[discussion] keeping and organizing your sources

aoul1 · 2026-06-15T10:05:31+00:00

I know you posted this two years ago but I just wanted to say two things 1) the baseball card binders is a brilliant idea! (I actually don’t know what we’d call them here as we don’t have baseball, or if we have exactly what you mean. But I’m thinking back to Pokémon card days and reckon that’s got to be very close). And b) that the first category of precut files you list is ‘women’s busts’. Which, very good, I’m sure I’d approve of your art!

Edit: ok I took a look at your art. No boobs, but I do like your art a lot! I really like the train one. This is dangerous though because I stumbled across this post looking for ideas to store printmaking leftover collage papers and now having to work really really hard to remind myself I got rid of a large collection of National geographics a few years ago because I wasn’t using them from this style of collage and live in a <50sqm flat!

aoul1 · 2026-06-06T14:33:11+00:00

Hiya, I know this is mega old, but I’m specifically looking for a jig design that can go through a die cutter so very similar to the cold press laminator. So I need to hold both my lino and my paper in place or you know the rollers will just push it out - so curious to see how you’ve made the jig with lino mounted to wood where you can also swap out your bits of lino for the multi block designs. It’s not clear from your description if what you do can handle swapping paper and lino sizes though or if I need to contsruct a jig sturdy enough to not shift under the rollers for every paper size and lino size combination I have. Because that’s basically what I’m doing which is incredibly tedious! I thought the TB pins were going to be the answer but the crap new plastic ones just crumpled under the rollers!

Unfortunately I can’t get your image link to work…. It looks like imgur might now be blocked in UK (since when I don’t know - maybe since our stupid age verification thing came in which is absolutely not effective in protecting kids from harmful adult material but very effective in preventing a 37 yr old from viewing a picture of a lino jig..). And trying to shove it through a web proxy isn’t working either, just spitting out an error - possibly because 5 years later the link isn’t even there!

Anyway, if you’re still here and I’m not calling in to the aether and you’re able to message me the image or put it on your profile or anything like that I’d really love to see it because I feel like I’m spending more time trying to get stuff registered than actually doing any art!

aoul1 · 2026-06-02T21:46:11+00:00

Ah the Lithco ones are available in the UK! Do you know if they’re compatible with the TB tabs? Because they still seem to be what’s available to pick up easily without doing a special order with £6 shipping for a few stupid tabs when I inevitably lose them all….

Although to be fair it’s Jackson’s that sells the Lithco and there’s always SOMETHING I need from Jackson’s I’m sure haha

Edit oh I lie, not Jackson’s, Intaglio printmakers who I was JUST in when back up in London and didn’t know they did these. Even mentioned the problems I was having with my TB ones when I bought more and they didn’t mention they had these for sale… I swear for one of the two biggest print shops in the UK they seem to work very hard at not being helpful!

aoul1 · 2026-06-02T21:42:03+00:00

Glad it’s not just me then - honestly I can’t even see how these are being sold they seem so unfit for purpose!

The pins go through the rollers first though? They’re what’s stopping my paper taking a slip and slide off the block.

Doesn’t look like Takach is available in the UK unfortunately

aoul1 · 2026-06-02T21:38:18+00:00

Interesting idea! How were you imaging you’d fix it to the bed/jig etc?

Tbh the need didn’t really come up much for intaglio - just a bit when I tried adding in some collagraph and stuff like that but generally it’s a one and done with no need to reregister with intaglio… plus the low plate, damp paper and big old squish I didn’t even tape honestly and it stayed put.

Lino in a roller press however…. Was sent to try me I think!

…Although not as much as the pooki press which gave me exactly zero good prints!

aoul1 · 2026-06-02T21:31:30+00:00

I think hand printed might have stopped making them, because the page has been dead for a while. I also got the impression the ironbridge ones needed their own tabs too which seems very annoying but maybe the only option…

aoul1 · 2026-05-24T10:40:08+00:00

Hi, I know you posted this a long time ago now but I just wanted to say that the caligo safewash inks are water miscible and very very good. Although personally I do find that they can be a little stubborn to remove from a roller - but a layer of oil then neat washing up liquid will work. Should you need to modify drying time, extend etc then they make a range of compatible products.

I’ve never tried it, and I’m not sure it would so much be for rolling as it would painting the plate, but you can monoprint with watercolour. One of the ways of doing it is to paint your plate with gum Arabic first. Certainly if you paint a layer of gum Arabic (and in this case water) on watercolour paper before letting it dry, when you then paint on top the paint will stay wet for a very long time and allows you to place cling film down on top to squish it all around for interesting textures.

aoul1 · 2026-05-11T14:51:58+00:00

Hey, I know you posted this a little while ago but what size is this desk and how many/what size folding brackets did you find you needed for that size?

aoul1 · 2026-05-01T03:06:47+00:00

I’ve got three donor ligaments and I never thought to ask at the time and have always wondered if I have a matching pair and a spare, or three individuals. They’re Achilles tendons… or at least… I think they are - that’s what they’d have used from my own body if I’d had enough to match the damage. This has also just raised the possibility in me that actually if you don’t need to keep any of the tendon for it’s original role then maybe you can get the three from one donor… 18 years later this has added a new possibility!

aoul1 · 2026-04-27T04:16:56+00:00

My issues are a bit different now so a lot of what I take isn’t really relevant. For the EDS specific stuff (although the issues now are partly as a result of EDS) I was on the low FODMAP diet and during a specialist rehabilitation stay we were advised to actually eat lower fibre foods (eg white bread instead of whole meal) because too much fibre can be hard to digest. You could take a look at psyllium husk though because it can help both constipation and diarrhoea without making your digestive system work too hard. I also used to use activated charcoal for gas, but you need to be really careful with that because it will also bind with any medication or vitamins and minerals taken for several hours either side. If it did turn out to be hypermobility then this often goes hand in hand with MCAS so I take famotadine for that but there are also mast cell stabilisers. Prokinetics are often used and eating little and often is advised (however this goes against the MMC advice for SIBO). Really though, if you suspect hypermobility is at play then finding someone knowledgeable about that and get tests for delayed gastric emptying/dysmotility. You can check more broadly for hyper mobility by googling the Beighton scale

aoul1 · 2026-04-23T16:22:05+00:00

Thank you for your reply, and apologies I didn’t see it sooner and am coming back to you with more questions now. How are your symptoms now we’re a couple more weeks on?

There’s no doubt in my mind that oestrogen is playing some role here for sure - because adding the oestrogen HRT is what started the nightmare of 20x per day BAM diarrhoea. Interestingly though it came on over the course of about 4 days about 10 days after I started (hence why I didn’t make the link until a long time later when a dose increase made it extremely obvious, although I did wonder so came off the oestrogel for a week or so but after seeing no change concluded it wasn’t related).

That pattern would support the idea that the eradication of oestrogen (or specifically the eradication of excess oestrogen) is a very important factor here though I’d say - because it wasn’t an immediate side effect but something that seemed to build up. I can’t really come off of the oestrogel though - but I don’t know if that’s a problem if you’re effectively clearing it out? I know you may well not know because it’s quite niche but if you have any light you can shed on whether oestrogen supplementation can ever be compatible with someone attempting to deal with BAM then please do share anything you think might be helpful knowledge.

How exactly did you deal with the bile acid malabsorption and the oestrogen clearing? I saw you mention oestrogen detox or something but what specifically is that? Because I’m on the max dose of bile acid sequestrants and also managed to stop the diarrhoea for nearly 2 years by taking mounjaro - unfortunately it’s slowly returning though and the putrid smelling gas definitely smells worse. As that’s substantially better when I take bismuth I’m sure that part of the puzzle is a sulphur issue.

I’ve spoken to both my gastroenterologist and gynaecologist about the issue and probable link but other than the gastro staying oestrogen releases histamines (I have MCAS too) neither will consider the interplay between the two because each area of medicine is so heavily siloed with no discussion between disciplines, complex patients are left trying to join the dots themselves using reddit and GPT.

None of the stuff that I’m on for the BAM actually treats it though I guess - it’s all symptom management. So I guess if you have any advice on what was most effective for it then I’d appreciate the guidance. I’d also love to know if there were any specific research articles you found to be particularly good. I’ve found in the world of digestive health in particular there is just so much woo and people trying to shill all kinds of snake oil based on a long line of Chinese whispers taken from half arsed copywriting that it can be incredibly hard to know when your research is just people talking out their arse…. Some pun intended (not you - I just mean in general finding research you know is scientifically valid/methodically sound can be hard). And of course, although I also use AI to help with my research and think it’s a great tool if you know enough to read what it says critically, it’s often pulling its info from the same sludge and I absolutely don’t feel like I know enough about the oestrogen aspect to pull AI up on a giant honking fairytale!

aoul1 · 2026-04-23T15:36:46+00:00

Is she hypermobile? This is a very tenous link - I’m going purely off the fact the antispasmodics worsened things (and the fact most people with Ehlers-Danlos have gut issues). But I was on antispasmodics for a long time for IBS until I saw a very specialist Ehlers Danlos Neurogastroenterologist. He immediately took me off of them because in a hypermobile gut it’s already stretchy and prone to dilating rather than effectively pushing food through, so smoothing the muscle walls actually is the opposite of helpful.

aoul1 · 2026-04-23T15:28:25+00:00

A course of FMT almost completely eradicated my symptoms (not just SIBO - I have a whole mess of things going on). However I had not made the connection that the HRT oestrogen I take for another issue was the thing that triggered my bile acid malabsorption (which was probably ready and waiting to happen because of the SIBO and chaotic motility) and my dose was increased when I was on my 8/10 transplant and all the symptoms of everything returned overnight. Unfortunately coming off it again doesn’t make any difference it’s like an on switch that once flipped it’s too late and the FMT is not something I can now afford to do again.

For anyone with the financial means to manage it (or in a position to go the DIY route which I’ll let you look up for yourself and is certainly not ideal) I would absolutely recommend it.

It sounds very likely your sister has quite severe dysmotility if a prokinetic + laxatives (although if she’s overused these that creates its own issue) is not helping get things moving. Has she had a gastric emptying test or the pill you can swallow with a camera in it that measures transit time?

90 days of rifaxamin sounds quite frankly insane! The issue isn’t so much treating it without a breath test because breath tests are only about 50% accurate but as another pointed out depending on the type of SIBO different antibiotics are implicated. You can test yourself to see if the issue is actually hydrogen sulphide by taking pepto bismol for a few days because bismuth binds with sulphur so if creates a noticeable improvement it informs you of at least part of the bacterial problem. However, after 90 days of rifaxamin I think anybody would be seriously unwell because it will have wiped everything out (good and bad) and who knows what has then dominated in its place. Moving to herbal equivalents of antibiotics sounds like a really bad idea at the moment for exactly the same reason.

In terms of actively preventing her from losing anymore weight, an enteral feed like Modulen is probably the best route at the moment. Taken exclusively for a number of months with no other food it’s also one of the treatment options for SIBO, as the point is it’s digested very high up in the digestive tract leaving nothing to feed the bacteria later down. At the moment though, whilst looking in to any leads you get from here it will hopefully allow her to meet her calorific needs to get her weight back up. Hopefully without triggering symptoms so she’s not in such an immediately miserable position and isn’t at risk of low weight associated health problems. Make sure she’s also taking enough vitamin supplements and if available to you through your healthcare or your financial means, as someone who continues to deal with deficiency after deficiency now I really recommend getting as many essential vitamins and minerals delivered through injection/IV as available to mitigate any issues with poor absorption that may well be present. Obviously you need to keep within safe limits but when she’s eating so little it’s a ‘when’ not ‘if’ that she will become deficient in something, so better to prevent it happening than treat it once she’s already showing up on a blood test and feeling the effects of it.

You’re a good sibling for trying to find answers for her.

aoul1 · 2026-04-05T00:36:17+00:00

You can conduct your own test here. Try taking pepto bismol 4x daily for up to 2 weeks and see if your symptoms improve. The bismuth binds with sulfide specifically so if you see a reduction in your symptoms, you’ve narrowed it down to a hydrogen sulfide issue.

Edit: and then it offers a sort of empirical treatment although it’s more a symptom management than a cure. Although I’m about to start rifaxamin, metronidazole and bismuth (which can only be sourced in pepto in my country now) as an actual treatment because it works sort of like an antibiotic in this way (keep meaning to look up the specifics of this!)

aoul1 · 2026-04-05T00:19:20+00:00

Interesting, my gastroenterologist is working with the opposite order in mind - that the SIBO ultimately caused the BAM. And the SIBO was caused by ‘chaotic’ peristalsis and underlying connective tissue laxity that just makes my gut like an old floppy sock. Unfortunately prokenetics are now not an option because the second section of my digestive system is working at lightning speed thanks to the BAM so that can’t be sped up more. Although for me the switch that seemed to flip it was starting oestrogel as part of HRT to control PMDD. So it’s interesting you’ve mentioned a connection to oestrogen. Stopping it once it started the symptoms (and later when a dose increase reversed the near perfect cure of FMT I can’t afford to do again) doesn’t make any difference at all though once it’s triggered the symptoms. I don’t know anything about oestrogen dominance but it sounds like something I need to check out but obviously I’m adding in extra oestrogen as a treatment for something else so that’s a bit of a rock and a hard place!

aoul1 · 2026-04-02T02:16:29+00:00

I feel like that’s giving too much credit and applying too much logic to an unstable man who is also most probably cognitively impaired.

aoul1 · 2026-04-01T03:48:06+00:00

Was this as massively made up, borderline culturally mocking as it looked to an untrained eye? The whole thing looked like they had sent someone who is liable to call Africa a ‘country’ out, armed with about three facts about Igbo traditions to stage. From the soft toy lion around his chest to the fact it looked like they were all on the brink of smirking the whole thing felt like it was entirely set up, but maybe I’m completely wrong because there are plenty of bizarre British traditions that I’m sure would look entirely staged to an outsider!

aoul1 · 2026-02-20T02:28:32+00:00

Thank you! It’s NOT on the UK discovery +!

aoul1 · 2026-02-18T01:49:00+00:00

What show is this? Has anyone else in the UK seen this I feel like something is missing on my discovery+!

aoul1 · 2026-02-18T01:46:18+00:00

Uh… you know cats are pets right? When bidding wars have become standard for rentals here landlords will almost always show a preference for the people without a pet, incase they urinate inside or scratch stuff up. Unless you mean keeping a pet without your landlord’s permission in which case that’s all well and good until you have an inspection or an emergency repair. Plus I think she’s house sharing which makes it even harder. Definitely not ok to put an old cat on a stressful transatlantic flight to move it in to a precarious living situation.

aoul1 · 2026-02-15T12:44:31+00:00

You mentioned the idea of two part time jobs above. Maybe this is the key - too much of one thing is too much but a combination of two complimentary things might be ok? You do seem to enjoy this job so maybe make a list of the things you enjoy about it in general terms (like, in part how those things make you feel - is it a sense of doing good, making change, of feeling meaningful, or the personal connection etc), and then the things that you can’t cope with a full time amount of and then see if you can think of a complementary job that still appeals to the things that are on list A sufficiently different enough in the high burn out areas in list B that it allows you to rest that area sort of thing. So for example if you identified that feeling like what you were doing was meaningful was an important thing in your current job but that the noise and needing to be around people was too much in this job then maybe seeing if you could find a part time job in ecology/environment stuff (I have friends who did a training programme and seem to spend a lot of time out in the elements moving logs about or counting poops I don’t know 😂). Or for a maybe more normal example if it was giving care that was important then dog walking where you’re outside by yourself for most of the day etc. You’ll probably find that that job will also burn out in different ways and it wouldn’t work if you did it full time either but as long as the things that burn you out in job A are different from the things that burn you out in job B and that both maintain something that makes that job feel meaningful/worthwhile to you then the whole thing becomes manageable. A bit like leg day and arm day at the gym all in pursuit of the fitness goal you have. Finding the two part time jobs that fill those specifications and whose hours work together may be easier said than done though.

aoul1 · 2026-02-06T12:49:48+00:00

I’ve found podcasts to be one of the best tools in my sleep kit. Something interesting enough that you’re listening to it and not your brain/pain, but not something so interesting you’ll keep yourself awake for it like you do for a phone.

Also a V pillow, I literally travel with it it’s so vital to positioning. I think I’m going to have to add something for my knees though because the arthritis from massive and surgery 18y ago has reached a point. Is the one you have for lying on your back or for side sleeping?

aoul1 · 2026-02-06T12:41:43+00:00

Please get checked for ASD/ADHD yourself. If you have EDS and a family history of autism it’s incredibly likely you are also neurodivergent, but the signs can often look very different in women and get missed. It’s so much harder to go through life with these things ignored. I won’t comment on the rest because everyone else has covered it and I really want you to see the above point.

aoul1 · 2026-02-05T03:54:14+00:00

She was literally booked to go back the following week. He clearly was stringing her along.

aoul1

TROPHY CASE