Subtle Guru

Food budgets - an accidental lesson in diet

2012-02-15T17:24:00.001Z

Nearly two months ago the confluence of two events led me on a journey of discovery about myself I didn't even know I was embarking on. These two events included; being asked what I had eaten for breakfast at the start of a course I was attending - I had had nothing but felt it easier to lie to fend off the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" rejoinder and the serendipitous introduction of a smart phone calorie counter application in my life. These two independent events initiated a series of lifestyle changes I wasn't looking for, didn't think I needed yet have had a profound impact on my life.

In a nut shell I have lost 8 kg (17.6lbs) in 8 weeks, cured myself of chronic heartburn and developed an ability to run between 5 to 10 km daily. This has been encouraged and fostered by measurement and feedback - not unlike how the consumption graph on your car's dashboard encourages more fuel efficient driving.

Let me get something out the way before I begin to explain myself - for much of my life I have typically eaten anything I wanted with the only consideration being cost. Over the last two years I have moved to the top of my BMI range from somewhere in the middle. I would have been oblivious to this except that I had also changed from the 32" waist to a 34" waist. This all occurs slowly, with stealth and in a manner that leads one to suspect that clothes are shrinking, that clothing manufacturers are changing their designs and sizing templates. With such naivety I can hardly describe myself as a life coach or nutritionist so feel free to ignore or dismiss my lessons as not applying to your particular circumstances. I also would not be surprised is my lessons are already outlined in numerous dietary books and self help programs but if so I haven't read them - ironically I am not that interested.

So Lesson one: "We generally are rubbish at predicting calorie counts for the food we eat"

Using MyFitnessPal I either scanned various products bar codes, or read the nutritional information, to see how accurately I could predict how many calories it contained. I was rubbish at this - so rubbish that I might as well have just picked a random number.

So Lesson two: "Know what your food calorie budget is"

This is where the accidental lesson began. I set a target to loose 7kg (13lbs). I wasn't particularly concerned with how quickly this happened just that it would eventually happen. Based on a weight loss of 1lbs (0.45Kg) per week I set myself a target of of 1700 calories a day. Not only had I never before been on any diet of any kind, I had no idea how much food this was.

So Lesson three: "Know what many calories are burnt when exercising"

Now if one is typically eating in excess of 2000 calories a day you will be hungry if you cut back. When living off a financial budget you don't just have to limit what you buy, you can also find ways to earn more. Equally with calorific budgets - the secret is exercise. If you want to eat 2300 calories a day then ensure that you exercise for 600 calories. In my case this equates to 40 minute run.

So Lesson four: "Weight change is related to calories consumed less calories burned"

We typically perform financial budgets on a monthly basis but food budgets are best done on a daily basis. The amount you exercise today effects the amount to can eat today. Using this approach you can increase or decrease your exercise on a daily basis to account for the meal out or drinks you are having after work.

I believe the Atkins and Paleo diets are short sighted for the following reasons:

They tell you what to eat instead of equipping you with the knowledge needed to modify your lifestyle.
Saying you must NOT eat some foods but can eat as much as you want of other foods is not sustainable in the long term. It is like deciding you will save money by only buying "yellow or red" items. You will save money briefly on some impulse purchases but ultimately you will fold and abandon this crazy, illogical approach to economy.
Palaeolithic people spent lots of time and effort gathering food and surviving. They had shorter lives and spent much of their time in an urgent quest for food.
They are diet fads, followed by purveyors of pseudo science and those who care more to make a quick buck on a diet program than your health.
Any diet fad that denies lesson four is a pseudo science.

There is no magic involved in loosing weight - you either eat fewer calories, exercise more or better yet both. Why waste time and often money on crazy diet plans that are not designed to modify your eating and exercising habits for life? It is not a healthy strategy to adopt these high protein, low carbohydrate diets over an extended period of time so why adopt them for even a short period of time.

So Lesson five: "Eat what you like most and is healthy BUT stay within your calorific budget"

When forced to eat within a caloric limit I became very discerning about what I ate. Was the fudge brownie ice-cream (260 calories) preferable to a chocolate fudge cake (270 calories) or indeed a 2 finger Kit-Kat (107 calories). My choice might change on a daily basis but as I control what I eat I can weigh up pleasure and impact on my limited budget.

So Lesson six: "Eat breakfast"

Over a number of days I noticed that on days that I had larger breakfast I would eat less at lunch time and less in the evening. For many years I have skipped both lunch and breakfast and then had a large evening meal. This meal is typically equivalent to all the calories I eat spread over the entire day. However when you are really, really hungry you don't make rational choices about what you eat and thus eat the easiest and quickest food. This is usually not conducive to healthy eating.

Since eating breakfast and hence less in the evening I no longer suffer heart burn, a problem that has plagued me for the last couple of years. This was sometimes so bad that I would wake up in the night in absolute agony. I haven't experienced this once in the last 8 weeks.

So Lesson seven: "Abandon foods that can be avoided with only short term discomfort but with long term benefits"

When making financial savings it is better to reduce your ongoing costs instead of once off costs. Likewise it is better to give up full cream milk or sugar in coffee instead of a rejecting a slice of Xmas cake. The former choice will save you calories for the rest of your life while the later can be offset by either exercise or another once off food sacrifice - you decide.

Lastly Lesson eight: "Use geeky tools to make it fun - the data doesn't lie"

With smart phones it is easier than ever to monitor what you eat. It is often as simple as scanning the bar code of the snack or food you have eaten see MyFitnessPal . It is also easy to automatically log your exercise using applications such as RunKeeper. This will map your route, distance and calories burned based on the speed, distance and elevation. Using these tools has been been informative, relatively easy and resulted in me loosing 8 kg (17.6lbs) in 8 weeks that has included Xmas and new year.

The Unintended Consequences of Moving Into the Cloud

2012-01-16T22:50:00.000Z

One of my new year’s resolutions was to become more virtual and less tangible - both concepts I am afraid I’ll need to explain. For several years I have purchased newspapers several times a week, most recently from the corner store, but for long periods delivered to our door if we could be assured that it would arrive before we left for work. Morning news is old news by the evening.

We have previously bought music on iTunes, at least until we as a family fell out of love with Apple. We have bought music and books from Amazon, even relying on Amazon prime for cheap and fast physical delivery. We have received two DVDs, and later blu-ray discs, on a weekly basis from LoveFilm and somewhat less frequently when we were busy or the disc selection was, in retrospect a horrible mistake. There were many of these mistakes and they would sit under the TV taunting us to either watch them or admit defeat and return them unwatched.

This has all changed. Some of the changes are good, some bad and some of the consequences are surprising and unintended.

My to-do/resolution list included the following;

subscribe to digital editions of newspapers only

throw out all my music collection, it was not that big anyway and it was to much work to collate it, music was lost between devices.

cancel the dvd/blu-ray by post deal. Those return envelopes drive me crazy.

This list has given rise the following actions:

Upgraded the broadband connection from 30Mb to 100Mb - cost £10 more per month

Subscribed to Kindle edition of Guardian - cost £9.99 per month - savings of about £19 per month.

Upgraded to Spotify Premium - free for six months with broadband upgrade deal - thereafter £9.99.

Subscribed to Netflix streaming and cancelled LoveFilm postal subscription - a saving of £2.00 per month.

Moved to a cloud backup solution - perpetual backup of new and modified files - no cost, included with the broadband package

A savings of £11 per month.

Although we have been doing this for less than a month it is clear that there are some distinct advantages. Notably Annalise and I each get to read the paper on the kindle and tablet devices as early as we can open our eyes each morning. Reading the "paper" (will the term have any meaning in the future?) on these devices at the breakfast table amongst the coffee, bagels and cereal bowls is much easier as it takes up little space and the cat appears to be less inclined to pounce on it.

The side effects are surprising - I visit the corner store less often - in fact I have yet to visit them this year. There is no negotiation with others for the various sections of the paper. There are thus no impulse purchases resulting in healthier eating and fewer arguments, at least about who gets which section of the paper. I do however feel less connected to the local community as we have previously interacted with the people working in the corner store. Also, in a twisted sense of logic, because our recycling bin is half empty at the end of week it actually feels less green.

Two of our kids have had jobs delivering papers. Is this one job, open to 13 year olds, destined to go they way of the chimney sweep?

The use of Spotify has increased the extent to which we listen to music. We share the account within the family and thus share and exchange play lists. The music no longer resides on individual iPhone, Android or computers but is cloud based and accessible by everyone. We do make offline play-lists an these are downloaded to the device, so that when we are going on car trips or holiday we don’t need to stream music over expensive or non-existent mobile data streams. This whole experience has been extremely successful. The only negative is that the Spotify premium only allows one device on-line and active at a time and this means that when Annalise and I are jogging I usually need to put my phone in "airplane" mode.

The LoveFilm operating model allows for several queues to be managed by different members of the family. While we see movies in the theatre about one or twice a month we add current movies to the LoveFilm queue and then, surprise surprise, they arrive several months later when they are released on DVD. We often received discs we no longer wanted or had seen in the interim. Having two discs in the house meant that these were chosen by at most two people and invariably they were Shrek 2 and Shrek 3, actually this only occurred once after which we banned Sophie from going near the disc queues.

Worse was when one started the movie and then decided it wasn’t worth continuing we had nothing else to watch. I am a great believer that time is far to precious to waste watching a poor movie. So how does changing to a “watch instantly” model alter the dynamics? For one there is less to watch. Netflix doesn't have my favourite movie “Amelie” nor many others. It does has lots to watch though and one chooses them as you sit down to watch with everyone present. This is much more democratic and spontaneous. It is also cheaper and better yet we share it with Emily while she is at University. It also streams to our phones, tablets, computers and of course the TV. We get less post and we never visit the post box any more. Of course this is Royal Mail's loss.

I have been struck by the implications for society if everyone were to do what we have done. The postal service would carry less post and the postman visit us less. Corner stores would do less business and may well go out of business. We would see less of others in our street. I should note that we always do our grocery shopping on line and it is very seldom that we visit a physical supermarket.

We have a wall in the lounge devoted to books, we love books. However the reading experience of electronic books on the kindle is very good and in some way preferable to a physical book. But what about the book shelves? Are they destined to carry books from a special era seen as quaint by future generations?

We are not throwing out the paper books and in fact over Christmas we gave each other more paper books than e-books but the tide is turning and we are spending less and less on paper and more money on e-books. It worries me that these books in kindle format and they are propriety and non-transferable though. Again each e-book purchased is one less parcel delivered through the post.

Is it inevitable that we while becoming more connected with people on the virtual world we will become less connected with those within our physical community?

O2 Wifi Hotspot Insanity

2010-10-31T12:36:00.012Z

I have been frustrated on each occasion over the last three months that I have visited a public wifi hotspot. Frustrated because while I have been paying O2 for wifi access it hasn't worked ever since I upgraded my iPhone for an Android HTC Desire (see the backstory).

More generally my problems have been, the inability to "merge" two or more calls into a single conference and more significantly an error message each time I attempted to access to a BT Openzone hotspot or a Cloud hotspot.

I have had a complaint with O2 for many weeks and have provided details to numerous people but received little help.

A few weeks ago I did resolve the merge call problem. The solution to this is that O2 only provide this on their iPhone tariff. Changing back to the iPhone tariff, from a same priced smartphone tariff, resolved this immediately. They don't admit this anywhere but this was the only change required. Suffice to say that an iPhone is not required but the standard iPhone "bolt on" tariff includes the merge call feature and other tariffs do not. No-one I ever spoke to at O2 understands this. Hopefully this will save some-one else some grief.

Regarding the wifi access, my fix is to change the the user agent string so that the browser reports itself as an iPhone.

The default user agent reports

"Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-gb; HTC Desire Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1"

This clearly identifies the phone as an Android HTC Desire. Changing the user agent string to the same as the iPhone gives

"Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16"

This can be trivially changed under Android Froyo version by typing in "about:debug" in the location bar of the stock browser and then selecting menu -> Settings -> UAString and then selecting iPhone.

This works for both the Cloud and BT Openzone hotspots. This is only required to register the device for the first time. Thereafter the MAC address is recorded and access is automatically granted to future connections. This problem has cost me many hours of phone calls and numerous cups of coffee in various hotspots to resolve. It is good that the solution is so simple but annoying that O2 themselves were never able to resolve it.

Using the iPhone user agent string is likely to be only appropriate for customers on the iPhone tariff but I believe that O2 checks for only a small, exact, set of user agent strings during the hotspot registration process. Thus if you get an error across all hotspots then it may be that the user agent reported is not one that O2 is looking for. This is a system that is so brittle and error prone that they should at least have the appropriate logging in place to diagnose these problems but alas they don't.

I hope this helps someone avoid some of the frustration I went through.

update - 4 Nov 2010

O2 has offered a £30 goodwill credit for my trouble.

On Book Burning and a World Gone Mad

2010-09-11T10:04:00.003+01:00

The on-off plan to burn a bunch of copies of the Koran on 9/11 by members of the misnamed "Dove World Outreach Center" led by pastor Terry Jones has sparked almost universal condemnation.

The act is provocative, arrogant and naive and I have little respect for the right wing, religious fanatics behind this. Various responses have been proposed for dealing with this act and the inevitable backlash including; banning it, stopping media coverage of it and protesting against it.

What I don't understand is this medieval belief that burning any book can somehow threaten any religion. Books contains ideas and a narrative that cannot be destroyed by burning a copy. Burning copies of the Koran, the Bible, the Talmud or Darwin's Origin of the Species can only have a impact when people are denied or prevented from studying these texts for themselves. Clearly this is not the case here.

Imagine a very different response to the current crisis, one occurring in a parallel universe. One in which Bibles, the Talmud and other "sacred" texts are all burnt alongside the Koran. The burning ceases to be a sectarian act and becomes as impotent as the burning of the catholic Guy Fawkes on the 5th November each year. The burning of a book is so much less a sanction than the Fatwā issued against Salman Rushdie and others and should thus be preferable.

So while tolerance should be encouraged let's not lose sight of what matters and what should not matter. Material possessions, including books, can be replaced. Religious hatred, a willingness and eagerness to take offence and spoiling for a fight do no favours to society. These small minded people must have a god or many gods with very insecure egos. They must lack faith that the ideas and ideals contained within the pages of these books are strong enough to survive not just modern scrutiny but even the incineration of a minuscule number of books.

We don't view it as a national outrage when a copy of the Oxford dictionary or a French dictionary are burnt. In fact I can't recall a public case of such dictionary burning occurring because such an act is futile. If it were not then Al-Qaeda would be focused on the printing and subsequent burning of copies of the American Heritage Dictionary as the easiest way to bring about the collapse of the Great Satan.

Live and let live, read as much as possible, as widely as possible but don't be offended if someone, somewhere burns a copy of your favourite book.

Now where is my copy of the iPhone developers guide and a box of matches ....

Apple I{Pad/Pod/Phone}

2010-04-21T21:32:00.013+01:00

So today Apple announced that 8.75 million iPhones were sold in the last quarter since the start of the year. This is around 95 000 each day. The iTunes market place for applications has grown making it the largest platform for smart phone applications and I have a habit of checking, or stroking, my iPhone several times an hours during the day. From Twitter feeds and FB to news, weather, SMS and email it seems difficult to remember an existence untethered from the internet. So what is the problem? Is Apple the new Microsoft?

Well maybe, except that confidence breeds arrogance and contempt and us customers are fickle creatures. On Thursday 25 March I tweeted the following -

"Have fallen out of love with my iPhone, this happened on Tuesday but I've been in denial since. Will keep it next while for sake of children"

followed by

"It is it's lack of multi-tasking, inflexibility and I lust after and android phone. Curses on google and their evil plot to rule the world."

and

"OMG just realised how insensitive it is to breakup via twitter/fb and from the handset in question. Sometimes I can be a real jerk."

Ignore the inappropriate apostrophe and focus on the content. The phone that did everything I wanted had, over the course of 12 months, begun to grate. Just as the missing toothpaste lid begins to sour a relationship the following began to niggle at me:

The Lack of Multi-tasking. This prevented the download of news feeds in the background, the streaming of music while tweeting, the ability to map my bike rides or runs while taking a picture.
The need to have a mac in-order to develop applications for the platform. In this day of multi-platform development, to limit to development tools to a single development platform might make marketing sense for Apple but it is just not cool.
The Google Android OS was released on the HTC Hero, Desire, Legend and Nexus One phones, along with several other models from Motorola, Samsung and others.
The Android OS is open-source, multitasking and exposes much more of the phone functionality to the developer. While Apple is creating a walled garden Google is sowing wild flowers that are starting to bloom.

There is reason to believe that Apple is worried. At the same time as Steve Jobs announced the iPhone OS 4.0 upgrade Apple also made a change to their developer agreement that controls 3rd party development of applications for the iTunes marketplace. This change enforces the constraint that applications must be developed using the tools developed by Apple - the same ones that only run on the mac. This is very unusual in that typically a software company will simply publish "look & feel" constraints and APIs that must be used and satisfied but this is much more controlling and I can't think of a precedent. Almost, but not quite unlike, dictating that your novel must be written with a HB pencil.

So why would they do this? One reason is that it kills a large piece of Adobe's business of producing applications that run across various platforms including the iPhone. There appears to be no love lost between Apple and Adobe and this supposes a school ground squabble between a bully and slightly weird kid that has spiralled out of control.

I believe a more significant reason is that this precludes the porting of applications developed for the Android to the iPhone and iPad. Given that the Android is an open platform it is much more tempting for developers to target this platform. Especially if they can port their applications to the iPhone and its many millions of users.

Will this work? Well according to Eric Schmidt, Google partners are shipping 60 000 phones a day and with new Android phones being released each month this is likely to increase. The hardware specifications of the new Android phones exceed to the specifications of the iPhone and with the intense competition there is likely to always be at least one manufacturer bringing out a new model ahead of Apple's one a year release date.

GetCliky gives provides some trend data for mobile operating systems. Although this varies from country to country.

I still have my iPhone, but I am developing for Android and conducting serial adultery with several Android phones before easing into stable, long-term relationship.

42

2010-03-01T12:43:00.001Z

42 is the "the answer to life the universe and everything", the atomic number of molybdenum, the angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears, the number of minutes taken to fall through the earth. It is found repeated 3 times at place 242,422 in pi.

This is the first day of the next week of my life and each will be spent dwelling on the significance, the wonder and doom associated with the the number 42. Now, despite the sunshine, the quiet house, the fresh day, the week long holiday taken in anticipation of this event I kind of prefer the number 41.

Ten23 the outcome

2010-02-22T22:41:00.006Z

Three weeks ago Annalise and I downed an entire bottle of homeopathic Belladonna and Arsenic as part of a nationwide stunt to expose homeopathy for the quackery that it is. Today two things happened - coincidence? I think not.

Firstly, the House of Commons select committee on science and technology released their report into Homeopathy and it was scathing. They advised on the closing of homeopathy hospitals and against the funding for any more more research into homeopathy.
Secondly the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) issued guidance that there is "no scientific or pharmacological basis for homeopathy".

I believe most users of homeopathy users its practioners mean well and many sincerely believe that homeopathy has worked for them but we humans are deluded creatures and see cause and effect when there are none. This is where science and random, controlled trials are used to measure objectively the efficacy of treatments.

There are also those who advocate homeopathy for the treatment of AIDS, malaria, cancer and other serious conditions - these people are at best naive and at worst evil.

Today was a small victory for science against 18th century superstition but it could be made all the sweeter if only the accusations of being in the pay of "Big Pharma" were true - I could do with the money.

The full report can be read here

Homeopathy and the 10:23 Campaign

2010-01-22T20:27:00.000Z

Homeopathy in the UK is alarmingly pervasive – setting aside the fact that the industry is worth an estimated £40million per year, the National Health Service actually plows £4million per year of taxpayers’ money into providing sugar pills as a Complementary Alternative Medicine – much of which goes into the upkeep of the four government-run homeopathic hospitals. That figure doesn’t even take into account the £20 million spent on the redevelopment of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. According to the British Homeopathy Association, more than 400 GPs regularly refer patients to homeopaths. Homeopathy is everywhere. And then we have the UK’s leading pharmacy, Boots…

Boots are as much a British national institution as the Royal family, the BBC and the sense of quiet superiority over our former colonies. Yet this well-respected and trusted organisation lends its well-earned reputation to quackery in the sale of homeopathic remedies (including it’s own-brand range) alongside real medicine. What’s more, their decision to stock these sugar pills is compounded by the fact that they have no real belief in their effectiveness, as became clear in the laugh-a-minute evidence check session, where Boots’ Professional Stand-up Com… sorry, Professional Standards Director Paul Bennett admitted the company’s policy of selling homeopathic remedies was based not on a belief that they work, but in a belief that they sell, and sell well. And that’s before we even take a look inside the Pandora’s box that is the Boots Learning Store – Alternative Medicine module (sample statement: ‘Foxglove (Digitalis) extract is used in the treatment of heart failure’).

Fortunately, homeopathy hasn’t been without its detractors and skeptical voices here in the UK – with David Colquhoun, Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst, James Randi (of course) and a whole range of other science writers and bloggers confronting homeopathy with sanity. Still, it’s not the science writers who have had the most success in getting information to the public of late – while having real science to hand is essential in helping dispense with the pseudoscience, it’s perhaps been the contributions of comedians and satirists that have had most success in spreading real information to the man on the street. For every Edzard Ernst picking apart the latest meta-analysis, we need a Dara Ó Briain telling the world ‘It’s just fecking water’; for every Quackometer showing where regulation is failing to keep homeopathy in check, we need a Mitchell & Webb to show us how ludicrous homeopathic healthcare actually is; for every Tim Farley answering the question ‘What’s The Harm?‘, we need a Tim Minchin asking the question ‘if water can remember a long lost drop of onion juice, how come it forgets all the poo it’s had in it?’ (the best answer to this, by the way, came from a satirist who claimed it was due to succussion: ‘As you beat the memory into the water, you beat the shit out of it’).

In short, the fight to raise awareness of homeopathy is best fought when everyone can bring what they have to the table, whether they’re ‘experts’ or otherwise. And this, essentially, was the inspiration behind the 10:23 campaign.

At the Merseyside Skeptics Society, we took inspiration from the success of the Australian Skeptics campaigning against ear candles via the publishing of an open letter, stealing the idea outright to pen An Open Letter To Alliance Boots appealing to them to remove homeopathic remedies from their shelves. From there, the 10:23 campaign grew – a website was launched with the aim to have a resource where people can go for basic information on homeopathy in simple, accessible English.

The goals of the 10:23 campaign are equally simple and accessible – to help raise awareness of what homeopathy is (and what it very much isn’t); to give individual writers and bloggers a banner and brand name to use when doing their day-to-day homeopathy-debunking, helping make their work easier to find and promote (do a quick search for #ten23 on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean); and to promote critical thinking to a wider audience.

As the campaign’s progressed, two questions have come up time and time again, and it’s probably a good idea to answer them now: ‘What’s next for the 10:23 campaign?’ and ‘Why is it called the 10:23 campaign anyway?’ I’ll answer the latter first… Yes, it is partly to do with the Avogadro constant. There are those that may think using this as the name for the campaign is something of an exclusive, scientific in-joke that would put off the non-science-savvy – here, I must disagree. Instead I believe it gives an opportunity to talk about the levels of dilution involved in homeopathy, and what effect they have on the ingredients of the sugar pills. What’s more, there’s more to the name than simply Avogadro, which leads me to the second questions…

On January 30th, 2010, at exactly 10:23am, large groups of skeptics will gather in the town centres of around a dozen cities in the UK and consume a full bottle of homeopathic pills, in order to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of homeopathy. Similar events will be taking place in the US, Canada and Australia. While the scientific evidence is there for people to find, we’re hoping this very public demonstration will help give people the motivation to go look for it.

Contact your nearest Skeptics in the Pub group for information about how to get involved. Organisers of local skeptical groups can email contact@1023.org.uk for more information. See you on January 30th!

Cornwall trip

2010-01-06T20:09:00.011Z

There are few things as alluring as high cliffs and the Cornwall coast has some fine specimens. This year, for Christmas, we hired a cottage within comfortable walking distance of sea cliffs. We knew it would be cold but, ensconced within an old cottage, with log fire the weather was entirely enjoyable.

Within the ruins of a castle on the Tintagel Headland. This was captioned "family, ruins, rainbow" but Stephen pointed out that with a quick scan, ignoring the punctuation, it parsed badly.

The weather was conducive to rainbows - where ever we looked one would be arcing across the sky.

Ah - a respectable cliff, if it can't kill you then it is not a cliff ...

On Christmas eve we released as batch of 10 Chinese Laterns from the cliff edge, the conditions were perfect and the floated upwards looking not unlike a distress flare. Fortunately we had alerted the coast guard before hand.

Upwards until they flickered out and returned to earth.

A most enjoyable trip. It has been a rather hectic year, work wise, and thus we travelled less this year than we have for a long time. Resolution for 2010 - "work life balance, work life balance, work life balance ....."

Alternate Nostril Breathing

2010-01-03T15:01:00.010Z

During an episode of QI last week Stephen Fry brought up alternate nostril breathing. Supposedly, breathing in through one nostril sends oxygen to one brain hemisphere and through the other to the other brain hemisphere. This is "demonstrable" by checking for improved cognitive function related to each of the two hemispheres.

I just spent five minutes trying to kill off my left hemisphere, through oxygen deprivation, by blocking a nostril - no luck. Don't both nostrils send air to the lungs in equal amount?

The yoga literature seems awash with breathing exercises for alternate nostril breathing. For example http://bit.ly/81L2XC describes right nostril breathing as "to increase the Pranic energy , the physical energy, to revitalize the body. It increases the efficiency of digestive system, also boosts the nervous system." This is a slightly different claim from the idea that alternate nostril breathing can enhance brain function in one the two hemispheres.

Am I missing something or is this totally rubbish? I did find two studies on this subject done by the Yoga institute, neither of which appear to have controlled for the placebo effect.

Any test that compared cognitive function during left and right nostril breathing would have to:

Ensure that subjects weren't influenced by the "expected" better spatial reasoning associated with one hemisphere or the better verbal function of the other
Ensure that the mental gymnastics required to breathe only though a single nostril was not affecting cognitive ability (ie. holding it closed with a left or right hand or closing one nostril without the use of the hands).
Postulate a possible, plausible causative effect such as oxygen absorption directly into the brain from the back of nose.

Is there any reliable evidence to support, what appears to be an absurd claim, that breathing though a single nostril has any benefit over breathing through both at the same time?

Wierd spam

2009-12-04T18:46:00.012Z

Anonymous left the following the comment on the blog entry below

援交友留言,視訊聊天室,成人貼圖站,情色視訊,情色論壇,美女圖片,080視訊聊天室,正妹牆qk176,18sxe成人影城,080視訊聊天室,免費交友,情色a片,台灣成人網,情色a片,聊天交友,台灣情色,情人貼圖,上班族聊天室f1,成人網,正妹交友,成人視訊,彰化人聊天室,台灣情色網,免費聊天,美女交友,丁字褲美女寫真,情色,免費視訊聊天室,777成人區,哈啦聊天室,0401視訊美女,免費色情影片,成人視訊,免費視訊,正妹牆自拍, ut聊天室,免費視訊,免費視訊g,八國聯軍成人,聊天室ut,

Being fluent in Chinese (actually I used Google translate) this translates to

"Aid friends message, video chat rooms, adult mapping station, erotic video, erotic forum, beautiful pictures, 080 video chat rooms, are sister wall qk176, 18sxe adult Studios, 080 video chat rooms, free dating and sexuality at a piece, Taiwan adult network, erotic a film, chat friends, Taiwan Sex, Valentine's mapping, office workers chat rooms f1, adult network, are sister friends, adult video chat rooms Changhua, Taiwan situation Color network, free chat, beautiful friends, and G-string beauty photo, erotica, free video chat rooms, 777 adult area, IMs as text chat rooms, 0401 video sex, free porn videos, adult video, free video, is Mei wall self-timer, ut chat room, free video, free video g, forces of eight adult chat rooms ut,"

The question is why?

Usually this would have two functions:

1) Increase the number of search terms that would result in the page appearing.

2) Increase the chance of the page being classified as "dubious"

This still doesn't answer why anyone would either want alter the number of hits the page gets. Of course by including the comment text here - in English and Chinese I must have tripled the impact.

Follow up: Google finds at least 500 other blog comments with the same spam.

Keeping the faith in vitamin c

2009-11-29T21:02:00.014Z

Recently Annalise brought home some vitamin c solvable tables from college. These were handled out with the intent to help protect the staff from colds.

Linus Pauling's made the claim in 1970 that taking large doses could both protect against colds and reduce their severity. The direct benefits of vitamin c supplements for this purpose have long since been discredited however the credibility of the Nobel Prize winning Linus Pauling has meant that this myth has largely persisted 40 years later.

Numerous controlled studies have shown that that those taking a placebo have feared no worse that those taking vitamin c supplements with regards the common cold. Despite the fact that there is so much evidence against vitamin c why does the false promise of efficacy still persist? There is large industry that makes a great deal of money out of vitamin c and it is in their interests to maintain the link between vitamin c supplements and healthy living.

I suspect that there is placebo effect at the college that may work to it's benefit. Those believing in the efficacy of the vitamin c and taking the tablets may be less likely to "give in" to cold symptoms and stay at home than those not taking the tablets, even though both groups suffer equally.

Even so, isn't it time we focuses on scientific methods of prevention like hand washing and general hygiene rather than advocating quack remedies like vitamin c.

IPhone catastrophe

2009-10-22T20:35:00.013+01:00

Last night, while reaching for my tooth-brush my IPhone slid from my jacket pocket. It fell, bouncing off the toilet seat, swirled twice around the toilet bowl before settling beneath the water. It sat there glowing as though trying to hang onto life for as long as it took for me to draw a breath, scream and yank it out.

My immediate impulse was to switch it off but the off button had no effect. Slowly but surely my beloved phone lost more and more functionality. First the touch screen failed, followed by the volume buttons, wifi, and then 3G until finally it started a repeated cycle of rebooting. The battery, that a few minutes previously showed as requiring a recharge, now showed as half charged - a sure sign of a major cognitive malfunction.

It sucks to have waived the extra insurance. The phone is now incubating in a bowl of rice in the airing cupboard. If not dead, it is certainly comatose. I am resisting the urge to charge it in order to check on its cognitive function as I fear that this would precipitate a terminal short.

Here's the dilemma - Apple will replace it with re-furbished one for £146 - ouch! But as there is a postal strike now this requires a trip to the Apple store.

Usually this is a straight forward task but how is this possible without a working IPhone? Without the ability to check train schedules and departure platforms on the move, without the ability to plot optimal tube routes based on current tube delays, without the ability to access google maps and get route directions from the station to the store, without the ability listen to a podcast on the 75 minute trip, without the ability to call and text to summon up loved ones, to snap a picture of a quirky scene, to twitter or facebook my movements, to read and send email and browse breaking news stories or even to perform a Doppler frequency analysis of the noise of a passing train to determine the combined speeds...

No, venturing to the apple store without an IPhone would be like returning to a Victorian England with printed train timetables, asking directions, making conversation with a fellow travellers and being oblivious of all that occurs over the horizon until it is recorded on dead trees.

Pity the Victorians - how did they cope? I need to check on that that phone .....

Happy, happy timeshifted birthday eve

2009-02-13T22:40:00.003Z

Tis the eve of my timeshifted birthday. Plans have been laid, presents perhaps bought and wrapped.

Plans include; an early morning alarm, perhaps 5am because birthdays are precious and should be maximised, a sumptious breakfast, presents, rollercoasters, lunch, rollercoasters, play with presents, evening drinks followed by 9:30pm romantic dinner date, play with presents and then wind down the day in preparation for the birthday boxing day.

Why timeshifted? Because my tentative travel date to India is the day before my biological birthday and a birthday without family and presents and food isn't really a birthday at all.

January Freeze

2009-01-10T13:29:00.008Z

Some pictures from an early morning bike ride today

Most people seemed to belive we were taking our lives in our hands by walking on this pond. It seemed solid and a could have been 20cm thick so I think it was safe, anyway to quote a favourite saying "nothing ventured - stay safe and boring".

The rest of the pictures can be found by clicking on the picture below.

I am not sure if I'll be able to get any aerial photography this afternoon - the camera battery doesn't cope well with temperatures this cold.

Fire, Fire! Laptop computer catches fire

2009-01-08T21:28:00.006Z

Stephen unplugged his laptop charger to bring it down stairs for Annalise to use. When he returned to his room 20 seconds later he heard a pop and a fizzing sound. When he opened the door smoke was coming from the computer sitting on the corner of his bed and this had filled the room.

When I got there 5 seconds later it was well on fire and the flames were about 30cm high as was the bedding. I grabbed it by the corner and carried it outside to the driveway. There it burnt until we poured a bowl of water over it. The bed also required water thrown over it and then a wet towel thrown over the mattress. The smoke was horrible. One of the battery cells had fallen out of computer and we scraped this into a bowl of water before taking this outside.

I called PC World's The Tech Guys to report the fire, We have two other laptops of the same make. This is a E Systems 4213 laptop. All three were bought 8 Dec 2007 making them exactly one month out of their 12 month warranty period. They refused to cover it, assess the safety of the other two computers or have anything to do with the incident.

Shame on you PC World. It is one thing for a device to stop working outside of its warranty period but quite another for it to self destruct by bursting into flame. We are very lucky that we were not asleep or out at the time. Oddly while our smoke detectors go off frequently due to burning toast or bacon they were never triggered by the battery smoke.

A video collage of the last week

2009-01-08T00:05:00.001Z

Places my camera has been over the last week.

Subway madness

2009-01-07T19:20:00.006Z

I occasionally walk down the high street at lunch time from work to the Subway where I purchase a 6" veggie delight sub for £2.00. Today I was dismayed to discover I had left my wallet at home and was reduced to scraping change from the bottom of my bag.

They know me because I always ask for olives and jalapenos and jalapenos and jalapenos with a few extra jalapenos. Only I say "Halepenos" and they say "Jalapenos". It is a constant sparing struggle and neither I nor this otherwise fine institution are prepared to concede defeat.

Well today, being of limited means, after purchasing a 80p Guardian newspaper instead of a 90p Times I noticed a limited period "Meal Deal" at Subway. This is a 6" sub (the picture shows meat on it) with a cookie and drink for £2.49. This suits me as I only had £2.55 and could get a drink and cookie for only 49p more than I usually pay.

I order this deal but decline the ham and just have the cheese and olives and jalapenos and jalapenos and jalapenos with a few extra jalapenos, as is my want. But when I come to pay they don't want to give me the drink and cookie because I didn't order the ham. When I point out the I did NOT order my usual "Veggie Delight" but the "Special limited time only Meal Deal" and just declined the ham they were incredulous. It would have been no problem it they had put ham on my sandwich and I had scrapped it off and tossed it away but ......

I prevailed but "only this once because i am a regular customer". To bad that tomorrow I will be at my other office and won't be able to try this again - nothing like a crusade against stupidity!

Baño del Papa, El

2009-01-06T23:12:00.001Z

We went to see a screening of Baño del Papa, El tonight.

This was a brilliant movie. It was beautifully set between Uruguay and Brazil and deals with the impact, or lack thereof, of the Pope's visit there in 1988.

I can recommend it.

Trailer here but without english subtitles.

Stephen's Birthday

2009-01-02T22:13:00.002Z

The entire world always seems celebrate Stephen's birthday. I think it helps that it is on the 1st January.

This year we spent the day in London at the Foyles bookstore, lunch and then checking one of Stephen's university options - Kings College.

Foyles is, in their own modest words, "Europe’s largest bookshop* with 5 floors and more than 200,000 titles in stock plus a wide range of gifts and stationery, printed music and second-hand and rare books, as well Ray’s Jazz Music and Books, the Cafe and a Gallery and events space".

I think Stephen has been correcting a few things on the wikipedia page for Kings College London because he was able to quote the most arcane facts about the college. Ah well each to our own ....

Twilight

2008-12-30T23:56:00.003Z

So not only did Emily get a copy of the book Twilight for Christmas, along with the second book for her birthday, but today we all went to see the movie.

An now I see this

What have we done?

Her birthday was completed by watching another teenage angst movie

Happy birthday Emily.

Walk on Colley Hill

2008-12-29T20:49:00.003Z

We fled the shopping mall today and headed up to Colley Hill. The hat was a new purchase - my ears have been getting cold in the sub zero temperatures.

From Drop Box

More aerial photography

2008-12-28T21:41:00.004Z

Another beautiful day for photography

An some still pictures

aerialpics

Playing with Xmas presents

2008-12-27T18:35:00.006Z

Clear blue sky today but icy cold with significant wind chill. I spent last night attaching a gift to my aeroplane in preparation for flying today.

Some still photos

And looking back toward me. I am the blodge on the edge of the cut strip.

And some video

This was just a proof of concept test drive today to check for vibration and ensure that I could trigger the camera remotely. It finally got to cold and my fingers stopped working.

This is the camera platform - my Fun Fly Cougar 2000

From cougar2000

Boxing day excursion

2008-12-26T19:27:00.003Z

Annalise and I decided to leave the kids with the Wii fit, left over turkey and plentiful supply of books in order to find some sea. We switched off the nav system and drove almost, but not quite, randomly but tracking towards the midday sun low in the southern sky, knowing that ultimately we would hit the English channel but not caring where or when.

We had a ambling drive, a lazy stroll and frequent stolen meditative moments when sheltered from the wind but exposed to the relative warmth of the sun.

boxingday-08

Careful what you learn

2008-12-19T19:32:00.004Z

During the last two weeks I have completed a 4 day first aider course and PRINCE2 Practioner project management course.

I used to believe I was indestructable, sliding down the banisters at work, shooting between cars on my bicycle but now I see broken bones or a snapped neck as the result of everything I do. I wish I had never done the course.

Is the project management course going to produce a similar effect and reveal those inefficiencies all around me in my work every day - will it make a normal work day insufferable?

Edge 540

2008-03-30T22:58:00.008+01:00

First flight of the Edge 540 today. The wind died down after several frustrating week-ends of either snow or very high winds.

The first three flights were all dead-stick landings as the engine is not run in properly yet. She really floats in quite fast when gliding but does slow down nicely with the prop. turning. The next three flights were perfect and the landing were under power. It has unlimited vertical performance and just disappears into the clouds.

Getting ready to fly

This is from the Easter week-end, plane all ready to go but notice the snow falling outside.

In the air

Several weeks ago my CAP 21 clipped a tree during the landing approch and fell into the river.

I only managed to retrieve it by stripping off and swimming to get it. In my haste I ran through stinging nettles, plunged into icy cold water and got covered in these leech type things, yuck. Only once my feet and legs started to thaw out did I start to feel the pain. The CAP is flying again after I recovered the wings and dried out the Rx, servos and fuselage.

The Alchemist

2008-01-30T09:56:00.000Z

I have just finished this book and I am still digesting it. Wow, what a great piece of writting. It deals with following your dream and deciding in life what is important and what isn't. Also the pusuit of the dream is as (more ?) important than its attainment.

A quote of an Arab proverb from the book "Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time".

Read it, at 160 pages, it is a quick read yet begs for a great deal of contemplation.

Reading

2008-01-29T20:57:00.000Z

I returned to work on Monday and then was back off sick today and now also tomorrow. It is now officially a "virus" - wow medical science has progressed so far since blood letting and vapours. Where is the smart anti-virus with genetic material targeted specifically for this virus and my body ? Instead I get some symptomatic relief and the suggestion to "wait it out".

The silver lining is that I have undertaken to catch up on some the books given to me over Xmas. This list includes

I am only half way down the list so I am unlikely to complete it before returning to work.

Also while waiting for the Doctor I had half an hour to kill, Annalise had the car, so sat down and had my hair cut. It is short, very short. My head is now very light and very cold. I think I should have waited for the summer.

This evening Stephen and I watched Oceans Thirteen . I am not sure how this got onto our DVD rental list but it was rubbish. I don't make a habit of watching rubbish all the way through but I think I went a little catatonic on the sofa.

Sickness

2008-01-26T18:38:00.001Z

On Wednesday afternoon, around 3:47pm (approximately), I got sick. Sore throat, high temperature and head-ache. It wasn't the lunch-time soup it was something far more sinister.

I stayed home on Thursday and then Friday - much sleeping, some showering and some reading. Today I feel a little more human - seems I'll pull through.

Annalise feels I have been a little obsessive about radio control flying lately, she may be right as much of the time while in bed I drifted in and out of sleep having numerous hypnopompic hallucinations. These involved fruitless attempts to calculate if a propeller with diameter 10 " and 6" pitch with a rotation speed of 11150 RPM provides a faster maximum speed than one of 11" diameter and 5" pitch rotating at about 10500 RPM. Also which has the lower tip speed and hence is quieter.

No I wouldn't describe myself as obsessed.

This afternoon I did venture out to the flying field. Although the wind was strong (15mph) at least it was straight onto the runway. I took of, flew and landed the CAP 21 after a couple of flight of the Travel Air. It is a big relief that not only does it fly but that I can fly it myself and better yet enjoy flying it.

Outsource

2008-01-16T23:45:00.000Z

Today it was made official.

The entire IT department is going to be outsourced to Tata Consulting Services (TCS). We, in theory, keep the same terms and conditions but have to move offices.

I wonder if they will have a more relaxed dress code ? Funny everyone is wondering about their pension schemes etc while I think about dress code and if I'll still be able to cycle to work. Does this say anything about me ?

My Cap 21

2008-01-14T22:57:00.000Z

She finally flew this weekend.

The flying field was part flooded by the river Mole so much of the runway was under water.

It was meant to be ready to fly on Boxing day but family and Christmas all got in the way. Six weeks total build time from ordering the wood, glue and hardware to the maiden flight.

Ok ignore the elastic band - just a temporary at field emergency safety precation.

I had a better pilot than me fly her for the first flight, thanks Geoff. She was very lively for the first 60 long seconds until the trimming was sorted. For a while I really thought I would be swimming in the river to recover the wreckage.

More pictures here

Rain

2007-11-19T17:31:00.000Z

I suspect I am sick. Left home in the rain this morning, got to work in the rain, had hot shower then noticed that my change of clothes from my backpack was also wet. Hand dryers only go as far as to warm wet clothes up for a brief instant. Got even wetter running from change rooms to office building. Coming home was a treat a well - more rain, pitch black by 4:30pm and maniacal white vans seeing how close they can force me into the gutter.

In case you hadn't noticed I am feeling a little sorry for myself. The irony is that it is probably my carbon neutral life-style that is delaying global warming and thus responsible for this dismal turn of events.

What does the queen carry in her handbag ?

2007-11-06T21:32:00.000Z

So the Queen of England has been in the news a lot recently. Is she the only one left who insists on wearing clothes that went out of date in the 1950's?

Watching her entertaining the Saudi Royal family brought home to me just how stupid the whole royal thing is. Does she know that she would have to wear a Burka in Saudia Arabia and would be banned from driving there? Just what are the shared values she speaks of between Britain and Saudi Arabia, a love of oil, fighter jets and corrupt arms deals or is it their human rights record?

Oh, and what does she carry in that handbag of hers - surely not a credit card or cash - has she ever used either in her life? I just can't imagine her needing bus fare or money for a newspaper.

Watching her reading the Queens Speech tonight begs the question how she would handle a paragraph proposing the abolition of the monarch or increased taxation on herself.

GuyFawkes weekend

2007-11-04T16:54:00.000Z

We had my nephew and niece spent the week-end with us.

Some pictures from this week-end.

Stroll in the park, making most of the sunny weather.

I had to throw Sophie into this bracken in order to get this one

On Saturday evening we went to the bonfire and fireworks display in a nearby village of Brockham.

During the torch-lit parade, We felt quite a mob.

The Bonfire, what a bizarre custom burning someone like this.

And the fireworks display itself

And finally some shots of the flying field, I love the light when the sun is so low in sky. Today I did my first spins although the mist cover before the sun came out along with the predominantly white model caused me to loose track of the plane on a few occasions.

Wonderful week-end, even got some painting done of the loft.

Terracotta Army

2007-10-28T19:55:00.000Z

With the tiling complete on the loft and a lick of paint applied I cleaned the brushes and spent Saturday afternoon flying my radio controlled plane. The wind was to little to strong for comfort and trying to land in a cross wind tends to focus the mind with visions of wrecked model. It was however immensely enjoyable though now that I have enough confident at attempt various aerobatic maneuvers.

It is currently pouring with rain - doesn't augur well for cycling to work tomorrow. Monday is my no "no park" day so no option but to cycle and with the loss of daylight savings it is sure to be dark when I leave work. Rain is bad, cold is bad, windy is bad, dark is bad - all four together is horrible.

Today we went to see the exhibition on the Terracotta Army at the British Museum. Sophie took a friend along and they spent the morning following various activities in the Ancient Egypt section. The Terracotta Army exhibit itself was very impressive. It includes a dozen or so the soldiers placed above the reading room of the museum. We did leave wondering why the Chinese haven't opened the tomb itself, or if indeed they have but what they found was ... well nothing.

Old friends

2007-10-24T13:21:00.000+01:00

This weekend we met up with some old friends we haven't seen in a long time.

We traveled down to Devon early Sunday morning and stopped to stretch next to Stonehenge.

We stayed here, in a beautiful cottage with Sheep grazing outside.

This is as heated as the Croquet got - makes a change from the Rugby on Saturday night.

Yes they can rip your stomach out

We went on walks during which small children learnt that gum boot fill with water when walking in deep water.

It was a really enjoyable weekend.

Black Sheep

2007-10-20T19:17:00.000+01:00

Annalise and I went to see two movies last week, in addition to the vagina monologues. The first was "Black Sheep" - a New Zealand movie with mutant sheep. Think "Shaun of the Dead" but replace the zombies with sheep. I have always suspected that Sheep could turn bad and savage people.

The second movie was Ratatouille - this was supposed to be a family outing but both Stephen and Emily bailed on us. It was nice watching Sophie enjoy it and seeing Paris again - even if it was through the eyes and nose of a rat.

Monologues

2007-10-19T20:14:00.000+01:00

We saw the vagina monologues together in the end.

It was interesting being one of four other men in an audience of around 400.

Glad I saw it - to be recommended and lots less cringe making and angry than I expected.

The monologues

2007-10-15T22:32:00.000+01:00

So Annalise is going to see the Vagina Monologues tomorrow night with some friends. I am gutted and hurt that I am not invited.

It's a one night showing so no chance of going to see it on another night and the idea of going by myself just cries out "desperate and looking to meet women".

So the best I can hope for is a second hand account, and one filtered through a woman's perspective. No scope for intelligent, open minded discussion there then!

Would I have interpreted the collective work as a "blast of hatred against men and heterosexuality" or something more revealing of the what is means to be a woman?

Will they censor the line "Is was a good rape"?

Will those monologues dealing with violence and oppression outweigh those dealing with loving relationships (both heterosexual and lesbian).

But no it seems the absence of a vagina means that I'll never know the answers to these questions.

Oh did I mention that I am gutted and hurt ......

Theory of tiling and everything

2007-10-09T07:01:00.000+01:00

While attempting to arrange the jigsaw constituted by the tiles on the bathroom floor I came to the realization that none of the truly great works of human endeavor have been tiled. Not the pyramids of Egypt, not Stonehenge, not the giant cathedrals of the middle ages.

There is a reason, it is almost an impossible task. Didn't tiles fall from the space shuttle - the modern equivalent of these historical feats. How arrogant NASA was to believe that they could succeed where everyone else has failed.

I have a theory, not yet provable but I'm sure it is just a matter to time before others find supporting evident that Qin Shi Huangdi actually commissioned a large area tiled in terracotta tiles but his subjects pleaded with him, "no anything but tiles, give us another task". And so they ended up building an entire army of Terracotta warriors, a much easier feat and something his enemies probably mocked him for afterwards

Also during the construction of Stonehenge the Druids originally asked for a paved area, made with Italian tiles - as even in these times the best tiles came from Italy, with good drainage where they could relax, read and catch up on the latest advances in herbal medicine. Again the impossibility of the task would have soon led to them giving up and instead dragging lumps of rock from hundreds of miles away.

I call this the theory of "Anything but not tiling". I believe this has been a great shaper of our history. Entire populations have fled when rulers have required them to tile and foolish kings and queens been overthrown over this issue.

It will likely be the tiling of the White house lawns that is the downfall of George Bush, not the fiasco of Iraq, his stupidity or his arrogance. Although who except the arrogant would commission such a thing in the first place.

I've been thinking a tiles a lot recently ...

Three dead squirrels

2007-10-08T19:46:00.000+01:00

Cyclists tend to be pushed to the margins of the road. It seems that we share this thin, precarious sliver of road surface with squirrels who no longer scurry, gamble and play - largely, in fact entirely, because they are very dead.

Today I came across three such individuals, two while heading north and one while heading south. Time of deaths - sometime between Friday afternoon and this morning. I could be more precise but I'd have to enroll on a course in pathology and then perform multiple autopsies - so let's just leave it as sometime this weekend.

What is up ? Is there inter cine gang warfare amongst these squirrels ? Is it the blue tongue disease getting into the squirrel population ? Perhaps the foot and mouth from the Surrey area has jumped species ? Bird flu ? Or is it simply a case of panic pre-winter nut collection leading to reckless and careless behavior,

Inquiring minds want to know!

This weekend

2007-10-07T23:50:00.000+01:00

I laid zero tiles although I did do some painting and skirting fitting. Why is it the the tiles look the best in the one orientation requiring the most cutting ?
Bled a little due to sawed finger.
Flew one new radio controlled plane.

Landed above plane a little roughly requiring a later 5 minute patch-up

Spent several hours at the beach

Found a tennis ball

Lost a tennis ball

Soaked up some sun

Had a lazy lunch in a beautiful cottage built AD 1536.

Watched some rugby, yes finally watched some TV.

The rest of the weekend's pictures here

New plane ready to fly

2007-10-06T02:10:00.000+01:00

Almost ready to fly tomorrow if the weather is good.

This afternoon I have

Test run the previously crashed engine
Setup throws all controls
Configured computer mixing for flaps/airolin
Placed tx and rx on to charge over night

Still need to

check centre of gravity
Make/buy bung for fuel tubing (currently using a large nail)

Fastest time to work

2007-10-05T22:05:00.000+01:00

33 minutes - fastest time since moving 5 minutes further away from work. Also thrashed the bus on the way home this afternoon.

Testosterone ?

Further evidence for lack of testosterone

2007-10-02T06:45:00.000+01:00

On Sunday Annalise and I visited the bridge where Winnie the Pooh played Pooh sticks.

This is the bridge

No I felt no desire to race, let along win, by dropping said Pooh sticks in slow moving current - how sad is that.

Has anything happened in the last two months?

2007-10-02T06:30:00.000+01:00

On July 02 I posted about how we had lost TV reception with the erection of scaffolding behind our house. Well the enforced experiment is coming to an end. This Thursday the scaffolding will be removed and once again our satellite dish will have an un-obscured line of sight with the appropriate geo-synchronous satellite.

This will be almost exactly two months without seeing a single TV picture. Has anything happened in the world in these last two months?

It brings to mind the movie Goodbye Lenin

Now should the kids be re-introduced to the medium slowly, can they overdose on it or will they even notice if I don't tell them?

Looking for Testosterone

2007-10-01T20:19:00.000+01:00

Strange things have been happening to me

The other day on riding home from work I decided to take "the scenic route", along the north down through some National Trust property. What is more - I lingered, taking in the view of Surrey country side enjoying the solitude and feeling the wind wiping up the hill-side. I noticed the birds, greeted the odd dog walker and otherwise behaved in a totally uncharacteristic manner. Typically my trips to and from work are competitive affairs, either improving on my own time, beating the bus or luring unsuspecting cars into a wedge opportunity in a narrow lane around an old church.
I have a heightened sense of smell. The other day I could smell the odorless moisturizer Annalise was wearing. This in addition the almost constant smell of "what might be coffee." (See my post regarding pending insanity)
I am sick and tired of the upstairs tiling - I honesty think I would sooner be part of a sewing circle.
If I shut my eyes during my shower each morning, after my cycle into work, I can believe that I am washing my hair in the Amazon rain-forest, in the purest of water surrounded by butterflies and orchids.

This all begs the questions:

Do I have an Estrogen/Testosterone imbalance ?
Am I turning into a collaborative woman and eschewing mindless competitiveness ?
Will I be wearing roses and perfume shortly ?
Should any of this worry me ?
If I am turning into a woman - will I be a lesbian ?
Who does one turn to for help and will they take "excuse me but I can now smell things and I don't compete with buses" seriously.

It is now a total wreck

2007-09-29T19:06:00.000+01:00

What are the chances ? Today another mid-air collision.

The remains

The other plane

No chance of a repair, although the engine, receiver and 3 out of 4 servos seem intact. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing more tiling.

Thursday I did place an order for a new aerobatic model so hopefully I should be flying again next week-end.

Hmmm .....

I wonder if my tutor 40 committed suicide knowing that it was about to be replaced.

&^&^*^%$££$"$£" Tiling

2007-09-26T20:35:00.000+01:00

The DVD never mentioned what to do when they fall of the wall, it didn't mention that while it will take evening after evening and leave one's hands and nails caked with tiling cement.

No the DVD showed a sterile room with tiles that fall apart along the "cut mark" and then almost stick themselves to the wall.

Mid-air

2007-09-24T21:22:00.000+01:00

I got a real rush from flying on Saturday ...

I felt relaxed enough to try acrobatics I had never tried before and then felt brave enough to add the video camera to the plane for some aerial video photography. This time I was expecting an unstable plane and managed to re-trim the model. The result - some somewhat interesting footage. I'm currently fighting my computer and am unable to convert the mpeg-2 stream from the camera into something suitable for upload to youtube to that will have to wait.

The day did end in disaster however. On the last flight of an otherwise perfect day, I ran out of fuel, called "dead stick" and glided in for my final approach, lined up dead centre of the runway about 40 metres high when another model flew straight through me, the model that is. The model in two pieces, a tail piece - cruelly severed 4 fifths of the way down the fuselage and the rest, plummeted into the ground. The damage was pretty bad - broken tail, fuselage, engine mounts, propeller, wing servo and wing leading edge.

Later on Saturday night, after everyone had gone to bed, I looked over the damage and started gluing, replacing and improvising fixes such that by 4:15am I went to bed with some hope that it may possibly fly again.

Sunday it did fly, like a wounded phoenix it limped skyward held together with tape, a healthy dollop of glue and all the will I could muster. After landing and making a few adjustments it was flying similar to how it had before the crash. I say "similar" because knowing what it has been though I can't get rid of the feeling that it is going to fall apart in the air and come crashing to the ground again.

Fighting insanity

2007-09-21T22:40:00.000+01:00

My olfactory hallucinations are back ...

They started about 7 years ago on a trip to San Francisco. I could smell this smell that can best be described as "almost but not quite like coffee". They returned on a handful of occasions since then and most recently returned two days ago and are still with me.

The smell is not unpleasant, or worrying, just weird.

I can't really explain it any better than "coffee" although it is more of a sensation of smelling coffee. When I smell real coffee it doesn't compare very well. I have done smell tests on my skin, my clothes, at home and at work, no one else smells it - am I going insane ? Perhaps the part of my brain responsible for smell is slowly decaying.

Oh well, there must be worse way to go than along with the smell of coffee.

This weekend I ......

2007-09-16T21:22:00.000+01:00

1. Terrified myself by flying a video camera in my airplane. The model was out of trim and required all my skill to get it down in one piece. The video makes me airsick to watch. I will try again next weekend as I think I know now what went wrong.

2. Finally signed up to facebook. It was fear that if I didn't I'll be ostracized and placed on an ice-flow to die a slow and lonely death.

3. Resisted spending any money, despite incredible temptation, at a model air show I went to today.

4. Did some work on my bike to ensure it was ready for next week. I noticed that my tyres are very worn, checked my cycle computer and estimate that I have ridden about 3700 km in the last 18 months.

5. Washed the car

6. Got the car dirty again by driving it in dirt.

Michelangelo

2007-09-14T00:21:00.000+01:00

I can empathise with Michelangelo during the painting of the Sistine Chapel as I am busy on a project of my own - the loft ceiling.

I am aiming for this effect

only in pure, solid white.

I fear for my eye-sight due to the dripping paint.

Ramadan

2007-09-13T20:41:00.000+01:00

A work colleague is fasting for Ramadan. Today he was downright obnoxious. I suspect low blood sugar levels - either that or he is a jerk.

To bad Ramadan doesn't fall in the middle of winter as there would only be 4 hours of sunlight.

Time will tell if it gets better or worse over the course of the next month.

Aerial Photography

2007-09-11T20:59:00.000+01:00

I managed to mount the video camera inside the fuselage, right on the centre of gravity. It does add 300g to the weight. This is 16% weight increase. My rudimentry knowledge of aerodynamics tells me I need a 4% increase in speed to compensate.

Either I'm correct or I'll be fishing a soggy plane, with video camera on board out of the Mole river.

Flight exam

2007-09-09T15:47:00.000+01:00

Today I passed by 'A' test. One month and one one day after my first flight. Now I can rack up much more flight time. I spent my immediate freedom from supervision by doing some loops and rolls - at least thats what I called them - purests would probabily disagree.

Next up

a) Master some simple, clean aerobatics
b) Do some aerial photography - I need to experiment with methods of mounting the video camera underneath the aircraft

Pink (Salmon) Mobile Phone

2007-09-08T20:51:00.000+01:00

This week saw me hand over my pink mobile phone to Annalise. She prefers it and I didn't think I felt strongly about it either way.

Now I miss this phone. Many was the time when at work, around the drinks machine, someone would come up to me and say something along the lines of "Is that a PINK phone?". To which I might respond "Aggggh, oh my gosh your're right" and drop it or "No it is actually Salmon". Such are the moments in which new acquaintances or forged or of the realisation that some people are just not worth the effort of trying to get to know any further.

I can remember the first cell phone I owned in Durban, South Africa. I carried it along with a pager because the battery would often be flat and it made me a prime mugging target when called into work at 3am in the morning. These, cell phone facilitated, early morning trips to the downtown office was also made more interesting by the prostitutes who never believed that I was also there for work purposes. Soon the freedom provided by being able to travel more while on call was exceeded by the ability to be called when-ever and where -ever. I remember the dread and the stress associated with the ring tone. Good news was never delivered via the cell phone.

In the US it was the same although spotty GSM coverage in our area meant that there were islands of "refuge".

Nowadays the mobile is just for texting and calling family and for the odd picture unless it is PINK and can act as an ice breaker.

Weekend activities

2007-09-02T22:04:00.000+01:00

Today we went climbing in Portland, Dorset.

We've climbed there frequently, it is mostly (perhaps all) sport climbing on short 20-30 meter cliffs with the waves crashing below. Not much of an adrenaline rush, more "soak up the sun" kind of climbing. The worst the kids can do is fall in the sea while they are not climbing.

The rest of the pictures from today are here

On Saturday I went flying. There was some really good discuss launch gliders being flown - similar to these. I was kindly given a Zagi flying wing which I hope to use for slope flying although it needs additional harware and some work before it is ready.

Regarding the the powered flying I added another 2 flights to my flight log, practising dead-stick landings and figure 8's. I hope I'll be able to take the "A" test soon and so be able to fly without needing some-one watching over my shoulder.

My Dad

2007-08-30T00:05:00.000+01:00

Picture from 2001

It is almost two years since my father died, struck down by a heart attack. Hearing the news was unbelievably devastating. Even now with time having passed there is so much I want to show him. We have always had very different interests - he wanting to build and fix things while I was more partial to computer software but these days I am constantly reminded of things he would like to see, and I would enjoy showing him, - a steam train, a vintage car, a construction technique, a documentary or any one of hundreds of small things I think he would like to see.

It always seems like a miracle to me each time I start the lawn mower with a couple of pulls on the starter cord because one of the enduring memories of my childhood includes him replacing points, spark plugs and other bits on the mower before the lawn could be mowed. In fact he would usually build something to "assist" in the fixing of other things. Did he do this because he enjoyed it or did we just not have the money to buy a new one ?

Mom and Dad visited us on two occasions while we were in Florida but I wish he could have visited us here in the UK - I am sure he would have really enjoyed it - the shared history and the fact that the UK is littered with people with similar interests as him. They spend hours in the rain noting passing trains, they build and drive model trains, full size trains and historical railways.

Bizarrely I find myself drawn to things just because I can remember the affection he had for them - am I turning into my father ? I wonder what emotions moulded his interests stretching back before I was even born.

His ashes were scattered on the site of this model railway.

Miss you dad.

Spare screws and missing keys

2007-08-29T21:54:00.000+01:00

This eveninng my notebook screen went "fuzzy" and then it died. On restart it would run for about 2 minutes before hanging, fuzzying or running really slowly. After cursing it, turning it upside-down and threatening to bin it to no avail and thus proceeded to dismantle it.

Lessons

Don't use a high powered vacuum cleaning unless you are prepared to rummage through other bits of "stuff" deap in the bowels of said vacuum cleaner in order to retrieve sucked-off keys.
Pay attention to where the screws all came from - I have two left over.
A battery can hurt when dropped on your foot.

The good news it has now been running for 10 minutes now - no fuzz, no hang and as a bonus my touch-pad is working for the first time in 2 years. I had thought it was a Linux driver problem and so had not paid any attention to possible hardware causes - in this case a disconnected touch-pad ribbon cable. Ah well explains the "software" in "software engineer".

Bank Holiday

2007-08-27T22:22:00.000+01:00

We aborted the planned climbing trip today on account of Annalise's dizziness and instead went into London to see the photo exhibition "how we are - Photographing Britain" at the Tate Britain.

The train was packed with people returning from the Reading Music festival. In fact everyone seemed to be out and about - a result of weeks of rain now broken with some summer weather.

After the exhibition, we picnicked next o the river and then walked the couple of miles to London Bridge.

I tried to stop Annalise taking pictures of the unelected (House of Lords) half of the Houses parliament building but something about balance and composure forced her to add legitimacy to the entire institution by rendering them whole.

The rest of pictures are here

Flying

2007-08-25T22:23:00.000+01:00

This afternoon was perfect flying weather. I took my camera and aircraft out to the flying field.

I loved watching this amble around the sky while soaking up the sun.

My first landing was a little rough but I think it was caused a broken nose wheel linkage - or did it work loose as a result of bad landing ?

During my next flight I was practicing landing approaches when I decided to abort a landing so I could go round again. It must have looked quite chaotic from the side lines. A perfect approach and then from less than a metre above the runway I applied full throttle and full up on the elevator, followed by hard down on the elevator to prevent the stall, hit the runway hard, cut the engine, bounced a couple of metres high before "landing" very hard. Only damage was a bent undercarriage and dented ego.

These aircraft were a little harder to catch within the camera viewfinder.

I spent half an hour this evening getting the plane air worthy for either tomorrow or for the Bank holiday Monday. We are also trying get a climbing trip in this weekend as well.

The rest of the pictures are here

Picking Blackberries

2007-08-25T13:03:00.000+01:00

This morning we went blackberry picking. For me the blackberries were more of a vehicle to get out outside and tack some pictures. Annalise and Sophie enjoyed the picking though.

It was so good to be in the sun again.

The rest of the pictures are here

5 Billion Slugs

2007-08-22T20:05:00.000+01:00

The UK has 5 Billion slugs.

They are on our driveway and they eat our vegetables. Someone described how to get rid of them you need to get up at night, take a touch into the veggie-patch and pick them all up.

There are then two methods of killing them

Feed them to the chickens
Cut them in half with a pair of scissors

Seems hopeless 5 billion slugs, snip, 4999 999 999 more, snip, 4999 999 998 .....

Why has evolution not created slug-eaters - mutant cannibalistic slugs that feast on vegetarian slugs ?

Almost won 35 Million Pounds

2007-08-20T19:36:00.000+01:00

I had it 35 million and then it was all taken away :-(

I was on my way home from work and listening to the story of a woman who had won 35 million on the lottery. I started thinking what I would spend it on:

Some to my favourite charities to start with
a farm close by with green fields and space for chickens and wind powered generator
another farm on the Welsh or Cornish coast with mountains or sea cliffs close by,
a small light air-craft
a boat to potter around the coast with and to get to the south of France.

Then just as I was getting home I realised and hadn't won it, someone else had. A bit of a downer that.

2007-08-12T20:39:00.000+01:00

Lessons of the day

When coming in to land at the local model flying club use the large oak tree to line up for the final cross-wind turn before landing.
When making fudge pour the fudge into the tray before it starts to set - it pours easier and sets evenly.

I soloed this morning - ie a take off and landing without assistance. I had three flights Wednesday, another three yesterday afternoon and today I was determined to land without help. Oddly after completing this milestone the world remained much the same as before - the birds still chirped, the clouds continued to drift across sky and there were no choirs of angles nor throngs of groupies wanting an autograph. Was this a hollow goal all along ?

Tonight was my turn to cook as part of the cooking competition. Curry with fudge for desert. Finally I produced fudge that looked like fudge and not pieces of mud scrapped off the ground. The curry is a dish I often make although because recipes are tedious, like "colouring in between the lines" it never tastes quite the same.

Voting is on Monday night after Annalise's dish.

Back at work tomorrow :-(

Bike is pumped, just need to locate my security pass.

Beachy Head

2007-08-11T10:05:00.000+01:00

Friday we went to beachy head - it is a "magical place" only marred by the fact that the cliffs are chalk and thus unclimbable, at least by the sane.

Click through for the other pictures

We picnicked above the cliffs and then walked below, discovered rock pools and shady holes to read in and generally spent a lazy afternoon.

Oh and i disturbed a nude sun bather in a very remote corner. He seemed flustered and self conscious but how does one gesture "I don't care that you are naked, I am just minding my own business, pretend I am not here" without making things worse.

Sophie's version

Flying, hearts and happy times

2007-08-08T22:33:00.000+01:00

Today I had three flights of about 6 minutes duration each. Very cool. The flying field seems to have grown a bit larger and the trees are now a little lower.

The foot and mouth outbreak makes overflying the surrounding farmland a little more risky as the farmer would be unhappy with people tramping across the fields to effect a recovery. I had only one scary moment when the wind seemed to blow the plane overhead as it approached me with the sun behind it. I recovered but only because I had enough height to recover from the resulting stall. The next fly pass revealed that I had lost a wheel. At this point I handed back control to my instructor who effected a "crash landing" on two of the three wheels. No harm done except that an additional wheel came off in the process. I paid so much attention to the flight controls that the wheels had seemed kind of cosmetic. Ah well we learn from mistakes.

Earlier in the day Annalise and I spent some time at the hospital where she had a ultra-sound of her heart. Now I know hearts, we've all seen them on valentines day cards, and what she had was not in the distinctive heart shape or red colour - it was black and white and rather grainy, almost but not quite like each of our children on their last ultra-sound scan before we met them in person. That the radiologist did not pick up on this alarmed me - she seemed to think everything was normal. We await the doctors opinion as to whether her heart is several sizes to small - like the Grinch.

Tomorrow we, me as the policy holder and Stephen as the dropper, have a telephonic interview with the insurance company over the claim for the broken camera lens.

After this we will likely either walk or drive around the country-side until we find a picturesque pub and them "waste" the lazy afternoon reading the paper or a book and having a drink. Four days of holiday remaining.

Tonight we started the our festival of "five nights, five chefs and five meals". Each member of the family gets 10 pounds to spend in ingredients and prepares a meal of their choice - nutritional constraints apply. We all vote on the best meal at the end of it. Emily produced marinated chicken kebabs with a peanut-butter based sauce and brownies for desert. Yummy. Tomorrow is Sophies turn.

Alternate view of lakes

2007-08-06T23:39:00.000+01:00

Sophie's take on the same experience

The lakes

2007-08-06T22:19:00.000+01:00

With reference to the previous post - It rained.

The tents held out for 36 hours of continuous rain, sometimes light but oftentimes torrential until they started to admit drops of water that in time accumulated into mini-lakes on the floor until they were absorbed by the sleeping bags.

Stephen slipped on a path, dropping the camera and smashing the zoom lens in the process. The subsequent pictures are all wide-angle although we took precious few pictures in the rain.
On a less overcast note - last week I updated my insurance policy to include the camera - will they be suspicious ?

The climbing involved a one and half hour to two hour hike into the mountain. This was punctuated by periods when the sun shone until we crested a spur or rounded a corner and we presented with wind carrying horizontal rain and storm clouds. The climb itself was a little tame with some exposure but not very much adrenaline. We were clustered on a ledge when the wind strengthened and despite a slab of shared chocolate I realised that no-one except me was particularly enjoying the prospect of the additional pitches required to enable a "walk off" from the summit.

We took a vote, qualified with a "no sulk" condition, that only I would complete the next pitch and we would then abseil back down the route and take a direct descent down the mountain to the valley - about 400 metres below the base of the climb. The climbing was easy, finding a abseil point was not. The best I could do was to use an unlikely looking block way off the line and right at the limit of the rope length.

I knew what would happen before I had even returned to the others. The wet rope would not pull around to block and thus could not be retrieved - apart from the value of the rope, this was our only means of safe descent having left the second rope below. My pre-constructed prusik loop is currently serving as an anchor line for my model air-plane, don't ask!, so the only option was a sling based prusik and an aided climb back up to retrieve the rope. This time I left a sling and a pair of carabiners to ensure the rope could be pulled through.

I hate leaving equipment behind but looking down on the rest of the family below I couldn't help thinking that they were nesting eagles waiting for their next rabbit to be brought to them. What I needed to do was bump them off the cliff and catch them on the wing a few times until they had the confidence to fly.

The direct descent followed a stream straight down the mountain side. Usually one slips when not paying attention but the rocks were green with lichen, the grass over run with running streamlets and the ground was soft and spongy underfoot so that we all fell - frontwards, backwards and sidewards many times. Often we all fell in the same spot even when forewarned.

By the time we reclaimed the car we were filthy dirty and soaking wet but miraculously unhurt and in surprisingly good spirits. Also my GPS that I had forgotten in the excitement of the departure was still sitting on the roof of the car - a happy surprise. A quick change of clothes, another family vote and we broke camp in record time, re-packed the car and headed home to the perfect weather in the south-east. It was a 2:30 AM arrival home but the beds were dry and our roof didn't leak.

The rest of the pictures are here

Packing for trip

2007-08-01T23:34:00.000+01:00

So I woke up this morning and could not locate the bicycle pump. Annalise needed the car today but no problem I'll catch the bus. Except no bus arrives. It turns out that due to road-works related to a gas main repair has caused the buses to route around my stop :-( By the time I realised this I had missed my bus. I walked to the next stop and wait. Spend 10 minutes trying to get real-time bus information on my mobile phone before I sheepishly notice that this bus stop has it already displayed on a built in screen - this just as the next bus arrives.

By this time I am so late that I figure I might as well try a "short-cut" for the one mile walk at the the other end of the journey. This involves walking through farm land and public foot paths in ankle deep mud. At least I met some very nice horses who didn't seem to think it at all odd that someone should be dressed for work cutting across their field. Needless to say it was a good deal longer than usual.

I spent the evening packing the car in preparation for the trip tomorrow. Today at work I had more calls for help than usual and so I will need to go into work around 6am tomorrow in order to get my code released. Hopefully things will go so well that I can get away around lunch time - 5 hour trip to lake district. Looking forward to it.

Things that could go wrong

Rain
Roof box could blow off, smash on the road, destroy the contents and cause an accident
We could run out of petrol
We could crash
It could rain
We could get injured or killed climbing
Software might not get released before lunch - if only I was a lumberjack.
It could rain
Forget any of a million things
Sophie is still sick
and oh it could rain

More on Genesis

2007-07-31T07:31:00.000+01:00

This is a follow up to the post on Genesis

Ricky Gervais.

Sunday - Sophie's birthday

2007-07-30T22:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we enjoyed watching The Simpson's as part of Sophie's birthday.

Sophie on her birthday

The rest of here birthday pictures are here including some of the troop of monsters that slept over last week.

Stephen and I hung out in the bookstore and coffee shop while Sophie shopped with Annalise and Emily before the movie stared. We did find the Sushi bar mesmerising - all the brightly coloured bowls travelling around on the conveyor belt.

A very relaxing day.

This evening we purchased a roof box for our trip to the lake district at the end of this week - not very exciting unless you are into carrying corpses around but it will allow us to carry the camping and climbing equipment on the roof and make the trip I little more comfortable. In the past we have tried duffel sacks on the roof but as these aren't water proof we have to bring them inside in the event of rain - an all to often occurrence this summer.

The plan is that we will climb on two days and the rest of the time go for walks and chill out around the camp site.

On the topic of boring purchases - tomorrow the bathroom stuff arrives for the loft.

It flies

2007-07-28T20:12:00.000+01:00

This morning at around 8:23am I read the last page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

This afternoon at around 3:10pm my plane flew.

It took off did several circuits before landing. This is a trainer - the aircraft equivalent of riding a bike with training wheels attached but it seemed miraculous that something I had constructed could fly.

Picture of plane

This is the airfield of the Leatherhead model flying club. The trees and the river seem much more menacing and the field much smaller when an aeroplane is at stake.

I now have my life back - no need at stay up until 2am each night.

Tomorrow is Sophie's birthday - Lunch, Shopping, ears pieced (it was either this or sky diving and turns out she needs to be 18), Simpson's movie, dinner and family board games with DVD. Seems like a lifetime since her party last Friday night.

Sleep always gets in the way

2007-07-25T22:01:00.000+01:00

There is something wrong with me - each night between 1 and 2 am in the morning I get so tired that I am just literally falling asleep.

Now usually this wouldn't be to much of a problem but my last several nights have consisted of radio control (r/c) airplane construction until after midnight followed some time with Harry Potter. Everyone else in the family has now finished the book and moved on. I haven't seen a TV or surfed the net since the weekend.

With the kids and Annalise on holiday we were woken by the plumber this morning. He arrived to fix a leak caused by the loft alterations - we have a noticable wet patch on the kitchen ceiling.

The plane is now complete and ready for crashing. I tried a r/c flight simulator with it today - first flight 3 seconds working up to a good 30 seconds. Not very promising.

I can't focus at work - to tired, I am wearing a wider and wider range of clothes as the laundry backs up. Something has to give and I think it should be work. We are still planning our trip to the Lake district in a couple of weeks but have identified several climbs and will find a campsite close by.

My arm is in agony and despite now having completed the set of physio appointments it is worse than ever. Gotta nurse it better for the climbing.

All is well

2007-07-21T22:08:00.001+01:00

Annalise is home - since lunch. All the tests have failed to find anything. As we have been watching the complete series of House M.D. the consensus opinion, at last between Stephen and me, is that it is either tape worm, they never explicitly checked for it, or her heart is a few sizes to small, this was the problem with the Grinch.

We are the owners of three copies of Harry Potter. One purchased at midnight and two more copies this morning. Stephen intends to complete one tonight - he is in the lounge with duvet and book. Annalise and Sophie are in bed together with the other two copies. Emily looses out because she has just got in from a movie and dinner out - nice that she can walk to these.

I am busy constructing a Radio Control Aeroplane that I bought this afternoon. After the noise and mayhem of last night it looks like the Cat-in-the-hat has cleaned up and it is like Christmas eve.

I am happy.

Worry and Fear

2007-07-20T20:57:00.000+01:00

Annalise called me at work today - the doctor had referred her to the hospital for tests. I didn't have the car so she fetched me en route to the hospital. Turns out she is scheduled for a CT scan tonight and will be in hospital overnight - this in addition to the afternoon's chest X-rays and blood tests.

Tonight is also Sophie's birthday party and she has four loud, excitable friends over for a sleep-over - they are pretty much chocolated-out after a chocolate fondue. We didn't know all the phone numbers or we would have cancelled. Did I mention they are noisy and excitable. I am cowering in the kitchen.

I am thinking of trying to pick up a Harry Potter book at mid-night and smuggle it into the hospital to Annalise but this would mean leaving the monsters, sorry girls, by themselves. Perhaps I can convince them to all come with - that way we can get five books (one per customer).

Emily and Stephen are strangely united tonight - a combination of shared fear of the guests and their Mom being in hospital.

Ruined crop

2007-07-20T12:01:00.000+01:00

Our crop is ruined !

Something has destroyed it almost entirely. All is lost.

This seems to have happened on Annalise's watch while she was on leave yesterday. I wish I had married into better farming stock. Less tolerant people might blame her.

Current status of crop

1. Aubergine - eaten off or broken 1/3 of way up stem - one small leaf remains
2. Chilli plant - 50% of leaves eaten or yellowed - looks like it will have "passed on" by the weekend.
3. Sun Flower plant - lets just say no oil will come from this plant.
4. Baby marrow - touch and go. Two stems snapped off - one remaining.
5. Red/Green pepper - we may loose this before it reveals it's true colour.

Who or what would do this ? There are no tracks and no sign of insects.

I suspect BIRDS - how i hate them.

We have no crop insurance.

Genesis

2007-07-19T12:59:00.000+01:00

I have finished Genesis, my intention is to read a chapter a month in the hope that I'll gain an better understanding, of what exactly I am not sure.

I couldn't find a review of this on amazon nor establish conclusive authorship.

Some observations

1. Genesis is poorly written, includes repetition, some very poor characterisation, muddled plot and in need of some major editing. Are the lists of family trees really needed for instance ?

2. People start off living 900 plus years, enough time to have several children. Later off they are living to a mere 120 years during which time they are able to have the same number of children. Is this a translation mistake or have medical advances taken us backwards and given us shorter life spans.

3. Punishing entire families or clans, for generations sometimes, because of an individual isn't fair.

4. These are not nice people. The good guys indulge in rape, plunder, murder and incest. Abraham twice passes his wife off as his sister so that she is taken by another man and offers his own virgin daughters up for sex to protect two visiting angels (can't they protect themselves ?)

I would rate this 18 for violence, Sex and content.

The end of the Internet

2007-07-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

It had to happen some-time, but why tonight ?

We are still without TV and I had read everything from our bookcase that appealed to me and so I found myself catching up on email and surfing the usual places; news channels (BBC, CNN, NY Times), Slashdot.org, www.theonion.com and a few others - To save you the trouble I can summarise these for you - Russian diplomats expelled from UK (I think they will think twice before subjecting anyone else to radiation poisoning), a nuclear reactor leaked in Japan, the US department of Lost and found has found a Slip-Slop and MIT has developed fearless mice (gee these are going to be useful - perhaps they will be brave enough to roam around the kitchen after dark)

Anyway after reading ALL this I realised I had seen the entire INTERNET, I frantically re-visited all my bookmarks (been there), also my http://del.icio.us bookmarks but sadly I had seen them all.

If only I had rationed my use of this resource. We can't go on like this every day consuming more and more of the INTERNET. Part of the problem is caused by ADSL lines instead of DSL broadband - people are reading far more than they are writing.

It is a sad, sad day. Please use the precious resource sparingly.

Loft and window cleaning

2007-07-15T01:09:00.000+01:00

Many is the time, when things are going badly at work and the weather is good, that I look outside and long for the apparently carefree existence of the window washers. Well this evening Sophie and I lived out this fantasy. Making effective use of the scaffolding we rappelled to just above the roof of the conservatory in order to clean the roof as it had some moss growing on it. Sophie dropped down first, just to make sure the top anchor was secure, no sense in me falling through pains of glass.

Mind where you point the hose Sophie...

I've just wet myself, no not from fear.

Some pictures as the loft has progressed

The view from the loft windows

Movie recommendation

2007-07-15T00:23:00.000+01:00

Tonight we watched Hot Fuzz

This is a very British, spoof movie in the same genre as Shaun Of The Dead.

Highly recommended.

Join me on the dark side

2007-07-13T23:06:00.000+01:00

Just in from watching THE movie.
Must perform magic, kill, drink blood, eat children ....

Why did I not listen, when the signs were so clear ?

Harry Potter - the antichrist ?

2007-07-11T20:58:00.000+01:00

With the release of the movie Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix expect a deluge of commentary on how evil these books are and how they are corrupting the youth.

These nutters at PawCreek ministries claim - 'The Harry Potter books are just another means of blinding millions to the truth. When people love imagination, superstition, paranormal intrigue, witchcraft, and sorcery better than they love truth, the Creator will allow them to be filled with their own desires. When the cup of sin is full, the King will say, "It is enough."' There is more, just follow the link.

Backing up these beliefs are ChristianAnswers.net.

Are these people serious? These are BOOKS, and children, myself included, love the idea of a magical world where spells and potions are possible and where pictures talk and amazing creatures exist.

Thus far, despite all five of us in this family having read all the books at least a couple of times, the worst side effect I have noticed an intense desire to read. For instance we attempted to read the last one aloud as a family but Stephen, we later discovered, had woken in the middle of the night to read ahead (this was a direct breaking of the commandment "Honour thy father and mother"). Oh and to be fair there is a fair amount of squabbling over the amount of time each person gets reading each book before having to pass it on to the next in line.

Do these people want us to stop reading books dealing with magic and fantasy? Should we burn them? Should we issue a fatwa on J.K. Rowlings as for Salman Rushdie. No of course not. So either read the books and see the movies or get a life and focus on something really important.

Week two without TV signal

2007-07-11T00:07:00.000+01:00

The scaffolding is still obscuring the satellite dish, so no TV.

We are coping as follows

Video coverage of topical news via Internet only - me
Lots of Wii fitness tests and practice - Sophie and Emily
Youtube - Stephen
Reading - Annalise and Sophie
Organising of digital pictures - Annalise and me
Catching up on our DVD subscription backlog - all

I think lack of internet access would impact us much more.

Legacy, what legacy ?

2007-07-09T21:30:00.000+01:00

So with Tony Blair resigning, and the subsequent talk of the nature of his legacy, I have been giving some thought to my own legacy. What has particularly alarmed me is he speed at which the builders have been at ripping, tearing and generally teasing the wood-work in our attic into a well designed living area.

Compare their work to mine today .....

My current project is adding functionality to a set of eclipse plug-ins that will aid software developers with the incorporation of a specific security framework used in my company into their own software projects. This security framework is also my responsibility. Now if you are a software developer, or at least a software developer using Java and Eclipse, you may have little idea about what I just said but if you aren't I bet you haven't a clue - and this is my point.

The best outcome for this project is that it improves productivity but because security requirements are so diverse even after using the the plug-in manual tweaking will still be required afterwards. Some people will use it while others will choose not to. Within a couple of years technology will have moved on and there will be a good chance it will become redundant.

Developing software can be considered architecture but despite the use of design patterns like facades, factories and singletons none of what we develop has the endurance of a cathedral, a house or even a loft conversion. No future archaeologist is going to be digging and stumble an eclipse plug-in - "thought to be particularly fine specimen of software dating from the early 21st century".

If this wasn't bad enough none of my children have yet sailed solo around the world, climbed Mt Everest or K2 or in fact become child prodigies at anything. This despite all the advantages of genes and environment.

Would some-one please notice me.

Climbing - Craig yr Ogof

2007-07-08T17:19:00.000+01:00

We had a successful days climbing yesterday. Preparation didn't include taking a road map but the navigation system got us as far Llanllyfni (spelling correct) where upon we had to start using our intuition and bland directions to the car park. This process was complicated by the low cloud cover obscuring all the peaks.

This was the road trip

We had to fight our way past these predators on the 60 minute approach route.

One of two lakes below the mountain

Our first sight of the entire climb - it is the peak without cloud cover.

and a few minutes later

View from the base of the climb

Climbing finally - this is first belay position

Despite only starting the climb at mid-day we had a late lunch half way up on a grassy belay stance with beautifully exposed view of the lakes below and the sea in the distance.

Pitch 4 was a complicated by the fact that it was getting late, the wind had come up and I had pushed on past the recommended belay position. Running out of protection and rope I was forced to find a belay stance based on my remaining gear, largely slings and a pair of nuts. The howling wind made communication very difficult and Stephen often mistook the bleating sheep down below as me trying to say something. Thank goodness these were Welsh sheep otherwise they might well have bleated "off belay" or "climbing".

A full six hours and 135 metres later we made it to the top - a most enjoyable climb.

We got back to the car at 7:30pm. During the return trip we stopped off at an Indian and Bangladeshi restaurant that we had noticed 12 hours earlier on the trip. This pushed the estimated arrival time to 2:21AM and feeling really tired, despite stopping often for coffee, we finally gave in to sleep for a couple of hours and subsequently only arrived home at 5:30AM.

The rest of the days pictures are here

Craig yr Ogof

Loft, Skittles and Climbing trip

2007-07-06T22:20:00.000+01:00

So the kids are in bed and about to turn in myself. Stephen and I have just completed preparations for a climbing trip tomorrow - The same trip we planned for last weekend. This is a 3.30AM start and a same day, 10PM, return.

I returned home today to discover we now have stairs to a 3rd floor - no need to climb the outside scaffolding, oh and also a note to say we owe the first installment of the building costs from the builders - how touching. I wonder if during the building of the great Cathedrals the Bishop was presentd with a bill each week for the duration of the 100 odd years taken to build them.

Annalise is out partying with work people - supposedly "skittling". Why she can't just settle down and help us with the trip preparations I don't know - something to do with modern decadence and the subsequent decline of the traditional wife.

Good night.

Croquet - the slippery slope to a wheel-chair

2007-07-04T08:30:00.000+01:00

Until a month ago I had never ever lost a game of croquet. In fact I had never even played that game, except for one occasion several years ago when we accidental broke a hoop, by bashing it into hard ground, while on a rural retreat. We then had to secrete the equipment back into the shed so as to not incur the wrath of the surly games keeper.

I am not sure which of the following is the most disturbing:

1. That I am now routinely invited to play the game during lunch times
2. That I have on several occasions I have accepted said invitation
3. That when playing I have a strong desire not just to win but the thrash my opponents.
4. That I have now lost several games of croquet
5. That with my right arm crippled by a repetitive stress injury (mousing), I am now only invited for croquet games. No tennis, no lunch time swimming (as though I would drown), no lunch time run (do I run on my hands ?)
6. That this might be a slippery slope to joining the chess ladder or bridge club.

If only my arm would improve enough so I can push iron over in gym.

I have looked for, but not found, a version of Wii Croquet. It is probably much to dangerous - imagine what might have happened if these people had been playing croquet - Serious Wii Injury

Checkout competiveness

2007-07-03T20:16:00.000+01:00

I am still smarting from a shopping trip this evening where we were beaten so badly in the checkout queue.

We have builders in our house and they need tea and biscuits. While not wanting to stereotype people, we didn't think they would enjoy either the Chai Tea or Lapsang Souchong.

Usually our groceries are delivered, especially the cleaning stuff, but tonight was an emergency shop - cleaning supplies and motivational foods.

The woman in front of us in the queue had

1. Three bottles wine, two white one red.
2. one red pepper
3. Half a cucumber
4. pack of small mushrooms

A high scoring basket I think you will agree.

Stacked up against this we had

1. Tons of cleaning supplies
2. 8 packs of biscuits
3. Toilet paper
4. 4 frozen pizza
5. Two litre organic semi-skimmed milk
6. salmon (not sure if it was wild)

Our only items that had a positive score were #5 and #6, and then only marginally because the milk wasn't skinny and the salmon may not have been wild. This against a very tidy basket of items - all scoring very highly.

I wanted to make eye contact with her, by way of saying "This isn't who we are - we are shopping for others with a lessor taste" - but I think she was to snobbish and consequently pretended not to notice.

I despise snobbery, who does she think she is ? Someone should tell her we are not "what we eat" or "what we buy" !

And to be quite honest some of us are above all this anyway.

Scaffolding

2007-07-02T19:00:00.000+01:00

The scaffolding arrived today in preparation for work staring tomorrow on out loft conversion.

It's been put up at the back and is about two stories high. It is just perfectly positioned to obscure our satellite dish - so no TV for the next 8 weeks. It is times like this that make a family either grow stronger or turn in on itself. Sort of like in "Lord of the Flies". I love experiments like this. Stephen is contemplating lifting the wooden flooring to provide a clear line of sight for the satellite signal and I'm waiting for a plank to come crashing through the conservatory roof.

On the up side it looks like we can use the scaffolding as an abseiling platform.

What to Ask Barbara Kingsolver ?

2007-07-01T09:07:00.000+01:00

This wednesday Annalise and I are attending a talk by Barbara Kingsolver about her new book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" - a book about eating local produce.

I just don't know what to do though. "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer" are two of my favourite books but my new passion is agriculture.

Should I use to opportunity to ask her to critic a chapter to two of my writing or instead ask her for advice on dealing with the pests that have eaten one of the leaves of my Baby Marrow plant ?

I fear she will only have time to do justice to one of these issues.

Looking out a rain splatted window

2007-06-30T11:04:00.000+01:00

Ever since we got back from camping and climbing in Wales earlier this year I've been hoping to return in order to do some of the longer climbs there.

Unfortunately the rope work is rather complicated for five climbers over six pitches and 120 metres so I thought it best that initially just two of us do a climb or two.

This week Annalise has been sick, otherwise I would have been planning a trip to Craig yr Ogof with Stephen this weekend.

Had I been uncaring enough to even contemplate going I might have realised that we would need to leave at 3:30am in order to travel the 5 plus hours and hike the 45 minute approach route, do the climb and then return by 10pm that evening. I would have known where to park the car, the quickest route and where to fill up with petrol. I would have convinced Stephen that he wanted, and indeed needed, this experience and we might have planned the trip to the minutest detail.

But no I am not uncaring and insensitive. For if I was we would have had to pack rain gear to cope with the 40mm of rain falling today in Wales and predicted again for tomorrow. Had I been the least bit uncaring I might have brought up the time 17 years ago when I cancelled a trip to the Drakensberg mountains on account of her been morning sick with Stephen.

Of course I did none of these things because I CARE.

Desolate day

2007-06-24T19:09:00.000+01:00

We intended to go climbing today. Damn weather, it has rained all day apart from the odd half hour, in a rather feable attempt to lure us outside.

It is some, but not much, consolation that we did do some indoor re-organisation.

I noticed these "witch" birds from the bedroom window.

They may appear blurred but I am grateful just to have caught them unawares before they morphed into innocent little robins.

I know they are must belong to a witch because there are about 100 of them and they sit watching us and then every so often return to somewhere quite close to report back. Sometimes they gather on a lawn across the road to discuss and to scheme.

Notice how these ones are trained to sit equi-distance apart. I suspect these are the elite flock, and smart - really smart.

Real Tennis outdoors with balls

2007-06-23T23:09:00.000+01:00

Inspired by hours of Wii tennis in our lounge Stephen and I had this wild idea about playing the real, outdoor version on a proper court - just like people played during 19th and 20th centuries before games consoles were invented.

We cycled into the high-street and located a sports store, similar to the Wii games store but with a much bigger selection of bats, rackets and balls - none of which look exactly like a games console controller. The staff seemed a little confused by our desire to play "real outdoor tennis like they used to" but I think they were history majors because they figured out what we needed and we left with two rackets and a quiver of balls.

If you are familiar with a Wii remote you will need to understand that these rackets are almost, but not quite, unlike the white wand shaped remote that fits so well in your hand. Firstly the safety wrist strap on each racket is missing (what were they thinking?) as are any additional buttons at all. This should be obvious when you realise that they did NOT have electricity when these rackets were popular.

We located the court - they are much larger than they appear on our 37inch TV screen. We played for a couple of hours. It is nothing like Wii tennis, and the differences extend to more than just the proximity to the fridge.

You are probably asking which I enjoyed the most. Well both forms have pros and cons.

The downside of racket tennis

The balls are the same colour as the court and indeed the surrounding foliage (seems like bad design to me)
The balls tend to leak through the fence and one has to risk stinging nettles to get them back.
Missed balls have to retrieved, sometimes from several courts away, - they don't just appear in your hand
You get wet when it rains
The court is slippery when it rains
It gets hard to see when it gets dark
The sound effects are a little unrealistic - no crowd cheers for example and a duller "thunk" on contact with the ball.
If the sun shone you could get skin cancer

The upside of this form of tennis

Great feedback in the racket (you really feel the ball striking the strings)
I think it is little more tiring and hence a slightly better workout than the more common Wii sport
It's cool to be able to tell people - "I played tennis - outdoors with balls"

A word of warning though. The lack of a wrist strap on the racket suggests that children should not be playing this version. Keep them indoors and in front of the TV.

Our next experiment is going to involve cooking like in the old times using the same techniques used in Wii's "Mamas cooking". We must get a fire extinguisher first though because this can be really dangerous.

Self mutilation

2007-06-21T20:54:00.000+01:00

This is a follow up to My Computer is Crippling me and the recent Wii injury.

Today I had my first appointment with "my physio". I've never been able to say that before. "My dentist", "my solicitor", "my hair dresser", "my broker", "my gynae". Well one out of five is a start.

I have Repetitive Stress Injury, RSI in my right arm. A result of years of computer use and bad posture.

The cure apparently involves

90 degree angles between every body part and every other body part
Frequent breaks, perhaps I should take up smoking.
Raising my desk
Raising my chair
Moving one of my two LCD screens to the right
Avoiding chicken wing arm movements while driving, sitting and riding the bike (pretty much any time I am NOT impersonating a chicken).
Oh and if this wasn't enough I should mouse with the left hand and not the right.
Notebook computers are bad
Numeric key pads are bad (they make the keyboard wider)

Lastly it would be better if I could get a job without any repetitive movement - I'm thinking professional fighter - never hear them complaining about RSI. If you hear of any left hand only fights, nothing very violent or involving chickens, please put in a word for me.

I have a follow up appoinntment next week - I do so want to impress ....

The God Delusion

2007-06-21T07:50:00.000+01:00

I recently completed the "God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

He writes brilliantly and he has inspired me to read the entire Bible, not just the familiar bits, - I wonder how long it will take ?

Three issues have been on my mind today -

1. The knighting of Salman Rushdie by the queen and the subsequent protests from Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.
2. The 100th day in captivity of BBC journalist Alan Johnston
3. George Bush's latest stem cell research veto

People with a strong faith, Christian, Islamic, Jewish or any other should be able and willing to defend their ideas, in deed and in debate, without bannings, death threats or other forms of intimidation. An Omnipotent God doesn't need any earthly protection from competing ideas.

Apart from the obvious attack on creationism and the literal interpretation of the bible Dawkings makes the following points

We don't get our morals from religion - What is morally acceptable today has changed so much in the last 2000 years while the Bible and Koran and remained the same. We just pick and choose those parts of the Bible and/or Koran that are convenient.

It is problematic to defend the belief that science governs the physical world while God governs the spiritual world and that there is NO interaction. The problem stems from the belief that God responds to prayer and intervenes in physical matters. Science should be able to detect such interventions yet it has not found any such evidence even when it has tried.

I would be interested to know what other people make of the book.

Preparing for the worst - "agricultural ruin"

2007-06-20T21:20:00.000+01:00

No sign of growth. The marrow looks the same while the rest of the crop looks slightly less "perky" than on initial planting.

Hopefully they are like new-born babies and are expected to loose weight in the first few days.

Yikes - It is raining even harder

2007-06-19T22:15:00.000+01:00

I worry the crop will be washed away. The rain is deafening on the conservatory roof.

Why did I even bother with the watering can ?

Subtle Guru

Food budgets - an accidental lesson in diet

The Unintended Consequences of Moving Into the Cloud

O2 Wifi Hotspot Insanity

On Book Burning and a World Gone Mad

Apple I{Pad/Pod/Phone}

42

Ten23 the outcome

Homeopathy and the 10:23 Campaign

Cornwall trip

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Wierd spam

Keeping the faith in vitamin c

IPhone catastrophe

Happy, happy timeshifted birthday eve

January Freeze

Fire, Fire! Laptop computer catches fire

A video collage of the last week

Subway madness

Baño del Papa, El

Stephen's Birthday

Twilight

Walk on Colley Hill

More aerial photography

Playing with Xmas presents

Boxing day excursion

Careful what you learn

Edge 540

The Alchemist

Reading

Sickness

Outsource

My Cap 21

Rain

What does the queen carry in her handbag ?

GuyFawkes weekend

Terracotta Army

Old friends

Black Sheep

Monologues

The monologues

Theory of tiling and everything

Three dead squirrels

This weekend

New plane ready to fly

Fastest time to work

Further evidence for lack of testosterone

Has anything happened in the last two months?

Looking for Testosterone

It is now a total wreck

*&^*&^*^%$££$"$£" Tiling

Mid-air

Fighting insanity

This weekend I ......

Michelangelo

Ramadan

Aerial Photography

Flight exam

Pink (Salmon) Mobile Phone

Weekend activities

My Dad

Spare screws and missing keys

Bank Holiday

Flying

Picking Blackberries

5 Billion Slugs

Almost won 35 Million Pounds

Beachy Head

Flying, hearts and happy times

Alternate view of lakes

The lakes

Packing for trip

More on Genesis

Sunday - Sophie's birthday

It flies

Sleep always gets in the way

All is well

Worry and Fear

Ruined crop

Genesis

&^&^*^%$££$"$£" Tiling