A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

Yesterday (2008-10-05) I managed to do a really clumsy thing. I had my brothers visiting playing Zack & Wiki (not new but awesome!) so I was a bit out of focus when I battled with separating frozen bread slices for us to eat, after they had been grilled. After chopping away with less sharp tools I carelessly decided I would use my Global bread knife I got for my 25th birthday last year. It worked fantastically well, even too well. I had of course applied way too much force as the row of frozen slices previously had seemed like a solid object, but now the knife went straight through, into my unsuspecting fingers.

The first few moments of shock is quite unsettling. The feeling of seeing huge gaping gashes in your fingers is completely unreal, until the blood starts gushing out and you realize you should like… try to stop it. I ran to the sink to not mess up my kitchen, but as I was getting lightheaded and felt like fainting I got some tissues under my hand and laid down on the floor instead.

I called out for my brothers so they could phone my father, that was my instinctual reaction. He later managed to arrange a time at the emergency watch, and an hour later I was sitting in the waiting room filling out the damage report. 40 minutes later I got into a room and they began cleaning up my hand before the doctor would arrive, which took another 20 minutes.

The doctor had me straighten my fingers which hurt a whole lot and sent a funky jolt of pain through my index finger. At first they did not deem my injury very serious as a lot of dried up blood made it hard to see, so they went to another patient while the anesthetic got to work.

They got back a while later and began sewing me up. She originally didn’t think it was very deep, but due to the blood pumping out of the cuts she changed her mind. Instead of her first suggested one stitch on my long finger she used four, and five stitches on my index finger! The anesthetic wasn’t completely working when she started sewing, but I wanted it over with, and after enduring three or four stitches I didn’t feel much anymore.

Now I’m home from work trying to take it easy. Just using my fingers a little is quite painful, but I did get a fair amount of sleep tonight. Painkillers woohoo!

You might have noticed the friendly images in the text, below are some of the bloody and scary images, so if you aren’t into that kind of stuff avoid clicking the links! I’ve also added a warning screen if you step through the images in the display system.

---

WARNING

THE FOLLOWING IMAGES CONTAIN BLOOD & GORE!!
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
IMG1 IMG2 IMG3 IMG4 IMG5 IMG6
END OF DANGER

---

I have been careful when cutting things throughout my entire life, so I’m not quite sure how I got to this point. My guess is that it was a mix of distractions, stress and frustration. Distracted as the others were playing a video game, and I was interested in the puzzles, stress as I was already late preparing the food and we were very hungry, frustration as I couldn’t get the slices to separate! And when it comes down to it, I was not even trying to cut something, I was just going to separate them! Of course I’ve gotten many tips and ideas of how to separate frozen bread slices without damaging your fingers now, like I wont think twice the next time.

My first and only MP3 player is a Creative Muvo 128MB, which has survived lots of things since about 2002. Airplane travels, rounds in the washing machine, too many bus trips… it has been very reliable, though without a display or even a shuffle feature it leaves you wishing for more.

This Tuesday I got a new MP3 (etc) player, finally. Yet again a Creative, but their Zen X-Fi 8GB. When looking for a new player I wasn’t so much browsing for MP3 players, but something that could do a little more. The Zen X-Fi can play back video and it has a very nice speaker built in, those were the feature who made me pick it. Now I have various videos I’ve made on the device as well as a bunch of Anime episodes. I’ve successfully watched two episodes so far, and it works very nicely at 2.5″ and 320×240 pixels. I love it :) But enough about the player.

I remember seeing a whole lot of the transparent monitor pictures online, very well made too, and when I discovered I can easily change the wallpaper on the player I just had to try this.

So, here it is… the translucent media player!

If I ever buy myself a laptop, I will do this for each and ever place I put it in! Well, maybe not.

Last week I was at the optician to try out one-day-contact-lenses. There, with the guidance of the professional optician, it took me an hour to insert and remove a contact lense for one of my eyes. As I am going there tomorrow again for a followup where I am supposed to wear the contact lenses when I arrive, I decided it was about time I practiced today. I’ve been postponing it as I have had a cold since the middle of last week, and it’s not advisable to use contact lenses when sick, but now I’m mostly fine.

I wasted the two first lenses I tried to insert, as it took too long, so it dried up… but on my third try, after 40 odd minutes, I got it in there! Dang, I really don’t like putting things in my eyes! Then, after finishing the right eye, I got the left lense in at the first try… I ended up mounting a mirror on top of my kitchen shelve so I could see what I did, even if I looked up. Then when putting the lens in I looked as far up as I could, and it kind of solved itself. After trying lenses I have a deep respect for those who can just slap them on and remove them in an instant… or are they just insensitive?

Then, thirty minutes later, I decided it was time to remove the contact lenses. This time around it was the complete opposite. The right eye gave me its lens almost at once, while the left eye almost had me panic. I see better on my left eye, so that lens is much thinner than the one I wore on the right eye. Which my explain why it went on easier. Now, when removing it, I had a really hard time to see where it went! At one point, I thought it had rolled up, but when I tried to grab it, it vanished! I rolled my eye about like a madman trying to find the little roll, and I thought I could feel it on top of my eyeball.

Eventually I took out my small Fenix L0D flashlight, which I carry on my keyring, to see if I could locate the thing. Then I could see a very thing outline around the eye, the lense was still on!! Whew… a few moments later and I had it out, and breathed heavily as my life was saved. I have a hard time seeing myself getting used to the horror of inserting foreign objects in my eye sockets.

Lately I’ve been really busy with a few projects which are still not public. One of them is almost good enough to post soon, planned it last Tuesday… but then I got more ideas to implement… you will see, soon! (promise!) There’s so much going on, phew.

Today I got a package I had no idea what it contained, as I have ordered quite a few things lately. To my joy it was a gym bag which I had spontanously ordered after seeing a bag in the same range on Prylfeber.se! I love it, a bit small, but I don’t things will fit… I’ll just bring a smaller towel! Oh, and if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m still fond of LEGO, even though the new Technic parts freak me out.

I ordered it directly from the LEGO shop!

Two days ago, that is Monday, the day started with the announcement that we had no water, as a water leak had been discovered near our building. During the day I saw various machines and people coming and going outside my window. At one point I was up on the top floor so I spent a couple of seconds snapping a few pictures from there. It’s not everyday that people sporadically dig up a large pit on in the lawn on the other side of the road. A change to my view.

We eventually got water from a nearby supply to keep the factory up and running, but midday yesterday things were like normal again, except for the pit then.

Oh, and while I’m talking about pictures… I have to sit down and pick some out from my vacation to post. Someday… soon, hopefully.

I also tried my shaky hand to record a zoomed in video to be able to create a loop. As you can see below my hands were indeed shaky, but at least it kind of loops! Next time I’ll make sure to get a tripod. I like video loops… but this one is a bit too wonky :P played back in four times the original speed.

Earlier I posted that I had acquired a trampoline to put in my parents garden, as I myself live in an apartment. Shortly afterward I got curious of how well it would work in water, if at all. It was quite a strange idea, but it got stuck in my head, so I had to try it out.

To make it possible to launch off of the trampoline into the water I wanted to increase the height by extending the legs. I checked if it was possible to order more leg parts, as they were stackable, but that was only possible if you actually had a broken part to replace. Then I checked the price for manufacturing extensions, which was more than half the price of a completely new trampoline! So I ended up buying a second one and used those legs for the extension.

For the trampoline not to sink in the sand on the lake bottom I prepared boards to have as feet on the legs. These were then attached with a rope to stabilize the structure somewhat.

To test the rig out I brought together a number of friends and headed out to a beach belonging to the second largest lake in the country. It was in my first week of vacation so it was cold in the water, a friend guesstimated 14°C, but it was the only weekend this summer that this amount of my friends were available!

To see the process and the end result, watch the video below! Enjoy!

I’ve talked to a few people which give blood, and I’ve been curious to try it out, it does serve a purpose! What pushed me into really contacting the blood central and registering was a talk with a friend’s grandfather, which had been a blood giver all his life. I’ve also talked to my neighbor about it, as she also is a blood giver.

Two weeks ago I finally booked a time, after having left a sample before my vacation, and it went perfectly fine! When I got there I had to sit in line for a few minutes, then I got to lie down and they slurped out 450ml of blood through my left arm!

I think the biggest mess with leaving blood is the iron pills I get to swallow after it. Apparently it would take a whole lot of eating until you have restored all that iron you lose with your blood, but pills will fix you up! Just that they make you weird in the stomach.

For people with fright of needles, I caution you to look away. Well, I guess that’s too late now… below are a two pictures the nurse was kind enough to take!

If you live in Sweden and also want to get rid of some of your blood, for the sake of others, go to GeBlod.nu! I have to say it results in a good feeling, like you are contributing to society in a good way, in addition to paying taxes and abiding the laws.

The USB-FAN!

I can’t open the windows in my office and the ventilation is not adjustable.

I use the fan to cool myself down after having rode the bike to work or after I’ve been running around in the factory trying to get things to work properly. It’s priceless to be able and cool down to stop the immense sweating!… yeah!

For 69SEK (~$10) at Teknikmagasinet it’s a dirt cheap way to make my working day more comfortable!

It’s very nice now when the air here is hot and damp, very high humidity makes it heavy to breathe. The first few days after the vacation ended it poured down outside, timing!

Two weeks ago we were visiting a couple of friends to test out pistol shooting at a pistol shooting club where they are both members. I set out with two cameras, my Ixus 75, and the borrowed Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A.

My plan was to film both myself when firing and the target at the same time, I ended up partially successful. It was a bit stressful to set up two cameras while getting information and instructions of how to safely fire a bullet weapon, but I somehow managed.

During the day I tried different levels of zoom which made some material fairly blurry and worthless, but some of it ended up usable. To my slight surprise It was the clips recorded using the digital zoom in addition to the analog that would display enough detail, I guess it is a smart camera that uses those extra pixels in the sensor when zooming digitally.

Below are a few pictures from the event, and the resulting video from all that recording!

All in all a very interesting and teaching experience, thank you Jönköpings PK. I might join a club myself in the future, to work towards marksmanship.

A week ago I took a walk with a friend to scout out a track for running. While strolling along I snapped a few pictures of the wonderful vegetation. Below is a very small collection of five pictures, of which three are panoramas!

The last panorama was made up of more than 35 snaps! Original resolution is 8475×4817 pixels :) Not super-huge, but large enough to take up a lot of memory!