You don't cry when you chop up a ukulele.
Djazz
I am very much enjoying Rob Scallon's latest, ridiculous, Jazz/Djent fusion. Nice.
On Using an 'O'-ring Part II
After a useful piece of advice on the RTCUK group that said you should clip to an 'O'-ring on your bridge rather than directly onto the bridge, I started to do exactly that. The rationale was that a carabiner will wear in the same place and abrade the bridge quicker than a ring that will wear uniformly all round it. Fair enough.
Well yesterday I was putting up a high hammock and had set up a Y-rig with two doubled ropes off the bridge. One was on my ring, but the other was clipped straight to the bridge. Because each leg was attached to anchors quite far apart, the tie-in points migrated to the ends of the bridge - but the directly-clipped one went beyond the bridge-end fittings.
This is not a good thing. Lesson learned. I'm buying a second 'O'-ring.
Tree Chilling
Thanks Jos for the great picture! An oak that can't help but make you happy.
Old-Growth Forests vs. Second-Growth Plantations
My Funeral
At my funeral, this is the piece to which everybody leaves.
Mastodon - Open Source Decentralized Facebook/Twitter Alternative
"Mastodon is a decentralized social network that uses standard interoperability protocols and is completely [FOSS]. What this means is that anyone can run a Mastodon server, and the users of those servers can talk to each other. More than that, non-Mastodon servers are also part of this network if they conform to the same protocols. This means that Mastodon is more future-proof than Facebook or Twitter: Even if Mastodon-the-software falls out of fashion, the network can be simply continued by other interoperable software. You don't have to tear out your entire social graph to have all friends migrate to something new if that happens. Furthermore, Mastodon allows self-determination and control. When you run a server, it's yours. Your rules, your community, hosted on your hardware... you don't depend on anybody, definitely not on a [Silicon Valley headquarters]."
from BoingBoing
Find me at @collapsibletank@mastodon.social
Chomsky Gets to the Core of it
Nadal
Rafael Nadal looks like Tom Cruise with his face smushed against a window.
Think Twice
There are a number of great maths channels on YouTube, such as Numberphile and Mathologer - but the most beautiful and elegant is Think Twice, where smart and smooth animation visualises otherwise complex formulae or theorems. For example, here's the derivation and properties of the Dragon Curve.
(Mr Puzzle has a nice review of some laser-cut puzzles including a Dragon Curve one here.)
Ancient Beech in Ill-considered Leggings
A return to a tree in Danes' Wood I'd only seen out of leaf, and which was hard to find with the wood in its summerwear. Turns out it's a beech and I can't tell my arse from my arbour.
Surprisingly tricky, requiring quite a lot of repositioning in order to get a good enough line for several of the re-pitches, but each stage was quite short.
The tree branches considerably all the way up, so there are a lot of choices to make, but once at the top you can move from place to place relatively easily with a long lanyard to play with. Also - great for limbwalking.
Inevitably I'd climbed about one metre higher than my rope would allow for a return to ground, and because of being too lazy to climb up and move my anchor point, I ended up using my lanyard to unclip from my zig-zag and drop to earth with my foot ascender still attached. Getting cramp in your supporting leg while trying to detach from a foot-ascender is both hilarious and agonising in equal measure.
Summertime
Aw yiss...
Noah Lee - "Julie-O"
The whole of this is great, but Noah Lee's piece is really special.
BETTER Dancing in Movies
There's a video doing the rounds this week called Dancing in Movies, and it's proving to be impossible to avoid. 1.5 million plays on Vimeo. Virality huh... But it's no good. The tracks he chose are agonisingly undanceable and it doesn't match satisfyingly with any of the actual dancing, much of which is amorphous. It's just random clips of dancing with a weak musical backing.
This one, on the other hand, from three years ago, is an absolute classic. Every clip is achingly skillful, the track (Uptown Funk) is the most leg-twitchingly danceable track ever produced, and the dancing actually fits the rhythm of the song, which you'd think would be fundamental to a project of this type.
Raising Sophisticated Young Ladies
Shaldon Ness
A beautiful day on Shaldon Ness this afternoon. First up a handsome Copper Beech on Ness Drive with the sun coming through the leaves.
This one is definitely a contender to house a couple of hammocks. Fairly quiet and easy to hide in, but very leafy so not much view; which is a shame because in winter you can see right along the coast. Then up a tall oak that overlooks the car park in one direction, but in the other direction - open sea! This is fantastic.
Trees at the top of cliffs are a real treat. I was up a different tree on the same headland last week and a helicopter flew past beneath me!
Today, I was waving at paddle-boarders. There's not a lot of cover in this oak...
Really special.
Five Old Blokes and a Million Kids
AC/DC in their still-rocking dotage. Worth it if only for the jumping crowd at 2m27s.
Shaldon Ness climbing
Too much new growth for a hammock these days, sadly. Still lovely though.
The Poor People's Campaign
This is a good introductory (to me at least) piece on the Poor People's Campaign. I wanted to say something like "and so it begins", but it has been actively running for five weeks with little in the media to show for it. This article asks why.
It ends with this excellent photo-essay.