Of Students and student things

Now I have to come clean here: I was once an undergraduate myself. So this may count as the pot calling the kettle black (a phrase in its self appropriate to the days of open fires heating utensils and so diminishing fast from our collective consciousness). Understand then that I write this with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight.

My company employs a few students. In the past I have tried this without success, may be it’s the fact that they are now in debt for their course fees or I’m recruiting from exactly the right cross section of society. As an old friend observed when we were discussing this over a dinner, in our days, in this situation we probably would have been awkward SOBs who would not have taken “yes” or indeed “no” for an answer! If we understood the problem, we would have then spent our time looking at it from every angle and insisting that our (new) way of providing a solution was far better than the one requested urgently by the boss. Definitely not worth employing!!

Employing students is not without its hazards: hygiene being the most prominent. After a gentle persuasion that a coffee cup was recyclable by virtue that it could be washed and used again. This process demonstrated its ultra modern green credentials. This was opposed to the “green” as in mould (which could naturally be encouraged by the significantly less energetic approach of leaving it hidden in some warm part the office for a suitable number of weeks).

Armed with one success, you need to know this is only the first step of several. The next phase of student coersion has still to be undertaken. A fine example of this was the purchase of new mugs. At this point we had not discovered the gravitational forces that caused the cups to be promoted to a bioengineering role and accumulate in selected culture friendly locations. The new mugs had stickers on them which were apparently impossible to remove. This difficulty frustrated all attempts to resolve over several days. It therefore came as some surprise to those finding this insuperable obstacle that the application of hot soapy water caused the adhesive labels to simply float off. The degree of wonderment that this revelation provoked can only be likened to a million pound lottery win. Clearly the combination of hot, soapy and water was an incredibly rare and possibly previously unencountered magical combination.

So what is it with students? Its actually a reasonably well know fact that the reason for the appellations “spotty” and “teenager” going hand in hand is that their body's immune systems are at their height during these years. More recently its been discovered that an over hygienic environment can lead to allergies caused by immune systems spoiling for a fight. These symptoms can be relieved by giving the body something to work on: for instance hook worms. It seems reasonable to assume that students somehow inherantly understand that giving their immune system something to fight by actively embarrassing scruffy, untidy, lets not beat about the bush, dirty surroundings are simply protecting themselves from other allergic reactions.

Now all I have to do is explain why students are able to detect those special properties of sunlight before midday so causing a vampire like aversion to the early hours (6am to 2pm)

PS If you enjoyed this, you may also like Tom Roush's blog

Of Wellies, Goldfish and cookies.

There was a newly married couple and just as they were getting into bed, the husband said: “I didn’t want to mention this before in case you were shocked and it stopped us getting married, but there is a position I’ve always wanted to try. It’s called the wheel barrow position.”

“Oh” said the wife “what does it involve?”
 “Well, you get down on your hands and knees, and then you straighten your legs. I get between your legs, pick them up and way hay... off we go!”
“OK said the wife, just promise me outside, we won’t go past my Mum’s House!”

Coincidentally, I’ve just been on a once in a lifetime holiday... No way I’ll do that again...!

A few days ago I went to Ceroc Newbury: it’s a Jive dance venue under the Ceroc franchise. Last night we had a special evening based on West Coast Swing. The class was taught by Brent & Kellese Key



We were introduced to a new description of your “centre” or core. This is the part of the body which represents your point of balance. Some describe it where you feel the pressure when you hold your breath and try to breath out (try it). This does not work if you have a cold as it then appears to be between your ears! It is somewhere between your knees and your chest. Some consider it as one of the 5,382 erogenous zones that a woman has. Unfortunately this may not narrow it down. Kellese refers to it as her “cookie”. For Brent it’s the berries and branch. Much of the class revolved around correct positioning of the “cookie”. It was very instructive.
  
It’s the Reading festival – noticeable for its rain making powers, greater even than Glastonbury. Actually it’s about half an hour into the start and at the big Tesco’s in town they have already sold out of the years’ supply of wellington boots, socks and presumably anything waterpoof.

When I got back in the car after the shopping expedition: the iPod came out in sympathy and decided to play Louis Armstrong’s wonderful World – “I see skies of blue... and clouds of white... ... and I think to myself; what a wonderful world.” I looked up: somehow “I see skies of grey and clouds of black” just doesn’t seem to have the same impact...



Actually I spent the weekend dancing. Now at the event I went to: there are classes every hour and a half spread over the day. The classes themselves last about an hour and typically will cover 3 dance moves.

The format is a demo of all three moves, then step slowly through the first until there is a reasonable chance of doing it with some degree of similarity to the demo. The second part of the move is then demoed again and practised. The first and second are linked together and practised. The third part is then demoed and practised. At which point the “teach” then says: from the top: all three parts together.

At his point I feel l have the same memory as the apocryphal gold fish. What was that first move??? Time to do both a passable impression of a goldfish – both in memory and the jaw dropping, mouth opening “ah”. F$%^£$&... I just did that  fifteen minutes earlier! The problem is that goldfish don’t have such a bad memory. Experiments teaching the fish a link between various signals and food have shown that a dozen or so repetitions can teach a Goldfish when or where food is provided which they remember for weeks.  I have since resolve to try to raise my game. Can I at least equal the performance of a Goldfish when it comes to dance moves?

Stay tuned... 

Some years ago a very bright chap called Steven Hawking published a book. Much to everyone’s surprise it rose to the top of the best sellers list. There was some debate as to if people who bought it actually read it. Indeed it was suggested that some acquired it just to have “A brief history of Time” sitting on their coffee table when people came round. No matter to this day, at over nine million copies sold, it is the most coffee tabled book in science.

By contrast even a scientific book of the first order as Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in print for a hundred years has print runs or editions only of thousands or tens of thousands of copies even though counting all languages there may have been a hundred editions.

No matter that it takes Professor Hawking a significant part of a minute to programme a sentence: the jokes in ‘brief history’ give the book a status second to none.

Darwin’s contribution to humour probably peaked when he gave eventual rise to the Darwin awards for selfless individuals weeding themselves out of the gene pool.

Hawking’s success has given rise to a number of physics trying to repeat his triumph. One of the more recent attempts has been a book called “The trouble with Physics” by Lee Smolin. Now when you see a book with a title “The trouble with Physics” it can be one of two things. The most obvious is someone with creationist beliefs who thinks Sarah Palin represents a credible view of scientific arguments in much the same way as Albert Einstein would make a credible entry into the Miss World pageant. Even ignoring the fact that he would be 130 and counting, having died in 1955 he must be in a serious state of decay.

Well (thankfully) “The trouble with Physics” does not fall into the above category. It attempts to explain the dilemmas modern Physic without resorting to impenetrable equations that not even the guys that developed those same equations really understand.  I’m currently about 2/3rd of the way through the book. It has moments of humour, but it’s starting to get heavy going. I suppose I can sum it up in a few paragraphs.

There are five areas where modern Physics has big problems. The first (two) of these is that there are two very good theories which explain the universe as we know it. One Quantum theory. The  theory of the very small and specifically something called ‘the standard model’ produces the results found in experiment to an astonishing degree of accuracy. Every experiment we have been able to make over the last forty years has produced results which agree with it exactly. Another theory: Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains the phenomena throughout the Universe and no experiment or astronomical observation over the last 50 years has yet found anything which in any way contradicts this theory either. Ice creams all round to the Physicists you may say.

There is one major problem. According to ‘the (Quantum) standard model’ nothing has any mass (gravity). Clearly this is wrong. But I heard you say it agrees with experiment exactly. It does, but gravitational effects where atoms and sub atomic particle are concerned just don’t show up (they are ever so small). There is another major problem: Einstein’s Theory is equally and catastrophically wrong when it comes to predicting stuff on the sub atomic scale. When things are much larger than the sub atomic scale Einstein hits the bull’s eye with unerring accuracy. At the sub atomic level Einstein is about as wrong as you can get.  The problem is that it’s the same universe that we are living in and is being described by both theories.

In some ways this is not really a problem for Physicists: combining these two theories is what they are paid to do. It’s a bit like mixing oil and water. They don’t mix! So working on trying to mix them can be a life time occupation.  More Physicists have worked on this problem for more years than ever before and got nowhere. This book is about the ‘fact’ that a large number of Physics may have found the very first example of ‘perpetual motion’. There is a theory called ‘string’ theory. It has so many varieties that you can just choose the one that fits and if you then find it doesn’t fit, then there is always another just beside it that can be chosen to fit better. It like throwing dice until you get the series of spots you want. It says nothing about the next throw. Physicists have been throwing these dice for the last 30 years.

To sum the book up, it’s about the craps table of modern Physics. Still someone may just be able to find a way to load the dice. That is very much a part of human nature.

They say when you have a drink...

 Many thanks to the tens of people reading this blog (and growing). It makes the time writing it worthwhile. Thank you.

They say when you have a drink; you can lose up to a thousand brain cells. I think I have one left... cheers!

This is certainly how I felt as I lay on a barely padded rack. I said as much to my chiropractor as he was gently detaching my head from the rest of my spine. I can never figure out if this process actually does some good... or if the body is just cowed into submission and does not have the courage to be in pain in case it gets a repeat of the treatment. Maybe it's the amount he relieves from my wallet which causes me to walk more upright. Who knows?

On the subject of frustration... can I be the only one who constantly feels Microsoft have lost the thread when it comes to searching for help? I wanted to have two screens one above the other for my laptop and an external screen which for space reasons (and because it reduced my neck strain see chiro above...). MS help says right mouse click on the desktop, open the personalize option, click display settings, drag the monitors  into the arrangement you want. Except there isn't space to have them one above the other or at least that how it appears to me. For the solution click the link below.

For a while I have been thinking that the Top Grear team have been going through the motions (literally and figuratively) rehashing old ideas and regurgitating them without additional polish or twists. So this week episode was a pleasant revival. Not so much new ideas, but much less tired. The repeat will be worth a watch or catch up on iPlayer (link below) .

At the end of this piece I’ll give you a link to an online magazine called the Daily Mash. For some reason it does not score highly on Google if you search on ‘satirical’ and ‘daily’. For each individual: the best satirical stuff is probably the stuff that is closest to the edge. The Daily Mash should score reasonably highly in as much as they can be so close to the edge that they probably go over it once per article. To give you a flavour a recent sports story was: Webber to start next race in a '98 Punto. Interesting to see what they write about Massa and Alonso...

The old journalistic catechism rings true: never let the truth get in the way of a good story! 

For instance, this previously unknown picture of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting to Steve Jobs a good Russian solution to the iPhone4 aerial reception problems...

It's the right colour: black... plenty of space for the Apple logo... we can get it made in China for a song and sell it for may be 50 bucks.... it has rounded corners, it even does the job - sold!



Links:

The Daily Mash
Webber to start next race in a '98 Punto
They say when you have a drink joke origin
Vertical aligned monitors, Staff Agency software, Staff bank software, Nursing agency software
Top gear

Function keys stopped working (suddenly): broken, not working, kaput!

There I was happy working away and suddenly and  (function keys F5 and F8) in the application I was using suddenly stopped working. Now I've had sticky keys before, but in 10-15 years never more than one at a time. I use F8 and F5 lots, by the well known law if a key fails, it's likely to be one used lots. I tried a few applications: no joy with these keys in any of them. It looked like it was the keyboard.
  

Nipped next door and got a PS2 keyboard (round plug on the end as opposed to the new square plug that goes in the same place as every other plug). That keyboard simply did not work: PS2 keyboards need the computer to start up with the keyboard plugged in. Since the computer was doing a long running background task – I did not want to restart it at that instant. Went upstairs and got a USB (Square plug) keyboard. Still there was no joy although the keyboard worked for all other non function keys. I still sort of convinced that I needed a replacement keyboard so went via Staples that evening and picked up a spare – more about that later...)
  

Following morning: I restarted Windows. there were still no working function keys. Powered down, unplugged, left for 30 seconds, powered back up. Still no function keys! This was serious – I needed these keys! Without them this PC is next to useless for my purposes and I need this computer. Ok I have (at least) 3 others with all applications installed and all the files synced across the cloud (Sugar sync), but this one has both my 2560 by 1600 screens and complicated stuff is much easier when there is that much desktop real estate. (Yes I know at this point you have stopped feeling sorry for me because 30 stands for 30 inch.). Googled Function keys not working: 3 pages of rubbish about application settings.  Google is great but there are some things no matter what you enter, it goes off in a different direction.

It turns out that some keyboards have a function lock button (circled in green) and a little light (also circled in green) to tell you it's locked on. Of course when it is off and the function keys are doing other things to normal then it does not draw attention to itself.... 

This was true of this keyboard (not true of every other keyboard I tried). Probably for some historical reason the state of the function lock key is stored so it's kept when you unplug the computer or unplug the keyboard.

One small key press solved the problem Ahhhhhrrrrgggg....

Actually it was not such a bad day. I had one of those Staples discount vouchers and whist looking for a spare keyboard, spied one of those dinky little palm tops: Asus Eee PC 1001PX (Seashell). They are going for around £220 now. Feeling sure my 20% discount voucher would not apply to the more expensive items, I asked at the till. Apparently it was covered! Scanned in and came out at 20% off. Staples do offer very good value for money. I’ve not yet found anything significantly cheaper elsewhere or even on-line. At just over £180 Asus Eee PC 1001PX was a bargain.   

Not bad performance  so far: windows 7 starter edition and gesture recognition on the touch pad. 

There is only one major disadvantage as far as I can see...Having bought a carrier bag to protect this nice device, it looks awfully like I've adopted the pracise of carrying a Handbag or "Man bag" down the High street.

Computer loss, Council employees, sharp objects

I was half listening to the TV news in the background. An item came up on, what seemed to me to be, an astonishing number of laptop computer losses from a council. A representative of the council was interviewed over this. Their response was that the council had investigated these losses. As a consequence of the investigation, they identified that council employees had not received any council training in preventing their laptops being stolen.

Politically I occasionally feel I may be slightly to the right of Genghis Kan. Other times I have quite liberal views (hanging too good for them etc). Therefore I feel quite at home with our currently elected (or unelected: none of us actually put an x in the box marked ‘coalition’) government. The major push that gets my full support: is making sure we tax payers receive value for money in government expenditure. How often has (in financial terms gold plated) red tape been used to justify the status quo when change was clearly and badly needed.

Now this caused me to wonder what else jobsworths or council employees needed training on? Had for instance council employees received adequate training on the use of toilet facilities? If they had, to what level: basic potty training or advanced? If they haven’t: is it only a matter of time before the proverbial hits the fan? What about sharp objects? Should we be wary on the (thankfully infrequent) occasions when we come into contact with council employees of an increased risk of personal injury? Would it be a good idea to have a refresher course on first aid prior to such an encounter? Are our human rights being infringed when we meet someone who (unknown to us) is a council worker? There is clearly an added danger encountering any individual who needs training in remaining attached to valuable objects, going to the loo or handling anything sharp. It seems common sense that such people should be forced to wear “I am a council employee” badges or t-shirt, perhaps better still one of those “end of the world is nigh” type of shoulder mounted advertising boards suitably inscribed.

We should be told...

PS If you like to see Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilon 'assemble' a Formula 1 car to council standards then click here...

Taking a punt...

I'm sure its life's little eccentricities that  make it truly enjoyable. When these become an annual event it is something to look forward to.

It's that time of year when the average height of people increases by six inches to a foot. When pink and other shocking colours of blazers explode onto the pavements. When grown men parade their Paddington Bear style tied on labels as some strange mandatory fashion accessory. Yes, it’s Henley Royal Regatta. This year, largely because there is a roof at Wimbledon, the weather gods have decreed sunshine and heat. Only overnight is it allowed to rain. Proof of this unseasonal weather is below.

Of course you might want to take a punt...  

Actually one of the images that Henley Regatta provokes in me, is the almost countless types who parade around town in their fashion crime blazers, prominently displaying their enclosure badges tied a la Paddington Bear style to self same jackets:

This Paddington Bear was kindly loaned from Asquiths teddy bear shop in Henley.

Cool.. Oh so cool... super cool`

Every so often, you can come across something that takes you very nicely by surprise. Not just jump as in a loud bang. No this is a sort of continuing surprise. It’s something that half an hour later you’re still smiling at the thought and bathing the soap suds of your good fortune. The dog eating at the table is one.

Not building this up too much am I?

This is the one that lead to this blog, it's not a streaming site, so it will take a while to load. Let me assure you its not what it seems to be: so let it play.

The link is to the original site and not the shorter lower quality versions you may have seen elsewhere. Happy origami!

...Welcome back? I have to reveal at this point that the drawings of Escher and Dali’s limpid watch (scroll about half way down the linked page) held a special enchantment for me during my earlier years. A sort of cross between science fiction and art. Now there isn’t much art in the publication New Scientist, so when something which can be placed in the Art category comes up and is worth a few minutes of your time: it has to be a bit off the beaten path.

For completeness here is the link to the New Scientist article that lead me on. This week they published best new visual illusions 2010 and the winner just ticked the box.

If you’re interested in previous years then the finalists from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, are listed in a panel half way down the left hand side.

Don’t mix business and pleasure.

Oh what sordid stories could fall under that heading!  This is quite sordid (ish). I’ll do my best to make it interesting.  It is, I suppose about apples and oranges.

Don’t mix business and pleasure: pt 1

Modern technology is wonderful and the web is a great part of that. It is however, likely to bite the uninitiated. This story relates to a few years ago. An old colleague of mine has a very prim and proper wife. She was not technologically blessed.  At some point a computer appeared in the house. It was then attached to the Internet. It was purchase to help her technologically savvy daughter who was going to university. It was also for the husband who was starting an OU degree. To help Mum, daughter explained all about shopping on line, search engines and the like.
Daughter was away learning about like in the modern world, Mother sat at the new computer. Having mastered the on / off switch, the windows start button and clicking on the desktop, she felt quite pleased with herself. There connected with the browser waiting on her tentative keyboard strokes.  The idea was to browse the Marks and Spencer site. She carefully typed http://www.marks & spencer.com/  and got back “invalid URL” a little pondering and she typed http://www.m & s.com/ .  “invalid URL” was once again the inscrutable reply. Confusion and consternation, then she remembered something about search engines. There was this empty box which said “Google search”. Ah! daughter said something about how good it was at finding stuff when she did not know exactly where to look.  Not quite so painstakingly she typed M & S into the Google search box and clicked on search.  In those days Google returned the results for the letters M and S in the same way as S & M. Apparently quite a fit of the vapours ensued....
Today you will get http://www.marksandspencer.com/ as the top hit. I must admit that frequently enough I find the serendipitous hits from Google, more interesting than the original search. It will be a sad day if ever Google finds a way to show us just what we think we want!

Don’t mix business and pleasure: pt 2 

The same is true for the latest iTunes update. It launches an app called com.apple.IE.client.exe. This does a passable impression of a denial of service attack. It gobbles up memory using one and a third gigabyte on my 2 gigabyte laptop. It renders the machine unusable.

 It also launches dialog boxes:

The iLounge site has quite a few entries. Some of these quite are negative about Apple's response to user pain. The answer is to rename the file/ folder:

 com.apple.ie to something like x.com.apple.ie

The laptop concerned has both business and (iTunes) pleasure applications on it and it was V. annoying when the laptop ground to a halt when I had a remote session to a customer going.

Spam with a hidden agenda. Some useful tips you may not know.

Most of us are pretty aware of spam and spam filters, letters from Nigerian solicitors, Banks we don’t have accounts to, IRS rebates and the like. Here at Ava (temp agency and staff bank software) we use Google mail and Google spam filters are pretty good in our view. They do however occasionally make mistakes, so we trawl through the spam just to check there is not an email enquiry from a potential customer.

I was struck by one (of several) emails advising me that “setting for your mailbox ****@*.co.uk  are changed”  (sic)

For the a postmaster with access to the company domain, all the bogus addresses come to one post box. The postmaster knows there is no ava7 email user.  Also this was one instance of about a dozen nonexistent email addresses. However if you are a single user you may not get that hint.

This email was slightly different from the norm:  Almost passable English, no over flowery phrasing. “Delightful over waited salutations to your esteemed unctuousness etc. “

I'm curious about these things, in the same way I'm curious about seeing Lions in the zoo: fine if there are iron bars between me and the Lions (or something equally effective) to stop any significant chance of actual contact! If I have a suspicious email, one of the signs is: there is a link which you are urged to click on.  Never do.  You may not know that:  if you hover the mouse over any link, you will find the actual address that you are over on the boarder panel at the bottom left of your browser. I occasionally do this and depending on the inventiveness of the spammer, they can be astoundingly similar to a proper bank address (but actually a completely different location) or just daft.

 Surprise! This email the link not only was the same, it was from Google as well who provide our email – ah! But the site /domain is Google groups and this can be anybody. More over the package to be downloaded was a zip file and not an html link or txt file.  Never download a zip in an email.  Attached zip files are usually stripped from emails by anti-virus software for good reason.

On other thing you may not know about Google mail is that if you click on the drop down button top right of the email, you can see the actual contents of the email.



Clues here include the mismatch of the “Delivered- To” and “To” addresses and also the mismatch of the “Return-path” and “From”.

Added value applications ltd (aka Ava) will never send you an email with a zip. Unfortunately if we send you multiple documents, they may be converted to a zip file by Google mail.  However they will all be listed separately.

Be alert – don’t click.

This sort of attack is sometimes called phishing. What is phishing?

PS Our Temp agency and staff bank software is really good.

What is the picture at the top of the blog?

I’ve just added an image to the blog header. I thought you might be intrigued by what it is and why i put it there. 

The why first:

When I was a young boy at school, (If I remember correctly) I won a prize: The Larouse Encycolpedia of Astoronomy. The book is amazingly out of date now! It did then serve to kindle my interest in astronomy.

Apart from being quite a massive book, there were some splendid mind stirring pictures. Not nearly as many or as fantastical and profound as those pictures now available now at Hubble

Today we understand the universe is a far bigger and more complex place than we could even think existed in the 1960’s. Moons in the solar system were thought of as lumps of barren rock just like smaller versions of our moon. Today we know quite different. In the 60’s it was thought black holes were forbidden by some quirk of universal laws: theoretical object only. Today we understand that there are billions of them lurking in every part of the universe.

The how:

With telescopes peering ever farther into the universe and not yet at the (apparent) point where the first galaxies condensed, an immense or even almost overwhelming number of images of objects including a multitude of colliding galaxies have been gathered. A few years ago these were published on the internet. This was done with a view to getting amateur astronomers to help classify them.

This project is  known as the galaxy zoo.

This very simple use of the internet was surprisingly successful. Whenever advances in technology have enabled us to look finer, further or at different wavelengths we have always discovered unexpected and revealing aspects of our universe. Entrancing views, demanded new and challenging explanations.  With such a plethora of new images from Hubble, the suggestion of simply asking everyone who was interested to look at the images was a low cost, low risk attractive option.   As it turned out, since the amateurs has a less grounded understanding of what they were looking at they were more inclined to the unbiased determination needed by science. Indeed one of these amateurs made the headlines by discovering a class object not previously encountered or observed.

The what:

The relatively unfettered discussion forum for the zoo also lead to these images being sorted in a serendipitous fashion.

This was possibly prompted by an earlier astronomical alphabet  or maybe just that compulsion having thought one galaxy unusually looked like a letter in their name, the idea arose that it would be cool to sign ones name on an astronomical forum in galaxy images?  What's not to like?

Individuals started organising some of the pictures into facsimiles of the alphabet. The results are here

Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: @ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: PQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: `abcdefghijklmno
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: pqrstuvwxyz{|}~

Actually the success of the galaxy zoo internet project has lead to further projects where everyone, no matter their qualifications, can be involved in genuine front line and ground breaking research.

Go for it!

We live in truely interesting times.

Spring is here, blossoms are out: so it’s raining

Well it is as I write....

Spring is here, we have had a nice sunny week end, a warm week, a nice walk along the river, a bit of a sun tan. That was last week, so it’s the south of England the week end and it’s bound to be raining.  Actually, last week there was ne’r a cloud in the sky: no high cirrus, no veil of opaque water vapour streamed from passing airliners. We don't get really clear skies any more. The contamination makes the naturally pure blue heaven a much more incipid lighter shade of pale grey blue. The sun gave a quicker tan last week I'm sure. The nights last week were certainly colder and the global government conspiracy theorists misted a trick. The last time the meteorologist had the data from this sort of experiment: (grounding all planes) was 9/11. Then the range between day and night temperatures increased by about 3 degrees across the USA.  Last week, here the nights were noticeably colder and the sky noticeably bluer. Still no ‘wacko’ has suggested that scientists chose ‘over react’ to the volcanic ash and ground planes unnecessarily so that further measurements of the effects of aviation on global warming could be made....

The forecast suggested that there might be rain. The meteorological models were bound to be off after last week, but to be on the safe side, the first walk of the year towards the source of the Thames started with me wearing a waterproof jacket. There were noticeably more blooms than the last walk towards the source.

I was reminded of Nordrhein-Westfalen  where I worked for several years. Immediately before Easter the land was muddy brown, the forest thin and bare of leaves. Post Easter, it seemed instantly the grass sprouted, the trees unfurled their leaves and the countryside transformed. England is always far greener even in the depths of winter.

The river birds were exploring territories for nests.

A coxed pair made its way up stream.

The River and Rowing museum hid behind freshly foliated trees.

The narrow boats were out.

And so were the Gin palaces

The stands and enclosures for the regatta are well under construction.

Piles are being driven into the river bed for the course. We are not quite sure if it’s the left hand or the right hand side where the piles are being driven with the greatest force...

The riverside pub gardens served more than just a few hardy souls.

The more venturous imbibed further downstream.

Enjoying the views of chocolate box house and fresh greens of spring.

Temple Island has started performing its summer functions.

Temple lock is flowering up nicely

Even though the weir is still flowing at a fair rate.             

Such are the peaceful joys of a riverside walk... and the Daily Mail has printed and article in agreement. Actually there must be some mistake because the article is positive and upbeat. Clearly why it stood out!

Ah well, legs stretched, mind calmed, back to writing temp agency and staff bank software

Modern Jive and what I did before.

I’ve been dancing for a couple of years now. I used to spend my spare time teaching people how to fly gliders at the RAF Gliding Centre now based at RAF Halton. Gliding was fun, social and surprisingly energetic. There is  a certain satisfacion of using a small amount of energy to launch a glider and then through native wit and intelligence extending that flight to tens of nimutes or indeed several hours. There is even a fitness component. When gliders did not land accurately: which they usually don’t when be flown by ‘ab-initio‘ students learning under instruction. (‘Ab-initio’ literally means from the start, there’s a quite a bit of multilingual stuff in aviation: ‘aileron’ is apparently French for little wing). As I was saying: when gliders do not land accurately (as opposed to safely which they overwhelmingly do), there is a fair amount of manhandling. This is often aided by some sort of tractor retrieve vehicle. It still means jumping in and out of the glider, turning it around and walking back to the launch point. This could be half a mile across the airfield. It provideds a fair amount of low level exercise. If there is a list of 100 things to do before you die, a flight in a glider will surprise you. Very few people say it turned out how they thought. It is typically far more peaceful. The views far more splendid, fascinating and exhilarating than people expect. This is even true when gliding is even compared to the view and experience of a small powered aeroplane.

When you do anything, if you do it for an extended period of time, it needs to be varied enough to present new aspects. In gliding this can range from flying high above the French Alps as opposed to the UK. It can be flying further than before or to and from different locations. It can be gliding in different designs (from the ealiest type of Primary glider to the much more modern ASW27B). It can also mean flying with different people. Because gliders fly in simpatico with the weather and conditions change from minute to minute each flight is inherently different to the last.

For various reasons after 20 years of enjoyment and many memorable occasions, the thoughts of which still give rise to smiles, I hung up my instuctors rating and started looking for a fresh pastime. I tried a couple of types of dancing, and modern jive was the one that clicked. This was possibly because initially the footwork was not too important. Most likely it was because several very pretty young ladies were prepared to put up with my stumbling attempts and even smiled! Still if young ladies were not prepared to put up with guys making complete fools of themselves, the human race would have died out long ago. Curiously, dancing with ladies in steletto heels occasionally gives rise to being stabbed in the chins by same heals. It has been statistically far more dangerous than flying without the aide of an engine. This is still true when compared  to teaching somone that you know can't fly (yet) or just is learning to fly! 

In dancing, there are different partners, different songs, different moves and different movement.  It’s indoors, so weather does not change. Dancing is a contact sport. So there are inherant dangers apart from stilletos! There is always the challenge of dancing more smoothly and interpreting the music in a more empathic way.  When I started a few years ago the classes at Henley on Thames were given by a couple called Simon and Nicole. There was always an element of humour in their teaching. Simon was (at times?) quite chauvinist, it was all clearly tongue in cheek and good natured.  Unfortunately they left the franchise running Ceroc at Henley. The replacements and their subsequent replacements did not do as well. Henley closed for the foreseeable future last week. There was one major thing going against Henley: the hall is quite echoic. Half way down the hall the beat becomes quite indistinct. The beat, you understand, is quite important for dancing! There was a solution: more speakers placed down the hall. This worked for a couple of weeks. However the guys setting them up didn’t do it properly so it went back to being difficult to follow the music in about half the hall.

I was also lucky at Henley: not only with Simon and Nicole but also because the "taxi dancers" who took what I refered to as the remedial lesson (they refered to it a the repeat beginners class) were charming, appoachable and clearly inerested in helping people to learn to dance.

Simon and Nicole disappeared from my radar for a while, but recently I heard they were doing a classes in Woodley near Reading.  I went along a few weeks ago. It was a lovely atmosphere. The class was intense but in an enjoyably challenging way. They are dancers who clearly care about dancing. Personally I do get the feeling that with a larger franchise such as Ceroc Thames Valley that profit plays a very significant part. It is a business and as a dancer your primary value is the fee on the door. In contrast, with Simon and Nicole the dancing and enjoyment of dancing comes first second and third.  If you like modern Jive, have a few years experience, feel you are doing the same moves in the same soulless way and think that there could be more to it: you will very likely enjoy one of Simon and Nicole’s classes smooth Jive classes tremendously.

Be prepared to feel like you are starting to learn to dance all over again: I do! Let’s face it though: it was fun the first time around, and I believe you may find this is more satisfying. Parking is easy and free. If you Google or Bing the post code: RG5 4JB  the arrow will be a little misleading:

Simon and Nicole also have a page on facebook.