About a week ago I received a formal written diagnosis under the DSM-V that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Previous versions of the DSM would have put me as having Asperger's Syndrome but under the latest revision, this expression is no longer used. Instead in most cases people are placed generically on the Autism Spectrum and I am ok both with this revised classification and the diagnosis itself.

I therefore identify variously, depending on context, as having autism, having an ASC (the formal medical diagnosis), living with autism, having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and being autistic. I know the latter is not universally favoured amongst the autism spectrum community but, used appropriately, I feel it to be empowering. In using this term I do not wish to offend others on the spectrum who dislike the word; your identity is yours alone and I will adhere to it. This is just an identity I personally accept for myself.

I do NOT accept the expression "suffering from/with autism". I am suffering, currently very badly, from the effects of my autism and the ignorance & poor awareness of autism among the wider population. The latter is what disables me under the Social Model.

Autism is part of who I am, just like my other formally diagnosed impairments and identifications; it is not all that I am.

OK so it's been a long time since I did anything productive with this account. Over the weekend I made a doodle sculpture for a friend; my first doodle sculpture in what feels like years. I'll upload pics when I get round to it...

I still see these doodles as just an occasional thing - normally made for other people as free of charge since the timeline could be days or months. If I charged then a commissioner would have a reasonable expectation of a decent turnaround & that is something I cannot offer. Maybe in the future...

In other news I'm nearing the end of a formal assessment process to see if I am on the Autism Spectrum somewhere. I'll cover that in a new journal once complete. I also had a head & neck MRI return less than desirable news; evidence of what MIGHT have been an old small stroke. When, how, if - all unknowns. I'm under a neurologist to try and get answers. Depending where that goes, it could be a game changer for me.

Lastnight I attempted to self harm. Very minor and I couldn't see it through but the will was definitely there and next time may well be more effective. There is no intention of suicide and I don't see it as a cry for help. It is just that every time I fuck something up, a relationship, a friendship, something technical at work that I ought to know - anything - I feel the need to cut, to leave a permanent mark, a scar to act as a reminder.

I have a mental health assessment coming up "sometime soon" which originally was to see where if at all I am I the autism spectrum. Each time I've had a psych evaluation I've been asked questions about suicide, self harm, violence to myself or others.

This time and for the first time my answer is going to be different, and it concerns me.

I'm not some hormonal 17yo emo struggling with homework or something like this. I am a bespectacled and supposed mature businessman type.

I'm in a dark place at the moment. May be better to keep your distance for a while as I'm not currently too great with people who care about me, and you may end up burned.

Update 5th Aug : as expected I have now self harmed several times by making multiple cuts about an inch long in a concentrated area on the back of my left hand using a blade similar to that of a pencil sharpener. These have become more aggressive and deeper / more haphazard. For a while I had them under control but then regressed, using a plastic fork to disturb and reopen / agitate the tissue that was just starting to heal.

I went to my GP and had a telephone call with a "crisis team". That was a couple of days ago. I've not self harmed since but I know this will probably resume.

Getting a lot of truly invaluable help from  Trance-Sortfolf and want to publically thank him here; he's helping to keep me focussed on the long term goal of defeating this.

Hi all

After a long gap from active fandom presence I want to have one more stab at getting a good fursuit made using this refsheet https://www.furaffinity.net/view/3624637/

I already have all or at least most of the raw materials from previous builder attempts that fell through. Tail already built but can be reworked. I need to emphasise these points:

If a partial then that's fine but would like option of turning it into a full suit later
Colours and features to match refsheet as closely as possible. Toony look, my vision should be as good as can be achieved since my human eyesight is not great.

Static jaw is fine if I can hydrate with straw. Moving jaw interesting option but needs to be robust. Overall look to be toony so dopey eyes and big fluffy ears are fine. The White whiskers are an essential element so I guess they may need to be capable of replacement.

Character is to be clean (non murr) and suit needs to be washable. Willing to negotiate periodic (eg 6 monthly) overhaul commission work to tidy up etc.

My side of the deal : funding immediately available but due to previous abandoned projects I'd need to negotiate. Location North west UK.

Your side : if interested AND SERIOUS and if you can link to prior work, please get in touch. Can commence and fund as soon as ready. Genuine experienced builders only please.

I mean, really, horseshoe crabs - is it possible to get much more awesome than these? Literally, awesome. It's a three way tie between horseshoe crabs, sharks and rays when it comes to the whole oh-wow-nature thing.

I'm trying to keep my bubbling anger from turning into a full on feral fury here. Very few on FA have ever seen me in one of those, for which be grateful. I'm not good to be around when that happens.

This is about me spotting on a treatment record for Dash (my youngest cat, about 2yo now) that he'd been given injections from 2 different apparently expired batches of drugs - an antibiotic and a pain reliever. The treatment record is plain as day.

I've spoken to them and they've assured me this was a data entry error and staff training matter which they're taking very seriously. However even if he had been given out of date drugs, in this case there wouldn't have been a safety implication.

The trust I have to place in a vet to treat a companion (I no longer use the word pet) is absolute. I have no way of knowing the safety or otherwise of what they administer. As a minimum this has severely dented my confidence over using this vet. At worst it's incompetence bordering on dangerous negligence.

All three cats are insured up to the hilt with the best health insurer there is (in my experience). If there was ever a query raised over the vets' records it could impair or invalidate a claim, putting the companion at risk.

Also angry at myself for not noticing this for 8 days.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env.....nment-26786142

So measures continue to be taken to "manage" the shark population and reduce the risk of attacks on people. Erm, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the water their home and aren't we the visitor? Have sharks not been around for hundreds of millions of years longer than us and therefore command a little more respect?

As a species we love to romp in the wild outdoors and treat other animals as our playthings. If they pose a hazard to us then we curb their ways rather than our own.

We aren't talking threats to fisherfolk here (although the argument could even extend to them), but to people who swim and surf. Sharks are following their nature. Humans have not evolved surfboards or gills and flippers. Why does mankind arrogantly assume the "problem" is the shark and not himself?

I wouldn't go romping round in the outback with slabs of bloodied meat strapped to my torso, unless I wanted to become a prey item. Why therefore should I want to go frolicking around in the oceans with a big sign saying "I'm fair game, eat me" then act all outraged when nature turns upon me? This is a hostile environment over which there is still very little true understanding. We do not belong there.

When a shark walks up on land and into my house, then maybe I will consider self defence. Until then they are not a danger to me.

Bothered by sharks? LEAVE THEM ALONE AND STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THEIR HOUSE. Problem solved.

UK residents, please read and consider signing http://e-activist.com/ea-action/act.....paign.id=26535

Thank you.

Swedish is strange. Just saying.

Over and out.

Nice place you've got here.
Let's do this / let's do this thing.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
It's show time.
I'm getting too old for this shit.
I've always loved you.

--- what's YOUR most hated and overused quote?

This pisses me off more than I care to say here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-e.....nment-24455141

Somehow we now have the right to turn other creatures into playthings for our children under the tenuous banner of eliciting greater interest in neuroscience as adults? If they tried to launch this with a puppy or kitten there would be outrage. Pick on a cockroach, nobody likes them, they're vermin, they're plentiful.

To me there is a whole world of difference between (for example) eating them - if that's your thing - and turning them into some cyborg hybrid just because we can. Has anyone asked the cockroach for its opinion on this? Oh wait, they can't talk. I forgot. That makes them fair game, right?

No I'm not a cockroach lover, I have honestly never seen one in the flesh and, if I did, I dare say I would be at least concerned. Yet that doesn't give me the right - as just another animal on the planet that we don't actually own (in case we've forgotten) - to pick on it.

Mankind pisses me off sometimes. Who the FUCK do we think we are?

Get buying these from  fablefire - you know you want to.

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http://shirt.woot.com/offers/patriotic-partying
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/cloudy.....hance-of-jerks
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/cats-resume

And, well, basically everything fablefire does.

Shameless plug over. Get spending :3

Circus Peanut will have a big "told you so" grin over this ... :-P

A while ago I bought a fairly average Mac Mini just as a toy and to get some basic OS X under my belt. And that's what it remained, just a curiosity for when I CBA to do my computing properly after a long set of shifts at work (which entails me being a Linux sysadmin). I've worked with UNIX and latterly Linux for most of my professional life (25 years or so) but I've never been bothered to try and learn the weirdness that OS X does in what would be nice and standard on an open architecture stack.

Anyway progressive degradation followed by catastrophic disk failure overnight, the "solution" being to reformat (sic : newfs/mkfs to us nerds) and reinstall then restore from backups I don't have - as there is nothing production on here.

Apple have made this whole process easy and very clicky, all nicely integrated into App Store etc, but laying down a fresh filesystem isn't going to fix a hardware failure such as bad blocks. I guess S.M.A.R.T will do some of the work but, if it really is toast then I am faced with a sexy sleek brushed aluminium doorstop since I assume getting inside would involve a chisel. Once there I'd probably find a standard cheap 500GB hard drive but with custom firmware that only an Apple store can flash.

On a SPARC or standard PC architecture system I could fix this in my sleep (and often nearly have). On a Mac it is different unless I can be bothered to do at home what I spend 12 hours a day doing at work - hacking up fixes.

And I can't be bothered so I'll use it til it fails then meh.

Ok erm,....

I think I might be turning bilingual, men det er jeg ikke helt sikker på endnu ...

*giggles*

Seriously though, after many years in the wilderness my long-forgotten Danish is starting to return. I'm still hesitant and slow to speak, but that is probably as much about being introverted and British, doubting I have any discernible level of ability.

It's very much a Brit disease that we tend to regard ourselves as poor at other languages (face it, I'm from Liverpool originally, I can barely manage English). I am spoiled by speaking a majority language where even Danes wonder why I study theirs, so I get complacent and lazy.

I only know one native Dane over here, and I'm taking paid lessons with her and her husband. These are helping me to concentrate less on the words and more on the conversation. It also means for the first time that - on a good day when I'm not tired - I can watch SOME Danish films without subtitles (on other days I put Danish subtitles on rather than English where available, so that I have to work at least a BIT).

So all you hundreds of native Danes out there in a short radius of NW England, get in touch please! (I should be that lucky, you all have more sense than to live in this soggy spot.)


[Småkager]

Things Dashcat likes to eat include:

Custard
Garlic and herb bread sticks
Cake
Cardboard
My fingers
Any form of peoplefood

The only thing I've found he doesn't eat so far:

Kitten food

... who doesn't give one quarter of a flying fuck about the latest apparently globally critically important Royal birth over here? Headline news, our obscenely affluent in-bred hoorays have been spawning again. Congrats to them. Meanwhile somewhere at the bottom of the news site in small print, some 12 year old is badly injured in a car crash during what looks like inner city racing. Just a moment, let me finish reading the most important story first, about the latest addition to the land of privilege and sycophancy; and then I'll tell you more about the crash victim.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10930639/

Do it! Do it now!!!

I think I may have hit on something big here.

I suggest all future flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders should have a 2nd generation iPod shuffle at their core. I say this because mine has been through everything short of a nuclear explosion, including getting dropped down the toilet this morning, and resolutely refuses to die.

Two big advantages spring to mind - space saving, and choice of colours so carriers will no longer be restricted to just having a Black Box.

Brb just filing my patent application ... XD

Hi all

I want to run a small site for the international animal lover community (furry or not) where people can upload a photo and short piece of text in memory of their animal companions who have passed on. There will be a few rules - no spam, no trolls, it will be moderated, free to post, no adverts. I already have the server environment (Linux based, probably nginx/php-fpm/php 5.4/MySQL or perhaps percona. I want to support as many browsers as possible. All input will be seriously sanitised and xss/injection ripped.

I don't have the skills in website design / CSS. If anyone is willing to help with this, please note me directly on here. If you have more general comments - eg if you think this is a good / bad idea, please reply on the journal.

I'm happy to do the whole thing myself but if there are furs out there with the needed skills and who share my wish to provide this resource, it makes sense to ask.

Copyright will be in the title of the coder for anything written, and probably in my name in terms of concept and general structure.

I wrote a journal a while ago with my thoughts on extinction.

Today I read this : http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env.....nment-21866456

So I'm not alone :)

Im so fucking sick of having Sjögren's Syndrome. I just had a sudden dental crown failure that was irreparable and needed yet another tooth to be extracted. These are failing one after another in a row and I am running out of biting surface. I struggle to eat most things these days because of this.

Every tooth in my face has at least one filling or other maintenance measure. This isn't about being a stereotypical Brit with bad teeth and poor dental hygiene. It's about having almost no salivary flow and lacking the enzymes others take for granted.

So I'm 45 and need dentures. I'm a bit pissed off and low about that.

I'll get over myself soon I'm sure, but for the moment I may need a bit of space.

I am now owned by an approx 7 week old black medium longhair male kitten who picked the name Dash. The other two owners Crystal and Jessica are not impressed.

Pics soon.

www.badlipreading.com

There is a strong focus in the conservation movement on keeping species from going extinct. As a believer in evolution I'd be interested in opinions on this. If you are a creationist then I respect your view but please don't hijack this journal to express that view.

Where a population is in decline due to the hand of man then I believe we have a responsibility to reverse the damage and retain the presence of impacted species at all costs. For example if we have over-fished, polluted, introduced a new creature into an environment that's not had time to adapt (populating an island and bringing across pets and livestock for instance).

However extinction is also part of the natural order. I subscribe to the view that species will naturally go extinct through evolutionary pressure. Eat or be eaten. This is the way of the world; selection is indiscriminate. So where a species is in decline, and where it can clearly and categorically be proven that mankind has played no direct or indirect role in this, then do we have the ethical right to interfere by preventing an extinction that is otherwise destined to happen?

Removal of one species gives up an opportunity for another to take its place, so by tinkering are we actually impairing the flow of nature as a whole?

I include homo sapiens in this. We have the right within our species to do what we can to ensure our survival, provided it is not at the cost of other species for the sake of vanity or self-aggrandisement. However we too will go extinct or evolve into something else. If we fail as a species then something else will take our place. This could be tomorrow or 20 million years from now, but it will happen. This is evolutionary progress.

I don't think there is an easy answer to this but it gives me concern that the movement is keen to preserve species at all costs, without asking itself whether it has the right to do this. I emphasise this is only about well-intentioned intervention in ecosystems where we have not caused or contributed to the damage.

Almost everything we do will have an influence on most life on the planet in some way or other, so this is probably more of a hypothetical discussion - but I'd welcome your thoughts on whether we are asking ourselves the right questions before seeking to conserve.