June 2005 Archives

This weekend I was futzing around on the turntables and decided to just record what I was spinning for a bit. The end result is a short 45 minute mix that pulled out some older tracks I had laying around.

Track Listing: Foolin' Around (Download: AAC) (I'll do mp3 if enough people whine)

1. Luzon - The Baguio Track (Unreleased Flatline Remix) -
2. Marmion - Schoneberg (Thomas Schumacer's Rumpshakers Galore Mix) - Superstition
3. Slide vs Healy - Fear (Sense and Catt's Twisted Casa Mix) - Fire
4. Circulation - Grey (Nathan Larsen's Doric Reply) - Hooj Choons
5. the real - debbie does deptford - Eukahouse
6. Robert Armani - Circus Bells (Hardfloor Remix) - S12
7. Wink - Higher State of Consciousness (Original Tweekin' Acid Funk Mix) - Manifesto

Hmm, maybe I'll start churning out a short mix every week and make a podcast out of it just to be trendy.

Mark Twain
"Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption." [Quotes of the Day]

Walter Bagehot
"It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations." [Quotes of the Day]

Today at around 1:30pm I'll be escaping the hospital and heading home. This has been quite the uneventful stay, but that was pretty much to be expected. I also won't really know the results of my stay for a few weeks. The downside is that my Prednisone dose will go up for a few weeks. Hopefully I won't put on the same amount of weight as I had. I'm just shy of where I want to be.

Also, having the laptop has been a big lifesaver. I've made it through two DVDs and been able to interact with people on-line. Much nicer than just staring at the wall for hours and spacing out. Next time I'll have to let more people know that I'm going to be having a hospital stay so I can get more visitors (thanks for stopping by this moring Ece!).

And the nurse has just arrived for my last steroid dosage for my stay, which will take around an hour.

So far things are uneventful. It's mostly just sitting around waiting for the next time to take meds. Luckily I have my Powerbook with me so that I'm online and finally caught up with lots of posts. I also brought some anime DVDs along so I can finally watch the last disk of Azumanga Daioh (YAMAMAYA!) and some other stuff.

Anyone feel like stopping by today/tonight and bringing me a snack? Leave a comment if so and I'll email you back if I see it in time.

As I said in my last post I'm back in the hospital for three days to get some nice high doses of steroids to combat some acute rejection. This is fairly run of the mill stuff, no need to panic or anything. I actually feel fine, the goal is to nip this in the bud before it gets serious.

Given that there's not a heck of a lot to do here I'll possibly be posting a bit more often than I have been.

Last Tuesday I had a bronchoscopy, which is a fun procedure where they send a scope down into your lungs to make sure everything is okay. In my case there was a little bit of inflammation, which can be a sign of rejection. As a result they want me to come in for three days to get some high doses of anti-rejection medications via IV.

So on Monday I'll be going into the hospital till Wednesday. If I get my act together I'll set up a dial-up account before then so I can be online from the hospital this time.

I made it to the end of the street and back. The key thing to do I've discovered is wake up early an do it before the day warms up. Next up is to make it halfway around the block, which will mean I can hopefully go the rest of the way around the block to return :).

While I was in the hospital a package arrived at my parent's place with a PSP (Playstation Portable). I was blown away at the gift, it was the last thing I expected anyone to get me. Now, I'm a big fan of portable gaming. I have a Gameboy Advance SP which I love. I'm still playing a fair number of games on it even after having it for over a year. And to be honest, the system I really want to try out is the Nintendo DS. I'd only been interested in the PSP as a curiosity.

All that changed once I took it out of the box and started playing around with it. The PSP itself sports a nice shiny black finish with a decent sized screen. You've got standard directional buttons, the familiar playstation square, circle, triangle, and X buttons, and a joystick type controller. There's also a left and right button at the top. It comes with a demo disk that doesn't have any playable games, but does have trailers from games and movies. The first thing that blew me away was watching the movie trailers, the quality of the video was really nice. The trailers from the games looked really slick too.

The PSP also multitasks quite well and, like Alton, I love a tool that multitasks. You can load photos, music, and movies onto the memory stick it comes with to view/listen to. Unfortunately the stick you get is pretty small. I'm already saving up to get a bigger one.

So, overall, I give it two big thumbs up with some comments as to things I think they could have done better. The first is including a slightly larger memory stick. The next would be to have at least some playable demos that come with the game. The next has to do with the kind of games. My friends also got me a game called Ape Escape. Which, while fun, felt like it would work better on the PS2 than it did on the PSP. I've since gotten Ridge Racer, Hot-Shots Golf, and Mercury. All of which feel quite comfortable on the PSP (And which I'll hopefully review in the next few days). Hopefully we won't just see lots of ports of PS2 games.

The one last thing I find myself annoyed at is the price. Though mine was a gift, if I were looking to get something for myself I'd be much more willing to just pay $150 for the Nintendo DS. I'm really not sure who Sony is trying to target with the PSP, it almost feels more like an executive toy. Especially with them releasing movies in the UMD format. Seems just the thing for the traveling businessperson.

Just now I made it up the stairs from the first to the second floor without using my cane. I never thought I'd be so excited by stairs. The lung is working great still, every bit of exercise makes me feel a bit stronger. My next goal is to be able to walk around the block by the end of the month.

I just finished watching Shaun of the Dead for what must be the sixth time or so and I still catch little things that I'm amazed I missed. This time it was the use of the word exacerbate. I think I'm going to have to show it for the next movie night I do in a few weeks.