January Freeze

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

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

Places my camera has been over the last week.

Subway madness

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

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

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

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

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

Another beautiful day for photography





An some still pictures

aerialpics

Playing with Xmas presents

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  

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

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

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

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

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 ?

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.