Category Archives: Work

homogenous

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1°C, Morning – heavy snow. later slushy met.

Whiteout sky and ground is now fading towards bland slushy grey. It’s blandly heading towards lake black.
Normally, the little green characters would be running about in this view, maybe they are getting tired of the snow. Maybe they aren’t coming to school today.

Icebound school

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-1 to 4°C, Sun

Gave in: the legs insisted, I rode to work. Days like this are about keeping eyes wide open for possible (black)ice. All was clear until I turned into the road where school is parked. It was glazed, I rode straight, fine. But turning was impossible, so I used shank’s pony to teeter and totter the last one hundred yards.
I was left pondering, somewhat idly, but still…
Why did Walsall & Staffs do all that gritting & salting, but leave out the school? Schools are a magnet for large cars carrying kids short distances from home, needlessly clogging the streets. In a society that regards child safety with fanatical reverence so we are obliged to write risk assessments for the most unlikely hazards like throwing snowballs. Mind you, the pavements were too slippery for walking, roads get gritted, er, except this one. Oh well.
 
Anyway, back to the point; everywhere seemed to have treatement to prevent dangerous ice, but our school was left out. What’s going on. (there, got there in the end).

Of Ice and indescision

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Clear, 4°C

Drove, no Ice could, have ridden, pah!
Sunset- favourable, mornings- lighter and I’m charmed by a delightful tutor group. What can I do to let them know how much I appreciate them?
Chrome:it is really no problem writing a blog entry in Chrome in raw HTML, line breaks, paragraphs and style are obvious really.

7½ mile walk.

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9°C, still, light cloud.

Walk home, Why?: The rear axle of my commuting bike seems to have snapped on the way home. Not sure because it has all seized up and can’t be unscrewed with the tools I carry each day. All I could do is walk. So walk I did; 7½ miles, that would be terrible but for my liking walking and the mild interval in the weather.

Leaden

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9°C, rain.

Drive home from work in a car. The traffic was thick, the rain was thick and the journey – retarded. Looking out through sparkling drips on the windscreen you can see into a  world of lead. The surface of Venus must be like this. Surfaces are shiny with molten lead, wet, gunmetal-grey, and filthy. Well, cool temperatures and only about 15psi. not really crushing, so not Venus then. That place must be hell.

What can I read after "Norwegian Wood"? More Murakami, but which one? (South Of the Border, Sputnik Sweetheart or Wind Up Bird Chronicle)

Murder, rain and rage.

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15°C, rain.

Unsettling: I rode passed a murder scene on the way to work this morning. The Police had closed the road, set up a cordon and a canvas tent stood ominously over a garden. Clearly, something dreadful had happened. Read
Later: I was subject to a road rage assault from a dustbin lorry driver. Had he some upset to recover from that drove him to verbally attack me? My “offence” was trivial, I overtook his lorry climbing to Shire Oak and which put him driving two cars behind me blasting his horn and shouting. He thought I should have stayed behind him. The rest of his thoughts were a jumble of obscenities and fist waving, all incoherently thrown as he stood at a red traffic light.
I remained calm.
Perhaps he was always like that; how unfortunate.

Warn & wet

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13°C, rain but now clear. More forcast with floods.

Ride in anyway today, I can’t sleep with this lack of exercise, just ride then. No punctures. Mornings are getting lighter…
 

A walk in the dark

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6°C, clear, a respite from the rain.

Four attempts at repairing a series of punctures failed this evening after dark. So I set of on the 10 miles walk home after ringing Hannah. She set off on the lookout for me wheeling the bike with flashing lights switched on. She drove past me. I decided to continue because she knows which way I was going. It took another 3 miles before she finally pulled up exasperated. Perhaps I just ought to throw out all of those spare inner-tubes and start with fresh ones, you really need to trust things like that.

3DS Max: Built a model of Chernobyl NPP last night. It was based on the Google-Earth model which I used as a template. The GoogleEarth model was imported into Sketchup and then to 3DS. There was a lot to fix, firstly the model has far too many triangles and second the main chimney was the wrong shape. After tidying up the girder structure that supports the chimney, the poly count was reduced to a tenth of its original. On the right is a photo of the real place, for comparison. I’d like to end up importing that 3D model into FSX flight simulator. To begin with, the model had 12,000 faces, . Now it has far fewer(6,000) and the model more detailed.

Diversion activities…

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8°C, windy, but getting clearer.

or Things to do when you’re writing reports:
  • Boil the kettle for some tea
  • Record LPs for the car sterio
  • Eat an apple
  • Install updates on the computer
  • Patch a punctured inner-tube
  • Fit a new chain to the winter-bike
  • Drink that cup of (now cold) tea
  • Visit the parents
  • Write a report…. go back to the top of the list.

Uggh! Pollution.

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3°C, no Ice,

One week to go and there is a slight respite from the ice. There is fog around, which has really picked up the traffic pollution so strongly that you can taste it. It’s more of an effort to breathe, the air sems more viscous.