Back in the end of June of 2007 I had dislocated my knee. I had written a few posts about my ordeal and those posts have slowly turned into a place of support and guidance for those who have also suffered from the same injury. One of those people, Lisa, has just recently had some serious complications arise from her dislocation. She had a blood clot dislodge and travel to her lungs. Needless to say she had to be rushed to the hospital. It was quite serious and all related to her dislocation, something which she, nor I for that matter, would ever have expected to result from a dislocated knee.

Here is what Lisa said in her comment:

“My doctor says the clot, based on ultraound/doppler tests, began behind my knee. Apparently, the lower in the leg the clot, the less serious/smaller it is and the more likely it is to either be absorbed by the veins or become a DTV (deep vein thrombosis) instead of a Pulmonary Embolism. Above the calf is considered dangerous. Normally the act of getting up to pee throughout the day during immobilization is enough to prevent a clot. I must have had the perfect storm of injury location and severity. The scary thing is that it was 4 months after the injury when the clot broke free and traveled to my lungs. Please encourage everyone on this blog to discuss DVT and PE with their orthopedist. Leg cramps and shortness of breath might not seem serious, but they can be signs of something deadly. I would even encourage folks who have a dislocation to carry a card in their wallet stating that fact. If I had lost consciousness and an ambulance had been called, it might have taken longer to get to the root of the problem without my being able to provide a history.”

There you have it. If you are fairly new in your recovery of a dislocated knee, please be aware of the complications that could arise. Watch out for the signs and symptoms and talk to your doctor.

I would also like to thank Lisa who took the time to share her story so that others could learn from it.

Cheers,
Jonesy

Ok, here is a quick post regarding a nice piece of free software (freeware) that I stumbled across while googling “extracting audio from video files”. It’s called AoA Audio Extractor, and the free version does exactly that; it extracts audio from video files. This is a great little piece of software and if you are looking to make your own ringtones or need a sound bite from a movie/tv show/etc. this is the program for you. Another great feature is that it allows you to specify exactly what portion of the video file to extract the audio from, you can either extract all the audio or just a particular section. Great stuff.

I will soon be putting a post together on how to create your own ringtones for your iPhone, and the AoA Audio Extractor will be featured in it. So if you want to learn how to create ringtones from your favourite movie or tv show, stay tuned.

Good afternoon,

Wow, it has been a while since I have been off the radar with my blog posts. While I have been keeping up with my two most popular post: one dealing with USB drives and Windows Vista, and the other dealing with dislocated patella’s, I haven’t been adding any new postings. =( I think my main problem is that I am always thinking I have to deliver some ground breaking post that is going to knock the socks off of people; instead of just posting something that I feel people may be interested in. So, with that in mind, I am going to try and do just that. Let’s see how that goes.

As I was walking the other day I passed by two gentlemen that were having a conversation.  All I caught of their conversation was one of the men saying:  “Anyone can train a monkey to push a button.”  That’s it, that’s all I heard, no context, no response from the other gentleman, just that little tidbit.  As I continued walking, leaving the two to whatever it was they were discussing, I kept thinking about what the guy had said:  “Anyone can train a monkey to push a button.” It’s an expression that’s been heard before, nothing ground breaking or revolutionary, but I kept thinking about it.

Sure, anyone probably could train a monkey to push a button, but is it really that simple, that easy?  There has to be more to it.

First of all, if pushing the button serves a purpose, such as the monkey performing a specific job that requires the button to be pushed, it’s pushing is related to a cause/effect situation.  Let’s say that the purpose of the button being pushed is to open a particular vent to air out a specific area, but this is not just a random purpose because there are definite times when the button needs to be pushed.  So for us to get the monkey to know when to push the button, we need to train the monkey to respond to a particular stimuli that it recognizes as indicating that the button NEEDS to be pushed (i.e. “When the green light comes on, push the button.”); I’m sure a monkey could handle that kind of training (any animal behavioural scientists out there please correct me if I am wrong).

Would that be all there is to it though? I don’t think so. What if our monkey gets distracted easily? What if he chooses to not push the button? It is here where I feel the importance of consequence or reward comes in; the monkey needs to be trained either through reprisal for not pushing the green button when the green light comes on, or reward for pushing the green button only when the green light comes on. Either way, the monkey needs to recognize the importance of fulfilling the task to its specifics, anything else is not acceptable.

And that is that, I never really went much farther in my thought process regarding this matter. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing revolutionary, but I do think there is more to training a monkey to push a button than there seems to be.

Just thinking out loud again.