T + 500 Two Mini-Milestones

As the title suggest, this post is about two minor milestones, one health related and one not.

First the health stuff.

T + 500

Yes I have reached five hundred days post-transplant and since we like big round numbers like that I guess it is worth mentioning. That equates to one year four months and a few days which sounds far less interesting.

Since stopping my prednisolone and related drugs things have been ok. I've have a few dodgy days when my energy has been low or I have felt nauseous but they seem to be less frequent now. They did seem to be time related always occurring around about 11:00 am .

Whether this was a certain time after my morning drugs had been digested and metabolised or part of some other biological cycle I am not sure. This is something I can mention when I go see the endocrinologist or hormone doctor as I have now had my appointment for that clinic come through. It's Wednesday 3rd Feb. This clashed with my appointment with the company medical advisors so I have moved that appointment to the 8th of Feb. I know where my priorities lie.

As an aside I have noticed that there are some words that you only really learn how to spell correctly when you have occasion to use them for real, as it were. It took me a while to get that endocrinologist is spelt as it is. In the run up to the year 2000 and the Y2K bug I learnt how to spell millennium ( two "els" and to "ens" ) and regular readers will now that in 2008 I unfortunately had to learn a mnemonic to help me spell diarrhoea.

My skin has been a bit dry and flaky and I am forever vigilant for my GVHD rash but so far the E45 moisturiser applied twice a day is helping a lot.

A Year on Twitter

The 26th January 2009 saw my first real tweet. I say real because I did use twitter briefly a few months before but never really got into it. For reasons lost in the mists of last year @andyhollyhead @gdsr and I ( @simonstanford ) started to make more use of twitter. Although twitter was already quite popular it has since become massively more mainstream and it uses have been extended and expanded.

I've mentioned twitter a few times before but for an overview of the micro-blogging service have a look here.

I'd like to take a few moments to talk about twitter and what it means to me and how I use it.

On my Mac I use an application called Tweetdeck that allows me to group the people I follow into different categories and lay them out in columns so they are easier to read and I'm going to use the groupings I have on that as a means to discuss my twitter use.

Personal

This is the primary reason I use twitter. In this group are all the people I know and have met personally. Twitter updates to and from this group are in one sense just ways to be able to update all my friends and acquaintances about what I am doing. A bit like sending texts to everyone in my contacts list but much easier ( and cheaper ) to do.

These tweets can be banal like what I cooked for my tea ( though sometimes these have links to recipes other people may like ) or more "important" ( and I use the term advisedly ) about my current health status. For this latter use I really am using twitter for micro-blogs as a quick update before I can get to write a long blog like this.

Seeing updates from people I know throughout the day gives me a warm fuzzy feeling ( unless they have bad news but even then it is somehow a positive connection ) and when working from home , as I do 3 days a week, it helps provide a bit of social interaction that would otherwise be provided by colleagues round the metaphorical or physical water cooler.

There are a few people in this category with whom I have otherwise lost touch and this has been a great way to get/keep the friendship fires stoked until I can see them face to face when I am back in full circulation.

Related to that using twitter has also re-ignited my use of facebook as I am able to update my facebook status from tweets and so this has led to me having more interaction on facebook than I used to.

Celebs

Ah celebrities. What is it that makes a lot of us fascinated by celebrities and keen to know what goes on in their lives? I guess celebrities are to some extent people we admire and by finding out about them we feel more connected to them. It makes them more real and maybe feeds some hidden sense that we are by the reflected light of their brilliance made a little more special.

Of course there are celebs and there are Celebs and of course I only follow people who are actually worthy of being Celebs. Well of course I would say that wouldn't I. There can be a certain amount of snobbery about celebrity and I am as guilty of that as the next person.

I like to think I only follow celebs who are talented and entertaining. Such as the King of Twitter, @stephenfry , his minstrel in chief @MitchBenn , the matchless @simonmayo and for a less well known example @boburnham a brilliant young comedy song writer/performer.

In fact add in @alancarr and @wittertainment ( the joint Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo films tweets ) and those are all the celebrities I follow.

The way celebrities use twitter varies a lot and Stephen Fry has written and spoken a lot about this. Stephen has over one million followers whom he can speak to directly. For publicity purposes this can be enormously influential but he at least uses his power with responsibility. If he backs a cause or takes issue with something thousands upon thousands of people will do the same.

Some celebs, whom I no longer follow, used twitter just as an extension of their public personas. They are, to use the showbiz phrase "always on", using twitter just to make jokes and witticisms and telling you very little about the real them. These people rapidly become rather boring and to me it is part of the bargain: I read your tweets about your latest gig, book, charity cause etc. in exchange for personal glimpses into your life now and then.

Other

This is an interesting gallimaufry of tweeters (guess who watches QI ). They are neither famous nor do I know them personally. They can be people that other people follow or people that provide useful information such as the owner of the Electric Cinema. Some are just interesting people who have followed me and I have followed in return and subsequently found them to be really good to follow.

So there you have my life in twitter and the reasons I use it. It is something you either "get" or you don't and it took me a few goes to get it.

Now as for Google Wave what's that all about.....?