Having been sidelined from fishing for a little while, I took it upon myself to give the site a bit of a makeover as I thought it needed sprucing up a bit. I do like to have a good old tinker, although not entirely proficient in the witchcraft that is coding, I’m more than happy to delve in and have a go; I mean, what’s the worse that can happen?
Undeterred, I ran a test blog and installed a fresh copy of WordPress along with ‘Panorama‘ a WordPress theme by ‘Themocracy‘. It was the only theme I found that was near enough to the way I wanted the site to look.
Once installed, I set about my tinkering and made a few changes – some minor and some not so minor – to the the theme until I was satisfied I had it the way I wanted. The most obvious changes are the colour scheme and background layout, the minor changes are the rounded corners on the blocks (Update. They’ve been removed for CSS validation purposes but I’m trying to find a work around by use of images) and dividers and other small graphics. The header image is a picture of Seven Sisters on the East Sussex coastline overlayed with a photo taken the year before last at Seaford, when I was out fishing with our son, Alex. The layers were toned down and given a shade of blurring and transparency to give the desired effect.
When I was satisfied, I had all the changes done, I copied all the relevant files, installed the new theme into the live blog, overwrote the theme files with the test copies and away we went. There’s just a few minor tweaks to be done under the bonnet but that’s it really. Now to go fishing.
Ahh…. did I mention the FPO’s new blog… I’m sure I did but just in case I forgot, it’s creamuntilfluffy.co.uk
I have been instructed by the FPO (Fishing Permissions Officer) aka my wife, Anna, that unless I wish to find all my tackle in a mangled heap at the bottom of the garden and see myself being allowed out only once per bi-annual period to fish with a crab line, I must add here a link to her new blogging site.
I therefore publish said link to ‘creamuntilfluffy.co.uk‘, a site dedicated to the art of cookery, recipes and other kitcheny type things.
Please do drop in and have a look around, you’ll find some really, really tasty stuff there. Please feel free to leave a comment.
That’s it, all done and I’m happy to report that I’m now pain free as far as my lower back and leg go for the first time in years. I’m still sore from the surgery but this will settle down over time, especially once the ‘staples’ have been removed and things heal naturally.
The biggest surprise for me was that on arrival at the hospital and being seen by the consultant neuro-surgeon, he told me that he had decided not to do the trial run but to go ahead with the full and final procedure there and then. This was a fantastic bonus for me, as it meant that there would only be one procedure and not two which obviously meant only one visit and less time in hospital.
I’m told that the procedure is relatively simple. They made an incision just below the shoulder blades and placed one end of the lead along the spinal cord. This end ‘forks’ and has a number of electrodes which transmit the stimulation to either side of the cord. The lead was then ‘threaded’ along the spine to the stimulator unit that was placed in a ‘pocket’ cut just above my right buttock, which has left me with a nice small hump.
Once the surgical part of the process had been completed, a technician then calibrated the stimulator and loaded the different programs that vary the types on stimulation available. This took some time as there are so many variables to consider but once completed, it gives me total control over how the pain is managed.
The stimulator unit itself is controlled from a remote control which I hold over the buried unit when I activate any of the buttons to change the stimlation level or type.
The stimulator runs on rechargeable batteries which should last for years, meaning I don’t have to be cut open to have them changed (phew). The charger is a small disc-like unit which sits in a recharging base station. When I need to recharge the stimulator, I am prompted by the remote, I then take the charging disc and stick it on the skin over the stimulator using a double sided sticky pad. The charge then passes through my skin to the stimulator beneath. The remote lets me know once it’s charged and I’m ready to go again.
This whole thing has meant the start of a new life; free of pain and freedom to do the the things I had previously taken for granted. Needless to say, I’ll be making the most of it once I’ve got the soreness out of the way and it’s declared safe to do so.
A big thank you to the manufacturer of the ‘Precision Plus‘ Spinal Cord Stimulation hardware that’s made this possible, Boston scientific, the staff at Hurstwood Park neurological unit at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath for their kindness and professionalism. Many thanks to Dr. Stephen Ward and James Akinwunmi for their work in obtaining this treatment for me and James in particular for doing the surgery.
Apologies to those of you bored enough to read these pages for the recent lack of reports. I’m afraid I’ve been laid up with the chronic back pain I suffer from, so haven’t managed to get out much. However, I think this may be about to change.
After a long battle, I’ve finally been given the go-ahead to have surgery that means I could be pain free for the first time in years. I’m absolutely over the ****in’ moon. The procedure is called Spinal Cord Stimulation and in simple terms, consists of an electrode inserted in the spine and pulses are sent along the electrode from a ‘magic box’ that is implanted nearby. The pulses replace the pain sensation with a tingling which is slightly more desirable. The whole thing is managed by a remote control which can be used to vary the levels of the pulses. Here’s a video presentation for anyone who is interested.
I’m booked into hospital for 9th October for the trial which should last for about 2-3 weeks. If that is sucessful, then I’ll have the full implant done immediately. I’ll update the progress here for the sake of anyone reading who may be in a similar situation and is considering or has been offered this treatment.
Looks like I’ll be missing some fishing in the mean time while it’s all being sorted but that’s a small price to pay to be pain free. This also gives Seaford beach a chance to build up its stocks ready for my return.
Just gotta keep me fingers crossed that it works.
Haven’t posted much recently, due, in part to the absence of a computer.
The old girl finally gave up the ghost and shut down forever. There had been intermittent problems and signs of impending doom such as a hard drive failure which resulted in some lost data. I know I should have had backups and I was going to do them ‘tomorrow’ but I never actually did it.
I managed to recover about 80% of the data using the hard drive in a freezer trick. I didn’t for one second believe it would work, but luckily I was proved wrong.
Finally the main board died and that was it. It worked out cheaper in the end to get a new system rather than to get new main board and have to upgrade all the components along with it.
I settled for a ‘barebones’ system from Novatech which comprised of:
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Mainboard
Intel E6600 Core2Duo processor
1024Mb DDR2 667Mhz PC5400 RAM
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream ATX case
I got it up and running with a Maxtor 200Gb SATA drive plus all other components salvaged from the old system such as the LG DVD writer, LG DVD player, GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 graphics card.
What followed was the usual slog of re-installing the OS (Windows XP Pro), all the software and re-configuring to get everything ‘just right’. Well it’s all done now, so things can get back to whatever normal is supposed to be.
Next on the agenda is to set up Linux (Suse 9.2 Pro), so I can have my dual boot machine again.
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