Jack's Bit of the Blogosphere

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know I won a free Nokia Lumia 800 on Facebook. I’ve been intruiged by the platform for a long time and I was delighted to finally get the chance to give it a proper test drive and see how it compares to my iPhone 4 S.

I absolutely love Twitter, and it’s one of the most used apps on my iPhone. I also love Question Time and like to join in the #bbcqt conversation, so what better way to give the Lumia a proper test drive than to subject it to the serious Tweeting that goes on during Question Time?

I know there’s some built in Twitter support in Windows Phone 7, but for this experiment I chose to use the official Twitter app.

First impressions of the app are that it’s very stylish.When you open the app up it integrates well with the Metro style which on the whole really is very pretty. Unlike many apps available on the Marketplace, the official Twitter app is actually very smooth. Lots of third party apps have issues with sluggish, juddering scrolling, but there’s no sign of that here.

However, the app is missing several key features.

The most glaring omission is autocomplete. I tweet to lots of different people, and people can sometimes have pretty strange Twitter IDs. How am I supposed to remember something like @_queSrahSrah ? Where does the underscore go again? Which ‘a’ is missed out in Sarah? On the iPhone I can just use autocomplete to sort out the spelling of usernames and hashtags for me, but on the WP7 app I have to go out into Internet Explorer and look the person up to make sure I get the spelling right. You see, if you get the spelling wrong you look like a tit who’s using a shitty Twitter client.

Another feature missing from the Windows Phone 7 Twitter client is any form of notifications. When someone mentions me or direct messages me, my iPhone will vibrate, make a noise, display a message on screen, and if I choose to ignore it it will add a badge to the Twitter app’s icon til I take care of it. You get none of that on Windows Phone, and it makes the kind of real time communication which people have come to expect on Twitter completely impossible.

Finally: there’s no multiple account support. I tweet from @JacksterD, @scotsyounglab and (less frequently) @GUEnviroClub. If I’m out on a Labour campaign and want to tweet about it to Scottish Young Labour members who don’t necessarily follow my personal account then too bad. I could log out of my personal account and log into the SYL account, but then why not just carry an iPhone?

Ultimately, the official Windows Phone 7 Twitter client makes me feel like I’ve gone back in time to Twitter v1.0 for iOS (OK, ok, it was called Tweetie back then). It’s missing some of the key features which iOS and Android Tweeters have become reliant on, and unfortunately – for the time being at least – it makes Windows Phone 7 a no-go platform for Twitter addicts.

• Not saying the C word more. It’s been appropriate so often this year, and I’ve sadly underused it.
• Not asking that girl (who will remain nameless) out on a proper date sooner.
• Not really a regret as such, but I wish my mum would stop reading my tweets.
• Dingying @ladyhoot at that thing
• Eating Di Maggios too often
• Actually that’s not true, I regret not eating Di Maggios for every fucking meal. I love that place.
• Spending too much time on one failing campaign instead of another failing campaign in May.
• Being friendly and polite to people I actually despise. Morrissey knows how I feel: “In my life, Why do I smile At people who I’d much rather kick in the eye?” (Although I’d kick these people somewhere else…)
• Discovering The Smiths so late. The last 19 years would have been so much fuller with Morrissey in my life.
• Buying yet another iPad and once again returning it under the 14 day return policy. Humiliating when it’s your third time and the staff are starting to recognise you.
• I don’t quite regret it yet, but on Thursday at 1630 I’m going to regret not studying for my Computer Systems exam
• Not going to a CLP meeting sooner. Maybe my CLP is just really great, or maybe I’m just sad, but I actually quite enjoy CLP meetings, and the people there are really nice and have good chat.
• Wasting even a minute of my life with Google+. It’s never going to take off.
• Not correcting people more. A few errors in conversation is no problem, but so many people have said so much monumentally stupid shit to me this year and I’ve just let it go. Well not next year.
• Not reading more. Similarly, I regret not using my Amazon Kindle more.
• Not getting my thyroxine increased sooner a few months ago. It’s amazing how you can become a completely non-functioning humanoid unit when your dose is a wee bit low.
• Not switching to The Co-Operative Bank sooner. RBS are corporate bastards, but the Co-Op’s online banking is so unbelievably archaic that I couldn’t justify the move until they recently introduced text banking which actually provides an up to date available balance. Until the text banking was introduced the only way to find out your current available balance was to trudge into town and get a mini statement from their ATM on Gordon Street. I’m not even joking.
• Not blogging more often. Or maybe just not having much of interest to blog about.
• Not being more experimental with food. It’s hard when you have nut allergies, but I’m going to aim to have at least TWO COLOURS (!!!) in my dinner every evening next year.
• Letting asshole customers at work intimidate me. Next year if anyone gives me any shit I’m going to punch them in the teeth (that is if they have any…)
• One of the things I’m glad I don’t have any regrets about it my relationship with my grampa. We had some great times together, and among the last words he ever spoke were “Jack’s really great” – it kind of made my life.

NOMNOMNOM

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to go about blogging on my hypothyroidism and I figured where better to start than the beginning? So, if you’re all sitting comfortably and have a sufficient supply of crisps, chocolates snacks and beverages then I’ll begin.

It all started in December 2009. I was at my work’s Christmas night out and was feeling a little nervous because it was at an Indian restaurant. I’m not a big fan of spicy food, but I was feeling nervous because I’m allergic to certain types of nuts and I know Indian food is a bit risky on that front. It was all going fine, but when the curries arrived I started feeling strange soon after. It was far from the usual symptoms of an allergic reaction, and now that I think about it it seems almost certain I was having some sort of panic attack as opposed to an allergic reaction, but I didn’t know that at the time. I called my dad and he took me home, and I ended up laying in bed eating next to nothing for the next few days.

Four or five days later my friend asked if I wanted to go to the cinema and as I was feeling a bit better I said OK. However, soon after we were seated I began to feel strange again, and I realised that whatever had happened the other night seemed to be happening again. I ran out of the cinema feeling sick before the movie even started and felt better as soon as I got out into the open air. Something strange was definitely going on.

A few weeks later and I was still feeling down, my appetite was at rock bottom, I’d lost over a stone and I felt almost completely unable to function if I was outside the house. Time to call the doctors.

The first thing the doctor thought I might have was a bacterial infection in my stomach, so she took some blood and sent it off for a variety of tests. They came back a week later and the results were surprising – I had low levels of free T4 and high levels of TSH – an under active thyroid.

So she started me off on 50 mcg of levothyroxine. Even though it’s a fairly routine condition and is easy to treat, it’s rare in guys and very rare in guys under 30, so the doctor refereed me to an Endocrinologist.

Between my first dose being prescribed and my endocrinologist appointment six weeks later I noticed a definite improvement in symptoms – most notably that my appetite had returned. I got some more blood tests done at the endocrinologist’s office and he decided to put me up to 75 mcg, but as I was feeling fine already I didn’t notice much of a difference.

Things went pretty well for about a year after that, I had had a few blood tests in between and each time the doctor had decided to keep my dose at 75 mcg. Then a few weeks after a test (which had come back normal) I was at my aunt’s house for dinner. I started to notice that I was feeling extremely cold. I asked around and everyone said the temperature was normal so I started getting nervous, but I wasn’t too bad because I knew we’d be leaving soonish. Then my aunt announced that my dad would have to take some people home and I realised it’d add around half an hour to the amount of time it’d take to get back to the house. That’s when I started freaking out – another one of those panic attacks came on in full force and I nearly vommed and passed out. Once I got home I felt a lot better, I calmed down a lot within a few minutes, but my appetite had dissapeared.

I was beginning to recognise the signs that this was a thyroid problem so I got an appointment with the doctor pronto. She was skeptical that it would be anything to do with my thyroid since the test a month back showed my levels to be fine, but she ordered some tests anyway and sure enough my TSH was sky high. She upped my dose to 100 mcg and I felt a little disappointed that she didn’t go higher, it seemed at the time that this fairly small change probably wouldn’t help much but three days after I’d started taking the increased dosage my appetite was back to normal. That was one month ago and I’ve just submitted another blood test. My appetite’s still pretty good, but the cold feeling is still lingering so I’m hoping I’ll get a letter through the door soon telling me I’ve been put up to 125 mcg and I’m hopeful that that’ll fix me right up.

Well, that’s my story so far. The main thing I’ve learned over the last two years is that you need to learn what symptoms you get when your thyroxine is low. In my case it was a poor appetite, a nauseous feeling and panic attacks. Once these feelings kick in you should try sleeping on it and seeing how you are in the morning and if you’re no better get yourself an appointment with the doctor’s because you’ll be absolutely miserable until you get yourself on the right dose. If my story helped you, or if you thought it was really shit, leave a comment and let me know
 

Around two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with a condition rolled Hypothyroidism – or an under active thyroid gland. The condition’s fairly rare in men, and even rarer in younger men and it’s not been quite as easy to live with as I was first led to believe. I’ve struggled with the symptoms – tiredness, depression, anxiety, nausea, coldness – for a while now and I felt there wasn’t a great amount of guidance available on what I should expect from my treatment, how long it would take to get back to normal, whether the symptoms would stick around after I was on the correct treatment, and whether all my symptoms are actually being caused by my thyroid.

I recently discovered the British Thyroid Foundation and they have some helpful leaflets available online, and through them I’ve found a few other people who keep blogs on their condition. I’ve found the blogs to be unbelievably helpful in understanding how the condition affects other people, and they’ve reassured me in ways that visits to the doctors have never done. Because of the help reading these blogs has given me, I thought I’d start blogging on my experiences with the condition, to help others but also to help myself keep track of how I’m doing over time. I’d also like to think that my blog will take a level headed approach to the condition – anyone who’s done any Googling on it will no doubt have come across hysterical websites claiming there’s a huge pharmaceutical company conspiracy preventing them from getting the right treatment, and that doctors take no interest in their patients’ wellbeing. That’s (probably) not the case.

So stay tuned – I’m planning on blogging on pretty much all aspect of the condition, from the common symptoms to the less common symptoms, the effect these symptoms can have on all aspect of your life, how these symptoms can lead to you pretty much completely withdrawing from the world, and perhaps most importantly how long it takes to get yourself back to normal once you’re diagnosed.

My entry in the British Postal Museum and Archives’ photo competition.

Photoset: J30 Strike in Glasgow

Photo Set: Stop Muscatelli March

I have to say I’m surprised I’m even writing this review – because I was fairly sure I wouldn’t actually be buying a 3DS. It has pretty bad battery life, its launch games are pretty dire, and to be honest I hadn’t really played my DSi in months. However, I just happened to be in GameStation the other day and they had a great deal on – buy a 3DS for £179.99 and get any of the launch titles for free. Take the price they were offering for a DSi XL trade in and I really couldn’t say no so I ran home, got my DSi XL and half an hour later I was the proud owner of a black 3DS with a copy of Super Street Fighter 3D!

Hardware

The 3DS is a nice looking console

The 3DS is the fifth in Nintendo’s DS line of consoles, but it’s the first to really up the specs in a meaningful way since the first iteration. The DSi had some minor boosts in some places, but these were rarely utilised outside of downloadable DSi Ware titles, few of which were particularly notable.

As has become the norm for Nintendo, the 3DS’ internal specs haven’t officially been published. It’s clearly a big step up from the original DS, as the visuals are fantastic for a handheld console. As for the externals, the top 3″ 4:3 screen has been replaced with a fantastic 3.5″ 5:3 screen which displays 3D images without the need to wear glasses. The 3D effect on the 3DS is different to what you experience in the cinema – in the cinema everything on the screen pops out at you, whereas on the 3DS it gives everything depth – but it’s no less impressive. You do need to sit directly in front of the screen to experience the 3D effect, but as long as you’re not being thrown around in a car or a plane it shouldn’t be a problem.

Another new addition to the 3DS is the analog nub, with the d-pad having been moved to the lower left corner of the device. The nub is great, I find it much easier to use when playing old DS games than I did using the DS’ d-pad. The new placement of the d-pad is very awkward, but you’ll rarely use it.

And finally, Nintendo has made a huge leap forward in an area which has felt pretty prehistoric in the DS line – the stylus is now telescopic! I don’t know why it’s taken so long for this particular innovation, but it’s long overdue and it could have allowed the tiny styli in previous consoles to be that bit more usable while not taking up any more storage space in the console.

Software

Playing Zelda: A Link To The Past DX

The primary thing that stopped me buying a 3DS on launch day was the launch titles. There’s no two ways about it: they were extremely underwhelming. Super Street Fighter 4 looked like the best of a bad bunch to me which is why I chose it. I’ve spent fairly little time with the game so I can’t go into much detail – but I can say that the 3D effect, while adding nothing to gameplay, is pretty cool and does add an extra dimension (sorry, but I had to make the pun!) of realism.

The one thing which has seriously caught my interest is the eShop on the 3DS. I never found anything of interest on the DSi online shop, but things are different on the 3DS and that’s primarily down to the Virtual Console aspect. Almost all of my time on the console has been spent playing the Game Boy games Super Mario Land and Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX – two games I used to love but have been unable to play as I no longer have a working Game Boy.

The Virtual Console on the 3DS is excellent. The original consoles had very limited power compared to that of the 3DS, so the emulators have no trouble rendering smooth gameplay. So far there are Game Boy and Game Boy Color games in the shop, with Game Gear and TurboGrafx-16 games coming in the future.

Another interesting item in the shop is a 3D remake of the NES game Excite Bike. It’s almost exactly the same as the original game, with the same 8 bit graphics and sounds, but now it takes advantage of the 3DS’ top screen’s 3D capabilities. It adds next to nothing to the gameplay, but it’s pretty cool and it’ll be nice to see some more classics redone in the same way.

Conclusion

The 3DS is a great little console, but it’s sorely let down but its lack of games and its limited battery life. E3 has pretty much addresses the games issue – the next few months will certainly be a good time to own a 3DS. There’s no getting round the battery life, though, so if you absolutely need to be able to rely on your 3DS in long flights or car journeys then there will inevitably be a revision of the hardware in the next year or two and that will probably be the number one thing which is addressed.

Flickr Photoset: Yes To Fairer Votes Van in Scotland