www.nickhodge.com

In the midst of the 2010 Fed­eral elec­tion, Aus­tralian of the Year Pro­fessor Patrick McGorry has man­aged to place Men­tal Health on the national agenda. ABC’s Four Corners “Hidden Voices” ded­ic­ated a pre-election show to high­light depres­sion, men­tal health: both sig­ni­fic­ant factors in suicide.

Look­ing at the data, whilst sui­cide rates are fall­ing – the rates in males 25 to 45 is still way above the norm. And more people die by their own hand in Aus­tralia than on the roads.

Dur­ing the show, I tweeted the fol­low­ing: I suf­fer from Depres­sion. There. I said it.

For me this has been a long jour­ney. Thanks to excel­lent med­ical care, and can func­tion in employ­ment and society.

So, let me high­light: If you think you suf­fer from depres­sion, are feel­ing ‘down’ – seek help. Start with your GP. Call Life­line or sim­ilar ser­vice now. Do not be ashamed in seek­ing help. You are not alone.

Whilst there is still a stigma

Being depressed, and men­tally unwell is still holds a social stigma.

Whilst pub­lic accept­ance is on the incline: pub­lic­ally stat­ing that you suf­fer from depres­sion will have a neg­at­ive effect on your employ­ab­il­ity. Whether work­ing for a large organ­isa­tion or as a single con­tractor: people around you will treat you with sus­pi­cion. Depres­sion can be a dis­ab­il­ity that dir­ectly effects work per­form­ance; and the career pro­spects of individuals.

Or as is sadly all too com­mon: no job at all..

Whilst remain­ing a sup­porter of vari­ous Men’s men­tal health char­it­ies. Per­sonal dona­tions. Grow­ing mous­taches, I am going to leave much of my per­sonal thoughts to myself for the time being.

I have been rather quiet of late.

Reas­ons:

1. Day 5 of a man-flu. Just can’t shake it quickly.
2. For the fourth time, I am tak­ing a break from the Twit­ter stream. Fun­nily enough, life goes on without know­ing everything else that is going on.
3. Think­ing. There is a rather lot of things to think about, if you per­mit your­self to men­tally wander.

For the non-Australian read­ers, renos is short for renov­a­tions. Pro­nounced ren­OEZ

Behold: my new Zip tap.

Not only hot and cold run­ning water, we now have filtered col­derer and filtered boil­ing (ie: hoterer) water – right at the sink.

This is my Christ­mas present from Avril, and the only request I had for the kit­chen renos. At cur­rent costs, this should pay for itself by 2025.

Inspired by the Del­ic­ate Genius’ Year in Review 2008

Firstly, what did I say last year

from Per­sonal and Pro­fes­sional Res­ol­u­tions for 2008

1. The home matters
2. Weigh Less than 2008 FAIL! no change
3. Geeks Who Care mat­ters presen­ted at vari­ous Senior Cit­izen groups
4. Think simple, be social

I have really only suc­ceeded on #1 #3 and #4. On the home front, I spent many more days not trav­el­ling and work­ing from home.

Think­ing simple, being social: fail, I think. Whilst I added 1000 twit­ter fol­low­ers; mainly from Aus­tralia – this whole area needs more work on my part. I think.

So, what did hap­pen in 2008? I’d like to say the theme of 2008 was black and white. No grey. Pure Black and White (yes, Neil Finn always says it best)

Other for­ward think­ing posts:

Two posts from early 2008 have returned with a ven­geance: And this early 2008 post (oh the irony): Our Bene­vol­ent Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment should Fil­ter More and Aus­tralia is going to be stu­pider in 2008. I think I called these two issues correctly!

2008 was char­ac­ter­ised by:

• Our fam­ily lost my Nana, Edna Dutschke.
• Other sig­ni­fic­ant people from my past have also gone
• Avril and Liam went to Mel­bourne a few times.
• Avril totally hot­ted up Megan: she is almost as power­ful as Scar­lett. And sounds throatier.
• Avril organ­ised and has nearly com­pleted some needed home renov­a­tions for the kit­chen and bath­room.
• The whole Hodge fam­ily becomes fam­ous in the Sydney Morn­ing Herald
• I have found out more about the paternal side of my fam­ily; going back over 300 years.
• Apart from what has been dia­gnosed as gout, been pretty func­tional. Oh, and I had a cyst out.
• The Geek Stor­ies: com­pleted 40 videos and put into hiatus for second half of 2008
• The best story from 2008: Email to the Future, where I saw ori­ginal Lady Ada Lovelace doc­u­ments!
• Aus­tralian ReMIX 2008: Mark Pesce, Only Con­nect: Mark intro­duces the hyper­con­nec­ted world
• Designed and Built my Dream Machine, Gen­eral Melchett: with three intense on10.net post­ings of which I am quite proud
• A post­ive, mid 2008 change in dir­ec­tion for me at Microsoft
• Spent 10 days in the US where the AU-US exchange rate was almost parity!
• Ray Ozzie: by Steven Levy: I saw Microsoft’s cloud future exposed, first hand.
• Start blog­ging code on http://blogs.msdn.com/nickhodge/ my first “code” post whilst at Microsoft is PHP.
• Work­ing more with Jorkeo. He’s the host­ing god.
• Oh, met and intro­duced Jorke to his per­sonal hero: Larry Wall
• F#/IronPython/Threads post. My per­sonal msdn favour­ite post
• Microsoft’s TechEd 2008: more behind-the-scenes organ­ising: Women in IT, Blogger’s Lunch, Live Frame­work (thanks for the help, Paul!)
• Presen­ted at AIMIA, AIBC, Bar­campSydney 3 and 4, atten­ded Bar­camp­Mel­bourne (with a last minute sneaky LOLCODE presentation)
• More present­a­tions at Edge of the Web, Open Source Developer Con­fer­ence: Demos, demos, demos. No slideware!
• Adding in Present­a­tions at vari­ous user groups, presen­ted to about ~1600 people
• Learnt a new lan­guage (F#) enough to present at user groups and Bar­campSydney 4. Thanks to Secret­Geek and Joel Pobar for the prompting.
• Inves­ted some time on the Pro­posed Aus­tralian Fil­ters. I still don’t think that the pro­posed fil­ters will work, and the Gov­ern­ment is miss­ing the point of edu­cat­ing all Aus­trali­ans over inter­net security.
• The Great Dan Fernan­dez invited me onto his weekly show “This Week on Chan­nel 9” Apart from a good couple of hours of fun, he made me fam­ous for 30 minutes. nearly 60,000 views of this video, alone.
• Some radio PR: on Microsoft World­wide Telescope
• Our Win­dows Home Server just keeps on work­ing. We share many more files now that the Tran­quil is here. Stor­age capa­city is 2.75 tera­bytes; but know­ing the PCs and Laptops in the house are backed-up is priceless.
• Met Matt Bai, and assisted the Microsoft team behind-the-scenes.
• The Thing that is Twit­ter: 1500 fol­low­ers, 8000 tweets dur­ing the year. 1000 twit­ter friends added.
• Over all the con­tent I pro­duce: over 600,000 views. Which is a darn lot for a single con­tent producer.
• Guest blogged over at http://gizmodo.com.au for a month (June)
• Star­ted to come over all Micro­formatty at the end of the year.

This is page 2 of a con­tract between Charles and Robert Fall of Dun­bar, Scot­land and the fish­er­men of Crail, Fife, Scot­land.

Charles and Robert Fall held many interests in Dun­bar in the 18^th Cen­tury. They also had fam­ily con­nec­tions in Fife. In an agree­ment signed by them on the 9^th Novem­ber 1745, the fish­er­men of Crail agreed to deliver their catch of white fish to them for a period of 6 years. This shows the final part of the con­tract made between the Falls and the fish­er­men of Crail. Here, agree­ment is made for the car­riage of fish, not­ably saithe, to the Fall’s cel­lars, to be paid by them. At the end are the sig­na­tures or ‘marks’ of the fish­er­men of Crail. The most east­erly of Fife’s fish­ing ports, Crail Har­bour dates back to the 16^th cen­tury. At one time the vil­lage was an import­ant her­ring sta­tion. The few fish­er­men left today fish inshore, mainly for shellfish.

On the left hand side, just below the fold, there is the fol­low text: “George GH Hodge mark.” In this instance, George Hodge could not sign his name, and there­fore marked with a “GH”. I am related to this George Hodge.

George Hodge was born in 1717 to George Hodge (him­self born in 1686) and mother Kath­erin Mon­crief in Crail/Fife, Scot­land. He was 32 when he marked this doc­u­ment. His younger brother was a James Hodge, where my paternal line descends.

Crail Har­bour: The har­bour was ‘new foundit’ in 1610, des­troyed in 1707, and what is shown here dates from the rebuild of 1728.

The fish stocks in this area star­ted to drop in the later part of the 18^th Cen­tury, and there­fore there was not enough room in the fam­ily busi­ness. As the younger brother, James Hodge left the fam­ily busi­ness and slowly drif­ted north to St Andrews in the lat­ter half of the 18^th Cen­tury. From 1764 in Crail, 1766 in Kings­barns (3.5km north of Crail) and 1771 in Brown Hills (just south of St Andrews). This George Hodge is also the wit­ness to the birth of James Hodge’s first and second chil­dren: Andrew and Mary. The third child of James Hodge is a John Hodge; again from where my paternal line des­cends. This John’s son, Melville, emig­rated to South Aus­tralia in 1853.

In the 1841 census, Mary Hodge (daugh­ter of James Hodge, born in Kings­barns in 1766) is lis­ted as liv­ing in Thor­gate, Crail. Based on the pos­i­tion in the census, it is likey she was liv­ing with the Scotts of Crail at this time.

I sus­pect that James trav­elled north either as a farm labourer, or as a hand loom linen weaver; as was his son. Kings­barns has a noted his­tory of both. And golf­ing, but I doubt my fam­ily was of the cor­rect glass for golfing.

Note: This inform­a­tion was found using the http://scran.ac.uk sys­tem. Scran is:

Scran — part of the Royal Com­mis­sion on the Ancient and His­tor­ical Monu­ments of Scot­land — aims to provide edu­ca­tional access to digital mater­i­als rep­res­ent­ing our mater­ial cul­ture and his­tory. This is provided through the wholly owned trad­ing arm Scran Ltd. We are one of the largest edu­ca­tional online ser­vices in the UK sup­port­ing over 4,000 schools, lib­rar­ies, col­leges and universities.

It is pos­sible that my paternal ancestor, some 11 gen­er­a­tions ago, was born in Duns. Very close to Black­ad­der. Maybe not the same Black­ad­der, but inter­est­ing in a his­tor­ical sense.

Epic laughs.

Amongst the ladies with per­fect early 1960s hair-dos and dresses in a series set in the mid 1940s; and the euca­lypts of South­ern Cali­for­nia appear the epis­odes of 12 O’Clock High

And there is lots of smoking: even by the com­bat pilots in-flight! Maybe cigar­ette com­pan­ies were primary spon­sors of the ori­ginal shows as the screened on US TV? Without a doubt, there are many young Amer­ican fli­ers chas­ing after Eng­lish girls in pubs and the countryside.

Many of the cut-scenes are repeated; both in air and on the ground. These were genu­ine WW2 gun cam­era foot­age and in com­bat shots.

In these stock shots you can see reversed insignia, old USAAF insignia, mix­ture of B-17F and B-17G types. The Ger­man planes are Hud­sons rather than Heinkels, yet the interior of the B-17 seems authentic.

Robert Lans­ing is like a Brigadier-General Super­man who com­mands his B-17 “Piccadilly Lily” with a con­stant sneer and con­sist­ent cool­ness. Nazis in the air, nazis on the ground and evil spies; he wins against them all. Never pro­moted with at least 3 crash land­ings and near death at least four times.

Other bits:

• Hazel Court as com­mon love interest, “Liz”
• Tom Sker­ritt starred as 5 dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in 5 dif­fer­ent epis­odes. I did not real­ise that he was a com­mon star of 1960s TV Shows.
• Sor­rell Booke, who later played Boss Hogg in the TV ver­sion of Dukes of Hazard
• Fam­ous screen sirens of the 1950s make an appear­ance in indi­vidual epis­odes, with many minutes of women swoon­ing: Dana Wynter (Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers), Glynis Johns, Viveca Lind­fors, Australian-born Vic­toria Shaw, Bar­bara Shelley
• Nor­man Fell: was a tail gun­ner dur­ing WW2
• A young Peter Fonda, with superb acting.
• Epis­ode 109, Appoint­ment At Liege: Inno­cent phrases such as “If I could com­mand­eer a Jeep, could you play hookey for an hour and a half?” and “I don’t know. I’ve never run away with any­body before.” <long eye gaz­ing> “you wait here”  (Future 2001: A Space Odys­sey Gary Lock­wood play­ing Major Gus Denver’s sweet lines to Nancy Kovack, play­ing a per­fectly 1960s coiffured weather intel­li­gence Lt Cooper)
  
  
• Sally Keller­man, to star in the later MASH movie, had a repeated role as a Nurse Lt. Typecast?
• Epis­ode 118 Lore­lei. In this spooky epis­ode, a haunted B-17 named Lore­lei returns to UK by itself and con­tin­ues to cause havok. Stars Rip Torn and Bruce Dern: one of four he was in as a bom­bardier. Bruce Dern as Lt Michaels quo­ta­tion on the Lore­lei: “We gonna get together an’ buy this here air­plane. And then we’re gonna get us some matches then we gonna have us a bomber bar-be-que”
• “That’s the thing with loners: they tend to be out­siders try­ing to get back in” (said of Keir Dullea; later to play Dave Bow­man in 2001: A Space Odyssey
• In Epis­ode 124, the future 99 from Get Smart play­ing Lt Betty Cum­ming: Bar­bara Feldon

Onwards to Series 2 and 3, then Combat!

Oh, I love holidays

Kit­chen installed dur­ing a 13 hour mara­thon yes­ter­day. Caesar stone top to come late next week; and electrical/tiling to be completed.

There be kit­tehs in this synth.

Yes­ter­day, this was a wall.

Today, we are proud own­ers of a hole between our kit­chen and lounge.

Renov­a­tions have star­ted to pace up now. Yes­ter­day, the bath­room was rendered. Today, the under­floor heat­ing for the kit­chen was installed by Avril and Matt. Tomor­row, kit­chen tiling is com­pleted and the new kit­chen delivered. Fri­day is kit­chen install­a­tion d-day.