Babies and the common cold don't mix

My son Gabriel has had the pleasure of a cold for the last week, and it's certainly made him a miserable little bugger. And who can blame him - I've had (one assumes) the same cold, and it's made me a miserable big bugger, along with laying me out for the weekend. If my mother had not been visiting, I think we'd have had the archetypal weekend from hell.

Two things have been cycling through my addled brain all weekend. One - who the hell did I catch the cold from? Two - what is it that makes it socially acceptable to go out amongst the masses and spread your fsking plague germs around so that I end up catching your lurgy?

There's a few culprits, starting with my wife's mother who was so desparate to see her new grandchild that she came to the post natal ward in a flu mask "so that she wouldn't spread her cold". Not subtle! Then there's the selection of scummers and vagrants who travel on my beloved no. 50 into the centre of Brighton. Coughing your lungs up over the seats in front of you seems to be jeu du jour.

Of course, even in my workplace which is populated with intelligent hardworking folks, there's a collection of people who simply must attend even though they are visibly leaking fluids.

One would surmise that the elementary mathematics (1 person off for 5 days = 5 days of productivity lost; 1 person off 2 days, spreads cold to remaining 30 staff, who are each off for two days before struggling back in to work = 62 days of productivity lost) would be enough to persuade firms to persuade their employees to stay the hell away.

Are the lemsip adverts really that convincing? or is it the stories of doom and gloom in the Daily Mail about how many millions of pounds are lost every year to people pulling sickies?

Whatever the reason, one of you bastards gave me and my son their cold. Shame on you.

Junk DNA is IP circumvention

Postulate one: while in the process of copying (or otherwise cloning) coded media, one can state that some minimal subset of the whole (not necessarily a workable subset of the whole) cannot constitute a meaningful proportion of the original media, meaning that it cannot be classed as a copy. Take the canonical case of a single bit of a movie file. At some point, the sliding window will represent some meaningful proportion of the original work, much like a collection of grains of sand becomes a heap, but there is established law in many societies that dictates fair use cases of subsets of media considerably larger than a single bit.

Postulate two: one can create a second work, larger than the original coded media, but containing the original coded media. If large enough, the original coded media can be contained in a form that is difficult or expensive to extract without relevant information, and potentially virtually invisible without relevant information.

Postulate three: if one exposes the entirety of the second work, yet restricts the relevant result of a copy or clone to only the sections of the media that correspond to the first work, then one can be said to have not copied the second work at all (by only allowing a restictive selection) but actually given access to the entirety of the first work.

Is junk DNA an IP circumvention mechanism?

What the hell are you all afraid of?

According to security services, a terrorist attack is highly likely.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/7056833/Terrorist-attack-is-highly-likely-security-services-say.html

Where? no idea.
When? no idea.
Who? no idea.
Why? no idea.

BUT YOU MUST BE AFRAID. BE SCARED. BE VIGILANT.

after all, you might see something suspicious and foil a terrorist plot all on your own.

What the hell is the point of this story? What the hell is the point of this supposed terrorist threat scale? Why does the government want us to live in a state of fear?

Answers on a postcard please.

A week in the life of

The last week has been pretty crazy, to say the least. I'm utterly in love with this new little man in my life, although I have to say the crying thing really isn't my cup of tea. What are my cup of tea are all the other little noises, the twitches, the bemused looks. When he lies staring at me while I rub his feet.

Gabriel is a boob demon, and while we're not trying to establish patterns just yet, we're noting down when he feeds (mostly to check he's getting enough and that Nic gets some rest when she can). Today he fed twice overnight, and is now heading up for his "every hour and a half" routine that he has been in the last couple of days.

I'm a lot more relaxed than I thought I'd be, and even (dare I say it) less tired. Nic is still pretty exhausted, but she's slowly learning to sleep when he sleeps and snatch the occasional 30 minutes or so when I can keep him occupied when he's awake. It's a learning game for everyone, I guess.

We both had a moment a few days ago - myself on Wednesday, Nic on Thursday - where we were sleeping with him in our arms and fell asleep ourselves, to wake up to a soundly sleeping baby. Both of us instantly went into panic mode - "Oh my god, the baby isn't breathing" - And then realised that actually, he was just fine - super snug, in fact. I think that's the first step down the road of not being terrified that he's going to die every waking moment. Hopefully we can continue down that road as he gets older!

The start of the last week was just hideous. Nic's labour was long, ended in an episiotomy and a nasty tear and a forcep delivery when we'd hoped for (but not explicitly demanded!) a c-section after the first few hours proved a very labourious (if you'll pardon the pun) exercise. I have a feeling that Royal Essex County were running at, and possibly well past, capacity on the day Gabe was born, as the moment he was born pretty much everyone vanished from the room, and we were basically left to our selves for the next day.

When we did finally move downstairs to the post-natal ward, instead of the private room we'd been promised the day earlier we ended up on the ward with three other mothers rotating in and out of the beds around Nicky. No space, very little privacy, constant noise, and hardly any staff around to help out with the process of moving Nicky out of hospital and back home. She was getting no sleep at all over the nights, and was only managing to sleep when I came in to hospital and walked Gabe around. Of course, this being brighton, fathers have to go home at 8.30pm and are not allowed back in to visit till 10am the next day, so Nic put up with three days of this before finally flipping.

The last day in hospital was simply ridiculous. We demanded to leave, and it took the entire day (from 9am to 6pm) to arrange Nic's medication, have a doctor finally come and check over Gabriel (yes, three days after he was born!) and to sign the paperwork. All available midwives appeared to be in triage mode, and it looks like teaching new mothers to breastfeed is higher up the priority list than organising and signing discharge papers. Eventually I had to collar a midwife and follow her around until she sighed, went into the office, signed a piece of paper and gave it to me.

When we finally got home, Nic was super-emotional (understandably) but got a few hours sleep in between feeding, and excepting the occasional crazy moment she's been steadily improving sleepwise and moodwise up to today. We even had visitors yesterday, which with Jay and Sal was ok, but with Nic's sister and kids - well, just a bit too much stimulation I think.

I'm now proficient at sip-feeding, bottle-feeding and changing shitty nappies. like Jason said, it's really not so bad after you've done it once - it becomes more a routine thing.

And the boy himself? he's just wonderful. he's noticably more alert today than last week, very energetic, and hasn't lost any weight between birth and today. he eats incessantly - we put him on a bottle of expressed milk last night to give Nicky a break, and he ate and ate and ate, well past the point of full, then spat a load of it up on my T-Shirt before demanding more boob from mother. Wonderful stuff!

I have a son!

The last 48 hours have been a combination of the most boring, exciting,scary, fantastic, revealing moments in my life. literally minute to minute things changed, and while my wife suffered through a fairly hideous labour, the end result is beyond belief.

I'll post later on the more mundane revelations of the whole affair; of which there were many, including the sudden change in midwife process from pre to post birth, the neighbour in the post ward with her 6th spawn ("11 if you include my partner") and the ridiculousness that two inches of snow brings to life.

However, today is the birthday of my firstborn. Here's to you, my excellent son.

Snow day

I love snow, and we've had another dose of it. I wish I was on holiday.

While the council didn't manage to grit our road, at least they've been kind enough to deposit a pile of grit at the bottom of the hill for residents to use.

I hope it clears before the baby decides to come, otherwise we're in for an interesting trip to the hospital...

My favourite times of day

11.11
13.37
23.11 (11.11 but in the dark)

something draws my eye to the clock at this time, I have no idea why.