I haven't been coming on here I lost my username and password just found them again so I'm back on I did go do a stroke group I'm a volunteer and I love it I want to do something not stroke that makes sense
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Hi Julie
I'm pleased you have managed to log on!
I hope someone can suggest some hobbies or interests for you.
Take care
Vicki 
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Something different to stroke could be related to animals if you like animals and want something new to volunteer to? Or maybe volunteer in a role that helps you gain new skills? One charity that I've always been a keen follower of is Contact the Elderly - they arrange monthly tea parties for lonely older people, I think it would be a fun and rewarding thing to do and good way to meet people (both in terms of the guests themselves but also the volunteers and hosts)
Or maybe just do something for fun that you want to try! You could set yourself a goal to try something new each month perhaps to see if you can find something that you want to stick with. Exercise, art, music.
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I find I've had to find new hobbies or adapted hobbies... Like my left handed art work.
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I would like to see your left handed art work
mark
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I like films!!
Poltergeist BBC 1 23.50
K 
Ok for those who have eye issues like me poltergeist has lots of flashing lights and I had to stop watching those scenes…
actually so many flashing images / tv stuff that I advise extreme caution watching it. I actually had to turn it off 
K
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Hi All
I had a stroke 4 years ago. It was a “Right Thalamic Infarction”, so the fully jobby. I’ve been thinking of joining the forum for yonks (Brummie term) but have just got round to it.
I consider myself very fortunate as had absolutely no physical symptoms, no weakness, no speech issues etc. I know the physical side can be very significant for some, my aunty, for example.
The only persistent issues are that sometimes I forget things I do regularly. Two examples are that I forgot the pin code for my mobile. How many times do I type that in a day? To be precise, it was’t forgotten, as I remembered it later in the day, so just couldn’t access it at that time. Now I use my fingerprint lol. Another is that I use a password manger for all my Internet accounts ad forgot the master password. No access to the manager, no access to ANY Internet account. Anyway I remembered it later and have now got it printed out in a safe place.
Sorry I’m off topic. To the point. My hobby has been electronics since I was about 12 and built a crystal set radio in the bedroom. It’s followed me throughout the years and I’m now 64. I’ve built up my test kit over the years, buying faulty kit, repairing and selling it and buying better kit. All my kit now is top-notch and is controlled by a GPS unit, making it as accurate as an atomic clock. Oops, wondering again… 
, Oh yes, the point. I haven’t touched it for years ad there it sits on the shelf, not even being turned on.
In the past I’ve had lots of hobbies and anything that takes my fancy I would do and pursue as far as as I was able. I went magnet fishing for a while where you tie a strong magnet to a rope, throw it as far as you can and drag it back, seeing what sticks to it. Now I have absolutely no interest in electronics or, in fact, any hobby at all. At a family get together, the subject came up and intuitively, the family were all suggesting lots of different hobbies for me. I know they were trying to be helpful, but I found it quite stressful to keep saying I wasn’t interested in any of them.
It seems like I’ve lost my mojo. I’m not completely inactive though, as have been a keen volunteer in the past and was thinking of doing the same again, when I saw a request on a local neighbourhood site from a lady who has mobility issues and wanted a private driver. We met up and got on well. She lost her husband some years ago and her house was suffering from lack of maintenance so the job kind of morphed into doing DIY round the house for her. I’m enjoying this very much and It’s nice to have some responsibility again. I said I would do it for free, but she insisted on paying. At £10 per hour, it’s not a life changing amount, but I do quite like earning again. This is good for me and good for her, so obviously will continue.
What I’d really like is to be like I used to be, but maybe that’s pie in the sky. I’ve been thinking of selling all my electronics kit - if it’'s not been used for 4 years, it probably ain’t going to happen. The plan would be to stash the money, and if my interest ever does return, I could buy the kit again and any losses, build it up like I did before, or buy beer, whatever takes my fancy 
If anyone has any views on this, I’d very much like to hear from you and your opinions. In the past, I’ve considered myself quite a driven person, often not considering the effort required to achieve a task, but now not so. Just to be clear, I don’t think I’m depressed and I’m not unhappy, just have a very strong longing for the old me. It’s a hard knock life…
If you’ve got this far well done and thanks for reading!
Cheers
Steve
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Hi @fryingtonite Steve
your post goes to the heart of a topic even we do not give sufficient air time to and is definitely almost completely overlooked within the medical services
A stroke kills part of your brain. All brain functions operate across connected regions of the brain - therefore damage to one part has multiple affects. Some of those effects are visible such as a dribbly mouth, no muscle control or a bad gait from poor balance. When we talk about balance we are observing symptoms of a damaged function.
Other symptoms of damaged function we don’t observe first hand are motivation enthusiasm drive energy etc etc that I read as the topics above you are talking about.
I am not surprised you have seen alterations in aspects that are non-physical. it happens to all of us and the medical profession have a strong bias towards giving credence to what they can see first hand .
the place most stirred by your words, for me is your expression of regret that you have lost the old aspects. My personal perspective is that a stroke removes you from the old life paths and places you on new ones
My philosophy is that by embracing those new pathways there is the better chance of a fulfilling but different existence - and by being distracted by the regret maybe less so??
I wonder is your driving and DIY fulfilling because you’re doing something new with your hands or because you are giving somebody else some pleasure? IE entirely new reward? Perhaps this is a new path where instead of a solitary activity with a soldiering iron you have found a new source of pleasure either from the smile at the end of repairing a rotted window frame or a trip to the shops and back?
We’re all searching for answers I don’t pretend to have any 
thanks for giving the opportunity to waffle
2¢
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Thanks very much for your very thoughtful reply, which I read with interest. As I mentioned, I’ve been volunteering for some decades not and am a firm believer in that if you help others, you help yourself. So, to answer your question, her gratitude is very rewarding for me. It makes me feel good about myself and that I’ve done a good job. She suffers a lot with poor sleep, so a few times, she’s asked me to let myself in and supervise some tree surgeons sorting the trees out. Of course, they knew what they were doing, and didn’t really need any supervision, just the occasional coffee. As I was sitting around a lot, I took the opportunity to clip some outside pipes to the wall, rake the leaves in the garden, brush the porch out and wash up. She was over the moon that I’d done extra, but the thought of sitting on my botty for £10 per hour made me uneasy.
I’ve not attempted any new skills yet, but do like fixing things. She had a blocked sink in the kitchen which would not shift, even with aggressive pumping with a plunger. After a bit of poking around, I noticed the pipe wasn’t clipped to the wall and the warm water over time had made it sag, with the ed of the pipe touching the drain cover, allowing it to block. I lifted it and it cleared. As mentioned above, I clipped the pipe to the wall, cut the end of the pipe to make it shorter and made a small grid cover to keep the leaves out. The problem was fixed and unlikely to happen again. Now I found that satisfying.
I found your comments on brain function and damage interesting. Like most people, I googled my injury and what the thalamus does. It seems to be a bit of a ‘switchboard’ for the brain and is important for sleep. When you go to bed it says ‘right SHUT UP everyone’ and everyone does and you drop off. I was quite lucky as this kind of injury can stop you sleeping. Ever. Now that’s serious!
Your explanation of the generality of the impact makes perfect sense to me. I guess I need to mourn the loss of the old me, then get on with what I’ve got left. Actually typing all this up and your response has helped no end, so I’m very grateful. It’s certainly going to be a work in progress. The same for all of us I guess.
Thanks again.
Steve 
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Ok so replying to my own post . I’ve only just joined the forum, but enthused by posting up and getting a reply, I’ve contacted my local stroke group and a very nice lady (Wendy) has contacted me, so I’ll join and see where it goes. It costs a tiny £10 per year which is no problem.
Also enthused, I’m hopefully going to test my new mobile phone zoom lens. Now, I’m no photography expert, but have bought a number of cheap phone lenses from eBay which are appalling, but hopefully this one is ok. If it is, I’m going to buy one I like better. Story of my life; Buy something I like then find something better . See how the day goes. My wife has asked me to replace the big washing machine door seal today, so if I’ve still got some lead in my pencil, I’ll give the lens a bash. The longer term goals are to a) Photograph the clock in France from the beach and 2) Photograph or video the SpaceX Starlink satellite train in the sky. Keep Smilin’ Steve
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It’s good to have goals and there are several photo threads on here
I assume you’re referencing zoom was a zoom lens for the space station not zoom communication by which you could join our weekly cafe on a Thursday ?
Ciao
Simon
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Hi Simon
Thanks very much for the links which I’ll check out. Yes, I meant a zoom lens. I’ve now had a play with the lens and the quality is fairly good, although has a few mechanical issues, which I won’t list now, in case readers go to sleep . In short, it’s quite a high zoom at 36x but is very tricky stopping it wobbling. Not put off, I’ve ordered some pipe clips and a bar from eBay and will make something better. The related issue its that when you touch the phone to take a photo, it moves the lens, causing blur.
Anyway, I took a sample photo of the bird house in our garden then with the lens. The zoom is pretty good and also works OK with the 5x optical zoom on my phone.
Last night I was pretty pooped and lying on the sofa. I popped out the front for a vape and noticed a clear sky and full moon. So I forced myself to get the tripod out and set it up. I’m pleased with the results, apart from the images being soft, which I think is the wobbly thing. Hopefully I can fix it with pipe clip assembly. It’s also very hard to focus properly, once again hopefully down to the wobble. For taking a photo, I’ve ordered a Bluetooth remote shutter for a couple of quid. It’s going to be like xmas next week! ,
All being well, I’ll get out next week and try the clock in France, but probably only after I’ve made the lens mount.
Cheers Steve
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OK so replying to my own post again
Just had a good look at my phone camera. It’s got a Pro mode, where you can choose which lens, White Balance, Focus, shutter speed, ISO, EV (dunno what that is, Extra Voltage?)
Anyway it seems to have all the tiddly bits of an SLR, so think with a bit of learning I reckon I could get that moon pic crack on. Not going to do much though until I’ve made the lens clamp. No point in buggering about with a lens that does an impression of a Weeble. You know, they wobble but they don’t fall down
Cheers Steve
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Is replying to your own post the same as talking to yourself?
EV is exposure value (in this context because it’s Earned Value in another, and Expected Value in another…)
Basically it’s a single number on a logarithmic scale that characterises luminescence for the purposes of taking a picture.
the EV number results from the combination of shutter speed and f stop or the hole in the iris that lets light in.
as the hole gets smaller (and the f number rises) so the depth of field increases and the amount of light arriving on the film or sensor decreases. As the shutter speed slows down so the susceptibility to movement increases but the amount of light received by the film or sensor increases. All exposures with the same EV number have the same amount of light but they will have different depth of field and susceptibility to camera shake (the film speed or sensor sensitivity or ISO is another variable in the mix).
The ev a number relates to the focal length of the lens and describes the size of the hole or aperture. An 80 mm lens at f8 as an aperture of 10 mm. At F16 it has an aperture of 5 mm however the amount of light passing through a 10 mm aperture is roughly 4x what comes through a 5 mm aperture because the two are circles. one with an area of 314 mm and the other with an area of approx 75 mm. So with shutter speeds of 1 second and 1/4 of a second they would have the same EV number
… my head now hurts …
Ciao
Simon
Ciao
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Yes it is. No it isn’t. It is. Isn’t I think I get it. So, to get the same effect and ignoring camera shake, a large aperture and high shutter speed can be the same as smaller aperture and lower shutter speed. Both could have the same EV number as in pure exposure terms, the two can be the same eg the same EV number. Is that it?
On a different tack, after a bit of argy bargy with the seller, I’ve agreed to keep the lens for a £10 discount. It cost £30.00 originally. My brother was very interested in the shots I took so might be able to sell it to him for £20, making me even.
I’ve already ordered the 20-40x direct from Apexel, which will take about a week. All the bits of hardware for the clamp should come some time this week, so I can play with that in advance.
I’ll post up about the pucker lens when it arrives and take some piccies of my clamp, unless it doesn’t work and then won’t mention it again
Cheers
Steve
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I guess that being a zoomable lens will make it slower (less light transmission)
WRT ev; cameras often have a control to add or subtract from the stop value by ⅓ ⅔ or 1 when using auto mode. So adjusting the exposure when the cameras software would get it wrong in fully automatic, aperture priority, shutter priority - EG photographing a snowy scene software will generally under expose it because the assumption in the software is of balance not of a very white scene.
Ciao
Simon
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I wish I had seen this post earlier! Hello, Steve and Simon. I always learn something when there is talk of photography. A pre-stroke interest of mine.
Like you, Steve, I have had no real hobbies since stroke with the exception of swimming when I am able to get to a pool, but even that has been more about my recovery than pure enjoyment these days.
One of my strokes was right thalamic (hemorrhagic). I was unaware of the sleep issue. I have sleep issues but after 2.5 years they finally seem to be a little more normal now.
I suffered a concussion very many years back and my sleep reminded me of that. I just couldn’t…at all. I was awake 5 days straight, until the doctor gave me Amitriptolene (however you spell it). I was excitable and agitated for about 2 weeks, rarely sleeping, even with the help. I suppose I thought of my sleep until lately as kind of the same thing, so I learned something from you.
I used to have many hobbies, none of which are very important to me anymore. I don’t really miss them much.
Somewhere along the line recently, I remembered that just like pre-stroke, I decide who I am, and I decide what interests me, what I believe, what I want to do or be in this world. And that made me stop missing old me. It isn’t like I was overly content with her, either…I just was familiar with her. There were no real surprises because I knew how she would react. She was dependable/reliable in a way I was comfortable with more than content with.
Now I am completely free to be a new me. Mostly without preconceived notions of who that is. I know I was way faster before, but I actually have more time now, so why must I be fast? I no longer work, and I am no longer truly responsible for feeding, clothing, housing others, so there are really no expectations I have to live up to. That is wonderfully free-ing.
Perhaps I am the lucky one, after all. How many people get this opportunity?
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That seems a post about realising that all that really binds us is attitude not circumstances. It is thought provoking and I feel deeply philosophical
Reminds me of the apocryphal tale of the slick city wizkid who finds a sleeping fisherman in his nets on a warm summer’s day and proceeds to explain how if he was out fishing he would earn more money, could buy more boats, employ people and the fishermen says “why?” and the wizkid says “so youd be rich enough that you could sleep in the midday sun”
A path we would not choose perhaps may have led us to a place that if we have the ability to see it has all the richness we would wish for
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Exactly like that. He can sleep in the sunshine if he choosed, whether wealthy or poor. Probably has more time for it in the latter category, so long as he fishes enough to feed himself and family if he has one. I have much less cleaning to do these days because I am more careful not to make a mess I can’t clean up. I didn’t really have to be careful before as I worked faster, didn’t tire as easily and could go without sleep for long periods of time to get caught up if I was behind. Perhaps that did not help at all with that blood pressure! And perhaps not stressing myself to that level consistenly might have been a better stroke deterrent. Who knows? But I do know, I am in no hurry to get that stress and level of achievement or productiveness back. I’m not a rat and I am not racing to my finished line.
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