So now I’m severely allergic to shrimp

A year or so ago I helped Char finish off some noodles from a thai takeout place. The dish had shrimp it, but I don’t like shrimp so I didn’t eat any. Right after dinner, I noticed my lower lip had puffed up to twice its normal size. I’ve never been allergic to anything, but this was clearly a reaction so I decided to lay off the shrimp.

Last night, Char and I had salmon, and three hours later I noticed my eyelids were starting to swell. I was confused and tried a cold pack, but when that didn’t work I decided to sleep it off. But then I had trouble sleeping, so at 1:30 I checked the mirror. This is pretty much what I saw:

My face last night, pretty much

OK so it wasn’t quite that bad, but the skin around my eyes was extremely puffed up, swelling one eye somewhat shot. So, I woke up Char, and we were off to the emergency room.

The doctor agreed that this was probably an allergic reaction, and that my body has now, thanks to the earlier shrimp incident, produced masses of wonderful shrimp-killing antibodies that are just looking for something shrimpy to destroy. Although I didn’t actually have shrimp last night, I probably got exposed through the salmon, most likely by the guy at Whole Foods not changing his gloves before serving me. (Whole foods had a huge display of shrimp skewers, so it’s likely he’d been skewering shrimp before I go there.)

So now, it’s not just a matter of avoiding shrimp. Now I have to be the dork who demands extra assurance that my seafood hasn’t been anywhere near shrimp. As of now, I’m not allergic to anything else that I know of — I had had scallops the night before without incident. But given the severity of the reaction, it’s not improbable that the allergy could spread to other shellfish. Sigh.

Mixxx Session 100409

After a couple months off, I’m back with another mix. Most of the energy that would normally have gone into mixing went into hacking on the software Mixxx itself. Modern DJ software has a feature that lets a DJ use a special vinyl record to control the software. So instead of having hundreds of records, a DJ just needs two special timecode records, and a laptop loaded up with mp3s. This feature in Mixxx was incomplete and buggy, so I spent a lot of time rewriting it.

But now most of that hard work is done, so I got some new tracks and started mixing again:

Mixxx Session 100409 by ywwg

  1. Frozen Border – A1 – Original Mix
  2. Insideout – Artificially Sweetened.mp3
  3. Alexi Delano – Adjust the Frequency – Original Mix
  4. Glutamate – Deep blue
  5. hermetico – nueva formula
  6. damolh33 – follow me
  7. By By – Paul Bee
  8. mehmet umut soy – usul usul
  9. Akira Tanaka – Tuetano
  10. Cio D’or, Donato Dozzy – Limone – Original Mix
  11. Tommy Four Seven – Surma – Original Mix
  12. eavesdrop – caribe
  13. Akira Tanaka – Die Formel (R-Stark Rmx)
  14. project swirl – forehead
  15. damolh33 – of an hour
  16. sowing paranoia – anomalistic month

And that was exciting, too

I seem to be living on the edge these days! I was bicycling on the BU Bridge, which has been reduced down to one lane in each direction because of construction. Because of the close quarters the traffic was backed up, so I was in the stop-and-go with everyone else. Suddenly:

Derailleur snapped off, chain broken and holding wheel onto frame.

My chain slipped a couple times, and then rear wheel locked and the bike stopped. Things were under enough control that I was even able to make a “I am stopping” hand signal so the car behind me wouldn’t run me over. I got off the road and discovered the situation above. The rear dropout basically snapped off, so the derailleur jumped around and got caught. The chain broke, but didn’t actually come apart. The whole system was actually stable, so that the rear wheel didn’t just fall off.

Because the rear wheel was locked, I had to carry my bike to central square (1 mile), get on the T, and then carry the bike home (.6 miles). On the plus side, my arms are pumped now!

And on the double-plus side, I guess I simply must buy a new frame.

Cutting the cable

I don’t think I would have canceled cable if I hadn’t basically been forced to. I’m still using MythTV as my DVR, and it works well — when it can capture video. Two years ago I was capturing HDTV using the little-known firewire output on our HD cable box. Then RCN turn encryption on all the channels, and I had to go back to analog SD cable capture. Early this year, Comcast announced that they’d be turning off the analog channels, except for the most basic broadcast stations. That meant cable would become almost completely useless to us, my MythTV can only record analog SD and we never watch live TV.

Since most of the shows we watch are either a) available over the air, b) available legally online, or c) available other ways ((like watching the red sox at a friends house, is what I’m referring to here!)), we couldn’t see the point of spending 40$/mo on top of our internet connection cost for TV.

I bought a 30$ powered antenna at Target, a 100$ HD capture card for my mythtv, and we’re now back to recording and playing back HDTV.

Well, that was fucked up

Here were are, stopped in the left turn lane of a stop light at a big intersection (McGrath and Broadway) when a BMW sloowly runs the light opposite us, doesn’t turn, and comes slowly towards us, and towards (I honk), and towards, until I realize they’re not going to stop at all and I try to get the fuck out of the way. They continue on McGrath headed south on the wrong side of the road. We did suffer a glancing blow, but just minor damage and everyone all right. Reported plate number to police. WTF!

Update:
The extent of the damage, although this really overstates the case since many of those scratches were pre-existing.

Small chunk of plastic missing -- all in all, could have been a lot worse

Dinner

image

Ziti Amatriciana, before I drowned the whole thing in cheese. The Bacon was not supposed to be smoked, but it turned out all right.

Note: all food looks better in halogen light.

Bicycle v. Boston

I recently went to a DJ show at Good Life, and since these shows usually last longer than the T runs and I also hate cabs, I decided to bike both ways (about 5.5 miles each way). It had been flurrying all day, but there wasn’t enough snow or ice on the roads to make me worried about wiping out.

One factor I hadn’t considered, however, was road salt:

My bike, caked with salt and grime
My bike, caked with salt and grime

Closeup of salt and grime
Closeup of salt and grime

I’ve wiped as much of it off as I can, but it’s too cold to wash the bike (it would probably just freeze). My hope is that the chain isn’t ruined and my components aren’t all going to rust. Ah well, the show was fun.

Together Bedroom DJ Contest Entry

Together Bedroom DJ Contest Entry by ywwg

I think there are one too many latin-style bombs in a row on this one, and I fucked up the effects at 37 minutes, but otherwise a fun mix with my usual chillout ending

  1. Luca Cazzoni & Naila`kil – High spirit
  2. Glutamate – Don’t look back
  3. Joel – Knopf (Live)
  4. Andreas Henneberg, Simon2 – Bolingo Grigo
  5. RuLO – Sounds Like
  6. Oblivion – Weaver
  7. SQL – Distorted Reality
  8. Alex Kenji – Tropical Chicks
  9. eavesdrop – chased by the trombone
  10. Chris Lake, LYS – La Tromba
  11. eavesdrop – clarinette
  12. Tea Time – My Name Isn’t Jack(System Zoid remix)
  13. damolh33 – nuda
  14. Dintun – Runge Mufasin (Pablo Denegri Remix)
  15. Function – Variance – Function Reduced Edit