I keep coming back to Geordi in the holodeck working a problem with the computer. With the latest Codex and Claude Code it feels like we're almost there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Faiu360W7Q

Starting to notice the hair coming out now, Tim Peeks here I come

http://www.timpeeks.com

Signed up for Bullet Memo. Fits my way of organising tasks but mostly I'm there for the insipiration boost I get using nice, thoughtful, opinionated software interfaces when I'm working on my own.

https://www.bulletmemo.com

TIL / remembered you get billed €100 for visiting the emergency department. I think it's to encourage people to go to their GP first but feels like they could carve out an exception for folks that have been ambulanced in after collapsing.

I used OpenMoji for the emoji here. The style is just what I wanted, Creative Commons license, can't go wrong.

https://openmoji.org/

Built this new website today to house my posts. Looks kinda like a social feed but without me feeling bad that nobody follows or retoots me. I like it!

I've been leaning into my middle initial more lately

Rewrote a couple of my old Objective-C tools / sample projects as Swift packages. Gave them snazzy new names while I was at it.

https://github.com/mbehan/FrameBlaster

https://github.com/mbehan/Luminator

I'm just about at the end of my first 2-week cycle on AC (doxorubicin / cyclophosphamide) chemotherapy. I've read a lot of people's experiences with it on r/breastcancer but they're mostly women, and most seem to have handled it really well, so I wanted to share a different perspective.

I've felt really rough the majority of the time. Thankfully I had already decided to take the entire 8 weeks of this treatment off. I had been hoping I might be able to return to work during the 12 weeks of Taxol (paclitaxel) chemotherapy that will follow, but I can't imagine working until I'm completely done and recovered now. Most stories say Taxol isn't as bad, but the tiredness is cumulative and I'm already so tired.

The best way I can describe my baseline feeling is that it's like back in college if I'd been up all night coding and downing red bulls, a sort of shaky, on-edge feeling. On top of that it's like somebody turned up the gravity, my arms and legs feel heavier than they should, getting out of bed is a chore. I feel kinda detached from reality, like I'm watching a video of life going by rather than being in it. Nausea has been present much of the time, but only once or twice did it feel like I might barf, thankfully I didn't. I took all the recommended meds (Emend, Dexamethasone and Olanzapine) and only felt the need to reach for the additional antiemetics (Maxalon and Valoid) a couple of times.

My mouth feels crap and I can barely taste most foods. No full on sores or bleeding but theres a general unpleasantness. I'm swishing (as best one can swish 1ml of anything) Mycostatin 4 times a day and using Corsodyl's chlorohexidine mouthwash. The Corsodyl was making my toungue sting so I've started diluting it, which helps a lot.

I'm on the 2 week dose-dense schedule so I'm injecting Neulasta to boost my white-cell count but thankfully I've avoided the bone pain that is a common side effect of that.

On day 6 I fainted. My wife called an ambulance but I was conscious and feeling ok by the time they arrived. ECG, bloods, and vitals were all OK in the emergency department so they sent me home. Followed up at the oncology ward the next day with a CT scan of the brain which was clear and they had me wear a heart monitor for 48 hours which showed nothing, so the consensus is let's not worry about it unless it happens again. It was scary, for my wife more so than me ("you looked dead").

Maybe I overdid it that day, I had been going for a 30 minute walk each day and I was feeling better that morning so went a bit farther, I hadn't eaten much either, maybe that contributed. I've resolved to take it easier for the first week of cycle 2, now that I know there is a point where it starts to feel much better.

That point was around day 9, I've been gradually feeling more myself since then, it's day 13 now and I feel pretty much back to myself (taste aside), able to stay out of bed all day and have been doing some work on some coding projects.

No idea how the next cycle will go, but if it's about the same minus the fainting, I'll take it. No sign of my hair going yet, I've heard it should be any day now, I keep running my hands through it, looking at my empty hand, weirdly disappointed, waiting on that movie "guy with cancer notices hair falling out" moment!

Adding it to the backlog

Blush Neo next to the midnight Air

Turns out I'm one of about 20 or 30 men who will be diagnosed with breast cancer in Ireland this year. I haven't found many men's stories, so I thought I'd share how it's gone for me so far. From finding a lump to diagnosis, surgery, and chemo within a couple of months.

I found a lump by chance during the first week of January, awkwardly taking off my oversized fleece hoodie that I was wearing with my hands inside more like a blanket. I noticed a hard lump under the surface next to my left nipple. I knew it wasn't good right away. A hard, round mass, about the size of one of those little rubber bouncy balls we always seem to end up with from kids' birthday party bags. Feeling around some more, I could tell it wasn't smooth like one of those, it had a rough texture, maybe more like a golf ball. It was late Saturday evening and I was up by myself. I decided I'd go to bed and make a plan in the morning.

The next morning I checked the lump was still there. I could feel its presence without touching it, and it was just about visible now that I knew it was there. I also noticed the nipple was slightly inverted. I didn't tell my wife right away. I planned to go to the GP during work the next day, hoping they'd say it was nothing, but the possibility of cancer was already top of my mind.

The next day was the first day back at work after Christmas. I split the morning between onboarding a new hire and calling around to get a GP appointment nearby. I was relieved when I got one who could squeeze me in at the end of their day on short notice. I gather I got a good one, given how seriously they took my concern and got things in motion. The GP had a look and feel around the lump, the nipple, and under my arm and said it needed to be checked out immediately. I was referred to the Triple Assessment Clinic at the Mater Private Hospital, and they called the next day with an appointment two days later.

The triple refers to having a mammogram, ultrasound, and a consultation with a surgeon in the same appointment. First up was the mammogram. I've always had enough man boob to be self-conscious at a swimming pool, but still it seemed like not quite enough to easily manipulate into the specialist X-ray machine, but we got there in the end. Several scans were taken on both sides and the technician was happy with the quality. That inverted nipple warranted an extra set of high-res shots.

Next up was the ultrasound. They were very thorough, really pushing the scanner deep into the tissue, especially in the underarm area. Later I'd realise this was because they were already seeing strong indications of malignancy and were looking for spread to the lymph nodes. I was told a biopsy was needed and they were going to proceed right there and then. I was given local anaesthetic and a large needle-like device emerged, which, with two loud thunks, took two samples through the core of the lump. They patched me up and sent me across the road to see the surgeon.

The surgeon described what they had seen in the imaging: a 23mm lump that needed further investigation by biopsy. It would take about two weeks for results, but he laid out the three possibilities clearly. The first was that the sample was normal tissue. He said if this was the result he'd order a new biopsy because something had clearly gone wrong. The second was atypical or benign. If so, he'd likely do an excision biopsy to confirm. The third was where the bets were being placed: that it was cancer, which would require mastectomy surgery, a lymph node biopsy, and potentially chemotherapy. Radiation looked unlikely. He set the appointment for the biopsy results and recommended that my wife come with me.

Waiting for the results was no fun. Some sleepless nights and consultations with Dr GPT went alongside pain and bruising from the biopsy, but work and kids and everything else carried on as normal. It was a bit less than two weeks later that we got the results, and option three was confirmed: invasive ductal carcinoma. Surgery was scheduled for two weeks' time. They would take the lump, the nipple, and the breast tissue from the left side, along with two sentinel nodes to test, as they'd be the first place the cancer would likely spread. They said three weeks after surgery we'd meet again to go over the findings and decide the rest of the treatment plan, but endocrine treatment was already likely given my tumour was oestrogen-receptor positive. After talking it through with the surgeon, the breast care nurse took us to another room to give us more time to ask questions and provide more info. It was funny that it was clear she was used to the man being there for moral support rather than being the patient. We were given a pink breast cancer booklet, but I'd already read up on everything in the weeks before, so there wasn't much to learn. It was all just actually happening for real now.

Surgery was a little scary. It was my first time under general anaesthetic, but everything went according to plan and I was able to go home the next morning. I emerged with a plastic tube coming from below the incision, with a bulb attached collecting fluid from where the breast tissue had been. Looking after the drain was probably the worst part of recovery. There was some pain, but it was easily managed with painkillers. There were restrictions in moving my left arm, but the physio exercises did the job and within a few weeks everything felt fairly back to normal. The drain could come out when it was draining less than 30ml a day, which took just over a week. I was back to work after two weeks. I'd have taken longer, but two weeks was all that was going to be paid.

The three-week wait after surgery was easier than the two after the biopsy. I had a lot more information now. From what I'd read, my cancer was very standard and the path ahead fairly well understood. If there was spread to the nodes that would be different, but everything so far indicated there wasn't. My appointment for the results was moved up. I got a call in work asking if I was free that day, so I headed over to the surgeon's office on my own. They said it was good news and didn't want to keep me waiting. Margins were clear, nodes were negative, and the tumour measured closer to 3cm than the original 23mm from imaging, but that wasn't a concern. There was one test left before we'd know what was next: the Oncotype test. That was ordered, my tumour sent to a lab in America, and I had another two weeks of waiting before seeing the oncologist once the results were in. This is the test that decides whether chemotherapy is needed, and in about 25% of cases like mine it is, so it means a lot of people can avoid it unnecessarily.

I didn't get warned to bring someone to the next appointment, so I went alone, but I could tell from the greeting at the door that it was probably bad news. The news was that my Oncotype score means chemotherapy should be effective at reducing my chance of recurrence. So it's not bad per se, but I haven't been able to avoid chemo. I'm dreading it more than having cancer. The cancer is gone for the most part, but now I have five months of treatment planned to clear up the stragglers. The oncologist explained everything clearly and I had the same extra time with the nurse as with the original diagnosis. They're well practiced at explaining how everything is going to go. Two months of AC followed by three months of Paclitaxel. The AC is usually harder. My hair will go. I should take off the entire time from work if possible and cancel my summer holidays. The only other prep the oncologist recommended was to tell the kids.

Lovely morning on Balbriggan beach

After much deliberation on gaming busses and party venues, our newly-9 year old went for an old school house party

The Irish Sea at Balbriggan harbour giving Atlantic coast vibes today

Big waves at Balbriggan harbour

New record in my morning work carpark challenge

At the rugger with the fam

Defused a bomb / replaced the fan oven heating element

Saw a   in the wild