bringing home the bacon

here is a quick guide to something a lot of people have asked about: the bacon test. this is a quick test to see if something you've made or bought is a good candidate to be implanted inside you somewhere. it's a way of checking how good the bioproofing on whatever you're testing is - so you can use it to test items you've bought from wherever, especially if they're not generally meant to be implanted anywhere, or on items you made yourself, which is where the test becomes much more useful and important. there's no need to bacon test something like Steve Haworth's magnets or Amal's chips, for example, but i wouldn't skip testing on things i've made or modified myself. i did that once and it's resulted in a weird janky looking giant lump on the finger i put the component in, plus a completely broken implant of course. (more on failures at the end of this post.)

passing this test doesn't mean your implant definitely will succeed in vivo, but it means it's worth trying. once again i am no doctor and none of this constitutes either medical advice or me telling you to go put things inside you.

things you need before you can do the test:
- your component
- your coating material

okay so first up you coat up your component. here a busted RFID field detecting LED sticker from Dangerous Things is standing in for ours, which in your test can be anything you want or are experimenting with, really. i'm coating it with plain old hot glue.

things you need for the test:
- a piece of pork or bacon that you don't mind throwing away (this here is a gone-off pork steak, but normally i use bacon.)
- hand sanitiser / gloves
- tweezers if your meat piece is very thick
- sharp knife, ditto
- cling film

procedure
here's the coated up component, ready to be inserted.

sanitise your hands or put your gloves on and get your piece of meat ready. it might need washing or cleaning off or whatever. here's mine - it's a pork steak, and if it hadn't gone off it would've been delicious.

make an incision as shown. if you're using a bacon rasher, that might not be possible. with those you just roll up the component inside the rasher, putting it at the centre of the layers so it's as deep inside the meat as possible (hurr hurr.)

put the component inside using your tweezers if you need them. if you've a thick bit, it helps to make the cut at an angle so you can put the component under the little flap it creates.

once this is done, you wrap the meat up in cling film and store it in the fridge for a week or so. after enough time has elapsed, you get it back out, unwrap / unroll it and have a good close look at the component. if it's rusty or discoloured under the coating in any way, it's failed. if nothing looks wrong, it will need re-sterilising before you put it into yourself anywhere, so i recommend doing this test on a second device or failing that, doing it only once you've sorted out a good means of sterilisation such as Milton solution, ethanol, etc. failure means that if you do implant it, it's likely to get encapsulated; as i said, i did this years ago in a really dumb kind of "nah, it'll be fine" moment with a homebrew magnetic node implant.

here's the result as it looks today: you can see the dark mass of where the implant used to be, which is the neodymium core all broken down from where my tissue reacted and attacked it. it's very much bigger than the original implant too, which is because your body doesn't just break substances like Nd down but also coats them in a giant ball of scar tissue if it cannot push them out of the site. you really don't want this to happen - not only will your device not work, but the place you put it in could potentially be ruined, especially if it's a sensitive site like your fingertips. also it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing to have big giant lumps of stuff stuck to you. they don't hurt, but they do look pretty gross. learn from my mistakes, sibs. i am the biohacking Goofus to your Gallant.

hope this has helped a few of you perform your own weird experiments. thanks to everyone who helps make mine possible - i know you've wanted personal updates, so these are coming in a separate post. carpe corporem

L

upcoming

i figured i should probably let you all know what i'm actually doing so you can poke me if i don't seem to be alive anymore. there's three things that have been on the back burner for way too long due to crappy health and crappy IRL stuff that i'm now working on as "resurrected projects":

- an implantable haptic compass (the 'Southpaw' project). an extremely kind person has helped me get enough together that i can now start looking around for hardware and a microprocessor - i know i've said this before but to that person, thankyou from the bottom of my shrivelled up little heart. you have helped so much & i would not be able to get any prototyping off the ground without you. to the engineer that commented re. what components might work best: thankyou also! that was really useful info & i will post a proper reply to you soon.

- proper instructions for how to manufacture / acquire / install nodes. i've had to hold back on this one because of some ethical problems brought up by two different people irl: the issue was more or less, is it right to give people these instructions when they don't have any experience with this sort of thing & may therefore do serious damage to themselves? i.e. if someone uses my instructions to try and install their own, fucks it up hardcore, loses a fingertip to sepsis and then blames the fuck out of me, is it actually my fault in a moral sort of sense? legally i am pretty sure it wouldn't be (but not completely sure, to be fair) but i have had to have a couple of long discussions about the whole thing (i also mentioned it to Kevin Warwick, whose take on it was pretty good advice.) in the end i decided it goes against my principles to withhold information deliberately, even if that info could possibly be dangerous. i believe we all have the right to use our bodies as we choose, even if that means we get hurt. i'm going to release the procedures with as much "safety information" as i can come up with - meaning i need to put in a lot more stuff about possible pain control, spotters, aftercare, what to do if it goes majorly wrong, etc etc.

- i'm also screwing around with this new XNT chip. nothing really new there but could get some videos up for you all or something. i'm not sure what apps exist for NFC devices - i've got a phone that's compatible but all i found so far is Dangerous NFC for protecting the tags and TagWriter for messin' with em. there's probably a lot more out there. it'd be nice to have something protecting my logins again, been a long time since i had that keyboard that required my tag to be present before it would let Windows log in.

- Paul's documentary is still chugging along as ever & will be available in late September this year. it ought to be pretty good i think; he's a damn good filmmaker.

i'll be at my parents' over the weekend coming up (Fri 16.6 to Mon 19.6) but will probably drag machine with me. have fun on Father's Day

cc

L

recent escapades

recent experiments seem to suggest the possibility of using acetone to dissolve various RFID and contactless devices to gain useful components. i also found the local Rag Market selling 100% acetone for cheapsies, which is always good. by "useful" i do of course mean "useful for installing beneath one's sliced open and surgically retracted flesh in order to further one's admittedly bizarre experimentation". biggest problem right now is making coiled-copper antennae, which are very delicate, suitable for implantation (i.e. bioproof) whilst still retaining functionality. it seems that a square shape, not filled in in the middle, with the chip connected to the coil on the outside (and the whole thing coated in whatever) is the best proto-dealio to be manufacturing, as it seems like that's the most stable construct that maintains the original shape of the device somewhat but also has the smallest surface area. as everyone probably figured out by now, items with a small surface area are far more likely to take beneath the skin than larger ones, and for related reasons, stuff with holes in is better than stuff without, so long as the holes don't compromise the bioproofing (whatever it is you've used for that). but i've had a few failures (conceptual and otherwise) & now need further supplies to fuck with. i'm going to be messing around with a contactless, refillable bus pass they sell around this area of Birmingham this time (sort of like an Oyster card if you're familiar with those). more as it happens / doesn't happen / gets horrifically infected and results in loss of limbs.

in other recent escapades i went with Paul (the documentary bloke!) to the Circus of Horrors a while ago. it was pretty amusing, although the posters led me to expect less than the quantity i actually witnessed of midget cock, balls and/or arsehole (how does he lift that weight, even with what are proportionally rather large tools?!) we accidentally bought VIP tickets and thus Paul calmly appreciated the artistry while i drank both of the little bottles of red wine we were given, plus a complimentary vodka lemonade, and spent most of the evening thinking a mixture of "HAHAHA WOW YAAY" and "I LIEK FISHNETS, I LIEK CORSETS" which i'm pretty sure is exactly what you're supposed to do anyway. it was immensely fun, they gave us free snacks and a tiny box of delicious truffles, and we even got to talk to the ringleader/owner afterwards (i did not say anything retarded, surprisingly.)

while that has exhausted my "fun stuff" budget for a while, i have got some cash left saved for experiments, so worry not. i'm not spending scalpel money on drink like some sort of *crazy person*.

cc

L

chip upgrade

hey all. recently i upgraded my RFID chip to a writable version of the same basic protocol type (close-range passive and if i remember right it's still an EM4102 chip.) it's one of the ones from Dangerous Things (Amaal Graafstra's shop), which i'd happily recommend - he was able to arrange fast shipping, the chip arrived very well protected, etc. i also managed to source a newer, sleeker USB tag reader, although its range is awful compared to my old Phidgets one so i might just carry on using the old one. i even got hold of some topical benzocaine cream which is a first. that stuff was extremely useful & i might have to try it the next time i do any fingertip installations, since a lot of the difficulty with those comes from the pain and the toughness of the fascia in that area - having the area numbed might well mean i can go a bit slower, be a bit more precise with the depth of the needle puncture incision.

i did the chip installation at home, with my standard bleach-and-alcohol treatment for the table i was using and hibiscrub to sterilise the hand alongside sealed tools and glove for the other one. i figured out a long time ago that it's better to use a needle than a scalpel, so in the pix i'm gonna share here you'll see me making the incision with a 4mm sterile piercer's needle blade. i did also acquire two of the weird pre-loaded needle syringes a vet would use to install an animal's ID chip, but those turned out to be difficult to unload (you can't use an animal ID chip on a person cause they're specialised things that hold animal-specific information, can't be overwritten with any other info, and require a specialist reader and software what is very expensive.)

so here's some pix:

the needles and the reader. you can see some of the other gear in the background like the dressings etc.

the anaesthetic cream tubes i was using

preparing to do the incision. i don't have a static photo of when i actually put the bastard in unfortunately but there is video which will be released in one form or another later (see below).

this is the dressed wound; you can see the incision site by where the dot of blood is. i used a steristrip wound closure under there as well just to hold the site as closed as i could but it was pretty much overkill, it was a tiny hole that healed up exceptionally well.

the whole thing is very well healed now, had no healing problems whatsoever, changed dressing daily for a week and then it was pretty much done. the whole procedure was filmed too, by both Paul and some professionals, but i don't know what's happening with that footage so i can't release it to you yet or talk about what it's for. in all likelihood nothing will come of it and i can put Paul's video up here or on rutube for you after i get the go ahead, so watch this space or my twitter & i can let you know what goes down. i'm also currently working on something else, but no point posting about it until i know whether it's a viable experiment or not. if it fails spectacularly i'll post pix of that too just for the lulz.

carpe corporem

L

new year's resolutions

i. never to read threads about myself on other websites
ii. to talk more with my family
iii. to try and set up some sort of Southpaw development space rather than keeping it here, since a blog isn't ideal anymore for the volume of people coming in

any ideas on the latter are welcome.

L

shopping list

so here's the list of components we're gonna need, so far. there might be more; if (as expected) i've forgotten something, let me know in the comments and i'll add it to this post via the handy unmistake button.

miniature Philips compass module
MSP microcontroller
transmitter and receiver coils
+ any required control circuitry
rechargeable lith cell
various wires
Sugru, lots
neuroelectrodes, 8 or 16 depending on price
solder
surgical supplies as usual (dressings, suture kit, etc.)
anaesthetic (lidocaine + sterile vials), needles & syringes

once this is complete, i can start deciding what i'm gonna build/test first and we can lay out a prototype diagram. whee.

L

borg schmorg

first of all, two or three people have asked me what my IQ is again, and for what i wish would be the last time, it's 145 - least, it was the last time i got tested. in actuality that means it could be anywhere from 135 to 155, not that the latter's likely. IQ is a pretty worthless way of measuring intelligence, in any case, and likely i'd do no better in terms of real intelligence than someone who routinely scores 100.

secondly, Borg, schmorg. i don't believe in forcing modifications on anyone.

i get some really stupid emails.

this post's actual purpose, of course, is to provide a space for us to discuss the current design of the subdermal Northpaw. right now, mine is:

MSP microcontroller with custom software
ring of 8 neuroelectrodes around ankle
Philips compass module
transmitter coil
lotsa wires

i am going to take this mess, and by Carl Sagan i am going to make it work. this is where you all come in.

BEGIN.

L

test nodes: result so far

looks like this:


zoom:



that's all for tonight. will keep the blog updated (okay, will try and will finally do it when endless email slews up about it) with the situation on the node; it's still hot as fuck and painful to touch, but not as much so as before. remember, no matter how much of a doughy Caucasian loser with nasty pallid skin and too many scars you are, the machines will always love you.

...wait.


L

HE'S OKAY, FOLKS!

sorry for the loss of updates, guys. my lack of medication is making it pretty hard to function. fortunately i see the doc tomorrow, and i should be alright after that.

the lumps are both fine - it's official, after about 4 weeks of waiting Sugru seems to be compatible in practice with the human body. there's been no itching, bruising or what have you, no irritation or leaking. it sealed up in about two days and has been peachy ever since.

some notes: i made the Sugru lump too big, and so it looks incredibly fucking nasty right now cause you can see this massive fucking thing on the back of my hand. i also made the hot-glue lump too small in my ever-flowing fucking wisdom, and i shit you not i have lost it. i don't know where in my hand that fucker migrated to, but it sure as shit isn't where i put it anymore. it seems to be non-toxic too, as expected.

i also can't find the Crackberry cable anywhere. fucking photos. i will get them to you guys if it kills me.

so, i got my scalpel handle and a shit ton of antiseptic for the real op, which is next on Lepht's Happy Fun List of Pain. i've got like two thousand hospital-standard bacteria-killer wipes as well, plus some proper finger bandages and another big fuckoff needle, and some sterile surgeon's gloves (latex-free, motherfuckers!) for once rather than crappy exam ones. i will see if anyone in the house has a cam i can use, otherwise you'll be getting crappy Crackberry footage, but there will be footage.

and i hereby grant you all permission to fuck with me mercilessly until i remember to update the blog. jesus, i suck at life sometimes.

L

progress bar

no infection or irritation so far; in fact the site's doing pretty well, although i had to put superglue out of the toolbox in it yesterday. if all is still calm by next week, i will take it that Sugru doesn't cause major immediate damage to the interior of the human body, although it could still be damaging in the long-term. i'm not so bothered about that, since anything that fucked me up over a long period of time has historically been detected by people giving me biopsies and scans and shit and sliced the fuck out before it could do any real damage.

if it works, then, i'll probably use the sugru to coat up both the parts of the modified Northpaw for implantation and two plain pieces of Nd in order to complete my array. i have the node that came out of my hand the other day ready for re-insertion, but i'm waiting on supplies.

and i'm scared shitless of how much it's gonna hurt, of course. i'll have a spotter to video that one. pictures of the blob-siting tonight with any luck.

L

blobs sited

i didn't manage to get the crackberry filming (too hard to rig a position where its tiny field of view can see enough shit - needs someone holding it), but i did take pictures. i'll be posting them up as soon as i can get them off that fucking excuse for a phone. (at least it isn't a fucking iPhone, i guess.) also if anyone knows of a good way to zero-fill or strip the EXIF data, i'd appreciate the entire technically-savvy biohacker underground not getting hold of my crackberry PIN.

experimental blobs of bright fucking orange Sugru and freshly melted hot-glue are now present in a gaping wound in the back of my hand, no anaesthesia required. i have filled said wound with ethanol. i dunno exactly how long it'll be until we see whether or not they'll decay, but i'm sure i'll find out.

irritatingly i snicked the node when i was getting it out, and although the gold appears unscratched, there's a big fuckoff hole in the silicon. i intend to hotglue that shut and all, once i'm sure it's sterile (it's sitting in the fridge in a coffee cup full of industrial bleach, HiBiScrub and surgical spirit, where it'll remain until at least tomorrow.) cross your fucking fingers, fellow hackers.

(brb, hospital.)

L

shit, i had that blog

okay, my exams are over with for this year and i return to the world of the living from my exile in badly-made pptx lecture slides and /b/. i'm alive! i didn't even slice any of my limbs open this time! i haven't been hospitalised once!

so i have some sugru coming in the post in the next couple weeks, anyway. one of you fine gents recommended it to me as a bioproofer, so i figured i'd give it a try - seems like useful shit to have around, anyway. if it doesn't work there's always glue guns.

speaking of which, i have several things on the go this summer, one of which is the continued hackage of the Northpaw; another involves my removing the last experimentally-placed node from the back of my right hand (as stated, it just didn't fucking work out) and re-siting it or attempting to do so in the little finger of the same hand, my left being complete for now. for this i will need some proper surgical sterilisation - TechniCare, ideally - and i'm out. anyone know where to get their grubby biohacker hands on some?

of course, ethanol is fine too. i'd just rather deal with less searing, flesh-burning pain than i need to. might give some lidocaine a shot too, although the doc thinks it won't work in the fingertips (no idea why not). thoughts? you guys want me to video this one?

lastly, my second article for H+ has been taken in and is probably currently getting anal-raped by the copy-editors. expect forthcoming.

L

haptic compass: hardware

i've just recieved a rather large amount of money at an award ceremony, and i know what i'm going to spend it on. food, schmood, because i think i have some better ideas for the control of the haptic compass than using my colleagues' original circuitry, which is rather large.

enter the very tiny MSP430, a little microcontroller i think would do a better job. all i would have to do would be:

- figure out a way to attach the little compass module to the MSP430
- get some fucking neuroelectrodes and attach them to its outputs (jesus christ, but it's hard to get hold of those things)
- bioproof the bundle thereby created (not hard, since all it takes is a hot glue gun)
- stop! scalpel time.

of course, i would also have to program the MSP. i'll need to ask the Noisebridge guys, but i think the logic would go something like this:

while (poweron)
get north direction from compass module;
cast to a degree out of 360;
figure out which electrode's "domain" that number falls into;
activate that electrode;

i'm pretty sure the way to go is to have each electrode responsible for a segment of the compass circle, i.e. 0-45 degrees activates electrode no.1, 45-90 activates no.2, etc. if all went to plan following this design, it'd mean zero transdermal components - the whole thing would be subdermal, which is far easier to keep sterile and far more likely to heal, plus naturally waterproof. it would be a big, big cavity to carve out though; i might need some real anaesthesia.

still, sounds like fun, right guys?

L

i'm retired from the human race

due to the diligence of my newfound readership (hat tip Ian), you can find my queer ass on an obscure YouTube video from last year, hosted under my nasty ex-partner's account. it's about how to insert nodes on the back of your hand, which tbh is a pretty worthless procedure, but someone (i forget) asked me for video.



or you can find it at said abusive's account. bear in mind i haven't spoken to him in a year, so i don't want anyone going all OMG UR EX SENT ITS ARMY HERE CUZ YOUR A CUNT. he is a cunt, but that's beside the point; i was a cunt while we were together as well, albeit less so.

enjoy, marvel, speculate on what the fuck that is on the back of my wrist.

L

evil plan results:

Bond loses. in other news, the implant has healed properly, to my surprise, and is now safely lodged in my left pinky and functioning at what i guess to be about half of its nerve-triggering capacity, based on what the others do.

i'll also be writing another article for H+ as previously hoped, on the ethics, procedures and legality of self-performed surgery (minor). thoughts?

L

i am a stupid stupid motherfucker

the idea came to me on the bus, before i'd remembered exactly how much this sort of shit hurts; i spent last night carving one of the stored/experimental Nd-60s out of my wrist and implanting it with a large-gauge needle and Muad-Dib's help into my left little finger. i don't remember much of the night, since i spent the evening with my hand taped into a ball apart from the victimised digit (which was taped to the table), covered in iodine and HiBi-scrub, drinking Laphroaig and taking pills. at some point i woke to discover myself in bed, having apparently untaped my drugged self and retired three hours prior. i hadn't completed the operation, although i had gotten the stored node out of the back of my wrist, incredibly messily - the wound is huge, since i used a silly little disposable Swann-Morton that wasn't exactly effective. i appear to have overcompensated slightly and made a giant gaping opening too far from the implant, then a secondary one crossing it and a massive fucking hole where i recall having to pull the node out, scraping the surrounding tissue back with the end of a spare blade. turns out the meat doesn't like giving up things that have been placed anywhere but the loose skin of the hands. lesson fucking learned.

having awoken covered in blood and with no memory of the self-mutilating events before like some kind of fucked-up Sleeping Beauty, i shuffled back into the Kitchen of Pain to finish the job. it took me an age to work up enough guts to do it, and that's for a reason; i woke up about an hour ago (fuck yeah, steak for breakfast) and it's still motherfucking throbbing - even with the drugs and the whiskey it was agonising last night. i screamed so hard through the kitchen towel i was biting down on that i woke up my flatmate B, who didn't appreciate it. musta taken us about half a fucking hour - it sure as shit felt like it - to get the fucker in, and when it was done, i don't even remember how i got back into bed. i even dreamed about pain, all these weird-ass visualisations of it.

i woke up this morning to find all my face paint on my arm where i rubbed it off bawling, some unidentified substance on my shirt, my lip split from the screaming and my dressings already filling with blood. Muad-Dib is a little traumatised as well. i'll keep y'all posted on whether the implant takes or not.

trufax: i need to find some better hobbies.

L

plans for the weekend:

i'm informed that normals do things like go out and drink. i intend to drink too, if all goes to plan, since i will be test-implanting a plastic-coated cellphone buzzer from the Northpaw kit into my ankle...

so, i'm gonna go get a hot glue gun, cover the buzzer in waterproof goodness, take a scalpel and shove that sucker in there. also i plan to solder the Northpaw's control board electronics together, design experimentation and sepsis permitting.

also i had something of a psycho bastard episode yesterday; i was almost ready for class, having done my usual faffing about in the morning (take pills, paint C symbols on face, try not to go back to bed because Muad-Dib is still dozing and asking for hugs, spike hair, etc.), and i was running a lil late - about to leave, i discovered i'd lost my phones cable (they're fancy Bose ones i got as a gift last year, so the cable separates from the phones themselves.)

dear reader, i freaked the fuck out, cussin' and kickin' stuff and frantically digging through the debris of dead machines and old clothes that forms drifts in my bedroom, and when Muad-Dib (understandably frightened) got out of bed to come hold me still, i burst into tears like the giant medicated pussy i am. i managed to choke out that the music was what i was using in order to not spazz out in public and smack somebody (not that i'd do much damage, having all the muscle strength of a scotch pie) or end up self-harming or whatever. i refused to go to class, both because of the smeary red-eye face-paint look and the fact that i'd been reduced from a rational human being to a bawling pile of jelly.

i spent the day, in fact, going to find a replacement cable, discovering afterward that the original was in my fucking pocket, scaring normals in a coffee shop, missing three fucking lectures and a BCS seminar i desperately wanted to go to, cleaning house in order to not feel like a useless cunt (didn't work), eating purloined Starbucks cheesecake, and shaving my head.

yes, i cope with mental ill-health just as badly as Britney fucking Spears.

ergo i am now utterly bald, and have painted various things in metallic green on my skull for shits and giggles. jesus, people didn't wanna sit next to me before, they're sure as shit not gonna want to now. happy weekend, everyone.

L

an announcement:

i have joined the ranks of bored white Westerners hopped up on happy pills to relieve them of the relentless misery of their grindingly, excruciatingly tedious little lives. this might go horribly wrong. we'll see.

interesting quotes from the patient information:

"Effects when treatment is stopped: Do not stop taking the tablets suddenly."
"Drinking alcohol is not recommended while being treated."
"The following side effects have been reported: ...spontaneous production of breast milk, inability to achieve orgasm, seizures, loss of memory, loss of identity, unusual bleeding..."

wat

in other news, i have recieved my Northpaw and a fresh shipment of solder, and now need to start bioproofing the components. in my own loserish biohacker way, i will probably end up encasing them in hot-gun glue as an initial prototype - that shit is bizarrely resilient to human flesh... need a gun from somewhere though. i'm also gonna have a problem powering the thing. gonna need to dissect a kinetic-powered watch, i think, and steal the little lightweight gyro.

and in other other news, i continue to resist the temptation to ask my pathologically competitive, partner-punching ex W3dyt exactly how his campaign to 'beat' me is going, since i hear enough hilarious third-party criticism of him without any input on my part. in the corridor outside Knowledge Based Systems: "He looks like a girl." "Yeah, but a really ugly girl." much lulz. i look forward to the team project results.

(i also look back with glee on that time i caught my medical bracelet on his chest dermal and ripped the sucker out. in retrospect, that was rather gratifying.)


L

implant synergy, part 1: reed sensors

a reed sensor is a little component that detects the presence or absence of a magnet. i've been blethering with a colleague about using them in conjunction with the magnets in my hands - it has interesting applications; like if you had three of them (say two on your keyboard and one on the monitor of your laptop) you could use them to interpolate the position of your hands in real time. that is, you could program the laptop to only switch the backlight on when you're actually using it, or to lock the screen as soon as you step away.

what's even cooler is that you can factor in the RFID chip in my hand, too. that is, you could program the book not just to only let people in when they show an RFID tag with my hex code, but also to then make sure they have the same magnetic configuration i do (which would be pretty hard to fake.)

i'm gonna have to get some of these things to play with. sayonara, wages.

legality vs. morality

so you're all aware my hobby is a little liminal when it comes to the legal system. the law's unclear as to what it's permissible to do to myself; i can't, as it turns out, do anything to anyone else that involves implants without being in deep, deep shit.

i didn't think i'd find this out by being tattled on. it's not worth my ass to blog about who did it; wouldn't matter much anyway what with this being a dusty little backwater Googlecorner, and i've got a sword over my head now. for the meantime, i don't know whether i'm going back to jail, and the one source of neodymiums there is - Trust, in Mannheim - has stopped exporting to Britain, making the single component i have left the last remaining one on the island. the one consequence that's definitely come outta this snafu is that i will never have a test subject who isn't me again.

before this starts to look too wangsty, let me get into my actual point.

i seem to be such an arrogant cunt that i consider myself above the law, i know, but that isn't actually what's going on in my head; i don't think the law was ever designed for what i'm doing. my attempts at lobbying came to an impasse when i was told to fuck off (because i'm an unqualified peasant and therefore don't get to discuss) by my MSP's office; in my mind, my implants did no lasting or unwanted harm to anyone. they don't violate the Golden Rule, and as such, shouldn't be illegal. i figured i and my buddies had the right to do whatever non-Rule-violating shit we wanted to ourselves.

well, some people don't agree with me, and in the name of doing the right thing, snitched. what i'm interested in is whether i or they are in the right; i'm pretty obviously biased in favour of it being me, and seeing as the one who informed the big guns was someone who previously worked shoulder-to-shoulder with me down in the H+ underground, so to speak, someone who i thought was with me ideologically as well as practically, i'm in no fit state to judge.

on the one hand, i probably did all of my transhumanist stuff up until now in the legal no-man's-land of badly defined prohibitions, and if i get taken to court, i'll have no choice but to plead guilty to whatever they charge me with. i'm fairly sure that the law is not on my side; my whistle-blower assured me that many other people agreed i should be exposed to the authorities and that it was right to go to them.

in addition, other people tell me the laws are intended to stop people from burdening the NHS with their homebrew fuckups. having experienced such fuckups and strived to not do it again, i understand that concern. i can't figure out whether a nanny-state law to prevent us hurting ourselves, NHS or none, is a good idea or not, nor whether there is one as regards implants.

on the other, i thought i had a right to personal bodily sovereignty; none of the components or tools i used are illegal; i never masqueraded as a professional i'm not, i charged no money or trade, and i hurt nobody. if my transhumanist dabblings are a crime, i don't know who the victim is.

the debate in my head has shifted from just Is it right to do these things to yourself? to also include the question, Is it and should it be legal? right now, i'm also wondering Was it wrong to do implants for a consenting, informed friend?

i guess they boil down to Does legality trump my personal ethics, or vice versa?

right now, i don't know. i'll be waiting to see what everyone else decides.