Not really, I just study a lot. Actually stuff it, might as well let it all hang out. Sometimes I 'feels the need' and it's been some years since I explained why I'm weird. Please don't bother responding re the medical stuff, after all this time it's a little boring. This stupid tumour/cancer doesn't get that giving up is not in me.
I have a rare (in adults) form of brain tumour that is highly aggressive and I've been the prime test subject for new treatments in Australia, that are just now becoming widely available here 7 years after the initial clinical trials were done on me at the William Buckland Centre (Melb) & St Vincents (Melb) in 2008 & 2009. I'm currently the longest known survivor of multiple Malignant
Hemangiopericytomain in an adult and in the last trial I spent 49 consecutive days (about two hours each day) in a fibreglass upper body sarcophagus being treated with a then new form of radiation treatment that included
laser radiation surgery along with the more common
Stereotactic radiotherapy and normal radiotherapy. This form of tumour does not respond well to chemotherapy. After multiple tumours over a 5 year period I am now into my 8th year tumour free. :D
Because this treatment was expected to result in an increased rate of deteriorating mobility & mental function, we (my family) decided at the time to use my pigheaded nature to fight back. So I study almost continuously and have worked to increase mobility as a fight back strategy. It has helped, ie I was paraplegic, now I walk, albeit not very gracefully. I'm very slowly doing two degrees online with help from uTas and I'm using open learning to investigate basic physics, chemistry, photography, marine studies, astronomy, mental health and to a lesser degree psychology. The last only because my daughter is currently doing her medical and pharmaceutical degrees as a precursor to studying as a forensic psychiatrist. It's way beyond me but I like to understand and discuss some small fraction of her work - whenever she stays in Australia long enough to see her anyway.
I now have an erratic and to some degree, unusual memory. Some days (not often) I can't remember what I did the day before and I have trouble with names, even my own kids at times. Yet at other times I can describe in detail (including clothes and surroundings) events from when I was two years old - verified by both parents and close uncles/aunties.
Because of my weird brain function I study the same thing again and again, taking copious notes until I grasp all the intricacies. I can't work anymore so I study a lot while my youngest kids are at primary school - it keeps mental deterioration at bay, somewhat anyway. I'm slowly doing a genealogy degree online at uTas and very slowly trying to trudge through applied science studies that I left incomplete when I married over 20 years ago. I'm really not that smart and flunked out in high school, I don't like school. I find that online study suits me a lot better.
I rarely take photos as my best camera is only a digital compact and with having little control over the left side of my body, I have to use tripods for most pics. You should see how bad all my typing is before I tidy it up. :eek
My son helped me with all the DIY threads I used to do but he's 18 now and has far more interesting things to do. He really despises helping with my tanks now unless there's some quirky thing that grabs him. Example - I'm about to treat almost all my live rock with concentrated hydrochloric acid and once he understood the violent chemical reactions involved, he volunteered to do the physical stuff while I film it all for a 'How To' thread I'm planning. Sees himself in the mad scientist roll I suspect. :rolleyes
But that being said, my tanks are not usually much to look at visually as I'm always tampering and experimenting with them. Eg I ran a 100 litre tank for 2 years, never putting a single creature into it intentionally, at least nothing bigger than about 8mm. You can imagine that for most people it would be boring but my then wife and I became fascinated by the microfauna that evolved and the quality of live rock we could produce by seeding it in that tank. Not much to photograph but great to watch with magnifying lenses and lasers. Actually Holly became the new owner of most of that rock and used it to seed her 'morphology' tanks.
My main DT has just been torn down after being used for a four year experiment running a turbid, high nutrient tank as I tried to find optimum growth methods for goniapora, tubastraea, gorgonians, etc. It was a constant battle with algae blooms but I learned a lot about hair and bubble algae along the way. You can see why I'm currently concentrating hydrochloric acid for my party trick.
I will be documenting and photographing the new journey as much as possible in my TJ, beginning with
why my tank crashed, entirely destroying a coral & invertebrate collection built up over 6 years but without observable harm to a single fish.The new DT will be a typical low nutrient tank as I want to play with SPS some time late in 2017. As is my preference now, based loosely on
Eric Bourneman's philosophy, once the DT is wet it will cycle for about 6 months as I build a microfauna population. I expect it to be ready to transfer my fish back around xmas 2016.
Well that was quite a rant but now it's time this single dad fed his three at home kids.