What was your fasting blood glucose? (full on chat)

[Bildad]

I thought perhaps I would post with all this chat about books (I read this and other threads every day but rarely post) I own and run a used book shop and have done for the past 40 years. The Internet has been a life saver as the foot fall in the shop has fallen to almost none most weeks but I sell all over the world via the net. As you can imagine I am most firmly in favour of real books over e books. I do realise that e book readers are a necessity for some or they would be unable to read at all.
To keep in the spirit of this thread my fbg was either 4.4 or 6.1 depending on if you are an automatic bg follower or a manual one. I find the Libre (when I wear one) to often read lower than a finger prick.
Thank you all for another year of encouragement.
Wishing you God's peace for 2024

 

[lindisfel]

Yes, books can be really heavy, especially hardback books.

Good exercise though.

 

[dunelm]

I was given a Kindle about 3 years ago. It is still sitting in a drawer in this desk - unused. One of my research projects for my Masters was to find out if people could read more easily from a printed text than from a screen. That was years ago now and screens have improved although I still miss typos on screen. Back then, it was possible to prove that people read less efficiently from screens. My eyesight is not as good as it used to be and I find text on screen, in many cases, is very difficult to read, even using my glasses.

Same here, I have a kindle, barely used. Just can’t get on with it. I do have the kindle app on my IPad Pro though and that works a treat. Before. I did used to test students with reading problems and sometimes got down to having them read printed texts through a coloured sheet of plastic with either a shiny surface or a rough surface. Sometimes that worked if they had something described as Irlen’s Syndrome. Some black typeface on white paper is quite difficult for some.

 

[dunelm]

I find Kindle better to read from @Annb
I use the dyslexic typeface. It is a lifesaver for me.
Otherwise Perpetua is the next best, and third is Times New Roman.
I generally need a serif typeface.
I am no good with a sans serif typeface.
I Also find it hard holding a book with my arthritic hands,

I was once part of some research looking at fonts (before the dyslexia fonts were around). We tested a host of fonts, font sizes and paper colour on several hundred children who reported reading difficulties and found that for a significant number, Ariel 14 on a pale pastel blue paper helped the most children. I think that the dyslexia fonts are based upon DejaVu Sans.

 

[dunelm]

Fbg 6.7

Busy today...

Wildlife nighttime video
Cat Jade's busy night maybe watching a mouse first! - Fox appears concerned for Jade - Badger spoils Jade's night & wrecks her bed

2 min 14 secs

Creative... a photo of my holly berries...this year, the birds have not eaten them!

Have to do some stuff...

Have your best day...


View attachment 65214

Smashing photo

 

[dunelm]

@Annb
Those Norman's only got Britain by cheating us Danes and Saxons, we fight clean wars with swords and battle axes and have to run the the length of the country and fight tired against some foe who can't wield a battle axe or turn a man into a spread eagle and we are paying for centuries. You Norman's should fight properly
Lindis fairhair.

“Shield wall”

 

[Annb]

@Annb
Those Norman's only got Britain by cheating us Danes and Saxons, we fight clean wars with swords and battle axes and have to run the the length of the country and fight tired against some foe who can't wield a battle axe or turn a man into a spread eagle and we are paying for centuries. You Norman's should fight properly
Lindis fairhair.

I was always on the side of the Anglo Saxons in that war. Poor old Harold - was literally fighting a losing battle there. I have Godwins in my ancestry as well, so partly Norse. But then, so were the Frankified Normans. How about the battles that led to the Angles and Saxons grabbing the land from the poor old Britons? Was that a dirty war as well? In terms of origins, as I said to Neil yesterday, we were, on one line, descended either from a Norman cheesemaker or a jewish tax collector-cum-farmer (Ferminger); on another from a Danish aristocrat (Godwin); from another from somebody who dealt in wool (Woolball); free thinking Quakers (when everyone was supposed to be Anglican); Welsh men and women, common or garden agricultural workers, master builders, ostlers and blacksmiths. Sounds OK to me.

 

[dunelm]

Good morning everyone from a bit of a blustery start here in the dark and dangerous north. Yesterday, in a sunny interlude to the rain, we walked into town, picked pebbles and stones from the beach and caught the bus home in the rain. Today is pebble painting but not until after we head to a local museum to find treasure and artefacts and probably sample the cafe. Children today seem to be perpetually hungry, I wonder if i was and have forgotten. Art bit, some more lines. Hope your day is kind to you and that you find the right book for the moment. I need to send in our gas and electric meter readings this morning but I simply must finish our koffy first.

 

[Annb]

I was once part of some research looking at fonts (before the dyslexia fonts were around). We tested a host of fonts, font sizes and paper colour on several hundred children who reported reading difficulties and found that for a significant number, Ariel 14 on a pale pastel blue paper helped the best. I think that the dyslexia fonts are based upon DejaVu Sans.

Dyslexic students in my classes seemed to have differing needs. Most said they found seriffed fonts to be most helpful (often italicised to give lines across the text). All preferred a wider line spacing. Some preferred yellow backgrounds, some blue. Perhaps, like diabetes, it's not a question of one size fits all. Perhaps there was an element of older students having made their own decisions by the time they were approaching 20. That's one thing that computerised note production helped with. I could start with a basic text and font and make adjustments for individuals very easily, once preferences had been established, to tailor notes and workbooks to the students' needs.

 

[Annb]

Fbg 6.7

Busy today...

Wildlife nighttime video
Cat Jade's busy night maybe watching a mouse first! - Fox appears concerned for Jade - Badger spoils Jade's night & wrecks her bed

2 min 14 secs

Creative... a photo of my holly berries...this year, the birds have not eaten them!

Have to do some stuff...

Have your best day...


View attachment 65214

Beautiful holly berries - so cheery in these dark, miserable days.

 

[dunelm]

Dyslexic students in my classes seemed to have differing needs. Most said they found seriffed fonts to be most helpful (often italicised to give lines across the text). All preferred a wider line spacing. Some preferred yellow backgrounds, some blue. Perhaps, like diabetes, it's not a question of one size fits all. Perhaps there was an element of older students having made their own decisions by the time they were approaching 20. That's one thing that computerised note production helped with. I could start with a basic text and font and make adjustments for individuals very easily, once preferences had been established, to tailor notes and workbooks to the students' needs.

Funny thing, vision. When neuropsychologist Larry Weizkranz demonstrated that there is residual visual function in the total absence of striate cortex (V1) in both monkey and humans back in the 1980’s he showed just how much we have to learn about the relationship between our visual system and such things as visually guided action, motor memory and micro muscle control. Eyes are just the tip of our very complex visual system. So called Irlen Syndrome, where text seems to blur, move, run down off the page etc., is sometimes clumped into the overarching word ‘dyslexia’ but I’m not sure. So much to do

 

[jjraak]

Fbg 6.7

Busy today...

Wildlife nighttime video
Cat Jade's busy night maybe watching a mouse first! - Fox appears concerned for Jade - Badger spoils Jade's night & wrecks her bed

2 min 14 secs

Creative... a photo of my holly berries...this year, the birds have not eaten them!

Have to do some stuff...

Have your best day...


View attachment 65214

Poor old jade....

Though good to see her Spidey senses are in full working order & warned her to go before the grumpy ol' badger arrived.

 

[jjraak]

@Annb
Those Norman's only got Britain by cheating us Danes and Saxons, we fight clean wars with swords and battle axes and have to run the length of the country and fight tired against some foe who can't wield a battle axe or turn a man into a spread eagle and we are paying for centuries. You Norman's should fight properly
Lindis fairhair.

Wot about us Celts...

No more small boats
& No more long boats, either ...

Blue paint for local blue bottoms only...

 

[jjraak]

“Shield wall”

Top reply..

 

[jjraak]

I thought perhaps I would post with all this chat about books (I read this and other threads every day but rarely post) I own and run a used book shop and have done for the past 40 years. The Internet has been a life saver as the foot fall in the shop has fallen to almost none most weeks but I sell all over the world via the net. As you can imagine I am most firmly in favour of real books over e books. I do realise that e book readers are a necessity for some or they would be unable to read at all.
To keep in the spirit of this thread my fbg was either 4.4 or 6.1 depending on if you are an automatic bg follower or a manual one. I find the Libre (when I wear one) to often read lower than a finger prick.
Thank you all for another year of encouragement.
Wishing you God's peace for 2024

Hi @Bildad

I hear the pain of the bookshop demise (guilty as sin here )

But I gave the win for the will to try to turn that around & succeeding ....bravo .

Welcome to the thread.

 

[jjraak]

Morning all

On the subject of reading, I was an avid reader.
Nothing too high brow, I want a book to entertain me or educate me.. history usually.

House was full of books, my Lauren loved to read too, and we passed that onto our Steph

(Surprised when we visit others how few now seem to read.
No books resting on coffee tables or mentioned, & none on display, though they could, as many of mine are, be on the kindle, etc )

I always love a gadget, & got pointed to e-books late 2000’s I think.

Got a 2nd hand Sony e-reader to test the waters...never looked back .
Kindles, paper lights & fire tablets has been the progress.

(PC , laptops, Chromebook, tablets too )

Have several 7" kindles, some better than others battery wise, with older ones doing better than some newer versions, oddly.

Bought an 8" fire, two year's back in a black Friday sale £39 (absolute bargain) perfect for my needs
Fast enough as a tablet, full Google play so apps aplenty if I need.
Just big enough to watch videos & films easily
and battery life is great.

As for reading, I choose a white text on a black background (same as my phone for the forum) as being easiest on my eyes.

The E-Readers have been on every holiday, so I'm always rather spoilt for choice on what book to read over picking out one or two at the airport shops .

But I do feel rather mean, when I see a book lending library at the hotel or apartments that I can't leave a book for.

Such is progress, I guess

 

[ianpspurs]

Good morning all on what I'm provisionally taking as Friday but in this odd limbo time it could be any day. I do hope you are all living the dream - fever, tiktokable or whatever label is most woke/aspirational this week. @Bildad good to see you and I hope your business flourishes in 2024. Since Hephers in Cambridge closed no bookshop will ever quite satisfy me again.
Printed books don't have hyperlinks and a kindle (I think I have 2 somewhere) book limits me to one task if text based. Audio books would probably be my choice these days.
Sore remainer eh - get over it

@dunelm and @gennepher thank you both for sharing your creatives be they photographic or artistic. @Krystyna23040 enjoy Blickling Hall. Interesting start to my day. A convoy of eery hi viz shapes with blue lights about 10 feet high moving along the path on the edge Newmarket at 7.20. Then I saw the amazing horses as well. My expected life span is too short to be preparing vegetables so I Waitrosed them today. Pigs in blankets reduced and piled as high as me - possibly an exaggeration. A cranberry and orange Danish each for the gels just for brownie points all done and back home by 8.20. Enjoy whatever day today is.

 

[Annb]

One of the biggest things is the growth of knowledge.
In astronomy, it is the latest from the new telescope photos that have the boffins rethinking big bang etc
In archaeology, the latest new sites in area all over that have historians trying to understand our pre history.
Egyptology, that is far older and scientifically advanced than first thought. And mainly Nubian.I
The South American civilisation, the pre Columbian civilisations.
String theory, and loads more.
Book burning, religious dogma, Royalty, tribal history, political history has censored, hidden, banned and prohibited knowledge. Censorship has confounded the growth of our understanding of the universe.

Brexit is the same ideology!

My problem with this particular book was that it looked like a children's historical novel but was not appropriate for children. I didn't want to keep it but I felt that the same mistake would be made if I returned it to the charity shop and some other child would access it, so couldn't give it back. Thus - it burned. Sacrilege no doubt, but my responsibility to my child, and others, was more important.

Edit: #Po-faced/#Self-Righteous! Sorry.

 

[alf_Josiah]

Good Morening Ladies and Gentlemen and those who are celebrating the season of gluttony is almost over.

We, here in Tilehurst Towers have finished our celebrations and are looking forward to a simpler and normal dietary regime.

Me, me’s and myself had my diabetic review yesterday morning, the diabetic nurse used the pronoun Ms, not Miss or Mrs, 5 minutes into the review I was told I was rude, I was rude. It wasn’t a Tuesday so I wasn’t playing the woke game.
I was also asked why I don’t come under the GP’s. I didn’t use the word incompetence, when dealing with diabetics with my medical history and medications, but the implication was there. This all sounds negative, but they appear to be happy with my control and my A1c was down. We parted on on good term with a fair amount of laughter.

As an avid reader of escapism and entertainment books I have tried to read everything that has been written about fellow posters reading habits. One book that hasn’t been mentioned is Fahrenheit 451, google if you must.

Mrs J has reclaimed her dining room table and will continue with her painting, in due course I shall publish her artwork on here.

Now it’s time for me to eat something simple then an afternoon nap as befits an aging, bearded, overweight greaser ( slang for motorcyclist ).

 

[gennepher]

Same here, I have a kindle, barely used. Just can’t get on with it. I do have the kindle app on my IPad Pro though and that works a treat. Before. I did used to test students with reading problems and sometimes got down to having them read printed texts through a coloured sheet of plastic with either a shiny surface or a rough surface. Sometimes that worked if they had something described as Irlen’s Syndrome. Some black typeface on white paper is quite difficult for some.

I read through a green or yellow coloured sheet...I have been told I have Irlen's syndrome. I did have green tinted glasses for close up reading etc, but they were expensive. And then when your prescription changes, then it is another pair of the expensive green glasses...so went over to clear reading glasses and used a coloured sheet...