andrewducker | Recent Entries

You can find more info on my userinfo page - but this is just here to say that I'm very happy to be friended by anyone that wants to read me. I rarely post friends-only, and that only tends to be about things that mention work, so if I don't friend you back you're not actually missing much...

If you do friend me, this would be a good place to leave a comment introducing yourself, and letting me know how you found me!

I have lots of awesome friends - if you want to make a few more then take a look at here for Dreamwidth, add a few people, and leave comment so people can add you too.

The links posts come from my page at Pinboard and are posted to DW via a web app which I wrote and runs as a daily PowerShell job on Azure. You can grab it to run yourself from here.

A note on correcting people's grammar in the comments.

Official Spoiler Policy.

1. Transgender youths prescribed puberty blockers had approximately half the odds of mood disorders and one-fifth the odds of suicidal thoughts and behaviors: (tags:puberty healthcare transgender children )
2. Tell a sad video game story in three words: (tags:games business sad )
3. Scotland is spending 4 times more on affordable housing than England: (tags:Scotland England UK housing )
4. European Court Confirms Ethical Veganism Is a Protected Philosophical Belief in Europe: (tags:Europe echr vegan )
5. Mathematicians still don't know the fastest way to multiply numbers: (tags:mathematics computation )
6. Some people have naturally low levels of GLP-1 and respond extremely well to drugs like Mounjaro: (tags:hormones weight )
7. Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years: (tags:co2 doom blood )
8. English and Welsh couples will free to marry at the beach or the pub under new plans - and Humanists will be able to carry them out: (tags:england wales marriage reform )
9. Trump Media to sell fast feed of 'market-moving' posts to Wall Street: (tags:corruption usa politics )

Fire on Salisbury Crags (adjacent to Arthur's Seat).

Can't see the fire from here, but it's lighting up the smoke.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. White Supremacists Love Armie Hammer's New Movie (including Elon Musk, of course): (tags:racism bigotry ElonMusk movies violence )
2. A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance: (tags:surveillance police sanfrancisco USA drone )
3. How Section 219, the US-Israel Military Merger, Would Thwart American Democracy: (tags:USA Israel military EpicWTF )
4. Scottish gangland feud spanning six months came to an end through dozens of arrests and a "resolution of differences" between rival groups.: (tags:Scotland crime gangs )
5. Edinburgh Napier University set to sell original Merchiston site and join three-way educational alliance: (tags:Edinburgh university )
6. "Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness": (tags:viaSwampers cars sick Technology apple )
7. The English woman who sketched India before photography took hold: (tags:england uk india art history )

My blood sugar used to be a disaster. I'd regularly get hypoglycaemic, complete with hot and cold shivers, dizziness, etc. I saw the doctor a few times, but they ran a simple fasting blood sugar test, declared me to not be diabetic, and sent me on my way.

In recent years, because I basically never eat sugar* I've gotten this under control. But I would still regularly feel impulses which I was interpreting as low blood sugar, where I'd basically feel like my skin was itchy/tingling, and I had a strong craving to have carbs. And this seemed to be getting worse as time went on.

So I went to see the doctor and said "Is there anything I can do about this." - and his first (very sensible) response was "Well, we don't know that this *is* low blood sugar." And we had a brief chat, and he said that the only testing that they can do at the GP is a one-off blood sugar test. Which will tell us almost nothing, because my blood sugar clearly changes significantly during the day.

He suggested those finger-prick sensors. I went one better and picked up a Lingo - a consumer version of the blood sugar sensors that plug in to your skin which diabetics use to track them and give them warnings when they drop too low. With the aim that I would gather data on my blood sugar and then go back to the doctor and say "See!"

I was somewhat nervous that inserting a needle into my skin for 2 weeks** would be painful, but it was actually fine. I felt a slight bruise about half an hour later, and since then it's only been sore when I knocked it against a door or when catching it putting on my t-shirt.

And then it told me....that I absolutely do not have low blood sugar. It's dropped below the normal range maybe twice in 2 weeks. And then only briefly (and once when I was asleep).

What I *do* have, is blood sugar which spikes for over 4 hours whenever I eat potatoes. Rice isn't so bad - I get smaller spikes, and only for an hour or so. But if I insert a chip in to my face the next 4-6 hours are full of spikes.

And the feeling I get where I'm craving? Turns out to be one of two things:

Mostly it's when the drop from a spike is very steep - not to an unhealthy level, but a sudden drop from a very high level to the lower part of the normal range is enough to make me want to eat something to stabilise it. Which does seem to work a bit, but that means that I'm eating when I'm not actually hungry, and it's not dangerous, so my new response is to just hold on for 20 minutes and wait for it to stabilise by itself.
And sometimes it's getting stressed/overwhelmed. Which, it turns out, feels physically exactly the same as having my blood sugar drop quickly. And where the cure is exactly the same - go and distract myself briefly until it passes (or deal with whatever it is that's stressing me out).

All of which has been very useful. Knowing what's going on internally is a relief, and calming, particularly as it's reassuring me that no crisis is occurring. I suspect that having had deeply unpleasant hypoglycaemic attacks in the past, I've trained myself to be overly nervous about other things my blood sugar is telling me. And not being able to tell the difference between the physical sensations of "I am stressed" and "My blood sugar has dropped" definitely has exacerbated that.

Oh, and now that I've stopped using snacking to try and control this, my hunger levels have dropped, presumably because my stomach has shrunk a bit.

Anyway, have a pic of what my blood sugar looks like if I eat protein snacks all day and then have fish and chips for dinner:

* And rarely have simple carbs. Or sweeteners, because eating/drinking things with artificial sweeteners in makes me crave sweet things.

** The cheapest option was two-weeks.

"It's over mummy! I have the high ground!"
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Microsoft Reports a Massive 25 Percent Jump in Emissions: (tags:Microsoft environment pollution AI doom )
2. See if you can spot an AI deepfake with this test: (tags:ai faces )
3. The song NASA banned from space: (tags:NASA music funny )

First time ever on a horse. She didn't hate it.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Board games are very serious business.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%: (tags:Education ai cheating )
2. What To Know About The Live-Action 'Moana': (tags:Disney funny )
3. Why American ambulance rides are so expensive: (tags:USA economics business healthcare transport )

A friend reported that it was taking him 20 seconds to load my journal (as opposed to only a couple of seconds for other people's). Other people's journals weren't slow, just mine. And only when logged in.

Can anyone replicate this? (I'm putting in a support request to DW over it, and it would be good to know if this is something special about him, or a more widespread problem.)

And before anyone asks, yes, we've replicated on multiple browsers, multiple devices, and multiple networks.

Edit: Support ticket raised

Edit 2: All now fixed.

Today we went to Berwick Upon Tweed, to a friend's birthday.

I didn't know exactly when we'd want to come back, so I bought an "Open Return", thinking that this would mean we could return on whichever train we wanted. That being my memory of how they worked. Only to discover that because we'd booked to go there on a Transpennine train, the return trip also had to be on a train from the same operator. Which, as there were only trains at 16:09 and then nothing more until after 19:00, we could either leave early, or be stuck there with the kids until very late.

I am completely baffled by this. There seemed to be, as far as I can tell, no way of getting an actually flexible return trip.

Anyone with experience of the train setup want to tell me if this is how it's now supposed to work?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Very cool, if true

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