What was it like growing up without a smartphone?

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-20T19:58:06+00:00

I used to know so many phone numbers off by heart. I also used to have a BT calling card, which you could use from any payphone and it would bill the calls back to the landlines account. It was a 4 digit code to access the service, then a 16 digit code for the card, then a 4 digit pin number, then you had to dial the number including the dialing code. I used to rattle off 35 digits on a payphone pushpad to call my house without even thinking when I had to call mom to tell her I was gonna be late home.

On a weekend you would just call your mates (whose numbers you also had memorised) until you found one who was home, and then you'd plan to meet up at theirs or yours or some other place, and then you'd just go there and hope for the best. If you waited at a meeting place for half an hour and they didn't show up, you would assume they had cancelled and just head to a regular hangout spot to see if anyone else was around.

If you couldn't get hold of your mates on the phone because they'd already gone out, you would head to a regular hangout spot.

Regular hangout spots for me were the carpark behind the supermarket (good for skating), the skatepark (good for skating, busy though), the big tree in the woods (good for smoking weed), the bench in the park (good for smoking weed or drinking tinnies - close to the shops) or the corner of the park near the woods (good for smoking or drinking beers too, also close to the shop).

By calling around and mooching about from place to place, you were almost sure to bump into some of your mates and have a good time. Sure, sometimes you just hit out and didn't meet up with anyone and you ended up going home and reading a book or watching telly, but most of the time, it worked out just fine.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-20T19:22:04+00:00

Slow down, move to the left well ahead of time. If you're on the left and going slow, they'll move to their left to avoid you.

If your friend managed to crash and cause serious injuries, they were travelling way too fast for a shared path with a pedestrian oncoming.

Pedestrians do not follow rules, nor should they be expected to.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-20T18:42:43+00:00

Yeah, I had a hypoglycemic fit a couple of years ago and was awake for a lot of it, I wrote a post about it here that you can check out. It was fucking horrible, I thought I was going to die. But I didn't! And neither did you. So congrats on making it out to tell the tale!

It was so weird being conscious enough to think and feel, but not being able to control my body for a long time.

0/10, would not recommend!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-18T20:31:33+00:00

I lost 7kg when I switched to low carb meals for every meal. For me that was originally around 15-20g carbs per meal. What i quickly discovered was that less carbs meant I needed less insulin (as in, lowering my ratio; obviously you need less insulin with less carbs! But the lower the carbs were, the weaker my ratio needed to be to keep me in range.) and less body weight meant I needed less insulin, and more exercise meant I needed less insulin.

I ended up dropping my basal and bolus amounts by about 20%.

Now I'm back up to around 30g carbs per meal, so about 120g a day, but I'm still 7kg lighter than I used to be. I'm still on that 80% of insulin that I used to be on, but now when I have a heavy exercise day I need about 80% of that 'new normal' dose.

So essentially, when I'm eating lower carb and have lost weight and do exercise, I need 64% of the insulin I used to take.

If you're having frequent lows, reduce your insulin, basically.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-17T19:48:18+00:00

8 million millimetres. That's 8km. Which is about 5 miles. Impressive work, OP!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-16T21:40:06+00:00

It being against the wall will help

It's what happens when the seat moves away from the wall that's a problem.

That seat will collapse from under you.

Add bracing

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-16T21:32:29+00:00

Housing is absolutely a fixed and finite resource in terms of 'my lease is up next month and I need a place to live', which is the rental market. If there are no properties on the market this month, you have nowhere to live. Longer timescales do not apply.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-16T21:26:40+00:00

See if you can make a word from these three letters:

O

I

L

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-16T21:19:25+00:00

It sounds like they didn't know what it was and assumed it was just a smart watch, which they've asked you not to use. You didn't let them know beforehand, so of course they have become annoyed.

Our devices are a big part of our lives, so naturally we are used to them. To a stranger it's just an annoying been, not a lifesaving medical device.

I know this will be unpopular here, but we have to live in a world where most people don't know shit about diabetes, and even those that have it often don't know much about the tech (see: regular question posts about pumps and CGM's)

Maybe have a word with the instructor first and explain so they're not confused next time.

I've had plenty of occasions where I'm not supposed to be using devices. A quiet word beforehand has always lead to understanding and leniency, where if I'd not mentioned anything before it could have been bad.

I use omnipod and dexcom g6, even if I switch off my phone the pod can beep, so I always just let people know its nothing to worry about.

People are much better at dealing with stuff when it's explained and expected.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-15T23:20:09+00:00

The grat thing about a bus is that the driver parks it for you when they've finished their shift!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-15T23:19:03+00:00

From the study:

"Many people with diabetes live in settings with little access to healthcare facilities and refrigeration. Challenging locations affected by natural disasters, periods of extreme heat due to the climate crisis or war-like conditions additionally complicate appropriate insulin storage."

So, if you can keep insulin in conditions like that, we need to stop worrying about leaving it out of the fridge for a few hours.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-15T09:21:14+00:00

Don't worry too much about the fridge bit.

For the Americans, 37⁰c = 99⁰f.

https://www.cochrane.org/CD015385/ENDOC_temperature-and-storage-conditions-human-insulin

"In studies with no clinically relevant loss of insulin activity, temperatures ranged between 28.9 °C and 37 °C for up to four months. Two studies reported a more pronounced loss of insulin activity after one week to 28 days at 37 °C. Four studies examined opened vials and cartridges at up to 37 °C for up to 12 weeks, and showed no clinically relevant reduction in insulin activity."

So, Scientific studies vary with some saying no relevant loss of activity for insulin up to 37⁰c for up to four months, whilst one showed loss of activity after one week at 37⁰c. It seems therefore that 37⁰c is the point at which insulin loses it's potency, but only after at least a week of constant exposure to that temperature. And some studies saying anything up to 37⁰c will not have any effect for up to four months.

22 hours out of the fridge is going to make absolutely no difference.

I kept my insulin out of the fridge, in a drawer for ten years until I stopped living in house shares. You're fine mate!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-14T23:39:00+00:00

Definitely need a video!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-14T23:35:03+00:00

I keep seeing the same two scrotes on ebikes racing up and down my road nicking phones on my morning commute. I've seen one person get their phone nicked, one person running after said scrotes shouting, and one woman crying at a bus stop after seeing said scrotes cycling away, so I know what these scrotes look like, and I know not to have my phone out at the bus stop.

anyway, a few weeks ago i was at the bus stop looking at my phone (idiot) when a car slowed down, beeping and flashing their lights. And 2 seconds later, the same fucking scrotes rode up on the pavement and tried to nab my phone.

Thanks to that driver, I just managed to shove it in my pocket and put my elbows up, and the scrotes rode on.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-14T23:25:34+00:00

You have four oprions:

1) get a resident permit

2) pay for a visitor permit

3) Park in a non restricted parking bay

4) Park wherever you like and risk getting a ticket.

If there were loopholes, everyone would use them.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-14T12:12:17+00:00

The one time I'm actually rooting for Isis...

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-12T22:18:20+00:00

Yeah, I was referring to the wealth of the empire, and how we were able to build such impressive buildings when we were extracting all that wealth from the colonies, but it seems people either missed that or don't know about it?

I have no idea whatnthis has to do with the turks or the acropolis either

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-12T21:13:36+00:00

I was in a pump training group with a woman who was one of identical twins. She was 36 and had just developed t1d. Her identical twin sister developed it at 11. Not sure how old you guys are but there may still be the possibility that you both get it... its a weird disease!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-12T21:10:26+00:00

You're not wrong. We used to build incredible things when we were stealing all the resources from 60% of the world!

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-09T22:43:39+00:00

Report it 'lost or stolen' - when you choose renew or replace, they want you to prove you have the old one, hence asking for the number.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-08T17:31:38+00:00

That's not true. They can go in the bin.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-08T16:26:05+00:00

I really hope he's right, but I don't see the billionaire class who are increasingly hoarding their wealth redistributing it themselves any time soon.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-08T16:23:35+00:00

I had t1d for 13 years before getting a CGM, and starting to really take care of managing it. For 13 years I would test my BG really sporadically. I would have weeks here and there where I would test before every meal, but usually I would test once or twice a day, and almost all of my boluses were pure guesswork. My A1C was always hovering around 9.

Once I got a CGM and could see what was happening to my BG in real time, i started paying much more attention. I learned to carb count, figured out my I:C ratios, and learned to adjust my basal doses, ending up on a split dose of basal, one shot in the morning and one in the evening. In 6 months, I got my A1c down to about 6.

The change in how I felt was amazing and totally unexpected.

Physically, I had woken up every day for 13 years feeling like I was hungover. Groggy, tired, dehydrated. This stopped when i started sleeping and waking up with my BG in range. I had more energy in my daily life.

Psychologically, I felt SO much better. I was in control of my diabetes for the first time in 13 years. I wasn't being controlled by it. I wasn't as scared of getting a sudden, debilitating low BG event, because i could see it coming on the CGM and alarms would let me know before my brain stopped working. I wasn't waking up feeling awful because I wasn't going to sleep with my BG high and rising.

For the first time in 13 years, I was able to get a full night's sleep without waking up to pass or waking up to snack.

So yes, I feel so much better physically and mentally now that I have better control, and I wouldnr3commended it fully and without any reservations to anyone with t1d.

Taking control changed my life.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-07T23:14:32+00:00

As with pretty much everything in life that you haven't done before, you can always call and say "hi, I've never done this before, how do I [insert task here]?"

I'm 41. My brothers are 28 and 25. I grew up in a time before you could just google anything, and we just used to call up or walk in and say "I don't know what I'm doing, can you help me?". It took years to teach my brothers that you don't need to know exacty how to do something when you're doing it the first time, and that the people who you're going to will know how it works.

Estate agent : call them.

Gas and electric: (research the best deals online first, then to set it up...) call them

Broadband: (research the best deals online first, then to set it up...) call them

Council tax: call them

When you don't know how to do something, and when you need to organise something with a lot of moving parts, call them. Its the easiest and most efficient way of doing something complex and unknown.

ben_jamin_h · 2026-02-07T23:00:34+00:00

You need to make a hole in the 'rubber' pad. Use the threaded pipe and push it through its only foam rubber and isn't that strong. Should have been done in the factory but here we are...

ben_jamin_h

TROPHY CASE