Treatment report (2014/12/22) : MRI

Written by cafealpha no comments
Today was a MRI day !
MRI taken so far (4 or 5 times) were took with contrast medium (liquid sent via intravenous in order to see clearly veins), but this time was the first time without contrast medium !
It was a little strange that catheter were not used this time, and it was so "easy mode" that I half felt asleep during MRI exposure session  ^^;

One anecdote about this day is that when I entered in MRI room in order to put off clothes and wait for my turn, atmosphere in the room was a little strained, and 3 bodyguard shaped guys were waiting with MRI technical staff.
Maybe theses guys are maintenance staff ? But they definitely didn't looked like : they only stare at the window and monitors showing the MRI patient just before me.
When it was my turn, I understood why atmosphere was a little strained : bodyguard shaped guys took handcuffs and put them to the MRI patient just before me : he was a prisoner, and today was something like his "quarter-liberty day" outside the prison !
It was the first time I saw a prisoner for real (not on the TV, internet, whatever) in Japan.

Additional CT is scheduled for next month, so see you later for my next adventures


PS : I'm looking for a laptop better than the one I'm using now. Is there somebody to help me ?
My requirements are as follow :
 - No need brand new laptop, used laptop is OK
 - Screen resolution >= 1366 x 768
 - DDR3 SO-DIMM memory slots x 2
 - RAM address area >= 8GB
 - Battery for offline use >= 2 hours
 - CPU >= Core 2 Duo
 - Japanese or US qwerty keyboard
 - No need of OS, HDD and RAM, I already have theses parts here.
 - No more than USD 150
 - Easy to purchase in Shikoku area (Japan).
I looked in Hard Off ... only found a SNK 95 Saturn cartridge and very old or very expensive laptops.
I looked in PC Depot ... only found a good Sony laptop very cheap ... with broken LCD. And of course, nothing about LCD damage indicated near price tag
Any other idea where to search ?

I plan to use this laptop for Saturn development stuff

Here is a picture of the laptop I'm currently using :
data/images/20141222_laptop.tb.jpg
Old stuff from 2007, with 2GB RAM (no more addressable space ... what a pity), and a 512GB SSD.

Read more Treatment report (2014/12/22) : MRI

Just moved !

Written by cafealpha 4 comments
Classified in : etc, Saturn, Mylife Tags : mylife
During the last weeks, I was busy in preparing stuff in order to move to a new apartment.
And now, I am busy in ordering stuff in this new apartment ^^;

data/images/20141129_gaston.tb.jpg
(Image of me preparing cardboard few hours before mover truck arrives)

During the next weeks/months, I don't plan to do some new Saturn stuff. Instead, I plan to do things related to my new apartment, like emptying cardboards, ordering rooms, selling old/unused things, etc.
By the way, I plan to sell old Saturn games from my collection, including PAL Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III Scenario 1, so please let me know (= add a comment to this article, or send me a message) if you want to purchase something :)
In the case things are sold directly from this homepage, it will be cheaper than in the case I sell them via ebay ;)

PS : I didn't set up internet connection in my new apartment, so I may not be able to answer mail/messages/whatever during the next couple of weeks.

PPS : happy birthday Saturn ! It turned 20 years old on last month ♪

Read more Just moved !

New USB dev cart - currently debugging

Written by cafealpha 4 comments
Classified in : Saturn, Mylife Tags : saturn, usb dev cart, IC, firmware, debug
Few weeks ago, I had some free time (only one day however) to populate new USB dev carts
data/images/20140829_usb_dev_cart.tb.jpg
USB dev carts during different populating states
"This isn't even my final form"

I could populate 3 boards ... third one is not on the picture, while a couple of capacitors is missing on second one, but this is a matter of 5 minutes to solder.
After that, time was missing, and what's more problematic, ICs were missing too >_<

I soldered my last flash chips (on the right side of the cart), as well as my last USB chips and connectors (top left side of the cart) ... and my last 100nF decoupling capacitor (everywhere near all ICs) too ... it's a shame about the capacitors because they cost absolutely nothing and they are required everywhere in the cart.

So what's the plan from now ? I'm currently improving USB dev cart firmware, and plan to sell the completed cartridge on the bottom right corner of the picture when firmware will be ready for release.
From that money, I will buy a new stock of ICs to populate other PCBs
Why not buying ICs now ? Simply because I don't have enough budget for that, and also because buying ICs in few quantities is too much expensive : IC price decrease with quantity, and shipping fees are free when more than of USD100 of ICs are purchased.


So let's come the interesting part : firmware, which means software !
Last month I had enough about PCB design with Kicad, so that was good to get back with my Saturn and USB connect it to my laptop

data/images/20140829_dev_env.tb.jpg
My Saturn development environment : no expensive vintage development kit,
only a modchipped Saturn, USB dev cart and 7 years old laptop are enough.

So of course I lost a lot of time with stupid software troubles.
Here is a list of the troubles. I hope that writing them here will prevent me from repeating the same mistakes in the future.

 1) Data alignment problem : one structure is 1 byte packed, and some long word was put a non 4 multiple offset in this structure. It is usually easy to spot, but ...
 - It doesn't cause problem under yabause (? not verified, please tell me if I'm wrong), so this problem was unnoticed until I test it under real hardware.
 - It happened during program initialization, before USB transfer would allow me to easily find why my Saturn freezes.
 - I was sleepy at this time

 2) Adding byte size to unsigned long* pointer ... it resulted in pointer set 4 times farther than expected ... really stupid bug
Oh, and in the same fashion, a similar bug in Action Replay flasher utility prevented from writing more than half of flash memory size ... it's good that I could fix this bug before anybody notice it

 3) Saturn freezes when reading flash vendor/device IDs.
As usual, when Saturn freezes, it is during program startup, when USB can't be used for debug ^^;
This problem was the most interesting one : some parts of the firmware runs directly from Flash ROM, and it seems that reading flash vendor/device IDs makes whole flash returning theses IDs, resulting in invalid instruction from CPU ... this is just a guess, correct me if I'm wrong.
This problem was corrected in a very Q&D way : return 0xBFBF/0xB7B7 in FlashGetVendorID/FlashGetDeviceID functions
I have a better idea to fix this, but it requires to modify cartridge flasher utility ... I made enough flasher utility stuff recently (I'm enough in fixing compatibility issues with Action Replay old flash chips !), so I will fix this later.

Read more New USB dev cart - currently debugging

Saturn cartridge firmware flash utility : small update #2

Written by cafealpha 12 comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : saturn, cartridge, memory, backup, restore, utility
I made some fixes to my flasher utility.
 - Added support for SST29LE010 flash chip
 - Added memory verify after flashing
 - Fixed erase/write operations AM29F010 flash chip
 - On startup, inform user that 3D pad and multitap pad are not supported

Thanks to beta testers on ASSEMbler forums, this new version has high chances to work on your Saturn cartridge
However, if you experience any problem, please let me know by leaving a comment to this article.

Some screenshots :
data/images/20140829_bfbf_0808.tb.jpg
BFBF/0808 flash chip, not recognized on previous version.
This version does now detect it as a 29LE010 device from SST.
Picture provided by dgist71.

data/images/20140901_flash_ok.tb.jpg
Write to AM29F010 chip was incorrect in previous version.
As displayed in this screenshot, this is fixed now.
Picture provided by XeCuTioNR.

You can download this utility here : flasher_20140902.7zflasher_arp_20150326.7zhttp://ppcenter.webou.net/pskai/
Disclaimer : You will loose your cartridge backup data after reflash. And, I'm not responsible in the case I brick your cartridge and/or damage your Saturn.

Read more Saturn cartridge firmware flash utility : small update #2

Saturn cartridge firmware flash utility : small update

Written by cafealpha 17 comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : saturn, cartridge, memory, backup, restore, utility
Memory Card Plus restore utility I made few days ago is now obsolete : I added a menu to select the firmware to flash.
Firmware list includes Action Replay Plus/Pro (various versions), latest Pseudo Saturn, Memory Card Plus, USB dev cart.
data/images/20140821_flasher_fwlist.png
Firmware selection menu

As you can see, I added some colors in text display too

The utility doesn't read data from the CDROM, so that it can be uploaded to Saturn via commlinks port (Action Replay) or USB port (USB dev cart).
All the firmwares don't fit as-is in Saturn HRAM (1MB), so I compressed them by using LZF compression, so that everything could fit in a single ~800 KB binary file

Here are some pictures of utility running on real hardware :
data/images/20140821_flasher.tb.jpg
Firmware selection menu from early beta version.
Picture provided by r1cola.

data/images/20140824_flasher_video.png
(click to open video)
Flasher in action : from firmware selection to end of flash operation.
Video provided by zorlon.

You can download this utility here : flasher_20140824.7zflasher_20140902.7zflasher_arp_20150326.7zhttp://ppcenter.webou.net/pskai/
Disclaimer : You will loose your cartridge backup data after reflash. And, I'm not responsible in the case I brick your cartridge and/or damage your Saturn.

Read more Saturn cartridge firmware flash utility : small update

Back home !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, home, saturn
Home sweet home !
There's no more hospital staff to prepare food or take care of my scars, shampoo, whatever, but returning back at home after around 6 weeks at hospital is nice

Today, I could get my hands on ICs for USB dev cart and Saturn dev stuff (Saturn, small TV, damaged proto carts, etc) that I put in a small storehouse before entering hospital.
Everything is still in cardboards/bags ... I shall tidy the apartment a little before to do some Saturn things ^^
Oh, and I finally could touch the new PCBs I ordered 3 weeks ago

Read more Back home !

Firmware restore utility for Saturn Memory Card Plus cartridge

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : saturn, cartridge, memory, backup, restore, utility
First, let's introduce to you memory card plus :
data/images/20140817_memory_cards.tb.jpg
Black cartridge : Memory Card Plus
White cartridge : official memory card

Memory Card Plus looks like regular backup cartridge, but behaves differently : while regular backup cartridge provides memory on CS1 memory area, Memory Cart Plus have flash ROM chip mapped on CS0 memory area, as Action Replay does.
Consequently, Memory Card Plus boot before game on CDROM, and during this this time, it modifies some settings in order to make BIOS detecting this cartridge as a second backup memory device.

As Action Replay cartridges, it is possible to reflash Memory Card Plus, and in the case you would like to restore its firmware to its original state, I prepared a flasher utility containing my Memory Card Plus firmware I dumped 2 years ago (time flies ...).

You can download this utility >here<
(source code is included, please refer to readme.txt for installation instructions)
data/images/20140817_memcartplus_flasher.png
Flasher tool in action ... well reflash don't work under yabause,
but should work on real hardware.

As en extra, I let my old game saves with firmware itself ... please format cartridge from BIOS memory manager if you don't need them.
data/images/20140817_memcartplus_contents.png
Good old times I played Night Xmas and Shining Force 3

Remark 1 :
Flashing your Saturn cartridge will erase all the data on it, including your game backup data,
so use only after saving backup data to Saturn internal memory.

Remark 2 :
Memory Card Plus firmware is designed to work only with specific flash chips, so it
probably won't function correctly on other cartridge (Action Replay, USB dev cart, etc).

Disclaimer :
I'm not responsible of damages that this utility may cause to your game save data, Saturn cartridge or Saturn itself.

Please let me know if reflash worked (or not worked) in this article comments


Extra : I also made a diagnostic utility that displays flash chips ID without modifying flash memory contents. It can be downloaded here.
It can be useful when analyzing exotic cartridge, but not really useful with Memory Card Plus.

Read more Firmware restore utility for Saturn Memory Card Plus cartridge

Treatment report (2014/08/17)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, shower
This weekend, I had my first "full" shower from hair to foot !
Until this time, I had my hair shampooed by nurse, in the same way that barber shampoo our hair, then had shower below shoulder by myself.
I still have an open scar near my ear, but nurses covered it with a special tape, so that I could freely pour water here.
One month without a real shower ... it was a real pleasure to clean freely my body

Oh, and last Friday, doctor said "according to latest blood analysis, you're about to completely recover from surgery/pus/whatever ... what day is fine next week in order to leave hospital ?"
Yeah ! I will be back to real world soon !!
In order to get the scar near my ear more or less cured, I will leave hospital on next Thursday.

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/17)

Treatment report (2014/08/14)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, meal, ensure
Today is anniversary day : one month after my surgery

And, it was also the day of my first meal ! I was waiting this day for one month !!
data/images/20140814_first_meal.tb.jpg
My first meal picture, similar as picture of in-flight meal

Everything is heavily mixed ... doctors say it might take time until I can start to eat more solid food.
I ate everything, except okayu (liquid rice) and tofu, not because I can't eat theses, but for taste reasons ...
Instead of okayu and tofu, I drank one ensure can

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/14)

Treatment report (2014/08/13)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Today was a good day full of adventures !

During rehabilitation, I could drink 32 spoons (nearly half a cup) of water without choking so much, which is an highscore until now

During the afternoon, doctor removed my "game gear", and told I no longer need it because scar near my left ear is closed :]
Just after that, I felt in a trap set by the doctor :
Doctor > "let's verify how well you can gulp jelly"
Me > "Does it mean that you will put a camera from my nose to my throat ?"
Doctor > "Yes, of course"
I couldn't escape, it was painful, especially when the doctor said "Well, your feeding tube prevent camera from going farther than your mouth. I will have to remove your feeding tube in order to continue verification".
Me > "Does it means you will remove feeding tube, put camera one more time, and then put feeding tube back ?"
Doctor > "Right. You understood well."
Me > T.T
data/images/20140813_ear_scar.tb.jpg
Here is what the scar looks after removing the "game gear ".
The blue tube on the left is my feeding tube.

But ! After removing tube, and verifying how well I can gulp jelly, doctor said "You don't gulp jelly so bad ... do you want to continue to use feeding tube ?"
Me > "No ! No more feeding tube !"
Doctor > "OK, you will drink ensure can from tonight"
Me > "Yeaahhh !"

So my first taste after one month without eating anything from my mouth was :
 - A grape flavour jelly, one spoon only
 - Horrible taste medicine ... I can't gulp capsule medicines, so their contents are put in water and I have to drink it, but it seems that medicine designers absolutely don't care about the taste of what capsule contains >_<
 - "Ensure Liquid", vanilla taste, 2 cans. I drank them by using small watering pot-like thing, and didn't choked at all
data/images/20140813_ensure.tb.jpg
Ensure liquid

Because I can't drink easily from can/cup/whatever, the watering pot-like thing helps a lot, because it pours liquid deep inside the mouth, making it easy to gulp after that
data/images/20140813_wateringpot.tb.jpg
"Joro" aka Mr waterpot

One bad point about the fact I don't have feeding tube is that I can't procrastinize on my laptop while eating ^^;

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/13)

Treatment report (2014/08/12)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Nothing really special today.
This morning, the roommate in front of me (separated by 2 curtains) left hospital, so I am now the patient with the longest stay in this room.
Previous roommate always spoke to himself while sleeping, so it's great that he finally left hospital


Among the two roommates remaining with me in this hospital room,
 - first one snores loudly ...
 - second one likes to play with room's air conditioner settings ... I don't know why he set temperature room to 28℃ .... maybe a game with me, I don't know.
Anyway, I plan to restore temperature to 26℃ as soon he changes it ... I have no choice, because his favorite temperature feels like hell to me.
And if he really continues to bother me, I will pour extra strong bond on air conditioner remote controller buttons


Doctor now use small syringe to pour sterilized solution in my mouth's scar in order to clean it, which is a sign that everything is going well for it
Also, according to the doctor, there's no longer need to clean this scar twice a day : once a day is now enough, which is another good sign about this scar :]
I hope this scar will close properly this week. After that, I finally will be able to start eating rehabilitation !!


On Saturn dev side (at first, this blog was intended to be a Saturn dev related blog !), I had fun with interrupt C and code executing on ROM ... except constant ones (of course), no global variable is allowed for ROM code ! Ouch.
Still not compiling, less than half of the project is coded, nothing tested, so I will continue tomorrow

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/12)

Treatment report (2014/08/11)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, anniversary
There were no message yesterday, because nothing special done. In fact, it was a shampoo / shower free day, but hey, it was Sunday, so I do anything I want
BTW, here is a picture took during yesterday typhoon :
data/images/20140810_typhoon_window.tb.jpg
Except rain, clouds, and some wind, there were nothing special about this typhoon, as usual in this region


Today was anniversary day :
 - One month from entering hospital
 - 4 weeks from surgery day

By reminding the first weeks after surgery, I can feel now I'm getting better and better :]
And, doctor told me today that scar in my mouth is closing little by little, so that I will probably start "eat by using mouth" rehabilitation this week


Read more Treatment report (2014/08/11)

Treatment report (2014/08/09)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report
Shower this morning. Glad that my shower rhythm is becoming similar to pre-surgery times

This morning, doctor told that I don't need band-aid on my throat anymore !
From surgery until now, scar was cleaned and band-aid changed every morning, but now, only a small scab is remaining, so that band-aid is no longer needed.

Tomorrow morning, typhoon is likely to come around the area where the hospital is ... I can't wait to see storms and heavy rain from my hospital window
data/images/20140809_typhoon.jpg

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/09)

Treatment report (2014/08/08)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, game gear, shower
Shower, and shampoo this morning.
Everyday, I beg nurses to get a shower in the wide shower room (only one available for around 30 patients), and they always manage to let me getting a shower, which is nice from them.

After that, I had my game gear changed. As the concerned scar is near my left ear and that tape is used to make everything hermetic around the scar, it was quite a pain to remove tape on my hair >_<
Then, cleaning of the pus inside of my mouth ... as usual, some pus is accumulating, and scar doesn't want to close ...

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/08)

Treatment report (2014/08/07)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Shower this morning, yeaaah !
Because of scars, feeding tube and my new negative pressure device, I can't shower around head, but it was better than nothing.

BTW, here are some pictures of what I currently carry with me :
data/images/20140807_friends_to_carry.tb.jpg
negative pressure device
I nicknamed it "game gear"

data/images/20140807_end_of_dinner.tb.jpg
Bottle that contains my breakfast/lunch/dinner.
It is empty on the picture, but when it's time to eat,
it is filled with YH Flore aka "stinky milk" .


After that, I felt in a trap.
I was called for the usual "clean the pus in open scar", but 3 doctors were waiting for me.
Me> "Usually, one doctor is fine for this, so why is there so much people this time ?"
Doctor> "Don't worry. Other doctors just want to see how to clean your scar."
Hum ... weird.

After cleaning the scar, it was clear it was a trap when a doctor said something like "by the way, let's change your feeding tube".
Removing the old one was not very funny, and putting the new one was quite painful .
But ! While doctors prepared new feeding tube, I could enjoy around 3 minutes without feeding tube between my nose and stomach

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/07)

Treatment report (2014/08/06)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, device
Today, I had the scar in my mouth (where pus accumulates) cleaned 3 times instead of 2 :]

And, one week ago, doctors "opened" skin close to my left ear in order to remove pus, because it is linked with mouth's inside.
As everything is now clean around my ear, they decided to close skin by using negative pressure wound therapy. It looks like the following device :
data/images/20140806_kci_wound_vac02.tb.jpg
(thank you wikipedia)
Tube is connected between my scar and this device, and negative pressure (like vacuum cleaner, but very very very very low) is applied to the scar so that it can close.
Around one week is required until I can get rid of this device.

Too bad I can't use the same technology to close scar in my mouth

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/06)

Treatment report (2014/08/05)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, milk
Breakfast (water + "stinky milk" packs) lasted from 9:00 to 13:00 -_-
The reason it was so long is that usually I receive first (by tube from nose directly from stomach) water only, then "stinky milk", which is kind to my stomach.
But this morning, nurse mistook and mixed water and "stinky milk", and consequently I was near from nausea because of directly receiving strong "stinky milk" first.

YH Flore, the so-called "stinky milk"
It contains milk, honey, various fish oils, etc
I receive 3 packs like this at every meal.
data/images/20140805_yh_flore.tb.jpg

To compensate this bad day, I took a shower before going to sleep

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/05)

New compiler for my Saturn stuff !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : saturn, compiler, motivation
Today, I just changed all my projects configuration and sources in order to use latest "Saturn SDK" compilers 

Very boring work, but now I feel happy to get all my projects updated !

Motivation hedgehog for today work, and future work too :
data/images/20140805_hedgehog.jpg

Here is a list of problems I fixed to get the new compilers working :
 - Don't call directly ld, instead call gcc -o. Why ? because ld can't find properly path to libgcc.a ...
 - Consequently, some link parameters need to be changed :
    "--script bart.lnk" → "-T bart.lnk"
    "-Map main_elf.map" → "-Wl,-Map=main_elf.map"
 - Some signed/unsigned mess that need to be fixed ... old compiler was quiet about this, which made me not worrying about data signedness ^^;
 - Removed volatile keyword in function declaration ... it actually didn't made sense to use volatile elsewhere than in data declaration !
    /* Exit to multiplayer. */
    //(**(volatile void(**)(void))0x600026C)();
    (**(void(**)(void))0x600026C)();
 - Removed SBL sources that were used to read file from CDROM, because they don't compile properly except in -O0 (non) optimisation mode ... Instead, I use source from great CyberWarriorX library

Read more New compiler for my Saturn stuff !

Treatment report (2014/08/04)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report
First mouth rehabilitation after the week-end. I feel I can drink a little more than before, but it is just a difference of 10 spoons -> 15 spoons ... I can't drink water cup, yet.

In comparison with last week, less pus seem to come from my mouth, and doctors are finally starting to speak about scar's closing over process :]

I am in 4 people room, everyone is separated from other people by curtains, and my roommates (~60 yo, me=30yo) are quite fun : when one start to fart, another one start to fart and so on. It feels like a concert

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/04)

Treatment report (2014/08/02)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Had my stitches removed from my tongue
data/images/20140802_stitch.tb.jpg

Long time I was waiting for this, because one stitch was sometimes hurting my palate during speaking or gulping ...

And tonight was fireworks ! I could see them from hospital window !
Fireworks lasted long (1 hour) so I was very tired, but I could see them with my wife and children

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/02)

Treatment report (2014/08/01)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Today, I had 2 rehabilitation sceances.
Doctor told that my pronunciation is getting better, but I personally don't feel any progress ... I hope it is not a flattery (oseji) for my self-confidence only ...

Had my scars cleaned up on morning and night, and still some pus is going out ... the more the doctors seek, the more the doctors find pus in my mouth ^^;

And ... I had my hair shampooed today


Due to summer holidays here, there are a lot of children (from kindergarten to junior high school) here, and unfortunately, my room is very close to treatment room (= torture room ) ... from time to time, I can hear child crying because she don't want flexo camera being inserted in her nose ...
I understand her (I don't like flexo camera too !), but in this case, the more she cries, the painful and longer it will last

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/01)

New homebrew cartridges : finished design stage !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : Kicad, PCB, USB dev cart
Since being at hospital gives me a lot of free time, I spend time having fun with Kicad software
data/images/20140801_pcb1.tb.png and data/images/20140801_pcb2.tb.png
The first one is "only" a cleaned-up, partially re-routed version of "Rev 1c (data/images/20140801_rev1c.tb.jpg)" cartridge I used to sold on this homepage last year.
Can you spot major and minor differences between Rev 1c and new version ?

When I will be out of the hospital, I plan provide them for sale as USB dev cart .


The second one is for private use (not for sale), and its purpose is private too. That's why I blurred its picture

Read more New homebrew cartridges : finished design stage !

Treatment report (2014/07/30)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, pus, rehabilitation
Today, mouth rehabilitation doctor provided 2 lessons instead of one usually :)
I drank around 11 spoons filled with water .... and choked with the half of them.

Then, had a shampoo, so my head feel (and smell) better now !

Before sleeping, doctors cleaned pus around my mouth ... on the same time, they found 1-2 sq. centimeter of dead skin that was hidden between reconstructed tongue and jawbone ...

Read more Treatment report (2014/07/30)

Treatment report (2014/07/28)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, pus, rehabilitation
First shower (from chest to foots) from my surgery 2 weeks ago !!!
And as an extra, nurse also shaved my 2 weeks old beard ... I can't do this my myself because of scars around my neck.

After that I moved my belongings from individual hospital room to a 4 people hospital room ... my neighboor snoring is noisy >_<

And, mouth rehabilitation doctor went to teach me how to drink water with my half cut tongue ... I always get chocked on every tries ! Drinking some water is difficult !!!

After that, doctor noticed some pus near my ear (close to scar due to surgery), so I have now some extra bandage on my neck ...

Read more Treatment report (2014/07/28)

Treatment report (2014/07/25)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report
Today was my first mouth rehabilitation :
 - Drinking water (little by little, by using spoon ...) without choking
 - Gulping down whole saliva in my mouth ... due to empty space from my removed tongue, it is not easy !
 - Exercises in order to attenuate pain on left side of my body : because of surgery, left side of my body from breast to ear feel swollen and tight.
I like mouth rehabilitation doctor : he is very kind and always attentive to what I'm saying. Next week, rehabilitation is scheduled every day

Read more Treatment report (2014/07/25)

Treatment report (2014/07/24)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report
Today was a good day, then a bad day.

The good part is that stitches on the scars on my leg (right thigh) were removed.
Why having surgery on the leg in order to cure tongue cancer ? The reason is that some "meat" need to be taken in order to put instead of the cancerous side of my tongue.

The other good news is that I passed water drink test !
Now I can drink little by little some water

The bad news is that I received analysis results about my tongue and lymphatic nodes removed by surgery.
Result is ly2, v1, pn0, which means that lymph fluid is/was contaminated by cancerous cells (ly2), blood is/was contaminated by cancerous cells (v1), and nervous cells are not contaminated.
So some more chemo is needed ...



Read more Treatment report (2014/07/24)

Treatment report (2014/07/17)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report
7/17 is the day I move from ICU to regular hospital room.
The reason I move from ICU to regular hospital room is simply that 7/17 is surgery day, so that I need to give some ICU space to other patient.

At this time, I can't stand up by myself, and still have some tubes and other medical stuff attached to my body.

Read more Treatment report (2014/07/17)

Last night before operation !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : none
Few hours remaining before operation !
It is good time to get operated, because recently I spit blood once every 2 days or so ...
Does it means that tumor is getting bigger ? I don't know, but MRI don't show major changes, so I hope this is not worth worry about :)
Anyway, I really want to get rid of that crap hidden in my tongue !

About 70% of my tongue will be removed, but I don't care if in exchange for this I can continue to live

Read more Last night before operation !

マイノートパソコン やっとWin7へアップグレード - Finally could install Win7 on my note PC

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
先月の2週間の入院(=科学療法)のときに助かった小型ノートパソコン。
やっとWin7をインストールしました。
(一応、WinXPは念のため残しているがこれからは基本的にWin7からブートする予定です。)

7年も前の骨董品ですが、小型で軽いなので結構気に入ってる、このパソコン^^;

来月は1ヶ月の入院の予定なので、壊れないといいね。

Read more マイノートパソコン やっとWin7へアップグレード - Finally could install Win7 on my note PC

採血(6/13) - Blood collection (June 13) - Iron lack

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
今日も採血だった。
「貧血気味の数値が続いているよ。鉄分のある食事をしっかり食べてくださいね。」と先生に言われた。
ほうれん草、お肉、チョコレートの食生活…食事制限としてはいい方だな。

Read more 採血(6/13) - Blood collection (June 13) - Iron lack

採血(6/10) - Blood collection (June 10) - High potassium level

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
今日は採血だった。
特に問題なかったでど、カリウムの数値は少し高かった。
「最近は生野菜か生果物を食べたのですか?」と先生に聞かれました
…昨日、イチゴを暴飲したのがばれちゃった^^;
血液の検査って怖いね。

Read more 採血(6/10) - Blood collection (June 10) - High potassium level

退院 - その1 Leaving hospital - level 1

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese, english
2週間ぶり病院の外を歩んでいます!
ただの2週間の入院だったが、2ヶ月に感じました。

帰宅していますが、1ヶ月後は手術等のため、1ヶ月ぐらいの再入院の予定があります。
再入院までに何回も診察の予定もあるので、これからかなり忙しいスケジュールが待っているんですね。

(click "Read more" link below for English version)

Read more 退院 - その1 Leaving hospital - level 1

MRI撮影、失敗 Bad luck for second MRI photography

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
昨日は2枚目のMRIを撮影してもらいました。
1枚目は3週間前のモノで、最新撮影を撮りたかったため、MRI撮影を受けています。
その結果、点滴の針による失敗です^^;
造影剤を注射するため、点滴の針を使ったが、2回も液漏れし、その結果腫瘍はきれいに映っていないが、治療前のサイズに戻っている事が見えたので少し安心しています。

Read more MRI撮影、失敗 Bad luck for second MRI photography

利尿剤ってすごいよね - Feel Da diuretic power !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
ただいま、5FUとアクプラの科学療法が終わり、抗がん剤が体に溜まるとよくないので利尿剤を使って尿を出しているところです。
まぁ、C言語でstdioがおしっこだとして、抗がん剤入りの利尿剤がfflush()関数になるだね

Read more 利尿剤ってすごいよね - Feel Da diuretic power !

点滴と注射… - Intravenous and injection

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, japanese
点滴で抗がん剤を受けるようになっていますが、そのせいで、気分が悪くなるときがあります。
看護婦さんに「吐き気止めの注射をしましょうか?」と聞かれました。
また針に刺されるのか…って思いながら、「はい、お願いします」と答えました。
でも、点滴は分岐できるようになっており、パイプを繋ぐだけで注射できるようにになっていますね。
よかったよかった!
…でも、あまり吐き気止めは効いてないようですが…

Read more 点滴と注射… - Intravenous and injection

Cancer : choice of the place to cure it

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in my personal case in Japan, I had to choose a place where my tongue cancer will be treated.
The main reason is that the prefectural hospital where I live don't perform such surgeries for this kind of cancer.
Instead, the doctor in charge of my case proposed to write an invitation letter to an hospital that is competent for this kind of surgery.

Read more Cancer : choice of the place to cure it

Fighting against cancer

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english
Hi, it's around 3 weeks it didn't went to my job ...
It's not I don't like my job, in fact it is the contrary : after graduating, I choose an interesting job rather than a weel paid one
So as you guessed from the title, I was diagnosed a stage 4 tongue cancer, and will start treatment for it from next week.
Well, from what I could read on internet, operation for this cancer is a severe one, but I will do my best to overcome it.

Read more Fighting against cancer

Same homepage, new provider

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : PPCenter Tags : HomePage, Japanese, JWPce
Hi, this is just to inform you that I officially switched my homepage provider from free.fr to webou.net.
I started to move everything from last February, and kept under the wrap until now to prepare some contents in this (dev)blog.

Except this blog, everything should be same as in the previous homepage ... sorry for my lack of free time recently

However, if you like learning Japanese, please find my JWPce I use under windows.
It features unicode support (not from me) and kanji <-> French translation support (from me).

See you, and feel free to send me a comment

Read more Same homepage, new provider

Howto : Build Saturn cartridge firmware from regular Saturn executable

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn, Programming Tags : Saturn, mkfirm, utility
In this article, I will explain how to build Saturn cartridge firmware from Saturn executable file.

Note : it doesn't magically convert .iso files to cartridge format ! It only convert standalone executable (typically, a file that can be executed after being uploaded to 06004000 address), and doesn't support programs that use CDROM.
So, basically commercial games can't be converted, and only some (not all) homebrew programs can be converted.

Read more Howto : Build Saturn cartridge firmware from regular Saturn executable

NppFTP : The notepad++ plugin that changed my life

Written by cafealpha no comments
I'm using Notepad++ daily. I should even say I'm using it many times a day !

At work instead of the crappy Visual Studio code editor.
At home in complement with gcc and instead of Quartus code editor.
I also use it to write memo, email drafts, and everything else.

Read more NppFTP : The notepad++ plugin that changed my life

東京へ行きました

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc Tags : Japanese, 飛行機, ディズニーランド
…そして無事に帰りました^^
長男と一緒に東京へ日帰り旅行をしました。
往路は格安ジェットスターに乗ったが、強風のせいかジェットスターの独特な着陸ポリシーのせいかわかりませんが、着陸のとき、機内は凄い揺れていました。
息子からのコメント「ジェットコースターみたいだね、だからジェットスターっていうんだね」^^

親子旅行だからもちろん東京ディズニーランドに行き、そして夕方は東京スカイツリーに行きました。

復路は息子が楽しみにしていた寝台列車に乗り、翌日の朝にやっとマイホームに帰ってそのままいつもどおりの出勤。

First post

Written by cafealpha 1 comment
Classified in : PPCenter Tags : English, HomePage
Hi, welcome on my new devblog !
My homepage wasn't very active recently for the past 6 years, but I recently found this nice, database-free CMS called PluXML, so I want to try it in order to share my latest thoughts about Saturn homebrew development.

Read more First post

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