Skip to main content

Bleeding good?

I went to the Perth Blood Bank yesterday morning, & donated.

They had a sign up pleading urgently for platelets, so I asked about that & donated those & plasma (apheresis) instead.

I wound up giving a double lot (2/3 of a billion platelets, over 600ml of plasma) & did it so well (56 minutes instead of 59, no interruptions or crises) that they want me back in a month instead of three.

A nurse named Beatrice (“Bee,” an Indian-based lass of about 30) will even be studying the results.

I had a happy little coincidence in arriving, as well. The #344 bus which I’d planned to be on went through earlier than expected, so I grabbed an 887 & rolled up at 07:30 instead of 07:00 as was written on the card, which turned out to be a good thing, as the 07:00 was a mistake, the blood centre didn’t open up until 07:30 anyway [links to the shiny new Google Transit, featuring TransPerth].

Happy little coincidences are good — more useful than you would expect (or at least more useful than I would expect) — as they help to offset some of life’s traumas, & help to (hopefully) re-build a trashed self-image, piece by piece.

Speaking of which, please call 131495 now to book your own short, painless (well, almost) & potentially life-saving visit.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.