The Synthetic Librarian

Today I got the result of the barium enema test I had two weeks ago. The test revealed some diverticulosis but this does not explain my symptoms. After taking some history on my problem and reviewing my file, the doctor I saw today did not hesitate to put the label of Irritable Bowel Syndrome on my problems.

Diverticulosis are small pouches that form in the large bowel and food can be trapped there causing abdominal pain from irritation (diverticulitis). However the typical pain associated with diverticulitis is not the kind I have. It typically presents in the lower left abdomen and my pain is mostly on the right.

Previous tests have revealed other problems that do not account for my symptoms as well, and the tests for diseases that would account for my symptoms have been negative. For example, I had an ultrasound to look for gall stones, which would explain some pains I have, but no gall stones were found and blood work similarly showed no signs of liver of biliary duct problems. The ultrasound did reveal fatty liver (fatty infiltration of the liver is the term I prefer), however that is not typically associated with the kind of pain and changes in bowel movements I have been having.

I have been expecting for about two months for the doctor to suggest that I have IBS. My regular doctor had never brought it up before. He was on vacation today and I saw someone else. This doctor asked me all the questions that I have read are used to diagnose IBS (The so-called Rome criteria I think). He told me that there were medications that we could try and said that they were relatively mild with few side-effects but that he did not want to prescribe anything unless things were currently bad. Things have been really good for the past 3-4 weeks. In fact this week was bad but not anywhere near as bad as things were a month ago. So he suggested no looking at medication for now and to continue to moderate my diet.

Sigh… that means I still cannot drink coffee or whiskey. But at least I know that there is a course of action now should the problem persist.

I am also thankful that the doctor did not send me for any more tests. I suspect that if I had seen my regular doctor I would have been going for a barium swallow (upper G.I. fluoroscope) test. He had previously stated that it was his intention to send me for one after the barium enema. I understand that the upper G.I. isn’t as bad as the lower G.I. test but I am getting pretty tired of the fasting period that precede these types of test .

The National Institude of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases says that since I have diverticuli I should not eat nuts, popcorn hulls, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, caraway seeds, and sesame seeds.

Windows XP has a well known problem affecting how it passes usernames to WebDAV servers. The problem is that is prepends a windows domain to the front of the username. That is, the username must be in the form “DOMAIN\username.” This causes problems with many WebDAV servers where usernames alone are the norm. Some sites provide advice on how to reconfigure your apache HTTP server to compensate for this but they typically involve installing additional software. I have uncovered a simple work around that allows you to trick Windows XP into passing the username alone.

The trick is that when you specify the URL to your WebDAV host, you should put your username in the URL. For example, if your WebDAV server is http://webdav.domain.com/ and your username is “fred,” you would put enter http://fred@webdav.domain.com/ as the URL to the server. When you are prompted for your username and password you would provide simply “fred” with your password. You will be prompted for your username and password many many times but eventually it will complete the process and you will have a usable WebDAV folder.

It is important to note that under Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) HTTP Basic Authentication is disabled by default. This may prevent this process from working. You can re-enable Basic Authentication by inserting the appropriate registry key and rebooting.

There is a DVD available titled “Ryan” that contains two documentaries about a famous Canadian animator, Ryan Larkin. The secondary documentary is about the making of the first. The first is not, in my opinion, a documentary but exploitation at worst and animated ethnography at best.

A young animator got some money to make a new type of documentary where he interviews some subjects and then blends the audio and video with computer generated animation. Essentially, the video is replaced with computer generated animation to create a new fictional work that includes the audio with some heavily distorted video of the subjects. In this case the subject is a famous animator who has some serious problems. The documentary heavily focuses on the documentary-makers ideas about the subject. This animated documentary was offensive to me but it was really interesting to see the contrast between this experimental documentary and the real documentary included on the DVD.

The “real” documentary is about the making of the animated documentary. The film maker uses conventional documentary mechanisms and does an effective job. The flaws of the animated documentary and its maker are revealed through candid scenes and interviews and the presentation seems balanced and non-judgemental.

This is really worth seeing. I love documentary, and seeing these two pieces together back to back was impressive. Ryan is from the National Film Board of Canada and I believe I rented it from Blockbuster.

In the past month I have seen a number of movies worth noting. Closer is about infidelity and love triangles (parallelogram maybe?), Suspect Zero is a really really bad movie about a remote viewer who kills child killers, Thomas in Love is an incredible French film about a shut-in forced to use the Internet for dates by his insurance company, The Village is a simple and effective horror/mystery with delightfully slow pace.

Don’t bother seeing suspect zero unless you are obsessed with child killers. Even then, you probably get your fix watching Law and Order: Icky Crimes Unit. It stars Ben Kingsley as a remote viewer from the CIA who has gone insane and is obsessed with killing child killers. How on earth did they get Ben Kingsley for this movie?

Closer is surprisingly interesting. Films about infidelity can attempt to whitewash the consequences of cheating on relationships and people (High Fidelity is an example of a whitewash) and that annoys me. This film made no such attempts and avoided all the cliches and traps I thought were awaiting me. The film kept me interested and thinking and entertained. It prompted reaction without promoting premature judgement. The film is about two couples who marry and all have affairs with each other and the how their relationships evolve. The actors give good performances. I cannot stand Julia Roberts but she was good in this roll.

Thomas in Love is a gem. The premise is that Thomas is agoraphobic and never leaves his apartment. He made a lot of money designing some high-tech stuff and turned it all over to a health insurance company who pays for his disability needs. All of Thomas’ interactions take place over a video-phone and we see only what Thomas sees on screen; the entire story is told with the audience seeing only what the protagonist sees. The movie is funny and enjoyable.

I expect The Village to be tedious and predictable as hollywood horror tends to be. It wasn’t very predictable and had a satisfying ending. Not an outstanding film but entertaining. It was really well paced, and by that I mean that most people will find it slow. I thought Unbreakable, from the same film maker, was a bit slow paced but effectively slow. This is not as slow but if you were bored by Unbreakable this might seem slow (though perhaps more bearably). I really thought at about four places a really bad ending was about to be revealed but it never happened. The sense of tension and is not overly high but it is maintained right until the end.

I am now a mere 198 lbs, the lightest I recall being in my adult life. While suffering from some kind of undiagnosed and chronic gastrointestinal ailment, I ended losing weight without dieting; about 10 lbs in 2 weeks. Recently, I started feeling a fair bit better and stopped losing weight. I figured I should keep the weight-loss momentum going and so I started a diet. The diet has been easy and successful so far thanks to help from a little software.

I tried dieting, for the first time, several years ago and managed to lose 15 lbs, most of which I put back on the year afterward. The key for me then was learning how to count calories. I started estimating the calories in everything I ate and gained some awareness of exactly how much I was overeating. Guesstimating calories is helpful but not sufficient to ensure continued gradual weight loss. This time I decided it would be easier to calorie-count by using some software on my palm pilot to track my eating.

I hunted for diet software and nothing really seemed that appealing until I discovered a demo program that came with my Sony Clie handheld. The software is called BalanceLog and after a few days of using it I was hooked and bought the full-blown version that comes with an MS Windows interface, web interface, and 4 user licenses. It was a bargain at US$49.

BalanceLog lets me enter what I eat every day. It has a built-in database of foods that knows the nutritional make-up of each food in addition to the calories. Each food is measured in grams or milliliters per serving. So you can easily enter in how much you ate and it calculates how many calories you got. The database is quite extensive and includes many brand name foods and foods from restraunts.

You also enter in your weight several times a week and it tracks how well you are doing compared to your goals. The goals are defined by choosing one diet from a set of about twelve. Each diet defines a set of goals and as you track your food. The goals are the amount of each type of nutrient you should get on a day-to-day basis. For example, the software will warn you if you have to much salty food if you choose a low sodium diet or too much fat on a low-fat diet.

I choose a low-carb diet, not because of the current trend, but because sugar may be one of the things triggering my gastrointestinal problems. The program asked me a lot of questions about my lifestyle and estimated my resting metabolic rate (RMR) and my body mass index (BMI). It then asked how much weight I wanted to lose over what period of time. I said I wanted to lose 50 lbs in a year and it calculated that I could lose 1 lb per week if I take in 1400 calories a day. It also suggested that I get at least 1200 calories of exercise each week (which would allow me to eat 1200 calories more food).

The first week it was a challenge to make sure I did not eat too much. The second week was more interesting because it was easier to keep the calories in check but I was able to appreciate the nutritional summary it was giving me. I never realized that I was not getting much calcium. In fact less than 10% of my daily recommend amount! I don’t like dairy much… except yogurt. I also get way way over my daily recommend amount of sodium. I found that I was getting the right amount of cholesterol but I already new that. Every time I have a blood test my doctor comments that my cholesterol is normal. He checks my blood pressure, checks it again, checks it a third time and, with slight disbelief, comments, “oh… your blood pressure is fine. hmm.” I think he’s used to fat men having high blood pressure.

I have been using the program for three weeks and I am hooked on it. Since the software allows us 4 user licenses my wife is using it too. The software seems much crueler to her as it told her that she could only have 1200 calories a day. How can a person live on that? Fortunately she gets thousands and thousands of calories in exercise each week so she can top up her meals.

So far I am on track every week with losing 1 lbs. My clothes fit me a lot better and I really look forward to wearing some old jeans that I outgrew about 5 years ago.