If you don't need it, give it away!

I donated blood today for the first time, at the Red Cross centre in Perth. It was pretty much painless; the tiny stab-sample that Nicole took for testing hurt more than the needle proper, and it was all over (insertion to withdrawal) in under ten minutes.

In three months, I can do it again, and at that point I qualify to be hooked up to the fabulous platelet machine every 2-4 weeks. This draws a sample, centrifuges it, pulls out the platelets and plasma, and then puts the rest back in — so no loss of iron and so forth. Meanwhile, your heart will have been busy circulating stuff, so the next sample is almost 100% fresh.

If a fat old bugger like me can survive this, maybe you can too?

Judging by Jeff’s blog, he came within a whisker of needing some replacement circulatory fluid today — maybe you’re next? <G/D/R>

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

Yeah, that'd be a good line (-: "Hey, my blood really harmonises with yours! Would you like to make even more beautiful music with other organs?"

The idea of having an organ partially sucked out, rinsed and replaced (platelet/serum processing) has a really squeamish sound to it, but it doesn't seem to feel all that bad. At least, BIL Jamie and mate-from-way-back Peter didn't seem to be having any issues with it.

10 September, 2005 20:52

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.

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...

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.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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