I’ve heard this a few times over the years, and it always bamboozles me. Yesterday it cropped up again, when someone was referring to an immersion heater, and said:

It’s more efficient if you leave it on all day – that way it’s just topping it up. It uses more electricity if you let it cool down and then have to heat it all the way back up again.

I’ve heard similar stuff about leaving the central heating running all day too. My questions are – why do people believe such drivel? Why is it so widely perpetuated? And actually how would you explain this to someone in a way they’d understand? If you just though about mentioning heat flux, then that’s not going to get you anywhere, but does anyone have a good analogy or explanation I can use in future?

I occasionally say things that barely make sense. Here’s two from the last two weeks:

This weekend is the first weekend since last weekend

I’ve got my fingers in so many pies that I just don’t have enough fingers to put two of them in this one

And here’s something from the fridge this morning, when I was searching for breakfast:

Damn right you do!

It’s busy days for me, as usual. Two weeks ago I was presenting and running a workshop at the Society of Cartographers Annual Summer School conference in Aberdeen. Flying back from that meant that I missed the awards ceremony for the British Cartographic Society’s annual awards – at which I was commended for the work on OpenCycleMap.org – there’s now a certificate hanging above the TV in our lounge, but I’ll see how long that one lasts. After all that, I spent a week on holiday in Wales – driving through some of the worst weather conditions I’ve experienced on the Friday after work. Most of the week was pretty soggy too, although there are plenty of paths in the area that need mapping. Interestingly (well, maybe only to me) we were in the area of the hill shading teaser that I made a few months ago – staying just off the top, and spending most days walking around there. As Richard said at the time, it’s a pretty nice area.

Whilst I’ve been back, I’ve been to the bar (once or twice), another mapping party, a Bourbon Blue band night, some climbing at the Westway, and was even interviewed by one of our German OSMers who came over to London. Next up, I’m off to FOSS4G in Cape Town tomorrow night for a week – now if only someone would come up with a more pleasant (and environmentally friendly) way to travel there… If you’re in Cape Town and fancy meeting up – give me a shout!

Wow, it’s been really busy for the last few weeks. And as ever, the busier I am and the more fun I’m having, the less you get to hear about it here.

I’ve been to see some good music over the past few weeks – drum and bass with Nia in Camden, good old pub basement bands with Linnie and Jude, and an eclectic mix of choral stuff this time starring Nia. The latter two, plus a barbeque in deepest surburbia with Joth and Em and a whole Sunday of doing absolutely nothing rounded out a nice weekend. And I went climbing last week too, nice to find I can still climb 6bs without much practise.

The cycling has tailed off a little, apart from mammoth weekend rides with Dave. Mammoth in timespan if not in average speed that is – a fifty-two mile ride takes all day when the first 30 miles involve following footpaths around London even if the last 20 miles takes less than an hour to ride directly home! Still, we’re hopefully moving offices at work next week so I’ll be back commuting via bike instead of sauntering across Putney bridge in the mornings so that’ll get the fitness up in time to enjoy the summer weather.

Anyway, busy busy busy as ever. My thoughts on the new mayor and all that jazz can wait for some other time (or you can read Nia’s thoughts on the matter and pretend I wrote them!)

I think the most important thing for this evening is just to get typing, and worry about the content later. It’s not particularly obvious to me just how long 350 words is as an essay, nor how long it would take to write seven of them; the last time I wrote a word-counted work was my final year project, back in 2003. So you could say I am slightly out of practice. It’s also better to get into the swing of things without having to concentrate on what is being said – something that I can do with touch typing. But rearranging the desk is something I’m doing, and hard to tell whether it’s of value – arranging it may make me more comfortable (and better the distraction occurring whilst the content is irrelevant), or it may actually just be a way of satisfying my avoidance tendencies. Ho hum.

What’s clear is that my room is far from tidy; my desk is no exception. So far moving a couple of books off my desk reminds me that there is an enormous pile on the floor beside me, which is getting in the way. Perhaps these would be better off under the desk, but there lies half a tent, the other half of which lies under my sleeping bag on the other side of the room, there to remind me that it could really do with a wash some time. There’s a laundrette at the end of the road – my dislike of laundrettes not withstanding, it’s still best to wash sleeping bags in a large drum rather than squeezing them into a domestic washer. But to do that as a distraction would be foolish – the lightning has added to the misery of a November day of cold rain, and wandering down the road is too obviously not working. Popping down stairs to return three books to the shelves is a convenient distraction and helps reduce the pile – and I’ll add a reluctance to aggravate my wrist pains (thankfully absent for a few months now) as a lame add-on excuse for a break.

A successful mission, and not even a chiding from my flatmates (who are both very aware of my avoidance techniques, my having been caught in an especially lame fashion earlier hanging around in the kitchen with my hands in my pockets).

Flash – the gap around my blinds is lit up, white against the warm light I’m working by, the thunder rumbles, and a few seconds later the rain pelts against the windows harder. I’ll open the blinds in case I can spot a fork straight on.

More desk tidying, to get my folder against the wood. I don’t use my desk at home for working much – it’s a giant place to leave mail, some opened, some not, until I get round to dealing with it. A staging post for bills to be filed, and envelopes to be recycled. But I’m not going to work on them now – again, to obvious, and avoidance doesn’t necessarily mean doing something else, just not doing what you’re trying to do. So the pile is straightened and moved over to the drawers, and set as a task for later in the week. I’ve been letting the state of the room slide for a while now – too many weekends away, too few things to practice avoidance on.

The lights are off, and the blinds open, but the rain has slackened and the clouds are low. The chances of a good lightning spot are low, and there’s only been the two flashes so far.

Ten o’clock approaches, and I’m up early again tomorrow. Time for a word check. 623 words. Ha, easy, I’ll be done in no time.

Tomorrow.

It’s probably about time I write some non-openstreetmap stuff!

Last weekend was the Dusk ’til Dawn overnight mountain bike race around Thetford Forest. 844 competitors in a couple of hundred teams (with some idiots doing a 12 hour solo race, and more sensible people like us doing relays in teams of four), and a course just under 12 miles long winding around the forest – some single track (fun, but tricky for overtaking), some fire road (i.e. forestry track), and the occaisional “bomb hole” thrown in for good measure. We came 32nd in our class (full timings) with me doing the first, seventh and final laps of the night.

Continue reading →

So the weather has been pretty grotty recently. It’s not been long since we were all out getting sunburnt and looking forward to a long, hot summer – but it’s July and it feels like autumn is drawing in. The graph that the BBC recently put up showing the monthly rainfall as a percentage of normal certainly backs up the feeling that summer came early. (The eagle-eyed scientists amongst you will, of course, realise that extra rain in the summer, when it is normally dry, leads to a much higher bar on that chart than the equivalent extra rain during an already-rainy winter month, but nevermind).

What is has done is made cycling to and from work distinctly unpleasant, but thankfully this week it’s been mainly on the way home. On Monday after climbing it was dark and heavy rain, and I was completely soaked (and had a crick in my neck from trying to shy away) by the time I got home. Today was similar – lighter rain, but a strong headwind meant I had to pedal downhill coming over Wandsworth Bridge.

Tuesday was ten times worse. After waiting until a heavy downpour had passed at around 5pm, I went to the DramSoc first-Tuesday barnight. Cycling home at about 10pm, I decided to ride down the Kings Road, to avoid the underpass at Chelsea Harbour. Just after the turning off down Wandsworth Bridge Road there was an unexpected giant puddle across the road – the streets had been dry up to there. Cycling into it at speed, I simply lifted my feet up and coasted through about 3 inches of water down the middle of the road.

Moments later approaching Parson’s Green there was another giant puddle, but as I went in I quickly realised it was much, much deeper, and seconds later it was above my axles and my feet were hardly clearing the surface on the upswing. As an oncoming taxi passed in the middle, I tried duck the wall of water (a bit like this guy), but failed miserably. By the time I made it to dry tarmac, I felt like I’d been swimming in it. Which isn’t far off, come to think of it.

Pictures from the downpour made it to the BBC news, which went some way to explaining the size of the puddles!

Almost a year ago, Ant and I walked the Pennine Way. More recently, Josh Roberts pointed me towards an article he has written for USA Today about it. You can read the full article online.

Pity I can’t even get my own age right – gah! Thanks go to Josh for quoting me in his article. I’m sure Ant is still kept awake by recurring thoughts of my terrible (and slightly repetitive) singing.

I’m back at work now, which is unfortunate but somewhat expected. I took some time off work to extend my Easter break out to a full fortnight, and had some fun doing things I wanted to do.

I got a new phone, for one thing. My old one wouldn’t do left and right button presses, and stopped sending text messages too. When I couldn’t figure out why, and went to the Orange shop on a nice and quiet Monday morning, they just gave me a new phone instead, and lowered my bills as part of the bargain. Nice approach to problem solving.

I bought a new camera bag – a camera rucksack really. It’s really nice, and really tough too. I was getting fed up carrying all the bits and bobs split between my old camera bag and my daysack – I’ve bought a lot more stuff since I was given the bag a few years ago! I’ve already worn it whilst climbing and roughed around with it – I’ll probably review it properly at some point.

I went climbing in the Peaks with a few people – but the photos from that are nice enough to deserve their own posting (to follow).

I did lots of other things too – cycling on the Thames, going to the Tate Modern, going picnicing and drinking and openstreetmapping and all kinds of fun stuff. I need to find a seasonal job, like one of these work hard for 6 months and we’ll give you six months off type things – I’ve got too many things I want to do, and two days each weekend just isn’t enough!