Updating my blogrole (what an awesome word)

With not much better to do, I’ve been going through Google Reader pruning the stuff I no longer can be bothered to read, and discovered that I really should update my “Friends and Acquaintances” links list. So here goes:

• Anickdaler.co.uk – I’ve actually been linking to this for a while, but had the wrong URL. So this should fix those 404 errors. She rarely blogs, but pop over there and give some love because things aren’t going so well at the moment.
• Asp Bites – For some reason, I never added this despite having been reading it for about as long as I’ve been blogging. Lots about fast cars and first aiding, so I can put up with the random lawyer stuff thrown in for those two.
• Skipping Down the Lane – A fairly recent one, via Chris, the blog of a girl who likes blogs. A rather entertaining insight into the way someone else’s mind woks.

Then there’s a couple more I want to draw your attention to:

• Blog Listings – a project I really should post more to! Finding random blogs relating to a particular topic each week, I’ve been very naughty and fallen behind with my homework due to lack of time. But I’ll hopefully get round to it.
• Useless, Dangerous, Late – My latest pet project, alongside GrumpyAmbulanceDriver. Head over there for a taster of what’s to come, and add us to your RSS feed because it’ll be worth the wait.

Bipolar plus what?

I really should read John McManamy more often. Unfortunately, the feed provided by BipolarConnect.com only provides the first few lines, and as I’m often reading my subscribed blog through the mobile version of Google Reader I’ll just skip over the article, because I can’t be bothered trying to decode a full webpage that has then had the IE mobile treatment, nor can I afford to with the current price of GPRS data (I’m not on a contract) and the amount of tat that websites have on them nowadays which downloads alongside the useful content.

It’s a shame, because when I do make the effort to read John’s posts, they’re more often than not very intelligent and insightful. Take the latest, “Bipolar Plus“, trying to identify (on a very simplistic basis!) what it is about people he knows with the same diagnosis such very different people.

Obviously, there’s far more too it than the simple “bipolar + $ISSUE” model, but it’s actually a good starting point for many people I know, taking the way $ISSUE would affect a “normal” life and then illustrating the positive and negative feedbacks it has with bipolar disorder. Apparently, this stereotype fits me:

Bipolar and ADD Dude: If this individual could figure a way to take his ubiquitous laptop into the swimming pool – while eating lasagna and reading a book and having sex and channel-surfing with the radio on and three phone conversations going – he would. Single-tasking is not in his vocabulary. Neither is time-management nor prioritizing. Often, he will miss a vital deadline or appointment because he got bogged down in something inconsequential, such as planting a forest and watching it grow. A subtle form of mania may drive his hyperkinetic multi-tasking, but ADD is what makes it work, and he has the successful life to prove it. But his ironic gift may one day lead to his fall from grace, and then he will have a lot to be depressed about.

So what do we think? Recognise yourself in there?

Fanboy moment

I saw “Xf”, author of “The Paramedic’s Diary” in London. At least, I think I did. We passed two CRUs and a FRU (RRV in Cambridge language) outside a coffee shop. The crew stood outside drinking coffee in the rain exactly as described in this post, on the same day that his radio interview was conducted. Oh, and the non-CRU paramedic had a Scottish accent, that sounds very familiar having listened to the interview.

Should have asked for an autograph, instead of looking at the bikes…

(Also, I’m such a big geek!)