Shoulder Surgery – 17 weeks in

Light barbell weights

Light bar bell weights - For shoulder surgery patients you should be staying under 5 lbs during aerobics to avoid injury.

Last time I updated you on my shoulder surgery (recovery from right shoulder Open Bankart Surgery), I told you my insurance company cut off my physical therapy visits citing near complete relief of symptoms. I checked with my surgeon and he told me to wait until my visit today when we could evaluate the situation. He ran me through a range of motion test (upward reach, behind back reach, outward reach, and outward rotation). He agreed my outward motion was about only 90% recovered, but because there was no pain in full assisted extension he let me know that is okay. He thus told me that my shoulder was both stabilized and 100% healed from surgery.

My surgeon told I can come back if I have any other issues, but otherwise no follow up visit is needed. He also noted since my left arm had gone without dislocation for over two months it too was healed. He did check my left arm’s range motion and let me know surgery would not help in that situation as there was no actual loss of stability or permanent tear in the tissue.

Instead he recommended I join a gym or start doing light aerobics with light weight lifting on both arms. He noted that using the same exercises at PT on both shoulders would long term strengthen and stabilize the joint. Motions should be inward in nature and kept under five pounds during work outs. He advised against heavy weight training and any exercises that would increase elasticity in the muscle. He said my condition was genetic in nature and quite common as far as joint structure defects go. Other than that, I am officially recovered. I’m about ten weeks ahead of schedule and more fully healed than was expected. Both items are good news and it looks like in the long term I made the right decision– though I won’t lie that first month was horrible.

This ends my log of shoulder surgery recovery. I know many of you have been checking in and reading. I hope for those of you going through shoulder surgery this helped you understand what to both expect and what you have to look forward to. Many Open Bankart surgery patients need up to six months to fully heal (that’s 27 weeks) and in my case I had a quick recovery. If you’re not healing as quickly as I did do not get discouraged. You will see the same results, but I will tell you my secret was never giving up on PT and always working through intense pain. This is the only way you will ever recover.

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Arming Up

Akai MPD18 Pad Controller

Akai MPD18 Pad Controller

Last week DJ A.D.D. was kind enough to let me borrow his Akai MPD18 for an extended trial as he has recently gotten a much snazzier model. For my purposes though, the MPD18 fits in perfect with my DJ rig. It integrates into Virtual DJ and is great for initiating sampler/sound clips. As a bonus I can also use it to drive VST instruments (or virtual instruments). Even better, I managed to get a MIDI to USB cable. This lets me hook up my old Boss DR202 and also trigger MIDI effect in VirtualDJ. All in all, I have more buttons than I should ever need and a quickly growing DJ rig. I ran through a practice mix session and while there is going to be some additional learning time needed, I was able to integrate all of the equipment into my mixing style with ease. I spent a good deal of time working up a new MIDI map. I also finally mapped in a crossfader EQ mixer setup that will work nicely when mixing track to track. Again, I tried it out for the first time last night and the test run went excellent. You should hear some of these new tricks by this week’s Pirate Radio (still on for 2/16/10).

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Snow Blind

I launched a new page navigation application on df.com today that will make it easier to jump ahead or go back in time from the main “News & Updates” page that you’re seeing right now. If you scroll down to the bottom you’ll see it. I think this will help you move around a bit easier and that’s always nice. It’s also on the archived pages (including the “digitalflood Pirate Radio” show pages). Again, this should make moving around quickly on the site easier to do.

We got a lot of snow here in Orange County, NY (as has most of the Northeast) over the last 24 hours. About 12″ plus. The snow started around 9 pm yesterday and just stopped around 9 pm today. That’s 24 hours of snow. I’m far from buried in though. I managed to shovel myself out. My landlord gave me a hand with his plow equipped pick up truck (which save me tons of time).

I haven’t even had a chance to think about next week’s digitalflood Pirate Radio (that would be “Volume 6 Episode 6” for those of you who like numbers). I can tell you it will be out on 2/16/10 though actual recording still has to happen. I may be able to get MC Mary to do the next episode (Volume 6 Episode 7) as she’s stopping by next week.

Other than that all is well at the Pirate Radio if not a bit quite. I am right now in conversation about a pretty cool project that if it pans out I’ll let you know about. I’m looking to do a remix album and we’ll see where that goes.

Finally, DJ A.D.D. has been kind enough to loan me an Akai controller pad, which I have yet to hook up. When I do (most likely this weekend) I’m hoping to see if I can use it trigger samples and queue points in Virtual DJ. If not it may be time to learn Traktor (I’ve been holding out). We’ll see how that goes.

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DF Pirate Radio – “2 am Underground”

Title: Vol. 6 Episode 5 (Click link to play) Rel: 2/9/10
Description:2 am Underground” – There is a certain something to being in a dance club at 2 am in the morning. The best music plays. The craziest times happen. And there’s just some extra “stupid” in there air that makes it all that and a bag chips. This episode is dedicated to that moment and that feeling, which DJ digitalflood manages to somehow bottle, encode into an mp3, and upload to df.com for your listening pleasure. The result is pure underground dance club bliss. Total run time is just over an hour. The mix is laden with hip hop, trance, industrial, dance pop, and some surprises as wekk. All in DJ digitalflood’s pure “Cut Like Crack” mixing style. So turn down the lights. Break out some bubbly. Put on “Get Out” on HDNET with the sound down. Turn up your speakers and prepare to make your neighbors call into the police a noise violation complaint. It simply doesn’t get much better than this.
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Me Verses I

You may have noticed that “digitalflood Pirate Radio Volume 6 Episode 5” isn’t out yet. That’s because this week has been the absolute week from Hell at work. I’ve come home every night completely tired and there is no way I was digging into mixing it. So, I’m taking this week off. I’ll be back next week with this episode and from there get things back on track, but for this week– yeah I need some quite time to relax. I’m sure you understand. The next episode will be out on 2/9/10.

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