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.

I've reached another milestone - attending the
ACCU conference and I didn't have a psychotic episode. There were a few moments where I was thinking "this is not real, I'm hallucinating" but overall things were OK.

Since the last conference I attended, in Spring 2001, there were a few changes. Python had a stream for itself. So did security. And Template Metaprogramming replaced the usual talks on Generic Programming and the STL.

My house is a mess - too many magazines and books - so I bought 4 wide tall bookcases. Hopefully that will clear the clutter and remove my piles of books from my kitchen table. I've been reviewing books for the ACCU, including an eye opener on the Itanium architecture and the Linux kernel.

SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional is out and I asked SuSE if people on DLA (Disability and Living Allowance aka Disks and Licensing Agreement aka Drugs and Lager Allowance) could qualify for the student discount - and they said yes which was very nice of them.

Things have been a little rough lately. I've become obssessive about checking my gas cooker, fridge, upstairs and downstairs taps, back door and front door whenever I go out. So I've been a little obssessive.

Schizophrenia is like a banshee - it wails and your nerves end up like violin strings. When I go to church, I worry frantically about my house.

My concentration is coming in peaks and troughs, I am experiencing voices and visions. Fortunately I have a little bottle of promazine (25mg) which I can fall back on when things get out of hand.

I've sent off for two new books, discounted at the Register bookstore:-

"Linux Kernel Development 2e" by Robert Love, Candace Bos, Jeanne Schumm ISBN 0672327201 which describes the latest (2.6) version of the Linux Kernel

"C++ Template Metaprogramming Concepts, Tools, and Techniques from Boost and Beyond" by David Abrahams, Aleksey Gurtovoy ISBN 0321227255

I'll be studying the kernel stuff first and later on I'll try to improve my generic programming skills - last time I used the STL was in 2002.

Not only do I have a New Year's Resolution to run a role playing game in the middle of the year, I'm also getting ready for version 2 of Open Office which is a free or open source clone of Microsoft Office.

How will I do this? Well there are no free courses for Open Office but Learn Direct are doing free courses for MS Office and basic computing skills. So I've signed up for PowerPoint (presentation tool) and Access (database program) and will be working on that this year. The MS Office skills will be directly transferrable to Open Office. Open Source rules ok!!

I watched "Jerry Springer - The Opera" on BBC2 over the weekend. There has been quite a fuss about it from Christians so I was a little concerned but I thought that it would be better that I judge for myself.

My final conclusion is that it showcased a lot of talent, even if it did conflict with some of my beliefs.

All in all, Christianity will survive this. My main concern is : How will organised religion cope with the first contact Earth has with extra-terrestrial intelligent life?

Good news! For the first time since 2000 I've had a Christmas/New Year that wasn't based at the hospital.

I've made a New Year's resolution:- to run a
Vampire : The Dark Ages role playing game. I'm taking Jan-Feb to absorb the rules, Mar-Apr to soak up the setting and May-Jun to read Vampyr/Medieval stories : see the White Wolf web site for more details

Although I'm a Christian, I think its only polite to be aware of other faiths. So, yesterday, I bought a translated copy of the Qur'An (Koran) from Appleby's books in Morpeth. Its surprising how intermingled the Christian, Jewish and Moslem faiths really are. Now all I have to do is find time to read it properly.

Just been to Contact in Lynemouth - it is different to Contact in Morpeth. Fewer people but still ok.

Winter is coming - I've just had double glazing put in and it makes a big difference - I need to put the heating on less often.

Christmas meals are coming and this is the first Christmas since 2000 that I will be based outside of the hospital and the first Christmas I will have as a vegetarian.

On Saturday my VCR's front panel stopped working - I couldn't eject the tape that was in it. AW from the Outreach Team identified the problem and fixed it. Very good of him to do that, I appreciate it.

I've got all sorts of paper work to do with being ill that I've been given over the years. I'm trying to be more organised. It all depends on how much concentration I can muster.

I had a glimmer of concentration at church on Sunday. During the bible reading I was able to follow the gist of the reading without becoming totally lost. I've been trying to stimulate my mind. First I was listening to music. Then I upped the ante by watching TV (Richard & Judy) and the BBC 6 O'Clock News and the Channel 4 News. Now that I've had a glimmer of concentration, I'll cut back on the TV to just watching the Channel 4 News and reading newspapers and books in the spare time generated.

Well, sometime back I asked one of my outreach workers (JX) "How come natural selection hasn't got rid of Schizophrenia?". She gave me various papers, one of which is called
Creativity, Evolution and Mental Illnesses. If I've read the paper correctly, it appears that schizophrenia contributes extra creativity to the general population. In other words, schizophrenia helps the group at the expense of the individual. I'd like to point out that, while meds are important, they do tend to inhibit thoought as opposed to promoting thought.

Well, its been confirmed. My meds/illnes is making me slur my words so I sound either rather dim or drunk. Sometimes it takes me quite a while to formulate a sentence which doesn't help either.

I'm counting the weeks that I have successfully stayed out of hospital. This wednesday I will have been out of hospital for 10 weeks.

Went on the coach with Contact to Skegness' Butlins on Monday (returned on Friday). It took over four hours.

Made friends to a fellow singleton called Joy T. We were inseperable over the past five days, being affectionate, sharing experiences and talking about things.

Butlins is mainly aimed at families - Joy and I mainly made our own entertainment and enjoyed the night life.

We're going to stay in touch and have fun over the future months.

Well, its been two weeks since I've been discharged. I've been meeting friends and generally getting on with things (cooking food, drinking wine). My biggest project at the moment is moving my furniture around in preparation for getting my (gas) central heating installed. I've found that having sky (the £20/month version) is helpful - there is less silence in the house which means its harder for the voices to take control. And I've got PRN medication.

And I've been sorting out my (SuSE Linux 9.1 Pro Update) computer - it turned out that the permissions of /dev/null were wrong which resulted in my email client, KMail, to give strange errors and cause my web browser, Mozilla, to crash silently - although if you ran it from an xterm, you'd get error messages about /dev/null being read only.

And I'm working (with other people) to shift an old web site from HTML 3.2 to XHTML and CSS. We're having difficulty having it look nice on all sorts of different web browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera, KDE Konqueror, Netscape/Mozilla).

I was discharged yesterday. But I've still got my social contacts, at Church and at Contact. The tiredness is still a major problem. And the Assertive Outreach team is keeping in touch with me to make sure things are going ok. And the hospital is keeping in touch, for about 4 weeks after discharge.

Last week AW (from the Outreach Team) took some of us to the cinema to see "I, Robot" and it was quite a good film. I enjoyed it. Now all I need to do is to gather my mental resources so I can re-read the original by Isaac Asimov.

I've got a new album to listen to - "Fire" by Electric Six. It is a good album.

And I might, in the near future, have another meal with friends.

I am constantly tired, due to medication. Today I slept in till 10am so I was late for work. Its a good job that I am doing voluntary work. It makes it so much harder to read YCDI!, a C++ tutorial.

Some friends from Contact are coming round for Pizza tonight - JT, LS, LX and EX (with her daughter because it is so hard to get a baby sitter). It should be ok. Not looking forward to Saturday because its one of my empty days.

The days are ticking away before my house gets turned upside down to install central heating.

I was confirmed yesterday at Mitford. It was good. I think the vicar (David) made the preparatory work simpler for me because of my medicine making me rather tired and dopey. Other people have classes whereas I had informal chats and the task of finding a favourite hymn and a favourite bible quotation, I chose Mark 1 "I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way" and "Amazing Grace".

I've got to pancake this baby - that is what I kept on telling the Birmingham psychiatric emergency team back in the 90's. Actually I'm not a cannibal, I used to be an aviation geek. At one stage I wanted to fly Sea Harriers for the Royal Navy but I got side tracked into computers. To "pancake" an air craft is to crash land it. So now you know

Clozapine is like a spy satellite - when it is overhead (fully working on my body), my intellect and consciousness hide, leaving me much like a vegetable.

I counteract this by having checklists of thing to do and by waiting for the satellite to go away (and can continue reading things like the classic book I am struggling to review, You Can Do It, by Francis Glassborow. I'm having to work on exercises as I review the book and I have to borrow time on a friends computer because YCDI is Windows based and my house is a Linux  Linux only zone.

I find that 7 hours after I've taken some Clozapine, I can shrug off the daze that descends on me and start thinking properly. Who knows, one day I might be able to think in C++ again, something I haven't done since 2001.

I think I have the right balance. Using Windows at work because that is what people expect to use. And use Linux at home because it is so nice, if a little awkward to set up at times.