Other Sites
Smelly Macs etc.
Spam filter woes
Maxtor/Fusion ...
EM Sensitivity Questionnaire
Smelly Macs etc.
From Meg
Hi Charles,
I was poking around on the Internet, trying to find out why some electronics products smell so awful, when I happened upon your article about smelly Macs. Wow! Someone who understands! I'm not as chemically sensitive as you, but I certainly have problems.
There's one particular smell---I think you know which one i mean...the one you described as sort of sweet---that also has a bite to it and really irritates and eventually causes nausea and headaches. I, too, bought a Kinesis keyboard, and it reeked of this. I just bought a Comfort keyboard, which I like, but it has the same odor, albeit somewhat less strong.
The standard Mac keyboard (mine doesn't smell) is really hard on my hands---I'm going to get serious arthritis if I keep using it. But what to do?? I'll keep trying other keyboards, I guess.
But in the mean time, in one of your responses to a comment, you mentioned that you had had a sinus infection for four years (and counting). Believe me, I know what you mean!!! And I hope that by passing on some of my hard-won knowledge, you might find some benefit.
I have had many bacterial sinus infections that lasted months, and NOT ONE was cured with antibiotics. At first, rinsing my sinuses worked, then for a few years homeopathics worked. I also acquired fungal sinus infections. Diflucan got rid of some, but one Candida infection locus, and one unidentified fungus infection locus are still with me....for over four years. Yeah, I have classic chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Epstein-Barr virus, and massive allergies and sensitivities.
I've spent years trying to figure out WHY these things plague me. My conclusions: (1) genetic predisposition, (2) EBV disregulates the immune system, (3) I happen to need higher levels of nutrients (and didn't always get them), (4) chemical exposures.
And what do to about it?
The biggest help of all has been raw vegetable juice. I have not had a bacterial sinus infection since I started juicing (6 to 10 oz per day). I now recover from viral infections faster than most other people. It kills off fungal infections, too - it's the only thing that has reversed mine over the long term (although they are still not completely gone). Cooked is not the same as raw---I don't know why, but I know it's true. I use a GreenStar twin gear juicer. It's great! Almost three years and it works like new.
Second, I eat all organic food (and organic grass-fed meat), and NO processed or prepared foods (except some canned tomatoes and occasional Lundberg organic rice cakes). This takes a lot of burden off my body.
Third I've been getting NMT (neuromodulation therapy) treatments for over a year. This is a type of energy work (nothing invasive or ingested or applied) that frankly, shouldn't work, but it does. I'm a scientist (MS in genetics) and a real skeptic----but it gives me solid results. My allergies and sensitivities are much less, I'm exercising regularly now, and I feel SO much better! Be careful, though, you need a practitioner who is well trained and really knows what he or she is doing to get results.
I know only too well the feeling of slowly losing the battle. It's been a long, hard road, but I'm very grateful to have found some ways of gaining at least some ground back. If none of this help you, I hope you find other things that do work.
Peace,
Meg
Hi Meg;
First, the keyboard issue. I've found that the most comfortable 'boards I've tried yet are the Kensington SlimType and the i-Rocks Mac X-Slim Backlit USB Keyboard (which are essentially the same design with some distinctive features respectively), and both were non-smelly right out of the box. You can read my reviews here:
Kensington SlimType
i-Rocks Mac X-Slim Backlit USB Keyboard
Of course keyboard comfort is ideosyncratic, and what works for one may not for another.
As for the sinus troubles, I'm not surprised that antibiotics didn't help, and they probably made things worse because they kill off the beneficial intestinal flora that help battle the yeast/fungus that it the likely main culprit. A Mayo Clinic Study seven years ago found that 96 percent (202 out of the 210 people with chronic sinus infections studied) had fungus infections. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990910080344.htm
I've finally gotten some relief following the dietary recommendations of my Naturopath - basically eating mainly fresh vegetables - raw in salads, steamed, or sautéd, plus modest amounts of fish, fowl, and extra-lean beef, and very modest amounts of fresh fruit legumes, and whole grains.
No sugar other than the fructose in fresh fruit, no foods containing flour save for very occasional unleavened whole grain bread, no processed foods, nothing containing yeast, no cheese, nothing containing dairy products (eggs a reports: OK in moderation), no fermented foods or mushrooms, no alcohol. I try to eat organic when practical, although organic produce can be hard to find here.
The effect has been quite dramatic. Like you, I'm not entirely out of the woods, but I've gone from having bad sinus headaches about five days out of seven, to perhaps three or four a month.
I wonder if neuromodulation therapy is anything like cranial-sacral therapy, which I've heard good things about.
Hope your improvement continues as well.
Charles
Spam filter woes
From Max MacDonald
Hello Charles,
In preparation for a media launch for our festival this week, we sent out some batch emails (media, sponsors, Board, etc.) with the invitation attached. Everything seemed fine with no bounce backs. Imagine our horror, when making follow up calls, to find that many had not received the invitation.
Subsequently, we discovered that many of these good folks had front loaded spam protection of some kind and our invitation was shunted off the tracks before ever reaching them.
Is there any way of avoiding this in the future or must we be resigned to sending our emails one at a time, with the message in the body, to dozens and dozens of contacts? Even in the old days I could send batch faxes! In this case, I'm not sure that the cure is any better than the disease. 8-(
On a side note, I've been using Spamsieve for the past month with great results. I average 20 pieces of spam a day and it is a joy to watch them disappear right in front of my eyes without having to touch them. The big difference from the folks above is that I have the option to quickly scan through my Junk E-Mail folder at the end of the day to see if I missed something.
Thanks,
Max
Max MacDonald
Celtic Colours International Festival
363 Charlotte St.
Sydney, N.S. Canada B1P 1E1
Ph. (902) 562-6700
Fax (902) 539=9388
http://www.celtic-colours.com
Celtic Colours 10th Anniversary Festival
Oct. 6-14, 2006
Hi Max;
I moderate an email discussion forum with about 100 members, and the way I get around the sort of spam filter blocks you mention is with the wonderful old email client program Eudora, whose address book allows you to enter multiple recipient addresses under a single nickname, with messages received by addressees having only their address appearing in the header, which I think (not positive) might work around the phenomenon you're encountering. This might work with other email programs as well, but I have no first-hand experience.
Thanks for the report on SpamSieve. Being stuck with a slow dialup connection, I prefer to avoid downloading spam from the server. I probably receive 200 or more spam messages a day, and prescreen them using Mail Beacon, POP Monitor, or Nisus Email, all of which let you download just the messages headers and delete the junk before downloading the stuff you (probably) want.
Charles
Re: Spam filter woes
From Max MacDonald
Hello Charles,
Thanks for the quick reply.
Eudora was the first email program I used and can't remember why I switched. I''ve read your testimonial(s) on the product and might just get back to it. (using Entourage the past few years and it's been getting fussy lately)
"enter multiple recipient addresses under a single nickname..."
Yeah, that's the way I do it as well but I'm finding out that not everyone in the office does the same thing. Therein lies the problem.
Thanks for the help,
Max
P.S. You manage to do what you do with a dial up connection??!!.. of course... you're the same guy who could keep those old Austins on the road, so I shouldn't be surprised. 8-)
Hi Max;
Sounds like your co-workers need some emailing 101 training. I'm amazed by the amount of business email I receive with long lists of batch recipients in the header. I've provisionally chalked it up to the general angularity of the Windoze world, but perhaps not.
Believe me, I'm not on dialup by choice. We're told not to even hope for broadband here before 4-5 years hence at the earliest, and essentially never, unless the government ponies up with subsidy cash. An Aliant tech I know estimates that it would cost about $190,000 to deliver broadband to an area within a four kilo. radius from the local switching station, and as you know, given the population density here, it would take a century or two to recoup the capital outlay from subscriptions. Satellite would be one alternative option, but absurdly expensive.
Charles
Re: Spam filter woes
From Max MacDonald
"... given the population density here, it would take a century or two to recoup the capital outlay from subscriptions."
Charles,
As you may know, the CBRM is about to go to the court with a lawsuit against the Province challenging the distribution of tax dollars. The argument the CBRM is making with the Province in regard to public service provisions is based on the following:
Pursuant to Section 36 (2) of the Constitution, Parliament and the Government of Canada are committed to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.
Section 36(1) of the Constitution commits the Government of Canada and the provincial governments to promoting equal opportunities for the well-being of Canadians and to furthering economic development to reduce disparity in opportunity.
Just a thought...
Max
Hi Max;
I was vaguely aware of the lawsuit, but not the details.
More power to 'em.
FWIW (which may not be much), on of the MacDonald government's promises in the recent election was to extend broadband to all areas of the province by 2010.
If they follow through, I'm not optimistic that we'll not be close to the last to get it.
Charles
Maxtor/Fusion ...
From Kevin Shaffer
Hi Charles:
Here is a product worth further investigation; I read about it on the Seagate/maxtor web site, as well as in a print edition photo magazine. The general gist of this thing is as follows, though I may have missed some detailed points; the topic needs more study before I'd buy.... Certainly I'd need to know more:
Maxtor (now Seagate) and Fabrik Inc have an imaging storage & retrieval solution; a hybrid browser-based interface to tag, organize, share (privately or publicly) any mixture or collection of pictures, video, documents of various kinds, and music; the device identified itself with its own URL. Password protected, it can be accessed by several different devices and online via that unique identity.
http://www.fabrikinc.com/ and http://www.maxtor.com/ sites have some info on this; since Seagate acquired Maxtor (and from other reports, appears to have eliminated what they didn't want in the process) hopefully the product will be a winner and do the job as suggested. It looks like a great way to post images to a web page, which will not require you to first-post to your personal page. And you can share between your own computers & others, under specified conditions, nearly worldwide. It will require a broadband internet connection to share online; but you could maybe upload to some sites if you don't have fast internet, depending on file size.
For more ideas on this, see the Fusion link at Maxtor.com; and read the July 2006 edition of Popular Photography, "The McNamara Report- Total Recall," on page 50.
See the Seagate/maxtor Shareholders press release, 06-14-06
Fabrik (software) has this About page:
http://www.fabrikinc.com/about.php
Thanks and best wishes, plus thanks for the articles, columns, reviews online!
Later,
Kevin
EM Sensitivity Questionnaire
From Sarah Dacre
Hi Charles
Please find attached an outline questionnaire for compiling a case book of EHS/ES case studies. We are aiming for 250-500 studies later this summer and we are well on our way.
Kind regards
Sarah Dacre MSc ACIB
London, UK
ELECTRO SENSITIVITY - CASE STUDIES 20 June 2006
I have been asked on several occasions by journalists and possible financial backers of the HESE-UK EMF conference for a compilation of electro sensitive case studies to raise awareness and to illustrate how ES afflicts a wide range of people with its wide ranging symptoms.
Several of us ES have already appeared in articles and the media have asked for details of other sufferers in the UK.
Rod Read of ES-UK has numerous case studies and he is now compiling his data base into a document. Rod has asked me to advise him on media and publicity and this is one way of taking the charity forward. The data produced may also be useful to HESE-UK.
There are also many other ES sufferers who have not registered with ES-UK and who may want to help us build nationwide data base. We are fully aware that to release the case studies, then anonymity of ES is of paramount importance.
There are several ES who have been invited by Sir William Stewart to a meeting about ES and this document will be a useful tool for that meeting.
Among others, Eileen O’Connor and Amanda Wesley have very kindly offered to circulate the following questionnaire throughout their networks for completion. Jean Phillips has also asked for a copy to circulate.
Please feel free to circulate to your groups and ask any interested parties to return completed copies headed up ‘ES questionnaire’ back to me directly:
Sarahdacre[insert @ symbol]aol.com
Many thanks to you all.
Sarah Dacre
Electro Sensitive Questionnaire
We have compiled the following outline questions which may assist you when compiling your history:
Name & location & occupation: (for the avoidance of duplication. When we compile these details into the document we will code these details, such as F43lon, for female aged 43 and living in London)?
How long have you known you are ES? How did you find this out?
Now that you know about ES how long have you been experiencing ES symptoms?
ENVIRONMENT
Have you moved house recently and if so, were you becoming ES at an earlier address and if so what were the triggers? Does anyone else in your household suffer from similar symptoms?
Do your colleagues at work have similar symptoms?
HEALTH
What is your current state of health and how stable is this?
Please list your symptoms, how often do these occur and what are your worst symptoms?
How helpful has your own doctor been and have you been referred by your GP for tests for your ES symptoms?
Please list any treatments either conventional or complimentary that you have tried and which have or has helped you.
LIFESTYLE
How has your life changed since becoming ES, e.g. changes to your career and earning potential, lifestyle, diet, friends, family, travel?
What are you now regularly unable to do?
What have you done to adapt your life e. g bought corded home phone, stopped using a mobile/computer/microwave oven, other?
Have you shielded your home and or workplace? If so what shielding materials did you use.
Have you learnt anything about being ES that you could share with other sufferers?
Please mention any useful sources of information on ES, web sites, hand outs, books which we could recommend to other ES.
Would you be prepared to have your case notes included anonymously into a document, which will be used to raise awareness about electro sensitivity? Please write any additional comments on a separate sheet.
Please sign and date this form:
MANY THANKS for your time and we look forward to having more ES news for you soon.
***
Charles W. Moore
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