It’s taken me 4 hours but I’ve finally got my Jabra v250 headset working on Linux. The trick for me was that, despite the offical howto saying to the contrary, I needed to use headsetd.

Also, in dmesg I got a lot of messages like,

hci_scodata_packet: hci0 SCO packet for unknown connection handle 1

This was stopping sco from working also. I think it was trying to use ESCO with the device, but the device only supports SCO. A kernel patching sorted it (patch). Did mean I had to compile the entire kernel again though :[. Really annoys me that you can’t just pull a kernel source tree and build one module. The suck.

Much to my surprise, I’ve discovered that people this side of the Irish Sea have never heard of the song, “Where’s me Jumper”. So here it is, an education, enjoy :D

It’s been playing on my mind for quite some time now. I go into work, and then my feet start to get uncomfortable. Almost like the socks are sticking to the arches of my feet. Not a sensation becoming of a fellow of by being. So there, I don’t like socks anymore.

Another friend, another round traffic accident. This time my best friend. He’s on life support at the moment, but he got a hard knock on the head, and it doesn’t look like he’ll recover. This year has just been a cunt, I hope it fucks off never to be spoken off again.

All with good reason though. Have been back from Mexico a day and a half and it was a most excellent experience.
I wont bore you with all the details since you can probably get most of it from the photos but there is some things not conveyed in those which I will mention here.

Firstly there’s the matter of bogroll. In Mexico, instead of flushing it with the rest of your business, you generally have to put it in a bin beside the the toilet. The official reason is that their sewage systems aren’t up to it, but I’m convinced that it’s because Mexicans like to examine their own leavings. You do get used of it after a while however, and when I got back to places with proper sewage systems, I still found myself instinctively looking for a bin. Kinda like when you spend a time in a foreign language area, it feels strange going into a shop and asking for stuff in english. You kinda feel bad doing it.

Speaking of which, I think Mexico really helped my spanish. I think my brain has even got to the point where I can construct and understand sentences in my brain without having to translate from english first. I even managed to haggle with an indigenous women, to buy a shirt at a market in San Cristobal, though that was more a matter of shouting numbers and her laughing at me.

Coconuts were quite common in Isla Mujeres (en. Island of Women) and Zihuatenejo and they remained an item of fascination for me for some time until I opened one. They’re really hard to knock out of trees, and it was hard to get a ripe one. Managed to get one in Zihuatenejo though, from the hotel. They aren’t as hard to open as popular media makes out. I had the other husk removed in 10 minutes with nothing but my hotel key and my hands. Nothing like the hours it took Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Getting at the milk was also quite easy. Really should have got a photo of it.

Also in Zihuatanejo, we went surfing in the pacific. Specifically, in Troncones. The waves were about 4 foot, clean and well spaced. It was my first time on a hardtop board and it seemed a lot more controllable than anything I’ve ever been on before. We had a instructor as well, mainly due to not knowing the area, the pacific being unknown territory and some people not having surfed before. He drove what looked to be a gutted VW Beetle (which are very common in Mexico, esp. as Taxi’s in Mexico City). The roof was made of palm leaves. One side of the windscreen there was a bunch of bananas and on the other side coconuts. The passenger seat in the front was a tree stump. It was an experience in and of itself.

Also while we were in Mexico, Tabasco got flooded. We actually went through Villahermosa the day before it happened, and it was already in a bad state at that stage. Each side of the road looked like a big brown lake and it wasn’t far from the level of the road. We were actually on a boat trip on the river that burst its banks the day it did, but we were further upstream. It wasn’t even at the high water mark where we were. The Mexican Embassy in the UK have setup up a HSBC account for donations. Details are on that page. *prods people*

…that he only had one copy and wanted to keep those for his records, so you fine people will have to wait for another occasion for such delights. He did give me some pills though. Click here to see what, and all the wondrous side effects. Add that to the Anti-Malaria pills, tetanus, polio, hep A, diphtheria & typhoid vaccinations, I’m all full of druggy joy joy at the moment.

Moving on, I’m in Finland with work. The light keep freaking out and the door keeps shocking me. I need food now.

I have recently awoke from general anaesthetic which I was under to have a cystoscopy. It’s where they shove a camera up your jap’s eye. A bit uncomfortable now, but it matters not.
It seems they may have found the problem, the symptom being that I go for a piss more than the average man. Much more, which is very irritating and pain when you go to the theatre/cinema/bus journey. My bladder opening is narrower than it should be. So the urologist is possibly going to give me drugs next week to loosen it, and possibly the photos.

General anaesthetic is very interesting. Never had it before. They just put a needle in your arm, you feel a little bit a cold feeling move up into your head and your gone. Next thing you know you wake up in recovery. I think I dreamt while I was under as well. Can’t remember what about. When I woke up, it was almost like I had been drinking. At about the 2.5 pints stage of merry on the Oliver Reed scale.

Let that word go into the annals of the internet and stay there forever. I had completely forgotten it until it was mentioned today, and it’ll always remind me of one of its greatest pioneers. Killabatter was a game we played in school. We’d throw someone a ball, or they’d come by the ball some other way themselves, and then we’d batter them to get it from them. Foremost in this game was Danny.

Danny was killed in a road traffic accident last Tuesday. He was put into the ground today. Everyone, myself included, are still feeling very raw about it. He was a great man, and it’s unspeakably sad that he was taken so young. He’ll be very sorely missed.

Really boring, but maybe informative post today. Over the last few months I’ve been having problems with my knees when I go running. By problems, I mean pain, and by pain I mean not being able to walk at the worst of it. I’d go running and after about 10-15 minutes my knees would start to go. It started with my left knee and then suddenly switched to my right knee. Really strange that. Anyhow, I’d keep running when I got this pain, and it only really got painful when I stopped. I had gone to the doctor with it and he had said it was probably just a minor ligament damage and to rest it. So after the JP Morgan Charity Chase, I decided it best to take a rest.

And I did. For a month. Then I went for a run at home in Ireland when I went back for a week, and I could barely walk for a few days afterwards. Time to see the doctor again. It had been about 3 months since my last visit, and it hadn’t got any better. Told this doctor the exact same thing, and she looked at my feet, the incline at which my foot sat on the ground etc. She pointed out exactly what was happening (which was verified by the physio when he filmed me running on a threadmill, and also by the young lassie at the running shop). As it goes, I have a pronation on my feet, which is very common and quite easy to spot. First doctor must have been sniffing the magic markers or something before I came in. Anyhow, what happens with a pronation is that your feet bend inward. This means your ankle isn’t straight when striking the ground, which has a knock on effect on your knees. Your joints can only take so much stress before they go.

The doctor recommended I go to physio and also to get proper running shoes. As I said the physio recorded me running. The angle my ankle was on striking the ground was really quite horrendous.

Also went to a shop called “Run and Become” near St. James Park. They’re really good. They make you run up and down the street to see how your foot is hitting the ground, etc. The pair I ended up getting have good support on the arches and heal. They really make a difference running. Went for a run around Kensington Gardens today. My knee is absolutely fine afterwards. I had a little twinge in my bad knee, but nothing like it was with my old pair.

I was actually quite enjoying it. It was a nice break of routine. Sure there was a lot of upset, angry, bitter people complaining about the underground, but really how much different is this to when the underground is running normally?

It also gave me a chance to walk home the whole way from work. It seems I have an excellent path home, taking in the majority of London’s tourist attractions. 70% of it consisted of park also, so really my walk home, is literally a walk in the park :). Basically, I start at work, walk 5 minutes to Waterloo, up onto the south bank past the millenium wheel, cross Westminister bridge, up past big ben, Westminister Abbey, into St. James Park, up to Buckingham Palace, then Green Park, walking diagnally up to the arch thing and artillery statue at Hyde Park Corner. Then just a stroll though hyde park, hop the road into kensington gardens, past the albert memorial and royal albert hall. From there I just had to mosey on down from the park to the flat. Took about 3 times as long as usual, but was 10 times more pleasant.

In short, I don’t know why people were so angry about the strike. Actually, I do. They’re bitter sods full of bitterness, and the strike just gave them an outlet for it. They would have been better off to just embrace the break in routine. Oh well, we may get another one next week :D.