Category: Vague – where should it go?

Where vague stuff is placed for filing

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Poppy Prize

I’ve recently been reminded of an incident from about 23 years ago. I probably think of this every year around Remembrance Day because it makes me chuckle.

As a teenager I was involved with the Air Cadets, or rather the Air Training Corps as we were then known. My loyalty lies with 309 (Sawbridgeworth) Sqn of the ATC as that is where I spent a lot of my time from age 12 1/2 (not officially) to around 30 [with a couple of breaks]. I attended the 25th anniversary meal of the Squadron being formed and next year I’ll be attending the 30th anniversary!

During 1990 I did the usual house-to-house collection for my squadron around the town of Sawbridgeworth for the poppy appeal. We normally did this on parade nights the few weeks before November 11th. This particular year I also happened to be dating a member of 1096 (Bishop’s Stortford) Sqn and for a laugh I joined her squadron on their door-to-door collection as their parade night was different.

So, it turns out that I won some sort of trophy at 1096 Sqn for collecting the most money for their squadron. Even now it makes me chuckle. I guess simple things please simple minds. I can’t remember if I ever got a trophy or prize but I definitely won their competition.

Also, the estate where I was collecting was home to a Squadron Leader from the Wing Staff. I can’t remember his name (probably Ian, but that’s not a great deal of help), I’ll get in touch with some of my close friends, they’ll remember. Anyway, I was going through the process to get my Staff qualification and part of this required an interview. This Sqn Ldr was meant to interview me and so when I knocked on his door and he recognised me we held the interview there and then. I passed the examination.

Perhaps there’ll be more dim and distant memories recorded here soon!

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Views From My Run

 

On my run this morning I took some photographs because this area of Kent is lovely. It was nice and sunny, although cold. I run in the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Here’s my route:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Here’re my photographs:

Kit’s Coty House – note the moon hanging around!

Kit's Coty House
Kit’s Coty House on the way up Blue Bell Hill

A road / footpath:

A Road
A Road

The North Downs taken half way up / down from the footpath from Burham to the Robin Hood pub:

Halfway Up
Halfway Up

A kind of triptych of the view just out of Burham on Church Street

Looking west from Church Road
Looking west from Church Road
South West from Church Street
West South West from Church Street
West South West from Church Street
South West from Church Street

 

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The Last Time Was 17 Years Ago

It’s been a long time since I last wrote on a blackboard with chalk. I remember the second school on my teacher training programme had blackboards and especially in the small sixth form teaching room. I explained arithmetic and geometric progressions in there as my A Level teaching experience.

On Wednesday 13th November 2013 I also used chalk on a blackboard. It was a pleasant experience. I particularly like the contrast of the white text on a black background, it makes the writing stand out well [when I read in my Kindle app I have the setting that way around].

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You might be able to see a little bit of white-roller-board in the picture and be wanting to ask why I didn’t use that? Well, it only makes up one third of the board and I didn’t want to have to erase my notes and it was dirty and creased. I’m rather fussy about white boards and how clean they should be kept. See this communication.

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Possibly Slightly Fussy

I could possibly be described as being slightly fussy. This may surprise you, dear reader, but then again I would think not. I’m a teacher of mathematics and I love science and the real world. Of course I’m going to be fussy and whimsical.

I am probably too fussy about white boards at work. The one in my main teaching room I keep as spotless as possible. I do not use permanent pens [you’d be surprised the number of times that does happen] and I always wipe the board using a circular motion with my hands.

If you wipe clean a white board using a side to side motion the ink gathers in small areas at the edge of the wipe, much like windscreen wipers. However, if you clean using a circular motion this does not happen.

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There is a slight dent in my whiteboard in the bottom right of the picture. It irritates me slightly but I can’t do a lot about it! Also, if you look carefully you might be able to see my year 10 class doing a test!

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Pigeon Check

This is a picture of the building where I predominantly work. You can see I have labelled certain parts of the building.

Over the last few years I have been here I have become aware that before I enter the building (through doors labelled A) I check the roof line (labelled B) for pigeons. This is because they poop over the edge of the building and I don’t want to get any of that on me. If I look at the floor underneath the eaves I can see a distribution of pigeon poop along the length of the building. If I spot pigeons directly above the doors I will adjust my approach to the building. In the picture the birds sitting quietly (labelled C) would not be considered a threat unless it was a windy day.

 

Pigeon Check
Pigeon Check

Don’t get me started on the seagulls on the other buildings!

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Just Wrong

Maps eh? This is the picture of a wall chart by Michelin (the French company but for their English cousins). It is a Van Der Grinten projection with changes made by Michelin. I’m not sure it’s ethical to change a map projection but they did.

This map makes Great Britain look the same size as France. The real multiplier is that France is 2.2 times the size of the UK, let alone GB.
Spain is really twice as big as Great Britain.
Although it’s not on this picture Kenya looks about the same size as GB but is in fact 2.4 times bigger.

What have Michelin done? They’ve made it appear that Great Britain is larger than it is really. Oh dear. Perhaps we should all watch the

Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail

episode of the West Wing. It will explain it all, I assure you.

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By the way, the last time I saw this episode of the West Wing was summer 2013 in Keswick while I was visiting penguin.

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Umbrella

In 1988 I went to the British Formula One Grand Prix with my sister and friends. We were four in total, Nick, Andy, Tracy and me. It was pretty exciting and one of the first “big days out” I had done as a teenager (I was 16).
I remember about five things about the day:

  • It rained
  • We watched from the Hangar Straight
  • Nigel Mansell came second
  • Andy and I bought an umbrella
  • We couldn’t hear the radio commentary because the cars were too loud
  • A car came to a stop right in front of us

Ok, wow, that’s six things about the day. I also want to say that we drove there in an Austin Allegro but I don’t think that is correct. I shall check and get back to you.

According the to Wikipedia page on this race it did rain, which is reassuring for my memory cells and Mansell did come second. It’s the umbrella I want to focus on.

As it rained so much Andy and I decided to buy an umbrella. We didn’t have enough money to each buy one so we put our funds together and bought a Marlboro McLaren umbrella from a stall. This umbrella served us well during the day and from then on we agreed we would share the umbrella between us as we both owned it.

I think this arrangement may have lasted about a year until I lost the umbrella. It’s something I feel a little bad about even to this day [when I remember to]. I had a strange canvassing job for Eissman who were trying to build a business of home delivered frozen food. A group of us would wander crappy (and some not-so-crappy) housing estates delivering the catalogue of frozen delights and then two days later we would ring every door bell and see if we could have the catalogue back, preferably with an order. It was commission only.

For this particular week I was getting a lift with the son of the vicar of Ugley in Essex. We were working in Letchworth in Hertfordshire. The weather must’ve been bad because I had the umbrella with me and then left it in his car when he dropped me off from another unsuccessful day at work. I’m pretty sure he quit and didn’t turn up again. As a job it was pretty bad, I lasted two weeks. What is more annoying is that I lost the umbrella which meant quite a bit to me.

I remembered this recently when I was teaching ratios to a class of mine. I told the story and then text Andy about it. He had forgotten what happened to the umbrella, but for me, I feel the loss nearly every day!

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Personal Air Conditioning

Last June I was in a new lecture theatre at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It was a nice room and well designed, apart from the positioning of the projector screens. One thing that I found surprising (and expensive) was the personal air blowing device. It’s either that or the designers have included some form of personal-gas-recovery-system to save attendees from other people’s smells!

IMG_4776

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Sexy Stuff

I don’t follow many people on Twitter. It’s a conscious decision that means I actually have the time to read tweets by my friends (see here). I have, however, recently added a couple of new people/things to follow.

  • @Scienceporn
  • @CombinedHistory
  • @MilitaryPorn

I find these generally fascinating and I feel that they actually add something to my life. I’m a complete science whore and so @Scienceporn is awesome. I am unsure about some of the sources and tweets, but the replies to @scienceporn normally ask for references and so it’s a self-sorting system, much like science.

@Combinedhistory is a really clever concept of matching famous pictures with modern backdrops and fusing the two together to give a brilliant time-displacement view of scenes.

@MilitaryPorn is awesome. I’ve always been a fan of military aircraft and in my teenage years I went to lots of airshows. Most of the aircraft that I find gorgeous aren’t really flying anymore and so this tweeter gives me a chance to drool over pictures of planes I’ve always enjoyed. Here’s a selection:

Four B1s
Four B1s
F4 being a bit naughty
F4 being a bit naughty
B2
B2
SR-71 and F4
SR-71 and F4

 

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