Disability and Rarity of Updates
Haven’t made any updates to this site or my “new” blog in over a year until I cleaned up and posted this biology article a few days ago. Even before then, I hadn’t made a post talking about my disabilities and past and how badly it affects my ability to get things done.
This post (originally on the new blog) will explain some of those issues, what I’ve been up to since last year, and what I might be able to do in the future.
Medical Issues and Disability Impact
From 2012 to 2015 I was physically assaulted repeatedly by someone who lived with me.
I have physical injuries and psychological trauma from this, including severe PTSD. The mental trauma was compounded by the police refusing to help me and telling me to leave my home instead, and the lack of support I recieved from others as well.
I also suffer from some previous medical problems, but they were mostly manageable before the above. I was able to work and study and engage in many side projects, including working on open source software and writing material for my website.
These days I can barely take care of my basic needs like cooking, cleaning etc. I don’t have the capacity to do any work even part time, let alone contribute to side projects on a regular basis.
Progress on PANTS
I had written the “Price And Nutrition Tracking System” nearly 5 years ago now, mainly due to my medical issues changing my nutritional needs and being on pension changing my financial needs.
Over the last couple of years others have been contributing to PANTS, especially Austin Grey, who has submitted many PRs including a much improved API-based frontend.
In the last year or two I’ve lost some of the motivation to take care of my health, and haven’t been using PANTS much. I’m trying to get back into it now, using it on a daily basis and hope to restart active development soon.
Budget Biochemistry Blog and Covid-19 Plots
A few months ago my depression was interrupted by a brief moment of inspiration. I had been reading some chemistry and molecular biology books, and got the idea of doing some simple but practical kitchen demonstrations like measuring sugar concentration, extracting DNA from fruits and veg, etc.
Unfortunately, after a day of excitement registering domain names and Twitter handles I lost interest in the project.
I recently got back into playing around with R and started posting some plots of Covid-19 spread in Victoria on the Twitter account. I will probably continue with this for a while, and maybe get back to the original project in the future.
Future Priorities
First of all, my personal health of course comes first, and I am never going to be able to be firm with any deadlines or schedules. All updates are going to be irregular. All deadlines will use the official Apogee Software one (“When it’s done”).
My priority in side projects is going to be getting back into active development of PANTS again, in part because it’s the most important for my own health, and also to make best use of the contributions made by others.
Because it’s relevant to current events I’ll probably keep up posting Covid-19 stats on Twitter for the time being too.
Blog posts are probably going to be behind the above, although I would like to start sharing some more recipes and other more varied stuff here.
Other projects like music and development of other software are going to be at the back of the queue.