I haven’t mentioned my car for a while – which I had intended to. Largely this is because it is rather boring as well as being a bit overweight, slow and depressingly grey: rather like me, I suppose. Actually, I still like it. For all its dullness it’s a rather nice place to be. Having now owned it for the best part of two years it decided that it wanted to be serviced. I did wonder about using my local garage for this but as it is still under warranty I thought I would give the local VW dealership a go.
The dealer actually came recommended. At least, one of my colleagues had used them and seemed quite happy with the service. I had a look at the fixed service prices and they looked quite a bit more expensive than our local independent chap does the Toyota for. However, I did have to take into account that VWs run on magic fairy oil which is different to normal engine oil in that it is jet black like oil from an old school diesel and costs £20 per litre. At least it cost that much when I bought a bottle to top up from Halfords. I suspect it may be cheaper if bought elsewhere but our local car spares shop was out of magic fairy oil and advised only to use magic fairy oil otherwise unspecified bad things would happen.
The actual service was pretty uneventful. I dropped the car off in the morning and took the train back home (I could have had a courtesy car for the day but it seemed like more trouble than it’s worth). The only amusement was when I went to pick the car up and they couldn’t find my details. It turns out that the man who used to own our house used the same dealer and his and my details had become muddled. After that it was a case of settling the bill: £220 for a full service which is not that bad once the cost of the magic fairy oil had been taken into account and they had washed it for me as well.
The variable service thing seems to be working quite well in that I had covered 18,500 miles in it since I bought it and the service and top up oil are the only maintenance items I have had to pay for so far. The only fly in the ointment was that the rear brake discs are rusting badly – mainly due to my driving style of long runs with gravity assisted braking. This has happened on previous cars with rear disks and I’ll need to get them changed (possibly just before the MOT so I don’t get the same issue twice.) As it is, I’ve had pretty uneventful motoring in it – and so far relatively cheap motoring as well.
Sunday 29 March 2015
Sunday 22 March 2015
Ecipse
Being a keen fan of astronomy and I had been looking forward to this week’s solar eclipse for quite some time. As always with these things I am left with one major question: is the Scottish weather going to play ball? Over the last few months we have had meteor showers, planetary conjunctions and several displays of the Northern Lights which I am reliably informed were spectacular. I have seen pictures to back this up but all I have been able to see in the night’s sky is thick, unrelenting cloud.
The forecast for Friday didn’t look particularly promising. We are pretty much in the middle of Scotland so any split on an East-West basis is something of a gamble but for once we managed to get lucky and sided with a clear skied Fife. For a solar eclipse this is fortunate because whilst a little light cloud can still show the crescented sun many of the odd and wonderful effects of the eclipse are missed. As it was, we had bright sunshine for almost the entire event apart from a short period of light cloud that allowed a friend of mine to take this rather pleasing image:
I wondered whether this was taken with somewhat more professional photographic equipment than I have in my possession but apparently it is taken in “pet portrait mode”. I’m not exactly sure what “pet portrait mode” is and I can only assume that it is a setting that takes random images which may or may not contain a picture of a cat/dog paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the camera. However, it did rather give me the idea that the sun’s “grin” is actually the Cheshire Cat in celestial form.
The odd thing with an eclipse of the sun is that the most interesting thing about it is not necessarily the sun itself but the strange effects that it plays on the light and the local environment. The light is odd and it is not merely because it reverts to twilight. Shadows differ depending on which angle they are looked at - hard edges in one plane and fuzzy edges on another. Although our eclipse was over 95% complete it doesn’t go dark as such but the dimming of the light would not be far off that experienced by a moon of Jupiter. For the 5 to 10 minutes of the peak it became noticeably cooler with a breeze being felt on what had been a largely still day. Overall it is a slightly unnerving if wondrous experience.
I did set myself up a pinhole camera to observe the eclipse's progression. I had heard a couple of sources suggesting that a kitchen colander could be used as a simple pin-hole camera and I had been rather sceptical about this. Dara Ó Briain had mentioned this on Stargazing Live and somewhat jokingly dismissed it as “what the eclipse will look like – if you are a fly.” I still wanted to give this a go so tried it out with our metal colander. The actual effect is very pleasing indeed as it does create a fly-vision effect but also a rather aesthetically pleasant one:
If solar eclipses are best experienced for their environmental effects lunar eclipses are fantastic for simple observation. I haven’t managed to catch a decent one for a few years now (the last one I observed from start to finish I did whilst listening to Tangerine Dream’s Zeit album – check the LP cover). We are due to have one on 28th September this year although, annoyingly, it does involve staying up in the early hours as it peaks around 03:30 in the morning. As I have the next day off as a local holiday I may well stay up and watch it with or without Krautrock accompaniment – at least if the Scottish weather obliges.
The forecast for Friday didn’t look particularly promising. We are pretty much in the middle of Scotland so any split on an East-West basis is something of a gamble but for once we managed to get lucky and sided with a clear skied Fife. For a solar eclipse this is fortunate because whilst a little light cloud can still show the crescented sun many of the odd and wonderful effects of the eclipse are missed. As it was, we had bright sunshine for almost the entire event apart from a short period of light cloud that allowed a friend of mine to take this rather pleasing image:
The odd thing with an eclipse of the sun is that the most interesting thing about it is not necessarily the sun itself but the strange effects that it plays on the light and the local environment. The light is odd and it is not merely because it reverts to twilight. Shadows differ depending on which angle they are looked at - hard edges in one plane and fuzzy edges on another. Although our eclipse was over 95% complete it doesn’t go dark as such but the dimming of the light would not be far off that experienced by a moon of Jupiter. For the 5 to 10 minutes of the peak it became noticeably cooler with a breeze being felt on what had been a largely still day. Overall it is a slightly unnerving if wondrous experience.
I did set myself up a pinhole camera to observe the eclipse's progression. I had heard a couple of sources suggesting that a kitchen colander could be used as a simple pin-hole camera and I had been rather sceptical about this. Dara Ó Briain had mentioned this on Stargazing Live and somewhat jokingly dismissed it as “what the eclipse will look like – if you are a fly.” I still wanted to give this a go so tried it out with our metal colander. The actual effect is very pleasing indeed as it does create a fly-vision effect but also a rather aesthetically pleasant one:If solar eclipses are best experienced for their environmental effects lunar eclipses are fantastic for simple observation. I haven’t managed to catch a decent one for a few years now (the last one I observed from start to finish I did whilst listening to Tangerine Dream’s Zeit album – check the LP cover). We are due to have one on 28th September this year although, annoyingly, it does involve staying up in the early hours as it peaks around 03:30 in the morning. As I have the next day off as a local holiday I may well stay up and watch it with or without Krautrock accompaniment – at least if the Scottish weather obliges.
Sunday 15 March 2015
The Physioterrorist
When I broke my arm some 4 years ago part of my treatment was to be assessed by the physiotherapy department at the local hospital. The doctor who initially assessed me jokingly referred to them as the physioterrorists. Apparently this is a joke that profession has heard often enough but in fact I found the treatment at the hospital to be quite a relief and they managed to return full movement back to my arm.
I’ve been struggling with back ache for quite some time now and finally went to my GP a few weeks ago to have it checked. They initially prescribed me with anti-inflammatory drugs which I can safely say had sod-all effect whatsoever but they did refer me to the physiotherapist and I got so see her this week. The treatment was mainly a set of tests to try and work out what was wrong – apparently there is some misalignment in my lower back. She also did “something” physical to my back (which I’m not entirely sure about) and gave me some exercises to do at home. So far, it seems to be OK although it’s early days and I’m still rather mistrusting of moving my body in any way that is likely to cause me extreme jabbing pain.
I’m actually quite glad that I have been referred to the physiotherapist as they do seem to have treatments that are based on some sort of scientific premise. Various people have suggested that I visit a chiropractor. On the face of it they both appear to offer similar services but I’m rather put off the chiropractors as they often seem to collocate with practitioners of acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism and other such non-mainstream medical practice. There may well be something in it but I’d far rather deal with someone who is more likely to associate with medical school graduates than witch doctors or shaman.
At the moment I’m feeling OK and whilst I’ve got some general backache and stiffness I haven’t had the jabbing pain that I’ve been suffering from and I haven’t sat down in a chair to discover that I’m stuck. I’ve got another appointment next week so I’ll see how this progresses. Failing that I suppose there is always the faith healer.
I’ve been struggling with back ache for quite some time now and finally went to my GP a few weeks ago to have it checked. They initially prescribed me with anti-inflammatory drugs which I can safely say had sod-all effect whatsoever but they did refer me to the physiotherapist and I got so see her this week. The treatment was mainly a set of tests to try and work out what was wrong – apparently there is some misalignment in my lower back. She also did “something” physical to my back (which I’m not entirely sure about) and gave me some exercises to do at home. So far, it seems to be OK although it’s early days and I’m still rather mistrusting of moving my body in any way that is likely to cause me extreme jabbing pain.
I’m actually quite glad that I have been referred to the physiotherapist as they do seem to have treatments that are based on some sort of scientific premise. Various people have suggested that I visit a chiropractor. On the face of it they both appear to offer similar services but I’m rather put off the chiropractors as they often seem to collocate with practitioners of acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism and other such non-mainstream medical practice. There may well be something in it but I’d far rather deal with someone who is more likely to associate with medical school graduates than witch doctors or shaman.
At the moment I’m feeling OK and whilst I’ve got some general backache and stiffness I haven’t had the jabbing pain that I’ve been suffering from and I haven’t sat down in a chair to discover that I’m stuck. I’ve got another appointment next week so I’ll see how this progresses. Failing that I suppose there is always the faith healer.
Sunday 8 March 2015
The First Canvasser of Spring
At one time it was said that Spring started when the first cuckoo was head. With the decline in cuckoo numbers a better marker would be the sound of the first lawnmower of Spring. The arrival of Spring is one of those nebulous affairs which seems to vary between the hard-line “it’s March so it must be spring”, the more prosaic marking of the vernal equinox or the pragmatic approach based on the whims of nature. This year, as we have an election coming up it is easier to mark this by the arrival of the first political canvassers. We haven’t had anyone around yet but we have received our first leaflet.
Surprisingly, given that UK General Elections are now meant to be a fixed 5 years apart, the pre-election world of bullshit seems to start earlier and earlier. It’s a bit like the supermarkets pushing the limits of how far the average customer can stomach Christmas tat in the run up to 25th December (the earliest I have seen was August but I know a supermarket buyer who mentioned they were arranging supplies in Februrary and hoped they hadn’t left it too late.) Even with an interest in politics I would have thought that 6 weeks is about as much of the lies and disinformation that most sane people could put up with but the current election campaign appears to have been dragging on for about 57 months.
Out of interest, the first leaflet through the letter box was from the SNP who are most likely to be battling out our constituency with the Labour party. Our sitting MP is actually an independent although he didn’t start out that way. He was thrown out of the Labour party for various misdemeanours including drink-driving, punching a Labour whip, head-butting a Conservative MP, removing an electronic tag, having another stooshie in a Commons bar and causing a commotion at Edinburgh airport. He is currently awaiting trial for another assault incident. Needless to say he is something of an embarrassment locally and most people would be quite happy with having a local MP who is slightly less pugnacious and preferably less rude about their constituents.
Having looked at the SNP and Labour candidates they both appear to be in the “mostly harmless” category - to coin a Douglas Adams phrase. The SNP candidate is a local councillor and runs a barber shop in a neighbouring town and the Labour candidate is a former MSP who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a reputation for nutting people. As far as constituency MPs go I’d be happy with either of them and it shouldn’t be underestimated how useful a good constituency MP can be. My brother had various problems with a government department’s handling of his personal data but his constituency MP helped no end to sort the matter out. This kind of thing goes unnoticed but it is a valuable role that MPs play.
I’m expecting all sorts of party political propaganda to be shoved through the door in the next few weeks. What surprised me about the SNP leaflet is how tame it seems. No mention of independence or the referendum but it introduces the candidate and states what they will be fighting for (less austerity, holding the parliament to account and dumping Trident). I’m interested to see what the other parties come up with although most of their pronouncements in Scotland seem to be about what a bunch of bastards the SNP are. Beyond that there are the usual platitudes about hard working families (whatever they are).
Of course we won’t be told what shady deals have been done with those with moneyed interest and power. I suspect that most senior politicians have more than one skeleton in the closet although I was quite interested in an article written by Peter Oborne in the Spectator magazine about Ed Milliband (Oborne, you may recall, resigned from the Telegraph on a matter of principle over big business dictating editorial policy). He asks the question of why the media hates Ed Milliband. Apparently he has told Rupert Murdoch, large corporations, war mongering Americans, right wing media moguls, neoconservatives and even Tony Blair to collectively go to Hell. That might be political suicide but I’m now rather warming to the guy.
Surprisingly, given that UK General Elections are now meant to be a fixed 5 years apart, the pre-election world of bullshit seems to start earlier and earlier. It’s a bit like the supermarkets pushing the limits of how far the average customer can stomach Christmas tat in the run up to 25th December (the earliest I have seen was August but I know a supermarket buyer who mentioned they were arranging supplies in Februrary and hoped they hadn’t left it too late.) Even with an interest in politics I would have thought that 6 weeks is about as much of the lies and disinformation that most sane people could put up with but the current election campaign appears to have been dragging on for about 57 months.
Out of interest, the first leaflet through the letter box was from the SNP who are most likely to be battling out our constituency with the Labour party. Our sitting MP is actually an independent although he didn’t start out that way. He was thrown out of the Labour party for various misdemeanours including drink-driving, punching a Labour whip, head-butting a Conservative MP, removing an electronic tag, having another stooshie in a Commons bar and causing a commotion at Edinburgh airport. He is currently awaiting trial for another assault incident. Needless to say he is something of an embarrassment locally and most people would be quite happy with having a local MP who is slightly less pugnacious and preferably less rude about their constituents.
Having looked at the SNP and Labour candidates they both appear to be in the “mostly harmless” category - to coin a Douglas Adams phrase. The SNP candidate is a local councillor and runs a barber shop in a neighbouring town and the Labour candidate is a former MSP who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a reputation for nutting people. As far as constituency MPs go I’d be happy with either of them and it shouldn’t be underestimated how useful a good constituency MP can be. My brother had various problems with a government department’s handling of his personal data but his constituency MP helped no end to sort the matter out. This kind of thing goes unnoticed but it is a valuable role that MPs play.
I’m expecting all sorts of party political propaganda to be shoved through the door in the next few weeks. What surprised me about the SNP leaflet is how tame it seems. No mention of independence or the referendum but it introduces the candidate and states what they will be fighting for (less austerity, holding the parliament to account and dumping Trident). I’m interested to see what the other parties come up with although most of their pronouncements in Scotland seem to be about what a bunch of bastards the SNP are. Beyond that there are the usual platitudes about hard working families (whatever they are).
Of course we won’t be told what shady deals have been done with those with moneyed interest and power. I suspect that most senior politicians have more than one skeleton in the closet although I was quite interested in an article written by Peter Oborne in the Spectator magazine about Ed Milliband (Oborne, you may recall, resigned from the Telegraph on a matter of principle over big business dictating editorial policy). He asks the question of why the media hates Ed Milliband. Apparently he has told Rupert Murdoch, large corporations, war mongering Americans, right wing media moguls, neoconservatives and even Tony Blair to collectively go to Hell. That might be political suicide but I’m now rather warming to the guy.
Sunday 1 March 2015
The Sound of Music
This weekend has marked my daughter Sophia’s 7th birthday. She had her birthday party / treat at a hellhole magnet for undiagnosed ADHD children called Monster Mania which, for once, I managed to duck out of by looking after the two older boys. This appeared to have passed off quite uneventfully although what the other parents make of their sugar and artificial additive stuffed children for the rest of the day is anyone’s guess. Sophia spent the afternoon spending various gift vouchers at the local toyshop and came home with what every 7 year old girl really wants: a remote controlled car, a DS game, something slimy and disgusting looking and a toy drum kit.
The last thing came as a bit of a shock to me as we had already chosen a musical present for her. I suppose it is possible that she has a real talent for playing the drums and we could have the next Joe Morello on our hands but having heard her Death Metal ukulele playing I suspect she is more likely to be a budding Lars Ulrich (not that I have anything against Lars Ulrich – he is a fine drummer. It’s just I wouldn’t want to have his practice studio in my home). As it was, she had wanted a proper guitar for a while and that is what we had bought her for her main present.
The intention with the guitar was that I could teach her to play some basic chords and then we could take it from there. This is easier said than done as I don’t think I’m the best teacher in the world. I printed off a few chord tabs and looked for some easy to play songs. The problem with this is finding something that is both easy to play and actually worth listening to. When I started out playing guitar the first things I tried playing were simple folk and pop songs. Early achievements were things like Wild Thing, House of the Rising Sun, various Beatles things and the odd contemporary punk and new wave songs (Teenage Kicks and I Love Rock and Roll were mastered early on).
All of this requires a few rudimentary chords but it is easy to forget how much effort it takes just to hold the things down at first. I tried coaxing Sophia’s fingers in position and eventually she was able to get a reasonably harmonious sound out. Of course, at this stage changing chords takes quite a few seconds but this slowly builds up finger strength and finger memory. Unfortunately, she ended up putting her fingers in completely the wrong places – it was at this point I realised that standard finger tabs are not that easy to follow for a left handed player. There are examples of left handed chords available on the internet so I printed these off. It does seem to help.
We ended lesson one after about an hour. At the moment she seems very keen so I’m hoping that she keeps up the practice. I think the breakthrough with these things starts when it is possible to play whole tunes, no matter how simple. In fact she wanted to know how to play Whole Lotta Love which does sound a bit odd on a nylon strung guitar. At least she wasn’t trying to play Slayer’s Angel of Death or whatever it is that she attacks the ukulele with.
The last thing came as a bit of a shock to me as we had already chosen a musical present for her. I suppose it is possible that she has a real talent for playing the drums and we could have the next Joe Morello on our hands but having heard her Death Metal ukulele playing I suspect she is more likely to be a budding Lars Ulrich (not that I have anything against Lars Ulrich – he is a fine drummer. It’s just I wouldn’t want to have his practice studio in my home). As it was, she had wanted a proper guitar for a while and that is what we had bought her for her main present.
The intention with the guitar was that I could teach her to play some basic chords and then we could take it from there. This is easier said than done as I don’t think I’m the best teacher in the world. I printed off a few chord tabs and looked for some easy to play songs. The problem with this is finding something that is both easy to play and actually worth listening to. When I started out playing guitar the first things I tried playing were simple folk and pop songs. Early achievements were things like Wild Thing, House of the Rising Sun, various Beatles things and the odd contemporary punk and new wave songs (Teenage Kicks and I Love Rock and Roll were mastered early on).
All of this requires a few rudimentary chords but it is easy to forget how much effort it takes just to hold the things down at first. I tried coaxing Sophia’s fingers in position and eventually she was able to get a reasonably harmonious sound out. Of course, at this stage changing chords takes quite a few seconds but this slowly builds up finger strength and finger memory. Unfortunately, she ended up putting her fingers in completely the wrong places – it was at this point I realised that standard finger tabs are not that easy to follow for a left handed player. There are examples of left handed chords available on the internet so I printed these off. It does seem to help.
We ended lesson one after about an hour. At the moment she seems very keen so I’m hoping that she keeps up the practice. I think the breakthrough with these things starts when it is possible to play whole tunes, no matter how simple. In fact she wanted to know how to play Whole Lotta Love which does sound a bit odd on a nylon strung guitar. At least she wasn’t trying to play Slayer’s Angel of Death or whatever it is that she attacks the ukulele with.
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