Grace VanderWaal's Tiny Desk Concert is lovely.
Rookie DdRT Error. How not to tie yourself to the top of a tree.
I got stuck up a tree on Sunday. Kinda. I was with somebody who descended and resolved it, but it was a learning-point - particularly when I usually climb alone...
I had ascended with a doubled rope, and then hauled up the tail and dropped it elsewhere to get it out of the way of my climbing partner. The way I did that was to pull up the tail incrementally and allow the taken-up bight to descend down where I wanted it to go. What happens if you do that is you end up holding the free end with the weight of all the slack rope pulling it down. The natural inclination then is to drop it. On this occasion the weight of the rope pulled the end with enough force to cause it to wrap completely around a limb much lower down, leaving it as in the image.
All seemed well until I tried to descend DdRT, when the standing end of the rope would not come up, thus preventing me from descending at all - and preventing me, therefore, from untangling the tail. To compound the problem, the single wrap meant that gravity would pull any slack out of the standing end, essentially acting as a progress-capture device, allowing me only to ascend.
Lessons learned:
This is why you should climb with a partner. Thanks Jos for descending and unwrapping my rope.
Don't drop the bight. You are probably ok to allow it to descend until you have the tail-end (though take care! The alternative is to bag the rope as you pull it up...) but then feed the tail down where you want it until all the slack follows it down and is deployed. This takes the energy out of the system, reducing the possibility of wrapping.
If you do get in this situation, anchor the working end to a limb near you and climb down SRT to unwrap the rope. If you have a throwline with you you can tie a retrievable anchor and not have to climb back up, but if not the extra climb serves you right!
Climb with a backup system. I always have a hand-jammer and foot-ascender, but I've added a gri-gri to my always-on harness-kit. With the progress-capture effect of this wrap it would have been tricky to tie a munter or super-munter for descending, and that wouldn't have been great for stopping at the wrap anyway.
Stay in school kids!
Parkrun and the NHS
Parkrun celebrated 70 years of the NHS last Saturday. Lots of people were in scrubs and so on. Nobody beats the person to Kelly's right in this Guardian picture though...!
How Technology Keeps Us Hooked.
This is a great article in The Conversation.
“Digital technologies, such as social networks, online shopping, and games, use a set of persuasive and motivational techniques to keep users returning. These include “scarcity” (a snap or status is only temporarily available, encouraging you to get online quickly); “social proof” (20,000 users retweeted an article so you should go online and read it); “personalisation” (your news feed is designed to filter and display news based on your interest); and “reciprocity” (invite more friends to get extra points, and once your friends are part of the network it becomes much more difficult for you or them to leave).”
At Sprydon Beacon with Jos
Showed Jos the enormous pines up Sprydon Beacon today. An arduous climb with views and tranquility that more than make up for the sweat.
Mashup Not Shit Shocker
Mashups are not usually my thing, being the musical equivalent of puns without the benefit of being sometimes funny. However, this is great.
Bath Skyline Parkrun
This is Nigeria
Oh wow...
Lyrics, Vocals & Recording: Folarinde 'Falz' Falana | Video Director: Iyobosa 'Geezy' Rohoboth | Video Producer: Wande Thomas | Internet: David Evans-Uhegbu | Executive: Sidney Sule, Femisoro Ajayi & Folarinde Falana | Transmitted by Bahdguys Records through Jungle Entertainment Ventures | Originally by Childish Gambino | Falz in 'This is Nigeria!'
Why America is the World's First Poor Rich Country
America fills me with utter terror. The absolute lack of interest the state takes in the well-being of its citizens, and the total private ownership of every service that would provide the foundation of a caring society wishing to invest in those citizens (cough... healthcare) leads to an undervaluing of human life and an over-emphasis on individual financial success. The actual ability for an individual to become successful (which in American English is synonymous with wealthy) is a dream bordering on delusion. The American Dream. As Cory Doctorow said in 2014:
“Human beings are the gut flora of immortal, transhuman corporations.”
This is chilling in its ten-word horrific truth.
This article in Eudaimonia expands nicely on the economic system that drives this paradoxical move towards poverty-despite-wealth.
“All the things that really elevate people’s quality of life — healthcare, finance, education, transport, housing, and so on — have come to consume such a large share of the average household’s income that they have little left to save, invest, or spend on anything else. And what’s worse, while the basics of life have seen massive inflation, wages and incomes (not to mention savings and benefits and safety nets and opportunities) for most have stagnated. The result is an economy — and a society — that’s collapsing... Predatory capitalism coupled with total economic mismanagement of social investments has made the basics of life ruinously unaffordable.”
Read it all here.
RTCUK Sleepover 2018
The Recreational Tree Climbing UK annual Sleepover is always good and, as usual, failed miserably to disappoint.
By no means everybody. Lots of shirts were in evidence. Kerry, Lawrence, and I had nice high hammocks...
This is the canopy above my bed...
The dawn chorus was amazing, but that early in the morning I was all zipped up and snuggled down. Later on (7:30 - very respectable) I recorded this:
This is how to get out of bed in the morning. It does rather mean the route to bed the night before is a right pain in the arse.
Treetop lodgings
Looking forward to tonight's sleep beneath the stars. And above the ground...
Rachael Talibart's Amazing Seascapes
Newhaven never looked better. Rachel Talibart uses superfast shutter speeds and telescopic lenses to pick out these dramatic solid-looking waves.
“Growing up in southeast England, Rachael Talibart spent several weeks every summer on her father’s sailboat, exploring the coastlines of France and the Netherlands. These family voyages were meant as a vacation, although Talibart never had much fun—she was a “shockingly bad sailor” who was almost constantly seasick. Because her nausea was worse inside the boat, she spent most of her time alone in the cockpit, looking out over the ocean.
’I spent ages staring at the waves,” she remembers. “I used to imagine creatures in the sea.’”
Found on Wired. See them all there.
Wakazono
Can it ever make sense to talk about 'art' or 'craftsmanship' in the context of a computer-machined hunk of aluminium?
Yes!
Designed by Nendo:
“Firstly, grooves of 5mm deep, 1.8mm width were carved in constant intervals on the vase’s exterior, resulting in two different levels on the surface. The first pattern was then carved 2mm deep from the external surface, while the second pattern was carved 6mm deep from the deeper immersed surface.
This calculated process results in the creation of a four-layer surface with different depths, allowing the patterns to appear visually according to the angle in which the vase is viewed. The dimensions and proportions of this process were carefully examined and tested due to the effects of deviations; if the initial grooves are too deep, the dark casted shadows will visually block the pattern, conversely if it is too shallow, the two patterns will blend together without a distinct separation.
By using multi axis machinery, some grooves were carved to 1.8mm in width, and only 1mm thickness at the edge. These narrow dimensions cause complications, as the grooves can easily break due to clogging of scraping material. Furthermore, if the cutting speed is too high, the temperature of the cutter rises, and can cause metal distortions. Accordingly, the production’s duration and dimensions were carefully adjusted, and milling was done gradually in 0.5 mm deep layers.
This delicate process originated from a 100kg block of aluminum, that after 7 months, resulted in a 15kg vase.”
Man Cave
Right now you absolutely cannot get me out of the man cave.
The midst of GCSEs
I am so impressed at the sheer graft our kids are putting into their revision.
Up a tree in the sun
Another brilliant climb in the wonderful weather. A huge (and very familiar) London Plane in King George V Playing Fields in Exeter. Just great!
Brilliant Steganography
FontCode is an ingenious system of tiny font adaptations to hide messages in printed (or screen-text) documents. It would be perfect for watermarking, for example, while the video demonstration uses it as an elegant (though undetectable?!) alternative to QR codes.
from Wired.
Mohini and Marco
Mohini Dey is the most exciting bass player in the world at the moment, and if a phone-quality video of her with Marco Minneman is all I can get, it's all I am going to watch. This is just great.
More...?! OK.
More wisteria.
Shut up. You're just jealous.
Top Cache Award
I just received two more Top Cache awards for my treetop geocaches. I'm absurdly pleased with all of these. Thanks to Amberel for his awards, and his craftsmanship!