Phil Bradley's weblog

Why you shouldn't use ExclusiveThesis.com

This isn't something that I normally do, but these really are not normal times. I know, and accept that there are scumbags out there on the net, but ExclusiveThesis.com really takes the biscuit. Not only did they try and spam my recent weblog about Jill with a scummy little spam advert, they tried it twice. You can take a look if you like, but I've made sure that ExclusiveThesis.com scum that they are don't get any links from me.

Now, if it was just that, which is bad enough, I wouldn't think much of them. However, I then went and looked at the website. On an initial look it's very neat. However, it's like a rusty broken down car covered in new paint. The 'chat' doesn't work. You can't email them. If you want to join you have to fill out an order form and even then it doesn't work when you try and submit it. The 'forgotten password' option doesn't work, the link to an FAQ takes you to a blank page, the link to a blog doesn't work, there are links to 'Test1' and 2 which also do nothing. It's a complete mess, and screams that ExclusiveThesis is an incompetent shower, Giving them money would be like burning it, only you wouldn't get the benefit of the brief warmth.

And yes, I do feel slightly better having written that!

Bad news I'm afraid.

There's really no good way to say this, so I'll come straight out with it. I'm not sure how many people know that my wife Jill has been fighting cancer for the last two and a half years, with regular visits to the Royal Marsden, and has had almost 100 cycles of chemotherapy. I've been spending much of my time supporting her - which is why I have only been able to work for clients on thursdays and fridays, and not stay away overnight.

Unfortunately the chemo has now stopped working, and there's nothing else that they can suggest. Any more chemo treatments will do more harm than good, and any trials would end up with her in hospital. We're now concentrating on palliative care for however long we have. Consequently I've cancelled all of my jobs indefinately since I need to spend all of my time now looking after Jill.

If you wish to comment at all please do, but I won't be publishing comments obviously. If you prefer, you can email me, or if you have Jill's address you can email her instead.

[Edited to add: Thanks to everyone for your kind words and supportive wishes - it makes a real difference to know so many people care. To answer one specific question that's been asked - Jill's pain is being managed well and is dealt with on a regular basis by the support team.]

Online09 and H1N1

As you're probably aware, if you can cast your minds back a week, I wasn't at Online09 this year. My presentations were instead most superbly interpreted by Karen Blakeman and Mary Ellen Bates. This is a lot easier said than done, since I tend to produce presentations that are screenshots, photographs and images without little integral content and I talk around them, rather than directly from them. This is great for me, but not so easy if someone else takes on the job. However, I wasn't that concerned since both Karen and Mary Ellen are such superb professionals it wasn't an issue. Many thanks to both of you!

If you want to see the presentations in native form however here they are. The first is a Twitter 101 for librarians, the second is a toolkit for searching the social web.

Twitter101 for Librarians

View more presentations from Phil Bradley.

A toolkit for searching the social web

View more presentations from Phil Bradley.

Now,the reason that I wasn't there was that I contracted H1N1 on the friday, ironically just before I was supposed to be getting my jab on the saturday. I'd felt pretty much fine all day, since I'd been running a course, but as soon as I got back to the car I really started to feel ill - by the time I got home I had the heater on at 24 degrees and I was still shivering. Then I slept for 48 hours. I did get Tamiflu, and it was awful - to the extent that I never even finished the course. I was pretty much entirely out of it for the rest of the week, and only started to come back to life at the weekend. Even now I'm sleeping for 12 hours at a stretch, but I think the symptoms themselves have finally run their course. I've had flu about 4 times in my life, prior to this one, and I've gotta say, this was by far and away the very worst bout ever. I'm told by those in the know that it'll take another 2 weeks before I'm back to normal again. The only bright point is that Jill had already had a vaccination against it, so she was ok.

Seriously - this is one thing you do NOT want to get!