Adventures on caffeine and hope

Brief post before my time runs out

2011-10-07T04:28:00.000+01:00

By which I mean the time on my wifi card (100 minutes a week). Seriously, time yourself! See how long that lasts...
I'll get more online soon but I've made it off camp (Sea Lion Island once and Stanley once) and seen many, many penguins, Elephant Seals and other animals. Work is mostly going well and I would sign up for a tour next year if we weren't so short back home.

Anyway, DVLA bad, post office slightly better, I'm missing the ginger hound, we REALLY more single desperate ladies down here that aren't too bothered about military guys but like overweight hairy forecasters.
Oh and go on England in the rugby!!

Ooops

2011-08-07T20:11:00.001+01:00

Right, it's been almost a year since I put finger to key (so to speak)and I've got a few catch up blog posts to put on, including weddings, flights, cars, cocktails, dogs parties and a few countries but for now I wanted to say that I will be putting a bit more on here as I'm currently sat in the departures lounge at Brize Norton (again), getting ready to head back out to the Falklands. I know, the last post was about the Falklands but I did come back and I've seen quite a few friends in that time and even made some more.
As it is, this time I'm due to have a fat boy seat on the way down (woohoo!) but as is my want I'm not going to fully believe that until we're wheels up and I'm reclining the seat to it's lie flat position (after the pilot has turned of the seat belt light, of course :) ) and I managed to get away with not carrying too many books this time, just some ones for work and a Kindle - more on this gadget in a previous post but safe to say it's still wonderful and I'll add more detail soon! So much so that I found myself trying to turn off a normal book rather than just putting it down.
Anyway, time to grab a coffee. I'm on Skype now (when I can get connection) but email is probably the best way to contact me, or leave a comment on the blog and I'll see it doon thar.

Falklands 2010

2011-03-11T15:47:00.005Z

So, second time down and a few things were different. I already knew some people down there, I had a girlfriend down there and I knew what I was doing.
That, at least, was the plan.
Turns out it took me much longer than it should have to get my mind in to the local weather and I've already mentioned that Kate and I broke up half way through the tour.

Although I didn't see any penguins I did see some other birds:

A turkey vulture at Goose Green, the second largest settlement in the Falklands, not counting Mount Pleasant. Population: about 35.

Ugly bugger up close. Which is probably what he thought of me.

This little fella was chilling inside a wreck at Goose Green, he's a night heron. Lovely, isn't he?

Sometimes called the military starling or the Falklands robin, I didn't capture just how damn RED the breast is on this Long Tailed Meadowlark. At least I think that's what it is; the chest is amazingly vibrant.

No visit would be complete without a striated caracara. This one wouldn't take off, just sat there, posing.

Just east of Stanley, this is Surf Bay, nice break, beautiful water and really white sand, it's probably a good thing you can't see that I'm wearing a full down jacket, gloves and hat. The water is about 4 degrees, rising to 8 at the end of summer.
I couldn't get to this beach last time owing to the mines that kept washing up on the beach. It's cleared now, or so they told me.

And this was a night in the Crab And Sprocket that started when Humf and Paul said "Fancy a drink?"
I think the details are self explanatory.

I'm aiming to get back down later in the year, but that might depend on some news due out of head office in the next couple of weeks.

One or two words

2011-03-11T12:23:00.000Z

Things have changed since the last blog entry, as you’d expect with it being almost 9 months ago.

I’ve moved out of the flat and am now sharing a house with a friend from the mess. She had the chance to buy a 4 bedroom house for under £100,000 and needed someone to help with the rent, I get most meals cooked, someone to keep an eye on my kit while I’m south/away and I get the ironing, martini making and spider catching duties. It’s a nice place but I do need to drive to work rather than cycling.

I’ve been asked to be godfather to a friends’ bairn, which is awesome, and I think I won the “most inappropriate Christmas gift for a baby” award with a Leatherman and two rock CDs :)

I’ve changed my car, I now drive a Grand Vitara 4x4 which is much more sensible up here, although I miss 50+ mpg like you wouldn’t believe.

I did go south (photos to follow) about 3 days after moving my stuff into the new house and didn’t see a single live penguin while I was in the Falklands. At one point I was thinking “next week I’ll see if I can get on a trip to Sea Lion Island” and then realised I was flying out in 4 days! I could have gone over to Bertha’s Beach to see some Gentoos but that would have been like going to the zoo. In the end I felt that it was almost more impressive not to have seen any ‘guins.
Kate and I broke up while I was south, although that means that it was face to face rather than over the phone as she’s still down teaching at MPA. We were looking after a place for some friends down there and she came in from the garden to say that we need to talk…

Yeah.

In the end I understood her reasons, we had a few days avoiding each other but with the mess not exactly being a big place we were guaranteed to run into each other fairly soon. I’m glad that we managed to stay friendly but I was, and still am, somewhat gutted.

Back up here and the way we’re working has changed. I’m now apparently on permanent early starts, and I do mean EARLY. The shift starts at 0530 and it’s a 20 minute drive into work. Some of the time I’m over at one of the squadrons, sat in the planning room to answer all their questions like “what’s the weather at our target?” “Will we be able to get laser lock on from this height?” “When will the wind increase?” and, more often, “Will I be able to fly my personal light aircraft this afternoon?” or “will I be able to go mountain biking over the weekend?”
I’m still waiting for “would you like a cup of tea?” I’ve done a couple of extra training courses, including one on how to talk to people (not totally useless, to be honest) and none have covered more than 50% of what I get here on an average day. What the future holds for the station, my job and the office as a whole I don’t know, we were supposed to hear something last week which got put back to maybe next week, I think I’ll be ok as long as the station is here (so no guarantees) but I think a lot of my friends may get shafted.

In lighter news, I’ve taken up dive training with the camp BSAC club and I’ve bought a Kindle, fulfilling an earlier wish of mine. Both good so far, especially the Kindle. I sprung for a third generation 3G enabled model and it is brilliant, the screen is very easy to read, the library is pretty good and conversion to the right format is easy with Calibre. Down sides are that the web browser is pretty poor and it feels a bit delicate but I’ve got a good cover for it now and it’s a book, not a tablet. Some people have said “oh but it’s only greyscale” but again, it’s a book, not a magazine. I haven’t tried any of the papers on it yet but I might try the Times free trial soon. At the moment I’ve got more than 250 books on it, most of them open source/out of copyright. I can see that it would be VERY easy to run up a huge bill very quickly. I’m told there are some file sharing options but one would never do such a thing :)
The third generation Kindle, like mine, natively support PDF files and I’ve put on some ones from work so, rather than lug around three A4 files, I’ve got a light piece of kit that fits in my jacket, let alone my bag. Down side of this is that the pages are very small on the screen so you need to zoom in a few times or use the landscape orientation option. There is a bigger version (the DX) that would be better for this and I think I’ve planted the seed of thought in one of the executives in the office that they could be very useful to forecasting staff to have with all the reference documents on, although I think rugged cases would be a worthwhile investment in that case.
No, it doesn’t feel or smell like a book, you can’t kill a fly with it, use it as a beer coaster (well I bloody well wouldn’t) and, despite what you see in the adverts, I wouldn’t put it my back pocket. However, it is very light, easy to read, the battery lasts a long time (especially if you don’t have the whispernet wireless turned on) and, did I mention, I’VE GOT OVER 250 BOOKS ON MINE! I haven’t even filled a quarter of the capacity. All this on something that is actually smaller than my pencil case. I’ve started reading from the Kindle rather than normal books these days at home, partly cause you can’t tell what I’m reading from the back of the device.

Anyway, it’s almost half twelve, I’ve been in work since half five and I’ve got to get back to the main office for some admin then I’m buggering off home.
I’ve probably forgotten something massively important that has happened and I need to add some photos later so there might be another post coming before too long.

30 times round the sun

2010-06-24T22:45:00.004+01:00

But more importantly, welcome to the world John! Hope Pam and Paul manage some sleep at some point during the rest of this year!

So I woke up this morning (da da da da dum in a blues style...) and thought "oh crap I'm not a 20 something any more!" A few of times actually.
The last few birthdays have been basically just another day but today felt a bit different, and it's hard to say why. I can't really say that I felt more mature, more refined or less likely to streak across the beach at midnight, but I did, do, feel like some kind of milestone has been passed.
If anything I'd say I feel a bit more confident. And it seems a bit brash to say that is just because I've got time served; but maybe that's all it is, perhaps maturity and experience are just fucking up in the small ways when no one notices and carrying on, not letting them see you sweat and blagging the decent roles. Getting through the big problems by shear power of will and the appearance of confidence.
As one of my old kayaking instructors used to say, "don't be good - be convincing!"

Gods know it feels like that at work sometimes.

*edited to add* In something of a tradition of the last few years, once I've got settled in the evenings I took one of my cigars (thanks for the Don Tomas Clasico, Smudge!!!) out to the front of the flat and had a moment of "thought" which this year involved a comfy chair, a glass of wine and the aforementioned smokable. I should mention that I get through, on average, 3 cigars a year, so I don't think I've got too much of a problem.
While sat on the moon chair, hoping for a break in the clouds to show the aurora that is supposed to be out there tonight, I thought "hmmmm, I feel in a 'poets' mood" and so, like every 'modern' guy I whipped out my phone, tuned into YouTube and pulled up the videos for "If...", "trust me on the sunscreen" and a couple of Roger McGough poems.
I felt decadent and almost educated with my choice of videos, but that was rather offset by the wine and cigar. I doubt there was any kind of point to this, so rather than leave it without a punchline I'll give you a couple of links that some might enjoy: Here and here.

Plans sometimes happen when you don't expect them

2010-06-19T02:25:00.005+01:00

Next month I'm flying back south ('deep' south). Not sure of the exact timing details yet but there's a few weeks left to organise that, must remember to take my DJ and possibly a kilt or two...
The week before I go south I'm moving house. Should be an interesting couple of weeks.
Next week I turn 30, and the implications of that really haven't hit me yet, but there's a whole load of stuff it could be. It's just a number, but over the last 3 days it seems to have become more and more significant. I'll put that down to paranoia for the time being.
Tonight I spent a fair amount of time this evening chatting to one of the guys from the search and rescue squadron, good guy; we talked about linux, Mac's reduction in the world of IT, xkcd, various things about the world of RAF funds reduction and the effect of an Air Commodore on groups of young officers (you really had to be there).
Got home and had a link sent to me to this, a talk by Prof Brian Cox (OBE or is it MBE? - anyway well done Dr Cox!!!) which matches almost to a tee one of the conversations I had this evening. Wonder, my friends, endless wonder about the world, the solar system and the universe in which we live.
There are some times I wonder if I made the right choice 5 years ago, the three courses available to me on that day (and it was actually a day - two job offers in 24 hours), choose one of the two offers or carry on as before. I do sometimes regret not staying working for Blacks, although by now I'd either be running the Cheltenham store or they would still have shut that store and I'd be somewhere else - but that is a path down a road undiscovered and a route forever unknown.
What if I had taken the job with James, working with AWE with the best job title ever - firing technician at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. I'd be working with one of my best friends and might even be on the way to getting a masters or a PhD. I can't describe how much I want a PhD so I won't try, but suffice to say it's a lot.
But here I am, I've taken the other road, it's taken me almost as far south as is possible and certainly further than I thought would be possible six years ago, and I'm still hoping for the chance to get that bit further south. I've still got the chance to get the commission that, it's fair to say, I still lust after. Admittedly, I've got a fair amount of work to do in order to get there, but it's within my grasp and the only thing stopping me from getting there is me. So I'll see how this deployment south goes.

And for those that haven't heard, I should say point blank. I'm going back to the Falklands for a few months :) And I'm really looking forwards to it for a whole bunch of reasons.

But as the song went a few years ago, trust me on the sunscreen.

Oh and for the record, Guitar Hero Metallica - BRILLIANT!!!!!

Realisation and a couple of links

2010-04-29T23:28:00.003+01:00

I hadn't thought that I'd been up here all that long until a few months back I was down in Exeter doing a course in satellite interpretation (good course) and I was in the pub next to the hotel, looking at the whisky selection. I was surprised that there were only 6 malts, and that they were those specific ones (can't remember exactly which ones but basically a basic selection of the regions) and I mentioned to the guy behind the bar that I was surprised he only had one Speyside.
Turns out he was the manager.
He seemed surprised by what I said and asked me what the difference was between the different types, which I found I didn't have any problem answering, explaining the different tastes and characters.

Looks like I've been living in the Spey catchment long enough to pick up a few things.

OK, so this is a pretty pointless post but aside from that, have a look at this site of customer idiocies. There's also Text From Last Night which is just a bit too disturbing, all told.

Some extra reading.

2010-04-20T18:01:00.005+01:00

A few follow up links from yesterdays rant:
The Daily Mash take on the matter.
A little something from the wonderful Cocktail Party Physics.
Astropixie's take, which actually prompted the post.
The Met Office VAAC charts page - that's Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre - (don't look too hard at the title, it stands for Volcanic Ash Graphic, ok? Nothing dirty with that at all...) and another Met Office one that gives some of the reasons behind the model.
One last (for now) Met Office one giving some gen on the particulates found in the dust layer.
A Norweigan model animation of the ash, but I'm not sure of what it specifically shows, I've mainly included it cause it looks cool.

And for a bit of a change, Kate's sister's post that was referenced by Ben Goldacre in his miniblog links.

Ash up your pipes

2010-04-19T20:46:00.007+01:00

I'm glad that it looks like we're going to be able to re-open the airways tomorrow, even if it's not for all that long.
I'm more glad that no aircraft have fallen out of the sky.
I'm rather pissed off with the people saying that nothing happened so the precautions were excessive.
If someone plays Russian roulette and doesn't die, would you say there was no danger at the start or that they were lucky? Would you say "they were fine so I'll give it a go"?

There is ash in the atmosphere, it's nasty shit.
If you think I'm overstating that, consider that this is made of rock (generally between 0.1 and 1 mm but sometimes much bigger than that) that can rather damage windscreens and paintwork, not to mention potentially breaking the skin of the airframe; there's volcanic glass mixed in (more so in this case as the silicon dioxide makes up 58% of the tested ash at Lerwick) which can melt in the combustion stage of a jet engine and form a layer of glass over the insides of the engine (check Flight Global for images of what volcanic ash can do to the engine on a F-18) as well as the fact that the ash itself can build up on surfaces and stick, ruining airflow and making the aircraft somewhat heavier. Oh, and did I mention the sulphur? Yeah, it's sulphurous, too much of it and it becomes a danger to respiration, add water and it can become sulphuric acid, oh and it stinks!
Can be pretty though, the effects of the particles cause a static buildup that results in lightning at the volcano and St Elmos fire on the surface of aircraft flying through it. Cop yer whack at this:
from NASA for an indication.
More pictures (some amazing ones as well) from the Big Picture from the Boston Globe.

We've had recorded ash across the entire UK, you can't see it but it's there. Or at least you can't see it in the air but it becomes visible when it builds up on cars and other surfaces. We've seen this from Lerwick, Aberdeen, Boscombe, all across Devon and most of the south. They took samples from West Freugh in southwest Scotland and they found 2000 ft of ash at two different levels in the atmosphere today. Some parachute dudes found a couple of layers (they reported some weird visual effects and "a stinging sensation on the lips" as well as dark areas in the air) and before you say "but the BA and Lufthansa flights were OK", we knew that we don't know the exact areas of the ash, it's distribution or exact makeup so we knew there would be clear areas and not clear areas, the research flights that went up found both.
We had some satellites but they were obscured by higher cloud, our radar isn't good (expensive) enough to find the ash, we don't have enough actual weather balloons spread across country (or upwind - it's ocean, which isn't really conducive to weather balloons) to get detail of the atmosphere and our wind profiler/lidar network needs so much investment any political party that suggested funding it properly would be laughed off the stage. We do have some of the best observers and forecasters in the world, one of (if not the) best set of models in the world, although they could do with being a bit more flexible, which we could do with more funding and a bit more flexible approach. But we haven't had a situation like this crop up, we've no experience of this type of thing on this scale and it takes us time to get the required information. It might even take us a week.

I was asked "how much ash is too much, because I've heard there is no safe amount?" and I can't answer this because I'm not an engineer or a Rolls Royce specialist. They (Rolls-Royce) are saying you need to cover the aircraft, put them inside and don't turn on the engines. Preferably cover them with fine silks and satins. OK, I'm exaggerating slightly, but only a bit.

In the 1980s a couple of 747s hit ash clouds and had all their engines cut off. These clouds are one of the few things that can kill all the engines on a multi-engine aircraft within minutes. To clear the engines of the glass build-up you need to put LOTS of clean air through the engines which generally requires about 12000 ft of free-fall. Our ash layers were around 4000-8000 ft.

Yes, it's been an embuggerance for many, many people, our mail up here is stalled (the post is sent by aircraft then driven on), my girlfriend is stuck at Brize Norton until at least Thursday and we'd both rather she could have waited up here until she was needed, not to mention the financial implications and all the people stranded.
But let me put it this way, I would rather she spent ten years waiting at Brize rather than be in an aircraft that took the risk of flying through an ash cloud at 8000 ft and having the aircraft turn into a glider.

Have a look at this for more explanation.

Could different levels of reaction be used in the future? Yes.
Yes if we know the exact distribution of the ash.
Yes if we know the composition of the ash.
Yes if we know how fast it's being produced.
Yes if we know the winds at every 500 ft interval and the vertical motion of the air over the entire area of the ash cloud.

Until that point ask yourself if fire engines need to drive so fast to every call out, or if you want your doctor to take you seriously any time you have a sharp pain in your chest. Or would you rather the fire brigade assumed you were burning toast rather than stuck in a building, your doctor assumed you were over-reacting rather than see if it was an heart attack.
Are you happy with the airline assuming that they know best and that because "they didn't hit any ash areas" means "we won't hit any ash areas."
Or wait until we know more about the circumstances and can say "OK, we've had a check and we think this area is safe while this area isn't."
Even if it takes a week.

Or the volcano stops.

I probably should have called them back and told them it was a joke

2010-04-02T00:47:00.003+01:00

Just in case there are any guys from 12 Sqn reading this, I was kidding, we're not being privatised (yet - ask me again after the election...), we're not being bought out by Disney, I won't be going into briefings wearing Mickey Mouse ears and we won't be diverting all telephone enquiries (including target weathers) to a call centre based in Mumbai.

Honestly, I was going to say that they should check the date but it was too much fun.
Wasn't as good as last years though.

Think I'll shrink wrap my boss' desk next year.

Some things, but not all, and not quite the ones I wanted

2010-03-18T18:16:00.006Z

Christmas and the New Year, Kate, myself and two friends (Tash and Chris) went off to Arosa in Switzerland for a couple of weeks snowboarding and spending quality time together. It was epic and my 'boarding has improved massively (as I found out at the Lecht a while later - but more on that later). There was a decent amount of snow and some unbelievable conditions, although on Christmas Day the falling snow, which did give a wonderful surface, meant visibility was only about 10 feet and you couldn't see where the edges of the slopes were. Fell over lots, only big falls a couple of times though.
Spending time with Kate was marvellous, but the two weeks went too fast, as always happens.

Into the new year and Scotland had the coldest winter in decades, for which there had been a 1 in 7 chance of a colder than average winter for the northwest of Europe. People forget that the seasonal forecast is for large areas, not specific places. Some people think that the forecasts ruled out cold winters, but if you roll a die there is a 1 in 6 chance of getting a 5. No matter what the outcome, there was a 1 in 6 chance of getting a 5. But there's got to be someone to blame, hasn't there?

Moving on.

Work was quiet, so I managed to take the opportunity to use the service transport to the Lecht for a days boarding. Conditions were a bit icy in some places but generally awesome and it was the best boarding I've ever done. Also the longest session, for which I paid the next three days...
No photos of that, so you'll have to take my word on it.

Been working all the jobs we have, observing, forecasting at both stations, forecasting on the big desk; also found out how much my job is worth in the private sector. Turns out it's LOTS more than we are paid. Government say we should be paid just under median market value but the market is based on what we're paid. Go abroad (such as Australia) and you can get even more. Even with the exchange rates and cost of living, lots more. Not for me though, not yet anyway.

Friend (one of the Sarahs) has been in hospital a lot recently, she's got a rare form of MRSA called PVL MRSA (I think), so she's been in isolation having her system cleared, the rare times she's been out of hospital we took her dog for a bit of a walk on the beach.

Turns out I've got a lot to learn about taking photos in snow. Been recommended changing the exposure settings.

The house move has been delayed, partly due to weather slowing things down, but also problems with planning permissions; and still no news about the potential job development, but might hear next week, or the week after. Having said that I've started becoming an NVQ assessor, it's even more work that doing the sodding NVQ itself! The first assessment went ok, once I'd finally finished the write-up. Hope to get that finished by the end of summer.

Back to Exeter next week for more training, but now it's off to work for the night.

Autumn turns, and the moon is born again

2009-11-21T21:09:00.005Z

The blog title isn't leading to anything, I just thought it'd be nice to write.

In September I was down at head office doing a course in winter forecasting, which was pretty good. Like most of the training we get, it can feel that we're being overtrained, but I had a think about it and I realised that they could just tell us "if you see this, then you put this into your forecasts" but rather than do that, they teach "if you see this, then this is happening, which means this might happen." We get taught the background reasoning and systems at work, rather than just the effects. When you think about it this is probably why our training takes longer and is more expensive than other places.
I had a big hire car when I was down there, with an electric handbrake, but I did NOT like it, I can see it working with an automatic, but not safely with a manual.

Bit later, I was back south for Dad's 65th, for which mum and Becky had arranged a surprise party. Keeping a surprise from Dad is not easy but we managed it, when he walked into the room he was expecting to go in and have a half price pizza, not for there to be 50 odd friends and family from all over, grouped together for him. Which was brilliant.
I managed to see Pippa, Sara and Andi, and Sian and Matt while I was south, which was awesome, and when I got back it was Oktoberfest, again awesome.

We had the station Friends and Family day, bit like an airshow but small scale. Typhoon came round and did a very impressive display - that thing just has buckets of power! I was working for the start of the day, and did the weather brief for the Red Arrows, also got to watch them doing their pre-flight brief, where they dissected their last performance, and they are REALLY strict with each themselves and each other. Have a few photos:

Apart from that, not too much has been happening. I'm going to be moving next year, a friend is buying a house and I'm going to be renting a room from her; I've been working a lot over the road at the other station, mainly at a level above what I'm supposed to be working. I'm looking at potential job development, but have nothing concrete yet.
I've almost got used to that moment when you think "oh good, it's half two and I start work at half five." But I still don't like that thought.

Language

2009-09-06T10:52:00.005+01:00

Kate sent something to me that I feel I must share, it's a little poem about the English language..

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

(some sources add a final couplet)

And yet to write it, the more I sigh,

I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

Hope she doesn't mind me reposting it here. There's an American reading it here, but up here "dead" can indeed be pronounced "deed", and don't get me started on the Welsh year, here and ear, all of which are said "ur" or saucepan in the Townhill dialect.

One of the sources gives the following:

The poem...is attributed to T.S.Watt (1954) and appeared in the Guardian...

However, in the following publication it is attributed to Richard Krough, 
see: O'Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, W. and Katamba, F.1997. 
"Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction_, London: Longman, p.614"

Interestingly, following one of the links trying to find an author with whom to credit the work, I came across a version on the West Cumbria Dyslexic Association, which has an option at the top to very quickly change the background of the page. I'm wondering if this would be a quicker way to test if anyone does find particular backgrounds easier to read from. Or, in the case of Mac Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8 to invert the page, although I personally have issues reading white text on a black background (persistence of vision is a bugger) it does make the text stand out better.

Right, last bit of packing listening to Tori Amos on the radio before the hire car turns up, drive to Inverness via work, fly to Bristol, pick up another hire car, drive to Exeter for a course in winter forecasting/explosive cyclogenesis/polar lows then home in time for the last night of the Proms!

2009-08-18T18:26:00.001+01:00

Right, been a while but here we go with a catch up. The little story thing pretty much went as I’d thought it would, thanks for the feedback though Rich! I’m sure I’ll have missed something that’s happened in the time since my last full post, but the main things since I passed my IAM (still woohoo about that!) are that I applied for a new job at work and did some walking.

Ok, maybe it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The new job wasn’t actually a new job but a 3 months secondment to a place called Rothera. To say that I was rather keen to go would be an understatement and pretty much all the indications were that I had a good shot at it. The position had been massively undersubscribed in previous years and I had Southern Hemisphere experience, winter experience and could put a tick in all the boxes on the application form.
But alas, it was not to be. Once the sift date had gone past and then a bit of extra time had lapsed I gave HR a call and was told that it wasn’t their department. Next day (hmmmmm, bit suspicious about the timing) I got the email saying that I had been unsuccessful in my application. I asked for some feedback but so far haven’t received any; there’s almost no point asking HR about it at the moment as we’re in the middle of a pay offer so they are all busy telling people that they’re not really getting a £5000 pay cut, it just looks that way.

So, one disappointment down, but now I may get the chance to spend Christmas with my girlfriend and some mates in Switzerland. So, not all bad.

Tash and Chris came up again for the Summer Ball, which had waltzers, a surfing simulator, laser clay pigeon shooting, FOOD, drink, more food and other posh entertainments (but not of the “masked ball” variety).

Chris and Tasha on the surf simulator. Yes, I did go on it, and did quite well, but unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that. Shame.
Week later we met up again, this time at a camping site in the Cairngorms, in preparation for the big walk – the Wolftrek 45 mile jaunt from Forres to Cairngorm. In the end I had to bin first, partly due to feet but mainly my knee was about to collapse; so I stacked at 17 miles, Tasha made 32 and Chris and Venora managed the whole 45 miles, swearing never to do anything as silly EVER AGAIN.
The time for their 45 miles was 19 hr 15 minutes, which was pretty damn good, but a bit longer than the fastest guy, who completed the route in 6 hr 52 min. ^-^
We had started out at a decent pace for the route, about 3 miles an hour, which we felt we could sustain, and which was about the right pace to get a time on par with the average from the last year’s pack. Problem was that everyone started off in a big bunch, mainly at the pace of the people who were only planning to do the first section. Pretty soon we were at the back, which isn’t a problem really, just a bit disheartening.
By the end some 40% had dropped out. Our team was the last to reach the first, second and third/last checkpoints but Chris and Venora finished in the middle of the pack, mainly as they didn’t get caught out by stopping in the comfy chairs at Glenmore Lodge.
Three days later I get a message from Chris asking if I was up for trying to beat the time next year. Ha! So much for never again!

Kate is up visiting, and we’re trying to successfully use the bread maker that Tasha and Chris got for me, but my first attempt was less than brilliant.

We also went to see Coraline over the weekend, a Neil Gaiman film that you can tell is one of his stories for children by the way it’s dark and quite disturbing. Good though, especially the cat.

I'm going to try something a bit silly

2009-07-28T23:58:00.002+01:00

Well actually I've got a few silly things planned. For one in less than two weeks some friends and myself are doing the Wolftrek - a 45 mile walk ending up at the top of Cairngorm, within 24 hours. Another is below.
I don't know if I can write in a way that is readable but this little short has been buzzing around my head for the past couple of days so I thought I'd try to get it down and one I'd written it I figured I'd ask for your comments. Good or bad but please be constructive, if not necessarily nice...

So here it is, a story about first contact.
.........................................................

Assessing record – first contact:

“…We turn to our special correspondent on the scene of this, humanity’s first contact with another species! Janet, can you hear me?”

“Thank you Tim, yes, here we are less than ten years after the first messages were detected by the LISA observatory, and now we are waiting for the representative of the species known as the ‘Pa’adu’ to leave their craft and be welcomed by the UN delegation.
“There seems to be a small delay while the translation equipment is set up, and I am sure everyone watching will remember how the newly commissioned LISA orbiting gravitational wave interferometer picked up patterns in the background gravitational field, and the scientific furore surrounding the discovery that these patterns corresponded to the prime numbers in binary. It has been called the ‘defining moment of our generation’ by the world’s leaders; and yet even today some religious factions have decried the development of the Gravitational Communication Wave, or GCroW, as an affront to the divine plan for humanity, although of course the major religious leaders have distanced themselves from this view.
“We are still not sure what to expect when the emissary leaves the ship, as no visual transmission was been possible but all contact has led to the belief that the first life discovered outside of our own planet is peaceful. We know that the home-world of the Pa’adu is slightly smaller than Earth with a similar atmosphere, some 30 light years from our sun.
“Communication based on the mathematical system of the GCroW has led to what is now recognised as the decade of fastest development in computing, transport and engineering and there are great hopes for the fu… Hang on Tim, there seems to be something happening!”

“We’re getting a bit of interference here Janet, what can you see?”

“The vessel, transported by the Pa’adu to the prepared site, has changed! The once smooth shell is now folding back on itself and there is light coming from the inside. Two figures are emerging towards the waiting diplomatic party, they look to be wearing some kind of protective covering with what appears to be a life support system attached.
“I…I’m not sure if I can do justice to a description Tim but they look to be slightly smaller than a horse, with six legs and two arm like forelimbs, each ending in two pairs of pincers. They seem to have some kind of sensory centre like a head, at the front of their bodies. Of course as yet we don’t know if they have male and female genders, if they speak as we do or indeed anything except what has been released by the UN Extra-Terrestrial Research Alliance. Speaking at a press conference earlier, Dr Petra Davros of UNETRA told us to expect the delegates to speak through the translation equipment developed from discussion via the GCroW; and it looks like the first Pa’adu is approaching the translator.
“There seems to be something wrong, both Pa’adu are moving around, they’re saying something but the UNETRA feed has been disabled so we can’t hear anything. I’m trying to get closer but the security fence is preventing me moving any further.
“It looks like there is some discussion happening with the UN group. They seem upset and the alien pair are, yes, they are returning to their craft! I don’t know what is occurring but the UN delegates seem confused and rather angry. The Pa’adu craft is, I don’t believe it, it is leaving.
“I can see Dr Davros, she is coming over, Dr Davros, what happened?”

“Janet, hi, I… I am not sure. The visitors looked around, looked at us, said some things that we are not sure we translated correctly then left. The translation should have been accurate but it does not make any sense.”

“What did they say?”

“The parts we are most certain of were that we had not told them of our aggressive nature, of the fact we were hunters and hunters could not be trusted. The last phrase, I’m not sure, but it seems as though they found something wrong with the way we look. They have left now and I am not sure if we can recover from this diplomatic mess.
“We are seeking a better translation of the last phrase, as soon as we have it confirmed we will release a full press pack but if you will excuse me I have to get back.”

“Well Tim, I’m not sure what to say about the events of today….”

Record complete.
As you can see, class, this first meeting between humans and a non-Terran race went badly and it took thirty years before we managed to convince any other race that we were not as violent as they assumed. We worried at first that they had witnessed our history and were judging us by how we acted but eventually we found out that the Pa’adu and other were basing their assessment on our heritage and the final comments would be a sign of how so many other races would see us. These words show, possibly more than any others, that in all of the diversity in the universe, some rules of evolution and natural selection are indeed universal.
“How can we trust you? You are hunters, we will always be prey to such as you. You have eyes in the front of your head.”

.....................................

I'll be honest, I would expect most people's first reaction to be "wha?" but hey, I've written drivel on the blog before, why not this? Like I said, please feel free to tell me what you think. ;-D

Music, friends for the creation of.

2009-06-30T21:56:00.003+01:00

A couple of my friends make music, me, I tend to just pretend to be able to play instruments.
Rich does his under Alpha Test Pilot, which I think I've linked to before, I certainly should have. Let's get some buzz going shall we?
In addition Julie, one of the guys from Blacks, has been gigging in the Cheltenham area for a while now and sounds pretty great. She's touring as Juey, with the ubiquitous Myspace page. I'd recommend anyone in the area have a listen online and if you like it then pop over and say hi. You could say that I sent you, but I'm not sure how that will really be received.
One thing I do know is that when I left Blacks we had a bit of a do and it ended up with Jon, myself, Julie, Kim, Rach and a slack handfull of others having a whale of a time. Was the best send off I could imagine.

If I've missed anyone else off the list of friends that make music please leave a note in the comments.

Sudden realisation.

2009-06-28T21:36:00.000+01:00

Arse.

I'm 29.

I'll write more soon.

Tests, results and things that make you go wow.

2009-05-17T12:12:00.002+01:00

Morning all,
I'm not a fan of paying for things, as a general rule, but sometimes it's necessary, and the TV licence is one of these. I'll go through periods of thinking "why pay if I spend most of my time watching advert funded TV?" then I catch something like "Planet Earth" or one of the BBC things that has no obvious market but is done to educate, inform and entertain; and I'll think "OK, it's fair."
Anyway, what's been happening? Possibly the biggest news for myself is that I took and passed my Advanced Driving Test!

I was a bit disappointed with a few bits, mainly my acceleration sense and cornering, but I was really chuffed that to be rated highly on observation and commentary. From what some of the Advanced Driving UK folks have said, it's pretty unusual to get a 1 on commentary so I must have been pretty good. :D
I've also taken the first module of my ECDL, passed that as well. I'd be somewhat embarrassed if I hadn't passed it. I'm going to try to get at least a module done each week, depending on work and when the assessment centre can fit me in.
Still waiting to see if I'll be able to get any money off my car insurance, but I did the course to be a better driver, not to save money.
Aside from that we're still waiting for our pay deal to be approved by the Treasury, this is the deal from July last year and includes our new role profiling, which is also delaying us finding out how we can progress in the job.
Went to see Star Trek last weekend with a mate from the mess and it was FANTASTIC!!!!11!!one!! I went squee and w00t (difficult to pronounce zero but I did it!) and had many geek joy moments (which I call geek-gasms). I'm tempted to use some of my budget to see Angels and Demons, purely for scientific curiousity of course, but I think that can wait.
Made it into the mess on Friday, it was a families happy hour so the rowdy behaviour was delayed until later on in the evening and ended up making sure a mate got back safely to their room before crashing on the sofa. I think there should be a rule that any and all sofas must be comfortable to sleep on, or if not, a sleep-able one must be provided! Woke up with one hell of a crick in my neck.
Chatted to Kev in the US for a bit last night and he told me about a little something he and Beth put together:

Which made I laugh!

The Planet Earth program has just started to feature Ascension Island, and it's a bit weird to think, "I've been there." Not for long, I think I've spent about 4 hours there in total, but even so, it's an odd sort of thought. I'd like to go back, but not for too long, the routine there would probably numb me after a while. Maybe a couple of weeks before heading back south.
If anyone is on Facebook please find me and join my Viking clan! PLEASE! I've only got a few chieftains on it and I'm getting picked on! You don't have to do anything after joining. Wow I sound lame.
Anyway, last night I was watching Eurovision at times, while flicking over to NCIS and a few other channels, and realised that I didn't know where the hash key is on the Mac, turns out I'm not alone, it's alt+3 which gives # but it's not shown on the keyboard and the "easy" way to find out that was suggested involved going through half a dozen menus, none of which was exactly obvious. And yet that still makes it more logical than some of the bits on the new system we're using at work.
I did find myself twittering the contest, reading other tweets, texting a friend in the Lakes, using the interactive services (sing-a-long-a-eurovision, the translations were brilliant!), chatting with a mate in the US and generally being an interactive sort of guy. We're not friendless, it's just most of them are hundreds of miles away.
Well there's a Green Day special about to start on TV so I'm going to slap the surround system on loud and enjoy it!

Friends, girlfriends and driving. Not all at the same time.

2009-04-26T21:16:00.006+01:00

Earlier this month my friend Swiral came to visit, which was brilliant, then a couple of weeks later my girlfriend Kate finally made it up to visit, which goes without saying as superb.
While she was visiting we went up Cairngorm - taking the train as there was still too much snow on the ground and Kate didn't have winter kit with her. That and it was blowing about 40 mph and was -2 C in the carpark, let alone 1000 FT higher up the mountain. We did wander outside the doors at the top, but it was gusting around 60 mph and dang cold there, so rather than walking up to the summit we went to have some (somewhat over priced but rather good) food.
Kate told me that she loves castles so I told her that we were going to go for a drive, without telling her where we were heading. Our destination, the most photographed castle in Scotland, Eilean Donan. Featured in Highlander, The World Is Not Enough and almost every other film made in Scotland in the last 50 years. And no, it's not on Loch Ness - that's Urquhart Castle.

Worth a visit if you're up here. Worth a trip if you're not, but I think next time I'm going to either get a bigger car beforehand or hire one for the duration.
It was more wonderful than I can say to see Kate again, and it felt like she went home far too soon, but hopefully she'll be back soon.
Just afterwards there was an IAM (local advanced motoring ground) fun day at the local skid pan and driver training centre. We did a bit of skid pan work (as I'd done some a few months before the instructor skipped the instruction part and went straight to the "I'm not going to tell you what sort of skid I'm going to use, just correct it." part. Great fun actually), a bit of HGV work and driving and reversing a trailer.

As I got my licence after 1997 (about 7 years after 1997..) I can't legally drive with a trailer so I have no experience of driving or reversing one. Turns out, I'm not bad at it. Or at least in the situation we were using I did OK. All I need now is to get someone to cough up the £300 for a trailer licence for me. One of the things that made the day a bit more difficult was the presence of a herd of cattle, wandering all across the driving area and generally licking the other cars.

So, apart from some great cartoons and some "stuff" at work, that's been about it. I might be posting more about what's going on there, but for now let's just say that I'm not a big fan of the government, especially the treasury...
In closing, I'd recommend the New York Times best seller Turn Coat, but do read the rest of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher first. And listen to Invaders Must Die by the Prodigy. No, I'm not on commission. Yet.

April, fool.

2009-04-02T21:55:00.005+01:00

Yesterday being the first of April there was a fair bit of pressure on us to try to do something "funny" at some point. This was a problem. I was trying to think of something that I could do but nothing presented itself.
I was running out of time.
I drove over to give a brief at one of the squadrons, got ready with the usual banter. They asked what April fools joke I'd be doing and I responded with the usual "I would but as a corporation we have no sense of humour" (Men in Black misquote FTW!)
Got to the end of the presentation and on the last slide it came to me.
"For Friday we've got a front moving in from the west; and next week we've got the TV weather girls coming up for their routine defence rotation."

I managed to dead-pan the entire thing and the pure joy on the faces of the guys was beautiful. They started planning to re-arrange time off and asking me details such as which girls, how long they were staying and would they be visiting the mess?

After a few seconds I looked up, smiled and simply said, "Gotcha!"

Much good natured verbal abuse ensued and as I left the briefing room I heard someone (might have been the boss) clearly enunciate, with a hint of begrudging respect, "Bastard!"
(Today the squadron boss admitted he had been hooked nicely.)

Didn't quite work as well with the other squadron, but then again I'm not sure if they realise it was a joke...
I'm not going to say which squadrons were involved but I think it's fair to say that I am pretty dang happy with that one.

Identity

2009-03-30T18:20:00.004+01:00

We had another directive at work telling us that we shouldn't put any information on the web that could allow anyone to identify who we are or where we work.
OK, fine, I can see why, but given the work we do, and who we work for, sometimes this rule doesn't make sense.
Take my mate Simon for example, he's on the BBC at times and has a photo profile on the BBC homepage. I've been on "national" radio - admittedly it was Falkland Islands radio but was still broadcast across the Islands. It did result in my being recognised by voice in Stanley (woohoo, I'm famous!!!!) but back here I'm much more anonymous.
I don't think anyone would mistake me for an official viewpoint about anything, in fact I'm pretty sure I said as much in one of the early entries, but I'm not going to blatantly state who I work for. Besides, I'm sure I've been oh-so-subtle and no one could possibly guess... ;)

Terror, it's about 3 foot high!

2009-03-18T17:11:00.007Z

Today, I learned a new type of terror.
I had to give a talk about the weather (and my job) to a group of Primary 2 children - ages 5-6. 25 of them. I'm not really that good with kids, so trying to aim the talk at the right level was hard enough, working with the teacher to control the children was even worse and I made the usual mistake - open questions! Ah, I'm a fool!
I was told, "never ask questions with more than two answers," and "never ask any question that could lead to a story about the weekend," but I ended up doing exactly that... Not horrifically but I guess I'm just not cut out to work with sprogs very much.
Having said all of that, I actually think it went quite well. I've got no idea what a good lesson is with kids that age (should have asked Kate for advice!) but their teacher seemed pretty pleased. I'd taken a load of the old school met kit that we have as back-ups, sunshine recorder (looks like a crystal ball on a stand), an "aspirated psychrometer" (two thermometers with a clockwork fan attached), hand-held anemometer (wind measuring thingy in black Bakelite - very 50s retro), small Stevenson Screen, satellite images and charts.
I had a few print outs of my favourite images such as a global map with nothing on it then ask the kids how many lightning strikes they thought would have happened in half an hour world wide (they thought 31) and then show them. In this case I'd printed out another chart with the strikes shown, and there were a few hundred at least. Certainly impressed the teacher, and I think the kids liked it.
So, although not a full win, I think I came out ahead. If nothing else when the children came in and saw all the kit laid out one of the lads said , "he's got cool stuff!" I liked that kid then.

Well, apart from that, I've had a couple of chances to get some pictures from work, and I think a few of them were alright. Comments welcome.
Firstly a Pax (passenger) transport that popped up:

Then a Merlin:

Then a Hawk (in this case from the centre of aviation medicene):

And finally some of our guys in the sun:

I need to use a bit of a faster shutter speed but had dropped it to get a bit of blur on the blades.

The new marketing slogan for the north of Scotland

2009-03-05T14:50:00.000Z

Randomly at work we were discussing press-gangs and one of the guys was saying that they were very active in the local area for the Navy. He pointed out that you needed experienced sailors and couldn't just grab people whilly-nilly in London, rather you had to come up to places like this where "the streets were awash with seamen."
At that point the conversation descended into fits of laughter...

Broadband, or how I learned to stop worrying and love t'interweb

2009-03-04T15:33:00.004Z

Either today or tomorrow my parents should be getting connected to broadband. We've been working at getting them to do this for a while and they've finally decided it might be worth while. Principally for mum's studies, but I think they're going to find some of the wondrous things online. Thing is, I'm pretty sure that my long list of webcomics and blogs won't be exactly what my parents are looking for, so I'm going to list a few sites I visit lots or find useful and if anyone else can think of some sites that might interest people a of a slightly older persuasion that are interested in theology, search and rescue (dad's getting more and more involved with the Severn Area Rescue Association), or things like that; please stick the tube addresses in the comments.
So here are a few I think my parents will like/use:
The BBC news site.
The Met Office site (OK, obvious, but should be improved soon).
My Flickr photo page.
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre's excellent blog.
The ever marvellous Snopes.
The AA (useful for route planning).
Google - obvious but still good, and I think mum may find this search useful.
For dad, a Facebook link for SARA.
Some lovely Satellite images from NOAA.
Some bits about the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I couldn't find an address for the theological college but I think mum already has the link for that one.

Of course there's more and I think they should have a list of their own bookmards, but using dial up I don't think they will have found the wonders of the net just yet. So if any of you can think of other sites like these that might be of interest, please drop the links! Cheers all.

**edited to add**
By the way, one week in and I've kept off all booze and got in some exercise each day. This weekend will be the first big test though...

Lent

2009-02-24T19:19:00.003Z

It's Shrove Tuesday and I'm not having any pancakes.
I'm sure everyone knows the traditions behind today and tomorrow (Ash Wednesday) and some know more traditions than others but the clearing of the fat from the house to allow easier fasting is similar to what I'm doing with a vodka martini right now. A LARGE vodka martini.
I suffer from a few problems, an excess of body and a lack of funds and will power (actually these three are the same thing) but I realised quite a while back that the ability to change these is within me, and not doing anything about it is my own fault as well.
So.
Booze is my biggest excess so I'm giving it up for the 40 days (and Sundays - see, people forget that Sundays don't count, especially Refreshment or Mothering Sunday) but as a priest I used to know once said, Lent is also a chance to start something.
With this in mind, as well as not drinking from tomorrow until Easter I'm going to finally get off my arse and start exercising properly. I should probably keep a track online of what I'm doing, what with this now being in the public domain and my friends being likely the best thing to keep me on track.
I've got a copy of the RAF fitness test downloaded - well, I say that, I mean I've got a copy of the beep test that the RAF use - so all I need now is will power.
Nuts.
Which is pretty much where if I'm not careful it's all going to go wrong. 40 days (+ Sundays) isn't that long and I should be able to see some results in that time but (as I just realised from the Simpson's) when I look back on Lent this year I want to feel like I've accomplished something. Admittedly I want to be able to look back on every year, and one day every day, with satisfaction that I've done everything I can with the time I've had, but one step at a time.
If this sounds a bit fluffy and touchy-feely, it is, but I blame Snopes, and in particular this Snopes article and , for that. Steve Jobs' comments on the old expression about living every day as if it was your last made me realise what that actually meant hit home; but maybe not enough to make me act on it yet. That can change. Again, the ability to change or to not rests in myself and I can't blame anyone except myself for me not changing.

Anyway, apart from that, enjoy some steampunk stuff: case mods, monitors and keyboards (Dear Santa).

Oh, four tuna!

2009-02-20T23:03:00.002Z

One of the blogs I watch is Amanda Bauer's Astropixie, and from there Phil Plait at Bad astronomy pulled the alternative lyrics to Carmena Burana. Well worth a look, laughter is almost guaranteed.

Sunday Driver

2009-02-18T19:11:00.006Z

As I've previously posted, I signed up with the local IAM group and we've got weekly lectures with observed drives every Saturday. Think of it as like taking your driving test every week for two and a half months. Yeah, that much fun.
Parallel parking, reversing round corners and turning in the road, well I'll get better at them. I've been getting good advice and am developing nicely but we're supposed to get as much practice as we can during the week and I normally cycle to work. I can easily do a week without driving under normal circumstances but now have to get more "wheel time."
With that in mind after last Saturday's drive I went for a bit of a spin on Sunday. My plan was to pootle through the Highlands and maybe find myself on a certain road I know. We've had, as you might have noticed, a bit of snow but I couldn't afford to hit the slopes (which is a shame as the guys on XV said they've never seen better snow in Scotland - gits) and the mountains were covered in a lovely layer.
Just south of Elgin I noticed something that made me stop and get out my camera (brought with me for just this reason):

Highlan' Coos!

At Cromdale there is a narrow bridge with traffic lights to stop people smashing into each other on the bridge, there was no one coming but the lights were just changing to red. I stopped (smoothly and controlled), waiting for the lights and then noticed that right in front of me was a tiny little rabbit that crossed in front of me. For the life of me it looked like the lights had changed to let a tiny little rabbit cross the road. Made I laugh it did!

Scooting through the Highlands (oh it was lovely!) I did make it to the road I'd been aiming for - the B9007. It's quite possibly the best road in the UK. Smooth corners and wonderful scenery. Don't believe me, well here we go:

In the summer it's a truly epic road, in the winter it's epic and snowy. The view is spectacular and the road curves and rolls and flows wonderfully. If anyone wants to try it, from Carrbridge (just north or Aviemore) head east and take the Forres road marked "B9007 - not gritted in evening." I think I might have another go on the road with the video camera mounted on the front of the car, any excuse basically.
And that's how I spent my weekend. This Sunday I've got work. So not so much chance to drive, but there's always Saturday.
Shame about the rugby though...

After too long a time, THEY"RE BACK!!!!!

2009-02-09T19:48:00.001Z

The Prodigy's new single, The Omen, is out for download today.
I caught the video on channel 4 a few weeks back, thinking, "it's been a while since their last new stuff, can they still make me want to shout loudly and jump all over the shop?"
Oh yes.
Oh yeah gods yes.
You can catch the video at a few places, including the MTV Two Video chart, where we can all click to vote and get some gratuitous hard dance back in the video charts! Or the Prodigy official site, which is full of angry sounding shouty goodness.

Course, knowledge and ignorance.

2009-02-07T12:46:00.002Z

This last week I've been on a two day first aid course specialising in outdoors first aid. It ends up covering all of the Appointed Person standard but there are differences. For example, the current thing is that after checking for Danger, Response, (shout for help) Airway, Check for breathing, you then go for help. In the situations we're looking at help may be 4 or more hours away so we have to adjust things slightly.
On Thursday I went (through the snow) so the first lecture for the local Advanced Motoring group and realised I've forgotten LOTS since Yorkshire and got into far too many bad habits. We had the first observed drive today and the local group seem to do things slightly differently so the previous ones, but there are certain things that are common. I'll be adding to the Student Room AD thread to cover some of the things I've picked up.
Today the six nations starts (WOOHOO!) and there's a double bill of Firefly on Sci Fi as well (Double WOOHOO!). Following a link I came upon Rock, Paper, Cynic, and in particular, this comic. Lots of the comics made me laugh, some made me think, that one did both.
And finally, following another link, a way to see minimalist Flickr photo streams, type the browser address ihardlyknowher.com/mountainmetman or replace the last with the Flickr name of who ever's stream you want to see. Or your user name, whatever's good.

Sunday morning grin

2009-01-25T09:53:00.003Z

Just had to share this one from UserFriendly.org.
I may well put up something about how ill informed (trying not to say stupid there) the worries of strangelets and rogue black holes are, but right now I'll let it slide.

Aside from that, it's a Sunday morning and while I'd rather be asleep for another couple of hours various doorbells rang earlier, none of them mine. But it's still a lie in from my normal 5 am wake up (or start to wake up). With me being such a morning person, it's probably a good thing that no one sees me until almost an hour later...
Well, time for the Lie In on Radio 1, probably the best two hours they do.

Less drained, now just slightly culverted.

2009-01-21T14:50:00.005Z

Much shorter day at work today.
Feeling better and wondering who'll be called in to cover the night shift tonight.

That's it. So to stop this from being the shortest entry ever (after the talk like a pirate day one), have a few youtube clips:

Thanks to Sian and Matt for pointing out the "Torn" one.

Drained

2009-01-20T20:31:00.003Z

At work, regional guy went sick so I stepped up and took over the regional desk. Means I was working "above my level" again covering pretty much everything happening in Scotland. Actually not as bad a deal as it sounds, I've done a shift on the desk before, but this time I was also looking after the local stuff as well. Partly, this was a great challenge; partly this was a pain in the arse.
I like work that stretches me, which is part of the reason I went down to the Falklands, but conditions were grim. I ended up playing that plate balancing game of watching the weather, doing everything I could to keep the guys informed and try to find options for them. Isn't exactly difficult, it's just tiring.
I've just got home after a shift that lasted 12 and a half hours without proper break (my choice, so doesn't break the European time directive) and I'm on early shift tomorrow (which does). Again, my choice to do the early start, the other station forecaster offered to swap start times but I felt like holding the moral high ground.
Ended up riding home in a shower with wet roads kicking water all over, which wasn't all that much fun - the showers were due to finish an hour before I left but the low pressure went a bit too far north (gave us the stronger wind as well) and they continue now.
Doesn't help to get back to calls from banks, insurance agents and the like. There's a limit to how often I can say "no, I don't want to insure my house with you," or "yes, I sorted that out ten days ago, yes, with your company, yes it's on your records. Have a look, yes I'll wait.....yes, that's right, ten days ago. Yes. Goodbye."
On the plus side, it sounds like Obama is using Barlett's speech writer and the Prodigy are playing Rockness this year. Don't know if I'll be able to get tickets, or if Mr Obama will be able to carry out his plans, but I think he's got a chance.
But with the lack of better things to say I'll grab a bite to eat and hit the sack. Night all.

Painfully true

2009-01-14T16:49:00.003Z

I was thinking about Twitter, I mean Obama, Neil Gaiman and Schlock use it, but I think Ctrl+Alt+Del has hit the nail on the head for me. Okay, Mr Obama only updated until he won, and that does somewhat reek of plugging into the zeitgeist, but none the less...
Also on the "painfully true" side of life, we've been receiving some odd faxes at work, a pressure and a correction (getting the value that you read corrected to sea level) on a blank bit of paper. We thought it was from Garvie range as we were expecting observations from them, faxed across every hour. I had a thought, prompted by Dilbert, and yes, the guys at range head had been faxing the observations the wrong way round on the fax.

On a different note, one of the blogs I follow has had some brilliant posts recently, Amanda Bauer's AstroPixie blog had this to say. And I can't top that really.

Well, almost.
Head over to Schlock Mercenary soon (especially if you are eligible to vote in the Hugo Awards!), Howard Taylor has put up a pdf of a Schlock book up for consideration for a category in the Hugos and we lucky people can benefit from his largess by getting our grubby mitts on a book of comics in handy pdf format.
If that's not cool then I don't know cool. Now please excuse me while I listen to Mantovani and crochet a cardigan in beige!
Or, as it's Wednesday, check out Girl Genius, xkcd, Penny Arcade and Kimono's Townhouse.

New Years Eve Eve.

2009-01-04T12:06:00.006Z

Last year we (Tash, Chris and a few of Chris' relatives) were up around Loch Ness doing stuff. This year we thought we would head up to North Wales and do a two or three day jaunt on Calder Idris or something of the ilk. Just after Christmas Tash and Chris popped over and they (Chris especially) were looking grim. So we decided to bin the big walk but had plans to try a smaller hill for fun. We settled on Pen Y Fan, the highest hill in southern Wales. Neither Chris or myself had made it up, I'd almost got to the top with a Duke Of Edinburgh's group from uni but we (the supervisors) decided it was too windy to push right to the summit so we stacked early.
As it was, Chris was still too ill to join us so Tash, myself and her dad started off at 7 (which, given my love for mornings, is remarkable in itself), drove to the hill and walked up, starting boots wet at just gone 9.
It was cold and we were in cloud almost from the get go with about 50 m visibility, people heading down told us that the top was clagged in and frozen. I knew we were in an high pressure situation and was hoping that the inversion (where the temperature increases, the air dries out radically and the cloud is capped) would have been below the summit but ahh well. One fell runner passed us (still don't understand them) and many, many people, often with dogs.

It was cold enough that the dogs had ice eyebrows and my eyelashes froze together. We stopped for a break at the subsidiary top then carried on to the summit, at which point, things changed.
Just as we got to the summit the inversion dropped to our level, the temperature started to increase, the visibility increased to about 60 km and the cloud cleared. I'd never managed to be above the clouds like this before and the beauty was just sodding jaw dropping!

Apart from a "little" navigational mistake involving two paths and 20 minutes extra walking we made it down comfortably although there were SOOOO many people on the hill. Seriously, there must have been a couple of hundred people on the paths that day. Chris would have absolutely hated that part of the walk.
Next day being NYE I drove up to Tash and Chris', about 320 miles including about 1.5 or 2 hours stationary in a traffic jam on the M6. They were both still ill so I saw in the New Year with the cats and a few beers. Shame I couldn't make it down to London when Tris called, that would have been epic! I think next year I'll hit a city/biggish town for the parties. Might be working for Christmas, but if I am I'm going to bounce over to Inverness for Hogmany. Might be elsewhere, but we'll see what happens, neh?
So now I'm back home, with at least one of the viruses I've been exposed to making life less than pleasant at the moment and my bank still being a general arse and it's back to work tomorrow on an early shift. Still need to sort out a new bed (falling onto the bed while drunk shouldn't lead to a collapse of such disastrous proportions!) and still some unpacking to do but it's good to be home. And the fish survived, which is nice.

Catch up entries 3 - the last of these ones

2008-12-23T15:10:00.002Z

Latest Catch up entry, written about the 21/12

On the way north I stopped off with Tash and Chris, drove right up from Andi and Sarah’s Halloween party, which was great although I did end up somewhat passed out in the front room with stuff written on my face. Fortunately not in permanent marker. Tasha had got some tickets for a play so I drove straight up and into Glasgow to meet them. Initially the plan was to meet them at theirs and we’d take the train into the city but there was some evil traffic so I was running late. We met up at a service station outside of Glasgow and we went into Glasgow in convoy, running from the car park to the theatre. I had no idea what the show was going to be, apart from the fact it had something to do with “Mrs Brown.” I thought it might have been something to do with Queen Victoria but it turns out it was about an Irish family and oh ye gods was it hilarious!!!! If you get the chance, there’s a whole set (four at the moment) of plays about Mrs Brown and they are very rude and very, very funny.
We had a relaxing day and then on my way home we dropped off at the Lecht ski centre for a days boarding. The nice thing was that pretty soon I was back to the point where I left of last season. By the end of the day I was getting some proper linked turns in, which was brilliant.
A couple of weeks after I got back up north work changed. We went from having just the four of us working 24 hours a day from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, doing 12 hour shifts, to working three (or two) shifts through the day from 6 am till the end of flying. There is now 24/7 cover provided by the regional unit but we have to use some of the charts from down south, rather than producing our own. That’s the bad side of things, but on the plus side we’re now doing many, many more briefings face to face with the squadrons, which is fantastic. I enjoy hooning around the camp in the works car and dealing with the squadrons face to face.
Apart from that I’ve volunteered to drive the weather survey van (some time, when I can) which is basically a set of sensors mounted on a small van, the idea being that we drive it on set routes in certain weather conditions, usually in the wee small hours. To make it a bit safer the office sent us on some skid prevention and control course (aka skid pan fun!) which was an absolute blast! I learned some things I hadn’t known before, including some emergency brake and steer techniques that were new. I still haven’t had the chance to go on a run yet but should get the chance once I’m back up after Christmas.
I’ve done a bit more on the slopes since the first trip back up, at the Lecht as it’s cheaper than Cairngorm and ok, the slopes and the snow aren’t as good as you’d find in France or many other places but it’s here and it’s enough to have fun with. When it comes down to it, I’ll take “fun” that’s an hour away from me and reasonably cheap, over “fantastic” that’s in another country and costs a bomb to get to any day. Especially if I can go there with friends. Of course, if I could go abroad with friends for about the same cost I'd be there in a shot (note to Tris, March good for you?).

Catch up entries 2

2008-12-23T15:07:00.001Z

Second entry written about the 29/10/08

At the start of the year, actually at New Year's, I looked at what I wanted to do this year and of the four main ones (bike, drive, run and fun) I've amazed myself by completing one. Still got the first three left – to whit, get my bike licence, pass my advanced driving test and get fit enough to easily pass the Cranwell fitness requirements. The last, fun, partly covers not being single but is mainly about getting out a bit more and doing some stuff I wouldn't have thought of; not siting at home on my own every night. On both of these definitions I have succeeded. It's a bit odd that loosing three months down south has actually helped with parts of my aims. Not as much as I'd have hoped for fitness (my fault) but more than I'd have thought with the others. The bike test has been helped by the fact that the government have pushed back the implementation of the new test regime until early next year, so I've got a bit more time than I thought. For the AD side of things I'm going to have a serious look at the Kinloss group back up north, although I'm also going to get a different car as soon as possible. Not another new one, but something a bit bigger and with a bit more capability. After driving all the 4x4s down south I've realised that the bit more ability would have been great for the hills. It's not that my little Charade can't handle most conditions but I'm constantly driving it to almost the limit of it's range, and it does feel chuffing ridiculous when there's a whole row of big four wheel drives parked in the snow on Cairngorm and I'm struggling to get my snowboard into the city car that's hidden by the Landies either side. The fact I have to drop the passenger seat to fit it in is bad enough, although it was funny when I was happily driving out of the snow and the numpty in a big ol' Jeep was getting stuck. He just couldn't drive in snow, was revving the arse off the engine and getting absolutely no purchase. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain the car was able to handle the conditions but the driver definitely could not.
Anyway, I’m now on the way back from London and it’s been absolutely brilliant to see Tris again. I’d like to be able to see D’Abs and it'd be great to catch up with Rich, also getting across to the US to see Kev (actually I’d LOVE to be able to that one!) but time and money prevent those. Apart from that I’d have to say that once I’ve got to Andi and Sarah’s and stopped off with Tash and Chris, I’ll have seen pretty much all of my really close friends within two weeks.
I don’t know if I mentioned it in my recent posts (off line on the train so I can’t check) but a couple of days after I got back from the Falklands I hit a low point. I’ve hit these before, it’s a kind of after travel thing where you realise that the next day you’ll wake up and see the same thing you saw the day before. It’s not a new place and it’s not home. It’s something in between that isn’t so good as either and not as interesting as you’d like. At that point I was ready to call up my boss and ask for the 3 year tour of Gibraltar or a long tour down in the Falklands (preferable as Kate is down there!). Like I said, I’ve felt this way before but this was something different. I really just didn’t want to be in the UK at that point and while I think I know why it’s not something I can put into words. One of the reasons I didn’t was that I knew there was a good chance of seeing friends soon and so I held off. My family’s great but I know they’ll always be there for me, e-mail, phones and blueys aside, contact is easy with mum and dad and I think Matt understands.
As I said before, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see anyone, let alone almost everyone, but I’m so glad I was able to. What I’d hoped for actually happened, I’ve found an anchor to these green Isles (as an aside, if you don’t believe the “green and pleasant land” description, travel to somewhere with a much lower rainfall total then look at the grass and the trees here when you get back. This country is SO beautiful I was almost struck dumb when I got back. The sheer intensity of the colours and the vibrancy of the life was breathtaking!). This anchor is my friends. If the guys weren’t back here, and as much as I love my family, I’d have to say that I don’t know if I’d stay here. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this country. From the mountains of home to the rolling hills down south, from the vast emptiness of the Highlands to the crowded, noisy, smelly but ALIVE streets of London and Birmingham, from the snow covered north to the palm trees in the south, I love Great Britain. The thing is that I’ve seen a bit more of the world and I know that there are amazing things everywhere. The politics and the social situation in this country aren’t to my taste but I’d rather stay and try to help solve that rather than run away to New Zealand and with my friends here there’s no risk of me leaving any time soon.
So there we have it from the train back from London. I’ll write a bit more of this after Halloween and probably post it in a one shot deal.
By the way, I’m writing this on some of the new software I picked up in London. Still trying to source Leopard for the Mac but I’m working on the new version of Word for Mac and it’s rather sweet. Bit different to the NT version we use at work and pretty similar to the 03/04 Office suite. Might have another look once my pay comes in. I like open source software, and in the case of Office, NeoOffice (OpenOffice.Org for the Mac) is very compatible but I can’t deny that Microsoft (turn and spit) do make some decent software and with work going XP/2003 having a fully compatible system is likely to make things easier. Thing that’s been getting to me a bit recently are the adverts for Microsoft where people say “I’m a PC” where what they actually mean is “I run Microsoft, rather than Mac or Linux.” PC just means personal computer, so I’m working on a PC now, it’s just a Mac, rather than a Windows box.

Catch up entries 1

2008-12-23T14:58:00.001Z

First entry written on about the 27/10/08

I can't really remember why I started this blog, I think it was probably just to keep friends up to speed with what was happening to me. I wasn't expecting anyone to read it, although it's nice that you do.
Anyway, I'm sat on a train heading to London, it's a sunny day with little cumulus clouds over the Cotswolds and it feels great to be travelling again. This strikes me as odd; less than ten days ago I was flying in business class across the Atlantic, yesterday I was driving back from Birmingham, so why does it feel so good to be moving again? It's not like I've had enough time to be in one place to get bored! I think Matt T had the measure of it over the weekend – I love travelling! Not just the seeing new places or revisiting favourite old ones, but the very action of travelling can be good. Admittedly, I'm in an economy seat (not the table one I'd booked either) and as it's half term there weren't any cheap tickets and there are too many kids for my personal tastes but even so, I'm speeding through the country with sun lit houses and open, autumnal countryside passing by, the music on my iPod is great and thanks to Sian I've got loads of extra music to sort though and rate. Might be able to pick up some decent software in the City as well, but we'll have to see how that goes.
When I was looking at having the two weeks off after flying back up north my plan was to visit as many of my friends as possible but I was half expecting not to be able to see any of them. Turns out I was wrong, even managed to get some quality time with my brother and a bit of culture as well!
I just sometimes feel when I'm visiting friends that I don't do enough. I know everyone will tell me I'm being an idiot, and in truth if anyone visited me I'd expect nothing except their presence, but still, I like giving people things, even for no reason. A fluffy penguin or fridge magnets seem small thanks for a quality time, but then I'm a bit daft about things like that.
On a different note, I'm going to try to do something with the pictures from the Falklands, even if it's just providing some unusual background images for anyone that wants them. Once I'm back up with my own net connection I'll see what's around online that you can enter photos in, competitions perhaps, although I think only about 6 of the shots would be worth entering in anything. Having said that, there's a magazine that takes pictures that people have uploaded and gives pointers on how to get better, and that is definitely something I'm going to look into. I don't want to sound cocky but I think with a bit of work I might keep surprising myself with the photos. I might even have a bit of a talent. And if not, then at least I'll have some fun on the way.

Links, 2,3,4

2008-12-17T22:17:00.005Z

Okay, not a Rammstein related blog (although I have been snowboarding to the strains of Mein Herz Brennt of late) and I know I owe you all a catch up post (I've drafted a couple that I will put most of up before I head a bit south) but for now I'll just stick up a few links that I think you might enjoy.
The first is an optical illusion,
http://blogoscoped.com/files/stripes.html
which is just sooooo cool! Swiral might want to take care, the image appears to flicker a bit when used but I don't think it's a problem.
Next is the Boston Globe's Hubble Space Telescope advent calendar, which I hope will be up after Christmas.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent.html
Worth checking out just for the first animated image!
Next, still with the Boston Globe, is the firs part of their images of the year.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html
This is part of the Big Picture series (stick it on your feed reader, it's worth it!) and the photos range from the sublime to the astonishing to the disturbing to the gut wrenching and graphic.
Now for a collection of sceptical thinking blogs:
Bad Astronomy - Phil Plait's Science and Sceptical blog (and lots of Dr Who stuff).
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre's Blog, including his articles on critical thinking from the Guardian and lots about health scares and misuse of statistics.
Bad Martial Arts - martial arts without mystical explanations.
Finally, another webcomic:
http://dooomcat.com/wp/
Bear Nuts. If anyone remembers my Bondage Bear, it's kind of like that; care bears gone bad...

At work we've been trading maths jokes, including the "classic" one:
There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary, and those that don't.
And another one:

How is Hallowe'en the same as Christmas?

Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.

Sorry, even I found that one a bit bad.

When I finally catch up I'll tell you about the skid pan training, the snow boarding and the bed.
Not related stories, although that would be a good one!

More geeky than c:/Spot/Run

2008-11-03T00:34:00.005Z

I'll have a full post up soon but until then there is a great "cartoon-off" between the New Yorker and Randall Munroe of XKCD which includes this picture:

If I say that most geeks wouldn't get the joke you might get the idea of how geeky this is, but I laughed lots. The joke relies on a property of higher dimensions and string theory, although the New Yorker was also right about String theory...

In case anyone is wondering, the joke I mention in the title goes:
c:/
c:/Spot
c:/Spot/Run
Run/Spot/Run

I'll soon have photos of what I've been up to the last couple of weeks, it's been brilliant!

Post dated - written first night back in the UK

2008-10-20T12:40:00.002+01:00

So I’m back home, back to using a Mac, back to autumn, back to missing Kate and back to, well, back to Britain.
It’s been one hell of a deployment, all in all. I’ve seen some things that less than 1% of the UK have seen, I’ve travelled a LONG way, I’ve seen animals in their native environment, learnt lots of things about using a SLR camera, met a wonderful girl and had to leave her 8000 miles away, and have now got experience of flying in a number of different types of aircraft.
Would I go back? Hell yes. Even without Kate, I’d love to go back south; with her there it becomes more imperative.
Am I glad to be home? Yes and no. For one thing I’m not home yet, I’m at my parents. This is the first time I’ve felt this, that my parents house is not my home. I’m always welcome here but this is their house, their home, not mine. It’s great to see them and Matt, Becky and Ellen (who loved her penguin) but I want to see my friends, I want to get back to my flat and relax in my own (rented) place. Don’t get me wrong, it IS wonderful to be here and they are brilliant but a week or two here is going to be enough.
I’m starting to see what Twoflower meant in Light Fantastic when he said “you haven’t travelled until you’ve got back home.” Looking back through the 2129 photos I’ve taken, I stripped them down to “just” 437 good ones and some of them are really good, I won’t be short of good images for backgrounds for a while, that’s for certain. I’m going to get one of those digital picture frames and load the good ones onto it, but that’ll have to wait until the next pay check at least.
Obviously the biggest down side of coming home is leaving my girlfriend (still feels weird to be able to say that after all this time) and enter into a very long distance relationship. We’re hoping it will work but both of know that the distance is very large, four time zones and totally different worldviews. So we’ll see how it goes.
It will be good to see friends and familiar places again though, and to be able to drive my own car when I want, where I want and above 40 mph (!) will be fantastic. As it is I’m still a bit jet-lagged so I’m going to reset my body clock tomorrow and head into town, which is about10 times bigger than Stanley, and then maybe Cheltenham, which is almost 100 times Stanley.
Pubs and real beer are going to be good, having to pay more than £3 for a 6 drink round isn’t. And yes, for the guys in London, that would have been an expensive round. If you consider that a double of Bells was 16p in the mess, more than £3 for a single is going to hurt. How much it would cost in the capitol I don’t want to think…
I had some bad days down there, not all of them hangover based. There were a couple of days when my forecasts just wouldn’t settle, some days I just wanted to be home, and some days that it felt like I was really up the arse of the world. But not many, and most of them were at the start, before I found my feet and made the friendships and acquaintances that I did.
Flying over South Georgia I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d want to be, although I could think of some people I’d want to be there with. Some of my friends back here would have really loved it down there, Tasha and Chris especially.
I definitely drank too much and didn’t do enough exercise, but I’m surprised how little I’ve actually changed. Moustache aside, of course. I’m going to get my dad to take a few pictures of my with the south Atlantic facial fuzz still attached then it’s going!
Did improve my bowling though. I’ve also learned an huge amount of new weather skills as well. After all, I’ve been working at a level above my normal work standard with minimal information so getting back to Lossie with all the kit that is normal for a met office will be a welcome change of pace.
Actually, that’s another point, we’re changing at Lossie to have a regional unit as well as the local station one; and when I get back up we’re moving back into the office on the day I go home with the regional unit stand-up two weeks later. Joy.
Oh, and Richard, thanks for the great comment, I must say that was a really lovely poetic turn of phrase. And you're right, living on a mountain would be easier but I've tried that, the wind chaffs terribly. ..

My timing SUCKS. Seriously.

2008-10-16T00:02:00.005+01:00

This will probably be my last post from the South Atlantic (this trip...) and five days ago I was really looking forwards to coming home.
I still am, mostly, but some things have happened in the last few days to make me wish for a bit longer here.
Since my last entry I was invited to go on a capability day by the RIC (Roulement/resident Infantry Company) which was the Rifles and is now the Green Howards (Yorkshire) where they showed us what they do, where they do it and make lots of things go BANG!
It was a good chance to see the range they use, for which we forecast, but most of us haven't been there. I got a panoramic of the range (which won't be posted) and some rather decent shots of things going bang. As I'm a civvie I wasn't allowed to shoot anything but did get to play with a sniper rifle that had been made safe.

Managed a couple of trips into Stanley and the road has been refilled. The first time I drove it, I managed to hold 40 odd mph for most of the way, feeling safe all the time. Unfortunately the last time the pot holes were starting to reappear. Not as bad as before (see previous entries) but enough to make 40 unsafe for many stretches. Ahh well, had decent stereo in the L200 each time so the trip was still good.
After this I got on another flight, this time on a Hercules C-130k. Supposed to be to the South Sandwich Islands but owing to a lack of air refuelling aircraft we only went to South Georgia. "Only" of course being relative.

When I can I'll stick up more photos, or have a look at my Flickr account, the link is in the "links" section on the right.
The Herc is an interesting aircraft, it was pretty full and all of us wanted the good photos. We were flying pretty low, about 1000 ft above the water, we were all wearing immersion suits (bit like dry suits) and one side door was open, as was the top part of the rear ramp. As there were protective nets over all the open doors to get clear shots you had to bag one of the small windows or get right up to the net. One guy had positioned himself lying down to get his lens out of the side door but was not going to move. I tried to get decent pictures then move out of the way, getting blatted by the wind and bounced by the aircraft.

On the way back we were escorted in by an F3, which was pretty damn cool!

The weather forecast was pretty much spot on for the whole trip, which is very satisfying.

The big bit of news this week: a couple of weeks back a new teacher came to the school here, called Kate. We got on great and a couple of days ago hooked up. I'm going to try to get a few pictures of her to put up, if she'll let me.
Yes, that's right, I'm no longer single.
The week before I fly 8000 miles away.
Arse.
You see what I mean about my timing? We both knew the situation at the start and are both a bit bummed by it. Her tour down here is for 2 years so there's a good chance I'll be back down before she leaves but even so it's not the best. We're going to see how things turn out but for now we'll enjoy the next couple of days together.
So I've gone from really looking forward to going home to wanting more time here. I never keep it simple, do I?

Volunteer Point and two new kinds of penguin.

2008-09-21T01:13:00.006+01:00

I went to the northeast of the Islands today, to a place called Volunteer Point. It was windy but the sun was shinning.

We saw lots more penguins, the usual Gentoos

but also Magellanic

and King penguins.

I didn't get all the pictures I wanted, half way through I made a mistake with my camera and got the shutter speed too low, resulting in camera shake. Some of the pictures I got were alright though. Well, I think so, what do you think?

One of the things that was quite funny was that people would be focused on the birds in front of them and not notice others just behind them.

Kings live for around 20 years and can dive to around 1000 ft on their 500 mile hunting trips - that's 500 miles in each direction...

They feed their young for about 18 months until their first fluffy feathers drop off and the smooth ones for swimming come in. The youngsters are the ones covered in fluffy brown feathers.

The 'guins around this time of year were just about to moult, in one case already moulting.

So then it was back to the mess for tea and toasties.

Yarrrrrr!

2008-09-19T14:01:00.002+01:00

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Yarrr!!

Avast Behind (but I'm try to trim it down!)

Themed at http://www.weregeek.com/ (check out the steak on a stick as well!)

I still prefer ninjas.

Oi've been drivin' in moi carrrrrrr..

2008-09-10T01:03:00.013+01:00

Or rather, borrowed one from the hire guys on camp, specifically a Mitsubishi L200 pick-up, which I rather liked. I had a day off last week at the end of the big exercise that was on (couldn't say owt about it last week but should be okay now it's over) so I figured it would be a good time to take a bimble into Stanley. A bimble is a trip out of camp. I didn't get a picture of the "Stanley - twinned with Whitby" sign but I will in the future.

So, driving on road in the Falklands...

The road varies between fairly decent surfaced road to dirt track with stonking great potholes in it, usually spaced just right to cause the vehicle to skip across the tops, loosing all grip and making the rear of the car snake out beautifully. If there aren't any potholes, chances are you're driving on a surface mainly made of small stones that will roll under the wheels, basically doing the job of ball-barrings in detaching your grip from the road. It's fun. Honest.
The speed limit on the Islands is 25 in the town (THE town, there's only one), 40 out of town and 30 on camp. That's camp as in Mount Pleasant, not Camp, which is a term used for anywhere out of Stanley, based, we think, around the word "campo" used for the farmland/hilly areas. Still with me?

As an aside, the clocks went forwards this weekend so Stanley and Mount Pleasant are now at GMT -3 hours but Camp is still at -4 hours as they don't use daylight savings in the same way as the camp do. So in leaving Stanley, you change timezones until you reach Mount Pleasant. This means we're 4 hours behind the UK until they put their clocks back, at which time we'll only be 3 hours behind. Clear, eh?

Anyway, back to the roads. As the car I was driving (which I would love for Christmas, if any rich nutters are reading) can be changed from 2 to 4 wheel drive on the move, I got quite good at slowing before the road surface changed, sliding into 4WD and avoiding the worst of the holes. It's only 35 miles to Stanley but it took me about 80 minutes to do it, which was fast enough, thank you very much! I think the record is unofficially 36 minutes but I'd like to live to see home again. Beside, fines for speeding range from £300 to £3000 with a night in jail so keeping below the limits isn't hard, even if the limiter is a bit faulty, as it was on my wagon.

About two thirds of the way to Stanley you start to see some interesting physical features on the hill side, the famous Falkland Rock Rivers, or Rock Runs as they're also known. I say famous, certainly famous amongst geologists. They are basically what appear to be rivers of rock that flow from the tops of the hills down to the sea. Theories about them generally focus on a glacial origin followed by extensive and extreme freeze-thaw weathering that results in very sharp rocks. I'll try to get some pictures next time. I was planning to stop but I ended up concentrating so much on not dying that I missed the chance.

*edited to add* I've managed to get some pictures of the Rock Runs, I'm afraid they were snatch shots from a helicopter so not as good as they could be but I think you can make out the way the rocks do seem to flow down the hillside. Looks like it could be an interesting topic to look into in more depth.

Around the same time you start time I started to see the signs warning of the major danger in driving off road without paying enough attention. Minefields.

Left over from the conflict in '82, these mainly centre around Stanley but are possible to find all over the Islands and are the only area that solid barriers line the road. You don't often see this sort of sign around in the UK.

There are stiff penalties for entering a minefield (aside from being blown up), as there are for making a mine explode. You might well be wondering why they don't get them all cleared, well, the important areas have been cleared but the locals have said that they'd rather the money and time went to clearing mines in other countries, rather than here, where everyone knows about them and can avoid them. That's what I've heard anyway, and if it's true then good on them!

In Stanley I did some touristy shopping (soooo many penguins!) and had a lovely lunch in the Malvinas Hotel. Do visit, try the squid rings! Then went for a pootle around the town, found a signpost

which reminded me of a bit in Pratchett's Jingo. The Ankh-Morpork soldiers had erected a signpost with distances to where they lived but as they all lived in one city all the arms pointed in one direction. At least this one had bits like "Oban, the long way round" - way before Ewan and Charlie!

Then a drive home and some time spent cleaning the wagon and I was done for the day.

I like these Islands. They're a long way from home but there's a good feel to them.

On a lighter note...

2008-09-09T01:37:00.004+01:00

I was looking through the "my documents" folder just now in preperation for the next post and I came across what could be the oddest titled file I've ever seen. The file is called "Penis trees." I'd written it when I got in one night after a conversation on the mess quiz night. The contents of the file are as follows:

There are some things that, when said, stop you from being able to say anything else. "I'm pregnant" is one of them (not, I hasten to add, something I've heard in that respect), "don't move, I've got a gun" is another. Last night the phrase was "Yeah, I've seen the penis trees!"
We (the Met and ATC guys) were at a quiz in the Sergeants' Mess, which we won, and Gemma from ATC was talking to Yvonne about driving south on the A74; Yvonne asked if Gemma had seen a certain pair of trees. Turns out that yes, Gemma had indeed seen the aforementioned interestingly shaped trees. Her fairly loud confirmation of this resounded around the bar. There wasn't much that Tom or I could say about that really, both of us were a bit dumbstruck by the announcement, although we were wondering if the fruit drooped if not plucked in time. And how would one prune a penis tree?

So there we have it. It was that sort of night...

Farewell to a good friend.

2008-08-30T18:14:00.001+01:00

I hope to have some good news soon, but right now it's a bit sad.
Crusty (correct spelling), the much loved long serving member of the MPA Met Office, has passed away.
He had been going down hill quite rapidly in the last couple of weeks, and in the last week seemed to loose some of the use of his back legs. The guys booked him into the vet on Thursday and on Wednesday night he had a seizure.
I was on nights so found out later that he had been put to sleep at the vets, we think he was suffering from kidney failure, possibly as a result of drinking from puddles contaminated with de-icing agent.
He had been with the office for around 18 years, making him somewhere in the region of 90 years old in human terms, after being found with his brother, Boddington, huddling in the office doorway. Boddington was adopted by air traffic and Crusty adopted the office, deciding that we were his best bet for copious amounts of food and warm places to sleep.
He gained his name after the move to neuter all cats on base resulted in 20 odd cats being taken to the dog section to see the visiting vet, where a combination noise of cats screaming, dogs barking and people swearing mixed with the smell of 20 cats relieving themselves all over the people carrying them. His scab didn't exactly heal cleanly, which is why he wasn't called "Cleanly healing wound."
Over the best part of two decades he became a much loved and respected member of the office, indeed many aircrew would look to see where he was sleeping, and base their view of the weather on this, surprisingly accurate, measure. By the heaters - it'll be cold, in his hut - it'll rain, in the open begging for food - you've got food haven't you? and it'll be mainly fine.
We buried him in the old enclosure and held a short goodbye with a flypast by the F3 guys, with a wake later that day, remembering him as friends should. For me his greatest moment was greeting the new boss by peeing on his corporate logo'd laptop bag. Take that branding team!
Of his preferred sleeping spots, the light-box (which we convinced certain aircrew was a sunbed for his arthritis), the printer (above the sign "cats are not to sleep on this printer!") and the gaps around the laptop all seem too empty and we all still look for him when we return from lunch. His plaintive mews for extra food are a silence that cuts into the day and his inquisitive manner when we try to draw up our charts will be sorely missed.
Good hunting little friend, may there always be beef and tuna, and a soft warm spot in which to rest.

Sea Lion Island - now with photos!

2008-08-24T23:10:00.005+01:00

Yesterday was another good day. I had my day off and I was off to a little island to the south of the main islands called Sea Lion Island. I'm sure you can guess what it's famous for. The family that live on the island take weather readings for us and they'd had some problems with their barometer being out of calibration so I was asked to pop in and have a look at it. No worries. So we went over in the helicopter which is the first time I can remember being in a helicopter to tell you the truth. The Island is fairly small, 5 miles by 1, and has populations of sea lions, elephant seals, penguins (at least three types), birds of prey and other birds.

I made sure that I sorted out the barometer first, it being the most important part of the trip really, then I had a wander around.

From the lodge down to the beach I passed Falklands geese

and some penguins,

(looks to me like he's going "I thank you!")

then along the beach there were more birds

and a seal of some kind playing in the surf.

Walking along I met up with some of the other guys from the heli and they pointed me towards an Elephant seal and his mate, and bugger me those things are big!

The big males (we found 2 of them) are huge, grey and mostly covered in sand, the females are covered in a soft looking brown pelt but I wasn't about to get close enough to see how it felt. Not just cause there's a minimum approach distance, or just because it they're big and strong, and not just because they do smell somewhat of fish. More a combination of these. And she looked like she didn't want to be bothered so I figured it would be better to let her be.

There were also many Turkey Vultures

and Caracaras,

as well as some smaller birds.

Some bits made me laugh, one of the guys had his family along and when they stopped a couple of birds swooped to sit near by, obviously hoping for someone to die.

Cue Ice Age quote "unattended children will be eaten!"

On the way back I sat near the penguins and after a couple of minutes they all started to come closer and closer.

Gave me some pretty good photos, although I took almost 400 shots so I should have had a couple of good 'uns.I'm going to have to go back, there's a lot of the Island left to see, and I'd recommend it to anyone that's down this neck of the woods!

P..p..p..Photo a penguin!!

2008-08-12T22:19:00.004+01:00

I finally got off base and got to a beach where there were some penguins

Yes, I've grown a 'tash. Don't worry my fond fans, it'll go soon, but it's a tradition thing.

These are Gentoo penguins, I'm hoping to get out to another island soon to get some pictures of different types.

"It's a trap! There's three of them! RUN!!"

They are great little animals, and not the only thing we saw that day.

Don't know if you can see it but in the wave is a pod of dolphins surfing the wave on the way in.

Next time I'll have the bigger lens with me to get some better pictures but it was still a good day.

Queen of the skies

2008-08-01T21:06:00.009+01:00

Had a couple of days off last week and managed to get up for a flight. Well, I say "managed," I got back to find a note shoved under my door that the aircrew had called us up and asked if we had anyone that would want to go flying so it wasn't me at all...

Anyway, we went up in a VC-10

and flew around for a bit, refuelling a couple of Tornado F3s

then playing "target" for them, (yes the nav is waving)

before we went around the Islands at fairly low level

and did a pass over Stanley and a few practice landings at MPA.

During this time, we (Yvonne, myself and a few others from the camp) had the chance to sit in the jump seat of the cockpit for one of the touch-and-go landings.

(I can't remember but I think in the two pictures to the right the crew are going "What's that?" "What?" "Up there?" "Oh crap, I dunno!"

That's where they touch down then power on and take off again. Smoother than most other aircraft I've been on, and more power as well, but then the idea of the VC-10 was "let's take an airliner and strap on four fighter engines!"

Managed to get a picture of the base and, 0ddly enough, in this image, I CAN see my house (well room) from here!

Didn't get any pictures from the seat cause I was too busy enjoying myself! Maybe next time.

Cats

2008-08-01T20:15:00.004+01:00

As promised, here is the cat.

He's called Krusty, has a lack of green wig (sorry Rich, I'll look for one for him while I'm down here!) and he's 17 apparently.
He's also a bit of a shoulder cat....

It's really nice having a work cat, although he does tend to walk across the keyboard at the worst possible time and if you've got any food he's a real pain in the arse!
Some of the aircrew that come in for briefings look to see where Krusty is sleeping before they ask us anything - if he's in his box it'll be wet, if he's on the radiator it'll be cold and if he's being attentive and meowing you've probably got food.

The moon's upside down!

2008-07-17T20:06:00.004+01:00

I had a blog entry written out but now that I'm in the cyber cafe I thought I might as well just bang one out (jokes to the usual address).
Well, here I am.
Managed to get pretty much everything organised before I flew out, the flight was long and rather boring, although watching the sunrise over Africa was brilliant. We stopped off in Ascension Island and I got to leave the cage to meet the local Met guys, briefly, before we were herded back on for the next part of the trip.
Arrived after about 18 hours on the plane and got a quick tour of the base and the office.
Limited to what I can actually say about the base but it's pretty good, there's a long corridor from our living area to the main mess (about a mile long) and it's a bit chilly at times - glad I brought my down jacket.
I'm sat in the cyber cafe right now, something dad didn't have when he was here, and soon I think I'll nip to Oasis for a cup of tea and a cake. Life can be pretty civilised at 52 degrees south. It's cold mind, but then it is winter, we had a day of glorious sunshine but most of the time has been dull and drizzley. I'm expecting snow this weekend.
Erm what else, oh we've got a 33m heated swimming pool, a climbing wall, a great gym (had my induction after work this morning - 3 minutes of the timetable being read and the pti asking "everyone seen the rules before? Right see me if you need anything else.") a cheap bar (whisky costs about a third of a the price of a chocolate bar :D ) a bowling alley (the pins are on cable - it's hilarious) that I got invited to on the first evening - great but I was dead on my feet by the end, library, couple of shops, few places for tea and coffee, a cinema that shows some fairly recent shows, and all this is just inside the mess complex.
I've had the landrover training and been hooning about in the works van as much as I can and I've come to realise that I like defenders! Hoping to get off the base at some point this week but I'm working this weekend when the rest of them are going off to Stanley, maybe next time. There's often chances to go on flights which I'll grab when I can but not just yet.
Work wise, it's harder than back home and different with more briefings and different conditions. Different products too. I was worried that I couldn't do it for a bit but I think that was just the newness of the situation. I need to speed up production but that'll come. Work also, like most sections down here, has a cat. He can be a bit annoying when he's begging for food but it's nice to be able to take a couple of seconds pause and say hello to him. I'll stick up some photos of Krusty, and other things, when I can.
It's the little thing that keep throwing me, I went outside and thought "Hang on! The cloud's in the wrong part of the sky and the wind's going the wrong way! My forecast is rubbish!" Then I realised I'm in the south and the sun is in the north. I'd automatically lined myself up and got it epically wrong. I also don't recognise ANY of the stars down here yet. Okay, apart from the Sun, but we don't see our local star much. I think I've seen the southern cross but need to check on that.
In general, I think I'm going to like it down here, but give me a week of work in evil weather on my own and then ask me...

It's not procrastination, it's planning...

2008-07-06T13:44:00.002+01:00

Okay, I'm putting off packing, tidying the flat, getting the spare keys cut and all the other stuff.
Still slightly freaking out.

Stuff that needs to get done:

Post redirection.
Pack.
Fix laptop. (Can't be done in time - bugger)
~~Get jabs.~~
Get Certificate for jabs.
Landrover training. (Can't be done before I leave)
Sort out Mess Bills for the next three months.
Pick up PSP from camp.
Sort out ID card.
~~Tell neighbours.~~
~~Organise someone from work to check on flat and feed the fish.~~
~~Get extra fish food.~~
Get passport photos for paperwork.
Get eye test for colour perception (might be able to use an old test for this) and for OASC (have you EVER tried to get a short notice eye test!??!)
Tidy flat.
Send OASC paperwork (might need to send that BFPO once I get down there - might look a bit different, return address FIB).
Get keys cut.
~~Look into phones daaarrrnn Saaarrrrffff (practicing the accent).~~ - Only mobile network is Vodaphone and the prices, well, let's say I won't be using mobile internet...

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Shame I've got to cover the night shift tonight.
Looks like I'll be travelling down a day later, or leaving later on Tuesday and crashing overnight at Tasha and Chris'. That or pulling another late night jaunt down the highways and byways of this nation.
E-mail will certainly be the best way to reach me while I'm gone, but there are these little things called "Bluey" envelopes that are a sheet of paper you write on and send free. Not sure how much they are but it's a physical letter. We used to send them to my dad when we was in the Falklands, of course, that was before we had internet. Or a computer. Or a VCR. (Yes, for my younger readers (or the younger guy at work) there was a time before the internet, and even before everyone had computers).

Right, I've got a few hours before I need to head to work, so I'll see what I can get done.
And Sian, yeah, fridge magnets were on my to-do list, as is trying to find a suitable penguin to photograph, or getting a Tux and sticking him on a rock somewhere.
Richard's comment on a previous post got me thinking - he was always good at that - and yeah, it's a strange world that we live in. Having said that, I'm not quite as blasé about this as I might seem. Seriously, I'm freaking out!
At least once I've done this, doing it again won't be so hard, and I get the feeling that unless I have a real problem with being down south, I'm going to be put on the list of "people that we can send south."

Ouch

2008-07-04T03:35:00.000+01:00

For the record the Yellow Fever jab wasn't too bad, and the Tetanus/Polio/Diptheria triple jab was alright as well.
At the time.
Since then the triple vaccine (which goes into the muscle) has started to ache, but I think that's fairly normal. Feels like I've pulled the muscle.
Didn't have much of a reaction to the yellow fever, apart from feeling groggy earlier, but like I was coming down with a cold. Seems to have cleared up somewhat now.
Looks like FIB (Falkland Islands Base) has a much slower connection speed, which is to be expected, so what I might do is blog off line and then use the cyber cafe down there to upload entries en masse.

Where will you be, the day after next Thursday?

2008-07-02T23:32:00.005+01:00

Had one of those days today. The Reds turned up, which was cool, and I got asked if I wanted to do a detachment down south for a few months.

So, next week I'm catching a plane.

To the Falkland Islands.

Yeah, 8000 miles south for three months.
Yikes.

First I've got to sort out everything up here, get an ID, get checked out on Landrovers and get vaccinations for Yellow Fever, Polio and Tetanus.
I should be able to keep everyone up to date but there may be longer than average gaps between posts...

And again, yikes.

Balls and kilts

2008-06-23T23:48:00.004+01:00

Summer balls that is.
I'd invited a couple of friends up to come to the camp summer ball the other weekend, and I think they enjoyed it.
The dogs are (left to right) Rosie, Rossie and Puddles (nee Rolly).
There were people in frocks, uniforms, kilts and dinner jackets, the shortest skirts were being worn by the men.

As with most balls at the mess there was also a selection of entertainments...Tom, a pilot, on a monkey bike.

Tasha and myself on the bikes.
Dodgems, with the station commander homes in on Tasha.Bungee running, BIG powerful elastic bands round your waist and try to reach the end before being pulled back onto you arse. Great fun.Mechanical bull with Tasha about to fall off, and...

Chris looking the part - McBrokeback Mountain anyone?

And the best, pudgel stick fighting!!! Chris and myself about to spar. Contender ready!

Longest day

2008-06-20T06:19:00.000+01:00

After hearing about Stonehenge on the radio I realised that I have kept the vigil for the sunrise on the solstice. Not by choice so much as it's my job.
Mind you, the sun only really dips below the horizon this far north, it doesn't really get dark until late August. Not the full insomnia 24 hour daylight but certainly not proper night.
There's quite a few bits of this job that seem to hark back to more interesting times. There's a gate guardian (a mostly decommissioned aircraft – in this case a GR4 bomber) near the front gate that either says "THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!!!!" or that sits there, holding back the evil spirits (and reporters).
Reminds me of the Snow Ball at uni one year. Happened to be on the winter solstice and it was a beach party so people were dressed in their summer clothes and were stomping around to heavy drums with small flame throwers going off in the background. Drums, fire and summer clothes to bring back the sun. Nice.
Tomorrow we dress up in our finery (kiltage!) and dance (drink and eat) until the sun comes up, possibly making merry and "cavorting like the Greeks of old - you know the ones I mean!"
I'll try to get some photos for you all, but not sure about the bungee running and laser tag. It's the Mess ball, in case you were wondering.

A big old week.

2008-06-14T00:07:00.005+01:00

A few weeks ago a friend suggested that we climb a hill for charity. A simple enough proposition, but this friend has an habit of suggesting fairly large hills.
So, for the Trail100/WaterAid challenge we were to climb An Teallach.
The walk in was nice, 3 km along and about 800 ft up, after that it got a bit vertical. Once we got to the ridge things got better, although we skipped a couple of tops and a major bit of grade 3 scrambling (which is a rope away from a V Diff climb) before gaining the summit of Skurr Fiona (middle peak in this image). At the summit it was calm, warm and sunny. By this point I'd been sun burnt but didn't realise it yet.
From there we went down then back up to Bedean a' Ghlas Thuill and the cloud came in.
One peak at 1060 m, one at 1062 (3484 ft), from about 50 ft start.
So far so good. Unfortunately for the rest of the group, the vast majority of walks I've done of late have been winter walks and so, when I went through my flat grabbing my kit, I grabbed my normal kit, including liners and my normal mountain walking socks. Note to self, when walking in summer, DO NOT WEAR WINTER SOCKS!!!!!
By the time we'd reached the major down hill I was suffering from self inflicted injuries on my feet, to whit, soggy socks and bad feet. Hurt lots. Also ran out of water - three and a half litres just not enough for hot days on big hills. I promise not to complain so much next time.
We had to change camp site that night - midges in Scotland are a bad thing and our first site was a touch close to the water. So close that we had to spend an hour and a half lighting a fire to get enough smoke to drive off the evil little bastards. We could have got it lit sooner but we were using flint and steel, and shaved sticks. When we got the fire going there was a definate "Ha, we are men, we make fire!" moment. I was using a head net as well, they look stupid but damn they work.
Didn't manage to avoid midges completely though, mainly on my feet where I was letting my soles dry out...Sorry about the ugly feet. Bugger did they itch! Best thing I've found for them was Boots Bite and Sting Relief cream. Or not uncovering skin to get bitten. Midges are a sod, the only good things about them are they are good for bats and other animals.

Next day, legs ached, feet itched, sunburn was a real bugger but we had survived An Teallach. Fantastic. We took the west coast route back and saw soooooo many amazing hills.

The rest of this last week, well, my parents have been up visiting. We went to see Culloden, which was really good, they've got a new centre there about the battle that's better than I was expecting. In addition mum and dad wanted to get to the top of Cairn Gorm. Last time they were up we took the funicular railway up but if you do that you can't go all the way to the summit; the only way to get to the top is to walk all the way up from the car park.
Now, my dad's 63, and used to be in the mountain rescue in the air force when he was much younger; my mum's 61 and didn't used to do much exercise, although she's been going to the gym three times a week for the last 7 months. This would be the biggest thing dad had done for a long time, and the biggest thing I think my mum had ever done.Mum's wearing a dear-stalker she'd bought in Braemar and dad is in a flat cap. They're both wearing jackets I recommended to them and I'd fitted mum out in wind proof gloves and neck gaiter, as well as Gore-tex gaiters. Which was a vast improvement on what she was planning on wearing up a hill that tops out at 1245 m, 4081 ft (trousers tucked into socks..).
Weather was good for most of the route up, until we got to the Ptarmigan restaurant, from where you head up to the summit. The wind picked up, the rain (and a bit of sleet/wet snow) started and the cloud came down. We made it up, and here's the proof. Mum and dad approaching the summit of the Cairn Gorm (I'm leaning on the summit cairn to get out of the wind).
Most people think that cairns (piles of rocks) are just to mark summits or just to look nice. Nah. When you're at the top and need a route in poor visibility you can use your compass and map, your GPS or you can follow the handily placed line of stone markers, visible in all but the very worst weather. Live saver!
We had a meal in the Ptarmigan and caught the train back down, much easier than walking!

So there we have it, six days, three Munros, even more tops, sun burn, midge bites, sore legs and feet, many miles covered and money raised for charity, and two very happy parents.
Not a bad week, all in.

A Good Day.

2008-05-26T23:49:00.003+01:00

Today is a bank holiday for most of the UK, but not Scotland. Fortunately the air force take it as a day off. Most of the time recently I've wasted the extra days I've had, or got to the end of the day and thought "wow, I've done nothing." Okay, actually I think, "I've played a good amount of XBox and got a bit of exercise, which is not too bad." And then I've thought of the untold possibilities that each new day presented and realised that I've just walked down the same path I've been down countless times before. (For reference, yes I am paraphrasing the xkcd comic I've got hanging in my kitchen.)
Today was different; I'd told myself I'd use today and by gum I have! One of the guys in the mess recommended the mountain bike tracks at Fochabers so today I hitched my bike to the back of my car and headed over to the Fochabers Ring. I didn't know it was the Fochabers Ring until I got there, I just headed over and found a route. So off I went, along a nice gentle undulating track then hit the uphill section. I knew that I was following a route that had red or orange labels on the posts, followed it from the monument at the top of the hill and then turned back.
I have my limits, and when the route labels go from orange to black with a skull and cross-bones (seriously!), that's a good time to find the different route. Apart from a bit at New Year's, I haven't done much proper off-road biking for ages, used to do quite a bit in the summers with the activity camps so I wasn't sure what I could remember of the more technical side of biking. I reckoned I still had the basics but when the sign recommends expert biking, walking the route first and warns of tables, drops, jumps and moving see-saws; it becomes time for the better part of valour.
As it is, back up the hill to the monument and followed the long route through Rohan and into The Mirk Wood (yeah, there's a whole Lord of the Rings thing going on) and wow. It was absolutely wonderful, some lovely singletrack with nice flowing sections and some interesting bits that demanded concentration. Better, I think, than the bits we used to ride in the Forest of Dean. Aragon Alley was poorly signed and had a depressing amount of narrow uphill with lots of exposed routes which was much more difficult but in a rewarding kind of way.
So yeah, loved it. When I got back I looked up the route (and the page I linked to earlier) and found out that the route colour corresponds to difficulty, just like on the slopes. The red route I was on turns out to be graded difficult - for "proficient mountain bikers with good off-roading skills." Turns out I remembered more than I thought about biking. Will be going back (and if anyone fancies coming up with a bike, or wants to hire one, please feel free!), especially now I've found that map with the other routes in the area.
After that little adventure (mainly on hope, but with coffee for breakfast) I got home, cooked a very nice little chili (another major achievement), caught up with a friend's latest blog entry, did some more washing and watched some great TV (weather gadgets on The Gadget Show). Now I plan to read more of a good book (Xenocide in this case) and try to figure out how to write my next entry without quite so many phrases in parenthesis.
It feels great to look back on a day and think that I've done something different to my normal routine. Actually, yesterday wasn't a waste either, I tidied up and caught up with my ironing. Of the two, guess which day was better. Guess which one I'll be trying to do again.

100 posts in and what's changed?

2008-05-18T23:55:00.000+01:00

I was hoping that I'd have some earth shattering news for the 100th post but just now I realised that wouldn't be true to the rest of this blag.
I'm writing this at midnight, on a night shift (already got pretty much everything done for tomorrow...) and outside to the south the clouds are backlit by the almost full moon, to the north the sky still holds the afterglow of sunset; this time of year it doesn't fully go down. While I was outside taking the hourly observation the air conditioning unit shut off and all I could hear was the low susurrus of the waves on the beach to the north and the lonely cry of a gull overhead.
Just now a shower has run through, a light one, but enough for the air to take on that smell of sharp, almost green, cleanliness and the deep rolling tones of the shore to be counter pointed by the crisp tattoo of the rain on the balcony.
I'm not where I thought, or hoped, I would be by this point when I started this blog but right now, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I'm closer to where I want to be, and certainly in a better place but I keep making the path ahead of me longer than it needs to be.
Since I put the first post down I've finished my training and require evidence for three sections of units to finish my NVQ – I’ve been trying to get these units signed off since I got up here in Scotland. One of my friends has taken her Chartered Engineer exams (results by Wednesday, good luck!) and another has started the road to his MBA. I’ve completed my CBT, but not the full bike training, nor have I completed my IAM or diving training. I’m still resolutely single (damn it!) but that’s not really a major worry. I’ve made a good number of friends in the mess and am known by many more. I have climbed at least three Munros, with another planned next month for charity (if anyone fancies sponsoring us to climb a fairly major hill, PLEASE visit http://www.justgiving.com/mountain-numpties , it’s for WaterAid, a charity I’ve liked for a while) and I’ve got my accuracy up to 94.7% on my TAFs, which are the basic 9 hour forecasts we produce. If you told someone that the weather forecasts in this country were almost 95% accurate they’d usually laugh you off the stage.
I’ve got back in contact with a couple of friends recently, including Richard, the guy I shared a room with in the first year of Uni, and Danijela, who went to college with use.
I’ve been to a couple of old friends weddings, and missed more; visited friends down south for Halloween and had a brilliant time; spent one New Years camping in the middle of no-where and another on the banks of Loch Ness, climbing, sledging, mountain walking and biking, ice skating and snowboarding. I’ve walked through snow and thistle, in shorts (rarely), kilts (even more rarely) and trousers, under skies clear blue while the sun rises to kiss the mountains with a golden peak, under leaden skies soon to poor rain onto the ground below; I’ve started so early we had to wear head torches to see the way and seen nights so light with the afterglow of the sun that you can read outside at midnight; I’ve walked alone and with friends, with dogs and ice-axes; I’ve slept in winds so strong we’ve prayed for the morning and dreaded the thought of going outside and through all of it, I feel incredibly privileged to be here.
Yeah, there are things I want to do, things I need to do and things I really shouldn’t do, like all of us; for example I’d like to see more of my friends, but I realised that I am the architect of my regrets and my successes. When I look back again I know that it will be my choices and my actions that will shape whether or not I am happy with the time spent.

So there we are. 100 posts, which works out to under one a week. Still, I think it makes me the most frequently posting of any of my friends (of late anyway). I know none of the 100 posts have exactly been Pulitzer material and most would have bored the pants of anyone reading them but thank you for reading them and I hope that I can find something worthwhile to put up soon.

Family Guy does the Matrix

2008-05-08T22:42:00.002+01:00

Almost sprayed drink all over my laptop.

*edit to add*
I'm going to add this to the last post rather than put this onto the 100th post because I'm vain and I want the hundred to be something REALLY good.

So in addition to the 99th, have a look at both the Nine Inch Nails album ( NiN.com ) for free music, even if you don't like it, download it then delete the recording - think of what you're saying to the recording houses about charging for music if the artist doesn't want it...
Also, listen to Wil Wheaton (Wes Crusher in THG - but don't hold that against him - seriously, he's good!) as the keynote speaker at the PAX 07 meeting from penny-arcade. (Google Pax Wil Wheaton - that's what I did) and listen to his talk. It's worth the time.
Aside from that, Lottie from the base is such a lovely lass, can't see why she thinks of herself as unattractive; wish I could make her believe otherwise (although then she'd never look at a guy like me) but she needs to believe in her own worth and she needs to understand that when she looks into the mirror what she sees is a good thing, not a question mark - as she seems to think she is.
Honestly, she's wonderful, better than the shite she's had to put up with.
Lottie, you're worth better than that arse-hole, give me a call if you can't see how.

Flood - or "Bad Meteorology"

2008-05-04T20:55:00.002+01:00

A storm surge associated with a low pressure system hits the north of Scotland, runs down the east coast and hits London.
First things first. It's a drama, it needs a bad guy and in this case it's the Met Office, shown as a bunch of model following incompetents. The only people aware of the danger are private companies, and if you're not attached to the office, you'd probably enjoy it.
Now, a couple of things. The facts as stated in the first sentence are true, large storm surges happen and are one of the things that we monitor VERY closely. The Ops centre (not shown accurately) do have lots of models but they also have satellites and actual reports to look at. They've also got us. All of the outstations would be watching this and all of us would be working on it separately, if we thought the Ops guys were wrong we'd sodding well tell them! The office would issue warnings for what might happen, as has been shown recently - and like I said, east coast surges are a sore point. We're often criticised that we issue too many warnings, but it's better to be warned.
Having said that, sometimes things do go wrong and sometimes forecasts go wrong, but on that scale? For us to miss the possibility by that much is a bit much.
This is the thing I'm not liking about the program - we're shown in a pretty shit light. Apart form that, it's actually not too bad. They point out the 1953 floods when exactly this happened, it was the highest peacetime loss of life in Britain for a very long time.
People don't like to think about storm surges, they're scary, but they are real. You get (roughly speaking) one metre of surge for every 10 mB drop and about one metre of wind wave for every 10 knots of wind, so to get the 50 odd foot you'd need a central low pressure of about 900 mB and winds of about 80 kt. Possible. In fact, statistically, likely - given a long enough time frame. But not this week. In fact we've had two big storms that threatened to do just this within the last two years, one on the west coast and one on the east. In one case the surge hit at low tide and for the other the pressure wasn't as low as could be and went further off shore, allowing the flood defences to work.
It's just how they show the Office that sticks in my craw. Trust me, if I'd seen a storm like that heading for the coast I'd be looking at it HARD. We'd be one of the first groups hit so we'd be signing the clarion call at the top of our voices!
By the way, as with pretty much all British disaster films, they get COBRA wrong. It is the emergency group but it actually refers to Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. It's a room they use; or at least was originally. I may put in more as the film progresses, depends on how annoyed I am.

On communication.

2008-05-04T00:56:00.005+01:00

Two points mainly, it's been one of those weeks.
This week there's been a few extra aircraft up here, various exercises and the like. Most of them were up for Joint Warrior including the French Air Force and the French Navy. Odd thing is that we're not supposed to talk about them until they're finished and everyone's gone home but within six hours of the first plane landing the pictures were up on various aircraft spotting websites. Another exercise was also on, and as the details haven't been put in the public sector yet I can't say much but this one was a mostly British affair with one or two notable visitors. For this one we were asked to provide on site met in the form of a briefing, which is something that I enjoy but haven't really done much of recently. Hopefully we'll be doing more of them soon.
Even given the fact that we work pretty closely with the air force I was somewhat put out that after I'd done my little bit and was sitting through the rest of the brief (bloody interesting stuff) I realised that if I'd known more about what they were doing I could have REALLY focused on what they needed.
The whole reason that we're cleared and out in theatre with the guys is that we can give specific information rather than just general forecasts for wide areas; I've begun now to understand more how better knowledge of the way they work will allow me to do my job more efficiently and just generally better. It's not that I think I gave a bad brief, but if I'd done another one at the end of the mass brief I would have delivered a very different one. Knowing what they were planning, not just the general area they were working in, knowing the profiles they'd be likely to fly and the things that they'd be doing, it all gives me a better idea what they want and what they need to know. The way I did it I gave information that they didn't need and focused on things that were frankly irrelevant. I'm going to try and get some feedback about it and see if, in future, we can get just five or ten minutes heads-up with Ops to, yeah, focus more.

The other bit of communications I've had is the reason this is being typed on a Windows machine rather than a Mac. My Mac has died. Gets to the boot screen and just freezes. Tried clearing the PRAM and resetting to factory settings, nothing. Ran a couple of machine checks (including one from a command line - I'm sure Unix is great but I don't have the skills to do more than a basic check) and when running the check from the install disk the system couldn't find the hard drive. Now I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to sys stuff but I know that not being able to locate the hard drive is a problem. Most of the stuff was backed up a few weeks back so there's a few pictures I'd be pissed off loosing but the big stuff is on the spare drive so re-installing shouldn't ruin my life. The machine is less than a year old so it's still under warranty; hence I started to dig out the documents for it. Found everything (including the bank statement) except the receipt. Bugger. I was sure I'd bought it from PC World (quiet at the back there!) so yesterday I headed over to Inverness to pop in. I was also planning to see Iron Man (brilliant!) so I was going anyway, which was good because when I got there I realised I'd actually bought it at Currys. We've got a Currys here, so I might not have had to drive 45 miles to the one there. As it was I got a copy of the receipt and the phone number for customer support. That's right, they don't handle Apple repairs in store, it's done through a phone contact. Fortunately a 24/7 number so a called a couple of times today as I'd got back a bit late last night. Twice I got the message "Due to circumstances outside of our control we are experiencing a high call volume and cannot take your call. Sorry." Click, buzz. Automatic cut off.
Waited until about 2200, called again, got told, "sorry, we don't do Apple on this number, here's their customer service number, they don't work weekends." I'll try again on Monday but I'm betting they don't work bank holidays either so it'll be Tuesday and I'm just hoping that they won't object to the fact that I didn't buy the care package - they shouldn't, it's within it's first year so still under warranty. We'll have to see.
When wandering through the store, all I could think of was "Nerd Herd! Nerd Herd!" Liking Chuck and Reaper.

A motorbike and comedy post

2008-04-22T00:30:00.003+01:00

Warning! Bad language, bad taste and good humour ahead!

There's been a few things this week that have made me laugh. One of the best was when I was chatting to a mate online and she mentioned that there was a "Mock the Week" marathon on Dave (for non-UK guys, that's a TV channel). I was in work the next night and sure enough, there was another set of episodes on. If you don't know it, Mock the Week is an improv show, and theoretically there's about 4 or 5 rounds of comedy challenges for the various standups such as one comic does a version of a speech (Dubya addressing Congress, the Prince of Wales talking to his mother) and another translates what's actually meant, or various topics are given and they compete for quick-fire laughs and so on. One of the episodes, I swear they had three rounds, and one of them had just one topic that was covered for about 15 minutes. Like all shows of the type it can date quickly but some of the rest of it is still painfully relevant. I think I managed to give myself a decent stomach work-out with the amount I was laughing.
From youtube, here's a few, including an outtake. The BBC have posted a load but can't embed them.

These are from the final rounds, "scenes you'd never see..."

2008-04-19T19:26:00.003+01:00

Did they base the Ood on Dr John Zoidberg?

*eta* as in the aliens from Saturday's Dr Who (and the Satan Pit) and Planet Express' resident doctor from Futurama.
Or maybe they're both based on Cthulhu... O R’lyeh? Yeah they might be.

I'll stop now.

Convergence

2008-04-11T22:35:00.005+01:00

A lager advert on the TV has Violent Femmes as a sound-track, which made me pop onto iTunes and grab it, as it made me think about Grosse Point Blank, one of my 20 favourite films (come on! "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork, how have you been?" Lines don't get much better). Riding back from Inverness today and the same tune came on my iPod, I think "must watch that film again soon" and lo and behold, right now on UKTV Gold, it's Grosse Point Blank.
*edit to add* just seen one of my favourite scenes on film. As a single guy I have a certain image to maintain as a climbing, boarding, kayaking, martial arts blokey bloke but the bit in the film with Robbie (at the reunion with Under Pressure in the background), it's just fantastic. If you've seen the film you'll know it. Just gets to me, you know. ;D */edit*
Score!
Tis a good day.

Also managed to get a few pictures of Scotland today as well, this is one of the better ones.

You know, I'm really lucky to live up here. I was faced with the dilemma of do I go snow-boarding, to the cinema, walking on the beach or walking on a snow covered mountain on my day off. Woosed out, went to the cinema, saw 21, not bad. Grosse Point Blank's better though. Mountains later, wine now.

Tiny bit tipsy

2008-04-10T21:10:00.006+01:00

Watching Bones, the new season on Sky, and a couple of things strike me, aside from the fact I've had a very nice bottle of wine (thank you Tesco) and a bit of a Martini-type drink (I'm using more vermouth than is standard). The series has about 12 producers/executive/assistant producers, two of them are the main characters and one is Kathy Reichs, upon whose books and life the series is modelled, but even so, 12! That's a bit over the top!
The reason I've had a drink or two on a week night is that I've just finish a shift pattern from hell. From Sunday night until 8 o'clock this morning I've been on a nominal 12 on 12 off pattern, except the two shift where I had to do 14 or 15 hours when the next guy couldn't get in on time. Not his fault, illness and planned activities related. Now I'm relaxing and enjoying the new season. My next comment may be a bit controversial, but I prefer the series to the books, although I've only read the first book, maybe the later ones are better, I'll have to find out.
I'm rambling, but I'm happy.
BTW, weekend looks a bit grotty (just showers in the south) and Monday could see a return to wintry showers as far south as Birmingham, but don't tell anyone I told you so!

And I've just found out that Martini's aren't improved by using Rossi. Although American Dad is always good.

But more importantly I've just realised that I'm going to miss out on my niece's life. I'm her uncle and I'm not going to be there. I know her mum and dad will be there for anything she needs but I think an uncle near-by, or at least reachable, is important. When Ellen was born Matt seemed a bit hesitant about the fact I wouldn't be a god-parent, but as I said at the time, I'm faimily, and I believe that god-parents shouldn't be family; but we should be available for the child. So when she gets older, I'm going to have to have to make sure she's got my number, just in case something comes up that she's not happy talking to her mum and dad about.
Having said that, she's three now, so I've got a bit of time, I hope....

Predictions of the future

2008-03-29T23:39:00.002Z

I'm watching Johnny Mnemonic and it's interesting in some ways, the VR headset he's using looks a bit like the Video goggles, but not much (hint for Christmas there :D ). Laughed to myself when he was barking instructions for the bits of kit he wanted, including a "Thomson i phone." Might have been "eye-phone" but was worth a giggle.
Nowt much else happening. I think I've managed to finish half of the remaining NVQ units, going to try to finish the rest this week (said that before) and I've been told I can sign off the hours at the gym, which is a good reason to go more.
Got a bit depressed when I realised that I have one friend on XBox live, even my fish have more of a social life than I do. On the plus side it's been good catching up with Danni on Facebook.
Wow, that actually is a fair summary of my week. Bit sad really.

Sir Arthur C Clarke

2008-03-20T15:43:00.003Z

He was buried today in Sri Lanka after dying on Wednesday.
I never met him, like most of us, but he's one of those authors that's made a huge impact, both on me and on people who've never heard of him. As well as being an amazing author, his 20001 (or as I prefer, Sentinel) is one of the great films, although the book's better.
He worked on RADAR in the second world war with the RAF and developed the specifics of the Clarke Geostationary orbit that allows so much of modern life.
I haven't read all that much of his work, in fact I was amazed how much there was, but one of the books that I did read when I was younger was a collection of his short stories, including the Sentinel. One of the ones that stuck with me was "The Nine Billion Names Of God." It turns out it's also one of Neil Gaiman's favourites. Like so many of his stories the end isn't what you expect. I think he was one of the writers that make me start to think that there was more to the world than I could see, and that finding out more about it could be the best thing possible.
Sir, you will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.

Little bit hungover right now

2008-03-15T10:53:00.003Z

First off, cheers to Morgan for pointing out that I've been misspelling caffeine for two years.
At the mess last night heard some great tales and had a great time. Have a type 2 hangover right now and was worried when I got up because I had made a load of comments on facebook when I got back in.
Having a look at them I think they're okay but I really shouldn't drunk type.
In case you're wondering, there are 6 levels of hangover.

In a type 1 you have a little bit of a headache but nothing special, probably don't even need an aspirin.
Now you want an aspirin/fizzy-headache-cure of your choice. You've got a mild headache, your stomach feels a bit off-colour but give it a couple of hours and you'll be fine.
This one is what my friend used to call a "hangover in the form of poo." It's worse than a type 2 but only until you go to the loo, at which point everything clears up.
Here things start getting serious. Your stomach is growling, your head is pounding and you don't want to be moving much.
By this point you're swearing off booze forever. Your head isn't pounding, it's a constant pain. Your stomach is not your friend - it's trying to eat itself. If you decide to stand up (fool!) you'll soon sit down again, trying to move is a bad idea.
This is the biggy. It's self inflicted so don't expect people to be sympathetic, although it would be nice if they were. Your head and gut will be horrific, light should be avoided, pure water is a waste - I'd recommend fruit juice. Stay in bed, you're not going anywhere.

There's the old rule that four o'clock is the magic time when a hangover will clear but that only counts for type two and four. Type 5 can only be cleared by sleep and type six is a two day suffering that can only be cured on Sunday afternoon in the pub with friends, by which point you'll be drinking soft drinks with your roast lunch.
This brings me onto hangover cures - there are none! If you can be cured, any cure will work. My preference is alka-seltzer xs, but at the moment nurofen is enough. Replacing electrolytes and re-hydration drinks help but as my dad once told me, the only thing that cures a hangover is 24 hours with sleep. Once you get in, you're not actually asleep. You're not conscious but it's not proper sleep, that comes later. Mixing drinks will usually make the hangover worse, it's a chemical imbalance after all and different types of drink will have different effects on your blood chemistry.

Not sure why I'm blogging this, but I just felt like putting it down.

Anyway, hopefully England will play the rugby better today than last weeks abysmal performance against Scotland.

An odd sort of week

2008-03-13T15:45:00.006Z

Well for one thing it's been a long week and it's not over yet! Actually a long two weeks.
One of our guys was sick last week and then when he came back another had a member of his family taken into hospital very ill. Had to organise for us to shut down overnight so told everyone except the helicopter guys- felt bad for forgetting them. As it was the man in charge of operations was told, as was air traffic control and sorted out next door to cover for us and produce the documents. I was on leave the next day so would have come in if needed but I'd been told not to do that. Then this week the situation had got worse so we had to cover the staff member's shifts. Wouldn't have been a problem as the boss was back up this week so able to cover but after my second night shift he called in sick at about 4 am. The other forecaster was asleep before his scheduled nightshift so it was a while before we could get contact with him.
In the end I've been on nights all week, including the extra four and a half hours on Tuesday morning (ended up being a 16.5 hour shift, although did get to come in a bit later on the next night shift) and I've got tonight on as well. There's a possibility of having to come in over the weekend as well but hopefully someone else will be able to cover that.
Just realised some of you may not know the shift pattern. We work 12 hour shifts from 8 - 8 with 15 minutes of handover each side of the shift, during night shifts I try to catch a bit of time between observations (every hour at ten to the hour) to get some sleep but doesn't always happen and if there's too much work on sleep goes out of the window. Factor in the travel time and I should have enough time between shifts to get some decent kip in, provided no one calls/knocks. I'm not sure how many hours I've worked this week but since 9 pm on Sunday it's been more work than not. Joy.
Thing is, I don't mind doing the extra work, God knows I didn't take this job to just work when I feel like it. We do a job that's quite important to the people we work for, and from the impression I've got from the guys out in Germany, we're doing rather well (working with the Americans, ohh the stories!). I keep getting told by down south that we should shut down and work differently, letting other stations take up the slack but honestly don't think that this would provide the level of cover they need, partly as our briefings have started at five in the morning. So when things go wrong I step up and work.
Wouldn't be so bad if didn't get a recorded delivery, my electricity meter read and two phone calls today while I was trying to sleep. Hence me blogging rather than sleeping at four in the afternoon. Was thinking about hitting the mess tomorrow but don't know about that now. I promised myself I'd have more of a social life this year and the mess is the best place for that at the moment. Meh, don't know what I'm complaining about really, in fact I'm not complaining as such, just grousing. I like my job, I love where I live and work, Be nice to see friends more but I could make more friends up here if I tried harder (or something like that - never been the most outgoing person).
Tash rang up to see if I fancied doing a walk for charity so not I'm in a group climbing An Teallach for the Trail/WaterAid challenge in June. I'll be looking for sponsorship soon, may well hit work for it (corporately, not just the guys in the office) as WaterAid is one of the official charities this year and there's an online system for hitting up you good folks.
I think that at some point in the future I need to get some of you up here and we can go up a few hills.
Right. Buffy, Star Trek, food, Simpsons, work. That's the short term plan, I'll think about a long term one when it becomes a short term one. Only long term one is to get fitter and loose more weight and watch the Terry Pratchett Colour of Magic this Easter (if anyone's up here they're invited over to watch it!). World changing ain't it?

Free as in "You don't pay for it!"

2008-03-03T22:51:00.004Z

A while back Neil Gaiman ran a pole to find out which of his novels people would like to see online for free.
I was a bit dubious but it turned out that American Gods won and is now available free on the Harper Collins website. Some people may already know about it, some people may not care, but if you want a chance to read a great book about mythology for free (but we don't know for how long), head on over and have a look (or a Loki).
I've been very lucky with these books, a really good friend over in America got me a signed (and personalised) first edition of American Gods! I'll still read the on-line version, if only for something to do in work.

*editted to add* Apparently the free book is only up for this month (March!) so enjoy while you can!

Isn't there something going on over the pond?

2008-03-03T15:11:00.005Z

It seems to be election season doesn't it?

Dodgy results in Russia, more campaigning than you'd think sensible in the US. People on the BBC news (in the crowd I must stress) shouting "four more years!" in the UK.

So first off, am I the only one that gets annoyed when people in the UK don't know that we vote for our government at least every 5 years, not 4, although it can be sooner? Yeah probably.

As for America, I know if I was over there I'd be a democrat (well, actually I'd be a non-voting alien, but meh), but who would I vote for?

It's allowed in the US constitution for a Clinton-Clinton ticket (Bill can't be elected again, but he is allowed to be vice-pres as gaining the premiership through the sucession of the VP doesn't require a vote) and I liked Bill. I do think Mrs Clinton is more aggresively driven than her husband was.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of politicians campaigning against each other rather than for policy but I'd probably just go with the one with the best advert. Like most people.

Here's one of Mr Obama's.

Couldn't get the gif to save.. Apparently Mr Gaiman is amused by it. Which reminds me (see next post).

Adverts part deux

2008-03-02T11:58:00.004Z

It's been while since I went to the cinema, and looking at my finances it's going to be a while longer, but up here they have a few different adverts in the trailers. There's an organisation called Project Scotland that is trying to get people to volunteer for stuff. Doesn't sound very interesting yet does it? The thing is their adverts are brilliant. Warning: There's a close up of spider for about 2 seconds near the end.

I want to see teenage wizard transforming spider pirates 3!

It's a shame that these won't get shown down south, Ginger gorilla milky milky sounds just like that line from The Mary Whitehouse Experience.
Oddly enough, went down to London a couple of years ago to see a mate and we went out to watch the November the fifth fireworks on the Thames. His girlfriend and one of her mates were with us and we randomly got talking about the Mary Whitehouse Experience. Was quite a surreal moment.

Answers to the film quotes thingy

2008-03-02T11:49:00.003Z

I've put the answers to the film quote quiz at the bottom of the entry, if anyone wants to still try it, just don't scroll down too far.

RCSI restarts Friday!!!!!

2008-02-26T22:10:00.003Z

So, on Friday, the non-subscribers section of RCSI - Code Name: Hunter restarts. Darc and Matt Sowers (the writers and artist) put the comic on hiatus for half a year to get a buffer sorted and a few other things.
Main point, from Friday, and hopefully updating Monday, Wednesday and Friday after that, check out http://www.rcsitravel.net/ for a great read.
I know, I read a lot of webcomics but I've got a lot of time at work and some of the writing and artwork is brilliant.

The film quote thingy

2008-02-21T23:14:00.006Z

So, with apologies to Darc and Traxer (and everyone else)...
Rules are:
1. Pick 15 of your favourite movies. (Not necessarily in order).
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions to answer!

“Is it really worth the price?” “I pay it gladly.”
“Oh, fuck off, grasshopper!”
“Bogies my ass, them's Bandits!”
“That was bad! Bad Intelligence!”
“Does it come in black?”
“Sort out your boobs man, you look like a bleedin' Picasso!”
"And the great whore will suckle us until we are fat and happy and can suckle no more.”
“I am, however, wearing full body armour. I am not a moron!”
“I love it when a posh bird talks dirty!”
"Do I look like I give a damn?"
“But you did not say “God bless you” when I sneezed!”
“What do stars do?”
“Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.”
“Every time they run, we take a shot.”
“That punk is either in love with that guy's daughter or he has a new-found respect for life!”

So there we are, some of the films are better known than others, some of the quotes are easier than others (anyone gets number 3 and I'll be impressed!) and there are a few other films that the only quotes I could use would be too easy. Leave your answers as comments and I'll be able to give credit where it's due. First come first served for credit but if you answer without looking at other people's answers we'll know you were good. And that's what matters.
Enjoy.

*Edit* That was fast, Sian's got 7 of them. I'll leave the answers in the comments section until either they're all got or I think that everyone that's going to try has done. :D

I think I might have a week of night's coming up soon, and if so this could well be my program for what to watch. Although I'll need to buy one of them, and another isn't out on DVD yet (bit of a clue).

Well, only one person gave it a try, which says quite a bit about the number of people that read this ;( and Swiral has put up one of her own, which is much more of a challenge, so here's the list of films. I'd recommend them all, and they're all now out on DVD.

Equilibrium
Hot Fuzz
By Dawn's Early light - 90's nuclear war film.
Team America, World Police
Batman Begins
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Gladiator
Serenity
Dog Soldiers
Casino Royale
Dogma
Stardust
V for Vendetta
The Incredibles
Grosse Point Blank

So there we go. 15 of my favourite films. A couple of them are less well known (By Dawn's... in particular) and the quote from The Incredibles was one of the more obscure, but it was fun to do.

SMIDSY

2008-02-20T20:15:00.005Z

Or "Sorry mate, I didn't see you!"
From the Biker Banter section on Petrol Heads, they linked to this video from the Devon council.
Brilliant.
I'm a bit concerned because my brother has taken up the two wheels, which is great, but he hasn't done his CBT yet (he doesn't need to for the twist-and-go scooter he's got). I'm only concerned because his helmet is second hand and I think it would be better if he did some more training. I know he's planning to do so, but tempus fugit. In October the test changes and it becomes not only more difficult but borderline silly.
There's a new meme I might stick on here as well, you pick your 15 favourite films, find quotes from them (IMDB etc) and post the quotes up for people to try and guess the films WITHOUT using IMDB/Google. Darc's RCSI journal on Livejournal had the first one of these I've seen, I'd link but owing to some evil gits on her comments she's put the journal on friends only, which is a shame but I can understand it.
The challenge for me will be to find quotes from my favourite films which won't be too obvious. For example, I could say something like "The greater good!" but that might be a bit too easy.

Quick update

2008-02-02T01:27:00.000Z

Good to see you back Swiral!!
Anyway, just a quicky, nowt much to say but went to the mess for a quick drink at 6, just got back (1 am :) ) so all good. It's neg 01 outside and snowy, about an inch thick but not very dense outside.
I'm a bit tipsy at the mo, just wanted to say woohoo for the snow!
Family Guy on now, which is great, but both FX and BBC three are showing the same episodes from series one...
On the plus side, managed to drag my carcass to the gym today, so now just another 8 weeks to go.
Hopefully something blog-worthy will happen soon.

2008-01-28T18:10:00.000Z

After a post on my friend Pam's blog I thought I'd post a picture of a cheese cake from the wedding of Sara and Andi:

Okay, the image is on it's side but meh.
Anyway, in case you're wondering, I can't remember which cheeses were included but ye gods it reeked.
The professional photographer had left by this point and hadn't got pictures of the cake so they asked me to take the official cake-of-cheeses pictures (sounds like a Monty Python sketch).

Thinking about it, while I'm sticking photos up I'll put up a couple more images.

This was the road through the Cairngorms before Christmas, it's ice not snow. It was cold (see previous entry for details).

This one is an image of the Falkirk Wheel. It's a solution to the canal in the Forth Clyde valley, rather than put in a series of 20-40 locks that would take something like four hours to navigate they came up with this elegant and beautiful solution. Takes about half an hour to go from the bottom to the top and it's just marvellous.
It's nice to know that engineers in this country can still produce designs that do their job and have grace and beauty. But then again, if you want another British design that's elegant, look at the Milieu viaduct.

Wandering thoughts in the shower...

2008-01-26T13:46:00.000Z

No, not like that.
For some reason I was thinking about scientific notation and the prefaces used.
This probably came from a discussion with a friend awhile back about how some Americans use tenths of feet rather than inches, and kilofeet. Having said that, we use hundreds of feet at work, we also use tens of metres, decametres, in a couple of measurements at work.
Specifically I was wondering which was bigger, 2 Gigainches or 1 nanoParsec.
Go on, work it out, the answer may surprise you. Extra points if you don't need to look up any conversion factors.
Now I need to go out and get a life.

Christmas and the New Year

2008-01-06T12:42:00.000Z

So, it's now 2008 and I've already put the wrong date on a form (at a climbing wall I put that it was the 04/12/07...)
I drove south in pretty much one go, it took almost an hour for my front wipers to fully defrost, until then I was getting out every 10 miles or so in the Cairngorms to manually clean the windscreen. When it did run fully there was a little but of water collected on the top of the rubber of the wipers which had frozen and lifted the blade out off the screen. Quick to sort out, just had to flick off a narrow strip of ice.
Went to see gran and some of the others in Swansea, which was great, but I have covered alot of miles over the days. I also went to the gym with my mum.
Now, as those that know her will be aware, mum has been a bit over-weight for a number of years and wants to get fitter generally, but also so that she can walk up Cairngorm next time they come up. She originally bought a rower, which broke down (as apparently all of that make did) and so I recommended that she visit a couple of gyms, not just the one at the local Cascades swimming pool because that one is basically shite. It's also filled with OAPs that go for their "gym and swim" which consists of 5 minutes on a bike then an hour in the jacuzzi. I finally got her to go up the hill to the gym at the hotel and speak to a personal trainer for a bit. She was so impressed she's joined up and is going three times a week.
Good for her.
Saw loads of old friends (and St Trinian's - great fun film), and I've been blamed by a mate for him loosing time when he's supposed to be writing a report. Honestly, he asks for a lava lamp then blames me when he gets hypnotized by the wax!
For new year I drove back up to join a couple of friends (and three others) for a week in the Highlands. While driving through the Cairngorms I got my first flat tire. This, I learned, is not the joyous experience one would expect. I had to get advise because I still had about 60 miles to go and only a space saver to use. I knew you shouldn't go over 50 mph, but I'd thought that there was a distance limit. Turns out no, there isn't. Two random members of the public did stop to offer help, which was nice. Got home to un-pack, sleep and pack at about midnight. Joy.
So, into the Highlands and cue a week spent walking, ice-skating, rock climbing, sledging and mountain biking. Have some great bruises and more great memories, saw many stag (including the one in the dark by the side of the road. Driving along thinking "aha, a dog by the road, I'll slow down, hang on, ANTLERS!!!!"). Also cooked for us all, which is a rarity as anyone that knows me will testify, and it appears that the cooking went down well. Got a bit further on guitar hero as well.
There's a few more bits that happened but I think that's about the it for the highlights. I've still got to try out Assassin's Creed, couldn't play it last week because Zack (Chris' cousin's Carin's son) was too young to watch the game, so that'll probably be my Sunday sorted, and then it's back to mundane Monday tomorrow for work.
I hope you all had a good holiday season and to quote Neil Gaiman:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

*edited for ease of Neil Gaiman quote-age - cheers for the comment Pam!*

Soon to be another internet meme

2007-12-12T23:35:00.001Z

The Bad Astronomy blog had a post saying "I'm updating the server, don't comment until the update is up as all comments will be deleted."
So, of course, all of us put all the stupid silly and funny things we could think of down on the comments. Some were bad (the link to a bad music site) but most were brilliant, and now they're all gone. You'll just have to believe me that my comment was witty and well observed. :D

In a similar vein, amazon sell pens, and Neil Gaiman's blog pointed over to the reviews of the humble Bic pen.

And finally....
The squadrons at work have phone based briefings and at the start of each one they call us up and count down to the time check. For most of the groups when they reach their own number (eg for XV, when they count down to 15 seconds) a cheer goes up.
T'other day at the end of a shift I was briefing 12 and heard the count-down get to 12. All was quiet to I went, fairly quietly, "Yay."
All I could hear for most of the rest of the count was cheers and laughter from the aircrew. Still makes me smile.

Northern Lights

2007-12-08T23:34:00.000Z

(There are soooooo many things that title could refer to...)
Or, to give it the name it goes by, "The Golden Compass."
I'm re-reading the book atm, so I'll tell you how they compare soon, but for the film itself, great.
First off, and google it if you don't understand, what a steam-punk world!!!! If you're a fan of girl genius or any of the other gas-lamp/steam-punk worlds, or a fan of the book, have a look. Not as much of a PG as some others I've seen, but not for very young kids (ie, Matt, don't take Ellen!). Obviously a set up for the next couple of films and the film manages to NOT mention the Catholic church at any time, unlike the book! But a huge cast, and Daniel Craig is brilliantly cast. Not as world conquering as New Line's other recent ventures (cough *LOTR* cough) but looks promising.

Thinking about the PG thing, went to see something a while back, can't exactly remember what but there was a scene in it that was a bit gory, nothing really horrific but enough that a few people I know would go ewwgh. On the way out I heard a parent, who had taken their child along with them, complaining to a member of staff. The queue monkey called over the manager who gave the complainer the address of the head office and two pieces of advice: you can leave the cinema any time (they hadn't), and it's a PG, which means that the parents are advised to view it first and then decide whether or not to take their children, so if they choose not to do this, it's the parent's responsibility.
I almost cheered.
As it was, as she went off in a huff I caught the manager's eye and grinned. Bugger me if there wasn't a flash of answering smile.
As we used to say in Blacks, the customer, while possibly stupid and potentially about to do something suicidal, is not always right but is always the customer.

Back to Family Guy

A good weekend

2007-12-03T00:38:00.000Z

This weekend my good friend Tasha drove up, with dogs. It was good to see her and we got out to do some proper outdoors stuff.
Friday we went out to Cairngorm (starting out at 7:20 - way before sunrise) and started walking up the hills with head torches until the sun came up. We ended up doing two Munros and a few extra tops (peaks above 3000 ft only count as Munros if there's 500 ft drop between the highest named point and the peak you're looking at, otherwise they're tops) and went up Cairngorm itself at the end. This was pushing me to the limits of my endurance, Tasha was bouncing ahead and "encouraging" me. On the way down we stopped off at the Ptarmigan restaurant and asked the nice bloke outside if the furnicular railway was running, although we knew it wasn't supposed to open until the next day. It wasn't but he said to hang on and sorted us out with a free ride down on the railway. That saved us about 90 minutes to 2 hours worth of walking so I owe the mountain guys a few favours I think. While we were out Tash convinced me to wander over to have a look at the Larig Ghru (sp?) which is a HUGE glacial valley. It's hard to describe the size of the valley, we were sat in the snow level with the top of the valley and, no, I just can't describe it. Google it and have a look and any Colin Prior type photos, it's just immense and beyond what I can put into words.
Well, that night we went to take the dogs out for a walk on the beach, mainly to stretch our legs out a bit. Next day we went to take the dogs for a walk in the local woods, in this case Culbin Forrest, and the little 3 and a half mile walk tired out the dogs nicely and almost stretched out all the muscles. Not quite though, today (Sunday) we went to the Inverness climbing wall and Tasha once more showed that she can climb a grade and a bit higher than me, although I managed to boulder to the same level as her HAHAHA.
After a few routes I knew that I wouldn't be able to drive safely if we climbed to my limit so I called it a day, or to put it another way, wimped out like a little girl.
Showed Tash to the A9 (main route south) and drove home, wincing when changing gear, but that's the fun of climbing.
Weeked after next she'll be back up, as she's agreed to be my +1 for the mess ball, and just found out that there's a possiblility that Matt (EMB) may be up in the mean time, although it may be too short notice. Hope Matt can get up, would be great. I'd like to get all, or at least most, of my friends up here at some time, but that may take a few months to organise.......
Put my Christmas tree up as well, all 3 FT of it, drunk a bit tonight (enough to feel happy) and the Jameson's advert with the harp is back on, so happy at the moment. If I can keep my weight loss on track and get a few more forecasts right I'll be even happier. Or, failing that, if I can beat Guitar Hero II or III on medium, let alone hard.
Must stop blogging drunk though, may have to edit this for spelling or excessive honesty.

Dear Santa...

2007-11-21T22:32:00.000Z

For Christmas I would like...

An Amazon Kindle. When I was at uni one of my friends and housemates, Sally, told me about some developments in electronic paper. The stuff she was looking into used duel coloured molecules/units that could be turned with an electrical impulse, and as it was pretty much solid state, once the page was set there wasn't any more power needed until your wanted a new page. (Apologies if I've got the details wrong, or explained it badly, it was 5 years ago we had the conversation). The Kindle isn't that sort of electronic paper, but is a form of digital book/newspaper/magazine. First time I've seen it was on Neil Gaiman's blog and after watching the video on the amazon.com website I think I want one. Maybe not first gen but looks like the future.

New arms. Been bouldering today at Inverness, my arms and hands ache. Pulled a muscle in my leg as well, hopefully all will heal in time for climbing at the weekend with Tasha.

A new (or second hand) car. Need a bigger one, maybe then the arseholes in BMWs will see me when they're pulling out into traffic and not smack me in the back bumper! No damage apart from scratches but annoyed me. The sod didn't even stop! Now, I know with advanced driving I'm supposed to look ahead and expect things to happen, which is why when the car pulled out I was already trying to move out of the way but why the hell didn't they stop? I know that my car is small but when it's in front of you it's visible, REALLY visible. Argghhhh!

An iPhone. Okay, it doesn't do as much as the Viewty but like most Apple things, what it does do, it does really well and really easily. Had a play with one in the O2 store and I'm now desparately telling myself that it's too expensive (it is), I don't NEED one (I don't) and I don't want one (ah, but I DO!!!!). I'll hold out for a while, mainly as I can't afford one....

Playing catch up..again

2007-11-18T20:58:00.000Z

Sorry I've been lame at updating this thing, I'm rubbish.
And for Pippa, yeah, not sure why the instructions have gone all Danish...

So, what's been happening? Well, went down to see Swiral and EMB in Brum, also Dajousephine and Jules and Ulrich da dog. Was brilliant seeing them all again, and we went to a great rock pub in Birmingham. We need one of those up here ,there aren't any rock clubs up here as far as I can tell. I'm planning to get at least Matt, and preferably more of them, up here at some point in the near future, there's plenty of Scotland to share and I want to get friends up here. While I was down Matt gave me a memory stick, which was cool, and Sian filled it with mash up tunes, which was amazing. Was sat in a service station uploading from a laptop to the iPod then plugged it in and had the best trip north I've ever had. Motorways were pretty clear then the A9 was beautiful. Any slow traffic I came across moved out of the way, signaling nicely and the music was superb.

A couple of weeks later I popped down to see Tash and Chris. We're going to be going climbing in Inverness around New Year's with a few others and both Tash and myself wanted to make sure that we were good enough to supervise a friend.
Now the thing about climbing is that you can buy all the kit you want and go to a cliff and climb. There aren't any rules about who can and can't climb, it's your life, it's your responsibility. Indoors climbing is different, you're using someone elses place so legally they ask you to sign a bit of paper (or take a course) to show that you're good enough not to anything too silly. The course in Inverness has about 18 months of waiting list on it. I'm pretty happy that I can remember all of the stuff for wall climbing but it doesn't hurt to go back over things and get a refresher, especially as there's going to be a kid climbing with us after Christmas and with kids you don't take chances.
So Tash and myself went to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena at Ratho.
Oh ye bloody hellfire.
I've seen big indor walls before, the Welsh International is big. Ratho is in another league. You walk in on the second floor and look through from the reception aera to windows going out onto the floor and think, "oh, that's big." Then you walk towards the window and realise it's not just big but you look UP and then you look DOWN! This place is huge! Pricey but massive. We had a great guy checking us over, running through the basics and suggested wrapping the ropes a couple of times at the top to add some more friction to stop Tash taking off when she's belaying me, always a problem. Almost worked as well, until we had an overhang, then she DID lift off, so Ewan (instructor) held her down and then we tied her to the wall for the next climbs. By this point my arms were pumped, the forearms solid and I managed most of a couple more climbs then just belayed Tash. It's quite depressing, she's less than half my weight, much shorter reach than me and is climbing over a grade higher than I am. Ahh well, she always was better than I was. Gives me something to work on.
Next day went swimming with Tash, found out I need to work on my stamina, but then I knew that anyway. Only really managed 32 lengths of a 25 m pool, need to get that better. Then later on had a go on Chris' bike, a lovely 600 ninja. As I've only got a CBT I was of course only riding on closed private areas, and not at all on any kind of by-pass, but even then it was great to get on a bike again. Makes me think I need to get my full license as soon as possible. But not that bike, the geometry is too short for me, would cripple me within two hours and I'm going to need something with more tourer than sports. Besides, the micky taking from the guys due to the ninjutsu training we did would be horrific, and perfectly justified. And it's green.

And that's pretty much me up to date, Tash is coming up next weekend, we're going to have a look at Inverness climbing, and possibly Aviemore as well; and I'm going to have a chat with a couple of car places, see if I can get a new (or different) car within my budget.

Reading - Greg Mandel series by Peter F Hamilton,
Listening to - Mash up mixes.
Watching - Long way down.

Sometimes you see the most when you can't see what you're looking for.

2007-09-20T01:49:00.001+01:00

At nights, like most forecasters, I’m alone in the office so I have to do the observations for cloud, visibility and anything else significant that the computer can’t pick up.
Once an hour I go outside and look for clouds. This is one of the few times that I like it when I can’t find what I’m looking for.

That's about it, had a mare of a night shift on Sunday when the communications died, and another (extra) on Monday night when I had to go to Kinloss to produce everything then drive it back to put it on our network, and have to wait an extra couple of days before I can get any fish for my bowl. Oh yeah, and got an expensive bill for getting the last bit of exhaust fixed on my car. Okay, admittedly when I say the last bit, I mean that the last bit fell off and it'll cost me much to get fixed but meh, do it up and sell it I think; supermini city car not quite what I need these days.

Aplogies to all my rabid readers

2007-09-14T22:36:00.000+01:00

I've been told that I don't update my blog enough, by a lady that scares me somewhat, but in a good way.*edit to add* I mean of course a wise lady who kindly takes the time to remind that that people remain interested in the blather I put on here, and many thanks to her (and you all) for that. *Better? ;> *
I'd say that's mainly because nowt much has been happening recently but that would be a bit of a lie....
For a start there's Andi and Sarah's wedding down south, which was brilliant. The bride looked amazing and the groom looked like a 14 year old dressed up for the day, but then that's Andi for you. Photos on Facebook, and will be on Flickr when I can get the new Macbook to log in properly.
Was unbelievably good to see all of my old friends again, shame that I'll miss Ria and Richie's wedding this weekend but best of British to them and every good thing. Also managed to get through a whole night of kilt wearing action without being groped too much, and most of that was by blokes. Which reminds me, the weekend before I'd been down to Edinburgh with some friends to see the Scotland South Africa game and Chris wore the Swansea tartan, I was in a Utilikilt and got a little bit abuse from a drunken Scotish girl for it not being a "proper" kilt, despite my comments to the same effect.
While I was down south I managed to get to see Pippa again, which is always good, but is something that I don't get to do anyway near enough, do love that lass. Also made it to Swansea, initially with the intention of having some more time with Pippa, maybe meeting up with some more of the old gang but I took the operatunity to pop in to visit my gran in Penlan. I'm really glad I did, I don't get to see her much since I moved up north, and since grandad died I worry about her more. By the time I left gran it was too late to see Pip before I had to head back to the hotel in enough time to get some sleep before the early start the next day. Which was a real shame, I'm going to see if I can her and the rest of the guys up here over winter, either people could crash here or I can see about hiring the civil service lodge near Cairngorm (if anyone's up for this let me know). But I digress slightly.

I got back on a Tuesday and was on a night shift that night. Since then, just under two weeks ago, I haven't been away from work for a complete day. Was hoping to break that tomorrow but there are some aircraft movements that require me in, or at least a foreacster and I'm the only one available. Damnit!
Also was talking to Tasha last weekend after the abismal performance by the England rugby team about general stuff and we agreed that I would loose 5 kg in four weeks and she would gain 5 kg. May not sound like much to some of you but it's alot for both of us, bit weird that she's trying to gain it and I'm the opposite but then she is about 40% of my weight, which makes it even stranger that we used to climb together, she got very good at belaying me while suspended in mid-air.
One week into this deal and I'm down buy........all of half a kilo. Shite.
Been to the gym for a couple of good sessions this week but I guess it'll take longer for anything to show up. Planning to get in for a swim tomorrow before work then maybe catch a film afterwards. Got to make sure that I don't weaken and have a supersize ultra sugar hit at the cinema as well..
Aside from that though, and work, nowt much. Trying to get some time off to go over to America and see some good friends, and also to get a certain bit of time off to see more friends down south again, party is good! I'll try and write while at work some time, should be easy enough... providing no sodding pilots get in the way.

Blogger security

2007-08-30T15:56:00.000+01:00

The BBC is reporting that a group is cracking Blogger and posting malicious blog entries that cause the reader to download spam or malware. Links in the entries put trojans on your system and some of the entries purport to be looking for testers for software and digital greetings cards.
The subject line will generally give it away, apparently most of the entries have things like "HAHAHAHA, man your insane!" (sic) or other such TXT SPK drivel (not that I ever use such things, oh no...). Unfortunately the system can use news stories to update some of the headers so unless you're sure the message is from me, don't use the links - or, hover over them and have a look at the target for the link without clicking on it, much as one would do with phishing emails.
Which does raise an interesting point. If the virus writers were switched on, they'd use an entry warning of the virus and containing the link to the virus itself, disguised like this entry. Ohh, existential!

New Webcomic

2007-08-23T18:45:00.001+01:00

Been sent to another webcomic, xkcd, which isn't always clean, and sometimes most people won't get the jokes (knowing about computer languages, physics and maths helps) but there are some wonderful bits about getting your heart broken that I think almost everyone will understand.
My favourites so far are pages 137, 154, 128, 123, 112, 92, 90(!), 10, 13, 21 (google Kepler laws of planetary orbit), 36, 40, 45, 52, 54, 55, 59, 67 (nerd girls rock!), 68, 75, 77, 78, 83, 84, 88, 164 (politics), 169, 171, 179 (geek alert, I laughed out loud.), 184, 197, 207 (makes me think of Pippa in the last panel), 209, 229, 231, 236, 241 (if you don’t get it, read Ender’s Game, brilliant book), 242, 249, 250, 253, 256, 258 (oh so true), 273 (some sick stuff there), 275, 277 (another one for the engineers), 281 (been there, had a package marked as "left Aberdeen" and arrived six hours later. It’s 60 miles people! Arggh.), 282, 283, 288, 289, 291, 295 (DNE – do not erase), 296 (look for the hover over text), 300, 302, 304 and 305.
Don't forget to hover the mouse over the image for the hidden text, often an extra joke.

XKCD

2007-08-23T18:45:00.000+01:00

Another web comic has come to my attention, from a number of sources,
www.xkcd.com

It's not always safe for work and many of the jokes aren't funny unless you know quite a bit about physics/computers/other specialised subjects. Quite a bit of "bad" language, but always justified. My favourites so far are:

pages 137, 154, 128, 123, 112, 92, 90(!), 10, 13, 21 (google Kepler laws of planetary orbit), 36, 40, 45, 52, 54, 55, 59, 67 (nerd girls rock!), 68, 75, 77, 78, 83, 84, 88, 164 (politics), 169, 171, 179 (geek alert, I laughed out loud.), 184, 197, 207 (makes me think of Pippa in the last panel), 209, 229, 231, 236, 241 (if you don’t get it, read Ender’s Game, brilliant book), 242, 249, 250, 253, 256, 258 (oh so true), 273 (some sick stuff there), 275, 277 (another one for the engineers), 281 (been there, had a package marked as "left Aberdeen" and arrived six hours later. It’s 60 miles people! Arggh.), 282, 283, 288, 289, 291, 295 (DNE – do not erase), 296 (look for the hover over text), 300, 302, 304, 305.

Don't forget to hover the mouse over the picture to get extra text!

Great dreams, crumbling away

2007-08-19T12:18:00.000+01:00

In work on a Sunday morning, great.
Does mean I can catch up with the internet, there isn't much to do on these sort of shifts.
Looking at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they link to an old article in Esquire. The article could also have been featured on Phil Platt's Bad Astronomy blog, probably was to be honest. It's about the creationist museum in Kentucky, but in a broader sense it's about how American (and British to an extent) culture is being subverted by the lowest common denominator. It's a good article, if slightly biased (not much, but enough to be noticeable and I share pretty much the same bias).
Thing is, I like the idea of the USA, it's just the current implementation I have a problem with. Well, and the tendency for much of the US to ignore the rest of the world, the trend to think WWII started in 1941, that the founding of America was purely about freedom and not at all about tax and the right to occupy the land to the west - killing or moving the native occupants as necessary, all those things. Britain isn't much better, and it's getting worse. Most of the Americans I've met have been great, but while I was over there I saw plenty that filled all the stereotypes (especially the good ol' boys in the back of the rusty pickup tilting their stetsons at us while going "how ya'all doin'?"). Still going to try and go back, I do like the place but it's like having a friend that you know could do so much but they can't be arsed so spend their entire life sat watching Corrie and complaining that the world doesn't do enough for them, all the potential wasted. Maybe things will change, maybe the average American will realise that intellect is a good thing, that education is vital and that truth isn't always pleasant or what you want it to be, but may still be truth.
Well, that's me depressed, I'm going to go and watch a violent film when I finish here, just for the sheer hell of it.

From the e-goat

2007-08-15T22:27:00.000+01:00

Starkle starkle little twink
who the hell you are I think
I'm not under what you call
the alcofluence of incohol
I'm just a little slort of sheep
I'm not drunk like tinkle peep
I don't know who is me yet
but the drunker I stand here
the longer I get
Just give me one more drink
to fill me cup
'cuz I got all day sober
to Sunday up.

Liked this one.

Mountains, midges and muscles

2007-07-29T22:46:00.000+01:00

This weekend I've been out with Tasha, Chris and some friends of theirs from their work.

We went to Glen Coe camping (me in my new wonderful tent - oh it's nice!!!). The idea was that we'd do a peak on Saturday with all of us and another couple that would meet us at the start of the walk, then on Sunday Tasha, Chris and myself might get another peak in. We met up in the car park, and I discovered a new part of Scotland. The Midges, (they deserve the capitol M). We were next to a river, which was bad enough but when the sun was heading down the sky filled with them. The little bastards were biting every bit of exposed skin available. Out came the Deet 50, with a warning to the others not to get it on synthetic materials, but it was the barbecue that drove them off until morning.
The hill we were planning on Saturday was Buachaille Etive Mor, or as Nicola put it as Tasha and her drove past it on the way in, "Oh My F***ing God!" Starts at 280 M and ends at 1022 M, with most of the ascent 2 1/2 KM. Or to put it another way, 920 ft to 3350 ft in a mile and a half. As the peak is over 3000 ft, it's a Munro. There's another three Munro tops on the peak, the plan was to do all of them and follow the route out but after the second one with the wind blowing strong as hell, the cloud below us and the rock wet and slick, we had to recalculate. Three of the group hadn't done any hills like this and had no ridge time. The ridge to the second peak was quite broad, and from Stob An Doire (second one) to Stob Coire Altruim it looked about the same.
It wasn't.
The ridge went from ten foot wide and gentle to about two foot wide and nasty looking. So we did the only thing we could in the circumstances. We binned it. Cue a back track to the saddle and a descent via scree, wet stones, wet grass and seating glissade (sitting on the wet grass and sliding down the hill - it was good enough for Shackleton!). By the time we got back to the cars my legs were sore as hell. Nicola and the other couple (whose names I can't spell I'm afraid, nice guys though) headed back to Glasgow, while Chris, Tasha and myself headed into Fort William for dinner. Our kit was sodden and we were all damaged in some way or other.
And then came the next morning. Tasha and Chris' knees were buggered, as were my thigh muscles, so we scrapped the idea of doing a hill and dispersed, planning another hill for the coming weekend. We did also find what could be the one of best pubs in the world, the Clachaig Inn. To say that it's a climbers pub is a bit of an understatement. Think I'll be back there at some point.
I think some of the sodding midges hitched a lift home with me, though, I've been itching like a bastard all day (from the midges! Nothing else).

It depends on what you are expecting

2007-07-27T02:01:00.000+01:00

I've been to see a few films recently, one major one on DVD and five on the big screen.
The DVD one was at work with Si, Blood Diamond. Not a comfortable film for anyone wearing a diamond that is anything less than certain about it's origin, but a truely excellent film. 92 %
Then we have:
Shrek 3: I liked it, there were a number of jokes about relating to a younger generation, and the characters didn't develop any stupid new traits. Nothing radical but if you liked the first two (and I'll assume you did) it's good fun. If you (or someone you know) has had kids recently, or is expecting, you'll find parts of it funny in a way that is impossible to explain to the other people in the audience. 70 %, rising to 88% if you know someone with young children.
Die Hard 4.0 (pointless .0 really, even if they release a directors cut as 4.1, is anyone going to be awed?), what can I say, it's a die hard. And it's fun, everything you'd expect from a good franchise, cheesey at times but great fun, and if the F35B can do what they suggest in the film the guys up here will have kittens of fun. 82 %
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Felt like someone had the plot explained to them while drunk and they were putting what they could remember on film, although they knew the characters and made the film with love for the original. If you haven't read the book, 85%, if you know the book like some obsessive fanboy (like me), 70 %
Transformers: Slammed by the critics, which is always a good start, it depends on what you're expecting. If you're looking for high art - WHY?!?!? It's TRANSFORMERS!!! If your childhood was formed by cars and planes and trucks that were more than meets the eye, you'll LOVE IT! Not a remake of the cartoon movie but there are moments of similarity. They get a couple of things wrong (It was ESA not NASA/JPL that sent Beagle 2, and there's the whole magnetic field thing), but great to watch. 82%
And finally,
The Simpsons
Okay, it's hard to describe, but it's not an extra long episode, there's things in the film that would NOT be in the series (such as gratuitous nudity), the story has more arc than a two part episode and the jokes are generally more grown up than the usual episode ones. Which is saying quite alot from me. 90% if you like the Simpsons, 88% if you don't (I refuse to believe that people exist that don't like it), I mean, Green Day doing the opening music and then a Titanic moment, it's genius!!
(For reference, Equilibrium was a 98%, Hot Fuzz a 94%, Merchant of Venice 88%, Gladiator 70% and Robin Hood Men in Tights 89%.

And another WOO-HOO!!

2007-07-19T22:44:00.000+01:00

Today I had my first experience driving a motorbike. Previously I'd had a bit of time on the back of Chris and Tasha's bikes (lovely tourer 600s) and lots of time on my push-bike (that's bicycle for anyone wondering).
Today I went for my CBT. This is the first stage in learning to ride a motorbike in Britain. You've got to have a provisional license first (full car or prov bike) then you do a short course covering basics of riding, maintainance and other stuff. The idea is that from never having been on a bike before, you're now safe to ride a small (125 cc) bike on the roads until you take your full test. Before this you could just hop onto a 125 straight off.
After this you do lessons on a more powerful bike. For over 21 year olds you can take it on a 500 cc and there are now legal to drive any size bike (this is called the "Direct Access" method). If you're under 21 (or too short to sit on a 500 - as was the case with Tasha) you use a smaller bike and then have to wait 2 years until you can ride bigger ones. You can do the CBT and the
direct access in one intensive course, but that looks to be more expensive.
I think I'll hire a 125 for an afternoon and get some road time in, to get used to things like canceling my indicators after turning, road position and not thinking that I'm on a push-bike. Then I'll get the rest of the lessons.
Stay tuned for more info.

50 years ago

2007-07-10T21:06:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in the excellent Bad Astronomy Blog, it was 50 years ago that this marvelous cartoon was first broadcast.
Generally held as the best cartoon made, it goes by many names, but generally "What's Opera, Doc?" and has, for myself as well as many others, resulted in people singing "Kill the Wabbit!" to some classic opera.
Enjoy!

Rope tricks

2007-07-06T22:38:00.000+01:00

I've splurged a bit (wow, the spell checker actually recognised that one) and bought a rope in the Tiso sale, thought it was 50 m of 10 mm, actually got 60 m and a free belay plate. Seeing as I was in the store and physically chose it, I was suprised that I was suprised. Anyway, my point.
In this age of legislation for everything, the fact that anyone can go into a shop and buy enough kit to go and do silly things in the hills is kind of gratifying. And also worrying- I mean there's nothing to stop people killing themselves or just getting into serious trouble but on every piece of kit, and in most stores, there's the disclaimers:
"Warning: Climbing is a dangerous sport!"
"No liabilities are accepted!"
"Use your own judgement!" - these from an American book.
"The authors..cannot accept any responsibility for [anything] while following any of the techniques described." - From a British book.
These are all fairly standard but the one on the back of the packaging for the belay plate (minimal packaging which is nice to see) struck me as just, well, just about right:
"Climbing and mountaineering are inherently dangerous. It is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or user of this climbing equipment to get proper instruction and to act safely and with caution while using this equipment.... You are responsible for your own actions and decisions."
And that's the thing. "You are responsible." The companies give you the kit and design it to be as good and as safe as it can be, but in the end, if you choose to take the risk, it's your call. You have the say over what you do. Nobody is forcing you to do it, (in all but the VERY rare cases of product failure) nobody is responsible for your safety, apart from you.
This is, I think, part of the appeal of the sport and the lifestyle. That and the feeling you get on a good climb, were everything is flowing and it's like you're dancing up the rock.

With this in mind, there's a great quote from Edward Whymper, a British climber who was on the first ascent of the Matterhorn - on the descent of which, four of the team died.
"There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have not dared to dwell; and with these in mind I say: Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end."
The passage from "Climb if you will..." is (or at least was) displayed on the wall at the Plas y Brenin National Mountain Centre.

Magazines

2007-07-04T15:24:00.000+01:00

There was someone a while back said something that struck me as being true, and I was reminded of it while watching a trailer before Shrek 3 (brilliant film by the way, was worried about it but didn't need to be).
Look at the front of most womens' magazines and you'll see articles on how you're not slim/pretty/generally good enough.
Look at the front of most mens' magazines and you'll basically get one message: "You're a GOD!"

And they wonder why there's a problem with self image?

2007-07-03T00:25:00.000+01:00

Think I've already mentioned Facebook, I've also got a page on MySpace, although there's less on it. I've heard that the American sociologists reckon there's a sociological breakdown that can be deduced by which of these two social sites people use. Arse as far as I'm concerned, I was introduced to Facebook two days before MySpace, and Rupery Murdock owns too much of MySpace for my liking. Haven't had a look at Bebo yet but the week is young.
Also I've put some more photos on the Flickr pages (linked --> somewhere), mainly of Clyne Halls in Swansea.