What The Weather Does to My Toes

WARNING: Photo below of my swollen toes. It's gross, it's weird and it's painful AND, it's 'normal' for me. For those who think, "That dude isn't in much pain", well you have toes like this, and see how well you fare...
You or one, has no choice but to walk on them, I can't walk on my knees or hands.
So I sucked it up. Years ago I slept for years. From like 2003-2006 or so, every day, got up, let the dog out, ate some breakfast, let the dog in, crawled back into bed. Woke up in the afternoon, let the dog out, got something to eat, showered, then took the dog for a walk, came home, went back to bed, got up close to supper time, let the dog out, made supper, ate, hung out for a while, watched a movie or some TV, went to bed. Repeat. I did have physiotherapy twice a week during all this and I did get out a lil further now and then, to some concerts, with some friends, but I slept and slept. When I slept I didn't feel pain and it was a relief... Mind you, there are plenty of times I wake up screaming. Past girlfriends alerted me to this anomaly.

 But I woke up one day and really 'woke up'. I couldn't do this with my life... So I started to walk, sometimes when I was walking, I'd be just looking at the ground going by and I'd be thinking, 'maybe I should just lay down here and rest, just to take a load off my feet for a while'.

Alita - my husky, kept me going, there was so much that turned out to be so serendipitous around the time that my arthritis kicked in... Where I lived, right next to my doc, the pharmacy, the hospital, getting Alita, who I obviously had a responsibility to take care of, huskies need exercise (all animals do) and she was mine and no one else was gonna do it, so she was a major 'crutch' in my life that made me get out nearly every single day, rain or shine....

Yeah, love this weather, although at least it hasn't really rained today. I woke up and something felt weird when I put on my slippers... It's a familiar feeling, it's like for some reason all my toes feel like they are taped together, that shoes that fit yesterday don't quite fit today...
In 2009.. maybe it was 2010, I can't really remember now, but several toes on my left foot were completely fucked. One as I say was 'corkscrewed' like a pigs tail, I finally got my doctor to refer me to a orthopedic surgeon, who, just happened to be in the same building as my GP, again with that serendipity. I was told it'd be up to 6-7 months before I'd get the work done on my toes. The 'work' was to 'straighten' my toes. The professional term was a 'total reconstruction' of 4 toes.
So about 4 months later I came home to a message on the phone from the surgeons office and they said that in two days I'd be in for surgery and I was like, 'Whooa! wait a sec, lol, I need more mental time to freak myself out over this!'... But then they called back and said they'd made a mistake and that a woman who was supposed to have surgery, well they thought she wanted to cancel her surgery, but in the end, they had messed up and she didn't want to cancel at all, in fact she had family coming to help support her after it was done. So, they said because they had psyched me out, that I'd get the next available surgery date, which was like a week or so later.
So, I went in for the surgery. It's quite hard to explain, but they straightened my toes by cutting a wedge out of four of the toe joints on my left foot and then inserting a bar and a bunch of screws they 'cinched' it all together...
They put me under of course and when I woke up, it was about an hour or two and the anesthetic wore off. I thought I knew pain well, but this was a whole new level. I wanted to get a stick of wood to bite down on... I couldn't sleep... I went through a few days of this and the screws and gadgets were in my toes for about a month or so.
Sorry, but this is my reality, it's ingrained in my databanks:

That op helped quite a bit and when I went to my surgeon for the follow up, he said that my right foot should also be done, but it wasn't "bad enough yet"... Hey man, well that's pretty great for him to say, he hasn't had to walk on my feet or feel my toes. You tell me, does this look like a 'normal' set of toes?

And no, that's not athletes foot, it's psoriasis.... For years I have had 'Psoriatic Arthritis' but didn't have Psoriasis, then, a few years ago I developed the psoriasis, guess it was a 'bonus prize' eh?

I'm missing both of my big toenails due to the arthritic effect. My big toenails became so warped and distorted that they removed them... permanently...  This is why I wear socks a lot, even with sandals because I'm pretty self conscious about my feet, though over the last couple Summer's I've been in a 'fuck it' kinda mood and have left my toes and feet exposed to the World... Like anyone would say anything....
On my left foot, the toes that were all warped and the one that was like a 'corkscrew' is starting to warp again. I asked my asshole of a rheumatologist about this and he said it was because the surgeon did a "shitty job"... This guy, the rheumatologist is such a dickhead, most of the city, and his colleagues included, dislike him. I've never in my whole time with this disease encountered a 'care giver' who didn't care. Now don't get me wrong here, I don't wanna be held and coddled but c'mon, you gotta at least have some inkling of care in your heart to be working with people who are mostly suffering from a great deal of pain.
There's really no other rheumatologists in Fredericton anymore, last time I was at the 'nurse practitioners' she was saying, "Well, it's him or Saint John" and there's no way I'm busing it to SJ and back just to see a rheumatologist... So I'm back on the waiting list for Doctor Dickhead.

Funny, since writing this out, a lot of the swelling in my toes have gone down, maybe this is good cathartic energy I'm throwing out here by writing this down....

And no pity please, just send money... lots of big 'Ol fat stinky greasy dollar bills.... And if those are like $100 or $1000. dollar bills, well hey, good one you!

Snow Be Gone!

Bit of an update as I found an interesting story on Phys.org.

It's always been a fascination of mine, earthquakes and animals. While there's many who believe that animals can sense the impending 'signals' of an earthquake, there's many that don't.
Years ago I had created a Facebook group called 'Domestic Animals Observed Acting Oddly or D.A.O.A.O.' - The purpose of this group was to try and get pet owners to as well as they could, observe their animals, and IF they had noted their pet acting oddly just before an earthquake or had any stories on the subject, to post about it. Never really got much headway on the whole notion.
So then this evening while reading through the articles on Phys.org, there was this really good story, sadly, it doesn't seem to put things in my favor. Though still, there's plenty accounts of snakes coming out of the ground. Birds taking flight en mass, dogs and cats freaking out. But does it all correlate to animals 'sensing' an upcoming quake?

Can Your Dog Predict An Earthquake? Evidence Is Shaky, Say Researchers

(phys.org) - - For centuries people have claimed that strange behavior by their cats, dogs and even cows can predict an imminent earthquake, but the first rigorous analysis of the phenomenon concludes that there is no strong evidence behind the claim.

The paper published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America instead suggests that most of this "evidence" consists of single observations and anecdotes that cannot be tested rigorously. Its authors suggest a series of questions that researchers should use in analyzing the evidence that abnormal animal behavior predicts earthquakes.

Heiko Woith and colleagues at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences say scientists must determine whether the link between the animal behavior and the earthquake is based on clearly defined rules (such as the animal's distance from earthquakes of a certain magnitude), whether the animal behavior has ever been observed and not followed by an earthquake, whether there is a statistical testing hypothesis in place to examine the evidence, and whether the animal population is a healthy, among other questions.

These questions are rarely asked, making it difficult to systematically analyze the evidence for animal prediction, the researchers concluded after studying 729 reports of abnormal animal behavior related to 160 earthquakes.

"Many review papers on the potential of animals as earthquake precursors exist, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a statistical approach was used to evaluate the data," said Woith.

The researchers collected reports on potential earthquake predictions across a variety of animals, from elephants to silkworms. Most reports were anecdotes rather than experimental studies, and the majority of the reports came from three events: the 2010 Darfield earthquake in New Zealand, the 1984 Nagano-ken Seibu earthquake in Japan, and the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake in Italy.

The unusual behaviors occurred anywhere from seconds to months prior to the earthquakes, and at distances from a few to hundreds of kilometers from the earthquake origins. Only 14 of the reports record a series of observations of the animals over time—most reports are single observations.

These weaknesses in the data make it difficult to confirm that these behaviors are predictive—meaning they signal an earthquake event before the event begins—rather than random occurrences or behaviors linked to the initial stages of an earthquake, such as foreshocks.

Foreshocks and abnormal animal behavior strongly cluster together in the statistical analysis by Woith and colleagues, suggesting that at least some of the behaviors may be related to physical phenomena from a seismic event already underway.

"The animals may sense seismic waves—it could P, S or surface waves—generated by foreshocks," Woith suggested. "Another option could be secondary effects triggered by the foreshocks, like changes in groundwater or release of gases from the ground which might be sensed by the animals."

One of the biggest problems with the animal data, Woith says, is the lack of continuous, long-term observations of animals experiencing earthquakes. "Up to now, only very few time series with animal behavior exist at all, the longest being just one year."

Without a long record, Woith said, researchers cannot be sure that their observations relate to an earthquake and not some other kind of environmental change or long-term fluctuation in the health of an animal population or its predators.

For instance, one study analyzed by Woith and colleagues found that toads were behaving "abnormally" for half of the total observation time recorded in the study—both before and after the earthquake.

Future studies should include a stricter, quantitative definition of just what constitutes "unusual or abnormal behavior" on the part of the animals, as well as a physical explanation for the change in behavior, the researchers note.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-dog-earthquake-evidence-shaky.html#jCp

From earlier this afternoon:
Well, that 'storm' certainly wasn't as bad as anticipated, at least not in Fredericton... Forecasts warned of "prolonged periods of freezing rain", "heavy rainfall", "flash flooding".... Strong winds were also forecast, but I didn't see none.
The good news is, the snow is almost gone.
Far from being 'time lapse' photography, I've been taking pictures over the last month or so of the snow slowly but surely leaving the 'field' beside our place.

From March 28th:

April 3rd

April 6th

April 8th

April 17th

But don't be fooled! It can very well still snow! I think I've even seen it forecast, but the good news is, for the most part, even when there's flurries it'll be accompanied by rain... We're on our way to Summer! 

The last few days have been brutal on my back, but I've got an appointment to see my 'nurse/practitioner' on Friday. So at least maybe we can make some sort of headway on this. I know she wanted to wait until i was back from Cuba before we started any treatments and get me blood work and X-rays.

Pretty excited for Friday and the Capital Project screening. I'm proud that Dad and his 'lady friend'.. I don't know, I'm old school, so I say 'girlfriend'... Anyhow, it's awesome they are coming down for this.

Not that my parents didn't endorse my desire for a career in music when i was young. Mom drove me to our first practices as 'K.G. Wolfe' in the 1980's. Then Dad let us practice in our house on Victoria st. here in Fredericton.

They never came to any of our shows, until The Wasteland Zombies played the Maritime Metal & Hard Rock 'fest a couple Summer's ago AND Dad and Riet came down from Kingston to see that show, which was very cool, plus my Brother Gordy and Crystal were there as well. Gord and Crystal had come to many of the shows we played in Saint John... I'm not sure if Scott and Andrea have ever seen us live before... Maybe videos... But I've always felt 'supported' by my family. Some parents are not behind their kids at all, then some bands, like Saint John's 'Elevate the Virus' and Fredericton's 'Cable Crusher', their parents I've met at a lot of their shows. 

I'm not even sure if I appear in the documentary on Friday. As Tim said last night on Johnny James radio show 'General Distortion', this screening on Friday is, well a screening meant for a certain audience. There will be another screening in the Fall and then there will be alternate 'cuts' forthcoming. The biggest and best is yet to come and that will be the Capital Project Webseries, due for release in the Fall of 2018. That will have near everyone and everything that Tim et all filmed. 

I do need to make a correction, for some reason I think a couple posts ago, when I was talking about the project, I had said like '300 bands', but it's actually only 100 bands and up to 200 some interviews.

Any way you look at it, it's still a massive undertaking.

I've been listening/playing the Capital Project 'the Soundtrack' quite a bit since I got my copy. It's so well produced and is filled to the brim with great music by amazing local bands. Again, that we'd be so fortunate to be involved with this project is such an honor. 

The bands return to rehearsing and writing has had a couple delays. We're waiting to hear what evening we can get in to the jam spot. I messaged the guys to let them know that Sunday is out for me as Dad will still be in town. I am looking forward to getting back to writing and rehearsing. I've tried to relay to the guys that I'm no longer interested in promoting or 'managing' the band. I asked for help so many times and got nothing that it's really turned me off of trying to put a lot of effort into the project. IF, we can just write some more and record an album, see it come to a vinyl release, I'd be happy to be done with it all... Although, there is still a part of me that might be interested in another music project, what genre, with who, I don't know. But I would probably be up for something.

I don't know IF we'll have any more shows for them to see at this point. We'll see how things go with my back and if I can get some relief from some sort of treatment.

On AIR Right Now!

Late on the gun here, but I just found out from my good friend at CHSR, Johnny James 'Dio', that on his show 'General Distortion', he's doing an interview with Tim Rayne from Raynemaker Productions, I don't need to explain more about that.

But tune in to CHSR right now, in Fredericton area, 97.9FM and online www.chsrfm.ca and then click on the 'Pop Up' Player in the upper Right-hand corner.

A full hour of Tim and Johnny talking about the Capital Project, screening THIS Friday at the Fredericton playhouse, Tix still available.

Johnny will be talking to Tim about the mega project as well as playing some cuts from the soundtrack (Some Wasteland Zombies to be specific and a whole lot more!)

A.I. It's coming for you!

Just an 'Add-on' to this post:
SURPRISE ASTEROID FLYBY: With little warning, a relatively large asteroid flew through the Earth-Moon system on April 15th only 192,200 km (0.5 LD) from our planet. 2018 GE3 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey approaching Earth on April 14th. Hours later, amateur astronomer Michael Jäger of Weißenkirchen Austria video-recorded the space rock rushing through the southern constellation Serpens:

Close call! '2018GE3 is the largest known asteroid to pass this close to the Earth in observational history

"According to wikipedia, 2018 GE3 is the largest known asteroid to pass that close to Earth in observational history," says Jäger. "It was shining like a 13th magnitude star at the time of my observations."

Based on the intensity of its reflected sunlight, 2018 GE3 must be 48 to 110 meters wide, according to NASA-JPL. This puts it into the same class as the 60-meter Tunguska impactor that leveled a forest in Siberia in 1908. A more recent point of comparison is the Chelyabinsk meteor--a ~20-meter asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows and toppling onlookers as a fireball brighter than the sun blossomed in the blue morning Ural sky. 2018 GE3 could be 5 to 6 times wider than that object.

If 2018 GE3 had hit Earth, it would have caused regional, not global, damage, and might have disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Nevertheless, it is a significant asteroid, illustrating how even large space rocks can still take us by surprise. 2018 GE3 was found less than a day before before its closest approach. 

Based on an observational arc of only 1 day, 2018 GE3 appears to follow an elliptical orbit which stretches from the asteroid belt to deep inside the inner solar system. Every ~2.5 years the space rock crosses the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--although not necessarily making close approaches to the planets themselves.  An interactive 3D orbit of the asteroid is available from JPL


Source: spaceweather.com

A.I.
Computers are taking over the planet at lightning speed. Let's take a look at what we're facing...

Jobs

There's 4 Million truck drivers in the US and 7 million data entry employee's in the US, in the not so distant future, these jobs will be taken over by robots.

IBM's 'Watson' does the business analytics that companies used to pay people $300/hr to do.

Radiologists, those who look at Xrays for health issues could be gone soon. There's an AI that sorts through millions of mammograms and it can spot cancer in seconds as opposed to huemahns that it would take eons for the same feat to be performed.

Surgical robots. There's been robots on assembly lines for years now.

So what will huemahns do for work? How will they be paid? Will there come a time when money is worthless? A massive global 'welfare state'?

Soon, with the advent of 3D Printing, we're heading into these machines having the abilities to 'make' products our of a plethora of materials. 
Will our food be 3D printed in the future? It's almost a certainty.

I saw a documentary years ago that postulated that 3 D printers will make rare elements, so that will destroy the need for money. If 'everyone' could create their own gold, diamonds and other 'rare elements', what will the need for money be? 
Of course, the creators and lawmakers will outlaw the production of these types of elements, but as with everything, those systems will be hacked or just end up in the black market.

Robots & The Coming A.I. Revolution

10,000 drones in the US, with 80 countries that use drones.

A $500 combat AI beat the US Air Force's top tactical experts..

A robot made in the US, was designed with it's own 'blank AI'. and 4 legs. In a matter of days, it began to walk. So then they did something cruel. They chopped off a leg, and it only took again, a matter of days and it taught itself how to limp.
They decided to look at it's neurons, as the robot had all kinds of censors to identify objects that the huemahns waved in front of it, while studying the neurons, they noticed that one was acting particularly unusual and found that this neuron was tracking their faces. The haunting/shocking part of this is, they had never programmed the robot to track faces, it did so, all on its own.

GOOGLE Deepmind -"DeepMind Technologies Limited is a British artificial intelligence company founded in September 2010.

Acquired by Google in 2014, the company has created a neural network that learns how to play video games in a fashion similar to that of humans,[4] as well as a Neural Turing machine,[5] or a neural network that may be able to access an external memory like a conventional Turing machine, resulting in a computer that mimics the short-term memory of the human brain.[6][7]

The company made headlines in 2016 after its AlphaGo program beat a human professional Go player for the first time in October 2015[8] and again when AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol the world champion in a five-game match, which was the subject of a documentary film.[9]

A more generic program, AlphaZero, beat the most powerful programs playing go, chess and shogi (Japanese chess) after a few hours of play against itself using reinforcement learning." - From Wikipedia

Deepmind could play and beat ALL ATARI video games in seconds. ALL of the games.

Took AI 7 days to beat the best poker players in the World,

When Things Go Wrong

In 2010 "Flash Crash" in a matter of minutes a trillion dollars of value was lost in the stock market.
The DOW dropped nearly a 1000 points in an hour.

More than 60% were being initiated by computers. Algorithms responded to algorithms was the cause.

What will happen in only a matter of less than a decade when nearly 95% or more of the Worlds operations, from street lights to air traffic control towers are completely run by computers and we have a major solar eruption. 
The 'Carrington Event' in 1859 was so powerful that operators were burned as fire came through the telephone lines. Power lines caught fire.

The Sun, in the past has had events unlike anything we've ever seen yet. At this point even the most modern electrical grids are at risk, let alone country's like Egypt, India and even places like Cuba have electrical systems that would give most electricians severe anxiety attacks.
So if a massive solar flare hits the Earth and all these systems are taken down, we could have World wide catastrophe's. What is being done to protect, not only the hardware, but software of these systems?

The 'Northeast Blackout' or 2003 was caused by a 'bug' in the system.

A terrorist EMP event. Electromagnetic Pulse could easily wipe out the electronics of any major or minor city.

Great documentary to watch: 'Can You Trust This Computer?' 2018

So is the future of huemahnkind bright or dark? Only the future will tell...and I bet there's some A.I. out there that knows.... But is it telling?

Interesting Thought Of The Day

In 2015 there was 8 Zettabytes of Data on the planet.

That's 8000000000000 Gigs - Eight with twelve zeros....

What the FRAK!??

EDIT:
Just a note; Art Bell, creator of the talkshow 'Coast To Coast' radio has passed away at age 72.
From Wikipedia: "Arthur William Bell III (June 17, 1945 – April 13, 2018) was an American broadcaster and author. He was the founder and the original host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM syndicated on hundreds of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.[4] He also created and hosted its companion show Dreamland."

While I haven't listened to the PODcasts in many years. It was well over a decade ago that I was an avid listener and had called in to the show to talk about an 'Alien' that was posted on the Coast To Coast website. The 'alien' in question was actually sculpted by my friend Mike Fields and it is my arms and hands holding the 'alien fetus' in the photo, which appeared on the 'Coast To Coast' website. I spoke about how the object was made with SuperSculpty, a type of modelling clay used by artists.
The 'alien fetus' had appeared on the website with one of the CtoC staff posting, "Does anyone know about this??? What is it???
Here's the alien in question:

Rest In Peace Art.

( Update: - Ok, I think I've changed the settings so that anyone can post a comment. Odd thing was, when going through my settings I found that my Brother had commented on posts as well as a couple of you friends from Facebook as well. Odd, there's no notification to me about this, but like I said, I think I've fixed it now.)
 It's come to my attention that people (at least one person) cannot 'comment' on these blogs. I'm not sure why that is. The person who brought this up has a Google+ account. SO I'll check my settings and see if I can remedy the issue. Please if any of you reading today's entry, could attempt a 'comment' which is found down below.

Jebiz Crispy! It's like January out there, what the fuck!? Went to Sobeys and had I known it was -40 out I would have just stayed in.
Ok, '-40' is an exaggeration, but it's so cold my inner ears started to scream at me. The North wind, my arch enemy of Winter seems to have made a late stab at us. I was wearing a toque, but it didn't quite cover my ears. In case no one's ever noticed, I have tiny 'lil mutant ears. Seriously, 4 and 5 year old children have bigger ears than I do. I don't know if it's because of the size of my ears or if this happens to everyone, but when it's really cold and windy out and my ears are exposed I find my inner ears get very painful. I rarely (and when I say 'rarely', I mean, I can't remember the last time I had an actual headache), but when the cold gets in my inner ears, my head screams. It's so painful that when I got to the Sobeys parking lot, the wind was coming straight on and I almost actually turned around and came home. ANYTHING to stop the wind in my ears. So I grabbed what I needed and on my way out the door grabbed a napkin and ripped some pieces off to stuff in my ears.
According to the Weather Network, snow is supposed to start around 4:45PM. Yes, snow, it's April and it'll still snow. There's a freezing rain warning on for Monday into Tuesday. Unbelievable right? No, it's totally believable when you live in Canada's butthole, which you'd think being a butthole an all it'd be warm, but it couldn't be further from the truth.
Summer is coming.... Sometime. I think Wednesday it's gonna be +9, but it'll be rainy most of the week (good for getting rid of the snow), I'm fearful of how I'll fair with my back.
Friday, Dad and Riet get into town and Friday night my Brother Scott and Andrea with Dad and Riet, we're all heading out for supper then we're going to the Capital Project screening.
I was talking to Spinesplitter drummer Brian Davis yesterday and I was saying how it must be so hard to have to cut scenes from the movie. I can't imagine the pressure. I was there for several hours earlier in the week and saw the process. I'm well familiar with the editing process, but again, there is so much amazing material from amazing musicians. Whatever the end product will be, it will still be amazing and I urge any of you Frederictonians to grab your tickets for the Capital Project and check out the show THIS Friday!
Anyhoo, I'm gonna go bury my head under some warms pillows until the screamin' in my head dies down....

Artwork by: Per Øyvind Haagensen

Ghostly Behemoth

Woke up to two outstanding music videos by two of my favorite bands!

First off, 'Ghost'. After a legal battle with this former 'band mates'. Tobias Forge, in this incarnation known as 'Cardinal Copia' and his band 'Ghost' release the first single from their forthcoming 4th full length album which will be called, 'Prequelle', which I believe hits stores in a couple of months.
The single called 'Rats' begins to touch on themes that Mr. Forge has spoken about in the press. The "Theme" of this album is the 'Dark Ages'. The time of course when disease killed millions and millions of people.  'Cardinal Copia' likes our world today to the dark ages, saying that, "There's a lot that you would recognize today in online mannerisms," he continued. "In many ways, we've gone back a few steps because now it's closer to how it was back in the old days when people were standing at the square and all of a sudden, it's like in Monty Python's 'Life Of Brian': 'Stone him! Ra! Ra! Ra!' Public trials are very unsupervised and extremely swift and speak to the most primordial parts of us."

Gotta love a band influenced by 'Monty Python'!
 ANNNNND Of course, the insert feature fails again... It could be that the video is so 'new' that it's not coming up in the search, so, without further ado... 'Rats' by Ghost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ijc7A5oAc

Next up was a total surprise! Behemoth is in the midst of recording their follow up to the absolutely mind boggling evil 'The Satanist'. An album I've dubbed the best in their career and one of my favorite all time albums. The band has just released a live CD/ DVD package (there's also vinyl) of 'The Satanist' performed live. So in the last many weeks they have been releasing 'cuts' off that live DVD. While I did note that as part of the package there was to be a video for the track 'O Father, O Satan, O Sun'. Now, if you've never seen a 'Behemoth' music video, well you're in for a visual treat. The vision behind their many videos are just astonishing. I'm always blown away by each and every one of them, the creative juices that go into these must be from the blood of many virgins and slit throats of many sacrificed animals (don't worry, this just goes along with their narrative).
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, 'O Father, O Satan, O Sun'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA_j_72psoo

Enjoy