good stuff thread.

[MoogleViper]

Well there's one definite "No" in that list.

 

As a Scottish man I'd thought you'd be a bit more accepting of gingers.

[Magnus]

He meant Ashley, obviously.

[bob]

Not sure if this is good or bad.

 

I saw my first ever wild badger today.

 

That's good!

 

But it was running madly across campus out in the open during daytime, which probably means there was something wrong with it.

 

That's bad...

[Jon]

Not sure if this is good or bad.

 

I saw my first ever wild badger today.

 

That's good!

 

But it was running madly across campus out in the open during daytime, which probably means there was something wrong with it.

 

That's bad...

 

It was probably being chased by government operatives wielding shotguns.

[bob]

I did wonder if it might have TB, but the only way to check is to look inside the hankerchief after a coughing fit (as every period drama has taught us), so i could not tell.

[drahkon]

A friend of mine has been in Africa for 6 months this year. She came over a couple of weeks ago and told me a lot about her time there. More importantly, she told me about the conditions people and especially children have to live in.

 

Nobody who hasn't seen this with his/her own eyes can imagine living like this.

She was pretty graphic in her description and I couldn't say anything...I still can't believe that it's even worse than I imagined.

 

You might wonder: "This is the 'good stuff thread', isn't it?"

Well, here comes the good stuff:

 

While she was living in Africa my friend organised some kind of 'self-made-charity'. Asking around via Facebook and relying on others to spread the word to donate some money.

Naturally a lot of people donated, because we knew that the money would arrive.

 

Today she showed me a lot of photos she and others have taken. They depict how the children received clothes, toys, learning material, etc. that were bought from the donations.

I wasn't there (duh), but the photos alone - seeing these children smile, knowing what they have to endure every day, knowing that a little bit of money made their lives a tiny bit better...it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

 

I don't want to put the donators - myself included - on a pedestal. I just want to share that those photos and the stories behind them made my day.

 

tl;dr

Saw a lot of smiles, made some children happy. Now I'm smiling.

[Goafer]

At work, we currently have a photo/notice board product that is in use in hospitals and we're trying to highlight how it could be useful in an Alzheimer ward. The idea is that you can put photos in it to remind the patient of key things in their life.

 

I had to make the content for the display unit, so needed photos of a fake person's family members, front door of their house and photos from their past.

 

 

 

He's currently touring Alzheimer wards all over the place.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Goafer

[bluey]

i'm in with a small chance of going to the gadget show next week for work... i'll know more tomorrow, probably. ^.^

 

I've been getting slightly bolder with my job-hunt, and in an effort to catch the attention of a foreign publisher that i just happened to REALLY like the games of, i sent them this email:

(their company name is "Neko Entertainment" "Neko" means "Cat" incase you didn't know!!)

 

Dear Neko,

Meyow mow meyoow, myow-meyow meyow. Meyow, meyow. Mowww, meyowmeyow (meyow meyow!!). Meyooooooooooow?

Meyow meyow myow Linkedin myow meyow-ow.

Myowmyow,

Myow.

 

Translation:

Dear Neko,

I have recently started to play your games, and I have to say - I really enjoy them! I am looking to gain experience within the gaming industry and I wondered if you might like some (free!) help from me with English language localisation?

I have previously worked as an English teacher in Japan and currently work retail in a video game shop, however I am hoping to move my career into community management within the video games industry. While I am job-hunting I want to get as much work experience onto my CV/Linkedin profile as possible!

I include a link to my Linkedin profile, where you can see more information.

Many thanks,

Rebecca.

 

....their CEO has since added me on Linkedin and i got a very nice but slightly pigeon-english "thanks, we'll keep you on file for future projects" email ...you catch more flies with crazy?

Edited October 25, 2013 by bluey

[nightwolf]

Nice one @bluey!

 

I got back from Thailand - my friend got ill half way through, but everything was wonderful, the hotel was stunning (The Kata Thani - Phuket if people are interested) and is in such a great place.

 

Picturesss:

 

 

 

(hotel is down at the beach)

 

 

Hnngg.

[bob]

It's a lot blurrier and less bright than i remember...

[bluey]

((Strange developments on the "Bluey emails crazy cat talk to a German publisher" front: 6 people from that company have now viewed my Li profile over Thursday and Friday of last week...?!))

 

It's confirmed!! I'm going to the gadget show live for work!! that's Thursday-sunday in Earls court! i'm super excited!! weee!

 

EDIT: OH! ALSO!!

I discovered that i'm psychic.

 

yep. psychic.

yesterday at GAME a couple were asking bout those blind-packaged pokemon rumble gachapon balls we sell, i told them we still had them but i'd had to move them out back to make room for all the batman stuff... i told them to wait a second and i'd go grab a random one for her - so i went out back, grabbed one from the BACK of the box, and came back out... i shook it next to my ear and said "yep - it's a pikachu." they bought it, she opened it. it was a fucking pikachu.

 

IT WAS A FUCKING SHINY PIKACHU.

 

i told her "no offence... but i hate you."

 

FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU~~!!!

Edited October 27, 2013 by bluey

[nightwolf]

It's a lot blurrier and less bright than i remember...

 

It was soooo bright, all the time. Blurriness not so much.

 

Thankfully it only rained in the evenings, but otherwise it was crazy hot.

[MoogleViper]

Welcome back, nightwolf. Glad you had a good time.

 

It's a lot blurrier and less bright than i remember...

 

[nightwolf]

[Kav]

I'm not posting in the bad stuff thread.

[The Bard]

Just had a dissertation idea based on persistent misdiagnosis of psychological "idiosyncrasies" such as autism, depressive disorders and ADHD entirely because they're seen through behavioral symptomotology rather than through looking at the causal mechanisms (through brain imaging and other techniques). For example, a missed dyslexia diagnosis in an above average student with co-morbid depressive/anxiety disorders easily presents as ADHD-PI symptoms. Want to look into an alternative testing methodology for these within distributive healthcare based on things such as frontal cortical thickness and axon length - empirically verifiable traits that are far more epistemically conclusive than "kid doesn't do homework - give him ritalin."

 

Putting this here so I don't forget

[Ashley]

And I've just had wine!

[nightwolf]

I'm not doing overtime this week.

 

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Just had a dissertation idea based on persistent misdiagnosis of psychological "idiosyncrasies" such as autism, depressive disorders and ADHD entirely because they're seen through behavioral symptomotology rather than through looking at the causal mechanisms (through brain imaging and other techniques). For example, a missed dyslexia diagnosis in an above average student with co-morbid depressive/anxiety disorders easily presents as ADHD-PI symptoms. Want to look into an alternative testing methodology for these within distributive healthcare based on things such as frontal cortical thickness and axon length - empirically verifiable traits that are far more epistemically conclusive than "kid doesn't do homework - give him ritalin."

 

Putting this here so I don't forget

 

That sounds really great.

[Jimbob]

Well, managed to get a hotel room on the 30th November so at least i can have a great night out with my work collegues this year, wasn't best happy not being able to get a place to stay and having to come home earlier. I suppose i was lucky, considering Autumn Internationals are on that weekend and finding somewhere to stay is extremely hard.

[jayseven]

@The Bard from my layman perspective I can only imagine that just as behaviours are shared by various labelled disorders, areas of brain activity are shared as well. Is there really a striking difference in both forms of diagnosis? Would be interested to hear.

 

Kind of related; my colleague has endometriosis, and the doctors are now prescribing her with IBS medicine to deal with those symptoms. It strikes me, the layman, as a ridiculous concept. It's not addressing the root cause at all, so why bother?

 

mehpost.

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

@The Bard from my layman perspective I can only imagine that just as behaviours are shared by various labelled disorders, areas of brain activity are shared as well. Is there really a striking difference in both forms of diagnosis? Would be interested to hear.

 

Kind of related; my colleague has endometriosis, and the doctors are now prescribing her with IBS medicine to deal with those symptoms. It strikes me, the layman, as a ridiculous concept. It's not addressing the root cause at all, so why bother?

 

mehpost.

 

My anecdotal contribution: My best friend at uni and I were shocked how much we were alike when we first met. Turns out she suffers from anxiety, and I, as you probably know, have autism/Asperger's/schizotypy (whatever they're calling it at this point); what's interesting is how similar many of our reaction patterns and experiences are despite different diagnoses.

 

Also vaguely related, another friend of mine had been in the psychiatric system for a long time without much luck until she met me back in gymnasium; then it dawned on her that she might be autistic. The reason she hadn't got that diagnosis earlier? She's a girl (autism apparently occurs four times more often in boys). The reason appears to be that she - perhaps by virtue of being a girl - had a slightly better social sense and thus didn't register as an autist because she knew not to blabber on quite as endlessly about her interests.

[Beast]

So except for completing my Harry Potter blu-ray collection with the last blu-ray that I needed (the 3D version of Deathly Hallows: Part 1) and getting The Dark Knight Rises on blu-ray for £5, I have become one of the fastest rowers in my gym. Nobody can beat my time of 3 minutes and 40 seconds to row 1000m. Quite bloody chuffed with that!

 

Also, I bought a fleecy Superman onesie for cold nights and it's just so fucking comfortable!...ONESIES ARE COOL, STILL!

 

I also accidentally found out tonight that my best friend is getting me the Lego Harry Potter games for Christmas. Not holding my breath but I'M SO FREAKIN' EXCITED!

 

Oh and 22 days left until Catching Fire!

[The Bard]

@The Bard from my layman perspective I can only imagine that just as behaviours are shared by various labelled disorders, areas of brain activity are shared as well. Is there really a striking difference in both forms of diagnosis? Would be interested to hear.

 

You would assume that to be the case, but often it isn't. Danny made the point that him and a friend share symptoms yet have been offered two disparate diagnoses; autism and anxiety. Well, anxiety disorders are a problem of activation, whereas autism is more to do with the brain being structurally composed slightly differently. If you look at an image of the brain of a person suffering from panic or anxiety disorders, there's a high likelihood that amygdala activation (a part of the limbic system that, amongst other things, deals with emotional conditioning and fear) will occur more frequently, and that the area will likely be engorged, while the bundle of fibers that connect the prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain will be thinned.

 

In autism (and in almost diametrical opposition, in dyslexia) you have slight idiosyncrasies in what are known as "microcolumns"; small interconnected computational groupings of neurons in the brain's input analysers. In autistic people, the axon lengths of neurons within these microcolumns are reduced. In dyslexia, the axon lengths are greater, meaning that the individual neurons have a greater ability to interconnect with other systems, but at the expense of the speed at which action potentials (electrical signals) travel down them. You can almost infer from the structure, the perceptual traits of people with these two fairly awesome in their own way "disorders." Autistic people tend to have a swifter processing speed than most - perhaps at the expense of metaphorical understanding, whereas dyslexics tend to have an increased ability to process in a "top down" way, ie. contextualise and apply a principle or idea to a very wide variety of phenomena.

 

As for diagnostics - obviously I'm not really sure about the extent to which our current imaging technology can even detect things as specific as axon length, but we should still try to look at the causal in conjunction with the behavioral - a diagnosis isn't a small thing to throw around, it can affect a person's entire conception of who she is.

 

Rambled for a while there - sorry, you invited it

[Jon]

Is there a better studio than Marvel for casting leading ladies

 

Hayley Atwell

Natalie Portman

Liv Tyler

Emma Stone

 

We'll forgive them for Gwyneth Paltrow, everyone makes mistakes.

 

The films aren't too bad either.