Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

2 Years Post-Transplant

Categories Life, None

This past Thursday marked 2 years since I had my liver transplant. It's been interesting living out this past year in our new-COVID-era world, but to be honest, I think it's made it easier.

I've never been the most social person, so an iron clad excuse to keep my heavily-immune-suppressed-self indoors and away from strangers is definitely welcome! It's now more than ever that I appreciate being able to work in a fully remote job.

Des and I also had the second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine yesterday. Despite not expecting much of an immune reaction because recent studies … Read more →

But He’s Got a New Hat!

Categories Life
Smithers exclaiming "But she's got a new hat!"

People have gotten into some strange stuff during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and I was no exception. My newish thing is baseball hats, which is a bit weird considering that going outside is not really a thing you can do in a lockdown.

Nevertheless, sun safety is a big thing for me, especially because I am at increased risk of skin cancer as a result of the immune-suppressants I am on following my liver transplant. I need a hat whenever I go outside to protect my significant—and I believe this is a medical term—chrome dome.

I started off just wanting to … Read more →

2020: Year in Review

Categories Life

This quote is from the end of my 'Year in Review' post for 2019:

Needless to say, 2020 and the entire 2020s are looking a whole lot more brighter for us after the events of 2019.

Although that was still accurate for me personally; for the wider world... not so much. 😅

2020 was a strange year for the whole world. I can't think of something (at least in my lifetime) that has affected nearly every person on the planet like the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has. 🦠

The year started off ok. I attended linux.conf.au 2020 at the Gold … Read more →

Tweets for 2020

Categories Geekery, Internet, Life

These are my tweets for 2020 (sans replies and retweets). All the URLs are still Twitter's 't.co' ones, as the Twitter API doesn't spit out the original URL text.

… Read more →

Converting my Flash Intros to HTML5

Categories Geekery, Internet, Life

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia (RIP 😢) Flash) was once a staple of the web, but for various reasons (security issues, unnecessary software, etc.), it has almost been completely banished from the internet, with HTML5 animations now largely filling the gap.

Adobe is stopping maintenance of Flash at the end of this year, and this is definitely a good thing.

This site used a fair bit of Flash in the Web 1.0 days. The initial version even used Flash for the navigation buttons! 😱 However, the biggest (and most fun) use of Flash was when I made 'intro' animations for my … Read more →

New Mobile: Google Pixel 5

Categories Geekery, Technology

The two-and-a-bit year cadence of getting new phones continues! My previous phone, the HTC U11+, has performed admirably over the past two years, and for the most part, still is. It's been a great phone, especially for the multi-day hospital stays I've had over the past few years.

However, as seems to be the pattern with my phones, at the two-year mark little things start to creep in. With the U11+, its screen would sometimes show weird hues after touching it, and also leave horizontal lines that would take a few seconds to disappear. Very distracting.

Although I've been … Read more →

Arsenal Win the FA Cup, Yet Again

Categories Football

Last night, for the fourth time in seven years, Arsenal won the FA Cup. It's almost becoming tedious with the ease at which they win it 😜. 14 times in total now, they should just rename it the 'Arsenal trophy' 😄

Once again, Arsenal were the underdogs, but once again they proved the odds and the pundits wrong.

They again defeated Chelsea, with the same 2-1 scoreline as 3 years ago. Other than the first 10 minutes, Arsenal were well worth the win. Nothing went right in the game for Chelsea. They lost three players to bad injuries, and conceded … Read more →

1 Year Post-Transplant

Categories Life
Framed picture saying 'Welcome home' with a diagram of a human liver with Lego pieces overlaying the left lobe.
Something Des and the kids made for me after coming home from the hospital. I received a partial liver (the other part of the donor's liver went to a child), so the Lego part is 'under construction' because it will mostly grow back.

Today marks one year since I had my liver transplant. It's hard to believe a year has gone by already, but looking back, a lot has happened in the past 12 months.

I commented to Des that it feels like the transplant wasn't that long ago, but other events, like getting on the NBN, seemed … Read more →

The ‘R’ Word

Categories Life

There's one word that fills an organ transplant recipient, or potential transplant recipient, with dread: 'rejection'.

TL;DR: I've just experienced an episode of rejection of my transplanted liver, but I seem to be coming out of it ok 🙂.

Before starting on the transplant process last year, I thought that organ rejection was an all-or-nothing thing. I thought that if rejection happens, it was like: 'well, good luck, go back on the list and hopefully you'll have a better time with another organ'.

That's not actually the case. Apparently, rejection is a common thing in the first … Read more →

Migrating to VS Code

Categories Technology, Work
Friendship ended with Atom, now VS Code is my best friend

I should probably add a disclaimer to start this post. At the time of writing this post, I work for GitHub (and by extension, Microsoft (who own GitHub)). As a GitHub employee, I have no more insight into Atom's or VS Code's development or roadmaps than any other member of the public. Both Atom and VS Code are developed as open source communities on GitHub. All opinions in this post (and more generally on this blog) are always my own.

For the better part of the last 5+ years, I have used Atom as my editor of choice … Read more →