Day 4: at last, tabs 8

Our first proper “late” row, since we’re now proud mebers of division 2. Time at the start to say hello to Amelie before being rudely interrupted by the 4 minute gun. I was busily trying to plaster up my hand having torn a callus off and… oooohhh, it did hurt a bit. Meanwhile, back at the rowing. Tabs 7 were sandwich boat, but we knew we were faster than them, and anyway they were tired after rowing over; they faded away after about 20 strokes. So our aim was tabs 8, who we chased unsuccessfuly on the first night. But we knew that ahead of them was St Ives, who they had failed to catch the previous night; and we knew they knew that we were faster than them. So I don’t think they had much hope, and in the end after we got through the choppy water under the bridge smoothly and did a couple of pushes we had them, roughly at the first corner. All hail the mighty Chesterton M2, as our club captain put it.

[Update: the crew lists are at http://www.cra-online.net/bumps/results/2008/crews/chesterton.htm.

And 2009 wasn’t so good; read all about it.]

Day 3: Too much beer

A good night last night: we got X-press 4 after about 40 strokes fairly well as expected, and we rowed about as we expected: a fast start then a bit splashy then just beginning to settle when it was time to stop. Which left us sandwich boat into division 2. Only a little tired we spun and had a good long rest at the start while the rest of the division came up. The next race was a lot harder, cantabs 7 were some real opposition at last, and they held us off at a length all through the gut (from this pic you can see why) though we may have closed slowly. We got a better line out, really settled at last, pushed down the reach and caught them about a third of the way down. Hurrah for us. I lost count at about 160 strokes, or perhaps it was despair, but it was probably another 20 after that. A pint at the beer tree, a watch of M1, and rather more pints at the Old Spring finished off a splendid evening.

Day 2: 20 strokes

Or thereabouts. Might have been 15, might have been 25. Barring disaster we were always going to get robs 6, and they knew it just as well as us. Good turn out on the bank to watch us as well, so all the more satisfying. X-press 4 were 1, so assuming they didn’t bump up into M2 (unlikely, since they are reckoned to be slow) the plan is to catch them tomorrow and be sandwich boat ourselves.

Meanwhile, lower down the division, M3 rowed over after being overlapped briefly – they have a slow start. They will catch the boat ahead of them, if only they can hold off. W2 went down, W1 rowed over, and (sadly) M1 went down too. Fairly thoroughly, to the extent of running their bow onto the bank, so some of the bows had to get out to refloat the boat. They will have a hard time tomorrow.

Thats our bump from today. Robs were a bit silly conceeding so late, Dave is doing a good job of not whacking their cox in he back, while their stroke has taken a tumble.

For those few of my readers not fully familiar with the bumps, the first few photos from this division are good: just poling off, about 30 seconds to the gun, we’re the third boat down and Andy Nicol is our man on the bank. A few strokes in and we’re looking very ragged and unbalanced. From that pic, I wouldn’t have bet on us. X-press 4 are looking good too: I suspect they may have more technique and less oopmh. Maybe 10 strokes in and X-press are still looking very pretty; I think you can see from this that we’re very close to Robs. Our bump, and us holding it up whilst everyone is shouting at Robs to clear the river. At last, our boat is level :-).

Buy our stuff (part 2)

Wireless scales! Your weight beamed to your mobile! See here.

Now we just need to work out what to call it.

The wire is just the power cord to the scales, of course, not connecting the scales to the phone 🙂

Remember the good old days?

Then you may like gmane.comp.security.full-disclosure/62146 (hat-tip: PW).

Or be up to date: pwnie-awards.org/2008/ Ooooh.. wordpress.

Stoat: the obscure blog. Or at least, I try.

Day 1: Technical row over

So: we took 1/2 a length off tabs 8 on the start, but they held us long enough to get robs 6, who were by all accounts rather slow. tabs 8 did a poor job of clearing the river so after 40 strokes we ended up jammed behind them. City 4?5? cruised past several lengths down, and appeared to be celebrating at the beer tree, but we are optimistic of a technical row over on the grounds of being impeded.

Other news: our mens 3 in the same division wear the willow; our ladies 1 rowed over as head of w2 and bumped up into w1, very exciting. w2 and m1 both rowed over. m1 rather flogged themselves down the reach, despite having 5 lengths before and behind.

Fairly obviously, that photo is copyright, but I’m assuming the photo folk don’t mind free advertising. Click on the pic for their site. I’m 7. You’ll notice that 5 and 7’s blades are parallel, which is more than you can say for any of the blades on strokeside (snark snark). All three boats (you can just see tabs bowside blades in the left of the pic) are (IMHO) taking the wrong line around the corner. For those who know Luke Diamand here is here and here too. Ouch!

What the price of coal means

As the price of oil has soared, so has that of coal. Both are demand-led. This is a very strong hint from the market that calls to phase out coal in the near future are doomed. Since CCS makes no commercial sense in the absence of meaningful CO2 limits, that too is doomed.

Just thought you ought to know 🙂

NextGen

My first post at NextGen is now up.

More excitingly, tonight is the first of the bumps. Go Chesterton 2!

Every step you take, every move you make…

…we’ll be watching you. Bluetooth, that is. At least according to the rather over-hyped Bluetooth is watching: secret study gives Bath a flavour of Big Brother. I don’t have a lot of sympathy. If you go around shouting out “Hello my name is Eric Fertang” then you shouldn’t complain if people listen.

Top quote: “This is yet another example of moronic use of privacy concerns,” said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, an independent campaigning group defending personal privacy (err, well no, not quite: he actually said “technology” not “privacy concerns”, but I know what he meant). “If the technology is as safe as they claim, then all the technical specifications should be published and people should be informed when they are being tracked.” The BT spec *is* published… how does he think people implement it? Guesswork? And I can’t see being constantly pinged with text messages saying “you’re being tracked… you’re still being tracked…” would be very popular (or even possible: you can’t get someones phone number from their BT address, unless they give it to you; nor can you necessarily talk to them just cos they are shouting at you). “It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control”. Well no, you just have to tell your phone not to go around shouting at people.

[This is my first post in my “bluetooth” category, and my first into the “technology” channel”]

TGGWS again: oh lordy

Prefix: you may have read the leaks about this in the Grauniad: “Channel 4 to be censured over controversial climate film” seems a fair comment on the fairness ruling. But are they right about the accuracy aspect? That will need another post. Meanwhile, thanks to Dave Rado for pushing all this, and have a look at http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/. Ofcom officially available from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb114/issue114.pdf.

If you have any sense, you’ve probably forgotten the late and unlamented The Great Global Warming Swindle (and many other points in the blogosphere). But people complained to OfCom about how cr*p the prog was, and the long slow OfCom process has now produced some rulings. To me the process seems rather like the Scott report: designed to bury the interesting information as deep as possible in mounds of verbiage. But reading through, we get…