Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

There are a lot of moms in my life—most importantly my wife, of course, who's the mother of our two daughters. There are also my own mom, my mother-in-law, my aunt, my cousin, many of our friends, and, most recently, my long-time pal and one-time roommate Tara, who had a daughter in February.

I think when your kids are young, they really don't fundamentally understand the concept of sleeping in at all. Pretty much any child past infancy treats sleep as an enemy. It's a measure of still being a kid, like aiming for puddles instead of avoiding them. Mother's Day is probably the prime example.

I remember bringing my mom breakfast way too early on Mother's Day Sundays when I was old enough to cook, in the late '70s. It never occurred to me that she might rather sleep than eat the delicious food that I spent so much time messing up (but not cleaning up) the kitchen over. No. Idea. At. All.

Today, my own kids were already awake at 8:30 when I carefully tiptoed out of the bedroom and closed the door, letting my wife sleep while I went to the bathroom and got ready to start the day. By the time I'd come back upstairs, our bedroom door was open and their mom, with a tired smile, had eaten some eggs prepared by our older daughter, who makes a pretty decent omelette. After some Mother's Day morning greetings from our younger girl, my wife was, blessedly, able to go back to sleep, and the girls went back to playing The Sims.

So, here's a toast to all of you moms who got woken up too early today for a kid-prepared breakfast. I hope it was tasty.

I've persuaded the kids to bring the Mother's Day gift to their grandmother, my mom, closer to lunchtime.

Labels: family, food, holiday, memories

Spring weather is coming, and with my new shaved head I'll have to remember to wear a hat and sunscreen—especially because chemotherapy side effects also mean I should avoid prolonged sun exposure.

More positively, my family has been looking at accommodations on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast for a weekend getaway, possibly sometime in June. We're the sort who avoid camping, and much prefer places with restaurants and perhaps a pool. There are a few such places up the coast from here, including Rockwater, Pender Harbour Resort (beware, flashy Flashness), the Sunshine Coast Resort, and the West Coast Wilderness Lodge (not really that much wilderness).

Does anyone have experience and recommendations for fun family places to stay between Gibsons and Egmont for a couple of nights?

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, family, holiday, oceans, travel

It's difficult for me to understand what it's like for my family and friends as I go through cancer treatment. As I've written before, in some ways it's easier for me than for them, because at any time I know how I feel, and at least tell myself that I have a decent sense of how I'm doing. That's not always clear to those close to me, and I know they worry.

I think I have a better understanding of it this week, because my wife had elective surgery a few days ago. She was in hospital overnight (which the doctors had expected and planned for, but which we didn't know about in advance), and has been recovering here at home. Since I'm not on chemotherapy this week, I'm in reasonably good shape and have been able to keep the house running fairly well.

But I wish there was more I could do to alleviate her pain and other discomfort. I also have little sense, from hour to hour, how she's feeling. I feel a bit useless. And this is relatively short term—she's been taking care of me, and doing a great job of it, as I've been through surgeries, chemo, radiation, drastic weight loss, and much more for well over a year.

This is that "in sickness and in health" part they talk about when you get married. I'm glad we can be there for each other.

Labels: family, hospital, pain, surgery

Tomorrow, for the second time this year, I'll be giving a speech at a memorial service. This time it's for my mom's oldest friend Sonia, who died last November. She would have turned 70 in January.

I had no trouble at all putting together a eulogy for my friend Martin in January, but this time around it's a bit more difficult. My relationship with Sonia was different—she was my mother's friend, after all, so every time I saw her it was related to something they were doing together—but also lifelong. By the time I was born in 1969, they had been friends for well over 20 years.

Sonia's three best friends (my mom included) compiled some information and stories for me to work with, and I have some ideas on how to turn them into a speech, but I feel already like there will be too much left out. It's hard to distill 60 years of friendship into five or six minutes, maybe one minute for each decade. And the group at the memorial will be much smaller than Martin's, maybe 50 or 60 people instead of several hundred. I actually find it easier to speak in front of large groups than small.

Anyway, I'll find the key things to talk about, plus some extras I know myself, and I think it will go just fine. I hope I can do Sonia and her friends justice.

I feel a little guilty about one thing: I'm sort of glad to make speeches like this. That's because each memorial I attend means I've made it long enough not to have my own.

Labels: death, family, friends

This book about home chemistry experiments looks pretty darn cool. (Via PZ Myers.)

Labels: family, home, science

When it's raining like this outside...

...there's only one thing to do:

Oh yeah, baby!

Labels: family, nintendo, videogames, weather, wii

The city of Burnaby, B.C., where I grew up and live, is just to the east of Vancouver itself, and is well known for a significant amount of parks and other green space for such an urban environment. One part of that is Burnaby Lake, a fairly large and extremely shallow wetland in the centre of the municipality.

The lake sits in Burnaby's central valley, and forms part of a waterway that starts at Trout Lake in Vancouver, runs east along Still Creek through Burnaby into the lake, and out into the Brunette River, which flows east and then south through Coquitlam into the Fraser River, which empties westward into the ocean. In recent decades governments have dredged the lake several times, both to provide enough depth for competitive rowing and to avoid having excessive sediment from development and the city's storm sewer system turn the lake into a mudflat—which is why the water's edge is so sharp in the satellite photo.

My wife had the great idea of taking the kids on a ten-minute car ride down the hill from our house every few days to check out the waterfowl and other birds, and to see if any chicks have arrived yet this spring. So far they haven't. But there are tons of animals and plants there, from birds such as ducks, Canada geese, crows, and pigeons to carp, frogs, squirrels, and even a significant population of beavers, the world's largest rodent and Canada's mascot.

She's gone down there with them a bunch of times, but this weekend I was feeling well enough to tag along. And a couple of days ago the sunny weather and abundant animals brought out another example of local wildlife: the Canadian wildlife photographer, whose distinctive plumage and plaintive ktsch-ktsch-ktsch-ktch call (known affectionately as the "shutter-and-mirror-slap") were in fine form down at the Piper Spit pier. The next day we visited again (this time one of the girls' school friends joined us), but our bunch was alone because of the cold and rain, which actually turned to snow briefly.

The entrance to that part of the park also crosses some railway tracks, which our daughters enjoy putting pennies on to see if they'll be flattened by passing trains. We're accumulating quite a collection of thin copper ovals now.

Exactly 20 years ago, in April 1988, I was working a summer job as a park naturalist, headquartered at the nature house at this exact spot, between the railway and the boardwalk. That job was where my wife and I first met. We led canoe tours of the lake some evenings (no motor craft allowed), and this year we're thinking of getting a canoe and taking our kids out there too.

Labels: anniversary, environment, family, friends, love, memories, park, vancouver

I know celebrity magazines and tabloids have been around for ages (here's a scandal sheet from 1957), and I've certainly seen them in checkout lines at the grocery store since I was a kid. But lately they—and a lot of their fashion and lifestyle magazine and TV cohorts—are really pissing me off. I think there are a few reasons.

First of all, they've proliferated wildly over the past decade or so, both directly (more tabloid rags) and indirectly (celebrity gossip appearing in other publications that didn't used to carry it, as well as on countless indistinguishable celebrity hack TV shows). Yet based on what appears on the covers, you'd think there were only maybe two dozen interesting people (Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton, plus people who associate with or resemble them) in the whole world. It's an echo chamber.

Second, I have two daughters approaching adolescence now, and I can see how the relentless repeated messages from these sources could warp their perceptions of what is normal. My wife and I continue to point out the distorted perspectives as part of teaching our kids media awareness, but it's a fair bit of work.

Third is my experience over the past year, specifically with health and weight. Between the beginning of 2007 when I was diagnosed with cancer, and the end of July, I lost over 50 pounds. It's taken more than eight months to gain it back, sometimes requiring me to eat more than I actually want to.

Beforehand, I thought that my stable long-term weight of about 200 pounds (91 kg) was a little higher than it should be, but nothing to be too concerned about. Now 200 pounds seems like a lovely, wonderful weight, a healthy place for me to be, even with all my new lumps and bumps and scars from my treatments and surgeries.

So looking at the shows and magazines that are obsessed with the tiniest weight fluctuations and skin changes in celebrities grinds my teeth. These are trivial, pointless concerns—and what annoys me most is that it's not only obviously what sells, but it also invades my brain when I don't even want it to. Why is there even room in my memory for whether one or the other stick-thin actress has a pregnancy "bump"?

The magazines occasionally find their way into our house. I have occasionally flipped through them, usually in the bathroom. When I do, it's a physically unpleasant experience, like my soul draining out of my body. Ugh, and now it's turning me into a stereotypical grumpy complaining blogger too. See how poisonous these things are?

Labels: cancer, celebrity, family, magazines, shopping, television

I didn't really get podcasting at all until the middle of 2005, which was some months after the technology first appeared in late 2004—and right about the time iTunes started supporting it. The first person to start a real podcast in our family was my wife, who launched Lip Gloss and Laptops with her friend KA in March 2006.

Their show has now reached its 100th episode. That would be a milestone in any medium, but in podcasting it's a big one. A good percentage of podcasts podfade and stop publishing long before their 100th show. Others, like my my personal podcast and the other one I co-host, publish irregularly and so take a long time to rack up the numbers (despite starting back in 2005, Inside Home Recording hasn't even reached episode 60 yet).

But other than a few holidays over Christmas and such, Lip Gloss and Laptops has come out every Wednesday for over two years. Even if you're not into the beauty and cosmetics industry, which it covers, it's an interesting and informative listen. (As the show's audio engineer, I hear every episode.)

So congratulations to Airdrie and Kerry Anne on their 100th show. I'm sure they'll be hearing lots more cheers from their fans around the world too.

Labels: anniversary, family, lipglossandlaptops, podcast

I'm posting this from my iPod Touch on a bench at the playground at my kids' school. They are riding bikes. Yay for free open Wi-Fi from one of the nearby apartments.

Labels: apple, family, geekery, ipod, school

As always, there are some people who think those darned kids today are taking us all to hell in a handbasket with their ignorance and filthy habits. However, I seem to recall titles like this only in my university statistics course textbook:

But that's not where it comes from. It's a school math worksheet for my younger daughter, who is eight and in grade two. I'm not sure "data management and probability" were words I could even say at that age. (Then again, I did know what "carbon monoxide" was from my first favourite book.)

As for my other daughter, who is ten, she drew a picture the other day. It's taped to her bedroom door:

I liked the Beatles at that age too, but she loves them. I had no idea who the individual Beatles were, never mind what instruments they played—especially that Paul played piano as well as bass.

Notice that while John and George are playing their guitars left-handed, which isn't correct, Ringo's drums are frighteningly accurate. And even though his kit didn't have one, hers has a soundhole in the front drum head as most do these days. I guess my work as a drummer has rubbed off a bit.

Kids today. Too damned smart.

Labels: age, band, family, neurotics, probability, school

• "You call this traveling? Twenty-one days, 15 countries, 45,000 miles—without setting foot outdoors."
  
  
• "The more affluent a country gets, the more things parents come to see as essential for raising children [so] as long as the world keeps creeping out of poverty, families will continue to shrink."
  
  
• jamNOW lets you jam online with other musicians, interact with fans, and listen to live streams from nightclubs all over the place. Haven't tried it, so I'm not sure how well it works.
  
  
• Looks like the iMac DV in our kitchen is finally officially obsolete. It's slow, but it still works pretty well.
  
  
• Are things really this bad for biology teachers in significant portions of the U.S.A.?
  
  
• "If all you do is work, your value judgements are unlikely to be sound."
  
  
• "I rejoice in this life that I have, and in the grandeur of a world that preceded me, and an earth that will abide without me."
  
  
• "Studies have shown that abstinence-only education does virtually nothing to prevent kids from having sex [and that] abstinence-only group[s] used birth control less frequently."
  
  
• "When I get a resume, the first thing I do is type the person's name into Google.  If nothing comes up, I trash the resume without reading it."
  
  
• "I don't want my ISP looking at how I use the Internet to target ads to me, period, any more than I want the phone company listening in on my conversations in order to sell me stuff."
  
  
• TripIt looks like one of the best online travel resources out there, though I haven't tried it.
  
  
• How to make your website or blog faster.
  
  
• The Universe is 13.73 billion years old, give or take only about 120 million years. Now that is a cool finding.

Labels: apple, astronomy, evolution, family, google, linksofinterest, music, school, science, sex, space, travel, web

I'm not sure if she's noticed, but after more than 12 years of marriage, and despite chemotherapy's deleterious effects on my vim and vigor, I still quite regularly check my wife out. Wink wink.

Labels: chemotherapy, family, love, sex

Beware: graphic blog post ahead.

Chemotherapy isn't something your body gets used to—the side-effect symptoms generally just get worse and worse as you proceed with treatment. While I've had it better than some folks since my current round began in October, this week—and today in particular—has sucked.

I finished my usual chemo dosage on Friday, but my recovery, usually pretty quick, was slower then normal this week. I had my delayed CT scan Friday evening, then went out for dinner, but yesterday, Saturday, I felt hung over all day, with a dull headache and fatigue.

This morning was a disaster. One of the potential side effects of some of the chemo drugs is late-onset diarrhea, something I haven't had in the four months I've been on this treatment. But I got it last night. Because I've had a temporary ileostomy bag since the summer, I don't have the urge to go to the bathroom. The bag glued to the side of my belly simply fills up, and I have to notice and then head to the washroom to empty it. I did that around 1:30 a.m.

But if things go badly, as they did today, the bag leaks. I noticed around 7 a.m. when it filled up again. I was able to leap out of bed, charged with adrenaline, and avoid making a big mess. After cleaning things off I got into the shower and prepared to put on a new bag, but while washing my hair and shaving, I suddenly felt like I was going to pass out.

Normally for me that would be a sign of diabetic low blood glucose, but after spilling test strips across the kitchen counter, I checked my levels and they were normal. Something else was wrong, and I felt cold fear. I stumbled into the bedroom, still dripping from the shower, and woke my wife as I lay down to keep from falling over. Getting horizontal, I immediately felt a bit better.

After assessing the situation and talking to doctors at the Cancer Agency, she discovered that fluid loss probably made me dehydrated and light-headed. Electrolyte imbalances likely gave me the hangover-like symptoms too. I've been drinking fluids and taking Imodium, as well as sleeping, all day since. I feel mostly normal now, but the headache is still there. My wife is having a nap too, because she was out late last night and didn't get enough sleep before I zombie-crashed her awake first thing today.

I hate having to put her and the kids through crap like this. It scares me too. I hope tomorrow is better.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, diabetes, family, fatigue, ileostomy, love

Sometimes I forget how sick I am. Not often, but on a day like today when the sun is shining and I have a week off from chemotherapy, when I can take the car in for service, then buy some groceries and take the bus home, make dinner, clean up, help get the kids to bed, and record a podcast, there are times when I forget the cancer.

At times like this, I have to remember what I've learned in the past year, which is to say no.

When I was healthier, I'd often get roped into (or rope myself into) projects that might be fun, or might benefit me or other people, or might even make me some money—but that turned out to be way more work than I expected. Or I'd end up saying yes to many little things that, individually, wouldn't take much effort, but collectively sucked up way too much of my time.

I can't do that now, and it has been a good lesson. During the rollercoaster of surgeries and radiation and chemo and weight loss and weight regain and wild swings in blood glucose and mood and physical ability since the beginning of 2007, I've simply dropped quite a number of things, sometimes with no warning. The world kept spinning, and the people who had to pick up the pieces did a good job, or made do without my contributions.

Seeing that, I've made myself a rule. When I get offered some freelance work or come across a volunteer project or a hobby activity that I might want to do—the kind of thing I'd have reflexively said yes to previously—I ask myself a question: if I'm well enough to do this kind of work, shouldn't I be ready to go back to my day job? If not (and so far, my answer has always been no, I'm nowhere near healthy enough), then I shouldn't take on anything big and new either. I shouldn't, and can't, juggle what I used to.

It's refreshing. I do smaller things here and there, and have managed to keep doing some activities I really enjoy, such as podcasting, playing with my band on occasion, and writing this blog. I do some chores around the house, hack around with computers, watch a bit of Discovery Channel, hang out with my kids and make sure they get to school in the morning, and spend time with my wife so I can look into her amazing blue eyes.

For now, in between all my medical appointments and such, that's plenty. And that's what I say yes to.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, family, fatigue, love, navarik, podcast

The stereotype is that children seem to grow up instantly, but that's not my experience. Our older daughter turned ten today, Valentine's Day. She was born the same day that Catriona Le May Doan won a gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. Coincidentally, a couple of our good friends had their first child, also a daughter, two days ago. It occurred to me that by the time this new little girl reaches ten, my daughter will be twenty—the age I graduated from university.

The past ten years haven't, as the saying usually goes, gone by in a flash. They feel like ten years, really. And that's great. When my wife and I each held our friends' newborn yesterday, in the same hospital where our daughters (and I) were born, the little one's tiny sleeping face and delicious infant smell took us back to those early days when we first dove head-first into the sleep deprivation of early parenthood.

Since then we've had another daughter, now eight, and the kids have grown, learned to walk and talk and read and write and ride bikes and play piano, gone to preschool, made friends, started kindergarten, and now are in the second and fourth grades. They're learning math and spelling and have their own blogs and Gmail accounts. It doesn't surprise me that it took a decade to get here.

This spring also marks the twentieth anniversary of the day my wife and I first met, when we both worked as park naturalists for the Greater Vancouver Regional District parks department (now called Metro Vancouver Regional Parks). We were friends for a few years after that at the University of B.C., then lost touch until spring 1994, when we met again and started dating. By our first Valentine's Day, in 1995, we were already sharing a house and planning our wedding, which took place that August:

She's been my wonderful Valentine ever since, and I've never wanted another. Twenty years doesn't seem an unreasonable time since then either. We've shared and endured a lot together.

Simply being able to say "I met my wife twenty years ago" does make me feel a bit old, but I like that too. Grey hairs might or might not be a sign of wisdom, but they are a sign that I'm still alive. So 2008 is an important anniversary year, especially following the last one. Happy birthday to my daughter. Happy Valentine's Day to my wife. Happy one more day for me.

Labels: age, anniversary, birthday, family, love

Cosmic bowling and a birthday party at the bowling alley are an energetic experience with a mob of kids all around age eight. There was even a conga line.

Our youngest has been especially excited to turn eight, as she did today, because now she's allowed to swim in local public pools (including going down the waterslide) by herself—we adults can simply sit at the side for a change. She's been planning today's bowling party for over a month.

The kids had a good time. Hot dogs, cake, chips, pop, presents, and flashy lights and music. Everything an eight-year-old needs.

And, of course, later we had to tackle the inevitable blister-pack packaging. Argh.

Labels: birthday, family

I'm not the only one in the family who got new glasses this week.

In fact, I think my older daughter's new set may be the funkiest spectacles anyone in our family has ever owned. They're clear and colourless, except for groovy brushed-metal strips on the sides and a "Vogue" brand logo. She loves 'em, and her sister, who doesn't yet need glasses, is a bit jealous.

And she apparently did very well in her Royal Conservatory of Music grade 1 voice exam today (where I took the photo). She didn't seem at all nervous, but still refuses to let the rest of us listen to her practice singing at home, so she does that in the basement.

Labels: family, glasses, music

A few days ago my wife mused that she'd like something by her bedside to listen to podcasts and music on, so she doesn't have to go to sleep wearing earphones. Gadgety guy that I am, today I went out and found her just such a thing, the Logitech mm50 iPod speaker system. While it has been superseded by Logitech's newer and very similar Pure-Fi Anywhere system, the mm50 is still widely available (for now) in the $100 to $150 range, brand new.

I've had my eye on the mm50 since Adam Curry advertised it on his Daily Source Code podcast a couple of years ago. For our needs it's the right mix of reasonable size (it's about the length of a loaf of bread, and as deep as a thick slice), portability, ease of use, and, most of all, sound quality. The unit I bought was a discounted open-box floor demo from Best Buy, and while there I compared it to a variety of other options. It sounded superior to most of them, and better than pretty much anything in the sub-$200 category, including its newer Pure-Fi sibling.

It's not perfect. While it charges any iPod plugged into its dock connector, and includes adapters for several iPod models, the mm50 doesn't act as a true iPod dock that you can connect to your computer to sync up. (Earlier releases of the mm50 did offer that feature, and it's still noted in the manual, but newer revisions like ours don't have the necessary pass-through dock socket.) Volume control is two buttons, rather than a more sensible knob. There's no bass or treble or other equalization control—although the sound is so good those don't seem necessary, and not having them keeps down the button clutter. The included remote, while useful, doesn't offer as much iPod control as some competing models. The internal battery isn't easily replaceable.

But the mm50 supports both AC power and its internal rechargeable battery, includes a nice zippered and padded carrying case, has smart stabilizing fold-out metal feet, features a regular 1/8" stereo line input for non-iPod devices, and feels remarkably sturdy. There's a two-year warranty. The "3D surround sound" isn't really 3D, but it sounds shockingly good regardless.

I think the mm50 is a good value, especially if you can find it at a reduced price now that it's a discontinued model. My wife sure likes hers.

Labels: apple, audio, family, gadgets, ipod, logitech, podcast, shopping

For kids who live in Vancouver, snow is a bigger treat than in much of the rest of Canada. While it does snow here every year, it tends to arrive when cold outflow winds from the B.C. Interior get overwhelmed by a warm wet front from the Pacific—so it may very well dump down and then melt almost immediately.

Several times over the past few weeks, therefore, I've planned to take the kids out sledding in the fresh snow, only to have the sky turn to rain and the ground become unpleasantly sloppy before we get the chance. But not today. It was just around freezing, but the snow was pounding down, so we packed up and went.

We were the first sledders today at our local park, which has slopes as steep as any ski hill. So my daughters were able to get a bunch of good runs in before they were wet and cold and we went home for hot chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches. Unfortunately, because of my current cancer treatment, blood thinners, ileostomy bag, and all that, I don't think sliding and bumping down the hill is a good idea for me, so I just watched and took photos.

Labels: cancer, family, ileostomy, park, sledding, snow, vancouver, weather

These are my first new glasses since 2004. Not too much different, but I like 'em (actually, I was looking at a much weirder blue pair, but both my wife and I agreed these were better). And the soul patch is gone now too:

Labels: ego, family, glasses

Today's weather was as unpleasant as Vancouver winter gets: just above freezing, windy, with driving rain. Water sluiced down the gutters, and even brief jaunts outside, from the house to the car, or standing at the gas pump, felt bitter. Having something of a chemotherapy hangover from last week didn't help. I slept for four hours this afternoon in a grey funk.

The kids had trouble getting to sleep, in part because the house was creaking in the wind. I imagined what it must have been like to live in this climate in a Salish or Haida village 150 or 200 years ago—despite the richness of our landscape, surely even those First Nations people would have huddled inside their homes in weather like this too.

Then, tonight, around 11:30, I was getting ready for bed and looked out our front window. The wind had died down, the streets were dry, and the sky was clear; I could see stars and, in the klieg lights of the ski slopes, fresh snow on the North Shore mountains. It was quiet, and beautiful.

Labels: astronomy, chemotherapy, family, snow, vancouver, weather

I got my haircut yesterday in the midst of my cancer rollercoaster, so I was away from home all day. My daughters stayed at my parents the whole time, and when I got home, my oldest said, "Daddy, did you lose all your hair in one day?!"

I told her no, it wasn't from chemotherapy. I just got a haircut. But I have noticed that there is now a band of grey hair across the back of my head, from temple to temple, that wasn't there last time I got a short haircut a few months ago:

Labels: age, cancer, chemotherapy, ego, family

Some good things happened in my life in 2007. My kids took their first trip to Disneyland, and at the same time I made my first visit to the NAMM Show next door, which is like Disneyland for music geeks. I saw finally saw The Police in concert. My wife threw me a great birthday party. One of my best friends became pregnant with her first child, due in February 2008.

But otherwise it's been pretty rough. Back in January 2007, I first got my cancer diagnosis, and since then I've had four surgeries (one major), two rounds of chemotherapy (the second one is half-way over now), six weeks of daily radiation treatments, and almost a month in hospital, during which I dropped down more than 50 pounds below my normal weight.

To top it off, the year ended with the deaths of my mom's longtime friend, world figures Oscar Peterson and Benazir Bhutto, and my friend Martin, whom I'd known for more than 20 years. All role models, all flawed in their ways.

NOTE: I've now set up a memorial page for Martin, including links to articles about him, copies of the notes from his eulogy speakers, and photos from his memorial event on January 6, 2008.

And yet. And yet.

I have two very different yet wonderful daughters now approaching adolescence, and a wife who is by far my best friend and confidant. I have faced death and, so far, beaten it back. I have things I yet want to do, but also know that if I don't get to do them, I'm satisfied with what I've already accomplished in my life.

I'm glad to see 2007 gone, no doubt. I'm more optimistic now to see the end of 2008 than I was at some times during this past year. I'm surprisingly clear in how I see my place in the world. That's something of a gift.

Next Sunday there will be a memorial for Martin, who did not see the end of this year. I've been asked to speak briefly about his modeming and BBS days. One thing I know of him is that he was always trying to find new ways to have fun, and to be happy.

In my mind, we all have our lives and our families and friends, and we each must try to be happy, because they are all we have. Happy 2008 to you.

Labels: bbs, cancer, death, family, friends, geekery, holiday

This site runs on Blogger, as it has for more than seven years, but if I were starting over again today I'd probably use WordPress. That's what I recommend to my friends and relatives, so that other sites I work with, such as Simon's, my wife's podcast (as well as her personal blog), and Inside Home Recording all use it.

If you use the free WordPress.com hosting service, all maintenance and upgrades are handled for you by the fine folks who run it. But if, like me, you're reasonably geeky and need the extra customization available by running WordPress on your own server, the main hassle has been that, when a new version of WordPress comes out, upgrading the software involves:

1. Backing up your installation.
2. Downloading the latest version of WordPress.
3. Deactivating all the WordPress plugins on your sever.
4. Putting your website into Maintenance Mode (basically, activating a page that says, "Hold on, we'll be right back" to your web visitors).
5. Uploading a whole ton of updated files to your server, usually in several stages so you don't accidentally overwrite any of your own customizations, plugins, or themes.
6. Running an upgrade script to update the database.
7. Taking the site out of Maintenance Mode.
8. Checking to make sure nothing's broken.

I've gotten reasonably good at that, but it's still time consuming, especially for multiple sites. Today, while surfing around feeling gross from chemo side effects, I read about the Automatic Upgrade Plugin (via Scott Beale on Twitter). It does all of that stuff with only a few clicks.

I tried it on two websites without a hitch, even using the Automated Mode that avoids the multi-screen, "Here's the next step, CLICK HERE if you're sure you want to proceed" process—with hardly a hitch.

Then, confident, I proceeded to the third site, Inside Home Recording, again in Automated Mode, got almost all the way through, and encountered the dreaded "500 Internal Server Error" page. I tried rolling back to my previous installation of WordPress manually. No dice. I noticed even the IHR forums (which use different software) were dead, which was mysterious and a bit freaky. And when I tried putting a generic "Sorry I broke the site" HTML page at index.php or index.html at the root of the site, it still didn't work. Yikes! I'd blown up the whole website!

I had a hunch, and took a peek at the invisible .htaccess file. That's a plain old text file sitting on the IHR web server (which I think is in Texas). The ubiquitous Apache web server software it's running uses .htaccess as a list to answer the question, "What do I do with stuff on this machine when I sent it out to the Web?" It seems that either WordPress or the Automatic Upgrade plugin had added some extraneous stuff to the end of that file. I deleted the extra text and, bingo, IHR was back up.

Having rolled back to the older version of WordPress, I made sure I had proper backups again (I remind you, back up, back up, back up your stuff), then tried the Automatic Upgrade plugin once more, but this time in Manual Mode (i.e. confirmed each step). No problems on this second attempt, and IHR is spiffed up with the latest software release.

Elapsed time from upgrade to blow up to fix up? Less than ten minutes. Sometimes I'm glad I have some web-fu when I need it.

Labels: backup, blog, family, friends, geekery, insidehomerecording, lipglossandlaptops, podcast, software, web

NOTE: I've now set up a memorial page for Martin, including links to articles about him, copies of the notes from his eulogy speakers, and photos from his memorial event on January 6, 2008.

I mentioned that yesterday, in the shock of hearing about the death of my friend Martin, I hadn't yet cried. That changed today, and what prompted my tears was something small that I'd seen earlier this week and forgotten about.

As I've done since 2003, just before Christmas on December 23, I had sent out a holiday e-card (a photo of my family) to several dozen of our friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Martin was on the list. He had replied with a brief, somewhat mistyped Merry Christmas message and a mention of his upcoming planned New Year's party, sent from his BlackBerry.

The next day, long before I heard the news, I had read his reply among others from our friends, filed it away, and forgotten about it. Today, as the snow fell outside and I was deleting some of the bounced emails from defunct addresses on my e-card list, by chance I came across his message again. He'd sent it at 11:44 p.m. on the 23rd, and sometime between then and the time I first read and filed it on the 24th, he had died. It must have been one of the last messages he had sent. I went cold. It was like an email from a ghost.

That was too much, and I went into the bathroom and wept. I blew my nose. The tissue was bloody from the side effects of the chemotherapy that is keeping me alive. Not much later, I cried again on my wife's shoulder when I told her the story.

Tonight my daughters and wife and I had dinner with Simon, the friend who told me the bad news, on the lower slopes of the North Shore mountain where he and Martin and others had once shared a house—and where Martin had hosted my bachelor party in 1995, at the end of a night exploring empty storm drains under the City of West Vancouver. At dinner, Simon and my family and I drank a toast to our lost friend. We're still stunned, and we weren't sure what to say.

Since my post yesterday I've heard from several people to whom Martin was important. I realized that for many of us, he was a pivot in our lives, someone who, though he never reached age 40, affected the kinds of people his friends have become, and for the better. Perhaps that is what each of us should strive to do.

Labels: chemotherapy, death, family, friends

Here's a YouTube Christmas song from my kids:

Labels: family, holiday, music, video

From my youngest daughter, Santa Claus, and the rest of us here in my Great White North family, Merry Christmas.

Have a happy hoho!

Labels: family, friends, holiday, vancouver

Mark pointed out that my post yesterday was slightly wrong; the Winter Solstice was actually last night (not the night before), or this morning if you're on Eastern Time. For a demonstration of the contrast in weather, here's what it looks like right now in Vancouver:

Unfortunately, it looks like it will all melt before Christmas. Maybe before sundown today.

Labels: family, holiday, science, snow, weather

Here's a photo of the sun finally lighting up the wall of my daughters' school this morning. It was 8:53 a.m.—there's the Winter Solstice for you:

Labels: family, holiday, school, science, weather

Two photo-related things today:

Passport photos for infants: little things

Passport rules have changed in the past couple of years in Canada, and now children, even infants, must have their own passports rather than riding along on those of their parents. That includes passport photos. For our kids that was no problem, since when we got them passports in 2006 they were already 6 and 8 years old. But I've been to a few photo stores and watched as parents and staff have some difficulty keeping their floppy-headed two-month-olds upright, looking at the camera, and reasonably calm in order to get an acceptable shot.

Yesterday I had some time to kill in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano before my wife took me to my latest chemotherapy appointment, so I popped into the main store of Lens and Shutter to do some photographic geeking out. Their infant photography technique is smart: put a big white piece of cardboard on the floor, lie the child down on it, and have the parents stand behind the photographer to keep the kid engaged during the photo process. The little one I saw there was reasonably happy, kept his eyes open, and managed a reasonable passport photo in only a few tries.

My wife suggested I mention this as a useful tip. So if you have baby who needs a passport, go to Lens and Shutter or ask your local passport photographer to try a similar method.

Best astronomy photos: big things

Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomy Blog has posted the 2007 edition of his annual Best Astronomy Photos list. This year features more galaxies and fewer planets than the 2006 version. Look at this example:

NGC 3808A and NGC 3808B are several hundred million light years away, yet still we can see what they were up to back then. Wow.

Labels: astronomy, family, photography, science, travel

We have aquatic snails in our fish tank, rather by accident. They came in on one of the plants we bought for the aquarium, and they multiply like crazy.

As someone who specialized in marine invertebrates for my biology degree, I rather like these little molluscs. They keep the sides of the tank spotlessly clean. They move surprisingly quickly (for snails). There are, however, often too many of them—they outnumber the fish by at least an order of magnitude—so we occasionally have to scoop some out and, uh, send them to greener pastures. (I have no doubt that things are greener, not to mention sludgier, in the Greater Vancouver sewer system.)

The snails perform one stunt that I hadn't seen before. Often they will make their way to the top of the aquarium and then "surf" upside down on the underside of the water's surface, riding the currents created by the tank filter. Sometimes one will circulate around for several minutes, its muscular foot flat against the surface tension, then it will either stick to a side or drift down to the gravel at the bottom to start trucking its way around again.

It's pretty cool, and probably the fastest these creatures will ever travel in their lives. Unless they get to visit the sewer someday, I guess.

Labels: biology, extremesports, family, fish, invertebrates

On occasion I have told a story from my wife's and my honeymoon, which we spent driving around California in a rented Chrysler Le Baron convertible. One night, after visiting Knott's Berry Farm, we found a Mexican restaurant for dinner and ordered burritos.

They came, but we couldn't see them, because each one had what looked like an entire block of cheese melted on top. Even today I associate the sound of a Mexican pop band (there was one playing downstairs) with the sight of that mass of bubbling cheese.

Tonight my kids and I visited one of our local Pizza Hut restaurants (much closer than the one in the photo). We ordered the special: the Triple Cheese Explosion pizza, where not only is there cheese on the toppings, but the edge of the crust itself is injected with the stuff.

It was overload. After an appetizer, my older daughter ate about half of one substantial piece (including the cheesy edge), while my younger daughter ate only some toppings from hers. "Too much cheese!" she said. Her sister said, "Look, it makes the plate greasy." I ate a couple of slices, and the rest came home with us.

Next time I think we'll go back to Me-n-Ed's.

Labels: family, food, restaurant

To honour the end of NaBloPoMo (in which I didn't participate officially), this final post of November will contain a mishmash of nothing in particular:

Cory Doctorow is reasonably digitally paranoid, but he has a point about Facebook: "Adding more users to a social network increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance."

It's worth listening to what Dave Winer has to say about podcasting, since he helped invent it, so when he writes, "I've heard that podcasting didn't achieve its promise," that's worth reading. His response begins: "First, obviously it depends on what you felt was the promise. Second, it depends whether you think there's more to do." He does.

Evel Knievel was an icon during my childhood, the epitome of cool to elementary school boys in the '70s. He died today.

Finally, here's a video of our pal Dizzy the Podcast Puppy licking my daughter on the face, after some prompting:

Labels: animals, extremesports, facebook, family, friends, pets, podcast

My wife and I made up a Christmas shopping list today. We're trying to cut down on total spending craziness, and so far, thanks to her industriousness, we're doing pretty well with that so far.

Right now she's out taking care of some more of the list while I flake out at home with my chemo bottle. We'll probably put up the tree this weekend when I'm feeling a little better.

Here it comes, everybody, ready or not.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, family, holiday, shopping

...we went to a parade today:

Labels: family, holiday, vancouver<