but this was particularly nice. I haven't watched the anime programme itself; I might check it out.

Sorry I fell off the face of this blog

but I only got 2 1/2 hours of sleep last night and not much the night before, either. Suffice to say I am tired. So I'm going to bed after 12 hours' work with almost no sleep and after doing my level best to make sure that neither YKWIA nor I will get the dreaded Conficker worm computer virus that is supposed to activate on April 1st. I should resume regular blogging tomorrow (assuming my computer doesn't wind up a giant paperweight--here's to Microsoft updates and anti-viral programs). Good night.

A look at how a species deals with handicaps in individuals, even early in its evolution

Deformed Skull Suggests Human Ancestors Had Compassion

Scientists argue that the child's fossilised remains indicate a diagnosis of craniosynostosis, a premature fusing of the bones of the skull which causes pressure to build up in the brain and mental retardation. Since this child was at least five when it died, possibly several years older, it indicates that the child was cared for despite disability for quite some time, at a timeframe of over 530,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene. Others argue that other primates do also take care of young progeny with disabilities, so of course these early species of Homo could be expected to. It's an interesting case, though. Here's a link to the scholarly article's abstract.