? Heavy Roast Action vol 1 by djroastbeatz.

brilliant take on classic hip-hop artists. Giving jaguar skills a run for his money…

excited about ensuing holiday in Spain, enjoying the very sunny day today. Looking forward to learning about “big data” and using “Hadoop” to breakdown complex tasks into parallel concurrent jobs. Had major problems with wheelchair this weekend, head rest broke off and had to be reattached with metal struts. Had to rewire the connecting cable with parts ordered over the bank holiday weekend…

Treating mild chest infection with antibiotics, infection almost defeated.

managing the language barrier difficulties with carer communication and battling with Ryanair over charges to change names in a booking…

Hope everyone is enjoying the weather

Skiing was great yesterday in the biski, what an experience it’s exciting
to think that there may be an opportunity to control it myself in future.
Will probably be a while until I’m back in the snowpark again.
Polly’s boyfriend Kristin’s birthday in Brighton was fantastic last night,
good times, good people.
Photos to follow in flickr

just been to see the Foals, incredible energy and soul.
Then all the way up to Scotland (Dumfries) for Easter weekend with the wife and lots of the in law family. Will be nice to have a break.
EYegaze computer-controlled gadgets from “Tobii” have arrived… Exciting!

SE2 EP4 – Eyewriter Tempt LA on Vimeo on Vimeo

via SE2 EP4 – Eyewriter Tempt LA on Vimeo.

Enjoying hard work and lots of live music
saw the rap legend Nas yesterday, author of my favourite hip-hop album “illmatic”.Jessie Ware last week with an incredible fusion of styles, and looking forward immensely to the “foals” at the Royal Albert Hall on the 28th. Before travelling to Scotland for Easter weekend. Portugal booked for second week of May!

Battling with enterprise network security for work and mentoring systems for charity. Pictures and videos to follow on Flickr…

Philosophical insight from my French compadre…

Drix: I can’t compare my stupid hepatitis to your broken neck, live was nice with me, but when I felt like dead because all my nervous system was fucked, I used to think that at least I can make people happy sometimes, and that made me forget that my body was broken too.
The most ridiculous is that when I finally cured, I felt completely empty because I needed to “fight” something…
…and I feel like I’m still looking for my big “fights” or accomplishments.
I wonder if at the end life is not simply made to “fight” and improve things, wherever you come from.

Me: I think you area great philosopher, that’s one of the reasons I like you so much. I agree,, like for me life is about the challenges, I feel more alive since the accident because the “fight” has been harder. Luckily for me, my fight is unlikely to get much easier.

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Challenges at the moment revolve around inconsistent care which causes health risks and reduced productivity which is difficult when trying to manage work and life responsibilities.
I usually try to get help with care coordination from the agency but this is not happening currently (it is mostly managed quite well).
A two-week lapse in physiotherapy (informal through carers and formal through physiotherapists) is showing an unsettling increase in spasticity and discomfort. This illustrates the critical nature of regular physiotherapy for tetraplegics which goes unacknowledged by the healthcare system (specifically continuing care groups).
Part of the cause of care inconsistency has to do with the job being difficult and not substantially rewarded (rates are very bad with consistent downward pressure from funding providers), therefore good PAs become disenchanted and leave after gaining valuable experience (creating a skills vacuum).

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Films to see:
Untouchables 2011 (French subtitles)
The Sessions 2012

this post should be tweeted on @TomNabarro

Disturbing that the NHS seems to be being dissected into disparate privatised components as we had feared. Such a shame considering the incredible work people like my grandfather did in helping to realise the unthinkable NHS charter.
On another note, very excited by Eye tracking technology by companies such as Tobii, whose products I will be using at work. The maturity of the technology means that it can be incorporated into almost any application as a human input interface and can be combined with voice recognition to offer the use of complementary senses to offer improved flexibility and reaction in human computer interaction. Opportunities arise with wearable computing for example in the form of “eye-wear” computer devices.

Disturbing that the NHS seems to be being dissected into disparate privatised components as we had feared. Such a shame considering the incredible work people like my grandfather did in helping to realise the unthinkable NHS charter.
On another note, very excited by Eye tracking technology by companies such as Tobii, whose products I will be using at work. The maturity of the technology means that it can be incorporated into almost any application as a human input interface and can be combined with voice recognition to offer the use of complementary senses to offer improved flexibility and reaction in human computer interaction. Opportunities arise with wearable computing for example in the form of “eye-wear” computer devices.

always on the lookout for the best enabling technology…
So not to have been in touch about the wheelchair developments, have been shopping about to get the most suitable technology. Some people in Norway are trying to get something suitable together in terms of head controls to fit on the “etac” chair.
Other options include “stair climbers” but practicality and reliability need to be assessed

Planning to go to Portugal and attend a friend’s wedding in Spain. We are off to Portugal in May, always seems more complicated than it should be (partly because of the required entourage). Daring to travel with Ryanair for the first time, hopefully this is not a mistake.

I was looking over the archives section of the website(a tab button on the homepage) and realise how many posts there are and how its such a good representation of the journey. Some of the early posts are intense and emotive.
I’m joined doing work with regain, backup and SIA (where I was yesterday). All feels very rewarding to be able to contribute.

Enjoyed Modestep at the Oxford O2 Academy yesterday, alongside energetic sweaty teenagers. Had to rescue Lucy on my lap from being “moshed”. Had a chat with a friend about smart TVs and iPhones… “Smart TV are fantastic, there are lots of good remote access features nowadays e.g. airplay, ELP etc
I use a raspberryPi with raspbmc (a dedicated build of the open source media player xbmc to control everything through infrared), worth a Google if you have a minute. I also have a remote control app for this on my iphone. I’ve been tinkering with an iPhone 3GS recently to get it to be controlled through the computer via Dragon, I’ve now managed it and can do scripting stuff to activate phone calls etc through a single command in Dragon(voice recognition). Pretty cool but don’t have enough time to look into it much further…”

In summary I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11.5, there is a version 12 but I don’t use it because it has not been compatible with a scripting environments called NatLink that I use. For anyone not having this requirement (and most people don’t) I would go with the latest and greatest e.g. Windows 8 and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12.
To avoid bottlenecks I would go with a significant amount of RAM (random access memory, at least four gigabytes, although improvements will be seen all the way up to 16!) And voice recognition, because of its reliance on processing power and audio input quality will be more accurate and responsive with powerful computer and sensitive microphone (iPhone is great or alternatively a USBheadset) it makes a significant difference if the microphone is reliably the same distance from the mouth each time you use it, the should be about 1 inch. The tutorials and information about what makes for good voice recognition within the software are very useful. Particularly information about vocal phrasing enunciation etc
I use a possum vivo for switch-based environmental control usage, this is limited but reliable.

I have been asked about for advice on travelling for people with high levels of immobility a number of times recently. The following is one of those responses…
“good to be in touch, probably best if you check my website (link below) for the links to the Guardian article on travelling. There is also another bit of writing from one of the posts in September/October about advice.
Important things are WAV which can be expensive and something I found I just have to fork out for, I always take familiar carers with me (obviously some are better suited for travelling than others). Lists list lists so you don’t forget anything and I would take shower chair and ramp if I wasn’t able to arrange at the destination (same with hoist although this isn’t always possible)
some airlines are better than others”

I’m working hard at the moment on a report for a customer regarding a secure network with hardware-based platform security.

Enjoying spending a lot of time at home with friends on the weekend. It’s great to see a lot of mum, Russell, Lucy and Higgs and of course the great Angela, Glenn and most importantly, the Gorgeous Wife.

Spent some great time with dad and Josephine a couple of weeks ago.