rooks, buzzards, red kites, a little owl and a black cat

We were out and about around the country lanes.

Already fuelled from a stop in Alresford the spin through Preston Candover and Farleigh Wallop yielded plenty of unexpected wildlife spotting opportunities.

Long shadowed late afternoon sunshine silhouetted livestock as well as a few birds of prey including red kites lazily circling for easy pickings.

Not too difficult as the road edges had their share of the carnage from smaller animals. We stopped to let some moorhens cross at one point and silly pheasants could well have been on borrowed time.

The bare branches of trees at both ends of one village were filled with rooks beginning to settle for the evening.

I noticed a little owl sunlit high in a tree. Later a large buzzard swooped and accompanied us along the road for several hundred yards, branching off when it decided that an approaching black cat was perhaps somewhat ambitious.

spiky start to 2015

We welcomed the New Year from neo-futuristic Shard, which is the tall spiky building in Central London. It's still the tallest building in the European Union and was designed by Renzo Piano.

I should have read the instructions about how to get inside. Forget breweries, I can't find my way to a party in a skyscraper. I took us confidently to what I consider the front door (which is the entrance on the concourse at London Bridge).

Wrong.

It turns out that another entrance on the other side by Joiner Street is the main one for revellers whereas the one I'd gone to was more or less the 'business' entrance.

Into the second entrance, which also turned out to be wrong. There's another one right next to it which houses the express lifts to the right floor and its panoramic views across London.

A useful tip to remember is that there's also a bar area which at other times should be easier to access and for the price of a London cocktail gives fabulous views across London.

And not something I'd normally mention, but the loos have an exceptional outlook too. In my case right across to the Houses of Parliament...

But, of course, we were there to celebrate the start of the year.

Here's to a fine 2015.

Happy New Year.

end of 2014 photo recap

Bike ridden for the last time in 2014 this afternoon. Can see the back of the fridge again in places. Video snapshots created. Now to start the 2015 prep.

frozen end of year chirped pulse amplification of petawatt beams

A few end of year reflections on the state we're in. I know, it will all be on t'internet, where everyone can read and gasp over these comments for years to come.

Except, in general, even privately authored public blogs only get a generally small readership.

When I first started this blog thing, I deliberately kept the name away from my own as a sort of air gap. Actually, various systems are able to rejoin the broken links nowadays, probably by following the IP breadcrumbs as well as the larger cookies. All so they can try to sell me a lawnmower/telescope/wine subscription and confusingly sparkly jewellery,

It leads nicely to the lazy journalism stories of social media being hacked and secrets of all kinds being spilled. Yes, if you are famous and put a selfie of something embarrassing about yourself onto a public forum, it will probably get re-tweeted. And if you are a big corporation, expect people to want to dig into your secrets. Take the Orion project's laser performance at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, for example.

And yes, if you reply to one of those chain mail get rich quick things, you will certainly get more. No surprises there, nor with the Russian bride and other scam letters.

Still internetting, narcissism accelerates with the continued rise of the selfie. I used to take self portraits as a kind of test or to use up the last frame of a roll of film. Nowadays there's a special stick for a cameraphone (it has a rude name sometimes which I won't repeat here) and it's used to take 'better' selfies. It's commonplace to see theses sticks brandished around certain parts of London, like Traf Square.

A similar effect also extends to videos, with the celebrity buckets of ice tipping and a curious lack of information about the amount actually donated to related charities.

Of course, donations to charity by phone and online continue, although the next twist of the Search Engine Optimisation scams create interesting dilemmas. The winner of The Apprentice has a derivative business idea based upon SEO although I assume it won't be the guerrilla format increasingly used. Take the new Dart Charge - the regular 'Dart Charge' search can be disabled and a substitute result applied. The parasitic substitute 0903 phone number site then charges £1.53 per minute to connect to the real call centre site.

Disappointing to me is the lack of political satire now available as we watch destabilisation politics from the main parties as they try to keep us guessing about what is really happening. The Beeb are probably scared because of their charter renewal and the commercial stations have to worry about the advertisers, so we are left to puzzle at daily conflicting information.

I can only watch George Osborne in so many colourful hard hats and high-via jackets and like many (but not - it would appear the deficit avoiding Opposition), I'm wondering about: (a) what happens to all that Quantatitive Easing money we keep printing? (b) why some of the dodgy bankers don't get put in prison? (c) who is getting fat eating all the pies? There's many more questions, but I'll save some for next year.

The Westminster villagers continue to have cosy expenses whilst idling and posturing for the next fixed term election - they find ever imaginative ways to look busy whilst doing little until next May.

I'm of a view that we need somehow to have an operating system upgrade for the U.K. It's hard to know what is possible given the lack of options? It can't include that dangerous cartoon character who has boasted of using his European expenses allowance to fund his 'get out' party.

It's probably a calculated positioning by the other parties to let it run because bizarrely they become the 'least unacceptable' choices instead of a genuinely good choice.

But that's probably enough for the moment.

I usually keep these blog posts to ten minutes and a picture, so this one is already something of an overrun. In the words of that frozen cartoon movie that I only just managed to watch: Let it go, let it go, let it go.

changing the London meaning of red circle with white C?

I drive regularly in and around London and so have my car set up for the Congestion Charge payment scheme via Automatic Number Plate Recognition. It means I don't have to worry about manual payment or penalties when I trip the London Congestion Charge zone.

The symbol for congestion charge is a red circle with a white C inside it. Easy enough? Yes, until the recent Dart Charge system opened for the Dartford crossing. It's at the east side of London where the River Thames is crossed by either a tunnel (northbound) or a bridge (southbound). For years it had a series of toll booths, but they have been recently replaced with ANPR style cameras which match the car registration with a payment.

The symbol for the system? A red circle with a white C.

Exactly the same as the Congestion Charge.

So someone using the Congestion charge ANPR system for payment could be forgiven for thinking that the same system works for the bridge and tunnel?

Brrrp. No.

It doesn't. Although its another automatic number plate recognition system, it's entirely different. The hours of use are different and the messages on the approaches say you'll need to pay by midday the following day, although it's not really that clear about how, except they say 'find us online'.

Actually, especially from the south side the toll messages can blend in with the various road works, diversion, no unaccompanied flammables, new road layout under construction and similar sets of signage. There's also still a barrier which automatically rises and which, particularly during the Christmas/New Year period, gives the impression that the system may be switched off. Just like London Congestion Charge which is suspended from 25th December to 1st January.

Fortunately I've done all of the search online stuff and am suitably Dart Charge enabled.

When I enrolled, it asked for the car registration and payment detail, and, at the time, I had two crossings to pay for. This is where there's another interesting aspect. There is no Pay button on the website. After enrolling, I still had to phone a separate 0300 number to pay for the prior crossings. And I had to pay the full price instead of the "I'm enrolled" discount price. The call centre system helpfully asks for the vehicle registration number when you call it, before placing into a queuing system.

Unfortunately, the chap that answered the call didn't have the car reg. information from the queuing system. Nor did he have the information from the payment system that I'd entered, so I had to go through it all again. I asked him why there was no pay button on the web-site. He said he didn't know, but I was far from the first person to make that comment.

I've used the system again since that time and it does seem to be working now, so I won't be one of what The Highways Agency calls 'first time offenders' with 14 days of grace to pay the first bill.

Apparently on the first full day of the scheme roughly 10,000 Penalty Charge Notices were sent out to motorists. The full fine is £70 unless paid by the midnight after the crossing and it rises to £105 if not paid within 28 days.

I should be paying £1.67 per crossing now on the significantly faster toll gate.

analogue games overtake digital at rashbre central

We're far more analogue in our choice of games at Christmas. The ones that involve curling up newspapers and wrapping up people. That kind of thing. And oranges. Yes. Games with oranges where we all end up on the floor.

Maybe a board game or two - I'm expecting to play the one where we have to be Uranium Miners at some point. For computerised games, I'll stick to 'Heads Up', which is the very simple iPhone game that sort of replaces paper in the usual stickers on the forehead type of games. Great fun, free and easy to set up.

I've posted some of the games involving old wrapping paper, sticky tape, fruit and the like in past years. Here's a few, which can be played at everything from amateur through to full Pro standard.

Required items: Wrapping paper, sticky tape, magazines, newspapers, highlighter pen, pins, people mainly capable of speech.

1) Guess the name : Yes - simply providing the guests with paper hats or pin on labels which they can't see with the name of a sleb on it. They have to guess with the Yes/No answers. Marilyn Monroe, that politician bloke who drinks the beer on telly, Frankenstein, Albert Einstein, Justin Bieber, Jason Bourne, 007, Mickey Mouse, Madonna, Beyonce. You get the idea.
2) Dress the person : Kinetic Game, two teams: 2-5 minutes. Select someone to be dressed using either old wrapping paper or a couple of recent magazines or newspapers.
3) Kipper racing : multiple teams. needs a long clear indoor space. cut or tear a largish fish shape from a sheet of wrapping paper or anything similar to hand. Add detail such as a hole for the eye, maybe a dorsal fin. Lie them flat on the floor and give other team members further sheets of paper/magazines to use to create air currents to propel the fish from a start line to a distant improvised finishing line.
4) Tell a tale : Pre select some groups of 7 unusual words from a magazine or newspaper article. Hand them to each team and and ask each team member in turn to tell a story using the seven words. Other teams have to try to guess the words.
(Example words from random article today : luckier; heterosexual; chevrolet; banana; promoted; quitter; eggs. and from another page: emissions; cruise; leisurely; overcome; scoop; howling; endurance...you get the idea.)
5) Pass the orange : Why wait until after the dinner has finished to play this game? goes great with coffee.
6) Pictionary: drawing fast pictures based upon words. The boxed set is best for this one.
7) GrEEn GlaSS dOOr : The person in charge suggests playing this and that everyone else can try to be selected to go through the green glass door by suggesting appropriate pairs of things. Things that get in are a pOOl but no water; glaSS but no picture; MiRRor but no reflection (ie the first thing needs a double letter in it.. Play till last person gets it)
8) GGD variants : Play GGD (7) where instead of double letters, each sentence said by the next person has to start with a vowel "...and blah blah bla; ...or blah blah blah ...obviously" and another variant vowel/then consonant and another variant is start with next letter of alphabet.
9) Alphabet Game : Choose topic (Animals, Cars, Candy Bars, Popstars, Drinks). Start at A and round robin through to Z.
10) Stirring the Mush : Announce you are stirring the mush and (eg stand up, sit down, scratch your ear etc). Then start stirring the mush by any hand/body gesture you like. The invite someone to copy. the trick is thay have to do what you did BEFORE you started stirring the mush (eg scratch ear etc). Tell them whether they have passed or not then select next 'victim'. Repeat until all have worked it out.
11) Erect-a-pup : More newspaper for this two in -oner. Part one. Teams. who can make the longest tube in 2 minutes from rolled up paper? Sounds easy. Just watch what happens. Part Two. Now, in another three minutes make a model life sized puppy out of tubes of newspaper. Warning that some puppies will have 3, 5 legs at the end of this.

And remember, avoid injuries.

airborne particles of glitter

Surprisingly, the now illuminated home-made snowman face assembled from fuzzy felt and copydex has survived the tree quality patrols. I'll blame the Hendricks for that, and anticipate the return of good taste to the tree by tomorrow.

A discerning Santa popped by on the right evening and left a pile of goodies. We provided the usual refreshment, although this year he seems to have been partial to 12 year aged Scotch rather than the more conventional sherry.Rudolph was still partial to the magic carrot and a bite from the mince pie.

Then time for a few glittery presents and I must admit our whole lounge has a slight sheen of glitter now, from presents, crackers and that some sort of particles just raining from the air.

From all at Rashbre Central - A Merry Christmas.

Santa speed calculations, NORAD tracking and links to Xmas games

Time also for this year's update of the Santa Calculations, which I first published back in 2006 and then updated in 2010. I'm using 7 billion as the world population.

Firstly, here's the link to the Santa tracking system created by NORAD. I noticed it being publicised at Heathrow airport yesterday, too.

And my usual reminder that an ideal last minute gift is, of course, the rashbre novel - The Triangle, now also available as a Kindle download for less than a couple of quid.

For those of you who are more interested in the technology of Santa, NORAD's FAQs provide the following:

I've again used the Joel Potischman and Bruce Handy calculations as the basis for the speed calculations, with my own adaptations:

The most notable corrections to be applied are:

- Santa delivers no gifts to naughty children (not even coal)
- Naughty to nice ratio is 1:9
- As confirmed by NORAD, one Santa distributes all of the gifts.
- There is only one family per household.
- Santa bypasses non Santa belief system houses.
- Reindeer have recently eaten fresh magic acorns.


Calculation Assumptions (2014):

- World population = 7.06 billion
- Children under 18 = 2.353 billion (Hmm may be higher)
- Global Santa based belief systems: 33%
- Max children requiring delivery therefore 784 million
- Children per household: 3.5 (may seem high?)
- Number of households requiring distribution 224 million
- Naughty to nice factor applied but not many all naughty households
- Remove all naughty households (25% 0f 10%) = 5.6 million
- Eastern orthodox using Jan 5 instead of Dec 25 = 16 Million
- Target Households = 202 million on Dec 25
- Estimated child bed time 21:00 (9pm) with 7 hours sleep.

(child sleep duration on Dec 24 may also require revision)

Gives circa 31 hours (24+7) for all deliveries
Time is 1860 mins or 111,600 seconds

Average number of homes to visit per second = circa 1810.
So average delivery per household is 552 milliseconds, which is why Santa normally appears a bit blurry (I previously thought it was the sherry)

Land surface minus Antarctica is around 79 million square miles. Distribute destinations evenly = 0.7 miles between households creating a total distance of circa 110 million miles.

So 110 million miles in 31 hours = 3.6 million miles an hour or circa 1000 miles per second or Mach 4770 at a linear speed.

This explains Rudolph's red nose because of air resistance creating around 20 quintillion Joules of energy per second, which would convert a non reindeer nose to charcoal at such energy levels. I think the acceleration and deceleration per household may also need some examination.

Luckily Santa has lots of special powers so these mere physics facts are no problem to such a superhero.

systems armed for Christmas break

My last spin around what was a very crowded Sloane Square before the start of the proper holidays and family get-togethers.

Part of my mission was to check on the new floor that the builders had installed in the London place before heading back to Hampshire.

Sure enough, they'd moved all the furniture, taken up the curried and red-wined party carpets and replaced it all with Scottsdale Oak.

Also on Monday a few of us got together in a pub for one of those 'what have you been doing?' sessions, which spanned people temporarily back in the area from as far as Australia and China, as well as those a short tube ride away.

I've also prepared an old-school mix tape (okay, it's a CD) - because that format is still usable in less technologically sophisticated environments. You know who you are.

And the regulation 'Driving Home for Christmas' video - again- the Sloane Street, Pont Street, Beauchamp Place to San Lorenzo part, if you know your London.

shopping swapping confusion creates spiced popping overload

Already back from early morning shopping for a couple of fill-in items, before the retail mayhem starts today.

Our pre-Christmas groceries arrived around 9.30 pm on Sunday, although the delivery driver explained there were a few substitutions.

Truth was, we'd used a different service from our normal one. All the usable delivery slots had already gone. When I eventually looked at the list of swaps, instead of the average two items substituted from our normal service, I noticed there were about eight substitutions, plus another six or so items not available.

This could have got a bit awkward, but as the various bags were unpacked we discovered it was something of an admin error. We seemed to have all of the missing items, plus quite a few substitutions as well.

Confusingly, all the changes added about 15 extra items to our shopping. However, the price was also lower than the original invoice. I wonder if we'd had two different people fulfilling the list?

I'll put this down to logistical confusion at this time of the year, although we do seem to have an awful lot of spiced popping candy chocolate tarts.

I attempt my first high speed photo summary of 2014

Sometimes it's necessary to take a high level view of things, even if there's a few smears and filters around what is happening.

That'll be the case with my first high speed look at my 2014. I usually make a practice video, so maybe it'll change before the end of the year.

My recipe: Export 1000 photos from 2014 at 1024x768 into a folder. Start a video app (e.g. Final Cut). Set the video stills default to 6 frames. Drag the 1000 pictures in, onto the Sequence line. Add around 4 minutes of music. Render and Share.

A warning, though, that my photo slide shows are a bit faster than most.

fir tree now indoors, awaiting #alexpolizzi decoration fix

Back down south again in that ground rush of the last few days before Christmas. I'm told that today is the Day To Avoid Visiting The Shops, because of all the last minute purchase mayhem - 'Panic Saturday'.

I can be slightly smug because I've already been out to collect yesterday's parcel from the sorting office plus a side visit to the mysteriously deserted supermarket.

"Calm before the storm?" I asked.

"Maybe," answered the checker-outer, "We were open all night but only had one customer after two a.m."

I noticed everything was being replenished yet I still managed to accidentally buy bread with a best before date of today. Grrr. A despicable placement of the oldest stock right in the middle of the most convenient shelf. Yo Ho Ho.

The Christmas tree is now indoors. Needles are mainly intact, except for the inevitable skirmish as I brought it (yes still wrapped) through the back door. I won't trouble to vacuum the loose needles yet because there will be even more as we start the lighting.

Like in that telly program with Alex Polizzi, I'll be banned from the actual conversion of the tree from mere forestry into a work of festive charm. And yes, repurposed paperclips made S-shaped will be used as hooks.

At least I got to light outdoors (soft white - another Polizzi tick in the box), although there was a tricky moment when the man with the chain saw came around to prune the already lit apple tree.