Category: Random stuff

For posts about anything really

The Breathing Earth

One of my favourite things is to stumble upon interesting bits and pieces – cool graphics, neat ideas, words of wisdom etc. – and earlier this week I came across this little animation called The Breathing Earth. It’s a composite of monthly cloud-free geostationary satellite images of the Earth wrapped onto various map projections. The title refers to the changing appearance of the Earth’s surface through the year, with waxing and waning ice cover and north-south migrating tropical vegetation which gives the impression that the Earth is breathing with the seasons. It’s simple, but a neat visualisation of the continuously changing face of our planet.

The Accidental 10k

About a month ago, while I was on holiday in Brittany, I decided to go for a run. It was a Sunday morning and it had been raining overnight and for much of the morning but the rain was clearing and the weather fast improving. I hadn’t been for a run for a couple of weeks but I thought I wouldn’t have any trouble doing a gentle 3 miles or so, following the route of a cycle ride that was provided by the holiday park that we were staying at. You can see from my ‘Run O’Hare Run’ page that I’m not a great runner but have been trying to get into running since May and although I had previously had a fairly poor record of getting out there 3 miles was easily a comfortable distance.

Anyway, I left the rest of the family with the words that I would see them in about 30 minutes which was plenty enough time for 3 miles and off I went. Well, it was a good run but it went on and on. I didnt have a watch but it felt a long time as I went along and when I got to about half way I was feeling pretty whacked. Further and further I went, now on the homeward part with my legs starting to feel significantly sore. It was tough. Eventually, I got back to the park only to find my wife leaving with car keys in hand on the way to try to find me. I hadn’t been 30 minutes but more than double that time and everyone was starting to get worried. I just couldn’t understand it. How could I go from being able to confortably run 3 miles in about 30 minutes to taking twice that time and feeling totally knackered at the end. Okay, it was a bit hotter than at home and the route had some quite decent climbs in it, but 60+ minutes? That was cruel.

A couple of days later I decided to cycle the same route with the gps on my phone switched on the track how far I had been. I got to about halfway round and the distance was reading 2.9 miles… I got to the end and it was reading 6.3 miles… I had run 10km… I have always wanted to run a 10k route but never worked myself up to this distance and now it turned out I had – an accidental 10k. My first ever. So, that’s the way to do it – complete your ambitions by accident – it’s much easier that way. And here. for the record, is my route:

Now then, how about a half marathon?

Somewhere Under The Rainbow

A couple of evening’s back my younger daughter had a football match at Saltash. It was a day of heavy showers and, sure enough, just prior to kick-off the heavens opened and we all got soaking wet. But on the positive side we got to witness one of the most spectacular rainbows I have ever seen as we looked north-east towards Plymouth – it was a full arc double rainbow and although the outer bow was somewhat weak the inner one more than made up for it with incredibly vivid colours. Unfortunately I was concentrating mostly on watching the match and only had my phone with me (which doesn’t have a great camera), but I did manage to get this snap of it, which I thought was worth sharing:

If you are interested in the outcome of the match you can read my report at the Chaddlewood Miners Girls Under 15s website that I write, here: Saltash v Chaddlewood Match Report. It was a good goal by the way…

Amazing cloud film

This is an entry I’ve been meaning to write for ages. Sometime a while back I stumbled upon a website for a Science/Art project called “A History of the Sky” by a guy called Ken Murphy. This project sets out to record the history of the sky as viewed from a fixed vantage point using a time-lapse camera. The camera films the sky each day taking a picture every 10 seconds and then the film from each day is displayed side by side on a big screen producing a mosaic-like effect in which each block of the screen is a day’s worth of sky change. The aim is to put screens in public arenas and, ultimately to show the full year in one go. It’s perhaps hard to get a real grasp of what this ends up looking like but you can read more about the project at its website which also include examples of a 42 day preview movies and a 126 day version which is also available to view in better quality directly on youtube (watch in full screen mode). The 126 day version is particularly good because it is a long enough period to be able to see the seasonal change in sunrise and sunset times between the earlier and later days in the sequence. I also really like the way that you can see the pinky/purple tinge of sunset enter each image just before the end of daylight and the image dropping out to black.

Personally, I think there is only one word to describe this piece of work and that (much over-used) word is “awesome”.

Cage football

Anyone who has clicked through to look at my “Run O’Hare Run” page may have noticed that alongside my record of my running exploits I have added the comment “+ cage football on Saturday” in the entries for the last couple of weeks. I thought I would explain what this is.

Most Saturday mornings at the moment are taken up ferrying my younger daughter to her football matches for Phoenix City under-14s and then watching these games unfold. However, when there is no match, as has been the case for the last couple of weekends, some of the players in her team together with their manager/coach and a few of us old men (Dads) get together in one of those small cages that house a concrete pitch, a couple of basketball goals and a couple of open areas that serve as football goals. We then spend an hour or so running around like mad things, the girls practising their skills and the Dads trying to regain their lost youth. It’s brilliant fun – if I played football with just a bunch of men I’d be instantly mashed to pieces, but against the girls it’s possible to run around a bit, demonstrate those silky ball skills (though mine do then to occur in slow motion) and even score the odd goal or two (though my shots do have a frustrating tendency to go straight at the ‘keeper). Mind you, it’s not without no physical content – the girls are pretty good at the odd kick in the shins and it’s good to see (and experience) them beginning to get the hang of barging opposition players out of the way and trying out some of the dark arts of holding and shoving. It’s also really, really good exercise (for me). In fact two weeks ago I almost managed to reduce myself to complete physical incapacity within the space of 10 minutes – and quickly learned the lesson to pace myself better last time.

Anyway, that’s cage football.

Back again, a little different

I’ve had a bit of break from this site – caused by a combination of being really busy and also me wanting to sort out in my own mind my strategy for adding material to the site. In the past I have tried to be completely consistent in what I add – for example ALWAYS adding a post about each book I read or ALWAYS trying to write a note about news stories I see about oceanography and meteorology. The trouble with this approach is it creates a sense of being under pressure and it is very easy for a back-log to build up and feelings of guilt to set in. So, I’ve decided to reinstate the site but not be too concerned about being completely consistent with what I post. I’m also thinking I will probably add some more material that relates to my work, both what I have published and what I am working on. My penchant for recording things will continue as I do plan to keep the “Reading Record” page up to date (just as a simple list of what I read) and I have also put back in the “Run O’Hare Run” page to record my latest efforts in trying to get fitter by running more (I have to do something to stop my body creaking quite so much). Fingers crossed – we’ll see how it goes.

The ups and downs of my meters

I love figures and I love playing around with them…

Over the last year, I have taken a meter reading for each of my household utilities every weekend. I started just after we had a water meter installed and I wanted to make sure I was checking regularly for leaks. The data is displayed graphically below. Some points of interest are:

1. The drop in water useage around Day 105 and 150 are when I went on holiday (4 days at Easter, 7 days in May).

2. Gas useage seems to show an apparent roughly monthly variation (in the winter) which is a bit odd (The graph below below is now a couple of weeks old – intriguingly the same pattern of roughly monthly variation in gas useage is starting to show up this winter too – have I discovered a signal of some previously unknown meteorological cycle?)

3. During the summer the electricity and gas show a small out of phase variation (gas goes up when electricity goes down and vice versa). I think this relates to the food we were eating – i.e. when we cooked something in the oven (electricity) we weren’t using the hob (gas).

100 greatest albums

Following up on the recent “100 Greatest Films and Books of the Decade” features in The Times newspaper, last Saturday’s edition included the “100 Greatest Albums”. I didn’t expect to do too well with this list (i.e. I didn’t expect to have too many of them in my CD collection) but I thought I’d take a look anyway. So, here goes my list from the 100 Greatest Albums:

02: Back to Black [Amy Winehouse]
03: In Rainbows [Radiohead]
10: The Seldom Seen Kid [Elbow]
17: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends [Coldplay]
59: Beautiful World [Take That]
65: Scissor Sisters [Scissor Sisters]
71: A Rush of Blood To The Head [Coldplay]

Not so good really and I’ve even had to cheat a little by including the Take That and Scissor Sisters albums which, although located in my CD shelves, are not exactly mine…

I only narrowly missed out on having the top 3 though. No.1 in the list was Kid A [Radiohead] – I have four Radiohead albums but not that one.

So that’s 11 of the top hundred – a better return than I managed for the top 100 films (see previous blog post).