The Sixth Disease

Or simply Roseola Infantum, is apparently an extremely common Children sickness, that occurs mostly in children from 6 months to 2 years old, however it could get to you at any age if you didn't have it yet. Once you have had Roseola, your body is immune to the virus which causes the disease called HHV-6b - a type of Herpes Virus, Herpes 6.

It's super scary for first time parents especially for me as I'm probably the most jumpy father this world has seen, and I suspect this world has seen many! The Scenario would be something like this: Karsten has a raised temperature, it's 38.7 and my first reaction is "OH SNAP!!! Hospital RIGHT NOW!!! if we don't do this he'll overheat and his temperature will go to over 9000 and then ...."

Well that's me! I usually tell myself, "better safe than sorry".
But sometimes, I overdo it! YES! I said it. but this won't change me!


This however is not the topic at hand, the topic at hand is Roseola, Roseola infantum, Exanthema Subitum or Sixth disease, and it's as mentioned before scary as hell, especially because People don't seem to talk about it, it's not dangerous though. Many of the Symptoms, and effects and the progression of the Sickness seem to confuse parents that have never seen or heard about it and I'm here to tell you about my sons tale of his very first, very own "self immunizing Child Sickness", Roseola.

It all Started, on a Sunday the 17th of June, (probably with an incubation time of 7 days prior) Yes! Fathers day.

In the morning the little one had Red eye lids, red eyes and tears as well as mucus coming out of his eyes constantly. then in the evening, Karsten had high temperature and even though we gave him "Calpol" or "ibobrufen", his fever wouldn't go down, I'm not accustomed to "Spongebaths", (quite frankly up until last week i thought a sponge-bath was the act of putting your child in a bathtub filled with cool water and washing him down with a sponge, I know better now and I suggest, YOU! look it up if you don't know better either!) so I didn't really bother considering it.

At 11:30 pm I decided the emergency room ought to get his fever down!! So off we went to American Hospital to get him checked in at the emergency room.

After the Triage Nurse panicked a little when she saw the little one's fever which reached 40.3 (CELSIUS!) she disappeared into the backroom and returned with a little bullet shaped object, also called, a "suppository", oh yes! Karstens favorite, and there is a reason, because he can't do anything about them! Anything Oral and he spits it 15m across the room. once administered, we waited.

And waited.... aaaaaand waited, then finally the Triage nurse came back to check his temperature which has gone down to a comfortable 37. 5. She then turned around and left, but not before letting me know, that the "emergency pediatrician in charge", is currently attending another child and that karsten will be next.

"Great" I thought, at 12:45am, with my pregnant wife sitting next to me tired like she hadn't slept for 10 years and with a 12 year old girl Screaming from the emergency room like her arm was missing, and to be honest, I have no idea what happened to her (in fact, I hope she's alright!). 

At 1:30am, the "docs" - as my son calls them - finally attended to us, and after a painless, but very loud (because kaedi was crying like there was no tomorrow since he's scared to the ground of doctors) checkup, the doctor said, "it's just an upper respiratory tract infection, probably viral, and there's no need to worry about that!"
We were subscribed Voltaren suppositories for the fever, an antibiotic (and at this point I want to mention that i know that an antibiotic cannot take care of viral infections) and some more stuff, which I'm too lazy to list down now!

Okay. Emergency room was done. "Let's see where this is going".

His fever wouldn't go down, in fact it kept spiking, the Voltaren took it down, but once his 12 hours subsided, the fever went back to 40+, I thought "THIS CAN'T BE RIGHT!!!! better go to the doctors!!"

4 days have passed, nothing changed! So there we were again, this time with an appointment at the pediatrician.
He said the same, "It's viral!! No need to worry, it'll go away!" It's not that I don't trust him, it's just that I felt so bad for my son being sick! The Funny thing was, He didn't seem sick! Yeah, when he had fever he was in the low low, but once the voltaren was in and taking care of his temperature, our little devil, was more active than a tornado! The Doctor told me, that if he is normal or playful and not tired or exhausted there's nothing to worry about!
Once he lies down and is exhausted and doesn't want to move! You have ALL the reasons to worry!

The Great thing is, He never stopped eating, yea he may have had less appetite but he never said no completely to a meal, he never threw up, although he had a little diarrhea, but that was apparently due to the medication so he was actually doing great.

Another Visit to the doctor done, and no more clever than I was 3 hours before.

However sure enough, the following day my son decided, he wants to stay in bed, my 2 year old son, decided that it was more fun to sink down into his pillow (even while the fever was gone) rather than playing hide and seek with his dad! I was worried, but for some reason had no headaches about it. I stayed with him, gave him a proper sponge bath, and gave him a paracetamol (as I decided no more Voltaren!) good Idea I thought, and I was right, his fever went down, not permanently though, it did come back at 10pm, and Karsten still didn't want to come out of bed! so I was still worried.

After a VERY long night, him sleeping next to me and the wife on the couch (for undisclosed reasons). The next day - Saturday, his fever was just gone, Karsten was back on track, playful excited and he ate, as usual!

One day passes (obvioulsy worried his fever comes back) but no sign of that.

Then suddenly on Sunday morning .. Rashes, they started on his chest and back then moved on to the arms, neck and face. My Heart stopped, pre-occupied with this I decided i better take him again to see what this is!

In the meantime, after self diagnose websites suggested Brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, Hepatitis A,B,C, HIV, syphilis and more awesome stuff, my wife sends me a message, informing me, that her colleagues kids just had Roseola, I checked it up online and it ABSOLUTELY matched his symptoms.

1. Sudden onset of high fever for 3 to 5 days
2. Rash
3. Fatigue
4. Irritability
5. Mild diarrhea
6. Decreased appetite
7. Swollen eyelids
8. Red Eyes

(THESE SYMPTOMS DON'T APPEAR IN THAT ORDER!!)

It all matched, and I was suddenly really comfortable. I went to see the doctor and he confirmed it was Roseola. He said, it would go away by itself, which it did. I am Super happy now, he is finally over this and now (probably) immune! His Left eye is still a little swollen, but the red is gone and he has been more active than ever!

I was scared to the bone in the beginning, I didn't know what was going on, was is scarlet fever? german measles? but now we know! It was just Roseola!

For any parent out there! This is not intended as a guide or professional Medical advice, If your kid has an unusually high Temperature! Take him to the doctor and make sure it's nothing serious, like "Kawasakis Desease" which is very very similar to Roseola, but if left untreated, could leave permanent heart valve damage!

for more info, visit The following websites,

MayoClinic
Wikipedia
BabyCenter

to everyone else, I'm signing out now, have a great weekend,

Game On!

-Alex

I see Framed Wires!

Earlier today, I posted something on my Facebook-Wall, said Post basically sums up how I feel sometimes when it comes to sleeping after long working hours, however, it's nothing I wrote, so I figured, I should write about my experience myself.

For everyone who wants to read the Post, go here.

I had such an experience just last night, its however nothing new to me. Basically It's dreaming of your daily routine, work, eat, sleep, play and so on. There are mild cases and extreme cases, and when I'm under a load of stress at work, say for instance we are chasing deadlines, they go extreme.

But first let's start with mild cases and the less  "unpleasant" ones. Gaming or TV shows. When A new game comes out and I'm really into it, say for instance "Uncharted 1, 2, 3" I do play them five hours on end! The result, is me dreaming about either being in the game or me playing the game or me developing a game. Pretty much the same with TV Shows it amplifies when I'm really tired too.

The MORE unpleasant case, is when deadlines need to be met on Projects at work and for some reason concepts get swung around after working on these things for a very VERY long time. That's the time when I start dreaming of working while sleeping .. and basically waking up in the middle of the night, wondering, why I was just working on a flag animation... or a Car Wire-frame while all I was really doing, was lying in bed next to my wife snoozing the night away.

One such case visited me last night, when my son was constantly blabbering half asleep how he wouldn't want me or his mommy to annoy him, while we were actually around 3 meters away from him, I kept on waking up ... and  while I was half asleep I'd see wire frames of cars and flags floating in front of me, and as I fall back to sleep... I keep working on them... in the weirdest ways. This cycle would repeat until 7am when my alarm rang .. meanwhile I realize that my son was already jumping around on my chest... Though I'm used to this whole thing, last night was special .. as I seemed to have 2 dreams happening at the same time.

It's not going to stop... or IS IT?

Just before I went to sleep I watched an episode of myth busters, something I should have not done, as my dreams have separated themselves into 2 independent dreams which kind of mixed within my brain .. I know it sounds messed up almost "Inceptionish" but its fairly simple... basically my dream was about the topic: "is it's possible to have a car Wire-frame spread and repeat itself 500 times or something. Let's bust that myth" Wait what? Why!!?? I think you understand when I say "this confused the heck out of me!"

I have not really spent enough time on getting this under control or making this controllable during the night, I would "initiate" much more elaborate dreams, like driving a Lamborghini on a straight highway 500 kmph... or flying a jet fighter .. or just sleeping and resting.

So until I do, I'll just go and play Deus Ex in a 360 Degree room in 3D .. for 24 Straight hours .. let's see what my next dream will be about.

Until next time, Game On!

-Alex

Charted!

When it comes to games, I cannot play them unless they tell some kind of story. That's why one of my favorite franchises is Final Fantasy. with VIII being my absolute favorite, I count many of them into my little happy-book. XI was great, X was good XII was quite alright, and I dare not speak about XIII...

With my age however my thirst for an "intelligent" story has increased quite a bit and with that, my attention to detail.
One Game, has caught my attention when I first got my PS3, not because i looked out for it, but because it was bundled with my PS3 gaming system when i got it 4 years ago.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, follows Nathan Drake, a fortune hunter on the lookout of a Treasure he found a clue to in his decedents Sir Francis Drake 400 year old coffin.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - Post Launch -The Final Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

It is the only one game, I have seen on the PS3 (as it is a PS3 exclusive) which used the Console to it's limit, or so I thought until each consequently following release of Uncharted 2 and now 3.

I have finished Uncharted 3 just a couple of days ago, and this time - just like every time I finish an Uncharted Game - my eyes tried to leave my skull and It keeps me longing for more!
Uncharted 2 takes Nathan Drake and his companions through Asia, as they try to solve a mystery revolving around Marco Polos Doomed Voyage through Chine some time in the 13th Century.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - E3 09: Official Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The recently released Uncharted 3, tells more about Nathans History and the search through Arabia trying to find "Atlantis of the Sands" a City lost in the desert.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - Launch Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

I was expecting a lot from the game but was given so much more! The textures, the music, the animations, the graphics overall, the voice acting, the attention to detail was so well maintained throughout the game. I was speechless and couldn't stop thinking of just keeping on going and hoping it would never end!

The Uncharted series is in my eyes, One of the best series, ever released for the PS3. I love for instance Assassins creed too, don't get me wrong, I just started playing revelations, however, Naughty Dog constantly increased their level of performance, upgraded their engine, basically upped the ante in each following game. One of the greatest parts of the game, each Cutscenes is actual in engine scrip running straight inside the games engine, and the game continues from there on out. no fade to black and then load or  anything similar, just cutscene camera moves to character and game on! I love that!

I honestly can't wait to see the fourth installment of this great Series and play as Nathan Drake, the Cocky little bastard Character who keeps a cool head in hot situations and has a good comeback for any situation. (Voicework is by Nolan North! Talented guy!)

I have read in an interview, that there are still so many boundaries to push and hurdles to take that I honestly just cannot wait to play the next games.

Anyways, I'll head on out now, play some Assassin's creed and see what that is like!

Until next time, Game On!

-Alex

The Child in me, will forever be!

Lego! (This will be a very short post, with lots of content.)
I love Lego, ever since i was a kid, building Lego with my dad was the greatest thing!
Now I have a son of my own and I'm getting prepared to Lego with him, he is not even 2 yet!
But I know he'll be a great architect.

So every time I walk into a Toy-store I go insane! Seeing all these things, an electric Car, Lego boxes stacked all the way up to the roof. Toy Guns more advanced than my mobile phone and of course, not only electric cars, but also freaking Helicopters and Airplanes!!

When I went to Virgin Megastore in Dubai Mall last week, it hit me, Lego! But not just any Lego, Lego Key chains and I thought! "SCREW THE WORLD! I'MA BUY THIS" so I did.
Now I'm the proud owner of a 2x4 Enlarged Lego Flashlight Brick for my Car key and a Enlarged Lego Motorcycle Policeman Flashlight for my House, office, ect. keys!

Nothing Fancy, but it's a constant reminder of how I just cant wait to play with Legos and my son!

Anyways, I'm out, Game On!

-Alex

The right way was left behind

I own a radio, a double din Radio from JVC to be a little more precise and I installed it in my 2005 Mercedes SLK four years ago. What i didn't install in my SLK was proper wiring and so after a few years, cables came loose and everything went haywire or without exaggeration, my speakers got confused.

You see, I didn't order one of those fancy connector harnesses that snap right into the original Mercedes radio plug. (unlike what i did for my wife's car a month ago). So I did the good old McGyver, the "I take some spare parts, and make my own little plug." thing.

(sorry for the pictures.. they do suck!)

It ended up looking like this.

It worked, but wasn't great as some pins constantly came loose. So four years later, I finally got myself to do some research on what to get, to make it work.
I searched the net for a proper plug but never found something that appealed to me. Most of them were either too expensive or to complicated to come across so I gave up ... for the meantime...

Until Our office took delivery of a few hundred "Mate 'n' Lock" Plugs.

Mate 'n' Lock plugs are a professional solution for cable connections similar to the ones you have on a Computer Power Supply.
Basically you have a female plug, a male plug and pins which you crimp directly onto the cable ends after that you just slide the pin/cable into the plugs and that's it. No soldering or Screw Terminals, proper secure, plug, click and fast, done!

My first approach four years ago, was meant to keep the original cable intact so that I could re install the old Radio in my car if ever I desired to do so. However after the long time that I've spent with the car, I decided, that this is no longer really required and decided right then and there, I'll just snap them off! But integrated a Mate n lock system on the original wiring, so that IF I had to get them back together ... all I would have to do is just plug it back in and tada! all is safe without any extra work.

Everything snaps right in and I'm so happy, finally the sound is secure and correct, as a little bonus, I got the correct wiring in as well, as the old diagram I used seemed to be for a different system?

Rear left was Front right and  all was messed up! But now, wow... Bass is all Bamm and VROOM... you know what I'm saying!

So let that be a lesson, McGyver never build anything to last forever! So if ever you McGyver around, please make sure to get it fixed before everything goes haywire and maybe your car would short.

Also I got a new Alternator for the car, although when I got the cables out, I checked that the cables didn't do anything to cause my alternator to go "poohf".

so all is good there, still had to pay for the damned alternator as the warrenty of the car expired .. a very ... long time ago!

So please excuse me, I'll go to my car now to hear my car go boom.

Until next time. Game On!

-Alex

The Act of Game...

Games!A whole universe, an entire industry built upon the thought of "game".From throwing a ring over a pole, to tapping a button till it either breaks or your fingers hurt, games are huge in this world.

I would even go so far as to say games are enormous in this entire universe but I think this might be a little far fetched. Hey, some of us say they were abducted by aliens, maybe they just had a fun little game of scrabble before they got their memory wiped and put back on the ground.

Games follow us our entire life from childhood when this little blue plane is an entire fleet of passenger jets landing at the busiest airport in the region to 30 year old men comparing their iPads and Motorola Tablets to the byte.

I'd like to think of myself to be a gamer, not hardcore, but core. Important here is the genre of games as, action figures and Monopoly are very different types of games in general, but I concentrate more on the few acceptable types of games in my age range league thing. The Virtual Gaming genre. PC/Playstation Gaming to be more precise. And I gotta say, its fun and it always will be no matter how old i get to become.

It started when watching my brother play "International Karate Plus" on the Amiga system around 1994, which slowly turned me into a player, very slowly. Seeing pixels jump around in the shapes of little Karate people ... I liked that!

Several years on, and my brother turned me into a Potion taker for his Hero in "Diablo" around 1996. Why just potions? Cuz I was too wussy to play Diablo by myself pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were my strengths!

The first "Sony Playstation", was my very first REAL gaming "rig" and brought me a lot of pleasure for about 3 weeks, until my "Gampad-Port" broke. How? I have not the slightest clue. It never got fixed and it ended up in the eternal darkness of garbagetown, as for some reason; which I cannot recall - the warranty was void. Did I open it up? I do not remember!

Next up was my very first very own PC back in 1997, it was a left over System my father used to use in his production company before upgrading to the new Pentium II Dual CPU Systems. So it was only natural that it came with Photoshop 3.1 and a software then called " Kinetix 3D Studio MAX" of which I had no clue how to use. And never really understood WHY I should. Now I know!

A few years have passed, and I bought myself my very first very own PC game, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six in 1998. "Low" were the settings I played at and the resolution I had to choose was 800x600. The game looked awesome and was choppy as hell, as I only had a 166 MHz Pentium MMX and an ATI Rage Pro with only 8MB Ram.

I still remember my bothers best friend at the time, "Marc" laughing about me and my eagerness to play the game at a maximum of 15 FPS, but I had started a passion .. and felt that nothing was supposed to stop me. I had a short run with The first Playstation and I hoped the PC wouldn't let me down! It didn't!

It continued with Final Fantasy VIII, SWAT3, Blade Runner and a few more games that changed the way I viewed the world, still... at a max of just 15 FPS.

A few years have passed and I finished Final Fantasy VIII, 3 Times, on 3 different system each giving me an increase of 10 FPS, when I finished the game the 3rd time, Squall finally decided to run smooth. And so did every other new game on everyone else's system, but mine as I never seemed to be able to get on the technology train that said "Next Stop, Upgrade Town"

By 2002 I had saved enough money, to buy myself a PC, a system I was able to configure, a system that ran games at their preferred Framerate, for maybe 3 weeks.

Sigh, I almost had it, almost had i had the coolest Gaming Rig...
I had only enough cash for a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB SDRam and a Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 with 64 MB of crazy Graphic Ram. In the meantime, my friends went out to get the Ti 4800 Series. Sigh, I was behind again!

For the following years my Graphic Settings were set to Medium; which was a big improvement to the previous years but still not what i suggest to be a Eden of Graphic Heaven.
My system now is an Intel Core 2 Duo with 2.6 Ghz and a Nvidia Geforce 280 oh and 4 GB Ram, is it enough to Game on it? Sure it is, to me at least. I have long decided that i don't need to Play on "High" settings.

For Gaming now, I use the PS3 my family bought me 3 years ago, and it still provides "Oh wow" moments, any Computer would have been long outdated by now.

So here I am, 17 years later still enjoying the act of Gaming. not far from teaching my son, that the bad bytes are the ones to shoot!

And until he takes the controller to himself, I shall enjoy gaming for a while longer.

that's it from me, Have a great week ahead, Game on!

-Alex

Get in "touch"... literally ...

Since I sold my Nokia N900 - the last hope I had for the manufacturer - I have basically given up on researching info or products from that Finnish company, as the world of Nokia is slowly decomposing and the products they seem to be shooting out every month are aimed at people that want to feel like lab-rats, I simply lost all interest.

There used to be a time of great innovation and slick communication, I still remember my first Nokia, the 8110 or as many people liked to fittingly call it, the Banana.

It's the phone Morpheus used to contact Neo in "The Matrix" in this Office just before he was ambushed by Agent Smiths' Crew. It was a cool phone. It worked too, just like the good old Communicator or the 3210, 3310, 3330 and one of my favorites the 6310i.

It was when Nokia said, "I have an Idea, let's try this", that everything started going to shits.

Now back to the topic at hand, Nokia. As I've said 13 lines above, I stopped researching stuff on the Company, however every now and then jobs slide through, for promotions on new Nokia phones or offers, it is here where I have to do a little research to make sure i get the correct logos, in the correct format and texts in their correct fonts. As this requires me to read a few product infos as well, I basically fall into this hole of knowing stuff about nokia and where the company is heading. Microsofts' Windows phone 7 for Nokia, Nokia N8 and other products I have learned about over that same route.

So here I am basically writing stuff about Nokia, because... you've guessed it, I'm working on a promo right now. It includes a Nokia Phone that includes a Tech that made me start this post in the first place.

Near Field Communication... or NFC, is a technology, that allows transactions, transfers and pairing of stuff, by just simply holding 2 devices, for instance 2 phones, a headset, or a wireless bluetooth speaker, to one another, making them... touch.

So for instance you want to pay for your new Shoes you just found at Prada or Nike or wherever you buy your shoes, and you'd like to pay for it, all you gotta do is hold the phone close to a device to do a transaction from your mobile phone, to your favorite retailer. Making it possible for you to NOT bring any cash or credit cards along.

Pairing works exactly the same way. Hold your phone to your Bluetooth headset, and it automatically pairs.

Sending Pictures too. Let's go with a little example here, Gregs ex-girlfriend just got this new 8MP Mobile phone from Nokia that apparently does great pictures. Now Gregs Girlfriend, seems to like to tease Greg so she decides to take pictures in "suggestive Poses" with her new boyfriend and sends them to Greg to upset him.

The reason Vanessa and Greg are no longer a couple? Vanessa decided to cheat on Greg at this "rad" party down in Miami or Abu Dhabi .. or Mumbai, it doesn't really matter.

Now Greg is still upset with her, and thinks to himself "you know what, I don't care for those pictures, but my friends at this bar might like them." So he asks them to activate "NFC" on their mobile devices and just taps them one by one, sending over an archive to each of their devices,without the need to first pair each phone separately in this lengthy process of passcode exchange and so on.

So NFC seems to be useful... It's NOT an invention of Nokia, it's just a technology nokia decided to pickup on to "attract" customers that they previously lost, but until they decide to actually develop a proper OS, use decent hardware in their mobile phones and offer a "Blackberry type" Service where internet, emails, and other services are being bundled in a decently priced package... they won't win me back. in fact, I don't think they'll win anybody back anytime soon.

So we'll see how NFC develops here in the Middle east, as this phone seems to be the first here in the middle east that officially advertises this feature in their add campaign.

Just don't forget your Mobile phone or get it stolen... you won't be able to call your bank to block it as it's ... gone!

Until next time, Game on.

-Alex