Weekend run

It was time for another long weekend run, and I wanted to visit Moel Smytho and/or Alexandra Slate Mine. It was great weather! It was a lovely run. I did do a rather large amount of non-running through unsuitable terrain, but I saw new ground, admired another mine, and ended up running a fair way after all. All good!

Viking washer

Since I mentioned I have Viking Hand it has gone markedly worse. I think climbing might have added to that. Mine exploration might not be very good either. I am trying not to use the part of my hand with the lump on it, as it hurts, and hurts again the next days, but sometimes one forgets. I had been wondering if I can protect my lump somehow. My first attempt was digging out my biking gloves, and making a hole in the left one where the lump is. That will provide some protection. However, biking gloves aren't very good for mine exploration, and they don't provide enough protection for climbing, as you tend to put your entire weight on each of your hands rather regularly. There's not enough padding in a biking glove for that!

The lump in my hand

Then I tried somethign else; I cut a donut-shaped pad out of a piece of neoprene, and glued it to the inside of my left mine glove. When I tried it out I was happy with the level of padding, but not so much with the glue. It didn't hold and the donut started to move through the glove. Not good!

Then I noticed the washer of a flip-top bottle I had in the kitchen. That's solid rubber, and it's donut-shaped. I tried; it had the right size! I figured maybe I should sew that into a glove. I had no time to do it before I would go underground next. I decided to improvise; I just taped the ring to my hand. That would keep it in place! And it did! We scampered all over the place, and even climbed a few chains and suchlike, which means you use a lot of power with your hands, and my lump didn't seem to notice. Great!

The washer in position. Notice the traces of glue...

My next thought was to perhaps make a contraption with an elastic band around my hand with the washer sewn to it. Maybe that will be better for staying in place. And I could use that in combinaton with any glove, and even without one! And then when the lump grows (it's expected to) I'll take the washer off and replace it with a larger donut.

I found a strip of neoprene and some velcro, and set to work. I added some silicone kit for extra friction. It seems to stay put! It would be nice if I turn out to have managed to make a gadget that reduces the discomfort of the condition to as good as zero. And I think this band does the job fine in everyday activities but wouldn't stay on for hard work like in a mine, but I may well stick to the tape solution for that. I already ordered a few spare washers so I can afford to sometimes lose one. Tape and waskers: simple but effective!

Return of the Cornish

If you live in North Wales all your caving friends will come and visit you. Next month the PCG will appear again. And this month, it was the Cornish! Not any Cornish; my old mates Daz and Mike. (I say old; they've known each other for decades so I'm a parvenu in their companuy, but still.) It was the second time this year; I'm being spoiled. They kept it a bit of a surprise until the end; they said they'd let me know on Friday whether they would indeed show up. They each have their own company and one never knows when a big order comes in.

That evening I went to the movies (!). Still no message when I came out! I texted them. They said they were here indeed and would text me the next morning. They had driven for nine hours and they were tired. Decision would come later!

That morning I got up to see I had a message already. It had come in almost an hour earlier! Oh dear. They suggested a mine and I thought it sounded fine. I quickly made some quick sandwiches and plonked my caving kit into my car. Just before I'd set off they phoned me to ask if I had a spare helmet. Luckily I did!

I got to the meeting point (I thought) and to my surprise, didn't find them there. Maybe they had been faffing? I waited a few minutes. Then I sent them a text, expressing I hoped we had meant the same parking lot. We hadn't! They were in the adjacent one. Oh dear...

We all jumped into their car and went to the start of a public path from which we would walk up. It was a wet day but Wales is also beautiful in the rain! And after a while we went in. I hadn't been in this place since 2014. I remembered little of it!

We had a lovely scamper. We just went where our fancy took us. We saw one incline after the other, we saw huge chambers, flooded at the bottom, we climbed up and down chains and whatnot. It was great! We also sat down against a comfortable slab for a bit of lunch.

 An impressive incline with Daz for scale

Daz admiring machinery

 

Mike looking serious

Decorative pot of grease 

An unexpected mushroom

After a while we got hungry and partial to a cup of tea and we headed towards the exit. That took a while; we were quite deep in and we only approximately knew the way. Sometimes we followed arrows. When the arrows sent us around a loop we just dropped a level and tried again. And it worked.

When we got out we walked back to the car, retrieved mine, went to their accommodation, had a cup of tea, and went to the pub for dinner. We were hungry!

It is always great to see these men. I hope I will stay here a bit and see them the next time they show up! It's great to do nice efficient scampery trips as they are so much more efficient than trips with large groups with slow people in them; with a small fast group you see so much more. But just seeing men like that is good anywhere. I hope to see them again soon!

To the movies, again

I was so glad when we finally had a cinema, but then after the first time shortly after its opening I never went again. I just always had other things to do! But when I saw a documentary about Gary Numan announced I bought a ticket. I am too young to have actively witness his initial rise to fame, but of course I knew his big hits like "Cars" and "Are 'friends' electric?" And when his album "Dead Son Rising" was released in 2011 I heard about it, liked the sound of it, and bought it. I wasn't disappointed. And there is something about a bloke who comes out of nowhere to fame, seems to vanish again, and then re-emerges thirty years later.

The cinema was less than half full. Not many Numan fans in Bangor! But the film started. The first scenes dealt with the whole Webb/Numan family (Numan is a nom de plume) getting ready to emigrate to the USA. And then the whole story comes out of how a shy and difficult kid found a Moog somewhere, decided he could do something cool with it, and then hit international fame. Suddenly he was a star, and his parents, who were his managers, had to step up their game. Fame and critical derision took their toll, and things went downhill. Luckily he had come across his future wife along the way; it was clear she was very important in his life. She seemed to have pulled him through. And then "Dead Son Rising"came out and I tuned in.

Fast-forward a bit and you have a whole family with three daughters, going to America, where the new Numan residence has a good sound-proof studio. In recent years, a newish generation of musicians (Dave Grohl, Trent Reznor, Tricky) acknowledged Numan as their inspiration. More new songs start to see the light of day in the new studio, and the world is paying attention. The past very hard years inspire a harder sound. And then contact is made with Trent Reznor, and Gary Numan does a guest appearance during a Nine Inch Nails concert. Things take off! A new album (this is "Splinter") takes shape. And when it comes out, it is to critical acclaim. Touring is fun again. Money problems fly out of the window. Personal problems are tackled. We see a rebirth of Gary Numan the man and the artist.

It is interesting to see such a long career in a documentary. It is also interesting to see an unusual family life. I had heard he had married a woman from his fan club; this sounded decidedly iffy, like he was one of those men who want a sycophant, not a person for a spouse. Seeing them after pretty much their entire adult lives together, and still clearly a great match, shows this is not the case. Most showbiz cliches don't seem to apply to this man. He is still a self-depracating shy bloke who needs his wife around to manage to socially interact with others, and who only discovered alcohol in his forties when someone had spiked his drink, and he found out it made him a bit more relaxed. More sheep than pool parties in the shots of his British home! I think I'll go and listen to Splinter right now...

Gary Numan; pic by Man Alive!

On with two digs

Our digs are now so exciting we keep gravitating towards them. This week, like (part of) last week, we went to visit them. I was keen on pushing further with Miles's dig; I had crawled in to some loose stuff at the end of the previous visit, and I was keen to see what would happen if that loose stuff was removed. Miles himself is less keen on crawling so I figured he would be quite keen on someone else doing that. And it wasn't just me keen on returning to Cwm; our own dig is also still going well, and we had some guests wanting to just have a wonder around. Three reasons to go to our regular haunt...

I was the first one down. I thought I'd wait for the next person, which was Edwyn, to say what I intended to do. When one crawl deep into a collapse it might be good if someone at least knows about it. Edwyn decided to come with me. Before I could say "slate" he was headfirst inside the crawl, crowbarring away at a rock in the ceiling of the crawl to see it it was robust. It was! Then it was my turn; I went in to get rid of the loose stuff. While at it, I decided to also remove a rock in the floor which made it hard to pull rocks back. That was hard as it was heavy and there wasn't much manoeuvring space. I asked Edwyn to give it a go. He figured we needed a rope.
 

Edwyn getting into the dig

Deeper...

Deeper even...

I scampered to the other dig as I knew there was some rope there. When I got back Edwyn was tackling another rock entirely. It was the one I had reduced with the breaker. It stood no chance against Edwyn! Then it was the turn of the other rock; soon that was gone too. That made the crawl a lot more comfortable. But now it went to a place with a marked change in style; we had hit a big rock with much smaller rocks behind it. These were the size you can easily remove, but they would have to go back a fair way, and there is't much space to do it. We would have to think about a strategy. We figured it was time to see what was happening at the other dig!

When we got there we found David who hoped we would have brought the large roll of wire with us. We hadn't, so I went to go and get it. Then I sat down for a bit of dinner. And after some general small talk I figured time was passing and I knew David wanted to put connectors on the wire. I suggested Edwyn and I do it; Edwyn is an electrical engineer so I figured getting him involved might increase trust in the work; I sometimes cut corners a bit when working with electricity. David thought it was a spiffing idea, so off we went.

It took me about three seconds to freak Edwyn out. We had a stanley knife to strip the wire, and I handle knives in ways H&S-focussed people can't stand. I admit his knife-wielding was exemplary. Mine gets it done too! Slightly hindered by the presence of only one knife and only one screwdriver we got the work done. Then it was time to go up; we'd meet the other group at 22:30 at the entrance.

Impatient as I am I was the first to get to the entrance chamber, where I met the others. They were keen to go out! It wasn't 22:30 yet, but I had the key, so off we went. They went down to get changed and I waited for the others. It was nice! I ate an apple, leant back, and stared at the Milky Way. Very idyllic!

Will we go back next week? No idea, but distance makes the heart grow fond and I am actually starting to itch to get my hands on that pile of small rocks at the end of our progress. And our own dig was going spectacularly well too: these are exciting times!

Teach with gadgets

When I made my lecture interactive I didn't stop there. I knew some of my colleagues sometimes make instruction videos; I figured that would be a good idea. I thought I'd make one in which I do the practical part of my assignment. If students then forget small things such as putting input files for MATLAB in the right folder, or specifying file extensions, or stuff like that, they can just look at me doing the assignment successfully and maybe notice what they did wrong. If you're a bit uncertain about a program it can really help seeing someone else do it! My computer, however, does not have a microphone. So when one of our teaching fellows mailed she had plug-in microphones we could borrow I did so almost immediately. I needed a few attempts; first I had to get the sound level right, then I had to make sure no unwanted windows would pop up (you can't have an excel sheet with student marking open when you do things like this, for instance), and during the first potentially successful attempt my officemate walked in and accidentally disturbed the recording. I got there in the end though! I am quite confident now. The students will still have to think anout the crux of the assignment, but I have faith they won't be held up by practicalities along the way. Bring on technology! If it can help rather than impede teaching it's most welcome!

Run Penmon

Penmon was one of these places I knew I really should go. People said it was beautiful! I had never got around to it, but then it was a sunny Sunday and I decided to do my weekend run there. And so I did! I parked at a lay-by right at the sea front, and from there ran to the old priory, the local well, the lighthouse (well, not all the way, as it stands in the sea), and the nearby limestone quarry. From there I ran back. It was all very agreeable indeed!

The priory (with the dove cot on the right)

St Seiriol's well

 The view over Penmon, with the Greta Orme and Puffin Island in the distance

 

The lighthouse

 

Part of Dinmor Quarries