It’s possible that I’ve been conspicuously absent from LJ since the end of May. Whether or not I’m being big-headed here is for readers to comment on. However, here are my reasons and excuses, in as near to chronological order as I can manage. Some of the following is rather gross and personal.

• • March to May
    I was almost permanently thirsty. The amount I was drinking caused me to wake frequently during the night to urinate. You can guess what was coming, can’t you?
  • 3 May
    I realised I had thrush. Over the counter medication (Canestan Duo) didn’t shift it and the thirst/urination-interrupted sleep was still present, so I eventually decided to check with my GP.
  • Monday 24 May, 4pm
    My GP prescribed stronger antibiotics and topical cream for the thrush.
  • Thursday 27 May, 3pm
    A blood sample was taken.
  • 28-31 May
    My hostess and I were in Worcester, clearing my mountain of stuff from my parents’ loft. I was reunited with my vinyl, my books, more old mac kit than I realised I had and clothing I’d not seen or worn for at least 5 years. Yeehah!
  • Monday 31 May
    This is the bit that must never reach my parents: Having a blood sugar reading of 17 mmol per litre, I had officially joined the ranks of diabetics. Because my mother had become diabetic at around the age I am now, I’d been vaguely expecting it. I recall that at the time I wasn’t upset – I had an explanation for the thirst and urination, even the thrush. (Diabetics are more prone to skin infections anyway, and the amount of sugar in my urine must have provided an ideal home for the yeast!) I just had a condition that needed to be managed with diet and possibly some pills.
  • Later the same day
    It felt as if I’d strained a sphincter muscle during a bowel movement. If only …!
  • Tuesday 1 June
    The pain in my backside remained but I went to work as normal.
  • Wednesday 2 June
    The pain in my backside had increased to the point of near immobility. My GP told me that I had an abcess on the inside of my right cheek. I was prescribed antibiotics (amoxicillin plus clavulanic acid) and told to provide a fresh blood sample the next day.
  • Later the same day
    My hostess and I learned that I dear friend had died today. No further comment is possible just now.
  • Thursday 3 June
    Between bouts of physical pain and sadness, I completed my sister’s tax return on-line. In the afternoon, my cuddly pig and I staggered to the phlebotomist through a haze of pre-phlebotomy fasting and feverishness. I’d booked a taxi but managed to sleep through the doorbell-ring.
  • Later the same day
    Other friends announce ‘Alice Jean was born today She is a beauty!!!!’
  • Friday 4 June to Monday 7 June
    Bouts of pain interspersed with lucidity and co-codamol-induced dizziness. In the middle of Monday morning, I woke from nurofen-sleep to find the pain had gone – the abcess had burst, leaving a few teaspoons of cold runny custard in my underwear. I went to an appointment with my GP (originally arranged to discuss my diabetes) but was told that I needed to go to hospital to get the wound investigated.
  • Monday 7 June to Wednesday 9 June
    Examination under general anaesthetic, morphine dreams, hospital food totally unsuitable for a diabetic vegan, even though my dietary preferences and needs had been asked about! Blood sugar in mid-20s, but apparently surgical wards don’t worry about this. (That’s what I was told!)
  • Tuesday 15 June to Saturday 19 June
    Back to relatively normal routine, including work, apart from not cycling and having the wound redressed daily by the practice nurse for the first few days.
  • Sunday 20 June
    Pain in my backside recurred. I assumed it was just the would sealing itself up so, with my GP’s tentative agreement, I went to work on Monday.
  • Monday 21 June
    After a couple of hours at work, I felt dampness down below. It turned out I was bleeding. I took myself back to the Western General Hospital and learned that I most likely had a fistula. This was confirmed during another examination under anesthetic, so the surgeons put in a seton suture. During that afternoon after the surgery, my blood sugar became crazily high (over 27 units at one point) so I was attached to an insulin pump. Hourly blood-sugar readings, pain and weakness that prevented me from moving to a less on comfortable position made Monday night the low-point of this period of my life. Hospital food was much more suitable this time around.
  • Tuesday 22nd June
    Discharged in the early evening with gliclazide and paracetamol and a suture that is to remain in my arse for at least 6 weeks

I need to say here that life could be a huge amount worse. Colleagues, friends and my hostess have been incredibly supportive and of course I’ve benefitted from modern medicine and the NHS. So here’s looking forward to the end of my arse-invasion, learning how to manage my diabetes (diabetes-school starts on 7th July) and being as near to my version normal as can be managed.

One more thing… I’m not telling my parents about my diabetes because they don’t need the extra worry. They have health problems and other worries, so they just don’t need anything else to worry about, especially when they can’t do anything about it. They couldn’t help but hear about my abcess- and fistula-induced hospital visits but that’s enough.

After cooking lots of curry and successfully feeding it to people on Saturday, my hostess and I found we had increased our larder’s entropy to the point of danger. So we bought a large amount of plastic tubs and created labelled order-paradise.

Following this order-thon, I was impatient to get out. I planned to follow cycle-route 1 to Dalmeny and then take the train back to Haymarket. Oops!

1. At Cramond Brig, I missed the sign for CR1 and so followed a sign for CR1/CR76 which took me into the Dalmeny estate. When I got to what I think is Dalmeny House, I found absolutely no trace of signs and, thinking I must has stumbled onto private land, I tried to retrace my path. I think I then got to Home Farm, before a local told me how to get to Queensferry Shore Walk – which involved several steep skittery gravel-tracks until I got to the golf-course to the east of Dalmeny House, where I’d been about 30 minutes previously! I reached South Queensferry and then Dalmeny station without further incident apart from being rained on.
2. At Dalmeny station I waited for the 19:37 train back to Haymarket. 19:37 came and went – no train. A help-point/train enquiries speakerbot beckoned. It informed me that essential engineering work had necessitated replacing this afternoon’s trains with bus services, and that it was unlikely that Vilior would be taken by bike. Fortunately, I’d spotted the actual CR1 as I approached Dalmeny station. The return 10 miles took me just over 45 minutes, so I can claim a sustained speed of 12 mph, which is fairly satisfying considering the previous parts of the journey through lots of hills on poor and occasionally treacherous surfaces.

The rest of the photos are here.

I’ve not had the appropriate combination of energy, time and inclination to blog recently. Many things have made me want to say something but I’ve not been able to distill it into coherency until now.

In common with just about everyone in the UK, I’m dissatisfied with the election results. I’ve shoved my soap-box into a corner so that I avoid ranting about PR, regionalism, federalism, etc. It won’t help choose who governs just now anyway. However, those of a religious persuasion might be pleased that while the parties try to coalesce, GOD is in charge.

The last week of campaigning mostly passed me by anyway.

• I visited Worcester last weekend to do more about my sister’s finances, dealings with HMRC, IT, etc. I put versions of VNC running on both her laptop and my dad’s PC so that, provided they open a relevant tunnel on their router, I can sort stuff.
• I got back to Edinburgh late on Monday, only to have to get up far too early for the first stage of being assimilated by the Bishopborg. I didn’t leave early enough to cycle any further than from the station to our offices-to-be but I was able to cycle from there to Croy before returning to Edinburgh. The route passes through Kirkintilloch before diverting into countryside and passing a bit of the Antonine Wall. I feel more exploring coming on.
• When I got back to Leckie Towers, I found a mountain of work waiting for me, so that I escaped well after 8 pm.
• If I recall correctly, Wednesday was another late day, leading to me being utterly brain-dead all through Thursday and Friday.

However, I appear to have regained some energy today. My hostess cycled to her piano lesson in Colinton this morning. My plan was to catch her up somewhere on the canal towpath, so that we could then cycle on as far as we liked. As I left Servants Quarters, my hostess told me she was on the path and would keep going. By the time I’d reached the start of the canal, she’d reached the bypass. She then told me that she’d stopped at the Bridge Inn in Ratho. I managed to completely miss Ratho, not beginning to realise this until I was through Broxburn – about 5 miles past Ratho. After sending telephonic apologies, I started back for Ratho and met my hostess just east of the Almond Viaduct. We then cycled in a more leisurely style to Linlithgow. It was quite pleasing to find that our leisurely cycling pace was about 8mph. I think both of us could have managed to cycle on to Falkirk: a further 12 miles by the towpath. Next time!

I love this.

A very good day. Firstly, my hostess and I took the first car-load of bequeathed rubbish from our cellar to the recycling centre. The staff there were noticeably friendly and helpful. My hostess then spent the afternoon in town while I bought some bits and pieces for Vilior at the Edinburgh Cycle Co-op. Then the sunshine and Union Canal path beckoned.

There’s good tarmac from the start of the canal until a small distance after the bypass. After that, the path is mostly packed earth and stone, with the occasional muddy puddle: rather momentum-sapping. This, and having not taken any drink, may account for the feeling that my hands were holding separate handlebars going in different directions around Broxburn. Perhaps my corpus callosum had been jolted into inactivity.

Vilior had his first puncture not far past Broxburn and his second hardly any distance after. Spending over an hour playing canal-side grease-monkey is my excuse for taking 3¹₄ hours overall to cycle 21 miles, so I’m claiming an average speed of 10·5 mph for this run.

Vilior and I took the train back to Haymarket. A blessed can of Irn Bru enabled me to potter home and find that my hostess and her friend had just started cooking aubergine and potato bhuna. Large amounts of good food and and small amounts of alcohol later, I’m very happy with my lot.

Some time after mid-day today, I started cycling south from Corrie. Not long after 2pm I reached Blackwaterfoot. I had lunch in, er can’t remember – but I’ll post a photo of the establishment as and when. I left Blackwaterfoot around 3pm, reached the coast-road about 4:20 and arrived at Corrie 20 minutes later.

So my coast-road to Corrie statistics would be about 5 miles in 20 minutes: about 15 mph.

Even allowing an hour’s stop at lunch, the overall 28-mile route took something under 4 hours. That averages, say, 7mph. If you discount the coast-road to Corrie run, I took 3:40 for 23 miles – just over 6 mph.

But I don’t care about this apparent slowness because there’s a bloody great hill in the middle of Arran and I cycled up and down it twice.

Every now and then I try to cycle faster than crawling pace for longer than just from Servants Quarters’ to work. Here’s some data:

Sunday 28th February: Servants’ Quarters to Musselborough
– out 45 minutes (9·2 mph against the wind)
– back would have been 40 minutes but I stopped in Leith to go shopping (10·2 mph)

Monday 1st March: Servants’ Quarters to PC World
– out 23 minutes (9·1 mph)
– back 20 minutes (10·5 mph)

Wednesday 3rd March: Servants’ Quarters to PC World
– out 18 minutes (11·7 mph)
– back 15 minutes (14 mph)

I wrote at the time that I’d like to get to 15 mph for such short bursts. (Of course, a lot depends on wind, traffic, traffic lights and whether it’s safe to take on major roundabouts.) For longer journeys, such a as visit to a friend in Spott (East Lothian), I’d be happy with 12mph in optimal conditions.

Today, the weather was much less than optimal, my abdomen felt rather tender and my thighs were not at their best due to prolonged spacehoppering yesterday. However, I’m quite please that I managed the SQ to Tescos (just next to PC World) run:
– out 18 minutes (13 mph)
– back 16 minutes (14·6 mph)
Of course, I only went that way to buy tobacco at pre-budget prices.

I don’t think I would have achieved even these mediocre speeds without jPhone blaring out a Genius mix based on my favourite MSP track.28

I visited Arran this weekend. The place I stayed has recently had broadband installed. Here you can see HEXIE controlling SURGE to tell me that jPhone (and I) were in Corrie.

This was achieved through BackToMyMac: no other VNC involved!

Next week: back to torturing my computers with layer upon layer of hypervision/virtualisation.

A quick web-search shows that there is VNC software for MacOS9: TestPlant’s Vine Server.

It’s working on PISMO here.

By the way, for those not familiar with Apple product-lines, PISMO is one of these, upgraded with

• 128 GB 5400 RPM hard disk
• 1 GB memory
• slot-loading DVD-RW drive,
• Airport wireless 802.11a/b card
• VillageTronic DVI videocard.

SURGE is one of these, with 4GB memory, 1920 × 1200 display and 2·6 GHz processor.

HEXIE is shy. You can see what she is when you meet her.

As any fanboi-fule know, since at least OSX Tiger (10·4), Apple has built LAN-based control of other macs into the OS. (In 10·4, it’s known as Apple Remote Access; in 10·5 upwards, it’s known as Screen Sharing.)

This week I’ve been exploring its abilities and limitations. It works just fine for controlling my other macs from SURGE, my main machine. It can even control my beat-up, second-hand PC laptop, on which I’ve installed TightVNC server. (I did try RealVNC – the original VNC software – but I couldn’t achieve connections.) This isn’t a surprise – ARA/SS is built on VNC.

Within my LAN, it just works, allowing me to have an ergonomic set-up with the laptops on shelves above my desk. But there is a caveat:

• If PISMO is connected to my DVI monitor via PISMO’s extra videocard and my KVM device, the Screen Sharing display has an interesting hue, even though the external and internal displays are normal. (The displays aren’t mirrored, so I can make the most of the 20″ DVI monitor.)

I’m puzzled that the same doesn’t occur with HEXIE, who has an external VGA monitor to make up for her very small internal monitor.

If HEXIE is outside my LAN, thanks to BackToMyMac (and regardless of whether ‘official’ VNC port-forwarding is enabled on my router/firewall/ADSL modem), HEXIE can connect directly to SURGE’s volumes, allowing me to copy files back and forth. This means I don’t need to carry all my data with me: I can just grab what I need when I need it. Also, SURGE stays at home so he’s backed-up hourly to our TimeCapsule. Better, HEXIE is much lighter than SURGE, which saves my back.

Better still, so long as the ports used by VNC are forwarded by my router/firewall/ADSL modem to SURGE, Screen Sharing allows me to directly control SURGE. This means that HEXIE can tell SURGE to work on SURGE’s own files (which hence remain safely backed up), without risking having multiple versions of files on different computers. Also, although I’ve not tried it yet, I believe that SURGE could process files on volumes connected to HEXIE, thus relieving HEXIE’s less impressive processor, HD and RAM, without the files ever really leaving their homes.

If HEXIE is connected to the internet via my O2 mobile broadband dongle, only Screen Sharing is available. But that’s enough to allow me to email files to myself, so this slight lack isn’t an issue provided I copy the results back to SURGE.

If VNC port-forwarding is switched off, then HEXIE is restricted to BackToMyMac-enabled direct connections to SURGE’s volumes and files. (So, if VNC port-forwarding is switched off and HEXIE is connected to the internet via the O2 dongle, HEXIE has no remote access to SURGE.) I’ve not found a way to remotely access the router to switch on port-forwarding (or do anything else to the router, for that matter). This is natural result of security, so I’m not worried. It’s just up to me to remember to do switch on port-forwarding when needed.

However, what if both my hostess and I both want remote control of our home machines? Accessing SURGE from my hostess’s PowerBook would then allow her to tell SURGE to BackToMyMac into her desktop machine across our LAN. But this means giving her unfettered access to my main machine and all my data. Good job I trust her! The other obvious limitation is that only one of us can have useful access at any time. Both local machines could observe SURGE but if my hostess is using SURGE to access her home machine, then the image of SURGE (on both local machines) will be completely occupied and we’d be fighting over control of a single cursor!

This also raises a serious question: how do real tech-support folk access multiple machines on a LAN behind a router/firewall, without changing the target of VNC port-forwarding on the router/firewall?

• Leaving the security set-up open to outside manipulation seems wrong.
• Relying on the presence of a drone within the LAN’s building seems equally fraught. Would you really want to encourage lusers to guddle with security software?
• Even worse, what if the building containing the machines to be accessed is unstaffed?

Potential answers seem to be

• a very secure tunnel to the accessees’ router/firewall, so that the inside-LAN end of the port-forwarding tunnel through the router/firewall can be securely changed from outside
• multiple tunnels from accessees within the LAN, through the router/firewall, to the tech-support staff. After all, VNC works by VNC servers on the accessees serving monitor images and choosing to receive mouse-clicks and keyboard commands from VNC clients on the tech-support machines. If the accessees close the holes in their internal firewalls that allow VNC commands to reach them, the tech-support staff would be powerless, no matter what port-forwarding exists on the LAN router/firewall.
• Or just maybe I should have realised something from my work’s firewall being a separate box from the ADSL box, sitting between the internet connection and the switches that connect our desktops to the outside world.

Comments gratefully received!

Also, my current system relies on the macs running OSX. I have a game that works best on native OS9 (hence on PISMO) and yet totally borks if PISMO connects to the big monitor, which would otherwise enhance game-play. I hope that an OS9-happy VNC server would get around this but I fear that VNC was developed on *nix, then ported to Windows while giving older OSes a body-swerve. More investigations to come.