Voting, working

My voting today was a bit damper than last year when I wrote this sunny little essay. I'm willing to share that I voted for AV. But then I am a statistician, and most people are not. Something tells me that we will not be adopting this system any time soon.

Today the company I work for was taken over. We are assured that it's only a takeover on paper and is actually a great opportunity, and that may be right. It can be so hard to tell with these things. I've been through quite a few of these big changes in a previous job and was largely the same at the end of most of them. I've consequently become quite stoic about the whole thing.

Election time again

We're coming up to another election, and so it's time for a look inside my postbag again. Tonight I have two leaflets delivered together: one is from the Scottish Lib Dems, and the other is a virulent tirade against AV, from people calling themselves no2av. Oddly, the Lib Dems don't ask me to support AV in their leaflet. Why is it that the no2avites can get to use the electoral register (the letter is addressed to me personally)?

Meek's cutoff

Last night I managed to go and see my first film at the cinema in a long time. I used to be a fairly regular film-a-week man, but I'm struggling to think of something that I've seen since the New Year, and I'm not sure what's changed.

Still, I managed to see Meek's Cutoff, which is best described as a Western that isn't. Just as well really, as I've never much liked Westerns. The film concerns three families on the Oregon trail who hire their own guide and split off from the main train. The trouble is, the guide doesn't seem to know where he is. I liked the film's studied avoidance of everything that you might expect in such a work. There is no stirring music, and the landscapes are shot at a low angle, making things feel oddly claustrophobic for a film set entirely out of doors. If the screen briefly looks as pretty as a John Ford Western, nobody on screen is bothered, because they have been walking behind the wagon all day and are covered in dust. The film gives the women a lot of screen time, often observing the main action from their point of view. They rise before dawn to light fires and cook breakfast. They watch in a group from beneath their bonnets as the men folk debate what to do next. And one shows herself very handy with a flintlock. (Military history anoraks will enjoy the scene where she fires a shot, goes through the laborious process of reloading, and fires again. )

Cutoff suffers from a couple of the irritating ticks of current films: the dialogue is often mumbled and unclear, and the ending is sudden and unconclusive. But well worth your time, I would say.

Spot on

Once again, the wonderful xkcd hits the nail on the head. It's actually not bad as an explanation of Type I errors.

Depreciation

It's a cliche of our time that computers go rapidly from awesomely advanced to piles of crap, but it is interesting to see this at first hand.

I'd been half-heartedly trying to get rid of a Dell laptop for a while, but the more I looked into the possibilities, the less it seemed to be worth. I still thought of it as rather good, but it was 7 years old, and a bit of surfing turned up that my model was actually known for its poor design and overheating. So. Not sought-after then. I thought I might still get ~£50 for it and took it to some wee shops in town, but nobody would bite. One shopkeeper suggested Cash Converters, and they came close to coughing up £20, but spotted some loose wiring and got cold feet.

So it's gone from about a grand to almost nothing in 7 years.

Let's hear it for Freecycle, where I finally got rid of it to a nice lady who just wanted to do a bit of web surfing.

Filled today

I've just reached another life milestone: my first fillings. I've always had excellent teeth, but I suppose all that sugary crap we eat and the odd crevices that our teeth provide to catch things in must take their toll eventually. Given that I was brought up in the east end of Glasgow, it's a bit of a miracle that this didn't happen before my forties.

It was all pretty easy and painless. Ah, modern medicine! I'm so glad I don't live in a previous age.

It's probably another milestone of sorts when your dentist is younger than you.

War Nerd on Egypt

I thought Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, had disappeared (again). But he is active again and providing this excellent post on the current troubles in Egypt. There was some quality time-wasting at work this afternoon.

Double walk

This can be a difficult time of year to get out for a walk. A combination of short days, poor weather and public holidays can make this frustrating, but this new year I had offers of walks on two days in a row.

First up was a trip to Ben Ledi with Dave. I took a train to Stirling to find him standing behind the ticket barrier, nursing his freedom from family for a day and the remains of a MacDonalds breakfast. Ben Ledi is a classic cobweb-blower, and we encountered as big a crowd of people as I've met on a winter hill. They displayed much resourcefulness in finding ways of not falling over on the ice.

I was in the mood for taking pictures of landscape fragments, such as the odd ice on this reservoir:
And these trees picked out by the snow:
Refreshments after at the Lade Inn.

The following day Craig suggested two interesting Corbetts, Faragon Hill and Meall Tairneachan. Interesting to me anyway, as I've attempted to get to this area before from Pitlochry, with little success. Ice was another theme of this day, encasing moss and grass like super-hard jelly.


Craig provided a nip of very good whisky to keep the cold out (don't try this at home kids). So that wasn't so bad. We warmed up further at the Taybank in Dunkeld.

A day on the Ochils

The weather again. Some of us were meant to go to a bothy for the weekend, but the exceptional cold and snow put a stop to that. Myself and a friend arranged to go a day walk in the Ochils instead.

On the way, both of us fessed up to an interest in photographing the oil refinery at Grangemouth. We found a snow-covered golf course to do this in. I'll spare you the pictures, but here is a nice one of my shadow in the snow.
We crossed the new Kincardine bridge, and drove through a foggy Clackmannanshire. All the glens on the south side of the Ochils are worth exploring, but we chose Alva Glen and followed it up to gain the open hillside. This wasn't easy, as the deep snow made crossing the burn and climbing the flank of The Nebit into a proper mountaineering exercise. When we reached more level ground, we found obvious traces of some recent avalanches.
With this in mind, we kept away from the slopes above the burn which seemed to be worst affected. The snow was deep and only just frozen on top, in some places giving about the most strenuous walking conditions you can get, where your front foot sinks in just a little, but then crashes through as you put your full weight on it. As we headed up Ben Ever we met some skiers, who were arguably having an easier time.

We were heading for Ben Cleuch (721m), which does not normally figure as a major peak. In these conditions though, it felt like quite an adventure. These rimed-up fence posts tell their own story.
There were fine views of the edge of the Highlands. Bens Lomond, Ledi, and Vorlich could be picked out among others, and the peaks on Arran just topped out the Campsies.

It was something of an impromptu day, and we had talked of descending to Castle Campbell and Dollar Glen, but time was passing and it seemed best to take the most direct way down over The Law. The light started to get even more extraordinary.
We were reminiscing on the way down about a similar winter day on Beinn Fhionnlaidh years ago where a late start also meant that we got a spectacular sunset on our way down. Sometimes things just work out.

And after descending Tillicoultry Glen, some nice people gave us a lift in their van back to the starting point.

For a parallel account of this walk, see Love of Scotland.

Back garden in the snow

I daresay a lot of snowy pictures will have been put in blogs recently. But why should I be different? Taken recently while working from home and wishing it would just stop.
I didn't open my bedroom curtains for a few days, but when I did I saw these icicles.
There was a LOT of ice around the downpipes and gutters. Thankfully it seems to have melted without any damage.

More nature notes

This week has been a complex pattern of snow, office closures and trying to do work on a crappy laptop at home.

On Wednesday, I was the only one in the office, and sat in glorious splendour having a conference call, and looking out at the snowy landscape. This time I saw two jays. They were more obvious against the snow, and I am getting more confident in my identifications.

Impromptu walking

The walking group I go away with got caught out by the first of the snow this year. And it was snow of a level that we don't normally see in late November. What was supposed to be a trip to the Trossachs (I've not done Ben Venue in ages) had to be hastily rearranged. We are equal to this challenge though, and the coach took us to Hillend, from where we walked along the end of the Pentlands. Snow was still falling heavily, and our walk parallel to the Edinburgh bypass felt more like the Cairngorms. Somebody knew a way onto the Water of Leith at Colinton, so we continued into town. I've done most of this before, but it looked totally different in the snow. And I've not been since Anthony Gormley's sculptures were put in.

They look cool in the snow. I'm sure the intention was that the pieces would undergo various alterations. And they have inspired a number of other more jokey tributes.

Bird watching again

I saw what I'm pretty sure was a waxwing today from the office window. It was foraging in an oak tree just opposite me. Assuming I'm right, the RSPB site says it's a fairly rare sighting. The name totally foxed me until I found out that it refers to the red patches on the wing that look like sealing wax.

Coffee and cardamon

I seem to have got very domesticated recently. Last night I was baking a cake that required ground cardamon, and the best way I could find of doing this was to use my wee coffee grinder. The cake turned out nice (thanks to Dan Lepard) and the coffee that I ground and drank afterwards tasted fantastic.

It's so hard to be original though. It turns out I have stumbled across a version of Arabic gahwa.

Browsers

I heard today at work that our IT department is continuing their relentless drive into the future by rolling out ....... IE 7! A quick surf reveals that this is exactly 4 years on from its release. Amazingly enough, we have been on IE 6 up to now. A lot of Web sites no longer support this, either putting up a message to this effect, or just giving you a crap version in Latin.

I wonder if they will ever replace our back-to-the-80s email system?

Another one down

I was telling my work colleagues today about my mouse problem and they (both women) were rather grossed out (particularly about the blood-on-the-floor detail). On examining a trap tonight I found I had another kill. This one had also bled on the floor. Are my traps particularly gruesome?

Must stop blogging about this, you'll think I'm obsessed with killing small animals.

All day permanent red

I can provide an update to my mouse problem. I bought a couple of traps and, on the advice of various people, baited them with Bounty bar. In time, the bait fell off and then disappeared. I re-baited and waited. A couple of nights ago, I heard a click and some scuffling. I was sleepy and forgot about it until this morning, when under the sprung trap I discovered a dead mouse stuck to the floor with dried blood.

Bounty is a fatal taste in this house, my little friend.

Death Ray

I was pleased today to see my childhood vision of the future coming one step closer today. A laser system for shooting down aircraft has been demonstrated. A lot of my reading as a teenager was of books where people were torn apart by ravening death rays, so this is way overdue. Death rays existed before the laser, of course (the Martians in War of the Worlds had them), but that invention did give a focus to hopes of futuristic death. A pity then that the main uses of the laser turned out to be stuff like survey equipment and playing CDs.

I notice that the artist's representation can't resist the cliche of a brightly coloured beam linking the laser to its target. To be fair though, the conscientious BBC journalist did note that this is rubbish.

I bet the range is, and will remain, rather short. You just can't get round that inverse square law.

Coastal walk

Thought I'd post-blog this.

Last month, I went on a nice (though damp) coastal walk from Cockburnspath to Dunbar.

The main attraction near the start was Dunglass Collegiate church, looking enigmatic in the warm July drizzle. To us now, it seems an odd use of land and resources. Is praying for your soul worth that much? The middle ages thought so.

Later, we passed Torness power station. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds, as its builders have fallen over themselves in an effort to be cuddly and inoffensive and give you information boards to look at. The sea defenses use piles of specially cast "knucklebones", which give the whole thing a futuristic air. I could see it as part of an episode of Blake's 7.

My companions didn't seem interested when I mentioned this. Different generation, I suppose.

Perhaps some future walker will find this piece of land use as inexplicable as a collegiate church.

Midsummer

In a rare burst of social life, I went to a party last night, and quite enjoyed it. I walked back through Marchmont and Grange at about 3am. It wasn't really dark, more a kind of blue dusk, with blackbirds tuning up in the gardens.

Today has been an exercise in staying one step ahead of dehydration. And I can't get rid of the smell of tobacco smoke.