Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html

Via the excellent Bad Astromer's blog;

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/24/the-blue-and-the-green/

Well after a week of editing and captioning, I've finally finished messing about with my photos. When I got home I found that I had taken 130 shots but now I have taken out all the shots of empty tarmac, half bikes and blurry messes and that has left me with 84.

I didn't do anything other than pick up the camera at home, make sure I had a couple of sets of batteries and just clicked away, witnessed by the fact that the first shots are black and white as this was the setting that my daughter left it on.

In terms of the camera's performance, this was probably the most impressive shot of the day. This was taken from about half way between the exit of The Esses and the Bonb Hole, before cropping the riders were little more than specs yet there is still plenty of detail.

For some reason, maybe because it was the best sounding bike out there I had loads of shots of the MSS Discovery Kawasaki, Julien Da Costa in particular. I know I'm prejudiced, I have Kawasaki, but there was a real rip in the exhaust note which was completely lacking from the Buildbase Kawasaki.

The most disappointing sounding bike, though I'm sure it's of little concern to Camier and Ellison, are the R1s of Airwaves Yamaha, the firing order makes them sound more like twins than fours.

I rarely knew who I was photographing so I was pleased to have come away with shots of Walker;

And TT heros Steve Plater and Michael Rutter;

These are the remainder of the shots I've kept;

So after the lovely evening yesterday, we have a similarly pleasant morning. It's cool, low seventies I'd guess, just a little breeze and fully overcast. So I can bring the laptop out in the garden, along with toast and coffee, without having to wear a cap to keep the sun off my face, or put factor 50 on my knees and calves to stop them burning and there's not too much glare to stop me seeing the screen.

And I can sit here next to a big bush with lots or yellow flowers and plenty of bees, and wonder what it's called, not that I care all that much.

Like this one are wonderful, even after returning from a shopping session at Tesco. It's fairly cool, but not enough to need more than tee shirt and shorts, the ground is still wet from a recent heavy shower and the garden smells rise into the air, in the distance summer lightening flickers soundlessly. I think I'd better go back outside and get some more, whilst it lasts!

For finally making your NASN/ESPN America subscribers happy! By going tits and saving most of us the monthly subscription to your piss poor offering solely for the purpose of getting ESPN America, which is now part of Sky News and Events and if you don't have this particular package on Sky it costs just £1 per month to add it. I'm not pimping Sky, I'd like to make that abundantly clear, but this is money I already pay to Sky and like the separate subscription I used to have to pay, in my pocket and not in Setanta's.

Had to drag myself in to the Jobcentre this morning for a review. Bit of a waste of everybody's time, reviewed the Jobseekers agreement and the interviewer concluded that it was not in need of updating, the letter 'inviting' me to the review said they would want to look at documentation indicating that I was actively looking for work, so I dug out all the letters and took the laptop with all the email and application confirmations; they didn't bother looking at any of it. I'm glad I didn't go the trouble and expense of printing everything off to take with me. It seems that I now have to go in every week and on the off weeks we will do job searches. I have doubts about that, they came up with just one possibility, 13 weeks work max, the money is average at best and, as I know the company, the vehicles are junk. So won't be pursuing that one, I feel I'm much better off being at home and looking for something better.

Had an excellent day yesterday, ended up being much later than expected in getting to the circuit after spending three hours chatting with the friends who were rumoured to be having a 'surprise' party tonight and it turns out to be nothing of the sort. They are on my way over to Snetterton and I spent the morning drinking coffee and talking. Got to the circuit at about 12.30 and the first item on the agenda was to find a loo after all the coffee and got shown to a portaloo. Ah, the day has started downhill then? Well no, it was clean and completely odour free, what it would be like at the end of Sunday might be another question? When I eventually found a spot to have a look at the action, at the Bomb Hole, within three minutes the session came to an end for a 45 minute break for lunch. Which gave me a chance to have a wander around and see more of the circuit. I settled on a place about half way down the Revett Straight and waited for the action to restart. Next out were the Supersport boys and as the session went on I made my way down the Revett Straight towards the braking area for The Esses in anticipation of the Superbike session. This was just eyepopping, watching as the big bikes went from about 170 mph down to about 50-60 mph, I guess, in order to take The Esses. I then went over the bridge to have a look at The Esses from the other side and the run on to the Bomb Hole. Even though it was free practice, plenty of riders went straight on and made use of the run off area.

At the end of the session I went over to the back of the pit lane and it was really nice to see some of the top riders, past and present, wandering around. Niall Mackenzie, John Reynolds, Paul Young and the man of the moment, Senior TT winner, Steve Plater. Leon Camier got collared for a few photos on his paddock bike and seemed very happy to do so. At the end of the pit lane I got a closer look at the some of the Superbikes as the came back from scrutineering. There were a couple of downsides to the day, being practice day many of the concession stands were either not fully set up or not open and this meant limited burger offerings, very limited, and the one I got was crap.

There were lots of good viewing places, at least good on a practice day, the braking point down Revett, The Esses, inside and outside, the Bomb Hole and another spot gave a good view of Russell's which leads onto the Senna Straight past the pits. But very little of the viewing areas are banked and with many more thousands of spectators on the circuit for race day you may have to get there early, get a good spot and stick with it for the rest of the day and I would not be happy doing that.

I took a load of photographs which I haven't loaded on to the PC yet, but I know that there are many of empty tarmac as the time the little Canon takes to write to the memory card became an issue and it only released the shutter when it had finished the write and not necessarily when I pressed the button. It's never been a problem before, but a fast moving bike could be at the next corner before it had finished it's housekeeping and was ready for another shot.

Long before this particular post I made it clear that I'm not a fan of A's General Manager, Billy Beane or outfielder Matt Holliday and a piece on Baseball Tonight seems to suggest that the combination is less favourable to the A's than I had thought. I had posted previously that I thought Holliday would struggle in Oakland and as we approach the halfway point of the season average is down 40 points, slugging down 100 points, HR project at less than 25 and RBI around 80, so about league average for a corner OF, but the A's are paying a substantial premium and the Baseball Tonight piece suggests we could be paying even more. I thought that the worst case was wave Holliday bye-bye at the end of the season, couple of first round picks coming back, thank you very much. But not so. Apparently the A's would have to offer Holliday arbitration and, if he accepted, which he would in all likelihood, we could then be on the hook for $15-$19m next season! And if we trade him, Buster Olney suggests that we would have to eat some of this years salary if we expected to get anything worthwhile back by way of prospects.

I felt that bringing Holliday to Oakland was a crock from the outset, even if he had reproduced something approaching career numbers it wasn't going to be a good return on the expenditure without may other unlikely pieces falling into place. They haven't, Holliday hasn't produced, is currently hoovering up $13m and we're in 4th. Not wanting to belabour the obvious too much, but we could be in 4th with a Gatorade cooler in left field.

I will be really interested to see what Beane can achieve as it would seem that he and the team are backed into a very uncomfortable corner.

I need an excuse to get out of a surprise party, not mine you understand, I think everyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with me knows far better than to do that to me. It's not that I dislike the guy, under any other circumstances I would be happy to have a beer with him and I have no knowledge of whether he likes them or not but I cannot abide them and I would feel uncomfortable being associated with one in any capacity. I know that the trick cyclists call this projection, but I don't care what name it has, it is what it is and I want a reason to have nothing to do with it.

But I can't think of one.

Thinking about going to the practice day for the British Superbike round from Snetterton tomorrow. Snetterton is not my favourite circuit, from watching on the TV anyway, but the Cadwell round, the one I would really like to go to, is over the August Bank Holiday weekend and I really don't want to deal with all the traffic and, who knows, I might have a job by then? Motor Sport Vision claim to have made many improvements to the circuit since they acquired it so we'll see tomorrow. The weather forecast is not too special, light rain, so even more stuff to be packed for the trip. The day kicks off at 9.00 but I don't think I'm going to be there by then but hopefully in time for the Superbike's fist practice starting at 10.20.

Please see, at the link below, an open letter to leader of the BNP. I just received a retweet request on twitter and thought it ought to have as wide a circulation as possible and whilst I may not be able to do a lot in that regard, I'm happy to do whatever I can as I would not want The Royal British Legion mistakenly associated with that trash.

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/news/general/an-open-letter-to-nick-griffin-chairman-of-the-bnp-and-mep-for-north-west-england

I thought this was quite interesting, I don't ever recall seeing a rainbow quite like this, maybe I should look up more often? I imagine that it's a property of the ice crystals in the high cloud but if so, why have I not noticed something similar before now?

Could very well be a case of 'be careful what you wish for'? Setanta sucks big style, always has done and, in what is looking like an increasingly limited future, probably always will do. It continues to appear very analogue in a digital age and if it sinks under the financial burden of ripping a piece of Premiership football away from Murdoch, well so be it. I couldn't care less, could I? Well, maybe. Reports suggest that ESPN may pick up the Premiership contract and if this happens, unless they are going to make every game pay-per-view, whatever channel they put it on is likely to be bundled with ESPN America and I am still going to end up subsidising the Premiership. Maybe BT Vision will step in and take it off satellite all together? I could live with that!

Ultimately, if it is curtains for Setanta, there won't be too many tears shed by the subscribers I suspect which is damnation enough when you consider that they were trying to break the Murdoch hegemony in sports broadcasting and were still unable to garner any affection from their viewers.

I think I may have put the control unit in the wrong place? It's on a shelf below the TV and I seem to spend as much time looking at it as I do the TV. I shouldn't be too surprised I suppose, when I got a car with a continuous read out of the fuel consumption I got a little obsessive about watching that. I guess neither is a bad thing, as long as I remember to watch the road as well.

I also downloaded some data on energy consumption of many consumer products and now have a spreadsheet which attempts to predict energy use for the house and it suggests about 10,000 kWh per year, which is way above average for this part of the country though I couldn't find anywhere with data broken down by type of residence and number of occupants. This consumption level may be down to not being on mains gas so cooking and part of the heating, one 2.5 kW storage heater, being electric. The hub recorded 28 kWh yesterday and my spreadsheet suggests about 28 kWh per day, but this is averaged over the whole of the year and I would expect usage of another 3-4 kWh during the winter, so the spreadsheet maybe not as accurate as I first thought. But as least I now have something against which I can continue to make comparisons.

I've completed the installation of all the kit that came with the Duet energy monitoring system, all the remote sensors are now paired and the range seems adequate for a 4 bed semi as they are all talking to the control unit. The furthest from the control unit is the 'pipe bug' which is a couple of sensors which monitor the temperature of the water flowing through the central heating and hot water pipes. The central heating is not in use at the moment of course and i seem to have a bit of a rat's nest of piping around the hot water tank so I have no idea if I have connected the sensors to the correct pipes. Not sure how this is going to be used anyway as I have not been asked to enter any details of my heating system?

Wasn't sure where to start the 'plug bug' units which monitor specific sockets and anything attached to it, I have pit one on a combo of coffee maker and kettle as I think the coffee maker keeps some water hot all the time and I would like to know what this is costing? The other I have put on the fridge and I will probably put the other on the freezer even though I'm not sure there is a lot I can do to make savings on these; I always check that the fridge is not set too cold and -18 is the manufacturers recommended setting for the freezer.

One facility which I had though the system would offer, but appears not to, is the ability, via the control unit and the 'plug bugs' to shut down a socket on a schedule. You can shut down the 'plug bugs' via the control unit but it has to be done manually.

Done the first bit of the Energy Hub install, set up the parameters for the control unit, date time, rates, Economy 7 times (which Southern Electric don't seem to go out of their way to publish on their web site???) etc. Paired up the device which clips around the mains live lead and attached it in the meter cupboard. Came back to check what it was showing? 8Kw/h!!! Arrgh!! It's a fairly quiet time of day, I'm watching the TV, my son is upstairs on his X-Box, there are a couple of PCs running, that should be it. No one cooking, heating not on, so where is all the juice going? Has someone tapped in to my juice and smelting aluminium?? Well, no. My daughter hasn't gone out as I thought and is is using the power shower. It's settled down to about 1.3Kw/h. Panic over.

Back in the middle of March I signed up for a trial of a trick energy monitor and today a box of bits finally turned up. Many, many bits; batteries, thermistors, 'Power Bricks', cables, SD card, SD card reader, Duet display assembly and some things called 'plug bugs', 'meter bug' and 'pipe bug'. And a surprisingly thin owners manual. The deal was that I got the whole shooting match for 25% of retail, still £75, and would use it for 12 months, possibly longer, and let them have the data from using the system.

I've never engaged in anything like this before but it all seems a little disorganised. After stumping up the moolah I heard nothing, other than a confirmation of the transaction, so after three weeks I emailed the company to ask where the gear was? I was advised that they were have production problems and that they were having to source a component from a different supplier and that I should have the equipment before the end of June. Which is fair enough, I guess it's a pre-production model and I have it on good authority that shit does in fact happen, but how difficult is it to keep the trial participants up to date? An email address was taken at sign up and creation of a distribution list is email 101. That was about three weeks ago and the next thing that happens is a box of stuff turns up this morning, no advice that it's been dispatched and more surprising is that I still have no idea how to submit the data that I collect into the trial. Oh well, I've got what I want and I guess, at some point, they will tell me what they want!

Looks like I'm going to be occupied for quite a while with the initial set up, but a little lunch first.

Here is an article which details a few of the engraving quirks on the Cup itself which contribute to legendary nature of, maybe, the most prized trophy in team sport.

http://vyous.com/sports/nhl/redwings/2009/06/03/maple-leafs39-39ass-man39-etched-in-stanley-cup-lore---the-gazette-montreal

The screen on my N95 turned up it's toes last week, I think everything else was working, lights were showing and there was some beeping going on in response to pressing buttons but it showed me nothing on the screen. Came down one morning and thought the battery had expired overnight, hadn't been showing any problems prior to going phut.

Now I'm not a great fan of '3' as a mobile carrier, their coverage is patchy, their online 'My 3' presence sucks and phoning them on any issue can be a little vexing but the deal I have with them is at a very good price and their repair service is as good as it gets, I know as I have had to use it on a number of occasions. I rang to arrange this repair on Friday last week, at first they tried to get me to take the phone into Carphone Warehouse, interestingly not one of their own shops, and I knocked that option back as I'm not prepared to deal with that bunch of clowns under any circumstances so they said they would send me a prepaid envelope, which turned up on Saturday, I put it into the post office on Monday and I have my phone back this morning, so less than 48 hours away. Can't complain about that.