For example, one cool feature is the High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode.  For this you really need either a tripod, or the back of the bike carrier if pressed.  It takes three pix in quick succession, then it merges those parts that are best exposed from each one.  Seems to work best with horizontally layered areas, like a green field below and a sunset above.  Lorin found the Sony’s HDR mode left visible joins in the final pic, whereas with the Canon G12 you can’t see any joins.

Sunset without HDR mode:

Sunset with HDR mode:

Another particularly cool feature is the smile detecting self timer.  You can put it in this mode then walk around the office asking people to hold it and look into the lens.  All it takes is a stern warning ‘Dont smile !’.  Soon as they smirk, the camera takes the pic.   Never fails to impress.

What really astonishes me is how, on the one hand almost every famous star in the sky has an arabic name  (off the top of my head I can list: aldebaran, rigel, sirius, pleides..), whereas on the other hand we’ve got a bunch of almost illiterates running most of the arab oil states, leading to the ludicrous situation that they publish a calendar of when Ramadan starts in advance.  (Hint: You don’t know it’s the new lunar month till someone physically sights the new crescent, something that is nigh impossible to predict.)  They live under the illusion that they can predict the unpredictable and yet, in almost all other spheres of activity the muslim body as a whole couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery, as they say in yorkshire.

Anyway I’m just so pleased that this year the new moon occurred with such good timing that its visibility curve was very strong on 31st July, meaning it could be seen easily with the naked eye as the sun set all over south america and some parts of southern africa.  Halleluja, that meant that taking Monday 1st August as 1st Ramadan (in the stupid timetables) was probably correct for a change.

http://www.moonsighting.com/1432rmd.html

Salam, folks.  Wishing you a Ramadan full of Blessings.  Let’s try not to put on too much weight this time round..

Wild bees (ie not honeybees) that look a bit like short bumble bees.. and are much more fidgety – seem to be equipped with multi-use stingers.  I happened to, erm.. annoy one recently and the twerp seemed to jab me more than once.  It didn’t die in the process.  My hand was sore for about two days afterwards.

That should teach me not to pester ‘em..

Take the ending in the word ROUGH. And the plentiful words like STATION or NATION habouring the sound SH.  The hard bit is figuring out an English word in which the O sounds like an I – it’s quite a common word actually, but I think I’ve met only two people who guessed it.  One, most recently, was a kid from the Isle of Man, of all places.

One of his school buddies also came up with an example of an English word in which the letter A sounds like an I.  A couple years ago while volunteering in an orphanage in Malaysia, another volunteer was teaching English.  She came out with the interesting proposition that ORANGE was the only example of an English word where the A sounds like an I.

At first I thought, nope: it sounds almost like a U.  Then I conceded: in England, especially in the north, people do pronounce it as if it were spelt ORINJ.  But for the life of me I couldn’t think of any other word that had the same ‘behaviour’.  Now these schoolkids a fortnight ago, on a trip from the Isle of Man, were being a bit noisy on the train to the airport, so I gave them a challenge.  And within fifteen minutes one of them pops out triumphantly with: SAUSAGE !

Then the floodgates opened.. once you have one example, suddenly you can see all sorts of similar words.  PORRAGE – an alternative spelling for PORRIDGE but pronounced almost the same, right ? Homage ? Damage ? What a mixed up language.  Hah – LANGUAGE !

Carrying along the theme of words, it popped into my mind recently how colours are used as surnames in some languages, including English.  But some colours are distinctly NOT used as peoples’ names.  So, although it’s not uncommon to hear of people called Mr or Mrs Green, Brown, Black, White, Grey and even maybe Pink, you would be very surprised if someone introduced themselves as Mr or Ms Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange or Purple.

Weird or what ?

PS Uebrigens Herr Edwards, Herzlichen Dank!

More recent developments  have frustrated this idea, with Heisenberg Uncertainty making for an unpredictable universe, and the whole Observation question in Quantum Mechanics  (if something is not observed, does it even exist ?).  With time, theoretical physics seems to be getting closer to showing the need for, rather than a lack of, an Ultimate Observer.  There is a Hadith Qudsi, along the lines that God created Creation as a mirror wherein to observe His own beauty.  (It seems fairly obvious though, that Mankind is not on the whole living up to these high expectations.)

Well, metaphysics aside, I think Penrose also admits that these non-repeating tiles were invented somewhere in the muslim world a long time ago.

(And, BTW I really like Oxford.  One of the nicer places in Britain.)

Near Collingwood College around 1985

He also related that the parrots could get to those nuts a lot easier, and that the natives from his wife’s village preferred eating the parrots !

I never dreamt I would one day go to that tree’s homeland and see a landscape full of them, but 25 years later (2010) it came to pass.

Lanin National Park, with volcano Lanin visible

At the entrance to the Lanin National Park in Argentina early in April 2010 I met a family using a catapult to shoot down the cones containing the nuts.  They were very good at it!  By the time MG caught up with me they were ready to leave but left me a gift of Araucaria nuts, telling me I can boil them.  But neither MG nor I wanted to eat them.   Instead I brought them back and Ghitta managed to get three to grow (see below).

Gift at Lanin National Park entrance

A bit further into the park we noticed a sign forbidding the collection of nuts !

Don't collect the seeds !

I guess all you can say to that is, er.. Oops! (The family in question had stopped further into the park and continued to collect, regardless..)

The border between Argentina and Chile cuts through the park, and on the Chilean side it’s called the Villarica National Park.  (They also seem to name the trees Araucania, if the sign is a clue.)

New names on Chile side of border

In Villarica we met up with Flo and Moni, a Swiss brother/sister to whose care I was going to entrust MG if they seemed to be compatible cycling companions for her.  A few days later, while battling against a horrid wind on a not-so-bike-friendly gravel track, I decided to hail down a truck and see if we could get a lift.  Flo didn’t really want a lift but I said I’m taking it anyway and so everyone came along.  Sometimes you just need to let people make their choice.   And it was worth it: We got a glorious view of the Araucania forest from a high vantage point, to spite the wind, instead of missing the views because of having to focus on balancing the bikes against wind.

big enough for 4 bikes and all

We had to say goodbye to the truck when the workers arrived at their work stop.  I guess they were clearing out dying or dead Araucanias, so they had lots of seeds taken from fallen trees, some of which they handed out.  When I mentioned my desire to try grow them back home, one of the workers demonstrated how easy it was to sow the seeds.

Demonstrates how to plant araucaria seed

Just scratch a shallow channel in the surface of the soil and lay a seed horizontally in it; then sprinkle it with a little soil.  I guess that’s how they sprout in the wild.

The following day our route crossed back into Argentina, surrounded by a rocky vista topped by Araucarias growing straight out of the rock.  These trees are supposed to be an ancient breed, perhaps prehistoric.

Auracarias.. out of rock

When Ghitta (renowned for her green fingers) planted the seeds around mid-2010, I was sorry to learn that all but three failed to sprout.  But three is a lot more than none. Here is one of them, a ten-month old Sprossling, pretty cool eh. Two of them got their own pot. The third was a bit Dingi so Ghitta didn’t transplant it yet.

Awww isnt it cute

Who knows your Kismet little one ?  I wish you well.

So today I’m out jogging in glorious sunshine, appreciating the clean air and the views, and sharing a Gruezi with people I passed, when I spot this furry little explorer on the pavement, looks like he’s given up.  It was chilly despite the sun, and there are hardly any flowers out yet, so he probly ran out of juice.

As is my wont, I have to stop the jogging and pick the little twerp up, so he doesn’t get squished.  They always struggle a bit but soon give up when they realise you’re not trying to eat them or squish them.  Then it’s hard to get them to leave your finger even when you put them near a flower.  Maybe they like the warmth of the hand.

I finally found a patch of little purple flowers and left him on one.

Quarter hour later I’ve found the river (I was as lost as the bee) and am jogging home when lo! and behold! Another one, sat in the middle of the path and ready to get squished, a bit like the crowds of dragonflies I had the privelege of rescuing from the riverside a few springs back..

So I was pleased to have met two bees today.

I suspect both the little critters will not be getting home, sadly.  They are cool little creatures though.  The nearest thing to fairies in real life, going from flower to flower and collecting nectar.   Welcome sign of Spring.

They don’t make that model anymore !  

They have ‘evolved’ their earplugs.  The ‘Biofuse’ model has an ‘elbow’ or L part sticking out (presumably to stop idiots pushing the thing in too far and damaging their ears, probably a recipe for Speedo to get sued by some halfwit in the states).  Sounds like a good idea but it didn’t work well – I got water coming in.

They have another model called Ergo that’s different in style completely – instead of a set of tapering concentric rings on the axle you stick in your ear, there is a rubbery shield at the end, that should make a watertight seal against the earlobe itself.  Sounds dodgy but it sometimes works very well, when it works.

So what do you do about the sloshing water that gets trapped in your ear ?

In the UK you can buy generic olive oil drops (dropper included) for a couple quid.

In Swizaland you have to pay of the order of ten times as much for some concoction that they can patent.  (The pharmacist gave me a rather puzzled look when I explained about olive oil drops.  Took me a while to figure out why - of course in the land of pharma, non-patentable remedies must be heresy.)

So you’re supposed to put a few drops of the stuff in your ear when you sleep, and sleep on the other side.  If you alternate you can give both ears seven nights of softening in about a fortnight.  If you have the patience..

I ended up just filling up the ear with olive oil to make sure it gets everywhere.  Just stick a towel over the pillow for the inevitable in middle of the night.  This seems to have worked after a few goes – in the shower I followed the pharmacist’s tip and showered out the wax from my ear. 

Reminds me of the nurse every year or so as a schoolkid - she would stick this monstrous syringe into your ear and it felt like she was flushing your brains out.  Huge gobbets of wax would come out and you’d wonder where the heck it all could have been hiding.

Interestingly enough – if you wander over to speedo’s online shop, they now have a product that I had imagined five or so years ago:  an mp3 player that you can listen to while swimming !  The earbuds are presumably embedded in a form simlar to those old swimming earplugs.  But they cost over a hundred euros, and if they turn out to let water in, what a waste of money.  So I won’t be rushing to buy them till I’m able to swim an hour non stop without getting too breathless.

nuf blah

bike in a bag

Trek bike in a suitcase

There is a lot packed into this 21kg package:

unpacked frame and bits

Three hours later, I have the seat and forks installed and the handlebars on upside down. Doh..

Looking a bit like a bike

After a lunchtime swim, getting more water in my ear, I managed to plod on in the afternoon and got the bottom bracket (pedal axel) and the rear derailleur back on the bike:

its almost like building a new bike

Couple of hours later after a dinner interruption, the front wheel including disk brake and brake housing is mounted:

front wheel attached

Next day I managed to install the back wheel, chain, and half-mounted the stand.  I left my allen keys with Martina in Argentina so I’ll have to fix the stand properly in the coming week, as the shops are shut here on Sundays.

Ready for pumping up

Now I just need some free time and a warm sunny day to take it out for a trial ride and see if that saddle still fits !