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Blog & forum updates

11 April, 2013 in The Blog

[edited post] I’ve been doing some work to upgrade the forums. If you’ve just had a million emails from Shoot Up with notifications that you’ve been mentioned in a forum post then I can only profusely apologise. Delete them all and pretend this never happened.

[update] it looks like, after all that, the import didn’t work properly. So…watch this space.

[update update] The forums are now working. Sort of. They’ve mostly imported everything up to 2012 but all the latest posts haven’t come in; I think I can get at least the thread titles but not all the replies. I’m working on it. Anyway, the plus side is that we now have much more sophisticated forums which we’ll be able to do more stuff with.

[update update update] After hitting the server repeatedly with a spanner I’ve now succesfully imported 4,705 posts about 353 topics. We’re back in business! Thank God.

12 Comments »

by Alison

Happy New Lancet for 2013

1 January, 2013 in The Blog

Celebrate the new year ShootUp style with a shiny new blood letting device

Here at ShootUp, we may be rather lax lancet changers the rest of the year, but we do have some standards. We always crack open a new lancet to celebrate the start of another year. To start the year with a blunt lancet would be disappointing at the very least.

Happy New Lancet to all of our readers. We wish you stable sugars and plenty of results below 13 in 2013 (unless you’re American, in which case below 13 would probably mean unconsciousness as a minimum, which isn’t quite so desirable).

Alison & Tim xx

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by Tim

Shoot Up review of the year

21 December, 2012 in The Blog

Ho ho ho! How Festive!

Well, chaps, I’m afraid it’s that time of the year again. It’s cold, dark, wet, you’re forced to buy expensive presents for distant cousins you don’t like and you have to pretend to be cheerful.

However, in amongst this Stygian bleakness is the one ray of the light that is the wondrous spectacle of the annual Shoot Up review of the year!

We started the year with a cheerful list of ways in which infusion sets can be accidently ripped from your flesh It seems there are a hundred-and-one ways around the house to separate your set from your body. It’s – as Lynne Foulds-Wood of 1980’s BBC Watchoog fame would say – a potential death trap!

We then moved onto equally cheery news that “Diabetic women are four times more likely to have a child with birth defects”. My co-writer rubbished the claims, but we all thought to ourselves “hmmm…now, why is Alison so interested in baby-related stories…?”

After these unhealthy doses of misery, wonderful Shoot Up contributor Liz cheered us all up with an article about Lola the Labradoodle. A dog with two major talents – one, the detection of hypos; two, the ability to be almost unfeasibly cute. Hurrah!

January also saw the rebranding of everyone’s second favourite diabetes charity – Diabetes UK. It’s not for me to rake over the now-settled embers of the controversy caused by throwing a bit of cash at a rebrand. But a charity spending seventy bazillion quid on a new logo that I could do in my lunchtime? And I don’t like the colour. Or the typeface. I spent a day selling cakes to pay for that, you know.

Speaking of Diabetes UK, Shoot Up interviewed its Chief Exec – Baroness Young of Old Scone – and asked her some sensible questions to which we got some sensible answers. See! We’re not just about whimsy, we’re like the Newsnight / Today programme of the diabetes blogging world.

I then spent some time then banging on trying to get sympathy for being slightly ill, for which I got precious little. Alison then stepped in with an interview with the wonderful Shelley from Circle D – Shoot Up’s very favourite diabetes support group. Not to be outdone on the Paxman stakes I then arranged an interview with Tom Craig about his new diabetes horror film.

April saw the unveiling of my groundbreaking Iron Maiden workout and Alison revealing herself as a contrary diabetic but perhaps more importantly it saw Shoot Up’s first Liverpool meet up in which we met up with readers and drank far too much port.

Further demonstrating our hard-hitting diabetes blog credentials (if such a thing can exist) Alison popped down to Parliament with the JDRF to shout about diabetes. Rrragh!! . Meanwhile delightful reader Anna went off to the Sports and Exercise weekend organised by Animas as Alison and I were too lazy to do anything relating to exercise.

Neville then took part in one of Shoot Up’s favourite activities – taking the piss out of inaccurate reports about diabetes in newspapers. What fun!

The summer saw Alison taking part in more selfless diabetes travel research while I wondered about how best to deal with young non-diabetics in an article with this year’s most tortuous headline

We then moved on to celebrate (celebrate?) National hypo awareness week , which I’m sure you’ll all agree was a massive success. And I managed to incorporate the longest footnote / disclaimer ever seen in a diabetes blog about the Olympics, a sporting event only eclipsed by the brilliant Junior Cup Diabetes hosted by Medtronic and attended by football-mad football-expert Alison!

Alison then asked whether we should go all out for a cure for diabetes while breathtaking reader Faith reviewed the Glooko logbook and meter for us – it’s works off of off an iPhone don’t you know?

In amongst the excitement for World Diabetes Day (which we invariably forget to report) Alison and her hubby Geoff delighted the world by announcing their pregnancy (that’s Alison that’s pregnant, not Geoff). While joining in with the congratulations, I can categorically say that the pregnancy was not planned purely to derive a million new articles about diabetes & pregnancy but to genuinely start a family. Honest.

Meanwhile I carried on with some non-baby news – an interview with a top professional cyclist via YouTube and some other stuff about cycling too . That’s what 2012’s come to after all – cycling and babies. Rock on!

It only remains to wish you all – the reader without whom this whole merry blog would be utterly pointless – a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year! See you in 2013.

Tim & Alison
x

Tags: review of the year 10 Comments »

by Alison

More strange things people ask

20 July, 2012 in The Blog

Trawling through the site stats for Shoot Up throws up some interesting facts. Plenty of people find us by searching the interweb looking for information about insulin pumps, living with diabetes, carb counting, injecting and the like. But others find us via slightly stranger searches – I’m not sure whether that says more about us or them.

Is wine good for diabetics? I’d go a step further and say it’s not only good, it’s sometimes essential to preserving sanity.
Are 5 year olds allowed lucozade That’s a tough one. I’d recommend only if they’ve been very good, completed all their homework and tidied their bedroom
I’m sorry That’s ok, don’t do it again and we’ll forget all about it.
How to get blood out of your finger There are many methods. Most of us prefer a lancet, but if you’re a more adventurous type I suppose you could try a hammer, a saw or maybe a chisel.
Treacle bender I can’t begin to imagine what you were expecting to find when you searched for that, but I suspect Shoot Up came as a disappointment to you.
Slough of despond Ah yes, that’ll be us, misery, misery and more misery.
Workout on a submarine I can see how that would be a challenge.
Chiropody tickle I’m glad its not just me who finds the whole diabetic foot check process ticklish.
I want my feet tickled London Each to their own I suppose, I’d suggest a diabetic foot check.
Square wave bolus crisps Now they sound tasty, what flavours do they come in?
Best illness to be off work with I like your thinking. The beauty of diabetes is you don’t have to put on a sore throat or feeble voice when you’re using it as an excuse, just baffle them with science about your carb ratios being incompatible with your basal rates and needing some time to modulate your glycaemic levels. That should get you a week at least.
What would happen if a fruit pastille went into space I would imagine it would get eaten by a diabetic alien.
Hello sailor in greek I can see you have interesting plans for your summer holidays, always good to be prepared with the essential language skills you’ll need.
Can fruit pastilles give you a headache Yes, mostly when you’ve accidently put them in the washing machine and they’ve melted all over your clothes.
Can a diabetic be in the sun Diabetes and vampirism are known to be closely linked so on your own head be it.
Sugar free pastilles pocket rocket I must hunt this down and get one
Do armadillos have insulin? Pass