Stephen Morton’s Blog

It’s been a rather unusual week.

Dad has been admitted to Palative care. He has suffered a bladder infection, and in his weakened condition, it is better for him to be in the care of professionals.

It’s very sad seeing Dad, he seems to not recognise me anymore. He at times seems aware, and other times, he seems to just look through me. I love and respect my Dad, and it is hard to see him slowly loosing conciseness!

On happier matters, My Uncle Robert came down from QLD, and stayed with Tomoko and I for a night last thursday. He came to visit Dad, unfortunately in Dad’s weakened condition, he stayed with us for the night. Uncle Robert offered both Tomoko and I a lot of comfort. It was great seeing him again.

Tomoko and I had a great day. We had our first Ultrasound scan today, and we were delighted to discover that the baby is growing beautifully. We could see his/her little heart beat. We can’t yet tell it’s sex. He/She is now 8 weeks old, and about the size of a jelly bean.

Finally, I was welcomed to Turramurra Rotary Club tonight. It was lovely to be made to feel so welcome. Tomoko came to dinner as well, and everyone was so nice and open. I am looking forward to helping Turramurra Rotary with the fantastic work they are involved in.

Dad came over on the weekend. He has quickly deteriourated, now to the point where he can hardly talk or walk.
It’s really sad and hard to see him in his current condition.
I have suggested that dad now needs additional care above what Mum and Graham can provide. Shortly he won’t be able to ask or walk to the toilet.

Unfortunately the news about Dad isn’t good. He is currently quite weak, he isn’t eating, and it appears the demon cancer is winning.

He looked so good only a month ago, however, this week, he really appears that he might not have long to go.

We are all very sad, because as I said, only a short month ago, we all felt, he was doing so well, that he most likely had a good few years left atleast.

It’s very hard seeing dad inhis current state. He was always such an intelligent man, and if e had all his faculties right now, he’d hate to see himself as he is.

We ofcourse are giving all the love andsupport that we can muster, while secretly, we are all having a tough time facing the future’s realities.

We will do what we can, however, the Dr’s aren’t much help, feel further Kemo treatment will be a waste and generally seem to have lost interest and hope.

We still can’t get a good estimate of how long dad has left from the Doctors. I personally feel, that we have the right to experience based estimates from them. And although it might be bad news for us, we still need to know.

Well, we found out last week that Tomoko is pregnant!! She is now in her 5th week.

We discovered this news while Tomoko had a blood test while in the early stages of IVF through IVF Australia.

Tomoko hadn’t really started the treatment, she was only on the nose spray that is supposed to “trick” her brain into not allowing her to ovulate.

So, this was a huge surprise after 3 years of trying. It was found that my count was low, so although pregnancy was possible, it was estimated that it could have taken us perhaps 8 years to conceive naturally.

Tomoko’s blood test was just a test to see if the nose spray was working. IVF Australia then called us back to inform us that Tomoko was pregnant.

The expected birth date is 10th June 09 – a winter baby!

It’s early days, so we’re just holding our breath until Tomoko’s first Ultrasound in 2 weeks.

Well I had my blood test for the Ivf treatment on Wed. I am really scared of needles so I was dreading it for days.

Tomoko starts her treatment on Tuesday. We are very excited. Luckily Tomoko isn’t scared of needles, otherwise we’d be in a spot of bother.

Dad is doing really well. Talking to him it is really hard to believe he had an area the size of his fist removed from his brain.

Obviously his speech, mobility and personality have all been effected, however he is doing really well and looks amazing.

Dr’s can’t tell us how long dad has, however, judging by how he has recovered, I think he’ll be with us for a while to come. Here’s hoping!

Well, after using twitter for a few weeks now, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve become addicted.

My old twitter usernames used to be sgm251070 – pretty cryptic I know, but everything else was taken.

Well I decided to find a better twitter name, and I now have stevegmorton

So, my twitter page has moved to http://www.twitter.com/stevegmorton

With “Hype” almost a daily occurance the lives of most of us today, the last couple of months could have gone totally unnoticed. There has been a few significant “things” that im my opinion, have changed my world.

IPhone – The release of the New Apple IPhone 3G less than a few short months ago, has totally changed the way I live and work.

Now I know that’s a pretty huge claim. And I don’t say it lightly. I personally hate Hype in all it’s forms, and reserve mine for really, truly amazing things. Well, in my opinion, the IPhone is such a thing.

Firstly, it has a “working” web browser on it. Since my business is a web developer/designer, It’s really important that the browser renders webpages accurately (or atleast as you would expect).

The Maps feature is great. Maps can be used to navigate as you drive, however, to be honest, it doesn’t do a great job of that (don’t buy the iPhone because you want a GPS car navigator, you’d do better to buy a $200 el ceepo one from target). Don’t get me wrong, the GPS functionality in the IPhone is great, but the turm by turn navigation isn’t as advanced (it doesn’t rotate to show the direction you are driving, and it doesn’t announce, eg 100m turn right).

The real power of the maps on the Apple IPhone in my opinion is it’s ability to bring up things you search for in the area you are at currently. Eg, if you are in Frenchs Forest in Sydney NSW, and if you opened the maps application in your IPhone, it would indicate where you are (using GPS). Then, say you wanted to find a local coffee shop, you simply type “coffee shop” into the maps application, and it goes away, does a google search (actually on google local), and brings up the coffee shops in the area. Now the issue, is that Google Local Business needs to know about the coffee shops first. I think this is a total winner, and I just hope business owners get a move on and make sure they are listed in google local.

Ofcourse, the IPhone has a great interface, great WifI capability, the camera is pretty good, and it sounds pretty good. The battery life could be improved, however, I guess it does have a large screen, so what do you want??????

The IPhone also intefaces nicely with the apple iStore, so if your in your car, and you want a new tune while your waiting for your girlfriend to arrive, then you can press the iTunes button, search for the song you want, enter your credit card, download and listen. ITunes is a Great idea by Apple, wish I thought of it.

Something to be careful of with the IPhone. Make sure you your phone carrier gives you planty of MB’s download with your plan. A phone like the IPhone has such great internet integration, it would be possible to use several 100MB’s quite easily per month I would imagine.

Something also worth noting, is since the IPhone has WiFI, if you have WiFi at home, then most of your traffic will come from your own WiFi connection (will cost much less).

Also worth noting, is that in Australia, Telstra offer free wiFi hotspot access with IPhone plans. So this is great!!!! With a Telstra IPhone plan, while sitting at McDonalds, you can connect up to the Telstra WiFI, read the Sydney Morning Herald, and it won’t cost you anything.

I like how Telstra offers FREE WiFI with the IPhone plans, at the time of writting, I don’t think the other carriers in Australia offered this. I would love to stand corrected! 

Ok Onto Google Chrome,

This was only released a few days ago. I downloaded it only lastnight. To be honest, I really didn’t want another internet browser on my computer. However, I must confess I am a bit of a google fan. I wanted to give it a try.

Well, I LOVE IT!

Google Chrome is fantastic. It integrates with google (which in my opinion, is the only search engine to use) without having to use the google toolbar. The browser searches while you type the URL – not just history like IE 7.

It seems to be quite lightweight, it downloads quickly, the favourites seem to work well. It has a page that shows your 9 most viewed webpages, and it just seems to work really nice.

I’m using it now to publish this blog entry on my site, and I’ve had no issues with Google Chrome. It’s only in Beta right now, so if the Beta is this good, imagine how great the 1st release will be.?.? 

Let’s put it this way, after being a devoted fan of IE7 (even downloading IE8 beta), never really liking Firefox, or Opera etc… I have now made Chrome my computer’s default browser. Since my business does Web development, one of the things that has always annoyed me, is that a webpage will work well in Firefox2, but not in firefox 3. Or it will work in IE7, but not IE6. IE 8 has been a real issue, it seems like it doesn’t render any web pages properly.

So in my opinion, it’s time to leave Firefox and IE to feude it out about standards, while I try a browser that seems to support them all, and is more interested in offering real enhancements, than dominance (for now).

Well dad moved back home with mum 3weeks ago.

Dad has had a wonderful recovery, however the brain cancer is still terminal.

We are now concentrating on making dad’s final time as comfortable and enjoyable for him as possible.

He has got back his humor and most of his personality back which is great. Mum is coping well as is Graham and myself.

I have to say, this must be the coldest winter I personally remember. It’s really cold. Typically, in Sydney this winter, we’re seeing 13deg C days. We’ve already had sleet in Sydney, and even the dogs are shivering.

Of course I’ve seen cold before, however, this winter would have to be the coldest I can remember by far.

Unfortunately it isn’t good news about Dad. His brain cancer operation, fortunately managed to get the “bulk”of the cancer out. However, at dad’s age and since the operation has left him with degraded motility, he hasn’t been given long to live.

The Dr’s have only given his 3 months to live without treatment, and upto 6 months with treatment.

The treatment is an oral “kemo” treatment together with radio theropy to his brain.

None of the family are taking this well. It’s really hard to believe, especially since only a month ago, dad seemed fine.

The cancer is a rather fast acting cancer. Unfortunately it was impossible to remove all the cancerous tissue, and so it is extremely likely that the treatment will only prolong the inevitable.

We as a family ave decided to try the treatment in the hope it works better than expected. I don’t think any of us expect miracles, however, we do need to live in hope.