Every Day is a School Day

 I've had a couple of funny experiences at the climbing gym. Firstly I split my pants open. I was reaching out wide with my leg and there was the sound and sensation of tearing fabric around my nether regions. I got down from the wall quickly and examined myself. Nothing was on display. It was my underwear which was destroyed, the trousers and my dignity were mostly intact. I'm proud of the achievement, I think it means that my hip flexibility and strength are improving.

Secondly, I was working on a climb at the same time as a group of students and their coach were working on the same climb. One of the students showed me how much further than me she could get. The coach tried to make me feel better by giving me hints, advice and encouragement. For a few minutes I joined the coaching session even though I hadn't booked, I wasn't paying for it, and I wasn't supposed to be part of it. It was the girls under 12 (advanced) group.

Richard "I know my place" B

Conic Section

 Children often ask their maths teacher when they'll use what they're being taught. For me it's so that I can waste a huge proportion of my weekend worrying about concepts that have already been explored centuries ago.

Inside you there are two wolves. One wolf sees interesting maths problems in everyday life. The other wolf likes solving maths problems.

I'm currently down a worse rabbit hole than recognising bad kerning https://xkcd.com/1015/ There are many things that artists get wrong when they paint the moon and I've learned to spot a load of them. I started wondering what shape the terminator (the line between the light side and the dark side) should be and it got a little out of hand.

The moon is a sphere (to all intents and purposes) and the sun is a point source of light (for all intensive porpoises). What shape does the illuminated section have? The limb (the outside edge) is a semicircle. My contention is that the terminator is another arc but I needed to prove it.

Let's say that the outside edge of the moon is described by 𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1

(yes, the coordinate system of my painting is based on the plane of the ecliptic). Let's say that the sun and the painter are looking at the moon from 60° apart so the terminator will be half way between the limb and the centre line. I know that the 1/2 seems arbitrary but if the maths works out I'll go back and replace it with a Greek letter. This will be true all the way up and down the moon because horizontal slices of the moon are all circles, they're all similar, just different sizes. So the question becomes what curve is half way between 𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1 and the vertical line 𝑥 = 0 ?

𝑥₁ = 𝑥⁄2
𝑥 = 2𝑥₁
𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1
(2𝑥₁)² + 𝑦² = 1
4𝑥₁² + 𝑦² = 1

Does that look like it describes a circle? No it doesn't, that's something to do with an ellipse. An ellipse! Hardly are those words out when an image out of maths books troubles my sight. If the moon is a peeled orange (you don't get poetic metaphor like that from amateurs like Yeats and Tennyson) the terminator is the shape of one of the segment lines and they're circles around the orange but angled towards us somewhat.That's the same as saying it's the shape made by cutting a cylinder at an angle and that's the same as saying it's the shape made by cutting a cone at an angle and that's the same as saying it's an ellipse.

So to do the terminator on a moon in your painting you'd seem to need to trace round an ice-cream cone that's been cut off at an angle. Or a traffic cone for larger works.

Richard "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise" B

Bedford Autodrome

 You and I are not the same.

I went on a track day with my boss. It's a long, hot and tiring day and by the end of it we were both tired and sweaty and our hair was moulded to our crash helmets. He magically produced a clean freshly ironed shirt. I did not. He untousled his hair. I did not. He put on good quality sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes. I put on a frayed and faded baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.Ninety minutes later we arrived at our motel and sadly there was a mirror in reception. During the drive he had seemingly been further restored while I had continued to wilt.

When we checked in he looked like a stylish and successful gent. I looked like an elderly and frail vagrant who would need to be disinfected and washed before he was allowed into the restaurant.

Richard "quick shower" B

Film Review

At the weekend I saw The Odyssey in the cinema and (like book Odysseus) I have the hubris to assume you might be interested to hear what I thought of it.

Not much. It's not terrible. The best I can say is that it's three hours long and I wasn't bored. William Shakespeare seems to have been able to review the film more than four hundred years before it was made. "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

It's a Chrisopher Nolan film so the sound should be bad, but in this case it's abhorrent. He also seems to have misunderstood who Odysseus was, but I think I know why. I very much like the idea that at some point some papers got muddled up between a beverage company planning a restaurant guide and a tyre company getting in to racing. We now have the Red Bull racing team and the Michelin restaurant guide (joke courtesy of https://xkcd.com/3269/)

A few years ago Nolan worked on Barbie Oppenheimer about the father of the atomic bomb. I suspect that some of his research notes from Oppenheimer got muddled in with the Odyssey because in the film Odysseus is riddled with guilt and regret, whereas he should have been boasting about being the craftiest general ever. It's his hubris and boasting that gets him cursed by Poseidon and makes the whole journey back to Ithaca rather arduous.

The gods, the sex, the beauty and the colour are missing from the film, so it seems like a very boring world for a fantastical story.

Richard "Scouring of the Shire Suitors" B

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

I recently said that I was disappointed with the effectiveness of my popcorn cannon. One of my friends suggested that the problem might be the moisture content of the kernels, and I think she might be right.

I've now got yet another project I never wanted. This time running a series of experiments with a popcorn cannon using kernels at different levels of moisture content. I do have a humidor that doesn't get much use, but the hygrometer is broken and the louvred box of damp sponge is missing. I plan to "age" the kernels at different moisture levels in the humidor then try popping them, and keeping records.

Richard "This popcorn tastes like a Romeo y Juilieta Number 3" B

Holiday Plans

I need to stop finding out that new interesting things are possible. I found out recently that a skilled blacksmith can hammer enough energy into a cold piece of mild steel that it will start a fire. As well as all the other things I want to achieve in my lifetime I now want to hammer a piece of steel hard enough and long enough to start a fire. My noodle arms and terrible fitness mean that this will be pretty much impossible.

This weekend I found out that in the 1800s there was a lead mining boom in South Dakota and a lot of Cornish were recruited for their mining experience. The important bit is that you can still buy a Cornish Pasty in South Dakota. Now I'm going to have to find the holiday allowance, money and accommodation to fly to the Dakotas just to buy a pasty.

Richard "to do list" B

My Lobster is too Buttery

 I'd like to say these are "nice problems to have" or "very middle class problems" but I fear the truth is that the problems which beset me are quite unusual. It's my birthday and there have been two disappointments.

I bought myself a popcorn cannon, and while it will support 8 bar and survive an explosive decompression, it takes forever to build pressure and it doesn't actually pop many of the kernels.

On top of that my chiffonier has a silk lined cutlery drawer, which now has a moth infestation.

Richard "I know just how you feel" B

Plagueis

 The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some would consider unnatural. I'm going to argue that one of the abilities conferred by the light side of the force is to make flight school exams easier.

If I were a fighter pilot I'd have probably learned to fly motor gliders, then a Chipmonk, then a turboprop trainer like a Tucano. Then a fast jet trainer like a Hawk, and then finally transferred to whatever type I fly, like a Typhoon.

Luke Skywalker probably learned to fly the hover car as a child and we know that he was competent in the T-16. Shortly after he arrives at the secret rebel base on Yavin IV he is flying an X-Wing by himself on a combat mission. This will be the first time he's operated outside of atmosphere, and the first time he's used an astromech droid.It will have been cut to maintain the runtime of the film, but I expect there was a training montage where Luke Skywalker completed the type conversion course from T-16 to X-Wing. I imagine scenes of him with a folder full of papers and notes and a stack of flight manuals. Him in a classroom with an instructor at a blackboard. Him sitting in the back seat of the rare training variant of the X-Wing with a large sign that says "Solo from front seat only". Him taking an exam. Him demonstrating some maneuver with a model X-Wing. Him sitting on the front of the X-Wing trainer.

All this must have been done in the time it took the rebels to decode the stolen plans and plan their assault. He clearly did very well in flight school.

Richard "always fade out of a montage" B

Recovery Drink

 A couple of weeks ago I climbed the hardest route I've ever done. It was a crack climb, so you're holding a good proportion of your weight by jamming your hand into a gap and making the hand as fat as you can. It's also overhanging at about 20°

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mSrFJI4BQwA

Somehow this route grabbed my imagination and I spent a lot of time and effort learning to climb it. It's the achievement in my life that I've tried the hardest to accomplish. The first time I got to the top I had made both sets of knuckles red and sore and they were bleeding on the right. My right foot was bruised, I was very out of breath, and my core muscles felt like I'd been made to do sit-ups until I couldn't even move.

It was 100% worth it.

Richard "wide boyz" B

Scales

Instead of doing a weird escapology act to weigh myself underwater, I made an appointment with the sports science department of a local college and had a load of health tests and body composition analysis done. While I'm generally fit and healthy, a full 23% of me is fat, which is rather high. I have to either lower my target weight or increase my muscle.

It reminds me of when I went out with a fantastically thin girl. She lived with me for a year and a diet rich in pasties and red wine allowed her to put on a little bit of weight. She's much more polite than me. When the doctor asked he her weight she gave some impossibly low number, the doctor then asked for he "target weight" she wanted to say "fuck off" but managed to subsititute that with "I haven't got one".

Richard "full fat" B

Dress Code

There are several photos of my late father doing informal activities (lawnmowing, boating, standing outside his house with his family, etc) while wearing a shirt and a tie.

I've just been to a track day with my brother. Thankfully it's not competitive motorsport so we don't have to wear fireproof suits, but we do still have to wear long sleeves and long trousers. The narrow pedalbox in my car also means that we end up wearing "racing driver" shoes. I like to wear a cardigan to trackdays to offset the fact that the racing driver shoes make it look like I'm taking the day altogether too seriously, but this time it was far too hot for a cardi.

Other than the crash helmet and the shoes I was dressed in summer mountaineering clothes. Very lightweight and slightly stretchy slacks and a similar pullover. My brother was struggling to find something with long sleeves that wouldn't be too hot and would stand the rigours of a day of driving. He very nearly chose a cotton dress shirt, and if he had he would also have worn a tie as a tribute to our father.

The chap with whom we were sharing a garage was a distinguished older gentleman, and judging by the livery on his towing car, he owned a Ferrari dealership. Without a hint of irony he was wearing a dress shirt both to drive and to prepare his track cars.

Richard "Brian James Race Shuttle 3" B

Paris Fashion Week

 One of my friends is the most stylish and glamorous woman I've ever met. She works in an office, but she looks like she's going to a modelling job. For an evening of heavy drinking at my house she had dressed as carefully as you or I would to go to a wedding. Just sometimes, however, she looks as classless and ordinary as the rest of us.

I gave her too many drinks, made her unwell and she had to go home. Apparently between the taxi and her front door she exploded into a fountain of vomit. Her husband had to sluice her off with the garden hose before she was even clean enough to walk indoors to the shower.

Richard "over-served" B

Hip Hip Hop and you Don't Stop

 There was a comments thread that I enjoyed. The idea was that your rapper name is "Li'l" + The last reason you were in a hospital. There were some great submissions like Li'l Fracture, Li'l Infection, Li'l I Work There, and Li'l Abortion.

I introduced my niece to the game and said that I was Li'l Stitches. She however is much more exacting about root cause analysis. Rather than Li'l Trauma and Li'l Shock, she said that she and her husband are actually Li'l Fell from a Horse and Li'l Plane Crash.

Sadly this makes me Li'l Climbing Accident, or even more insulting - Li'l Skill Issue.

Richard "Li'l Elderly Father" B

Book Club

 I'd like to recommend a novel, and to tell you a little bit about it.

It's called "Just Stab Me Now" and for the most part it's a fantasy and romance story about a widowed noblewoman on a diplomatic mission to the court of a foreign queen. It's also a story about an office worker and part-time author who's writing the story you're reading. It's also a series of vignettes that take place entirely in the author's imagination as she "talks" to the characters while she's writing her book.

Despite the fact that the real author, Jill Bearup, has invented a whole new way of telling a story, it's not a masterwork of literature. What it is is great entertainment. It's a nice length, it's an easy pageturning read, and it's a whole lot of fun. There are two adventure stories that are thoroughly entertaining, there are two romance stories and one of them is genuinely heartwarming, and the way that the characters rebel against the author is laugh-out-loud funny.

I feel a bit bad for the author. She's come up with something as new and inventive as the epistolary novel, but I think it's one-and-done rather than the start of a whole new genre.

The best bit is that the author and the characters can talk about the tropes and forms of romantasy, but still use them or subvert them. I think it's both a love letter to and scathing criticism of romantasy genre fiction.

Richard "TLS" B

Escapology

 I have a reputation for getting into ridiculous situations. I swear that this one isn't real, just the product of a thought experiment: I'm wet and cold, wearing only swimming trunks and a climbing harness. I'm in a wheelie bin full of water that's balanced precariously on a plank. There's spilled water everywhere. I'm desperately trying to reach the jack handle of an engine hoist that's attached to my harness, to lift me vertically out of the wheelie bin.

I'm a bit worried about my weight, but I don't know what my target weight should be, so I'd like to know how much muscle and how much fat I'm carrying. I can weigh myself easily enough and measure my height, but I'd need to know my volume to work out my density. Obviously that would be done by submerging myself and measuring how much water is displaced. If I had a bath I could make a couple of marks on the side of it with wax pencil - one for the water level when I'm completely covered and another one when I'm out of it. Then it would simply be matter of counting how many buckets of water it takes to fill it back up to the top mark. I don't have a bath, nor waterproof pencil, nor goggles to see where I'm making the top mark when I'm underwater.

I do have a wheelie bin, and I'm pretty sure I could fit in it. It would seem to be much simpler to fill it to the brim, then get in it, and measure how much water was displaced. I couldn't sweep all the spilled water up off the garage floor well enough to measure it, but I could weigh the bin it before and after. My bathroom scales don't go up far enough to cope with a wheelie bin full of water, but that's easily dealt with. We'll put a scaffold plank on a paving stone at one end and the bathroom scales at the other. The wheelie bin will be on the plank 20% of the way from the stone to the scales. A little applied maths will tell of the actual weight.

The only problem that remains is getting in and out of the water filled wheelie bin without tipping it over and without getting stuck.

Richard "apparently a gym can do this more easily" B

Choice of Words

 There's an old saying in computer programming that the two really hard problems are naming things and cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.

I think I've got a pretty good vocabulary, but I was drinking with a very skilled software engineer who has a superb vocabulary and he took the liberty of filling in the holes in mine.

I was telling a story about how awkward it was taking the phone number of a single pretty woman at the climbing gym who was less than half my age. I swear that we swapped numbers so that I could add her to a whatsapp group of people that climb after work on a Monday evening, not anything... ummm...

My friend instantly filled in the word "predatory".

Richard "how about unseemly" B

Rocky

I recently saw the film Project Hail Mary at the cinema. I'll let you know what I thought of it in a minute, but we have to go on a long detour first. To my shame I got caught up in the hype of commentators and critics saying how wonderful the film was and I saw it the week it opened.

In 1995 there was an album called Jagged Little Pill that generated the same amount of critical acclaim and excitement. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing it, and everybody was saying how wonderful it was. I distinctly remember watching some music awards programme and there was one dissenting voice who said it was a good album, but nothing special. That in a few years time nobody would be saying it was particularly important. He was right. There have been plenty of good albums by a female singer song writer with something to say, the only thing different about this one was that it had swearing and funk rock bass playing.

My review of Project Hail Mary: It's a good film, you'd probably enjoy it. It's a long way from the best sci-fi film ever made.

I think what has happened is that cinema has been pretty mediocre for a while, and sci-fi has been completely overlooked in favour of franchises and superheroes. I don't think the critics and commentators would be praising P.H.M so wildly if it had come out in the same decade as, say, The Day The Earth Stood Still, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, Alien, The Terminator, The Matrix, or Contact.

Richard "The Critic was Paul Gambaccini" B

Null

 There are lots of questions that seem like they would produce a simple yes or no answer, but in fact they don't.

I think I annoyed my brother a little bit by answering "yes" to "have you got a barometer?" and then, after quite a long conversation answering "no" to "have you got a serviceable barometer". However I stand by my first answer. I kept my late father's barometer for sentimental and historical reasons. While the needle does move a little bit, it's unreliable and wildly out of calibration.

If the answer to "have you still got dad's barometer" is "yes" then the answer to "have you got a barometer?" must also be "yes"

Richard "Do you still beat your wife?" B

OBD2

 I usually consider myself to be pretty good at faultfinding, but the evidence from this week doesn't back up that idea.

Pulling away or changing direction in my Fiat Panda started making a gurgling noise. My first thought was fuel, but nothing smelled of petrol, so that didn't seem likely. There must be rainwater getting in. No. Everything was about as dry/damp as it usually was. It can't have been hydraulic fluid because the clutch and brakes worked fine. There also isn't a pubble under the car. The coolant level is normal, so I was stumped. Battery Acid! The battery must be half empty and the engine bay will be corroding terribly. No, it was dusty and dry like usual.

The answer came when I tried to go rock climbing. I had left my gym bag in the back of the car and there was a half drunk bottle of water in it.

Richard "hydration" B

Relative Humidity

 How was your first track day of the year?

I took my Caterham to Pembrey on Sunday. Some of the day was excellent. The car behaved impeccably. The new suspension is very impressive. The tyres and brakes came alive in a couple of laps each time. Both my guest and I had a good session on track.

However the weather was bitterly cold, strong winds, and varying wildly between drizzle, heavy rain, and bright cold sunshine. We both got cold and wet. We weren't allowed into the cafe until 8:30 and we were kicked out at 14:00. There is no other shelter in the paddock (unless you brought it with you) and the necessity of being able to see out of my car on circuit meant that I had taken the windscreen and roof off.

We drove home wearing wet clothes in a car full of wet upholstery, weather gear, tools and equipment with the cabin heater running full blast. We weren't cold but we weren't dry either. I now smell like a wet dog and I think I might have a mild case of trench foot.

Richard "worth it" B