Si and myself went up a hill, as you can see, Si is in jeans. I could have hit him when he turned up in jeans. Ah well.


The reason I could have killed him is that in the background you can see snow. Snow and jeans is not a good combination. The hill we are on is higher than the one in the background.



Yeah, we were higher than that one.
Fortunately all was good. I was trying out my Buffalo special shirt, which was really warm at the start but had lots of venting on it so it was good, and when we got to the cooler areas it really paid off.
On a sad, weatherman note, the wind really picked up near the level of the weather inversion (where the temperature rises instead of falls as you go higher and traps low cloud and poor visibility) and the snow was pretty much gone above the inversion, showing the increase in temperature quite nicely. Told you it was a sad metman thing.

There was another picture here but I decided that if I know you well enough for you to see it, I'll send it to you personally. Opsec and all that. Besides, burning pianos is just an urban myth, isn't it?

Tea

I've been drinking quite a lot of it, still having it NATO standard (white and two sugars), although thinking of cutting down to one. There's NATO, Julie (Andrews. With milk and no sugar, after her performance as a "white, nun{none}") and a Whoopi (Goldberg. No milk or sugar, Sister Act, Black Nun) but there's no slang for white and one as far as I can tell.
Anyway, during the second Gulf War the Americans where assigned to provide drinking stuff for the Brits and radically underestimated the British armed forces capacity for drinking tea.
There's an odd website called "nice cup of tea and a sit down" that rates biscuits and sometimes tea and one of my favourite quotes of all time comes from Neil Gaiman's book (and TV script) Neverwhere. The hero, Richard Mayhew, has to face a great ordeal to end up facing the Angel Islington. The ordeal is presided over by the Black Friars of Black Friars in London, but first, "the nice cup of tea."
And that, for me, is the thing; step up and face your challenges, but first - the nice cup of tea.
Lovely.

Talking points

There's been a bit of discussion recently about global warming - and more specifically Man Made Global Warming (MMGW). Mainly as a result of the program on channel 4 - The Great Global Warming Swindle. This was a privately produced program that was aired on channel 4. Not, as has been stated in some of the American press, made by or broadcast on the BBC.
The show (note I'm not calling it a documentary) aimed to refute all the claims of mankind's involvement in global warming. It was wrong. Now, by that I don't mean that MMGW is absolutely certain, but that's because I was trained as a scientist, and more specifically, a physicist; so I have to acknowledge that there is room for doubt, although if I was as certain of the Lotto numbers as I am about MMGW, I'd put every penny I had on it, and win.
No, what I mean is that the program used inaccurate data, presented it badly, misquoted many of the scientists and generally did a bad job of presenting both sides of the debate. It would take too long to put all the problems here so I'll link to some brilliant pages that handle most of them.
First off, the Met Office's own FAQ page on Climate change. Read this first, and any further questions can be dealt with much easier.
Next, a section from the weather and climate group RealClimate.org, where climate scientists go to relax.
Next, an article from the Independent (which is not my favourite paper, but it's the one they chose to use) about the program.
And finally a short critique on the issue by Sir John Houghton FRS CBE.

Now, if you're involved in a pub based discussion on how global warming is all a ploy by the Met Office to get more funds, you have the knowledge to put down your opponent and make them feel silly.

I've also been made aware of an article on Gillian McKeith, which I think is rather marvelous.

That should do it for now. When I can be objective I'll put something up about intelligent design, but it'll just fire up the blood if I do.

And todays random thingy

Library thing, a list of some of the books I own. Not all, partly cause most are still down south, I can't remember the rest, you only get 200 free listings and it takes quite a while to add whole collections.

Playing with the boys in green.

So, what did I do yesterday? Well, I'm glad you asked (okay, this is a bit self absorbed but sod it, it's my blog).
Yesterday was the station AWEL day, that's Air Warfare, Ethos and Leadership. This means that it's a training day for everyone to learn how to fight wars, the ethos (why you fight wars) and how to lead troops in war, or numpty workers in a cubicle laden office space – if you believe the hype about all the lessons of war being applicable to everyday situations and hence all leadership techniques being interchangable from the battlefield to the office. To an extent that's true, but there aren't many day-to-day scenarios that require navigating to a hidden covert rendezvous with an undercover agent of a foreign occupied state when you're working in a place that uses Dilbery to guage how well the day went ("We only had three pointy haired boss moments today, we're doing well!").
The boss said to us, a few weeks back, that there was this training day. On most of these we have a down day as there's no flying so no need for met information. We also usually have a staff meeting at the Skerry. This time – partly as there was flying programmed – the boss decided that we'd join in with the AWEL day instead. The, how shall I say it, more elderly mature of the staff had the option of a few different lectures on the current world status, the profile and role of the RAF and the history of the 140 EAW (Expeditionary Air Wing – organising the entire base to be able to deploy as a complete unit, rather than rely on other sections for maintenance and the like).
The other younger member of staff was going to be doing the more active stuff as well but he had a family matter he needed to attend to. Si was going to be doing the "rowing the channel on rowing machines" and "Tornado Pull". The last one was basically a tug-of-war with, yeah, that’s right, a Tornado GR4. He’s flying back up today so I’ll be able to tell him what he missed.
I was scheduled to do "something in the woods." The briefing I got was to turn up at a certain place and time with kit suitable for trogging through the woods.
I was doing the weather on Friday so I knew what to expect. Snow with fresh to strong northerly winds
So yesterday I rocked up on the base, after three Weetabix for breakfast, and joined cohort 2 of section A. We picked up our packed lunches (God bless the catering section) and piled onto the buses. Hour and a bit later we offloaded at the Colbin forest by Nairn and I was introduced to the rest of the cohort. Flt Lt Davy T from six foot was in charge and there were four others, ranging from SAC (senior aircraftsman) to Corporal.
Our situation was that we were downed inside of enemy territory and had to escape to the UN safe area some 10 km away, after building a bridge to cross the "ravine" and meet with Pedro, our local undercover agent. So our mission was to build the bridge, meet Pedro, make a rendezvous, rescue a downed airman and enable medivac and then make it to the extraction point in the UN safe zone. The main point of the day wasn’t to complete the tasks so much as to develop the leadership skills of the members of the group. This started with the briefing system, known as SMEAC (pronounced "smee-ack" to rhyme with the car firm SEAT). The acronym is for Situation, Mission, Execution, Any questions, Check understanding. To use it, you state your situation, your mission, your plan, you ask if anyone has any questions and then you ask random members of the group questions to check that they understand all the aspects of the plan. You might pick the SAC and ask what the mission is; you might ask the Cpl how long you’ve got to complete it and so on. It’s the standard system that the armed forces use so good to practice if you’re planning to join or go to officer selection.
My role for most of the day was as navigator, as I had the most experience, although I also handled most of the knots when we made our bridge (and my end was solid, hahaha). I will admit that the pace they set was faster than my normal but that was good. Also there were occasions where I didn’t keep as tight a track on the features that we passed, which is essential for close work nav, and as a result there were a couple of times when I wasn’t completely, absolutely certain of our location on the track. Only out by a couple of hundred metres at the most but with what we were doing, and considering my nav training, that was too much. No one minded, after all, I’m an evil civvy, but I was annoyed.
In the end we walked about 15-20 km, by the end of which I was feeling the blisters on the underside of my feet – shouldn’t have happened with the socks and boots but I didn’t wear the extra liners that I normally do (they’re in the wash) and I was also somewhat parched. I hadn’t filled my drinks bladder that morning, not being sure if I’d be able to fill it up later, and the opportunity never presented itself so I had to make do with the drink in the lunch provided.
It was a brilliant day, the guys were superb and the weather was great – fresh to strong northerly winds, cold and snow showers (it’s always nice when I get it right) – any the kit I had dealt with the weather wonderfully. I wasn’t wet, the cold was only a slight problem when we stopped and the wind wasn’t an issue, Gore Windstopper is expensive but damn it’s worth it. I think everyone in the group (except for the officer) had a Leatherman on them, myself being no exception, and mine came in useful for when we were making the landing zone for the medivac helicopters, admittedly only for cutting open the sacks for marking the area but even so.
Lessons learnt – SMEAC, ALWAYS fill your water bottles, double your socks, the right kit is wonderful.

Oh and Pip, the only reason I had a Primera was that was the car I was given by the rental firm. Hoping for something a bit more interesting next time.

(Edited to correct the E in SMEAC - it's execution, not "evaluate plan of action")

Yeah, I was bored at work. Found the link from the e-goat.
Hoping to talk to a couple of old friends tonight, then getting stuff sorted tomorrow. There's a good chance I'll be doing more detatchments around the place, which is grand.
Well, that's about all I've got to say, except that I'm not a fan of Nissan Primeras - nothing wrong with them as such, just didn't wow me.