Eat well, drink in moderation, and sleep sound, in these three good health abound

The last couple of weeks seem to have been manically busy, and as a result I’ve been commuting full-time to London, rather than my more usual 3 or 4 days a week. I’ve found that really difficult, and as the days passed I was struggling to keep going.

The main issue is just plain tiredness. My ileostomy has both herniated, and become very enlarged since it was installed. The result is a large bulge on my abdomen which makes sleeping difficult; I rarely get more than a few hours sleep a night.

So, discovering that I had meetings all-day on Thursday, all-day on Friday, and was entertaining customers on Thursday night too, didn’t fill me with my usual enthusiasm. I honestly didn’t think I’d make it through Friday. So to ease the load I booked an hotel in London on Thursday night.

And had the best nights sleep I can remember.

The reason, as far as I can tell, is that Marriott have invested in some spectacularly nice pillows. Their beds and duvets are pretty good too. But their pillows are something special. Wonderfully soft, but firm and supportive too. Mine are woefully poor in comparison.

Turns out that they even sell them. But in Europe they only sell smaller versions (I think to suit European queen-sized beds) of the pillow I made use of, even though at £54 + p&p, it’s a pretty full-on price. Unfortunately I have a king-size bed, so I really need one a little larger.

The interesting thing I took from this is the description of the pillow, which has two chambers, one central one, giving firm support, surrounded by a soft, fluffy outer layer giving comfort.

But this is the internet. Time to go hunting for someone who sells something similar, but in a size better suited to my bed. And here it is. Unfortunately it comes with what seems to me to be a terrifying £71.25 price tag. But then, if you believe the 10 year guarantee, that’s £7.13 a year, or a mere 2p per night.

So, what price a sound nights sleep?

State of mind

It’s been a long time since I last posted anything here about my treatment. Actually, it’s been a long time since I posted almost anything here. And I’ve been pretty distant and difficult to contact in the real world too.

I could make a series of high-minded excuses, but actually the truth is much less prosaic; after the latest series of updates from my consultants I’ve been struggling to come to terms with my current situation, trying to work out what to do next, and how. And fundamentally I’ve not been coping too well; I’ve been acting rather like the archetypal “rabbit in the headlights”.

Tuesday will be the 3rd anniversary of my original cancer operation. I’ve been fighting medical problems for almost all of that time, as well as the 6 months prior to that while I was being diagnosed. And it’s fair to say that I’m tired. I’m tired of the hospital appointments, the consultations, and of being prodded and poked, injected, bled, and scanned. Of being outwardly positive and cheerful, even when I feel depressed and negative. And above it all, I’m heartily sick of still not being well again.

And I feel guilty for feeling like that, especially when actually I’m one of the lucky ones who seems to be surviving his brush with cancer, unlike so many others.

If this were a different problem I’d take a break and come back to the fight refreshed. But there is no break with this; at the moment it’s my new normal. So I have to just keep on going. But unfortunately this also seems to be an inflection point in my treatment; I need to make some irreversable decisions on the direction of that treatment, and they all seem to lead to fairly disagreeable end points. Which is not helping much.

So, to the friends and colleagues I’ve not been in touch with for a while, or been short and irritable with, I’m sorry. I’ll try to do a bit better. And since, according to Dorothy L. Sayers, a “trouble shared is trouble halved”, so I’ll even try to post a bit more here too.

Grumpy bar-steward

I’ve noticed that recently I’ve been less positive and a bit more grumpy when thinking and talking about my treatment.

It’s not really that anything has radically changed, but time is passing. The constant fighting with the ileostomy, the lack of sleep and consequent tiredness, the limits on what I can physically do while I’ve got the ileostomy. Trying to cope with the frustrations of the treatment not working as planned. Not being able to move on with my life plan in some of the ways that I would like to. It all adds up. And wears me down.

I noticed that on the 26th it will have been 3 years that I’ve been fighting this, and I’ve realised that actually I’m never really going to be able to completely stop, because even if we do finally solve my current problems, I’ll still never completely recover back to the level of wellness that most people take for granted.

Meanwhile, because I’m basically coping with being back at work and I’m getting pretty good at hiding the outward signs of my condition, there seems to be an expectation that I can do all the mad things that everyone else is expected to do again. Which actually, I can’t. Fortunately my immediate colleagues shield me from some of the worst excesses of the IBM system – but it’s frustrating that they have to.

For the first time I have found myself wondering if I should declare myself “disabled” to the IBM HR machine. I guess it all hinges on your definition of disabled. I’ve never considered myself to be disabled – there are people in much worse situations than me – but I’m starting to wonder if I need that label to maintain awareness. It feels like a very large step though, and one I’d really rather not take. Somehow it also feels like giving in.

And in other news, my appointment for the MAG3 Renogram is now through for Thursday morning. The fight goes on.

RIP, old friend

My second ever laptop, my old Thinkpad 600, has finally died.

It replaced my original 760CD, and like that machine, I carried it with me on numerous business trips all over the world. It survived being dropped, splashed with coffee, slung into bags, and then crammed into overhead luggage racks or under seats where it invariably got stood on. Despite all this abuse it still worked faultlessly in temperatures as varied as -20c in the Scandinavian winter, through to +40c in the humid summers of the US Deep South.

When IBM supplied me with an upgrade I bought my 600 off the company. For a time it was my personal system. Then it ran my home network, 24×7 until I could afford the parts to build a proper server. It was my wife’s main machine for a time, and lately my youngest daughter has been doing all her homework on it. Even in retirement it worked hard for it’s living.

I figure it must be 12 years old, and when it finally failed it was still running Ubuntu 11.04, which is a sophisticated and current operating system. Ok, the bizarre hybrid sound card wasn’t recognised (the 600 used a custom DSP to implement the modem and the sound system – a great idea, badly executed) and it wasn’t the fastest system on the block, but the overall experience was still pretty good.

At the end of the day it’s just a pile of electronics attached to a magnesium alloy chassis with some rather drab composite plastic covers, that no longer works. I should just recycle it. But there is an emotional attachment; I can’t bring myself to just take it to the recycling centre and dump it. But given that the motherboard has failed, the best I can offer it is the chance to donate some spare parts to new projects. So for now it’s going into my spare parts box; hopefully the screen, memory, disk and perhaps keyboard will show up in some future projects.

It may yet live again!

The search for a new desktop continues

So the fight to find a workable productive solution continues. Lubuntu and Xubuntu both ended up having problems with some of IBM’s productivity applications. Not an issue for the majority of users, but critical for me. And I also discovered that IBM and Canonical have committed to work together to ensure that we “internal” IBM users of Ubuntu will get the support to ensure that our internal productivity tools do work under Unity.

Which gives me a pretty strong push back towards finding a way to make Unity somewhat more palatable and productive. So I’ve set about trying to turn Unity into something that I can live with for work. I’d not say I’ve completely achieved that yet, but a couple of (long) evenings have got me a fair way forward, and revealed a few problems that I probably need to raise as bugs against Unity – though given the non-standard way that I’ve exposed them, it’s debatable whether they’ll ever be addressed or not. Anyway, here are the results so far:

My normal desktop

Customised Oneiric, with the launcher open

Customised Oneiric, with application selector open

And this is what I did to a freshly installed Ubuntu 11.10 system to get there:

1. Add back a menu of applications that can act as a launcher, and a taskbar where I can see what I have running. I came across this post describing how to resolve these issues, and merely followed the directions.

   First the menu launcher:
   
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator


   Once installed, run it by pressing Alt-F2 and typing classicmenu-indicator.

   Now install the taskbar:
   
sudo apt-get install tint2


   Once installed, set it to auto-run on system start, by adding an entry to the Startup Applications. The executable is at /usr/bin/tint2. Then configure the resulting bottom panel (in ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc) so it only has a taskbar, removing the clock and battery indicators, by adding:
   panel_items = T
   and adjust its size to avoid interference with the unity launcher (when it’s on screen) by making sure:
   panel_size = 90% 30
   and finally (a personal choice) remove the ability to close applications from the taskbar by setting:
   mouse_right = none

2. Next, get rid of the ugly Unity launcher by making it autohide. This is done by altering some parameters in the Unity plugin in compiz. You need to install Compiz Config Settings Manager (CCSM) first, by:

   sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

   Then run it with ccsm, and find and select the Unity plugin. Then on the Behaviour tab:
   
   Set “Hide Launcher” to “Autohide”
   
   Set “Edge Reveal Timeout” to 100
   
   On the Experimental tab:
   
   Set “Backlight mode” to “Edge Illumination Toggles”
   
   Set “Launcher Icon Size” to 32
   
   Set “Launcher Opacity” to “0.8000″

   I still think it looks like it was designed by a child with a set of blunt crayons, but this makes it a bit more professional-looking, and since it’s now going to be hidden most of the time (and rarely used) I can live with it. I do wish there was an option to completely disable it though.

3. Next I fixed the window buttons, by re-enabling the standard minimise, maximise, close triple, and moving them to the right side of the window title bar. Do this by entering:

   gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string ":minimize,maximize,close"

4. Then I disabled the ridiculous Overlay Scrollbars, and the Global Menu; together this moves the window buttons and menus back onto the windows where they belong, and gives us working scrollbars on all applications again, including those that are built on Eclipse:

   sudo su
echo "export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars
echo "export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/81ubuntumenuproxy

   Sadly the scrollbars lack scroll buttons; I’ve not worked out how to resolve this yet, which can make fine positioning difficult. But it’s orders of magnitude easier than fighting with the overlay scrollbars.

5. Firefox has an extension to separately move its menus to Unitys top panel, and this needs to be disabled too. Access it from Firefox’s Tools->AddOns menu. It seems to require that Firefox be restarted, and a logout/login sequence to be followed before it fully takes effect.
6. Next I took back control of the workspaces, by adding an indicator applet into the notification area of the top panel, that also functions as a workspace switcher. The indicator is in a PPA, but unfortunately only for Natty rather than Oneiric. The Natty version works just fine under Oneiric, and installing it is straightforward, if a little fiddly, by following these instructions.

7. At this point I rebooted to make sure everything was working, and noticed that the classic menu indicator was not the leftmost of my indicators any more. However, it is possible to specify the exact ordering of indicators, so I reordered mine by:

   
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/indicators/application
cp /usr/share/indicator-application/ordering-override.keyfile ~/.local/share/indicators/application/


   Editing the new local ordering-override.keyfile allows the exact order of the indicators to be specified. Lowest numbers are to the right of the panel. To find the id of unknown indicators, use:
   
dbus-send --type=method_call --print-reply \
--dest=com.canonical.indicator.application \
/com/canonical/indicator/application/service \
com.canonical.indicator.application.service.GetApplications | grep "object path"


   This results in lines like:
   object path "/org/ayatana/NotificationItem/gnome_power_manager/Menu"
   In this case, the id is gnome-power-manager, but note that the command output contains underscores which need to be changed to dashes to be valid in the ordering-override.keyfile.

8. Next I installed dconf-editor, which allows a few additional tweaks to be make to Unity:
   
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools


9. I then did some configuration of general settings around the operating system. First, I configured the terminal look and feel by opening terminal preferences:
   
Set font to "Monospace 9"
Set default size to 100x40
Set scrollback to 10000


   Next I changed all the fonts throughout the system, as the defaults seem far too large:
   
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name 'Sans 10'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Ubuntu 9'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name 'Ubuntu Mono 10'
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop font 'Ubuntu 10'
gconftool --set /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font 'Ubuntu Bold 9' --type STRING


   Then, in the “Screen” settings, I configured the screen to turn off at “30 minutes”, and set the screen lock “on” after the “screen turns off”. In the “Power” settings I set the system to “Do nothing” when the lid is closed (on battery or AC), and not to suspend when inactive (on battery or AC), but to shutdown when power is critically short on battery. In the Time and Date settings I set the Panel clock to show the Date and Month, and the clock in 12 hour format. Finally, in “Removable Media” I set the system to never prompt or start programs on media insertion.

10. To add a quick list of locations to the Launcher “files” icon, I ran the following as a single command:
    
echo "[Desktop Entry]

    Name=Home Folder
    Comment=Open your personal folder
    TryExec=nautilus
    Exec=nautilus --no-desktop
    Icon=user-home
    Terminal=false
    StartupNotify=true
    Type=Application
    Categories=GNOME;GTK;Core;
    OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
    X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
    X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=nautilus
    X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general
    X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=nautilus
    X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=Videos;Documents;Music;Pictures;Downloads

    [Videos Shortcut Group]
    Name=Videos
    Exec=nautilus Videos
    TargetEnvironment=Unity

    [Documents Shortcut Group]
    Name=Documents
    Exec=nautilus Documents
    TargetEnvironment=Unity

    [Music Shortcut Group]
    Name=Music
    Exec=nautilus Music
    TargetEnvironment=Unity

    [Pictures Shortcut Group]
    Name=Pictures
    Exec=nautilus Pictures
    TargetEnvironment=Unity

    [Downloads Shortcut Group]
Name=Downloads
Exec=nautilus Downloads
TargetEnvironment=Unity" | sudo tee /usr/share/applications/nautilus-home.desktop


11. Next I disabled the guest account in LightDM. This prevents someone from logging into my machine (albeit with very limited privileges) when I’m away from the machine. I suspect our security people would not be comfortable with this feature left enabled. To do this, edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, and make it read:
    
[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=unity-greeter
user-session=ubuntu
allow-guest=false


12. Next I wanted to change the Alt-PrtSc capability, so I can capture a specific area if the screen rather than the active window. I want to retain the default PrtSc functionality. To do this, I started ccsm, and in the Gnome Compatibility plugin I changed the command “gnome-screenshot -w” (active window) to “gnome-screenshot –area”.

    While I was in ccsm I also disabled the “Snapping Windows” plugin, as it was driving me nuts. I also set a key combination (Ctl-Alt-g) on the “Toggle Handles” option of the Unity MT Grab Handles plugin, to allow easier screen grabbing & manipulation, as the default theme has quite small borders to its windows.

13. By default, Oneiric doesn’t come with any screensavers. It simply fades to black. Which is efficient, but rather boring. So I removed the default screensaver (which does nothing) and reenabled all the pretty screensavers:
    
sudo apt-get remove --purge gnome-screensaver
sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra


    It’s then necessary to add “xscreensaver -nosplash” to the startup applications. This is the server portion of the screensaver which does the actual displaying of the animations, the locking of the screen, and any power management. It’s configured with “xscreensaver-demo”, which allows graphical selection of screensaver animations etc. Finally, to keep the ctl-alt-L key combination to manually start the screensaver, it’s necessary to:
    
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver-command


14. Getting Conky installed (to create the animated desktop) was simple, once I’d realised that the key to making it work under Unity is to change the .conkyrc configuration stanza to own_window_type normal. However, Unity does something odd with painting itself into a different window than the root, so Conky cannot do transparent without help from something like feh, but that can only work with static images, not my preferred gradient fill. I resolved the issue by adopting an image for my desktop background.

15. Finally, I mentioned a few issues that I’d not resolved yet:
    
    It seems impossible to stop the Unity top panel showing the name of the active applicaton.
    
    It seems impossible to move the classicmenu_indicator to the left of the Unity top panel.
    
    Having disabled the overlay scrollbars, the remaining scrollbars lack scroll buttons
    
    It seems impossible to remove the workplace switcher icon from the Unity Dash (hard-coded) Raised as Bug 898230.
    
    It seems impossible to remove the Dash Home icon from the Unity Dash (Hard-coded) Raised as Bug 898230.
    
    When maximising a window, Unity still steals the window buttons, and places them in its top panel Raised as Bug 898250.
    
    When stealing the window buttons, it doesn’t adhere to the setting in gconf for how to display them, but uses a hardcoded default Raised as Bug 898250.
    
    Seems to be impossible to completely disable the Unity Launcher Raised as Bug 898260.

    Help with any of the above would be much appreciated!

Anything to declare?

Last weekend was the 2011 International Broadcast Conference, which is run in Amsterdam. It’s the biggest broadcast media event in Europe, second only to the National Association of Broadcasters event (NAB) in Las Vegas. This year over 50,000 people turned up, completely swamping Amsterdam, amd filling all the hotels and restaurants for 6 days.

IBM sends quite a lot of people to the conference – some to man a stand, run demonstrations, and meet our customers, and others (like me) are just there to host our customers to the conference. In my case, this was my second visit to IBC, but my first with an ileostomy. It was somewhat eventful.

The trouble with having an ilesotomy is that if you’re going out and about you need to do a fair amount of advance planning, and always factor in as much flexibility as possible, because (as Murphy has noted) things will go wrong.

The joy of business travel is that you are, thanks to the airport security requirements, rather restricted. Add in all the extra problems of attending an insanely large conference, and needing to attend or host a series of business meetings, and you become very restricted. Add to that the fact that it’s run over a weekend, so you’re more tired than normal, and switch the time zones around, and change your diet (because you’re living in an hotel) and things start to get hairy. Very hairy. Which is not a good thing.

In the end, over the 3 days I was there I had 3 bag failures. One at dinner with some customers, one on the way to the conference centre, and one in a customer meeting at the conference centre. I generally carry some medical supplies with me for emergencies, but it’s just not feasible to carry a change of clothes. Frankly, that whole aspect of the trip is one that I’d like to put behind me. The patience & forbearance of my customers and colleagues still amazes me.

But there was one amusing (in retrospect) ileostomy-related element of the trip, and that occurred on the way home. When I went through security I discovered that Amsterdam has some kind of body-scanner technology installed, which spotted my ileostomy bag. The security guards then wanted to frisk me, which was OK up to the point where they tried to grab my bag and pull on it.

There then ensued a fairly heated discussion, with them wanting me to take the bag off, and me not (as my changing kit was by now in the airplane hold). The security supervisor eventually turned up, and her better English finally meant I was able to explain what the bag was, and why it really wasn’t a good idea to take it off in the airport departure hall…

Thank goodness for having been blessed with a sense of humour.

Half term break

I planned this last weeks vacation with my family on the spur of the moment nearly 9 months ago, more as a means of using up some of my accrued vacation than out of any real desire to take this particular week off as holiday. However, in practice I seem to have needed it more than any other vacation I’ve had this last year. I found the fortnight leading up to it particularly difficult, with a lot of travel, and consequent long days.

Add in the stress of recent developments in my health, and I’ve been struggling to cope. So it’s been a huge relief to spend a week away from the trains to London, the office politics, and the pressing concerns of my customers. Instead, I’ve been able to spend a week catching up on my sleep, recharging my batteries and spending time with my family. It’s reminded me of the important things in life.

I’m now looking forward to the challenges of work again next week, but it’s definitely tempered by the thought that I clearly no longer have the stamina to burn the candle at both ends, let alone while lighting the middle at the same time.

I’m going to need to improve my time management, prioritisation and delegation skills if I’m going to maintain a good work-life balance and keep my health intact.

Ambient orb project?

Long ago, in another role, I played around with the original “ambient orb”, which was a globe that was connected to a wireless data network and depending on the status of whatever subscription you had configured it for, glowed different colours. By default it glowed red when the DOW Jones stock market was falling, and green when it was rising. All very Wall Street. Unfortunately they also had a Wall Street price to match.

Probably because of the price, they never really took off. But the idea of consolidating and simplifying complex information down to a simple (and aesthetically pleasing) format was a good one, and I’ve always fancied taking a crack at building one. Unfortunately the format is intrinsically rather expensive – wireless communications and infinitely variable coloured lighting have never been cheap.

But if one is prepared to sacrifice the wireless part, it looks like you could now build ambient orbs pretty cheaply, thanks to the advent of the BlinkM programmable colour LED, and the LinkM i2c controller. Essentially you just need to put a BlinkM in an appropriate enclosure, connect it to a LinkM, which is plugged into a (potentially very simple) computer running a program to convert whatever interests you into a simple glowing colour. Better yet, the LinkM can control^[1] up to eight independent BlinkMs … so multiple “orbs” are possible at relatively low incremental cost.

People have done this before, often using Arduino systems as a relatively low-cost computer with an integrated I²C controller. Some don’t even bother with the BlinkMs! However, to my eyes the problem has been finding the right enclosure for the BlinkM … bathroom light shades have been popular, but I’m just not convinced you’d get them to glow brightly enough to get the full-on original ambient orb effect.

And then yesterday, while I was in B&Q to pick up a nightlight bulb, I noticed that they were selling “Cubo” colour-changing LED lights for £1.49. They’re unintelligent mood lighting, and basically junk – they use expensive lithium watch batteries to cycle a colour LED through a fixed pattern for about 6 hours. But the cube-like enclosure is perfect for turning into an ambient orb; it’s 3″ on a side, and even with only a tiny LED, they glow deep satisfying colours even in normal daylight.

So in a fit of madness I picked up three. Now I just need to find some time to do the conversion.

[1] Actually the LinkM can control many more i2c devices than this, but it can only provide the current to drive eight BlinkM LEDs, which are quite power-hungry.

International Broadcast Conference

As part of my new role supporting the Media and Entertainment industry for IBM, I’ve just spent a week in Amsterdam at the International Broadcast Conference (IBC2010), which was a simply fascinating experience.

Of course, I’m primarily there to work – and in my case I was mainly acting as a host for some of my customers who were attending the show. But I’m also still learning how the broadcast industry works, so this was a great opportunity to do a lot of self-education, see a lot of the basic broadcast technologies “up close”, and talk to the suppliers to understand how they are used. I was also able to network with some of IBMs senior technical and executive team who were attending from around the world, and spend time learning in detail from them about the IBM technologies that they were at the show to demonstrate to our customers.

There was no doubt as to the theme of the show … everywhere you looked was 3D. From the cameras that shoot it, through specialist electronics that “fake” it, to specialist displays that show it, there was absolutely no escaping it. What was interesting (to me anyway) was how unconvincing I found it. The effects were very impressive, but somehow it didn’t seem to add very much to the overall experience. Worse, I found that after a relatively short time watching something in 3D, I started to feel slightly ill – something like a cross between motion sickness and a headache. I had the same result whether I was watching an active system (with the shuttered glasses) or a passive system (with the polarised glasses). After several days of watching these systems in action, I’m not convinced that the technology is really ready for the home; it doesn’t work as well for an “off center” viewer, it’s inconvenient (at best) for anyone who wears spectacles, and (from my informal polling of other attendees) a goodly proportion of people don’t actually find the effect very pleasant.

Add in the significant investment required in new equipment (a new TV, plus several extra sets of glasses) and it will be interesting to see if it really takes off as quickly as the industry would like.

On the other hand, some of the 4k resolution equipment was simply stunning. I spent a few minutes standing next to a Panasonic 152″, 4k (4096 x 2160) 3D plasma display. It was the size of a large wall, and yet even standing with my nose almost pressed to it, I still couldn’t see the individual pixels. The quality of the images it was displaying were simply unimaginable – very, very, impressive. I’d really like to think it could be the next big thing after the industry has got itself over 3D.

Recovery progress

I realised, to my chagrin, that it’s been nearly a month (a month!) since I last posted an update here. I’d like to say that I don’t know where the time has gone, but I do. It’s working for a living again. Take the normal weekly workload, add another 15 hours of travel to and from London to that, include a normal family life, and there’s nothing much to spare.

Work itself is going pretty well, and despite the travel, I’m really enjoying it. I am having to manage my diary quite carefully though; it’s all too easy to schedule too many trips to London in a week, or to try to pack too much into a single day, which results in problems for me later. Improvements in my stamina seem to have plateaued for now, and I’m still nowhere near as “resilient” as I used to be. On one level that’s really frustrating, but on another it’s forcing me to adopt a much more healthy work-life balance, which is something that is actually quite important to me now.

Health-wise, things continue much as before. I continue to have “good” days and “bad” days, and the ratio varies from week to week, almost at random. I’ve decided that the key thing for me is to try to make the best of each day, no matter what it’s like, as I really can’t tell in advance what sort of day I’m going to have and plan for it; I need to adapt to the circumstances I’m presented with. Even so, there are some days when that is difficult, and on those occasions I sometimes have to remind myself that at least I’m still here, and living a basically normal life. There are a lot of people who are not.