As part of Anja's ongoing analysis of her illness, the next step after the bronchoscopy and CT scan, was to undergo a further scan known as a PET scan. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. This scan is more intensive and is done in order to take a deeper look at what is happening within the body. With a PET scan you first have an injection of a very small amount of a radioactive drug (tracer). The amount of radiation is very small – no more than you have during a normal X-ray. It only stays in the body for a few hours. Depending on which drug you have, the radioactive drug will travel to particular parts of your body. The most common drug is fluorine 18, also known as FDG-18. This is a radioactive version of glucose. When FDG-18 is injected into your body it travels to places where glucose is used for energy. It shows up cancers because they use glucose in a different way from normal tissue. And it will show up changes in tissues that use glucose as their main source of energy for example, the brain. [via] Unfortunately, ...

Following on from my previous post where I took a look at social networking and how interaction has changed on the Internet over the years, I came across a few programs which tie in chat programs, email and social networking in one neat package. I used Trillian years back, and cannot remember why exactly, but no longer have it on my system. Probably just got left behind as upgrades, new drives and new machines evolved. There are quite a few of these all-in-one programs available now though - Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda and Meebo - as examples, but the one that really caught my eye was Digsby. From the authors' themselves: Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. digsby is an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as 'Delete' or 'Report Spam' with just one click. digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to. First impressions are quite good, with the only problem as ...

When I first started out with computing, I used to connect to the Internet using dial-up technology and with a 1200 baud modem. I vividly remember the exact tone it made and the screams of joy I cried when the connection actually made it through and I was on the Internet! Moved on through 9600 and 38700 baud and so on and each connection became more stable and faster. But the Internet that met my eye was nothing like the Internet I see today. I progressed to the point where I owned my own Bulletin Board and felt like I was a king in my own castle, especially when I started getting bulletin board members who actually visited me from other locations. I could chat with people, send emails and even managed to build up a 100,00o+ strong file system ready for downloads and sharing. It was magic and it was all done via DOS [better known now as the Dead Operating System]. So the Internet back then was 90% black and white or possibly 8-bit colour depending on your monitor at the time. And the biggest joy of owning a bulletin board was the interaction from other members. People you ...

So, like millions of others, I am a diabetic. Type 2, or as so many like to call it - the lifestyle disease. People say we become diabetics because we eat the wrong foods, don't do enough exercise and are generally big, fat slobs. Idiots! I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 35 years of age and hardly a drop of fat on me. I was fit, active and certainly not a chubby! But then my body started acting weirdly. Too many visits to the toilet on a nightly basis, eyes going out of focus constantly and then the blood tests and the glucose check. Wham - another statistic joins the list. And for those of you who have no clue about diabetes [because, hey, it doesn't affect you right?], well let me tell you, it does change your life. It's not just about not eating too many cakes or whether or not to have that extra biscuit with your cuppa, it's also all about how you feel overall. A healthy diet can keep it in control but not always. Sometimes, there is absolutely no explanation as to why your sugars go up one day and down the next. Worries ...

Colour [or 'color' for those of USA persuasion]: a quality which objects have, and which can be seen, only when light falls on them. No matter where you look, you see colour! Wars have been waged over them and others play with them. They bring fear, happiness, sorrow and all the myriad of other emotions we all exprience. Red rag to a bull, green with envy, as calm as the blue sea, black with hatred - are just some of the feelings and 'vibes' associated with colour. And in this new world known as the Wide Web World, Web Wide World, World Wide Web [or Internet], colours are used in thousands of different ways. However, as any web designer will tell you, there are colours and then there are colours. It's all black and white you see - but not really. White and black are not generally known as black after all [yes, yes, I know black and white are not colours but that's not the issue]. The point is, white becomes #ffffff and black becomes #000000 and everything colour-wise works from these junctures. And as you delve deeper into colours and you work with them daily in code, you start to ...