Okay, so I've got this iPhone. The other day I realised that I had actually fallen into the trap, and I would be lost without it. Sad, really.

I check TweetDeck, Facebook, GMail and iReddit every day. Without them I think I may well go nuts on withdrawal. But that's not all - there are games! Lots and lots of loverly games. Most of them cost money, and for things like Bejewelled I don't really mind that. My current favourite game is called DoodleJump, and it's a very silly mindless piece of fluff that involves getting your animated character to bounce off various kinds of platforms and go as high as possible. It's fun. But that's not all.

It connects with both my mail and my calendar on Google. I can post to LiveJournal from it. I can use Maps to see where I'm going. I can check the news and weather. I can convert units from metric to imperial and check the current currency exchange rates. I can read eBooks from Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks. It holds my entire music collection and automatically keeps my podcasts up to date - it even remembers where I am in one podcast if I decide to stop it and listen to another. It has a complete web browser integral so that I can look up anything, any time, anywhere I have a 3G connection. I can reference the Yellow Pages, Wikipedia, the Holy Bible and the Australian Constitution, whenever I want and wherever I want. I even have a polyhedral dice roller! How cool is that!?

As a phone, it's okay. It's not the best mobile phone, but it works, and it's got one or two nice features - like pausing the podcast when there's an incoming call, and resuming it automatically when the call ends. Call quality is... well, it's okay. Good enough for most purposes. It has a voice recorder, and I wish I'd known that when I went to TAM, because it's much better quality than the dictaphone device I did all my podcast interviews on.

But one of the best things, one of the things that I appreciate the most, is that is shows me SMS messages in a conversation format. So I can see what I'm replying to, and what someone who has just sent me a message is replying to. It shows the full history of SMS messages with this particular contact, until I decide to clear it. Now, I'm not a huge txt msger, but I do use it occasionally, and one of the things that annoyed me about previous non-smart phones is that I'd sometimes get a msg from someone, and I couldn't remember what it was they were replying to. My iPhone shows me exactly what I want to see.

And yes, I know that there are other devices available that can do all of this. I chose an iPhone, mostly because I was already using iTunes. It's what I decided to invest in, and although I acknowledge that it's definitely not the perfect device, it is pretty good from my point of view. It works, and it works well for what I want it to do. It's one of the better investments I've made recently, and I'm very pleased with it.

Photos of the interclub fighting day on my Flickr stream.

Well, as some already know, I'm turning 40 this December. A good friend of mine, Sarah from the AAF, is also turning... er, 12 (well, that's what she says, anyway), close to the same date. We have decided that we will combine our parties and have a Pool Party at her place on Saturday the 5th of December.

Don't worry if you don't know where it is. We'll show you.

Please let me know if you can make it so that Sarah has some idea of how many people are likely to be descending on her flat.

...about my Flickr photostream - in particular, about the photos I took at the Mount Ainslie rally the other week, which I have publicised a little bit.

( Cut for photos )

Tonight, JOY 94.9am radio in Melbourne (Australia's only gay and lesbian radio station) will be replaying (with permission) my audio segment from the Mount Ainslie rally. It will be on the Hide and Seek program, airing from 11pm tonight.

I'll be contributing.

http://www.youngausskeptics.com/2009/10/action-required-response-to-the-rise-of-atheism-convention-ddos-attack/

I'm making the mistakes I never got to make as a teenager.

Something has ended that I valued. It's time to try and move on with my life, hopefully having learned from the mistakes I made.

Episode 12 is now available through the Nonsense Podcast website, or on iTunes, featuring the audio of the Mt Ainslie rally. Plus, of course, many other interesting items. :)

For those who didn't know, there was a rally/protest today atop Mount Ainslie. Here's the story.

Pastor Danny Nalliah, from Catch the Fire Ministries, decided that Canberra needed a spiritual cleansing. He decided that there were bloodstains on the plinth supporting the aviation beacon, and that these were from covens of witches doing blood sacrifices up there.

Anyway, the Australian Sex Party got wind of it and organised a protest. I went up there to cover the event for the Nonsense Podcast. I got about 10min worth of audio/interviews, which will be featured on the next episode, due out in a couple of days.

As is my wont, I also got a few photos. Behind the cut.

( Photos )

The audio will be on Episode 12 of the Nonsense Podcast, due to hit iTunes and your reader of choice within the next couple of days.

As I mentioned, I had blood taken last week. Today I got the results. The significant ones are:

Cholesterol: 6.0
Liver GGT: 167
Triglycerides: 2.66

These numbers are high. They're not high enough to be a serious concern - no need to put me on medication or anything, but they are higher than they should be. The good news is that I don't have diabetes (yay!) and the above numbers are likely to go down on their own - so long as I start treating my system better than I have been.

So that means more exercise and eating better. I'm already getting more exercise - we've had this treadmill for some time, but I haven't used it before because I figured that whatever calories I burned off I'll just drink back on. I'm doing a 20min walking cycle every second day at the moment, but I plan to start ramping that up as I get more used to it.

So to summarise: Health decent, but could be better. Could easily have been a lot worse.

After years of legal wranglings, the rights to show the movie 'The Flintstones' have been granted to Middle-Eastern countries.

The movie has had mixed reviews. For instance, the people in Saudi Arabia don't like it. However, the people in Abu Dhabi do.

I did not celebrate Blasphemy Day. My reasons were pretty much the same as those of Hemant Mehta and Paul Kurtz. Exercising one's right to free speech for no real purpose other than to annoy people is basically counterproductive, in my opinion.

So I went to see a doctor today, as suggested by my friend on the JREF.

I really like the Isabella Plains Medical Centre - they do training, so occasionally I'll get to see an intern. It's always cool to be a training subject for a future GP.

Anyway, I had a checkup. My blood pressure was 144/90, which is a little high, but not excessively so. My BMI is 31.8, which is also a bit high. But I'm exercising more now (I did another stint on the treadmill this afternoon) so that should go down over the next couple of months. My liver is apparently a tiny bit swollen, but not so much as to be a real concern. The way she measured this was fascinating. She put the stethoscope over my liver, and apparently by tickling my skin she can hear the edge of the liver. It's about 1cm below my ribs.

I've also got a referral for some blood tests - kidney and liver function, cholesterol and glucose. Wouldn't want to have gradually developed Type 2 diabetes over the last ten years, after all. I'll be getting that done tomorrow or Friday before work (depending how early I get up and feel human).

So we'll see the results of the tests soon. It's good to know that if my years of alcoholism have done any organic damage, that damage is minor and probably reversable. The intern and the supervising doctor were pleased that I chose to do this now - apparently at the 40th birthday, a bunch of things change, and if I'd continued on the way I was for much longer, I'd probably have some fairly serious trouble. As it is, things aren't too bad.

It's good to know.

ladyfirebrand and miss_terri_girl were absolutely right.

There was really no point in waiting. Tonight is the second night in a row that I don't have beer, and apart from a slight headache which may or may not be related, I feel great.

I'm very glad I took today off work. The opportunity to have a day on my own (where I'm not clutching a throbbing head or forcibly expelling my guts out my anus) did wonders for my stress levels. For the first time in weeks, I'm feeling happy.

Here's some advice I've received from one of my friends on the JREF Forum. This person is actually a practicing clinician:

Quitting alcohol is far different than quitting smoking and, believe it or not, much harder (despite what people say) and potentially more dangerous. I understand that "secretiveness" of addiction as a clinician, and it comes in many forms. But, may I suggest that you do this, at the very least, under the guidance of a physician. You can do it your own way, and some people who have addiction tendencies (no sense sugar-coating this) also have control tendencies. It's a weird combination, but I think setting a date - if that was successful for getting off of cigarettes - is a good one. The problem is that chronic alcohol ingestion can play havoc with some of the receptors in your brain which, unlike cigarette addiction, can actually have serious health consequences if you quit cold-turkey. The effects of quitting cold-turkey, by the way, may not be felt for up to a week.

I replied (slightly edited for relevance):

Thanks, I appreciate your advice. My problem is that I don't think that anything other than cold-turkey will actually work. Part of my problem is that once I start, I can't stop. And if there's alcohol to be drunk, I'll drink it. Part of the solution is willpower, of which I have the exact opposite of an abundance.
...
Part of my issue is dealing with the routine - the habit - the pattern of behaviour that I have become accustomed to following. This is exactly the same as when I gave up smoking. Turned out that once I had actually quit, that part was easy. But it was a part that gave me considerable anxiety during the leadup.

And he replied:

What I meant about talking with a physician is that he may be able to temporarily put you on a drug, like Librium, which can protect you from some of the dangerous side effects of quitting alcohol "cold turkey." Unlike quitting cigarettes, quitting drinking can be risky to your health, even potentially life-threatening, depending (among other things) on how much you've actually been drinking and for how long.

He also has this disclaimer in his sig block, so it appears at the bottom of every one of his posts:

The above post is for informational and/or educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for the professional judgment of, in direct consultation with, a health care professional in diagnosing, treating, and/or preventing any disease or disorder. It is not to be construed as individualized medical advice, diagnosis, or a treatment recommendation. Your reliance upon the information obtained or used by you at, through, or as a result of this post is solely at your own risk.

He has given me some good advice though. I've already arranged to have tomorrow off, since I have the leave available. Tomorrow was the best for the organisation since there was no-one else taking leave that day. I'm going to spend the day destressing. I'm going to see a doctor according to the advice I've received, but I'm not going to use my annual leave for that :)

I have followed through with yesterday's threat, and not bought any beer tonight. I've spent most of today thinking (not in a good way) about how I'll have no beer tonight. I've had brief moments of almost-panic, in fact. But right now I feel pretty good about it. Shortly I'll go and get myself a cup of coffee.

It's funny. I spent a week and a half in the USA, and came back with high blood pressure and a caffeine addiction. Go figure.

I'm going to try something. I will not buy beer tomorrow. I will have no beer tomorrow. If that works, I will also have no beer Thursday.

I can't do it today because I still have beer. I have found that I can't have beer available and not drink it. This was one of my problems with smoking when other people in the house still smoked. I will run out of beer tonight, then I will not buy beer tomorrow.

The first time I gave up smoking, which lasted for two years, I did basically this. So I'm going to try it with beer, and with any luck it might last more than two years.

Most of you probably don't know this, but I am an alcoholic. I have been drinking at least a six-pack of beer every night - yes, every night, for probably the last ten years. Sometimes, I take a day off work and drink half a bottle of scotch before anyone else gets home, then pass out until someone tells me to go to bed. This is something I've always tried to keep secret - but it's fairly obvious that that hasn't worked.

Despite the effect that it is having on my liver, my kidneys, and especially my wallet, I have not so far been able to bring myself to give it up. This has to change.

Recently, I was involved in an online exchange (on Twitter) where I made a complete dick of myself and possibly alienated at least three people I consider friends, and one that I consider more than a friend. I was drunk at the time, like I always am at that time of night.

This has made me realise that I need to stop. I already knew that I had to stop, but this rammed it home really hard. Like, seriously hard.

So I've made a decision. I will give up alcohol on my 40th birthday, 12th December 2009. If you're going to be in the area, please drop by and lend me your support.

I'm going to use the same method I used when I gave up smoking, since it was so incredibly successful. This involves setting a date, and making an event/ritual out of it. The lead-up gives me time to accustom myself to the fact that I'm giving up, which is why it isn't just a case of giving it up today. If I say that I'll give it up today, I know I'll fail. But allowing myself time to get used to the idea worked for smoking, so that's what I'm going to do now.

But like giving up smoking, this scares me. Drinking beer has been such a part of my life for so long that I'm not sure how I'll cope without it. I've heard that alcohol withdrawal is considerably harder than nicotine withdrawal. But if I managed the latter, surely I can manage the former, right? Right?

I am sorry. There was no excuse for my behaviour. I feel very bad about what happened, and my role in it, and it will not happen again.

Please accept my sincere apology. The last thing I wanted to do was offend.