The Wellbeing Project, Part Two

Numbers five to eight in a series of eleven short information-videos about wellbeing and life-satisfaction, designed to be shown in the Waiting Room of the doctor’s surgery where I work.

5. Creativity – https://youtu.be/iysdK3FdcK8
6. Pets – https://youtu.be/cE5AyfyVWWs
7. Money – https://youtu.be/FPzjg6A5qN8
8. Mindfulness – https://youtu.be/tEN0a711PoM

The Wellbeing Project, Part One

The first four in a series of ten short information-videos about wellbeing and life-satisfaction, designed to be shown in the Waiting Room of the doctor’s surgery where I work.

1. Introduction – https://youtu.be/Lon8w_dACC4
2. Connecting with other people – https://youtu.be/B19GFLNAMuk
3. Learning – https://youtu.be/Ot4A6xOrOdQ
4. Staying active – https://youtu.be/EUwIK6poKJI

The Squeaker

squeakerscreenshot

A short song/video about the tribulations of a professional busybody – an inspector of doctors’ surgeries, in fact. This will eventually appear as part of the third series of Dr Hairy videos (collectively entitled “Dr Hairy and the QCQ”), but hopefully it also works as a stand-alone. Loosely based on “The Seeker” by The Who, which is a particular favourite of mine. Made using InkScape, Blender, Kdenlive, Audacity and the Gimp.

squeakerscreenshot2

YouTube – https://youtu.be/dRWQEC1YbEc
Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/189668021

Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries, September 2016

The Research Summaries for September are now online – a bit late as usual. These are the last of the present series of Research Summaries: we’ll now put them all together in the form of a book, and start a new series after a couple of months’ break.

Subjects covered this time:

Statins evidence: when answers also raise questions
BMJ 2016;354:i4963
Association between electronic cigarette use and changes in quit attempts, success of quit attempts, use of smoking cessation pharmacotherapy, and use of stop smoking services in England: time series analysis of population trends
BMJ 2016;354:i4645
Electronic cigarettes and smoking cessation in England
BMJ 2016;354:i4819
Positive language leads to positive wellbeing
BMJ 2016;354:i4426
Recurrent otalgia in adults
BMJ 2016;354:i3917
Prevention of tick-borne diseases: an overview
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp16X687013
Exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction: a common and overlooked cause of exertional breathlessness
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp16X687001
GPs’ demoralisation is due to our loss of human connection
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp16X686833
Influenza vaccination: in the UK and across Europe
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp16X686677
Decriminalising sex work in the UK
BMJ 2016;354:i4459

For more about Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries, visit http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/

New Publishing Talks interview by David Wilks

David Wilk interviews Peter Costanzo of Associated Press

I’ve been following David Wilks’ ‘Publishing Talks’ podcasts for some years now, and every so often he comes up with something really interesting. This one is an interview with Peter Costanzo, currently working for the Associated Press, but formerly associated with digital publishing ventures for NBC and various others; and it’s full of perceptive remarks about why ebooks haven’t supplanted print books, why ‘enhanced’ ebooks (new media literature) have failed to take off commercially, how the publishing industry has managed to protect the status quo in the face of digital change more effectively than the record industry, and just the mechanics of the modern publishing marketplace in general – the dominance of Amazon, the failure of both Apple and Google to challenge that dominance, the dominance of the Kindle as the main reading device, etc. Well worth a listen if you’ve got 45 minutes to spare.

The Poetry Map by Matt Bryden

http://www.mattbryden.co.uk/Matt_Bryden/PoetryMap/index.html

I came across the Poetry Map on the Arts News list, and it’s definitely worth a visit. Basically it’s a collection of poems associated with certain places, and as you move from poem to poem – along one of four ‘paths’ – you also move from one Google map to another, showing you a from-the-air view of the place where the poem is set, or where it was composed. Most of the places are rural or semi-rural.

It’s a bit glitchy. I haven’t managed to make it all the way through yet without reaching a page where the text disappears and leaves me with no alternative but to start all over again from the beginning; and I also think that it’s a bit less interactive than it could be, because the introductory map looks as if you ought to be able to click on it to choose which path you’d like to go into, or which particular poem on a given path you’d like to start from. Also, the ArtsNews announcement mentions that there is a Random option, which presents the poems randomly rather than asking you to follow a particular path, but I haven’t been able to find this yet.

But having said all that, it’s proper well-written poetry, and there’s a real sense of place about it, and Bryden has  found an interesting and original way of presenting the poems to an online audience, all of which makes it well worth a couple of visits.