Taking the subway

Posted by Roy Tomeij | Filed under Book

For some reason I’m quite intrigued by the subway (or the “Underground”, if you ride it in London) and stuff associated with it. I recently finished two books on the matter, with the first one focussing entirely on subway maps: “Transit Maps of the World“. The second one is about the people riding (and working in) the New York City Subway: “Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York“. Read the rest of this entry »

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Read more | Comments (0) | October 28th, 2008

Cancelling all appointments & limited availability

Posted by Roy Tomeij | Filed under Miscellaneous

Just so you know: my girlfriend will undergo surgery sometime soon. She can probably expect a call somewhere next week, which will be her two days notice. They plan her surgery only two days ahead, because it all depends on the number of available beds on the ICU (intensive care unit). My girlfriend needs to stay there for a couple of days. Since we live in ’s-Hertogenbosch, I work in Amsterdam and surgery takes place in Eindhoven (they’re specialised in the procedure there) it’s not doable to keep travelling around during the time she’s in the hospital. I will therefor stay with my parents in Eindhoven, so I can make it to visiting hours in the hospital. My parents do have a 20mbit Internet connection, so I can work perfectly fine from there.

This does mean that I will have to cancel any appointments I might have on the same two days notice. I will also not be available at all on the actual day of surgery, and will be less available after that while she’s still in the hospital. This should only take a week if everything goes right, but she might need some home care after being released from the hospital.

So it basically boils down to: I’m sorry, but I have no clue from when and for how long we can’t meet. I hope you understand.

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Read more | Comments (0) | October 27th, 2008

Going insane

Posted by Roy Tomeij | Filed under Book

Some time ago I finished two great, but totally different books about two US mental institutions. One focuses mostly on the institution (and its patients and staff along the way), while the other is all about the people in such an institution. “Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital” is about McLean’s hospital in Belmont, by design a place for the rich (and sometimes famous, like Ray Charles) insane to be cured or kept until death. Apart from housing the insane, it also proved to be a convenient place to put that nutty uncle Albert (or any other burdensome relative). Schizophrenia was most of the time diagnosed within the first few hours of admittance, so virtually anyone showing up at McLean’s was considered insane. There were little lobotomies at the hospital, despite being the way insanity was usually cured. The staff at McLean’s stuck to water treatment (hot, cold, ice, dripping, under high pressure, you name it). Over time McLean’s proved to be unable to keep up its own pants and needed to sell part of their grounds, admit people only for a short period of time and resolve to modern medicine (excessive use of drugs). The book covers over 150 years of history of a landmark institution.

“The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic” focusses almost entirely on the patients of Willard State Hospital. When this state mental hospital was scheduled for demolition in 1995, researchers found a large amount of unopened suitcases in the attic. They belonged to the patients who were admitted to the hospital, but forgot to collect their belongings when they left, or simply died during their stay. The authors have conducted extended research on the contents of the suitcases and managed to write great stories about each of its owners, of course with pictures of said suitcase and owners (often taken on the day someone arrived and sometimes after 40 years on institutionalization). Read the rest of this entry »

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Read more | Comments (0) | October 27th, 2008

Sequel Pro: the long awaited sequel to CocoaMySQL

Posted by Roy Tomeij | Filed under Software

Found out about Sequel Pro through Wakoopa recently. Didn’t know there was a fork of the abandoned CocoaMySQL program (MySQL database management tool for Mac OSX). Works fine and is being actively developed, as far as I know. Highly recommended when running MySQL locally for development. Mac OSX only.

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Read more | Comments (2) | October 26th, 2008