Tonight there’s a climbing competition on at the Nottingham Climbing Wall. It’s something they run in the Winter as they get more people in and they get bored with the same routes all the time. Each time they put up new routes they run a competition. There are three levels: easy, moderate and hard. I do the easy one (routes 1-20 out of 40).
Alison will be along to spectate, and she’ll have the camera too for some action shots.
Stay tuned!
Now and again I help out at a nearby cafe, and seeing as I’m such a kind soul I took along my new camera to take some snaps for their website. I didn’t realise before showing up there but it turned out that Jon and his band were playing live.
The pictures turned out really well and of course the band was a bonus, not only entertainment but an interesting subject too!
Anyway the pictures are below.
1: Shot from the bar area of Jon and the band (foreground) and some customers (right).
2. The band playing with a music video playing on the video wall. I artified it slightly.
3. Shot of the balcony with all the computers (it’s an internet cafe), artyified once again.
4. This shot came out slighty blury, so I shrank it. From the balcony overlooking the whole cafe.
That was the sound of me and Daz going round Rockingham on Saturday.
Thankfully we were on a skidpan, not on the main track so those kinds of
noises are to be expected! The day was an ‘experience’ gift from the parents for Christmas and we finally got round to doing it. On the front of the gift box it shows a fairly old Ford Sierra sliding round on a great big square of tarmac, so it was quite a surprise when we got a letter each in the post saying that we’d be in a BMW 320!
Yes this motor goes very well, especially round bends! It goes round like mine never would. I don’t know if it’s because the BMW is rear wheel drive whereas mine is front, or because the BMW is a better car or simply because it’s newer.
The traction was controlled with a rig on the outside of the car that hydraulically lift the front or rear of the car. This simulates snow, ice, rain etc and is all controlled from a keypad in the front of the car. The instructor can change the grip at the front and rear independently from 0 (normal) to 10 (ice).
To begin with the instructor took the car round the circuit and showed us the sorts of thing we’d be doing. I use the word ‘circuit’ quite loosely. It was basically a massive square of tarmac with 4 or 5 cones down middle as a slalom and cones arranged in a number of ’roundabouts’ no either side. So long as the way is clear you can go where you like as quick as you like.
Needless to say the instructor gave us quite a ride round the track showing us under, overseer, all-wheel skids and different recovery techniques. We had 2 goes each round the track for a good while, trying out all the different traction modes and slinging the car round the bends. Setting the grip low at the back makes the car over-steer, in other words the car turns in towards the bend you’re going round and if you don’t steer the other way pretty quick, you’ll end up facing the wrong way and going backwards! (Like we did a few times!) The oversteer mode is great fun, whereas understeer is not so much.
Understeer is the opposite of oversteer (who’d have guessed?) and means that the car wants to keep going in a straight line as you go round the bend. The result is the car doesn’t corner as sharp as you’d like and you have to take your foot off the gas to come out of the slide. If this happened in real life then you could quite easily end up on the kerb.
Using the fancy controls the instructor could set the grip so that you’d understeer going into the bend but then oversteer as soon as you left off the gas, something he called ‘hot hatch mode’ referring in particular to the handling of the infamous Peugeot 205 GTi. He also tried to throw us off by changing the grip before each bend or even during the corner or in the
slaloms. Sneaky bugger!
A good day was had by all, even the slightly damp (it rained) spectators.
Related: Digital Camera (Part III)
It’s about time I wrote something conclusive about my new Pentax S40, I said I would after all.
The camera really lived up to expectations. It has some really usefull preset modes like landscapes, night shots, sunsets etc and all of these worked really well. I particualry liked the night shot mode, it leaves the aparture open for longer giving more detail. this does mean you can get a bit of camera shake but it wasn’t a problem for my steady hands. A handy wall would do the job better though I’m sure.
The batteries lasted forever, despite using the flash a lot and always having the screen on. I always carried a spare set roud with me but they were never needed during my whole two week holiday!
The memory cartridge last till the end of the holiday too and had some space over, I never thought that would happen. In fact I was checking out the prices of extra memory in Dixons Tax Free at the airport, luckily the high prices put me off as it wasn’t needed in the end.
As for weight, the camera weighs a bit more than most because it uses AA batteries rather than moulded lithium ones, in my opinion though this is a plus point as spares are cheaper. It really didn’t weigh a great deal anyway, certainly light enough to put in your pocket.
One day I may put up some of my snaps, but until that day, keep reading!
Related: MLB Baseball: New York Yankees at Boston
Boston wins, and Shady wins too!
Just noticed that this game only started 20 minutes ago, so I’ve layed both sides.
Current odds are
NYY: 2.2 (Back), 2.6 (Lay)
BOS: 1.65 (back), 1.66 (Lay)
So I placed these bets: Lay NYY 2.2 ?2 and Lay BOS 1.3 ?3.40.
Neither of these bets have been matched so we’ll have to see what happens, but the idea is that the odds will fluctuate enough for both the bets to be matched and I’ll be ?1 up regardless of the winner.
Again, I’m talking big money 
While I’ve been typing my NYY bet has been matched and BOS are at 1.8 to lay. So lets hope that BOS come through and the odds swing in their favor, and mine.
If the BOS bet isn’t matched, then NYY have won and I’ll be ?2.40 down. Boo
Come on Boston!
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