Hip hooray!

Had the operation on 27 August as scheduled. Arrived at the hospital at 10:30, filled out paperwork, showered, donned one of those fetching hospital gowns (and a reasonable bathrobe), and sat around waiting for quite awhile after unpacking a bit in my assigned room. At around 1:30 pm I was wheeled away, bed and all, to pre-op, where I remained for only a few minutes before being taken in to the operating theatre. I was returned to my room around 5:30 p.m., more than an hour later than expected. The surgeon explained later that the x-rays had shown I needed a size 1 hip socket replacement. However I actually needed a size 0, the smallest one. I assume they had to get one from stocks and sterilise it before finishing the operation. I was fully awake, and Eric says I was showing good spirit on my return, despite a drip, two drains, a catheter, a pressure cuff on each lower leg (squeezing at half-minute intervals), an oxygen tube in my nose, and a heap of monitor gear connected to me. I wasn't exactly comfortable, but neither was there much pain. However, when the nurses started transfusing my own blood back into me around 9 p.m., I suddenly had considerable pain in my hand. Indeed, I let out an involuntary shriek that probably could be heard through the entire hospital. Opinions varied on what the problem was, so everyone spent some time adjusting the drip rate, adjusting the position of my hand, and so on. The only thing that helped was a slow drip rate (55 ml/hour max). Unfortunately, that wasn’t one of the choices: a rate of 150ml/hr was required to get all the blood into me before it warmed up to the point where it had to be discarded. Eventually a shot of morphine reduced the pain to a tolerable level and they managed to get two units of my own blood into me. In the morning I felt fairly good, all things considered. The physiotherapist arrived in the afternoon to get me standing and then walking in place. Apart from an incident on the second night when I had to argue rather vehemently with the nursing staff for adequate pain relief, the staff were friendly, helpful, and at times quite amusing. The food ranged from good to excellent. I had a private room. It’s mainly a day surgery; few patients remain overnight and the place is remarkably quiet. The surgeon visited several times a day (his office was at one end of the corridor, and the operating theatres were at the other end). Almost as soon as I was detached from an amazing amount of postoperative torture devices, and less than 48 hours after the operation, I was doing laps around the hospital hallways on crutches and practicing stair-climbing. I got home today. I'm getting around on the crutches well, and didn't have any trouble getting up the 35 steps from the carpark to the apartment (veeery slowly). I'm allowed to stop using two crutches or even one crutch as soon as I feel confident that I don't need them. BTW, the crutches are a type called "Canadian" and they are very comfortable to use, with a moulded hand grip.

More hip problems

Ten days ago my left leg took a turn for the worse (nerve pinch in hip, apparently) and Hurts Like Hell much of the time, despite various medical treatments and codeine tablets (fortunately available without a prescription here in Australia). I've been spending most of my time lying in bed, although that isn't always an improvement over sitting up. Eric has reorganized my desk so I can lie in a recliner chair, type, and use the big monitor. The distraction of working is good for me, though the codeine makes my brain fuzzy at times. Monday we went to Mackay for the first round of blood collection (in prep for the op). To my surprise and relief, riding in the car was less uncomfortable than sitting in any of my chairs (or lying in bed) at home! So I made it there and back, and the bloodletting went okay (no dizziness or whatever, not that I expected any). I've phoned the surgeon's office and suggested that, given the change in my left leg, I'd like to have that hip done first. I have an appointment with him next Monday (when I go to Mackay for the second blood collection) to discuss this and fill in some more paperwork.

Hip surgery plans

I saw the surgeon today and liked both him and the private hospital. He confirmed that both hips need replacement, and opined that the pain in the left knee is probably caused by problems in the left hip, so most likely replacing that hip would fix the knee as well. I liked the surgeon: he was very straightforward, no nonsense, but pleasant. Not a hint of "talking down" to me, and answered questions with what I considered an appropriate level of technicality (not too much nor too little). And there was no delay getting in to see him at the time of my appointment -- somewhat unusual in my experience with specialists. The hospital is small and does mostly day surgery. Most of the 25 or 30 rooms are private. It does not have any cafeteria or food service other than what the hospital provides, so Eric will have to pack a lunch when he comes to visit. I am having the first operation (on the right hip) on Monday, 27 August (5 weeks from today), and the date for the other one will be decided later. I may be able to have that 2-3 months after the first, depending on how quickly I recover. I am going to be very impatient for the next 5 weeks to pass! One reason that I can't have the first operation sooner is that they want to stockpile 3 units of my own blood to use in transfusions during the operation, and I can only give 1 unit each week. This means Eric will have to drive me to Mackay (2 hours each way) one day a week for the 3 weeks before the operation, to have blood taken. Unfortunately there are no facilities closer to home to handle this type of blood donation. I received a packet of information from the company that produces the replacement hip. This info included a DVD of post-surgery exercises, which I am still going through, and a credit-card-sized card with the patient's and surgeon's names, date of operation, etc, for me to keep in my wallet to show to security people at airports and other checkpoints. Eric and I stayed Sunday night with friends in Mackay. Turns out that K had built the surgeon's swimming pool last year. Small town!

More laptop progress

Today I got the DVD player working, using VLC. This involved a bit of mucking around, since some of the necessary software isn't hosted (for legal reasons) on the Ubuntu website. Once I found the (very good) instructions, which included where to find the s/w (on a site called Medibuntu.sos-sts.com, for "Media, Entertainment, and Distractions in Ubuntu"), the rest was easy. Not that I watch DVDs very often, but it's nice to know I can. I had not managed to get the DVD player working under the earlier version of Ubuntu, but that might just be that I didn't put enough effort into finding what I needed (I never found Medibunt before today).

New laptop

I wasn't going to buy a new laptop, really I wasn't. But -- as has happened before -- Dell had a sale of just what I wanted, so I gave in and purchased both a laptop (much smaller than my others) and a new monitor (much larger than my other one). The laptop is an XPS M1210, relatively lightweight but with all sorts of goodies on it, some of which may be more challenging to get working under Linux than others. The monitor is a 24" one with lots of USB and other ports. Later I'll look up the specs or post a link for those of you who want to know all the technical details. I repartitioned the hard drive for dual-boot and a shared partition with Windows, installed Ubuntu 7.04, installed the Nvidia driver for Ubuntu, installed the printer, and got the big monitor working with it (as the main monitor, not a second monitor; it came right up when I installed the Nvidia driver). Most of my data files have been copied over, though there are a few things still to set up (shared Thunderbird files, for example). I'm delighted to report that Ubuntu's installation from the desktop CD has improved with each release, and several things that I previously had to do manually are now handled by the installer -- like enabling the wireless networking (it was detected like the ethernet and just worked, no drama), switching between wireless and ethernet (automatic), mounting the shared drive (no more manual editing of fstab!), and some other things that I forget. It was a good distro for newbies before, but now it's even better -- I feel much more confident now that I can hand a CD to someone (except the totally clueless) and they would be able to install it successfully without assistance.

Cold weather

We just had the coldest June day on record, or something like that. Cold, here in the tropics, is of course relative (a Minnesotan would laugh), but the high was somewhere around 15C and it rained off and on too. Every store in the area sold out of space heaters several days ago (except for some large, expensive ones) -- this was a "hot" topic on the local evening news. It's not too bad indoors, but I am wearing my outdoor jacket and my hiking boots as well as long pants and several layers of shirts and sweatshirts. I've dug out every blanket and quilt I can find and put them on the bed; good thing we have cold-night camping gear! I even managed to find in my hoard of stuff a long-sleeved, warm nightgown, though if this keeps up I may opt for sweatshirt-and-sweatpants in lieu of winter pajamas.

Australian National Science Fiction Convention

Eric and I flew to Melbourne on 6 June, a few days before the Australian National Science Fiction Convention being held there over the Queens Birthday weekend of 8-10 June. We had a great time catching up with old friends, attending book launches by old and new friends, and wandering around part of Melbourne. One night I gave a demonstration of OpenOffice.org to the Victorian group of the ASTC (Australian Society for Technical Communication). In the process of answering some questions, I discovered some changes in the user interface that I hadn't noticed before. (I've only been using v2.2 for 10 days or so.) Fortunately they were not changes that I should have written about in the books I had just published. Some days I could walk reasonably comfortably, but other days I couldn't (arthritis). I have an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon next month to discuss surgery, but in the meantime walking is not fun. However, we did wander around the city a bit and discovered a small museum in an old (historic) building that had been preserved when a new modern shopping centre was built around it. In the museum was a display that I had never seen before, but Eric says he saw something similar in the movie Minority Report. Instead of a touch screen, it had an area in front of the display where you waved your hand to point at choices (hold for a few seconds to activate the choice) or move sliders around on the display. It didn't seem to work very well (or maybe I was too quick in my movements or something), but in general it was very cool and fun to play with. I also got to the Birkenstock store and bought a pair of sandals with a heel strap, to supplement the ones I have that don't have a strap. The latter are great for indoors, but I can't drive or walk any distance in them because they often slip off. I learned that I could send my old sandals to Melbourne for repair or to have the sole replaced when the tread is too worn. These shoes cost a lot, but they seem to last forever, and their arch support is very good (a requirement for me). We stayed at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on Lonsdale Street, not far from the convention hotel, the Rydges. The hotel room had broadband (at a price), so I used it a bit. As is typical of too many hotels, the room had very few electrical outlets, and those few were poorly located. Even though there was a desk with a decent lamp and an ethernet cable, it had no spare electrical outlets anywhere nearby; the only ones were behind the bed, which is along a different wall, some distance away. Considering that everyone these days wants to charge a mobile phone (if not a laptop computer), this is definitely user-unfriendly! I could have unplugged the lamp to plug in the laptop, but I didn't want to be hassled with climbing under the desk all the time. So Eric bought a cheap 4-outlet powerboard from an office-supply place at the corner. We usually bring a powerboard with us, but this time we forgot.

OpenOffice.org Impress Guide published

Today I published a new OpenOffice.org book in the OOoAuthors series: the Impress Guide. Michele Zarri (from Italy) and I researched and wrote most of it. I learned a lot of useful things about presentations while writing it. I use Impress occasionally but had never taken the time to learn more than the absolute basics. Free PDFs are at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/ Printed copies can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/opendocument

Another live WordPress website

Friends of OpenDocument's new website just went live. http://friendsofopendocument.com/ I learned lots more things about WordPress while doing this site, because I wanted to turn the old news items into blog entries and I had to tweak the template to show the blog info on the static pages. I was really happy to find a theme that had almost the same colours that I had used in the original site, so the existing logo fit right in. I just had to tweak the colour for the header background a tiny bit to match the logo. I'm also quite pleased that I was able to figure out so many things without asking anyone, just searching the web for info.

Taming OfficeOrg.com website redesigned

My first WordPress-based website is now live: http://taming-openoffice-org.com/ It still needs some tweaking (both the content and the navigation), but I'm generally happy with it. I learned a lot working on it, tweaking the CSS and some of the PHP files (especially the header and sidebar). I never want to use a template or theme the way it was originally designed! ;-) I read a lot of how-to's and other online info to get as far as I did. I found some WordPress extensions that have helped a lot, but it's obvious that I need to learn a lot more about PHP to be able to do much more personal customizing. As I expected, this WordPress-based site is much easier to keep up-to-date than the old site was. I'm thinking about adding a blog for OOo-related topics, but considering how rarely I blog on any topic, I'm not sure it's worth doing. Meanwhile, I've started working on the updated site for Friends of OpenDocument. I chose Taming and Friends as the first sites to convert, because they have smaller amounts of existing content compared to my other websites. I'm really keen on revising Avalook and Technical Editors' Eyrie, despite the huge number of pages, but I want to learn what I'm doing with something less daunting. I've found really nice-looking templates for those two sites, so that's encouraging me to get to them soon.

I love my cleaning robots!

Today I used the vacuuming robot again. I am getting better at using the remote control to get it to go into places it had missed. We moved most of the chairs and other furniture out of its way. It is much more efficient when it doesn't keep running into things. (What a surprise!) Then we ran the floor-washing robot for the first time. It did a really good job, and the water in its tank (when it was done washing the floor) was impressively dirty. It only missed a couple of spots, and one of those was something sticky that it couldn't dissolve. So we are really happy with these gadgets, but moving everything out of the way is almost as much work as doing the cleaning myself. I should take a lot of the stuff off the floor (things that aren't furniture) and put it somewhere else, so perhaps this will encourage me to be more tidy. Perhaps.

Grace Hopper Scholarships for Celebration of Women in Computing

This came in from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) conference is a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) and is co-presented with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), happening October 17-20, in Orlando, Florida. The online scholarship application for Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is now available. Scholarships will cover conference registration (which includes most meals), lodging, and an upper limit for airfare based on the geographic region of the applicant. GHC Student Scholarships are made possible by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology through generous grants from the National Science Foundation and Google. Apply Now! Deadline for applications submissions is June 11, 2007. Background info: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2007 is the seventh in a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today's technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.

Past Grace Hopper Celebrations have resulted in collaborative proposals, networking, mentoring, and increased visibility for the contributions of women in computing. This year's theme is "I Invent the Future". The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology's website states: "We are women technologists. We use technology to connect our communities. We create technology because it is who we are — intelligent, creative and driven. We lead with compassion and a belief in inclusion. We develop competitive products and find solutions to problems that impact our lives, our nation, our world. Together, through the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), we are inventing a better future. Working with men that believe in our mission, we are changing the world for women and technology."

New webhosting service

This past month I've been moving all my websites from Gisol to Dreamhost. So far I've had no problems with Dreamhost and have been able to find answers to my questions in their support wiki (in significant contrast to my previous hosting service, about which I will say more later). Dreamhost offer what I consider huge amounts of storage space and bandwidth (and unlimited domains) — far more than I need — for a reasonable price. I chose the two-year pre-payment option on their lowest-level hosting plan. I like the fact that they are employee-owned and do not even offer Windows-based hosting. :-) I signed up with them mainly because they offer one-click installation of a lot of software like WordPress that I (as a non-technical user) find a bit daunting, and their help wiki is actually helpful for someone at my level. But they also offer shell access and other stuff for those who want and know how to use them. Reviews suggest that they had some downtime problems last year, but as I am not running a business site, I am less concerned about that then I might otherwise be. As part of the move, I am progressively migrating my websites into WordPress. I'll be writing more about that in a later post.

Cleaning robots rock!

We haven't tried the Scooba yet, but the Roomba worked quite well for cleaning on tiles. It's a bit noisy but did a good job. Its dust bin filled up rather rapidly when it went under the bed into the "mega dust bunny" zone (we hadn't cleaned under the bed in over 6 months), so we found out how easy it is to empty the bin. Ours has a remote. In theory we can use the remote to control the robot like a toy car, but today when we tried it that didn't work very well. We'll have to experiment a bit more to see if that was user error or a problem with either the remote or the robot. [Later: it was user error. I'm getting a lot better at controlling it after a bit of practice.] It was fun to watch. Its search pattern never reached some of the corners of the bedroom, but we stopped it to empty its bin before it had really finished. It also just fits under the Ikea bookshelf units, another place that accumulates vast quantities of dust. Overall, we think it will be a great addition to the household.

The robots have arrived!

Eric and I had ordered two domestic robots, a Roomba (for vacuuming) and a Scooba (for washing the floor). They arrived today and are charging right now. You've probably seen them on TV, but here are some links if you want to look them up (not all models are available in Australia). http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=122 http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=128 The FAQs include "Can Roomba [or Scooba] clean as well as I do?" We laughed, because we hardly ever clean the floor, so no matter how good or bad the robots are, they will probably clean better than we do!

Happy Birthday to the OpenDocument Format

A hearty "happy second birthday" to the OpenDocument Format. The OpenDocument v1.0 specification was approved as an OASIS Standard on 1 May 2005. (The OpenDocument v1.1 specification was approved as OASIS Standard on 2 February 2007.) More dates and links are available on the OASIS website and on GullFOSS.

OpenDocument News

I've posted a longer article of recent OpenDocument news on my O'Reilly weblog. The list of applications supporting the OpenDocument Format is growing so rapidly that the team at the OpenDocument Fellowship is having trouble keeping their Applications List up to date, and it's a daunting task to review all the additions. I hope to do some work updating the list this weekend. Daniel Carrera briefly reviews one of the new additions, Peepel, a web-based office suite that competes with Google Docs and similar services. Politics continue in the ODF-vs-Microsoft/Ecma OOXML arena, with Microsoft apparently urging California voters to lobby against a pro-ODF bill and Microsoft UK setting up a web-based petition to lobby the British Standards Institute to vote in favour of Ecma Open XML as an ISO international Standard. This petition follows an older one (begun by John Imrie) to the Prime Minister in support of ODF in the UK.

Shade sails at shopping centre carparks

In private correspondence I mentioned in passing the shade sails at our local shopping centres. I was asked what a "shade sail" is, so here are some photos. I believe the material is similar to that used in the sails of boats (hence the name). You can see that the designs differ quite a bit. They have some use as shelter from rain as well as sun, though the rain often blows under them. The photo below was taken at the new Centro shopping centre, which opened last year. The second photo was taken at the older Whitsunday shopping centre, which is being upgraded; the shade was added in the last few months.

Meet the Easter Bilby

As part of a campaign to eradicate wild rabbits from Australia, in 1991 the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation of Australia (now the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia) developed a campaign for the Easter Bilby, to highlight the damage done to Australian wildlife by rabbits, and to raise money for research and wildlife conservation.

The Foundation licensed the production of many 'Easter Bilby' products, including books, CDs, T-shirts and the first chocolate 'Easter Bilbies' in 1993 as alternatives to 'Easter Bunnies.' They were a success, and it's now quite common to find chocolate bilbies in the supermarkets in the weeks before Easter.

The Bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is a member of the bandicoot family. Bilbies are also known as Rabbit-Eared Bandicoots. The Greater Bilby is on the endangered list; the Lesser Bilby is believed to be extinct.

The Greater Bilby, usually referred to as 'the' Bilby, is the largest of the bandicoots, measuring up to 55cm in length (body only) with a tail up to 29cm long. Adult males weigh up to 2.5 kg.

Greater Bilbies used to live in more than 70% of mainland Australia. They are now found only in the Tanami Desert (NT), the Great Sandy Desert and Gibson Desert (WA) and in south-western Queensland. The Greater Bilby's habitat has been destroyed by cattle and rabbits, and they are prey for cats, dingoes and foxes. (You'll note that the problems have come mainly from animals introduced by white settlers.)

For more about Bilbies (and some photos), see:

Australian Bilby Appreciation Society Environmental Protection Agency, Queensland Burra Nimu - The Easter Bilby, Jenny Bright's children's story and also some excellent Bilby information Queensland Museum page on the Greater Bilby

Below: Chocolate "Easter Bilby"

Tsunami alert but no wave

Earlier today, Eric came in from collecting the mail and said, "Have you heard about the tsunami threat to the Queensland coast?" Me: "What? Is this an April Fool's joke?" (At that time it was still April 1 in Hawaii, where the warning came from.) Eric: "No, it was a genuine warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, because of an earthquake near the Solomon Islands, but no reports of significant sea level rises have been received, so no tsunami is now expected." We then looked it up on the web, which said "some rises of about 20-30 cm have been observed". So we kept an eye out for any sea level rises here, but we didn't notice anything (not that we expected to). A very small rise was recorded on the instruments at Sydney Harbour. According to the evening news, schools were closed on much of the east coast and lots of people headed for high ground, as a precaution, remembering the Indian Ocean tsunami. By the time we heard about it, the wave (had it existed) would have been on us. Fortunately our apartment is well up on a hill, so we'd probably not be washed away, but a true tsunami would wreck havoc on the town and the road out, and the power supply etc. At least our cyclone preparations (food, water, camping/cooking gear) would serve us well in such a situation! [Edit] In the Solomon Islands themselves, big waves (up to 10 metres?) did occur.