Is anybody on Twitter real...

Following on from the virus last week, it's now hit my other half pretty hard, plus my son seems to be coming down with it this morning as well which is worrying. It also seems to have given my system a kicking in general so I'm waiting for advice from my consultant and being very careful what I eat (translation - not much) so altogether I'll be happy when we're all better.  On the plus side losing a pound or two wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I keep getting followers on Twitter, which is really cool.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a "microblogging service" - basically you can write tweets, which must be a maximum of 140 characters, which then everyone who is following you can see.  You can follow people yourself, to see what they are tweeting.  Popular celebrity twitterers (twitterati?) include Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga - the latter has almost 30 million people following her, which is just insane if you think about it (or not for the matter).  Personally I recommend The Guild, Geek & Sundry, Felicia Day, and Wil Wheaton.

My twitter account is at RavenswingThog if you want to follow me.

But how many (I presume) fake Twitter accounts are there?  I have, at the moment in time, a huge 68 followers.

Of the 68, about 44 are work related in some manner.  A few more are friends, but there's a few which are clearly fake accounts.  When I say fake accounts (lets call em zombies), its usually a female with a random name that includes "xxx" in it and all their tweets are random garbage like "once I went outside but it rained".  Quickly scrolling through I can see at least nine zombie followers.

It just seems odd to me to have zombies trailling after me, listening to my tweets. I guess the reason why is that they follow real people in the hope that they follow them back, they then have a long list of followers and sell tweets to businesses (for $100 we could tweet to all of our followers about your urinal cake business!)

More worrying, I did a quick search on the net for "fake twitter followers", which led me quickly to a website that would check how many of these you had following you.  But to do this, the website would have permission to post tweets on my behalf.  I wonder how many people sign up to something like this, and then the app happily goes along tweeting about whatever it wants on their account.

Facebook apps do the same.  If you're not careful all types of Facebook games and the like take the ability to post on your timeline about themselves.  Generally I try to be fairly careful and reject those apps that want too much access, or if there's an option of "who sees the posts from this app" I set it so that only I can see the posts, and it doesn't bother my friends.  After all, I generate enough noise without apps helping!

It's a virus!!!

Hi folks,

I've been off the blog for a few days due to illness.

Monday night I had a really bad night sleeping, to the point where I was up for about 2-3 hours in the night watching videos on YouTube because I just couldn't sleep.  A sore throat had turned up out of nowhere (Monday daytime I was absolutely fine) and on balance Tuesday morning, although I wasn't too ill I was tired from lack of sleep and my throat was aching a good bit, I decided the best way to see off this cold was to take a day off work, rest up, and get back on Wednesday.

I was wrong.

Tuesday night I had as bad a nights sleep as the night before, but my throat decided that it wasn't going to do any of that throaty stuff like swallow fluids or anything, it was far too painful for any of that.  Simply making a swallowing motion was enough to make me wince in pain.

Wednesday morning I began throwing up, but I noticed that there was blood on it, and after the third time, each time the amount of blood was increasing, I thought I ought to make sure I was okay.

I went through my symptoms on the NHS Direct website and was advised to see my GP today.  Now the issue is that currently my GP's practice is down on staff (one doctor has left, another is leaving shortly) so although you can get in there, I'm reluctant to take up their time if it's not really needed.  So, I decided to use the NHS Direct telephone service to get an opinion from a medical professional.  For those that haven't used it, it's excellent.  We've used it five or six times in the past, and it's great - you get through to a healthcare worker who goes through an assessment with you, and agrees action from there.

Anyway, I got about six questions into the assessment with the healthcare worker, and she said:
 "You need to go to A&E and get checked out.  Can you get there okay?"
 "Yes, sure." Oh - might be serious.
 "Can I double check your contact number just in case?" she added.  This was definitely beginning to worry me.

As it happens we live about five minutes drive away from Hull Royal Infirmary, so I got in there and saw the A&E reception staff.  And waited.

And waited.

This isn't a rant about the NHS.  In my view, the NHS are excellent.  They get a lot of negative press, when the bottom line of the NHS is, if you are ill we will look after you.  I'm not saying that they are perfect, but when in many other countries people who need life saving treatment must have medical insurance or face a huge medical bill, I like having the NHS in the UK. I remember when my other half was in hospital getting ready to give birth to our son, and it took a while.  But in particular, I remember one point in the birthing suite where they were having a problem finding his heartbeat.

And the room filled up with staff.  Suddenly, they were needed.  And they were there, doing all the stuff you want them to.

He's been busy this week pooing on the lawn but that's another story, and shows that they did their job okay then.

So anyway, I waited ages.  I did get to see a triage nurse, and someone took my blood to check, but I waited about two hours, then my other half turned up - I was so glad to see her, it surprised me.  Then we waited almost another two hours before we saw the doctor (which took about 10 minutes as you expect).

Bottom line, I have a viral infection in my throat.  Because it's viral antibiotics have no effect.  Basically it's rest up and drink lots of water (which has been really hard because it was hurting so much to swallow - you don't realise how much saliva your mouth produces until you have to force yourself to swallow it).

I slept on and off for about 17 hours after going to hospital, and I've spent the last two days resting and basically doing as little as possible.

One fun point was the use of technology for communication.  I had to get a message to my mum after hospital to tell her that I wouldn't be going round on Thursday, and that she needed to go and tell my gran this.  This sounds straightforward, but...

• I can't speak due to throat, so the phone is out
• I'm too tired to go and drive anywhere
• My mum checks her emails and Facebook page once a day (at most).  She doesn't use Facebook chat.
• My mum plays World of Warcraft (I don't have a live subscription)

So, I went on Facebook, and found an old friend (hey Abyss) on there.  I asked Abyss to contact my mum on World of Warcraft to tell her to check her Facebook, and I sent her a Facebook message.  She then rang up to see what was going on, so my other half explained what was going on.

With having some downtime, I have actually started playing World of Warcraft again.  It's a nice and fun game and lets you be social with people (hey Guild Ravenswing!) and the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, looks like it is going to be really good.  I just need to learn how to play my hunter - I've never really been happy since they took away my mana bar and changed it to focus - but that's just me whinging!

Anyway - catch you later!

Thog