deficient

Late March was our 50th reunion for college.  One of the old friends I met there was chatting about her vitamin D experience: she had discovered she was deficient, and had needed a booster course to bring her back up to normal levels.  She mentioned some of the symptoms: fatigue, bone pain, muscle weakness,... 

I recognised some of those symptoms, although I hadn't realised the pain near the top of my pelvis I was having might be bone pain: I didn't know bones could hurt! Muscles yes. Joints yes. But bones themselves?

The conversation stayed in my mind; the fatigue was getting me down, and the (bone?) pain seemed to be getting a bit worse.  Mybe it wasn't just the decrepitude of old age.  I don't get a lot of sunshine (I'm in the UK, after all), but I have been trying to eat food with good vitamin D levels, such as oily fish.  But maybe that's not been enough.

So I booked a blood test, and I had a blood sample taken on Tuesday morning.  They said I should get my results in a week.  But Wednesday (yesterday) morning my doctor phoned: I was vitamin D deficient, and she was prescribing me a "loading dose" to bring me up to a better level. 

I went online to look at the actual test results. I was at less than 25 ("deficient"), where 25-50 is "inadequate", 50-70 is "adequate", and (presumably not too much) over 70 is "optimal" (units are nmol/l).  So yes, clearly a problem.

This morning I picked up my prescription: 6 capsules, each with a dose of 50,000 IU ("international units"), to be taken once a week.

Since the typical maintenance dose is 400 IU a day during winter, that loading dose is nearly 20x the maintenance level!  Wow!  Let's see how it goes.

I'm not sure when in the day I should take it.  The NHS site says "with your main meal of the day", which for me would be evening dinner.  Other places say to take it early in the day.  Also, to take it with fat to maximise absorption (despite being recommended a low fat diet).  Hey ho.  I'll take it at lunchtime then, with an oily fish dish.

Anyway, from blood sample to prescription in hand, less than 48 hours.  NHS FTW!

Jupiter pinwheel and moon

More fun with the SeeStar telescope this eveneing.

A nice shot of the moon:

An overexposed Jupiter and four moons:

clearly, we need to learn more about adjusting the exposure

The Pinwheel galaxy, M101, 11 minute exposure:

The same image with some simple postprocessing:

clearly, we need to learn more about postprocessing

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLIX

The latest batch:

excursion to Segesta

The conference has been wonderful, as usual.

This afternoon was the excursion, to Segesta, where we went four years ago.  This time I was not recovering from Covid, so managed the various walks without needing to stop to catch my breath.

Everything was as impressive as last time.  

We didn't get to go inside last time.  The people certainly give a sense of the sheer scale.

trying for a fancy shot

After the temple, we hopped on the shuttle bus up to the amphitheatre.  We did the tour the other way round last time, but the main difference between the visits was due to the time of year: a parched October in 2022, and a glorious spring April now.

wild flowers: vibrant, pervasive, and glorious

On the walk back up to the Erice venue from where the tour bus dropped us at the car park by the walls, I was saying that I found the town map very unhelpful, and kept getting lost.  One of the other conference goers pointed out the reason: the town is triangular in plan, and there are two different maps in two different orientations.

this one, sensibly, has north at the top

this one is rotated 120 degrees

Aargh! I hadn't noticed this, so whenever I looked at a map (copies of which are scattered helpfully throughout the town), I had been assuming a consistent orientation, and hence was getting hopelessly confused.

If "the man who published a book without an index ought to be damned ten miles beyond Hell, where the Devil could not get for stinging nettles", then whoever decided to rotate one of the maps should join them.

Anyway, we found the very nice gelatto shop (as opposed to the merely nice gelatto shop), so that was a bonus.

Last day of the conference tomorrow (yes, it is scheduled over the weekend!)

view from an Erice accomodation window

I flew to Palermo this afternoon, for the third workshop on unconvnetional computing (the previous ones were in 2022 and 2024).  I drove to Stansted airport, to what my SatNav called the "Stansted short. Stay green car park"

The weather while queuing to get on the plane was significantly better than the last time I flew, in February.

The plane right next to the one I am boarding, with another plane in flight behind it, all against a lovely blue sky

It was dark by the time I got to Palermo, where I was fingerprinted and flash photographed at passport control for the EU's new EES (Entry/Exit system).

It was even darker by the time I got to Erice (although it was nowhere near as late as the first time I came here!), but the view from my room window was all the more beautiful for that.

The workshop starts tomorrow.

view from a Birmingham hotel window

We arrived in Brimingham for the 2026 Eastercon yeaterday, and settled right in, as we have been here before.  I have been using my new reMarkable notepad, and it seems to be working well so far.  Let's see how it stands up to a whole long weekend of use.

Here's the standard hotel window shot:

Not exactly beautiful!  However, even if the outside of the back of the hotel looks a bit like a tin warehouse, the inside is perfectly cromulent.

Now off to another day of talks and socialising.

new solar PV and battery charging strategy

We have solar PV and a battery.  If sunny, we can use the PV during the day and export any excess.  We can charge the battery overnight on cheap rate (6.4p/kWh) for use during cloudy days and in the evenings, when power is more expensive (24.2p/kWh).  We can also charge the battery off any excess production during the day.  And we have an electric car, which we can charge off excess production, or off the grid.

Up until now, we have been trying to balance things so that we minimise our import from the grid.  This means charging the battery as much as possible off excess generation during the day, only topping it up overnight if needed, and even using it all through the night if it has enough charge.  In the winter, this means we have been charging it overnight, but in the summer we have been using it all through the night, and charging it off excess during the day, therby having essentially no grid import at all.

This is all well and good, but there are two issues.  First, and most complicated, is that we need to know how much sunshine there will be tomorrow in order to know whether to charge overnight or not.  We have been making this decision manually, because the automatic system is not very good at predicting the weather. This is better than the automatic system, but it doesn't always work, and in early March this year we didn't charge one night when the weather forecast promised sun the next day, but the sun never appeared.  This meant the battery went flat mid evening and we had to import from the grid at the expensive rate.  This cost us about £1, so, more irritating than anything else.  

The second, and more economic point, is that overnight grid power on our current tarrif costs 6.4p/kWh, whereas we are paid 15p/kWh for export.  This means that it makes financial sense to charge the battery (and the car) on cheap overnight electricity, and export all the excess during the day.  That feels wrong, somehow, because we are using more grid electricity than we need to.  But, presumably, the electricity company prefers to provide us electricity at night, and use ours during the day.  We can timeshift, at a profit.

So we have started a new PV/EV strategy.  From late March we have started charging the battery and car, and using grid power, overnight, then exporting all surplus generation during the day now that we are no longer charging the battery off the PV.  We'll try that for the rest of the year, and have a look at the various bills to see if it makes any significant financial difference.  It is certainly easier to "program": we just set and forget.

reMarkable new toy

I've been thinking about getting a device that allows me to input using handwriting for a while now, as I like to take notes while I am reading non-fiction, and a laptop or other keypoard device is too clumsly for this use in places like on a train.  I've tried stylus-on-tablet a few times, and never liked the feel.  Also, they too are a bit big.

A collegue of mine used a reMarkable notepad, and liked it very much, and said the writing feel was good.  But those are also a bit big: fine for meeting, but not so much for casual note-taking.  Then I came across the reMarkable Paper Pro Move, with a much smaller footprint.  I dithered for a while, then decided to give it a try, as it has a 50 day trial period.

Here it is, against a mass market paperback book for scale:

I haven't gone for the cover (as the point is to have something I can use easily), or the fancy marker with an "eraser" on the end.

I'm off to Eastercon in a couple of days.  I'll use that to try out how well it works.  Review to come!