Google.
Still having problems with Google’s front end to blogs. Think I’ve worked it out for this post.

Cognitive function.
I’ve noticed that compared to some people that my thinking isn’t as rigorous as it could be. This has been going on for a good year or so. I’ve been referred to a specialized clinical psychologist. She interviewed me once a week for three weeks and then produced a report about my thinking skills. I’m now working with my main clinical psychologist to discuss and react to the report.

As an attempt to get some thing going, I’ve bought a Nintendo DS Lite with a copy of “more brain training”. Its proving to be quite addictive. And my thinking seems a little clearer these days.

Fun stuff – Babylon 5 style.
For years now, me and a social worker (call them ASW_RPG for now :) have been knocking around the idea of running roleplaying games. Nothing much came of it. Then I bought some Babylon 5 (B5) RPG (Role Playing Game) stuff along with the core rules for the B5 wargame. We’re going to play it at Morpeth Gaming Club, at the hospital

On closer examination, it is less demanding to play a wargame than it is to run a RPG. Later on, ASW_RPG and I may play the RPG. I’m getting hold of the gaming books and, hopefully one day I will have enough concentration to run a RPG.

I've had a bit of trouble updating my blog, now that Google has taken over. We'll see how well this turns out.

Anyway, take a look at the history site of St George's Park, http://www.stgeorgeshistory.org.uk/site/ - it is quite revealing

Back in the 1980's I had (an almost workstation class computer) called a Sinclair QL. It could multitask (via an operating system called QDOS, later on superseded by Minerva by QView), network and came with a set of free, bundled business applications (the Psion Xchange) had a vibrant user group (Quanta) which had a regular newsletter, a vast library of software available to Quanta members for free.

It took a while (about a 15 years) but I have finally replaced my QL stuff. These days I use Linux, OpenOffice, read Linux Format (and I've started reading some of the tutorials and typing in examples into my PC) and am a member of a local Linux User Group (LUG). I've decided that 2007 is going to be the year in which I learn the OpenOffice suite - get to grips with fancy formatting in Write - maybe even get mailmerge going, get used to Calc and learn some of the commands that are now common in spreadsheets since I learnt Abacus and learn how to do databases in OOo Base.

Emotions.
I didn't realise this until recently but... when you're not too hot emotionally, it can impair your ability to do things and think things through.

Pixies.
I've been put on Risperidone to get over a rough patch. It turns me into a pixie:)

Literature - the opiate of the intellectual.

When I was 20 and going through relatively minor, undetected, psychotic episodes while working at Grand Metropolitan Brewing (Systems), my coping mechanisms were 1) reading and 2) running Dungeons and Dragons games based in the World Of Greyhawk and 3) computing on a 68008 based computer, the Sinclair QL. At weekends, isolated and hundreds of miles away from my family, I would bury myself in my books, writing and computing. Some weekends I would read two novels in a weekend.

Losing and regaining intellect.
2001 saw me at the height of my programming abilities. I was making good progress in learning things that were new to me – C++, STL, generics, ODBC, VCL and the sky (or at least Boost) seemed the limit. I'd been a C++ design geek for some time – reading books and asking questions about what was not only what the language features were but also how to deploy them. So I was well placed to start using C++. About April 2001 saw the beginning of what is either the end or a major power cut in my programming career. I was made redundant and within weeks I was admitted into a psychiatric Hospital with a major psychotic episode. At the time I figured I was safe from those people who had conspired against me and that no-one would look for me in a psychiatric hospital – I was safe. I was put on anti-psychotic medication (Olanzapine)

Do you remember the Jack Nicholson character at the end of the film, “One flew over the cuckoo's nest”? Well, that was me in 2002. A cocktail of medication, schizophrenia and lack of intellectual stimulation meant my intellectual abilities took a nose-dive. Since about 2003 I've been working to regain my intellect. It started with small steps, while on rehab (East Loan) – reading the Daily Mirror, reading Bridget Jones' The Edge of Reason (in about 3 months). I've taken to frequenting local libraries, reading New Scientist, Scientific American, The Economist in the journals section. And I've been reading books and, on occasion, reviewing books. Thanks to New Scientist, Scientific American and some library books, I've got a rough recipe for genius:-

1% inspiration
15% Mentorship
4% Lifestyle (good rest, diet, pacing, planning)
80% perspiration

Thanks to my concerted efforts, I now have the reading capacities I had as when I was 21 years old. That's an encouraging milestone. But there's more to come. I've got to regain my programming abilities by learning new tools. I'm going for a Linux based approach because 1) lots of new things happen there and 2) its cheap. If I can work with the Linux stuff, I can work on the proprietary stuff at a later date. There's a new version of C++ due out before 2010. I want to regain my abilities by then, possibly by working on free/open source software projects and building up a portfolio of work.

A city at war
Schizophrenia is like being a city at war. No matter what hangs in your art galleries, no matter what is debated in your universities, a well aimed bomb (schizophrenia) can bomb you back to the stone age.

Christianity and Science
Some of my friends are scientists, some of them are Christians. Will the two ever reconcile their differences? Taking the science thing further, take a look at
Scientific American Mind I have a courtesy copy of it and have already used it in my fight with schizophrenia.

Conditioning
I am continually striving to get my concentration back. I have discovered that certain environments (like a library) can make it easier to concentrate.

Anniversary
I have been discharged from hospital for two years.

Contact project
I started a project at Contact where we take in surplus computer equipment and pass it on to in-patients, out-patients and their carers.

Holiday
Been to Windermere for a short camping break with the outreach team. It was good to go back to old haunts.

Stigma and lazy reporters
If a person "with a mental health problem" attacks someone, a few things aren't disclosed by the media. 1) They don't say *what* kind of problem they have and 2) quite often the person has not been taking medication for months, they haven't been keeping up with appointments and they haven't been seen by caring staff for months, either.

I'm working hard to avoid DFCFing (Departing From Controlled Flight). People see a thoughtful, rational person but, like when watching a swan glide by, they are unable to see the webbed feet paddling frantically away.

A couple of weeks ago, the new hospital staged a visiting day - before the patients were transferred - on a Saturday.

The new hospital is a big improvement on the old one, even if I recall correctly it cost about £27m via PFI.

However nice it is, it is still a hospital and I will be working hard to make sure I remain out of the hospital rather than in.

Thursday 4th May 2006

I am a creative. It took a while – reading books and writing articles – for me to work that out for myself. At school the *only* subject I was any good at was English – at least until Computer Science came along :)

So what now? I'm laying down technical and story telling foundations.

I've been trawling through Morpeth Library's reference section. In it I've discovered a series, “The elements of fiction writing”. Courtesy of Amazon UK, I've bought 8 books from that series, with a view to developing & running a “Vampire : The Dark Ages” campaign with my social worker, RB.

For technical stuff, I've built up a library of Linux and programming books. I'm working my way through them, reviewing them for the ACCU.

For personal development stuff, I'm reading books about thinking (edward de Bono) and memory.

So I'm just getting started. Who knows what I'll develop in the next 3 to 5 years?

Have split up amicably. Am single again. It was a valuable friendship that ended in friendship. Can't complain about that.

My youngest sister, Katy, 31, apparently committed suicide on Tuesday morning, about 4am. Later on it was discovered she'd taken a small dose of pain killers - and with a lot of vodka, that was all that was required.
Family flowers, everyone else a donation to the PDSA

Coping strategies - battle for sanity.
I’ve been having a bit of a rough time recently – the usual problems with schizophrenia. In particular, I’ve been deploying coping strategies to deal with the problems. I’ve talked to the Outreach Team about this and they are happy with the way I’m coping with things. In particular, while deploying coping strategies it is a bit like being a fireman in a burning building with other people (outside) commenting on the firefighting technique.

Distraction - battle for intellect.
I had a look at my expenses – books, music and Sky and I thought – three choices, pick two to keep and get rid of one of them. I’ve cancelled my Sky subscription because I want to spend the money on other things (DVDs) – and because I believe I’ve made more progress. When I was still on East Loan (rehab), I used to sit all day, drinking tea, watching music television and reading the Daily Mirror. It’s taken a while and I’m nearly but not quite there. If my symptoms are bad then I find it difficult to concentrate. If I can’t concentrate then I have to rely on music as a distraction technique. If the music doesn’t work, I have to rely on promazine. Depending on how well that works, I may have to have a chat with the outreach team. The DVDs will be useful because I want to run a Story Teller game (by White Wolf) and those games are like a cinematic type of Dungeons and Dragons game. If I get my concentration back, I should be able to read the game’s books, do a bit of brainstorming and ultimately run the games sometime in 2006.

Speech.
On Thursday the 10th of November, at the Hirst Welfare in Ashington there will be a “Well being for all” day, starting at 9:30. There will be various events but the one that has my attention is the after lunch presentations from local projects – I will be giving a 10 minute talk on my experiences with the Hearing Voices Network.

Ways of thinking:
There are ways of thinking that we don’t know about. Nothing could be more important or precious than that knowledge, however unborn. The sense of urgency, the spiritual restlessness it engenders, cannot be appeased.
Susan Sontag


People who share with others are seldom hungry.
Haitian


Those of us who are forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
Andre Lorde


Let there be no violence in religion
The Koran, 7th Century

Imagination:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
German-born physicist


Excellence:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

(Aristotle (384-322BC)
Greek Philosopher

A Godly life is its own reward

My rotary washing line disappeared over the weekend. So I told the police it had been stolen. Well a few hours later they came back with it, apparently someone had left it lying against a wall somewhere. That was really nice of them.

Been working on the computers that Contact has scrounged. We're just about keeping up with demand.

My poem is sublime because I can rhyme

The low down about my town.
Berwick is big, Berwick is small
It even has an ancient town hall

Berwick has bars
Berwick has cars

But I relocated
Because it's isolated


Ian B

I participate in certain leisure activities and have a laminated business card with emergency contact details and coping strategies on it. What has this got to do with schizophrenia? Well, imagine being schizophrenic as being something like living in Japan. There are problems with flooding rivers and buildings falling down in earthquakes. In effect the activities and strategies are similar to Japan's efforts to avert natural disasters. Instead of coping strategies etc, river banks have large concrete walls added (to reduce erosion and minimise the possibility of landslides). The houses are built on "land rafts" so that when there is an earthquake the whole house moves, reducing the risk of collapse.

We've been busy at Contact. Various friends and associates have donated obsolete or unwanted hardware. I am split between teaching people how to use computers and working on the computers to get them going. Fortunately, I can delegate to 1) Joe Miller of Applications Unlimited and 2) J Mee, a new Contact volunteer who is a systems administration and networking expert.

We're also putting free software on the computers (Open Office 1.x - its more stable than 2.x, Java 5, Free Zip, Cygwin, Python, Spectrum emulators and games).

BT donated some PCs and a broadband connection. Hopefully we'll be able to link more computers to the LAN and have internet access throughout Contact.

This year I am concentrating on hardware. And book reviews for the ACCU and polishing my writing skills for the reviews. Then I'll start running historicals roleplaying games. Next year I'll start learning emacs, LISP and polishing existing skills.

I tried updating this blog at the Lynemouth Resource Centre but the centre's internet "net nanny" program blocked it.

I've been doing some Learn Direct courses at the Lynemouth Resource Centre. At the moment I am studying Dorling Kindersley's "Essential Computers - Multimedia - Creating Presentations", a book about Microsoft PowerPoint that I picked up in Oxfam for 99p.

I've been going through a bit of a trough. I've been sleeping a lot lately and my symptoms (of schizophrenia) have been more pronounced. I've got the latest copy of SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional ready to install but I just can't face it at the moment. In fact I'm having difficulty sorting out my bills and things. Although it's an unpleasant time to be going through, I'm glad that it didn't happen while I was at the Oxford ACCU conference. I've also bought a couple of books 1) SuSE Linux for dummies and 2) Networking SuSE Linux. A friend of mine, Joe Miller, wanted to have a Linux box on his network. Maybe these books will sort out these problems. And I'm scrounging old Windows/Office CDs from anyone I can.

I've been teaching people at Contact, Morpeth, how to use computers. Even the people who think they know computers are learning new things. And we're asking members of the public to donate unused computers to be lent out to people for a couple of months at a time. Some computers that have been donated will have wiped hard drives. So, as I am unwilling to pirate Microsoft software (Windows or Office), I will have to install Linux/Open Office instead.