but she's a girl...

Lynmouth

2008-09-07T15:32:38Z

We spent a few days last week on holiday in North Devon, staying at Lynmouth. When we actually stopped to think about it, we realised that it was the first holiday (as opposed to work travel) we'd had in 3 years, and I certainly felt like we needed it! In the last few years, we seem to have always been too busy, had too little money or to have been doing things like moving house to make even a short break practical. But getting a change of scenery every now and again is important to recharge the batteries, so I was quite excited about our little trip.

We suspected that we would have dreadful weather, but in the end we were incredibly lucky. It was very windy on the coast, and that seemed to keep most of the showers at bay, or at least move them along quickly once they had started, so we didn't get prolonged periods of rain. This was just as well, because we wanted to spend most of the time walking some of the coastal and moorland paths. Lynton and Lynmouth are really one town divided by an almost vertical cliff. There's a rather nice Victorian water-powered cliff railway to take you between the two, or you can walk up the zig-zag paths which connect the two towns.

All I can say is that people who live in Lynton and Lynmouth must be very fit, and have very supple knee and ankle joints. Even with the zig-zags, the paths had sections that seemed to have slopes of about 40°, and required a curious, flexed-foot shuffle to walk up or down. This also applied to the coast path and a lot of the other footpaths we used for our walks. The area isn't known as 'Little Switzerland' for nothing. Mr. Bsag is like a mountain goat, and climbs hills while walking or cycling with no perceptible effort. I, on the other hand, am clearly not geared correctly for hills, and while I can walk for miles on flat or undulating terrain, I puff and pant like a steam train on inclines. Despite that, we had some wonderful walks (with Mr. Bsag gently pushing me up some of the hills).

One of my favourite walks was along the River Lyn to Watersmeet (where two rivers meet, obviously). The river flows in a deep gorge which is thickly wooded with wonderful, lush ancient woodland. One benefit of all the rain we have had this summer is that the vegetation was even greener and more lush than it might have otherwise been. Every possible shade of green -- from almost black, through vivid emerald, to sharp lime -- was represented. Rain drops shone and sparkled on every surface making the whole wood glitter. Every rock and tree trunk was thickly covered in many species of moss, liverwort, lichen and fern. I couldn't resist plunging my hand into a plump pad of moss, and found that it sank finger-deep into the cool, soft fronds. Deciduous woodland is one of my favourite habitats, and with a fast-flowing river too, it was just about perfect. I could have stayed for days in that green-brown dappled light, just looking around me and sighing happily. The photo above is of a section of the woodland, high on the valley side, entirely composed of oaks. It might well be very ancient, but the soil is so thin there, with rocks close to the surface that the oaks can't get to their full size, and grow like ancient saplings, close together and corkscrewing towards the available light. Magical.

Wild swimming

2008-09-04T17:05:09Z

One of the great treats of going to Brazil is a trip by boat to swim in the river. We find a nice spot with a sandy river beach, ignore the resident caiman, and pile in to the caramel coloured water. The water isn't cold, exactly, but it feels cool after the roasting heat of the sun. I love the tropics, but don't care for the heat very much, so I value any opportunity to get cool. The current is surprisingly strong, so you can use the river like a natural, water-treadmill. You thrash away as hard as you can, then find that you've made barely any progress relative to the bank, but when you've swum a little way, you can let yourself drift back, to start again.

The visibility under the water is very low, which is slightly unnerving. We know for sure that there are a lot of piranhas in the water, and every now and again you get a little, gentle nibble on a limb or your back, which keeps you on your toes. The reputation of piranhas is much more ferocious than they are (for a start, many species are not carnivorous), and it's quite safe as long as you don't have any open wounds. Similarly, the caiman just keep out of your way.

I know that it's not an efficient stroke, but I think that breaststroke is wonderful for wild swimming. You can see where you are going and hear all the bird calls bouncing off the water. As you look ahead, your sweeping hands slice the calm, virgin water cleanly, making you feel as if you're the first person ever to swim in the water. Even if you're swimming with others, you can point yourself towards a bit of open water and it's just you, your hands and the river. Bliss.

iPhone as travel companion

2008-09-01T18:46:51Z

I travelled fairly light (for me, anyway) to Brazil, but one thing I was keen to take along was my iPhone. It turned out to be a very useful travel companion for entertainment (music, TV shows and books via Stanza) as well as a stopwatch, alarm¹, calculator, currency converter and various other useful widgets. We had no internet or mobile phone coverage at the site, but the connectivity was very useful during the interminable travelling. I found that with Airplane mode on, the battery life was great. I also took a Freeloader with me, which was brilliant for recharging on the go. The power supply at the place we stayed was not the most reliable, but there was certainly plenty of sun, so the solar panels of the Freeloader charged up its internal battery quickly. I could then recharge the iPhone (and my camera) up at my leisure. It works well in the UK too, though it takes longer to fully charge, but you can also charge it via USB from a laptop.

I lugged a paperback copy of War and Peace to Brazil (875g!), but if I had been a bit more alert, I would have noticed that it is available on Stanza, so I could have taken a weightless literary tome with me on my iPhone.

¹ I recommend 'Piano Riff' as an alarm tone. It brings a bluesy, dramatic start to the day, and you wake up composing "I woke up this morning [da-DA da-DUN]..." blues songs. It also goes well with howler monkeys. ↑

Moseley Folk Festival 2008

2008-08-31T12:04:06Z

We went to the Moseley Folk Festival yesterday, and it was really fantastic. I don't know why I haven't been before. I love folk music, and Moseley is only a short bus ride and a walk away from me. Anyway, I'll certainly be going again next year. The festival is held in Moseley Park, which is a fabulous, fairy grotto of a park, hidden in a valley between rows of Victorian houses. It's surrounded by trees, and the natural slope of the site makes a good amphitheatre for live music.

All the artists I saw were wonderful, so it's hard to single people out, but there were several artists (some new to me) who I particularly enjoyed.

Jon Redfern

Jon Redfern has a lovely, delicate style, and a great guitar technique with beautifully-crafted songs that really hold your attention.

John Smith

John Smith: surely the man with the least distinctive name in music, but a really distinctive, rich voice, and a mind-blowing guitar style. He's one of those artists who is really hard to describe to someone else, because he doesn't sound like anyone else, but he made my heart break a bit. Which is a good thing, in case you're wondering. He also has an extraordinary, show-stopping guitar technique where he lays it flat on his lap and employs a kind of extreme tambour stroke to provide a percussion backing. Even though he's there, doing it in front of you live, it's hard to believe that he's getting such an incredible layered sound out of one guitar and two hands. If you're interested, you can hear it on 'Winter (Live)' on his MySpace page.

The Family

The Family describe their music as "swaggering, Bourbon-drenched Cosmic Country music for bow-legged women", which is a fairly good summary. It's good-time music that's a little bit off its head -- something like early Beefheart or Canned Heat. They also gave away free CDs, which endeared them greatly to the crowd.

The Destroyers

What can I say. I've never had the pleasure before, but now I'm wondering where they've been all my life. I've got a very soft spot for Klezmer music, which is the basis of The Destroyers' sound, but they swerve joyfully between klezmer, ska, dub, punk, funk and folk, often within the same song -- it's like an explosion in a music factory. And they have a hurdy gurdy, and any music featuring hurdy gurdy is OK by me. They've got a great video (shot in Digbeth!) of their anthem to the joys of multicultural urban life, Out of Babel, which is definitely worth a look. But if you want to see their live style (with a much reduced band), see Rhombus of Righteousness. Little kids (of all ages) love them because you can jump around like a loon to their music -- in fact, it's impossible not to.

Sharron Kraus

Sharron Kraus has a lovely, high, clear voice which she completely subverts by singing dark, dangerous folk songs and murder ballads. Her music manages to sound ancient, like songs passed down through the generations, but she writes all her own material. Excellently creepy.

Chris Wood

I've raved about Chris Wood's music before, so it won't be a surprise that he was the reason we decided to get tickets for the festival. So it was a shame that his set was so short, and that it was plagued with sound problems. Actually several artists had problems with the sound, which with acoustic music in the open air can really mar the performance. He was also on not long after The Destroyers, so people were still a bit excitable. It must be hard for someone -- whose stock-in-trade is a quiet, carefully crafted, emotionally-laden story in song -- to get people to shut up and listen. Well, I was listening and hanging on to every note, and he was wonderful. Chris: if there's a chance in a million (see what I did there?) that you happen to be reading this, some people were listening. And you made me shed a tear with 'One in a Million'. Again. I'm a sucker for a sweet, romantic story, and it's the way you tell it. I wish you'd had time for 'Lord Bateman' too.

Snakes on the Plains

2008-08-26T17:30:30Z

Watching wildlife is often the outcome of random encounters, and your luck never seems proportional to the time and effort you put in. Sometimes you lie silently on your belly on a freezing moor at dawn for hours and don't see so much as a rabbit, but at other times, you stroll along whistling and almost trip over a rare and wonderful animal. We were quite fortunate on this trip and had a lot of the latter kinds of experiences, including seeing not one, but two, whole anacondas.

Let's get one thing straight from the start: it's not like in the film. They don't suddenly lunge up out of the water and consume a boat and its occupants. They are fairly shy, and tend to lay low, quietly suffocating and swallowing smallish animals in private and out of the gaze of curious tourists. They also don't need to eat very often, so catching them in the act is even less likely.

We saw anaconda 1 on a horse ride. We were gaily wandering through a shallow lake on horseback, when one of the guides jumped off his horse, and started excitedly poking about in the rushes. He'd seen an anaconda which was in the process of constricting around a caiman and eating it. You might think that jumping into the water next to a snake big enough to swallow a medium sized caiman is a bad idea, but doing so while it's feeding on a medium sized caiman is probably as good a time as any, because the snake is actually rather busy. That was exciting.

The location of anaconda 2 was given away by some jacanas (big-footed water birds, similar to coots or moorhens). They were going crazy with alarm calls, hovering over a particular patch of water and looking very nervous indeed. When we looked through the weeds at the spot they were troubled by, we saw a lithe, yellow, spotted body slipping through the water. We were out of the water this time on a bridge, but one of the guides -- in his enthusiasm to show people wildlife at as close quarters as possible (with just a touch of wanting to impress the laydees) -- waded carefully in and grabbed the snake's head, hauling all 2.5 m of it out on to the bridge for us to hold.

I really prefer it when people leave wild animals alone, even if that means you don't get such a good view. Better a brief glimpse of a wild animal behaving naturally than a long look at one which would really like to go and hide in the water, thank you very much. However, there are times when you can't get a real impression of the physicality of an animal without seeing it up close and touching it. The warm, dry skin of the snake was beautiful, and the incredible smooth power of its muscles as it gripped our hands and arms was something that just looking at it wouldn't have conveyed. The guy put it back in the water gently, then backed away carefully. They may not rear up out of the water to attack you, but they do command a certain respect.

5.30 am

2008-08-24T15:57:12Z

(Tuesday 19th August, 5.30am, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil)

It's 5.30am and the sun is just beginning to colour the eastern horizon a delicate peach, shading to deep indigo at the zenith. The river is very still in the silver half light, and a veil of mist hovers just above the surface of the water. A cool, light breeze drifts shreds of mist, like smoke, towards me, as I stand on the boardwalk watching. On three sides, groups of chaco chachalacas¹ strike up their raucous song, like a drunken military tattoo performed entirely on amplified kazoos, and backed occasionally by a howler monkey chorus. In the brief breaks between chaco sets, I can hear the various whistles, purrs and mews of other birds against the earth-shaking three-note bass growls of caiman the wildlife starts its day. The dawn here is often peaceful, but seldom quiet.

In the west, the full moon is still high, and as the sun rises, the cold, silver moon-shadows are gradually erased and replaced with the deep, warm sun-shadows. Dawn happens fast here: as I watch, the sun hauls itself above the horizon, bloodily dripping and setting fire to the landscape. Another day begins.

¹ They can be heard 2 km away, so you can imagine that when you're standing right next to them (or vice-versa), conversation is impossible, and earplugs are advisable. I once had to break off a conversation with my colleague because of noisy chacos above us. It's no use shouting at them, either (I've tried) -- you just have to wait until they're finished. ↑

Landed

2008-08-24T15:37:01Z

I'm back in the UK after three weeks in Brazil. It was a good trip: the students worked hard and enjoyed themselves, we saw a lot of interesting animals, and my colleague and I made good progress on a grant application. However, it's a long time to be away from Mr. Bsag, and it's very nice to be home. When I got back from the airport yesterday and sat down on the sofa with him, cup of tea in hand, I was more content and happy than I've been for some time.

One of the real killers with the trip is the travel. Brazil is a fantastic country, but it's also very, very big. Our return journey took 36 hours in total, involving a 5 hour minibus journey and 4 separate flights. We also had a fair bit of hassle with the flights this time, though thankfully we didn't miss any of them. I don't want to get on another plane for a few months, I think!

In my absence, Mr. Bsag has been a whirlwind of productive activity. As well as making a lot of prints, he had arranged for an ugly conifer to be taken down in our garden, got the loft insulated, and even re-painted the hall, stairwell, landing, and the kitchen. It makes me think that I'm slowing him down, but I don't think either of us could keep up the pace we set when we're apart and trying to distract ourselves with activity.

Off to Brazil again

2008-08-02T17:12:57Z

It's that time of year again when and colleague and I take a group of students to Brazil for a field course. I'm off on Monday, leaving -- with great reluctance -- Mr. Bsag and Cleo to fend for themselves for three weeks. We're in the middle of nowhere, so it's very unlikely that I'll be able to post anyting to the blog while I'm away. As usual, I had intended to make some posts in advance to be published during my absence, but as usual, I haven't had time. No doubt you'll all be busy enjoying the nice weather and/or the Olympics, so I doubt anyone will notice

Brazil is a gorgeous country and we're surrounded by wonderful wildlife, but it's very intense, hard work, and the heat gets to me after a while. I love the tropics, but I'd like them better if they were a bit cooler! I watched the first episode of Lost Land of the Jaguar this week, and even though the expedition featured is in Guyana, not Brazil, we see many of the same species. I felt slightly smug when they went to great lengths to film giant otters in their totally remote location, when we saw them from a boat about 5 minutes from our hotel. Two years ago, a couple staying at the hotel even saw a jaguar while they were on a boat trip early in the morning. It was sunning itself on the bank, and they got some stunning photographs, which made us wildly jealous.

The area we stay in may not have the same level of biodiversity as the area the team visited in Guyana or be as pristine, but we're very lucky to see so much wildlife.

Have a good August everyone, and I'll post about my adventures in about 3 weeks time, bearing (no doubt) the scars of heat rash and numerous insect bites.

Spuds ahoy!

2008-07-27T18:15:47Z

Although some of our potatoes are probably not quite ready for harvesting just yet (particularly the maincrop variety), we are impatient and decided to try digging up a couple of of the plants to see how they were doing. Other people on the allotment have been complaining that their yields have been very low this year, so we were pleasantly surprised to get quite a good haul. There are some very tiny ones, but also some that will make more than a couple of mouthfuls. We also -- as is traditional when you grow your own -- got a few amusingly shaped spuds.

The allotment is going pretty well at the moment, after a slow start. We've also got plenty of courgettes (you can see today's haul in the photo, and we have more in the fridge from earlier in the week), and lots of nasturtium flowers for salads. The tomatoes are coming along slowly but surely, and the runner, Cherokee and dwarf beans are finally coming into flower after sulking for a couple of months.

Digging potatoes is brilliant - you never quite know what's going to come up, but it feels like digging for treasure.

Mobile Safari

2008-07-22T18:05:55Z

Reading web pages on the iPhone is a very different experience than reading them the desktop version of Safari. Some things (like entering text and so on) are inevitably slightly more awkward because of the onscreen keyboard. But there's one thing in particular that I'd like to see in the full version of Safari: zooming in on page elements. For those who haven't used Mobile Safari, each page is initially displayed full width, which for most pages results in tiny text, but means that you can see at a glance the layout of content on the page. The magic comes when you double tap a page element like a column of text: it expands to fill the entire width of the page, which for most pages I've tried makes it perfectly readable. It also -- and this is why I want it in desktop Safari -- removes any of the other distractions on the page. This is perfect when you're reading typical sites with sidebars and other content at the side of the page, and is particularly good with online news sites where you have flashing adverts and other distracting elements to either side of the content.

It's the web browser equivalent of 'full screen mode' on a text editor, and I'm rather addicted to it. So much so that I tried double clicking a column in desktop Safari earlier today to concentrate on what I was reading.

leah buechley - LilyPad Arduino - build - turn signal jacket [ma.gnolia]

2008-06-28T04:51:53-05:00

Fantastic diy cycle jacket with turn indicators sewn into the fabric. That Arduino LilyPad controller looks very interesting. via BoingBoing Gadgets.

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Tags: cycling, diy, electronics, geek

Dyson Vacuums: A Video History of Dyson Upright Vacuums [ma.gnolia]

2008-06-24T16:21:02-05:00

"...caught this video of an incredibly soporific employee...." Great video, but Gizmodo, just because this guy isn't shouting or going "Rah! Rah Dyson!", it doesn't make him soporific. This is how we speak in Britain ;-)

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Tags: engineering, technology