Samuel’s Blog

Crash Photos

I’ve had a few requests for photos of the car that I crashed last night. As requested…

Samuel

7 comments July 1st, 2008 at 12:22pm

All the “What ifs” start to sink in

Following on from my car crash last night, all of the “what ifs” surrounding it have been running through my mind. I’m surprised that I managed to get any sleep last night with various parts of my body trying to punish me with pain.

Ultimately it was my own stupidity that caused that crash and I’m not going to try to diminish my responsibility for it. I am going to try to work through the “what ifs” though, so that I can try to understand what was going through my head at the time, and to help me learn from the experience.

After the crash it occurred to me that if I hadn’t managed to miss an appointment with a neurologist yesterday morning (which has since been rescheduled now that I have realised my mistake), I probably wouldn’t have had the money to pay for the tow truck. But what if I had gone to see the neurologist? Would I have then made my trip in to Weston once I was finished with the doctor? If so, would I still have crashed on the way home from Weston?
I believe that I would have gone to Weston and that I probably would have avoided the crash because:
1. The roads were dry at that time of the day.
2. With more traffic, I wouldn’t have been speeding.

Then there are the immediately more relevant questions:
What if I’d gone home a couple hours earlier rather than sticking around and going to the Weston Club for a while? (And before you ask, no, I wasn’t drinking…although I’m surprised that the Police didn’t bother to breath test me)
More traffic, and it was still raining at that time. I probably would have been driving slower…in fact the stupid thing is that I left Weston, drove around for a bit and went back, if I had just gone home, I doubt that this would have happened.

What if I had stayed in Weston for longer?
I doubt that it would have made a difference. I would have been driving just as fast, and the roads would have been slippery, not to mention the impossible winds on Parkes Way at the time. It probably would have been just as bad, if not worse.

What if I had a passenger at the time?
That might have saved me. I’ve noticed that I’m more cautious when I have a passenger than when I’m on my own. I knew that I was going too fast last night, and there is no way that I would have done that if I had a passenger in the car. With a passenger, I highly doubt that there would have been an accident to talk about.

OK, but what if I’d had the accident anyway?
The passenger would have come off worse than I did as pretty much everything that was loose in the car (eg the CD cases in the console, my mobile phone, my glasses which flew off my head, and even the dirt from the side of the road after the windscreen was pushed back a bit) flew in that direction. The structure of the body of the car survived, so the passenger wouldn’t have been too bad, but the debris flying in their direction could have done some serious damage. In fact it could easily have flown in the other direction and injured me.

There are more “what ifs” where they came from, but I’m going to wait until I’ve spoken with the Police today before I write any of them.

I should have known that yesterday was going to be weird from the moment that some drug-crazed nut interrupted me to babble about “gear” and “five dollars” before wandering off as quickly as they had appeared. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but I feel like telling the story anyway.

I’m lucky to be alive, but considering that I often struggle to feel safe in vehicles being driven by others, and that I don’t trust myself now (I’m still debating whether I ever want to drive again), I think I’ve just put myself in my very own psychological hell.

One day a time for now I suppose…and this one is not going to be one of my best.

Samuel

July 1st, 2008 at 09:01am

Crash!

This evening at about 8:05pm I rolled my car on Parkes Way. I was stupidly going too fast in wet conditions and lost control on a bend, the details are a bit hazy but I believe I hit the gutter and rolled once, landing in the left hand lane. It was impossible to move the car on to the shoulder so I tried to get it across to the median strip, however the car stopped with the rear wheels on the road.

Surprisingly I managed to escape with only a small bump to the head, and a slightly grazed shoulder and knee. The main body of the car survived almost intact whilst the boot and most of the front of the car were demolished. The police officers who attended the scene were surprised that I was still standing.

Thank you to the people who stopped to check if I needed any assistance, especially the couple in the ute who parked on the median strip to flash their lights at oncoming traffic to warn them about my car protruding on to the road on a blind corner…not that they all paid attention. Also a big thanks to a friend who took my call and sent me the phone number for a tow truck.

I’ll be heading down to the Civic police station tomorrow to hand in the accident report, it will be interesting to see what happens after that.

Samuel

2 comments June 30th, 2008 at 10:02pm

Robot proves that Samuel is a Chinese communist

I don’t know if any of you remember PodZinger as it came and went from the public spotlight very very quickly a few years ago, but basically it was a semi-promising new search engine which aimed to automatically index and transcribe podcasts. If it worked, it would have been a good way to find information in what is otherwise an awful medium to search.

But of course, it was doomed from the beginning as anybody who has ever used voice recognition software would have known. To get a computer to recognise a voice with any amount of accuracy, you have to train it. Usually this involves two steps, the initial preset “read these sentences” training exercises where the computer gets to hear you say things that is asks you to say, and then the ongoing “no, I said “cat” not “hat”, the hat is not in the hat, the cat is in the hat…no, the cat is not in the cat either” intermittent corrections which also help the computer to learn how to understand your voice.

The reason we need to teach the computer how to do recognise an individual’s voice is that everyone has a slightly different voice and a slightly different speech pattern…and if humans who are predisposed to understanding the speech of other humans have difficulty understanding people with accents, what hope does an untrained computer have?

As far as I can tell, PodZinger had no form of quality control…the robot listened to the audio, produced a mangled transcript of it, and nobody bothered to check the accuracy of it. A system where corrections could be submitted by listeners could have worked better, but I don’t think PodZinger were ever interested in having masses of voice samples floating around in their system, nor do I think that having masses of voice samples from different people would have helped with individual transcriptions.

So, why am I babbling about an ultimately failed search engine of little-to-know consequence? Because they’re still around under a different name (EveryZing) doing much the same thing, albeit with expansions in to the more profitable and sane market of search engine optimisation, and expecting people to pay them for it. Maybe the transcription software is better today than it was in 2007, but I wouldn’t be willing to pay them in order to test the theory.

I noticed that they are still around on the weekend when I was wondering if they are still around and was shocked to find that they are. They also have all of their old archives…and if you search for my name, you can be informed about my Chinese communist leanings by their transcription robot.

It has transcribed the Feedback segment from Samuel’s Persiflage #13, specifically the section from 47 minutes and 58 seconds. According to their robot, in that segment I said:

can go to get sort of course if you concentrate back podcasted Samuel Gordon Stewart — Communists the email address or you can leave comments in the China nights or irritants Samuels who supplies were sought to

Maybe the robot’s ears are blocked, because when I listen to that segment, I hear:

feedback to get through and of course if you’ve got some feedback, podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com is the email address or you could uh leave the comments in the show notes or go to the samuel’s persiflage website and

That said, I have been (jokingly) accused of encoding secret messages in Samuel’s Persiflage…maybe they were on to something…I would have to be among the last people on Earth that anybody would consider as a possible communist, so I would have to be the perfect vessel for hiding and broadcasting such messages.

It leaves me pondering the question: “Why am I giving the conspiracy nuts something to work with?”

Samuel

June 30th, 2008 at 06:10am

Tours of the Mount Piper Power Station

I must thank Stuart Bocking for talking about tours of the Lucas Heights Nuclear Reactor this evening because it reminded me of a story I saw on Channel Seven’s Sydney Weekender a couple weekends ago.

The Mount Piper Power Station is a new power station near Lithgow, operated by Delta Electricity, and they run free tours daily at 11am. Unfortunately they don’t allow anybody (except television travel programs) to take cameras on the tour, but it would be good to go there and have a look around anyway. Even though I don’t like power lines, I’m fascinated by power stations and substations.

The fact that it is free and that you don’t need to book makes me inclined to disappear to Lithgow on an upcoming weekend as I would like to see the insides of a power station. I’d also be interested in touring a telephone exchange at some stage…not that Telstra run tours of them, although it couldn’t hurt to ring them and ask I suppose.

I had a strange dream about touring a power station the other night. In this dream, if you drive through a tunnel somewhere near Gungahlin, you end up in a power station which has a “drive-by tour” track. I think I’d rather walk around a power station though…I’d see more and it would be much more interesting.

Samuel

June 28th, 2008 at 12:05am

Twitter!

I decided to join twitter due to the fact that I seem to put off writing a lot of my short blog posts because I want to expand on them even though they would be fine as a short blog post.

Twitter constrains me to 140 characters per message so it’s perfect for short blog posts, and can be used for other miscellaneous updates. Hopefully this will not only make me not put off the short blog posts to the point where they never get written, but it will also make me more interested in actually writing my longer blog posts because I won’t be dismayed by all of those short blog post titles just waiting for an accompanying article.

All of my twitter updates will be posted here daily (as long as the WordPress plugin for that actually works) and I’m debating whether or not to show them in the sidebar. You can also follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/SamuelGS

At this stage I think this is just what I need to get back in to blogging regularly. Twitter’s 140 character limit is just the psychological limit that I need…I think…we’ll see how it goes.

Update: OK, it’s silly for me to post short immediate updates to twitter and only have them appear here once per day. The daily archive will be posted here once per day, but I’ve decided that the latest updates need to be visible in the sidebar. So far, so good, this is looking promising. End Update

Samuel

June 22nd, 2008 at 04:36am

You know you’re obsessed when…

2CC are broadcasting a Canberra Raiders match and you’re more interested in the Brisbane V Parramatta match, and you can’t stand the Channel Nine commentary team, so you mute the television, listen to the 2GB webstream, and use a PVR to delay the television coverage of the match by about ten seconds to bring it in sync with the 2GB webstream.

I’m glad that 2GB are able to stream their coverage of NRL matches (unlike the way the AFL’s radio partners are treated…a case of “you can’t stream the match, but we’ll stream your station through our website”)…if it hadn’t been for the webstream of Andrew Moore, Steven Roach and Peter Psaltis’ call of the match, I probably would have just gone to bed.

Samuel

May 30th, 2008 at 10:03pm

Well that’s karma for you…

For those of you who have been having trouble reaching this website since about 8:30 this morning, it would appear that karma caught up with me and decided that once the power was restored in Mitchell and Kaleen, I had to be punished for enjoying 2CC’s endeavours in the darkness of a power outage by having my hosting provider’s network go “wonky” (as Clive Robertson would most likely say).

Of course, the fact that I work there (I may have resigned but I’m still in my notice period) and was part of the team dealing with many customers who were also affected by the wonky network just made Dr. Karma so much happier.

For slightly more details of the wonky network, see http://status.aussiehq.com.au/item/2025.html

Samuel

2 comments May 29th, 2008 at 11:12am

Who wants my job?

On Monday I resigned from my job as Senior Customer Service Representative at AussieHQ for mostly personal reasons. The job has now been advertised, so the question now is who will get it when I leave?

(Image taken from the Seek version of the job advertisement)

If this sounds like the job for you, then you might as well apply because I won’t be in the job for much longer. The job advertisement can be found on Seek, CapitalJobs and Whirlpool.

Other jobs currently on offer at AussieHQ
Customer Service Representative: Seek - CapitalJobs - Whirlpool
Customer Service Manager: Seek - CapitalJobs - Whirlpool
Assistant Manager – Corporate Services: Seek - CapitalJobs
Accounts Receivable Officer: Seek - CapitalJobs

For what it’s worth, I have every intention of remaining a customer of AussieHQ and think anybody who is interested in one of the available jobs will enjoy the work environment. For those of you who do decide to apply, best of luck with your application.

Samuel

1 comment May 28th, 2008 at 12:23pm

Birthday Notice

As many of you know (or can easily work out), it will be my birthday at some stage within the next four weeks. As this is the case, and most of the people I know happen to read this blog, I need to say this clearly now to avoid difficulties later on.

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I do not want to be involved in any celebration of my birthday this year, nor do I wish to hear about my birthday. If you want to celebrate it, go right ahead, but please do not involve me in it. I would just like to treat that day in the same way as any other ordinary day of the year. I hope you understand and are not put out by this.

For those of you who don’t know me personally and are wondering what has brought this on, it seems that none of my subtle attempts at getting this message across have worked properly, so I have written this in order to make my wishes perfectly clear, and to avoid people going to the effort of putting together a celebration that I really don’t want.

Samuel

May 23rd, 2008 at 04:53am

Memorandum addressed to Nattie

It, defined as dog, sleeping across the legs of one, is something up with which one will not put.

Samuel

May 18th, 2008 at 01:21pm

By way of an update

I suppose that, by now, I probably owe you all an update. The short version is that thanks to the encouragement of all of you and a few other people, I visited my GP on Monday the 5th of May and was prescribed an anti-depressant called Lexapro, less commonly known as escitalopram, which is one of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class of anti-depressants.

The good news is that, for the most part, it works. My rate of suicidal ideation has reduced significantly, and I’m generally feeling better. The side-effects are annoying but they seem to be wearing off. The dizziness, nausea and having no appetite are mostly gone, and the jury is still out on whether my intermittently persistent migraines are being compounded by the drug. The persistent tiredness is probably the most annoying side-effect and isn’t showing any real signs of abating, although the extremely vivid and strange dreams are proving to be most amusing, and I’ll share some of them with you during the week.

Over the second half of last week, from the day-and-a-half of migraine onwards, I partially accidentally and partially purposefully went off my medication. The migraine, and my own stupidity on Thursday, contributed to my depression and I started to doubt the effectiveness of the drug as the side-effects started to wear off. The last few days proved to me, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the drug works, and that I had more symptoms than I previously recognised, but it did present me with an ethical dilemma which I haven’t really had the opportunity to test until now.

The fact of the matter is that I am dependant on this drug for my own sense of well-being and for my mental stability (both in terms of preventing depressive episodes and paranoid utter-nuttery episodes, something which brought me close to writing a blog post which could have ruined a number of professional relationships along with the next two months of my life). I’m not dependant on the drug in the sense where I crave it, but it does in some ways present me with a “high”, insofar as I don’t feel like topping myself or doing something equally stupid, it’s not a high in the traditional usage of the word in relation to a drug, but a sort of stability. This is my ethical dilemma. I am dependent on this drug for this; if I stop taking it, I go “nuts” (for lack of a better word), and even though it is a prescribed, legal drug, the fact that I am generally opposed to drugs of dependence, especially psychotropic drugs of which escitalopram is one.

If one wanted, one could draw a comparison between my stance on this, and my constant ingestation of caffeine, and one probably should draw this comparison now before somebody else does it. The difference between my use of caffeine and my use of escitalopram is that I am not addicted to caffeine; I can go for days without it and not suffer, it also has no impact on my state of alertness or awakeness. Escitalopram on the other hand has a measurable impact when taken, and when not taken, and this is my problem.

For ethical reasons I do not want to be dependent on this drug, however without it I might as well not be here because I’m only going to harm myself and others. I am forced to wonder whether or not I really am “me” when I am taking this drug if it is affecting my perception, mood and consciousness. If I am going to be dependent on this drug for the remainder of eternity in order to function properly, and I strongly doubt that it is truly “me” in this body in this state, then I have to wonder why I would bother continuing like this. With it or without it, I’m stuck in a difficult ethical dilemma…to be dependent on a drug, or to allow a monster to be loose in public.

I suppose on the former ethical dilemma, the following bit of information about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is encouraging:

SSRIs inhibit the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) into the presynaptic cell, increasing levels of 5-HT within the synaptic cleft.

But there is one counteracting effect: high serotonin levels will not only activate the postsynaptic receptors, but also flood presynaptic autoreceptors, that serve as a feedback sensor for the cell. Activation of the autoreceptors (by agonists like serotonin) triggers a throttling of serotonin production. The resulting serotonin deficiency persists for some time, as the transporter inhibition occurs downstream to the cause of the deficiency, and is therefore not able to counterbalance it. The body adapts gradually to this situation by lowering (downregulating) the sensitivity of the autoreceptors.

Of greater importance is another adaptive process: the downregulation of postsynaptic serotonin 5-HT2A receptors. After the use of an SSRI, since there is more serotonin available, the response is to lower (to normal levels or less) the number of postsynaptic receptors over time, and in the long run, this modifies the serotonin/receptor ratio. Since a larger percentage of available receptors become activated by serotonin, transmission is enhanced or restored.

These (slowly proceeding) neurophysiological adaptions of the brain tissue are the reason why usually several weeks of continuous SSRI use are necessary for the antidepressant effect to become fully manifested, and why increased anxiety is a common side effect in the first few days or weeks of use.

Whilst I’m certain that the quoted text could be interpreted in about a dozen different ways, to my way of reading it, after a period of time on the drug, a brain will have adapted enough to function normally without the drug. This gives me some hope that I will not be dependent on the drug for eternity, and is something I will need to discuss with my GP when I see him again in two weeks as per his request.

Samuel

P.S. Sorry, on reflection, that was not a short version of the story at all.
- SGS

2 comments May 18th, 2008 at 01:13pm

As requested

Yes Davky, I’m fine. Further update soon.

Thanks for your concern.

2 comments May 10th, 2008 at 08:44am

Depressive Episode

It seems mildly odd to me that I can write about this here, addressed to nobody in particular, on a public blog which will be indexed by Google within the next few hours and be very difficult to ever completely remove from the Internet, and yet I have avoided mentioning this to anybody else, even completely omitting it from the list of things that happened on the weekend when asked by people I can confide in.

I hesitate to use the word “major” in front of “depressive episode” because I don’t think it quite fits the clinical definition…it was an episode, a fairly serious one, but I’m not prepared to call it “major”. What am I talking about? The events of Sunday morning around 4:30. I don’t remember the exact time, but what I do remember is that in the space of about five minutes, and for no apparent reason, I went from being in a relatively good mood, to being depressed enough to have to fight off the urge to visit a publicly accessible building of suitable height.

In the end, the best thing I could do was make myself go to bed and sleep. It took a long time to get to sleep, but I felt a little bit better when I awoke. I didn’t really fully come out of the depressive episode until late last night, and to be perfectly honest I’m not entirely sure that I’m over it yet, but I suppose I can be pleased with the fact that certain buildings don’t seem as appealing as they once did.

As I said, this all happened for no apparent reason…perhaps I’d just been un-depressed for too long, considering that I had a relatively good week and it had been a week or so since I noticeably felt depressed, it’s a workable theory. Otherwise I’m confused. I like to understand things, and the fact that I can’t understand why I suddenly took a nose-dive on Sunday morning concerns me. Will I finally seek professional help, probably not. Should I be seeking professional help? Most likely, but how exactly do I force myself to do so when I would rather not have any interaction with any human being while I’m depressed, and I don’t seem to want help when things are going well?

If there is one thing I seem to be very good at, it’s getting myself in to situations that I just can’t manage. I count three of them at this point in time, two of them are my own fault, and one of them (this one)…well I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with the other two…in fact I’m almost certain it’s related to at least one of them, but now I’m being intentionally vague and defeating the purpose of writing this publicly. This article is long enough…and once again, writing like this has been mildly therapeutic.

Samuel

9 comments April 29th, 2008 at 02:44pm

There should be a title here…

…and further text here

It’s the formula to writing a blog post, something I just haven’t really had time or the motivation to do for most of this week. Honestly, I don’t have any reason for writing this other than to inform you that I’m still here (I surprise myself sometimes), more (somewhat more useful, relatively speaking) content will appear eventually, oh…and I received some really pleasing news about ten minutes ago, I just can’t share it due to a non-disclosure agreement.

I hope your week has been less difficult than mine.

Samuel

1 comment April 4th, 2008 at 06:11am