naarmamo | Member Posts

[/prompted by a conversation with another disabled person this morning]

Just because a doctor suggests a test doesn't mean you have to do it. Always ask how the results might effect your treatment or health outcome and if there isn't a satisfactory answer then refuse any test that is painful, or expensive, or might have some other negative outcome outweighing any positives.

Example from my actual life (paraphrased but I swear this is an accurate summary):

Doctor: The scan showed you have [damage]. The next step is to give you the [electric shocks from a cattle prod] test.

Me: But y tho?

Doctor: ::explains how test is conducted by giving the patient electric shocks from a cattle prod::

Me: Yes I understand, but y tho?

Doctors: To measure the ability of your nerves and muscles to conduct electricity.

Me: Yes, but y tho?

Doctor, beginning to sound less assured: Because it's a standard test?

Me: And how would the results effect my treatment / outcome?

Doctor: ... ... ... It wouldn't?

Me: So, imma gonna skip the electric shocks from a cattle prod test, 'k thnx!

In conclusion specifically: after this bizarre conversation I checked the more sensible patient-centred discussion websites, as one does, and discovered long comment sections full of people I can summarise as "It hurt and made no difference to anything" with a few people saying they'd been through this test more than once! I'm sure there must be some actual medical purpose for which these tests give valid and useful results (or there were at some time in the recent past) but without in-depth research I didn't find any. Basically, if you have numbness or pain and can verbalise this clearly then telling the doctor is as much use as them electrocuting you with a cattle prod, and probably more use because patients are likely to be more accurate (e.g. it would be easy to misplace an electrode and get a false negative).

In conclusion generally, I repeat: just because a doctor suggests a test doesn't mean you have to do it. Always ask how the results might effect your treatment or health outcome and if there isn't a satisfactory answer then refuse any test that is painful, or expensive, or might have some other negative outcome outweighing any positives. OBV.

miriam_e

This graphics server that Kimi AI has been helping me to build lets me do wonderful things. Here are some pictures made using awk to explore the famous mandelbrot set:

awk mandelbrot x.3798053 y.09999955 mag.0000002 --hue.005.png

awk mandelbrot x.3798053 y.09999955 mag.0000002 --hue.005.png

x = 0.3798053
y = 0.09999955
side = .0000002
hue = 0.005

awk mandelbrot x.3798053523334 y.0999995944562 mag.000000000005 --hue.0035.png

x = 0.3798053523334
y = 0.0999995944562
side = 0.000000000005
hue = 0.0035

The x and y coordinates are the position of the middle of the image. The side is the size of the vertical side of the image in the mandelbrot set. And hue is really a measurement of the spread of colors over the values in the image.

When I've eliminated the main bugs in the server I'll upload the program so anybody can use it from any computer language, regardless of whether the language has graphics commands.

I should have added the mandelbrot set using awk. Here it is (I've highlighted in red the special commands sent to the canvas server via its pixel bridge):

#!/bin/bash

wide=$(awk '/width/ {print $2}' ~/.config/canvas/settings)
high=$(awk '/height/ {print $2}' ~/.config/canvas/settings)

awk -v w="$wide" -v h="$high" '
BEGIN {
    hue_scale = 0.0035
    saturation = 0.9
    lightness = 0.5
    max = 10000          # iterations
    side = 0.000000000005     # size of image side (smaller = deeper zoom)
    midx = 0.3798053523334    # Center X (bigger = move camera right)
    midy = 0.0999995944562    # Center Y (bigger = move camera down)

	# X image size scales by aspect ratio to match Y size
    xside = side * w / h

    for (py = 0; py < h; py++) {
        y0 = (py - h/2) * side / h + midy
        
        for (px = 0; px < w; px++) {
            x0 = (px - w/2) * xside / w + midx
            
            x = 0; y = 0; iter = 0
            
            while (iter < max) {
                zx = x * x
                zy = y * y
                
                if (zx + zy > 4) break
                
                xtemp = zx - zy + x0
                y = 2 * x * y + y0
                x = xtemp
                iter++
            }
            
            # Color
            if (iter >= max) {
                print "pset " px, py, "(0 0 0)"
            } else {
                log_z = log(zx + zy) / 2
                smooth_n = iter + 1 - log(log_z) / log(2)
                hue = (smooth_n * hue_scale) % 1.0
                hsl_to_rgb(hue, saturation, lightness)
                print "pset " px, py, "(" _r, _g, _b ")"
            }
        }
        
        if (py % 10 == 0) print "flush"
    }
    print "flush"

}


function hsl_to_rgb(h, s, l,    q, p) {
	h = h - int(h)
	
	if (s == 0) {
		_r = _g = _b = int(l * 255)
		return
	}
	
	q = (l < 0.5) ? (l * (1 + s)) : (l + s - l * s)
	p = 2 * l - q
	
	_r = int(hue_helper(p, q, h + 1/3) * 255)
	_g = int(hue_helper(p, q, h) * 255)
	_b = int(hue_helper(p, q, h - 1/3) * 255)
}

function hue_helper(p, q, t) {
	if (t < 0) t += 1
	if (t > 1) t -= 1
	if (t < 1/6) return p + (q - p) * 6 * t
	if (t < 1/2) return q
	if (t < 2/3) return p + (q - p) * (2/3 - t) * 6
	return p
}

' | ./pixel_bridge --batch

squirmelia

On Valentine’s Day, the Thames gave me a curious bouquet. Sherds with flowers and other plants on:

More finds, including some with bits of words:
A sherd that looks like it says “James”, but I’m not sure
A sherd that looks to say “grind”
A sherd with “dge”
A shard of glass that looks to have “chy” on it.

And also:
Some Express Dairies Aster

A colourful Carter, Stabler & Adams sherd. This colourful piece would have been from between 1925 - 1934 and was made by Carter, Stabler & Adams in Poole, Dorset.

I haven’t found an exact match for the pattern but I imagine it could have been something like this: https://20decoarts.com/carter-stabler-adams-poole-pottery-art-deco-bowl.html

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

thisbluespirit

I thought it might make a change to write something here and post it straight away, instead of in two weeks or three or four months, idk, shocking but still. (I continue as before, getting a little more useful with every few days.) In the meantime, here are some fannish things that made me happy in this last week:

1. Another Enigma fic! \o/ 0_o

All Tapped Out (665 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tom Jericho/Hester Wallace
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Vignette, Missions Gone Wrong
Summary: “What the bloody hell was that?”

2. Sesskasays, whose Classic Who reactions I have enjoyed so much... is going to be doing Blake's 7! I did not dare really hope, but yay. I cannot wait for her to meet Servalan.

3. Small Prophets, on the iPlayer, a 6-part comedy from Mackenzie Crook, who did The Detectorists. It has all the mix of slow build, appreciation of small things & being v down to earth of the former, with actual supernatural ingredient in shape of six humunculi that Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) grows in his garden shed, for reasons. I haven't watched most of ep6 yet, but cannot imagine it producing any reason in the last 27 minutes for me not to rec it warmly here.

4. Another magnitude of miraculous on from Enigma-fic - a Rufus/Adam vidlet for A Fatal Inversion (Jeremy Northam & Douglas Hodge in 1991/2) from someone on YT:

Watch on YouTube

Like. This is why I wrote Rufus/Adam fic that nobody wanted! And this doesn't even have the shots with the dinner party and the make up, but, lol, I feel like it is a much more compelling argument for watching it than me saying it's very good. XD

Anyway, creative people continue to be a Good Thing is all. <3

thisbluespirit

I've had this post stashed away since late November, meaning to come back to it and write something more sensible about The Stone Tape that wasn't how much I wanted to icon Jane Asher's face. The reviews were already at least a couple months out of date, I think. Then life intervened and alas, I have even less brain now than then, so I should get on and post it anyway.

Eye in the Sky (2015)

This was one of the later things I pulled off Jeremy Northam's CV. The JN tumblrs reckoned it was a good one - and it was.

It's about an international military and political operation to capture the three top leaders of an Islamist extremist group in Somalia, with various layers of people involved via video conference - the UK Colonel in charge (Helen Mirren), the US soldiers running the 'eye in the sky' (Aaron Paul, Phoebe Fox), the Somali agents on the ground (esp. Barkhad Abdi), and a small group overseeing it from a meeting room in Whitehall (Alan Rickman as General Benson, Jeremy Northam as the Minister in charge, Monica Dolan as PR), plus various others who need to be consulted, including Iain Glen as the Foreign Secretary. And right there in the middle of it all, is Alia (Aisha Takow), a child who lives close to the target house.

( Cut for more details )

Smartly made modern film, but also exactly the kind of knotty moral problem and intelligent writing you'd have got in a Play of the Month.

Talking of which...

Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC 1972)

I this via Talking Pictures, after having heard of it forever, and it was great! I really loved it. The creepy concept, the scientific approach - I really wished I had screencaps so I could icon Jane Asher in it (she was wonderful generally, not just icon-able) and everything. The way that the misogyny was used was also great, and took me by surprise because I had felt my one other Nigel Kneale did give way to a 1960s/70s misogynistic trope that I had seen too often by that point, but perhaps the "seen too often" part was more of the problem, because this just made me sit up and do the, "Oh. oh" moment for real. Highly recommended if you like any brand of creepy UK 70s TV. (It IS creepy/disturbing, though. This is not a chirpy watch that will end well, please do note). It starred some other people who weren't Jane Asher, too, like Iain Cutherbertson and they were all also good, I just didn't want to icon them and their face and their red hair in quite the same way. XD

So glad I finally watched it & I enjoyed it even in summer, when I so often can't manage TV downstairs.

Official Secrets (2019)

EitS having been so good, when I realised that this one (featuring one of the 2 brief cameos that are all JN has done since 2016) was also directed by Gavin Hood, I checked for a cheap copy & obtained it poste haste. I really liked this too, and watching them close together made me think even more highly of both - this is the story of a real incident from 2002, while EitS is a theoretical piece behind its tension, but underneath, they're both smartly done morality plays with excellent casts. (Incidentally, there are 3 actors who feature in both - Monica Dolan, John Heffernan and Jeremy Northam).

When I looked up both films online the first description is always "underrated" and the Guardian apparently ran a piece for Keira Knightley's 40th earlier this year recommending a top list of her films to watch, and put Official Secrets at no. 1.

Official Secrets isn't as tightly contained as EitS, as it's based on a real UK whistleblower incident from 2002, but which ended up not having much effect, so it's a really unusual thing to tackle (& as faithfully as this - they had a lot of the real people involved in the production in some way or other). As before, it's a large but excellent cast (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakri, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma & more).

( More under here, although not really spoilery )

Anyway, after watching both, I got excited by clearly liking a director's stuff, so I looked up what Gavin Hood had done since - and the answer was nothing, dammit! (Before that he did Wolverine and Ender's Game, which are not tightly done morality plays. I mean, I assume not?? But I might need to investigate the first half of his CV more closely sometime. He has something upcoming lurking on imdb, which sounds more similar, but I'm not sure if that's real, or just a production hell mythical something or other.)

feng_shui_house

Today's boring chores -Laundry, scrubbing floor, weeding, sorting out stuff to trash or give away, then I took a break and found two videos that uplifted my spirits.

John Oliver and Cookie Monster Out-takes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H916EVndP_A

The Robot and the Whale (CGI robot who helps living things. It's very ASMR, I got the nice neck tingles while watching it.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-aaUwiacxY

squirmelia

After work, I headed down to Gabriel’s Wharf, and walked down onto the foreshore, but even at low tide, it was too high to walk along to the bit of foreshore outside the National Theatre. That day the low tide was apparently 2.15.

I found a few bits of Staffordshire style slipware and a piece with a few letters, and some leafy pieces, and a round yellow thing. But mostly I was just annoyed I couldn’t walk further along.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

squirmelia

It was lunchtime and low tide had just gone. I feel like I'm not finding so much at Custom House Lower Stairs now, but I did pick up some bits of Bellarmine and some green bits. I also picked up what I think is a tack. And also a barnacle! These aren't native to the Thames so perhaps it could have come from a ship?

Did you know that there is a barnacle goose but also a goose barnacle, and according to folklore, barnacle geese are born from goose barnacles?

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

miriam_e

With enormous help from KimiAI, I have been working on producing a graphics server that acts as a graphics screen for programs and computer languages that can't do graphics themselves, like, for example, awk. I can write images, and even animations (though primitive so far) by using the text output from awk (or any computer langauage) to draw on a canvas.

Previously (back in November 2023) I wrote here about my attempts to give awk graphical output by writing directly to an ASCII .pbm file. It works, but is a bit clunky and inconvenient. At the time I compared the speed of various ways to draw a 256x192 pixel image of Wolfram's 1D cellular automaton (rule 30).

1 hr 8 minutes -- the old CoCo computer
5 minutes -- the CoCo emulator running as fast as my computer allowed
12 minutes -- using python
0.08 second -- awk creating a .pbm image file
and now...
0.633 second -- awk drawing onto a canvas through my graphics server.

That's slower than awk writing to a .pbm image file, but much more satisfying, as I can watch the image being drawn. This lets me catch errors early or enjoy animation. And it is far quicker and simpler than python graphics... and python can write to the canvas through the server too. In fact any program with text output can, even the bash shell!

And just to show off the amazing capabilities of this graphics server, here is a Mandelbrot set drawn by a short awk program sending its text output to the canvas server. The 800x800 pixel image took just 10 seconds to calculate:
awk mandelbrot set 800x800 [10 secs]

I have just a few more improvements to this graphics server and I'll upload it to my website for anybody to use.

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Page generated Feb. 27th, 2026 05:03 am

Art Making Month

Member Posts

In which you can just refuse

Pretty mandelbrot pictures using awk - a language that has no graphics commands

Mudlarking 94 - Valentine's Day

An actual up to date little post of nice things

What I was watching... um... in summer?

2 videos to brighten your day

Mudlarking 93 - a high low tide

Mudlarking 92 - tack and barnacle

Update on using awk to do graphics

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August 2023

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