If you are a therapist working toward graduation or licensure and would like your school’s or states requirements to be officially supported send an email to support[at]therapyhourstracker.com and let us know.

Just released a website that I’ve been working on for a number of months now.  It’s a site for therapists-in-training to use to track their client-contact and supervision hours (for those not in the know, these are hours they have to accumulate to graduate and then get their license).  The student enters her hours week-by-week and the site generates a timeline with averages for how many hours of each kind (individual, relational, video supervision, etc.) she needs to be earning in order to graduate and get her license on time.  It also has a section that allows her to generate reports for any time range.  Many sites and schools require monthly hours reports and THT generates these very quickly and easily (and by site too!).  In the next update we plan to roll-out printing of hours reports forms that will be acceptable at most internship sites and university/college programs.

Right now Therapy Hours Tracker is geared mainly toward MFT (marriage and family therapy) students/associated in NY state though it is flexible enough to work for many other states as well.  In the near future we’ll be expanding the format to be customizable for MSW (masters in social work) and others.

It’s getting a really great response in the therapy community.  I’m glad it’s going to be helpful.

Monday 26 april therapyhourstracker.com A new website for therapists-in-training. – Record Your Hours – Track Your Progress – Create Reports Therapy Hours Tracker gives you the tools you need to take control of your hours. Know where you stand and stay on schedule for graduation and licensure. Visit the website for more information and to create an account (it’s free and easy!) Now you’re in control of your future. Record Your Hours Track Your Progress Create Reports Therapy Hours Tracker service and Web site © 2010 JSLEUTH LLC, All Rights Reserved.

mysqldump -u username -ppassword -h  www.databasehost.com --all-databases | gzip >  /home/user/backups/mysql_`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`.sql.gz
echo | mutt -a backups/mysql_`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`.sql.gz   email@address.com

You’ll need to replace the generic names with your specifics (In the first line: username, password, www.databasehost.com with the login information for your mysql database.  /home/user/backups should become an existing directory on your server where you want to store the dumped files. In the second line backups/ should be the same directory on your server that you saved the dumped file to and email@address.com should be replaced with your email address).

The first line dumps and gzips the database into a file with today’s date in the name (line ends with the first ‘.sql.gz’ and a carriage return).  The second line uses mutt to send me an email with the dumped file as an attachment.

Doesn’t get much cooler than that.

It’s donationware so send them some beer money if it’s useful to you.

#!/bin/bash
svn status | grep '^?' | sed -e 's/^? /svn add "/g' -e 's/$/"/g' | sh
svn status | grep '^!' | sed -e 's/^! /svn delete "/g' -e 's/$/"/g' | sh

Truly a timesaver.

With BC/BS and Aetna we never had any trouble with claims.  Any needed procedure was reimbursed, virtually no questions asked.  With United, Every. Single. Thing. Has been like pulling teeth.  Even worse, like pulling teeth and finding out tooth-pulling is not reimbursable, even though the plan says it’s covered.  It only gets worse when you take in to account the fact that the company the rely on to establish standards such as “reasonable and customary rates” is a company they own.  The New York Times estimates United has “…systematically underpaid New Yorkers for medical services by 10 percent to 28 percent…“.

Obviously, it would be oversimplifying to say United is the worst healthcare insurance ever.  All I’m saying is choose Blue Cross / Blue Shield or Aetna first if you have any choice in the matter.

But sometimes I feel I was meant for much more than this. I long to serve a higher cause. To make a meaningful contribution to the global community that has already given me so much.  To unite humanity by creating a work of such genius that every soldier would put down his weapons and embrace his brothers and sisters.

And then I remember.  I have.  But don’t take my word for it:

Time and time and time again this masterpiece has been referred to as, “…obviously inspired by…”,  “wow, that was pretty…”, and “most annoying commercial ever.”

However, I cannot take full credit for the brilliance of this work.  I merely wrote the song that drives it and recorded and edited James’ brilliant voiceover performance.  The original idea wasn’t even mine, it was the creative guys over at Euro that dreamt up this bad boy.  World peace, after all, sometimes takes a group effort.

So if you are ever feeling depressed and hopeless, just remember you have the power to remove limescale.

If you’re like me and are inspired by scientific and technological advances and bleeding-edge knowledge of our universe and human-kind, you will love ted.com. Whenever I’m unimpressed with the world and its inhabitants (especially myself) I go to ted.com, and it always manages to impress me. TED reminds me that anything is possible if we can dream it and commit to making it real.

TED.com has hundreds of free videos featuring innovative speakers from each field. Almost all the talks are fascinating–even if the subject matter doesn’t interest me I usually can’t help but be drawn in by the speaker’s passion.

Here are the ten best talks:

• The Human Brain
  • NEW:  Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist, gives an insightful, provocative, funny, impressive talk to Stanford graduates.  He focuses on the unexpected areas where humans are just like other animals, and even more unexpected areas where we’re one of the unique-e-er species on the planet.  Wonderful.
  • Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who suffered a massive stroke. She describes what it was like to be conscious during the stroke, watching parts of her brain shut down. Truly amazing.
  • Jeff Hawkins (developer of the Palm and Treo) talks about brain theory. Fascinating arguments such as, intelligence is not indicated by behavior, but by prediction. Great, fast-paced talk.
  • Vilayanur Ramachandran talks about brain damage and novel ways to cure some of the problems that arise. Quite an innovative thinker.
• Technology and Scientific Frontiers
  • Kevin Kelly, executive editor at Wired Magazine (my favorite ever) describes his vision of the singularity and what will happen in the next 5,000 days of the web. Very exciting.
  • J. Craig Venter works on creating the first synthetic lifeforms. Yeah… pretty cool, pretty scary.
  • Johnny Lee demonstrates revolutionary and inexpensive new uses for the Nintendo Wii-mote.
• Music and Art
  • Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, talks about classical music, leadership, and going home. Truly inspirational.
  • Alison Jackson hires look-alike celebrities and photographs them in compromising acts and scandalous situations. Fascinating dissection of the meaning of celebrity.
  • JJ Abrams, director, writer, producer (Lost, Alias, Cloverfield), talks about mystery, imagination, creativity, and a gift from his grandfather that he will never open.