April 2007 – Page 2 – Something Odd!

Vote for the person or the party?

I’ve had cause to get in touch with my local TD, Noel O’Flynn, recently over an urgent matter and he has been very responsive and helpful. Some will say that it’s an election year and our elected officials will be extra careful to keep their constituents happy but even in past correspondence he responded promptly. I’m not normally a Fianna Fail voter but this year that may change.

So, will you vote for the person or the party? Do party policies matter more than the active local politician who represents you?

Can dogs tell when a woman is pregnant?

Sorry, yet another pregnancy related post but it’s been a strange day. Our dog Oscar has always been protective of my wife Jacinta. He has always preferred her company to mine or anyone else’s, but recently he’s become a lot more agitated.

My sister and her boyfriend called over this afternoon and Oscar was on edge the whole time. Instead of playing with the ball he would growl and almost even bit me when I made to take the ball off the ground. Later he growled and bit at my shoe when I sat down next to Jacinta at the dinner table, an act for which I punished him with a few minutes outside the kitchen door.

This evening we took him for a walk and instead of running or walking quickly he walked near us, looking back the whole time, then walked behind and next to us, staying with us as we walked slowly up the road.

I’m convinced he knows the baby is on the way. These answers on Yahoo Answers to the question, Can dogs sense when a woman is pregnant? are fairly unanimous that yes, dogs can tell. I don’t think pets are psychic however!

Here are a couple of great tips and answers to some pregnancy related questions.

Does my dog know that I am pregnant?
What reactions might my dog have to my pregnancy?
What can I do about any negative reactions I see in my dog?

I really need to get Twitter’s number into my mobile, just in case..

Eva Herzigova is loving pregnancy

Today’s Sunday Times reveals that Eva Herzigova loves being pregnant. She is 7 months pregant by long term boyfriend Gregorio Marsiaj.

“I’m just so happy. I want to be pregnant for the next 10 years,” she declares with a beatific smile. Pregnancy, she says, has changed her life. “I feel so powerful. You have no idea. But it’s an inner power. You are so content with just being. That’s how it is. I feel so confident about my body. I feel so potent. You feel like you have your mission, and it’s empowering.”

You should have seen my wife’s face when she told me that. She’s two days overdue now and her expression spoke volumes!

Eva does have a refreshingly normal outlook on getting back into shape though,

She has no intention of following Heidi Klum’s example. The German supermodel posed in lingerie on the Victoria’s Secret’s catwalk just weeks after giving birth to her second child. “I’m not thinking about getting back into shape,” she says, patting her bump. “I just want to enjoy this. I’m not like one of those celebrity people who would die to get back into shape. If people want to take pictures of me being round, they will take pictures of me being round. I think it’s important to show your true self and how you are — you don’t have to be in perfect shape or skinny shape.”

Let’s hope she feels the same way at 9 months..

Continue reading “Eva Herzigova is loving pregnancy”

Desktop Tower Defense should be banned

Desktop Tower Defense could be the most addictive game I’ve played in a while, which is why you should not play it. Never, really, don’t go there. Or if you do, play it now and get it out of your system before you go back to work on Monday.

It’s rather good. I’d write more but I’m in the middle of a game…

Later .. Two days later Michael Arrington says exactly the same as me. Thanks Donal for the heads up! I’d like to think that he read it here but I suspect the only thing we share are our sentiments about this addictive game.

Would you download the new Harry Potter book?

Drmike says he found a site where you can download “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.

Would you download a possibly incomplete copy of a new book? What if it’s not as polished as the finished item? Would the glaring grammatical mistakes, and unedited paragraphs ruin the experience for you?

What about the experience of lying in bed with a good book, engrossed in it and falling asleep with the light on? Is it the same with a set of printed sheets from your computer? I think not. That scene in The Devil Wears Prada does spring to mind where the kids are reading the manuscript on the train..

Meanwhile, Scott Adams has an excellent post on copyright violation which he later explained was an experiment in “cognitive dissonance”.

If you’ve read anything about experiments to produce cognitive dissonance, you know this was the perfect setup. You can produce dissonance by putting a person in a position of doing something that is clearly opposed to his self image. Then wait for his explanation. The explanation will seem absurd to anyone who doesn’t share the dissonance. In this case the model that produced it was…

1. Good people are not criminals.
2. Criminals break laws.
3. I break copyright laws.
4. But since I know I am a good person, my reason why it’s okay to violate copyright laws is (insert something absurd).

I don’t think it worked on me because I happen to agree with him that copyright violation is theft. Previous mind experiments have however worked on me so I’m as susceptable as anyone. His underpants story was particularly absurd however, even if in keeping with his sense of humour and not at all out of place on the Dilbert blog!

21st July – the book is out and I’ve seen it. I took a picture of the last page but I don’t think anyone really wants to see it, do you? There’s Michael reading his copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows!

Today was D-Day

Today was the due date for the birth, but our baby is too comfortable and isn’t coming out just yet. It’s a waiting game now, at least until Thursday when things will be given a push along.

I feel nervous and expectant. Everything is ready but the guest of honour is not ready. I’m impatient to see my son or daughter and know they are well.

I read that the last few weeks of pregnancy drag out and they certainly do. All the preparation is done. The visits to the hospital taken care of. The baby’s room painted, new curtains hung, everything assembled. We’re waiting and praying that everything will go ok for the last few days.

I wonder what my dad would have blogged about 31 years ago if he had a chance to record his thoughts. I must ask him.

More fun at the hospital

We spent over 2 hours this morning at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH). Little had changed since last week. Appointments were still impossible to make so Jacinta was told to come in early and wait.

It was crowded last week, but if anything, it was worse today. Most seats were taken but it’s a funny thing about some people – even when there are seats to sit on they’ll continue to stand. Even heavily pregnant mothers. I can’t figure it out. Martyrs?

This last week has seen Ireland sweltering under a blistering warm sun and conditions in the hospital were as stuffy as before. I stood near a radiator in the corridor and was shocked to find it was lukewarm. Expectant mothers looked on in disbelief when I mentioned this!

You’ll meet all sorts in the hospital. All races and creeds are represented in those hallways and unfortunately Irish racism is alive and kicking. A man at the end of the corridor was heard to say, “I should learn a foreign language and get an interpreter. We’d be seen sooner.” Shortly afterwards, his partner commented on the pronouciation of a foreign doctor saying that it was hard to understand him.

Good news however, I’ll be a dad within the next 7 to 8 days (hopefully). Due date is tomorrow but if nothing happens, Jacinta will be induced by the end of next week.

In related matters, Justin provides a transcript and commentary on Green Party candidate Patricia McKenna’s assertion on national radio that there’s a link between MMR and autism. That link has been discredited and I’m following this closely, but all it takes is one comment from the parent of an autistic child to make me doubt my convictions. Conor has more to say on the matter too.

He also reported a few weeks back that children in a Cork creche were found to have Tuberculosis (TB). Munster, the southern region of Ireland, does not have a programme in place to vacinate babies and children, but after the recent outbreaks, the HSE will introduce it later in the year. The vaccine is called BCG and has been administered in all other parts of the country. The Wikipedia page on Tuberculosis has a lot more information on the disease.

More and more bloggers I read are becoming parents. Maybe I’ve become more aware of the announcements, or maybe it’s simply that they are at that stage in life when they’re starting or expanding families. Remember when you and all your friends were celebrating your 21st birthdays?

How I move a WordPress blog to a new host

Aaron Brazell described how he moves his WordPress blog to a new host and it’s very familiar since I’ve done something similar a few times over the last few months.

I’ve figured out a few things from those moves which you might find useful if you get sick and tired of your hosting:

If you’re self hosted and have a domain name, set the “time to live” (TTL) to as small as possible, say 15 minutes. You should do this about 24 hours previously. Doing this will mean that visitors to your bog will start seeing your new host sooner!
Just after you dump your database to a file for export close all your posts to comments. I do this with the SQL, UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status='closed'. Now quickly transfer your db over and get your site up and running in the usual manner. Your old site will still get traffic for a while yet. Googlebot will still visit too, but nobody will leave comments there so you don’t have to worry about synchronising your comments table. You could do the same with ping_status too if you get a lot of pings.
For extra brownie points add a small message in the comment area informing the visitor that, “Comments are disabled. This site has moved to new hosting. Please check back later to leave a comment.”
If you fiddle with your hosts file make sure there isn’t an entry for your domain pointing at the old site. That happened to me on my Macbook and even after updating /etc/hosts it still didn’t work right. I had to reboot the laptop!
Say “Thank You” to anyone who helps, especially support staff!

Good luck moving, it’s not as hard or as daunting as it might be. ssh, scp/rsync, mysql/mysqldump and tar/gzip are your friends when moving!

WP Plugin: Import your Flickr comments

I have had a plugin running on my photoblog In Photos for quite a while now that imports comments on my Flickr stream into my blog posts. It prefixed “Flickr:” to the username and linked back to the Flickr comment.

Due to overwhelming demand (two people asked!), I cleaned up the plugin a bit and put a configuration page on it and called it the Flickr Comment Importer. There are a few things to consider if you want to use this plugin but it’s straight forward to install and configure and it’s all documented on the plugin page.

Download it now!

Harney forces Cork midwives to resign

The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has a lot to answer for. Nurses, midwives, consultants and other staff in the newly opened Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) are stretched to the limit coping with the pressure of expectant mothers and babies from the original three maternity hospitals in the city.

We spent over two hours in a stuffy, crowded and very warm waiting area to be seen by a midwife and a consultant this morning. It was in stark contrast to the empty hallways and calm of the hospital just two weeks ago when we were given a tour of the facilities and offered a glimpse of a gleaming high-tech maternity environment. Pregnant women, partners and children waited in the sweltering heat while staff were run off their feet. The waiting area was unfortunately too small, there weren’t enough seats, and pregnant women had to make do by leaning against the walls of the corridors while waiting to be seen.

Despite the pressure, staff were as nice as always. Midwives were considerate, helpful and professional, but when asked about how things were going I heard that 2 had resigned and 4 had taken sick leave. As well as being short staffed to begin with, the remaining staff are even worse off now. Some workers are pulling 11 hour days.

Did I forget to mention that this 75 million Euro hospital doesn’t have air conditioning? Can you imagine the heat and mood in a small area where the only air comes from 2 slightly ajar windows and from internal corridors? It wasn’t nice. At least the two expensive flat screen LCD screens on the walls kept us occupied with day time TV courtesy of TV3. Oh yeah, that’s what we need.

Thanks to Mary Harney’s bullying tactics last week the hospital opened a week late on Saturday last. She had threatened to find a different use for the building if midwives didn’t accept her terms and move to the new hospital. Midwives and consultants protested that staffing levels weren’t high enough and I bore witness to that shortage this morning. Even the computer system there is broken and not expected to be working until this evening. No appointments could be made so women had to come on a first-come-first-served basis to the morning clinic. One woman we met there had been there since 8.30am. We arrived at 11am. Apparently it was even worse on Monday.

Teething problems with a new hospital? Perhaps, but if Mary Harney wanted the hospital opened a week previously shouldn’t those problems have been sorted out then?

Truly, healthcare is a vocation. I couldn’t do it. The midwives and staff deserve all the support they can get.