Yesterday around noon, we ran an errand to get some natural cat food at a nearby pet store. On the way we were one car shy of being in an accident.
It was all over so quickly that I really didn’t realize it was happening until afterwards. At a traffic light controlled intersection (a main road with 4 lanes plus left-turn lanes) and a side street (bank on one side, residential and gas station on the other) we had solid green lights. The speed limit is 45 and traffic was moving close to that.
The mini-van in the left lane, directly in front of us, was hit by a car coming from the side street. Both cars stopped rather quickly, and there was an explosion of glass, plastic, and metal on the road. I was able to stop our car, thanks to the ABS braking system. I drove around the accident scene and then stopped to go render aid. Sibylle used her phone to try and call 911. Several other people stopped as well.
The single occupant of the car was unhurt, and after getting over an initial daze at what had happened, seemed okay. The husband and wife in the mini-van were a bit more beat up. He had a large bruise forming on his wrist, and she was shaking and panting in her seat - I think the airbag deploying into her had really shaken her up. One of the first people there was a nurse and she quickly and calmly took over aiding the woman.
After what seemed like a very long time the police showed up, and then an ambulance. The occupants of the mini-van were taken to the hospital, while the driver of the other car waited for friends he had apparently called to arrive. The driver of the car which had been next to the mini-van filled out an accident report for the police; since I had really only seen the ending, and not how it had started, they didn’t request one from me.
In all we where there for 40 minutes or an hour. Long enough that I have a mild sunburn on the back of my neck and the tip of my nose. Even though we came to a extremely rapid halt in our car neither of us was hurt. Although, Sibylle, did experience an ocular migraine after we got home from our errand. She looked it up online and discovered that it was possible to have a migraine in the area of the brain that interprets signals from the optic nerves, and that these could be completely painless but would cause jagged halos or crescents of light in ones vision. After laying down for a few minutes the symptoms went away. We are both thinking that the stress of the accident directly in front of us, and then being a part of its aftermath, on top of an already long week worrying about Nekko, was enough to trigger this migraine.
The driver of the mini-van used Sibylle’s phone to call someone, who came just as the ambulance arrived. Later today, or perhaps tomorrow, we are thinking about calling that same number to find out how they are doing.
For the past week, Sibylle and I have kept a much closer watch on Nekko, her insulin injections, her food intake, litter box usage, and general overall demeanor. For the most part Nekko has seemed to be fine. She still displayed some aggressiveness around our food, but willingly ate her own food. We reduced her insulin dosage to 3 units every twelve hours; a 25% reduction from the 4 units she has been getting twice daily since March 2007.
This morning at about 4:00 am, or about seven hours into her insulin cycle, Nekko let out a very loud, unhappy sounding meow. Sibylle got up immediately to see what was going on. Nekko seemed fine. When offered a plate with syrup on it, she sniffed but didn’t partake. After a few minutes Sibylle came back to bed only to have Nekko meow loudly again. This time I got up and sat in the room with her for a while. Again, she seemed normal.
Around 7:00 am, while I was eating my breakfast, Nekko start meowing loudly and continuously. Sibylle immediately recognized that this was the same meowing Nekko had displayed last week prior to going into insulin shock. She showed Nekko the plate of syrup, which was lapped up immediately. We moved on to a small can of wet cat food, which was also consumed rapidly. After eating and consuming some more syrup Nekko again seemed fine. Within minutes however, she threw up. Obviously her system wasn’t prepared for large amounts of food. Worried that she might not have absorbed or retained enough glucose from the syrup, we decided that we needed a home test kit.
I was able to get an Accu-Check blood glucose monitoring kit and some test strips at the local Wal-Mart. Nekko was surprisingly obliging as we fumbled around with the lancet trying to find a setting that would sufficiently prick her ear. When we finally got enough blood for a reading it was 84.
Felines are a bit different than people, in how they express diabetes. The “normal” range for a cat is something like 70-160. However, for a diabetic cat the danger is getting too much insulin and dropping the BG below 70. The optimal range for Nekko is more like 100 - 200, with 100 being the absolute lowest reading we’d like to see. The safe human range extends to nearly 350, so a high reading isn’t going to bother us at this stage of her disease.
Two hours, and a little bit of food later, Nekko’s reading was 90. Two more hours later it was 204. Throughout the day she has had some diarrhea and has thrown up again. Sibylle mixed some rice (bland) with canned cat food, and Nekko has thus far kept that down. At that time her BG was 202. Once she manages an hour without incident we’ll give her another portion.
We are going to test her glucose level every couple, three hours for the next day or two. Hopefully that will give us a baseline of where she is now. We are going to discontinue insulin for the time being. As the doctor said, too high is better right now than too low.
As for the cause of her sudden hypoglycemia, the Diabetes Mellitus in Cats site, offers this information:
The first signs of spontaneous remission is hypoglycemia. At the peak time (determined by the glucose curve), the cat is very unresponsive; however, a few minutes to a few hours later he appears normal. The cat has the ability to respond to hypoglycemia by converting glycogen (stored in the liver) to glucose. However, after a few days of this response, glycogen stores are depleted and the cat becomes seriously hypoglycemic. He may die without immediate intravenous glucose. The episode last week certainly sounds like it could be the onset of remission. That she has continued on for another week, with insulin injections, seems to fit with the use of stored glycogen. It is based on this information that we are taking the steps to monitor her BG and suspend insulin injections for the time being.
We are hopeful that Nekko’s episode with insulin shock was an isolated event. Since Tuesday we have closely monitored her eating and insulin, and haven’t seen any evidence of another bottoming out like Sibylle caught that day.
For her part, Nekko, seems to be normal again. She still displays some aggressiveness around our food, needing to be shooed away from an unattended plate, but nothing that causes any concern. If anything she is more approachable in the aftermath of Tuesday’s episode.
In a little less than two weeks we’ll have another day long glucose curve performed, and hopefully learn more about the current state of her diabetes. Until then, we’ll be watchful and cautiously optimistic.
For the past twenty months Nekko’s diabetes has been under control. Sibylle and I have eased into a pattern where she administers the AM shot, and I take care of the PM shot. The last several spot checks of her blood glucose levels have been good, and the blood glucose curve we had performed in March was excellent.
This afternoon, for no immediately apparent reason, Nekko went into insulin shock or hypoglycemia. Fortunately, since this is the week between her spring lessons and the start of the summer program, Sibylle was home today. She noticed that Nekko was behaving oddly, and was being very vocal. At one point Nekko tried to throw up, and then Sibylle saw that she was arching her back and she noticed a tremor in Nekko’s paws. Cats mask their pain and illness; showing weakness in the wild invites predators. Sibylle’s instinct that something wasn’t quite right was well founded. We had been told that should Nekko ever have too much insulin in her system, for any reason, to give her some syrup, as the glucose will be absorbed by the mucous membranes in her mouth immediately. Sibylle did smear some syrup in Nekko’s mouth before rushing her to the vet’s.
By the time she reached the vet’s office, Nekko had started to convulse, stiffening and arching in the carrier. The doctor immediately started a dextrose IV. The initial blood sugar reading was below the lowest detectible level. There was no sugar in her blood stream. Nekko was hypoglycemic. Fortunately, thanks to Sibylle’s quick action and thinking, Nekko will be okay. We will return to pick her up for the night in a couple of hours, and then tomorrow take her in for a new glucose curve.
While we’ve been waiting Sibylle has done some research into insulin shock, both in people and in felines. Everything we’ve read indicates that the course of action our doctor is suggesting is the right one. That for some reason she suddenly had too much sugar in her blood stream. Either her pancreas has started producing insulin again (not unheard of in felines), or she didn’t eat sufficiently following her last shot. We have noticed an increased aggressiveness towards our food in the last several days. Last evening, as she was trying to eat a piece of cheesecake, Sibylle had to fend Nekko off several times. Not at all Nekko’s usual behavior. In light of this afternoon’s episode, it appears that Nekko’s system may have been changing for several days now.
We’ll know more tomorrow evening.
iTunes allows you to back up your purchased media, in fact you can make a back up of your entire library. However, since most of my non-iTunes purchased media is already on CD, I don’t see a need to back up the iTunes version. My iTunes purchases include the introductory mini-series and first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica (BSG), a whopping 18 GB of material, that, quite frankly, has to go. Even with an after-market 100 GB drive installed in the Powerbook, I’m regularly below 8 or 9 GB of free disk space these days.
My Powerebook only has the Combo-drive, capable of reading DVDs, and burning CDs. Backing up the BSG shows to CD would take some 26 or 27 CDs, and who knows how long for each CD. Not really looking forward to feeding the laptop CD after CD for an entire day, I’ve been putting this chore off for a while. With rain in the forecast for our Memorial Day weekend I decided to start the process Friday night, and just feed the slot drive as needed. Clicking on File | Back Up to Disc… option started the process. After inserting a blank CD I was informed that one of the purchased items was larger than the 700 MB capacity, and that I should insert a DVD instead.
Huh? Larger than 700MB? Something purchased from iTunes?
Turns out that one of the Battlestar Galactica episodes I was trying to back up was in fact a two-hour episode, and weighed in at a whopping 900 MB. Since the Powerbook hasn’t got a DVD burner it appeared, at first, like I was out of luck.
I do have the original 40 GB hard drive, in a USB/Firewire enclosure, however. And iTunes will allow you to transfer purchased content to a different computer. So. The 18 GB of BSG stuff was copied to the portable drive, so that it could be imported to the ThinkPad, which does sport a DVD burner. Of course what it didn’t have was 18 GB of free space. It too suffers from creeping drive usage disease and has only about 5 GB free out of an 80 GB drive. Triaging the drive in the ThinkPad, I found some old Java/HTML/Ruby archives that could be moved off the machine, and so I copied them to the portable drive, giving me about 10 GB of free space to work with. Not enough for the entire 18 GB, but just barely enough to import and backup a season at a time.
After importing season 1 (and activating the computer on my iTunes account), I was able to start the backup process. While I didn’t keep track of the time, it seemed to produce the completed DVD in fairly short order. With season 1 on DVD, I deleted the episodes from the ThinkPad and imported season 2, and back them up as well. Season 3, with the two-part episode, weighed in at nearly 10 GB all by itself. Apparently NBC or the SciFi Channel or Apple, increased the video quality and consequently the individual episode size. iTunes informed me that it would have to create data disks and that the back up would span 3 DVDs total. Fine. Again, each disk took a relatively short period of time to be completed.
After testing each of the disks to make sure they weren’t coasters, I returned to the Powerbook and deleted the three seasons from my hard drive. Now, instead of 8 or 9 GB of free space I have 26 GB. Much better. As a bonus, I now have a backup of my iTunes purchased television programs.
UPDATE: October 24, 2009 - I’ve now successfully restored the backed up material to my new computer. You can read about that in Restoring iTunes Backups.
In the early 1990’s, when I was still using OS/2 as my primary operating system, I attended a day-long demonstration about the platform. Included in the slate of presentations was one about voice recognition. The presenter, an energetic woman, described how she was able to read and respond to hundreds of emails and Compuserve forum postings using dictation, or voice-to-text, software. She gave us a quick demo of the software’s ability by dictating, “You were right to write to me right now, Mr. Wright.” The software was able to correctly spell each variation of the phonetically identical right/write/Wright.
Of course, the software wasn’t able to do that for me when I loaded it on my computer at home. First, I had to train the software to my speech patterns, inflections, and rhythms. The training consisted of reading several passages of text, provided with the software, making corrections to the text on the screen as I went. After perhaps an hour’s work, the voice recognition was nearly 100% accurate. Through the training exercises the software was able to “learn” about my speaking habits, and accurately capture text I dictated.
In the years following that experience I have run across several other examples of “software that learns.” The one that comes to mind most readily are the Bayesian junk mail filters common in email clients today. By identifying mail you consider spam (or not spam) the filter learns how to sort your mail. Most of these tools are very accurate, with only a few false positives or negatives.
Our experience with Sibelius this weekend has led me to think that music notation software could benefit from some kind of training mode, or learning mode. Sibelius allows one to input music notation in three ways: computer keyboard, note-by-note (Steptime) using your MIDI input device, or dynamically (Flexitime) using your MIDI input device. They explain in their literature that playing a piece of music accurately to a metronome is difficult. That as humans we tend to vary the time of our playing ever so slightly. Flexitime attempts to allow for this by adjusting the tempo to match your playing speed. If you slow do, it slows down. Unfortunately there are several points of failure between the musician and the notation algorithm, not the least of which is latency introduced by the MIDI interface, and perhaps more latency introduced by the sound system in the computer. (That experienced musicians can, and do, play accurately to a metronome is a discussion for another posting.)
If Sibelius had a “learning mode” that provided several short pieces of music for the musician to play using Flexitime, the notation algorithm could examine the captured results and compare them to the stored standard. From this comparison the algorithm could “learn” about the latency characteristics of the computer, MIDI input device, and MIDI interface. While it might not completely eliminate the kind of notation problems we have seen, I feel it could go a long ways towards reducing them.
After a morning of continued experimentation with, and reading about, Sibelius, Sibylle discovered a posting online that talked about using plugins. Also, I received a comment to my earlier Sibelius posting, that specifically called out using the “Simplify Notation” plugin to clean up a score that had been entered using Flexitime.
It actually works.
Sibylle was able to play several measure of her composition normally, capturing the music in Sibelius. The score was littered with the now familiar sixteenth notes and rests. Selecting Plugins from the menu bar, and then the Simplify Notation plugin itself produces a sub-menu with several choices. The one that we used was called “Renotate performance.”
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While we still feel that a plugin, and the extra step it entails, shouldn’t be necessary to capture a score, having the plugin does make capturing the score possible.
Recently Sibylle purchased an electronic keyboard for her studio, and last week the copy of Sibelius 5 that she had ordered arrived. Sibelius is one of the top two or three music notation software programs available and includes a note input mechanism called “Flexitime.” Flexitime captures the music you play on the keyboard (or other MIDI input device) directly on a score. Last evening we hooked everything up and gave it a try. We could not have been more frustrated or disappointed.
I had originally hooked the keyboard up to our iMac, which while somewhat aged (800MHz G4) is still serviceable. It also has Garage Band which we played around with a bit. Garage Band captures the MIDI information from the keyboard, but does not show that information in music notation form. Not what Sibylle needs to capture compositions.
Sibelius installed very quickly and easily on the iMac and, while a bit slow at times, ran fine on that machine. No drivers had to be added for the USB to MIDI dongle, and it was simple to follow the Sibelius setup instructions for adding a new MIDI input device to the Mac. More on how the notation feature worked in a minute.
Installing Sibelius on a Windows machine was slightly more involved, but not annoyingly so. The installation directions provided by Sibelius are thorough and even lightly humorous. Getting the MIDI dongle recognized was another matter entirely. Why peripheral manufacture insist on putting drivers on a CD with the device in the packaging, when they know that driver will be out of date in no time at all, is beyond me. Installing the included driver failed to activate our MIDI input. I had to click on the provided link, decipher a myriad of available drivers, download, and execute the new driver setup, in order to have Sibelius (and the computer) recognize the keyboard when it was attached.
Flexitime is the dynamic note input mechanism included in Sibelius. The software also allows for computer note input and steptime note input. Using the computer mouse and keyboard you can create musical scores - a lengthly and laborious process. Using step input involves the electronic keyboard, for the notes, and the mouse to select the note type from a palette. With step input you can actually just play the keyboard and get notes on to your score which are accurate in terms of which note, but aren’t accurate in terms of duration or other values. In other words, unless you change the type of note from quarter to eighth to whole, and so on, every note is recorded as a quarter note, regardless of how you play it. This input mechanism will be fantastic for producing scale or chord worksheets for students.
Flexitime tries to capture music as you play it. There are many options controlling how it performs, from what duration of notes it recognizes (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second), to whether or not the metronome adjusts to your playing speed or not. Both Sibylle and I tried each of these options, and many combinations of these options, trying to get an accurate capture of music being played.
We have not yet been successful. Even playing a whole note scale produces odd rests, and notes which are of the wrong duration. Setting the duration sensitivity seems to allow notes of the selected size or longer, when whole, half, or quarter are selected. Once you pick eighth or shorter as the duration sensitivity, Sibelius starts littering the composition with sixteenth notes, and even thirty-second notes.
Sibelius does provide an online help web site, but several searches didn’t reveal any useful information about our situation. Google searches did turn up several other people with basically the same problem as us. Some of the suggested answers included making sure that the sound card drivers were up to date (although why the playback channel should improve a MIDI input is beyond me). And one site said that it is possible to get Flexitime to work, but that it took a lot of fiddling with the available settings.
I spent a hour or so this morning cursing Windows and various driver manufacturers as I update the ThinkPad’s sound card driver, all to no avail. We were still unable to successful produce a score using Flexitime.
The Sibeluis literature suggests that it is difficult for even seasoned pianists to play accurately to a measured beat; there will be little variances, which will throw the notation algorithm off. So Flexitime tries to adjust to your style of play, speeding up or slowing down the beat as necessary so that the final composition has fidelity. Therein, I think, lies the problem. Sibylle has 36 years of piano playing experience, she can play a piece accurately. Having software “interpret” and “adjust” her playing basically ruins the composition capture. We will continue to “fiddle” with the various settings and, as soon as the phone support reopens on Tuesday, we will call for technical assistance.
The idea that what another says can’t hurt you is patently false. Words can do damage, often permanent and sometimes costly. So I have empathy for someone who is under an attack of words, particularly if the words are incorrect or false. However, I do not have much sympathy for someone who engages in a war of words and then cries “Foul!” when the other side responds in kind.
When I first started riding motorcycles I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) Basic Riding course. At the beginning of the first night of class, the instructor asked us if we thought a motorcycle could be ridden safely. After some discussion we thought that, yes, it could, provided you were very careful. He then pulled out a dictionary and read the definition of “safely.” It means “without risk”. He continued to say that, “Once you throw your leg over the seat of a motorcycle, you are telling the world you are willing to accept some risk.”
There are many endeavors in life that come with some risk attached. In fact, it might be easier to list the ones that are truly risk free. Starting a campaign or crusade to right some wrong, or convince the world that your viewpoint is right, by attacking another’s viewpoint, is one sure way to take on some risk. Waging your crusade on the Internet guarantees that the whole world could be part of the audience. “World Wide Web” isn’t just a catchy marketing phrase.
In fact, the Internet is the new play ground, one allowing anyone with access to a computer to sling insults, barbs, jabs, lies, taunts, and flames. Forums, mailing lists, and comment threads are often overrun by cretins hiding behind the anonymity that being online provides. Wiki-style pages, where anyone with an account can edit the contents, have become hugely contentious virtual spaces. Zealots create dozens of alternative IDs, known as sock-puppets, to make it appear like they have support. The best known Wiki, Wikipedia, is often in the news as a result of contentious factions on opposite sides of an issue, biography, or fact, trying to keep their view on top, as the most recent edit. If nothing else, Wikipedia is the best example I can think of for the need to think critically. One has to evaluate the information there, asking again and again, “what is the source?” Without an understanding of the source, of the foundation a given entry stands upon, any information taken away from Wikipedia can only be considered hearsay.
To their credit, Wikipedia does try to manage the often unruly mob of editors and contributors, but it is a Sisyphian task. Zealotry abounds there, and if you are one to take umbrage at what another has written or said, you would be well advised to not participate. As they say, wrestling with a pig results in you both getting muddy, and the pig likes it. Wrestle with virtual pigs in the form of trolls in comment threads or online forums, or sock-puppets on Wikipedia, and you merely make yourself their next target.
Recently there was an article about Wikipedia in general, and about one contributor in particular. The journalist tried, through various means, to discover the real world identity of one particular Wikipedian, going so far as to try and back track though IP addresses where he or she was located. At one point in the article, believing the mystery Wikipedian lived in a particular area of the city, the journalist mused about how to identify and confront him or her. In effect the journalist was stalking this person, albeit for the purposes of completing her article. What the journalist wanted to confront the Wikipedian about was his or her alleged stalking and bullying online, of the journalist’s sister. It seems that the mystery Wikipedian was using sock puppets and other tactics to run roughshod over other contributors. However, the journalist’s sister may well have had some sock puppets of her own. Or maybe not. You see, that is the entire problem with trying to confront this type of childish “he said, she said” behavior. It is never ending, and impossible to eradicate. What’s more, in her article she herself admits that after five unsuccessful attempts to contact the mystery Wikipedian, she would have to get “pushy.” Objecting when someone tapes a “kick me” sign to your back is one thing, taping one there yourself and then objecting is another thing entirely.
How do I know about this sordid little tale? I wrote a piece about Anonymity that garnered a comment. This comment was offensive to the journalist. The journalist responded to the comment, here on my site, with not one, but two comments of her own. She also sent me an email claiming that the original comment was defamatory. She wanted it removed from my site. She wanted to know,
So this afternoon, when the journalist called me on my cell phone, to ask if I would remove the comments that offended her, I was again put off and reluctant to comply. If she is willing to allow comments that don’t paint her in a flattering light to appear on an article published by her own employer, then why should she get to pick and choose which comments appear about her on an obscure, nerdy web site that largely pertains to the existential navel gazing of a middle-aged man? Beyond the potential defamation in the comment, her reason for having the comment removed, said to me during our brief phone conversation, is a fear the subject of her article may be stalking her. I hardly think the absence of one comment will stop him (or her) from doing what ever they want.
If she thought that she was going to write this article and “out” a Wikipedian for less than ethical behavior, be patted on the head and given a lollypop, and have that be the end of it, then I think she has an awful lot to learn about the Internet. There are any number of comments on the article critical of the journalism in the article, and any number of other sites critical of it, with one site noting, “She chronicled her meandering, unsuccessful saga in 4,275 paralyzing words.” The last comment on my posting indicates that this article was the subject of some discussion in a college journalism class. The Internet is merciless and unforgiving and not a place to engage in word games, unless you are willing to become a target yourself.
The site Expert Law, on their article about “Defamation, Libel and Slander Law” has this to say about why commencing a defamation action may be a bad idea:
The publicity that results from a defamation lawsuit can create a greater audience for the false statements than they previously enjoyed. For example, if a newspaper or news show picks up the story of the lawsuit, false accusations that were previously known to only a small number of people may suddenly become known to the entire community, nation, or even to the world. As the media is much more apt to cover a lawsuit than to cover its ultimate resolution, the net effect may be that large numbers of people hear the false allegations, but never learn how the litigation was resolved.
Another big issue is that defamation cases tend to be difficult to win, and damage awards tend to be small. As a result, it is unusual for attorneys to be willing to take defamation cases on a contingent fee basis, and the fees expended in litigating even a successful defamation action can exceed the total recovery.
Another significant concern is that, even where the statements made by the defendant are entirely false, it may not be possible for a plaintiff to prove all of the elements of defamation. Most people will respond to news that a plaintiff lost a defamation lawsuit by concluding that the allegations were true.
In other words, the plaintiff in a defamation action may be required to expend a considerable amount of money to bring the action, may experience significant negative publicity which repeats the false accusations, and if unsuccessful in the litigation may cement into the public consciousness the belief that the defamatory accusations were true. While many plaintiffs will be able to successfully prosecute defamation actions, the possible downside should be considered when deciding whether or not such litigation should be attempted. I fear that the journalist’s toothpaste is entirely out of the tube, and no amount of work will ever get it all back in again. However, the possibility of creating an even bigger mess is entirely within the realm of possibility.
USA Today has an article up about new school policies regarding the minimum grade possible. Instead of allowing scores below 50, this new “minimum 50” policy would have 50 be the lowest score possible. The reasoning given in the article is that having a score range from 0 - 59 makes getting an F six times as likely as getting any other score. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out in ‘Minimum 50’ Grading Polices,
The issue with grades and testing is placing emphasis on the grade, and not on the knowledge, or lack thereof, it represents. Tests should help teacher and student both, understand what material isn’t understood fully. Ideally, there would be time to return to the just-tested material and review it again. Something, I fear, that isn’t done in most circumstances.
Douglas Reeves, and the school boards rolling this minimum 50 plan out, should all receive falling grades - numerically and otherwise.