Get any bites?

Yesterday I went fishing for seatrout for the first time in ages. I always fish with a fly and this time I decided to fish from our little red boat. we bought the boat years ago to lend to people who rented our cabin out on the coast. I now realise that a 12 foot boat with a 4hp motor is not ideal for sea fishing. I can't stand using the motor because it makes so much noise so this year I'm not going to put it on, anyway I can almost row as fast, today I overtook a sailing boat. Fly-fishing is rather like hunting, you see the fish place the fly and hopefully reel the fish bites. Yesterday the conditions were perfect, as I drifted parallel to the bank a fish rolled over in between two clumps of sea weed, on the first drift it went for the fly but turned away at the last moment, on my second pass I got it, a 700g sea trout. It fought quite a bit and I didn't have a net so to get it in the boat I put my thumb in its mouth and slipped a finger round its gills. Guess what? It bit me. Today I took the landing net but as everyone knows when you have the net you never catch a fish.

Hartleys Jam

I must be turning into a dog, just went for a walk up the mountain and the most noticeable thing was the smell, it was just like that peach flavoured iced tea. I think it was a combination of juniper, fir trees and ferns. Why is iced tea invariably peach flavoured? Peaches aren't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of tea, lemon yes peaches no. Did someone come up with the idea out of nowhere or was it a result of market forces. Did they start producing all flavours and peach sold best. Reminds me of an old advert for Hartley's jam where a woman serving cream teas in a Devon cafe goes through the whole range of jam's available.
We've got strawberry and apricot, Rasberry..........
For years (even now) I would always recite the advert any time anyone asked what kind of Jam we had.

Wall to Wall

Back home after after the Ankara workshop. The flight from Munich to Oslo was overbooked so I accepted 250 Euros to go later, Yippee. Also got upgraded to business class which was cool. Funny how your personality can change just because you're sitting in a different seat, didn't like feeling a fraud for the whole journey though. Definitely more comfortable and better food down that end of the plane. Just joined facebook to find out what it's all about. Don't understand what's going on yet but I guess it will become clear, frightened of doing something foolish like writing on the wrong wall or something. I find the whole friends thing a bit strange, I can't separate the use of the word friend in facebook from the normal use of the word. I wonder what it would be like if you could register enemies.

**** would like to be your enemy do you accept
**** is now your enemy

It all seems a bit one sided friends but no enemies.
Disturbs my need for symmetry.
Maybe I just haven't found the right button yet.

Troublesome tap

Now I'm in Ankara. Well I'm in a hotel room in Ankara which could be a hotel room anywhere really apart from the raki in the minibar and the nuts are called nuka. Had some technical problems on the way here. I pulled the towel to hard in the toilet at Copenhagen airport and a whole load came out, that's when I saw the just tug lightly sign. It seems there was some automatic sensor that let the towel out when your hand got near. On the plane from Munich to Ankara I couldn't turn off the water in the toilet so had to inform the flight attendant, yes I felt a bit silly saying that I didn't know how to stop the water. Maybe she thought I was one of those people who's been raised in the jungle and has never seen a tap before. In the toilet at Munich airport they have stuff for cleaning the toilet seat, I didn't spot it until I'd used the toilet so used it afterwards, assuming everyone makes the same mistake as me all will be fine.

Boat Blog

Just had to do write a blog entry whilst sitting on the Fast boat going to Bergen. Amazing how you can log into the internet on a boat. I'm on my way to Ankara to lead a workshop for physics teachers. Its a beautiful journey but I usually use the time to do some preparation so don't look out of the window so much. Actually I gave my seat up to an old English guy who wanted to see the scenery, he doesn't seem to be looking at it much though, there's gratitude for you, kindness thrown back in your face.

Almond Shells

Was just walking down from the mountain and saw some of those dung beetles again,the ones that roll about balls of cow dung. I'm not sure what they do with it but maybe they make houses. There is a tribe somewhere who build there houses from Cow dung, don't think it would be allowed in Norway (except for beetles).There is a building in Dale that is made from almond shells, when I first heard about this I was intrigued to find out how they made walls from almond shells. Do they stack the half shells ontop of each other or stick them to a sheet of plywood? The reality is that the shells are turned into powder mixed with loads of resin and moulded into what looks exactly like stacks of photocopy paper. Its supposed to be environmentally friendly but it doesn't look like it. Maybe its because it looks like a stack of recycled paper that makes it so environmental. We always use environmentally friendly toilet paper, I wish we used bottom friendly toilet paper.

Survival of the Physics

Was in the lab today and saw some writing on the board "We survived 1st year of physics" well by the look of the handwriting you didn't. Would have been nice if it said we love physics with one of those red hearts like on the I love NY tee shirts, maybe I'll change it tomorrow. I want to get a T shirt with I love NYnorsk written on it, I don't really love NYnorsk but its a clever logo. My ability in Norwegian seems to be going downhill, I must have peaked. At this rate I'm going to have to start lessons. Thats why I only speak Norwegian to Per, get some practice. By the way Per managed the climb he was trying.

Roads are permanent

You can't see it very well but in this photo there's a path winding up the hillside. It's taken years to build and its still not finished. I've heard that its being built by the son of the person who lives in that house in the middle of the picture, he's been building it for years. If you've lived at the college you might have heard him working late into the night. Quite an impressive feat for one person, not quite the building of the pyramids, more like the building of the road but not bad. The reason he is building it is because his dad is paralysed so can't go hunting in their cabin up on that mountain, when the road is finished he'll be able to. I just can't imagine taking on such a big job as carving a road up a mountain, what happens if you build the road and find it's too steep to drive up, you can't really knock it down and start again.

New belt

I buy all my clothes on Ebay that means that they don't always fit properly. The other day i bought a pair of trousers that were slightly too big but would be fine with a belt. Problem is I don't have a belt and to buy one I'd have to drive for an hour so decided to make one. I took the strap from an old computer bag and some buckles from an old rucksack and sewed one together. Could only find pink cotton but never mind. Quite a good belt actually and its almost identical to Bens collar.

Strong wire

About those gates that I wrote about a few posts back, I was going through them again today on the morning walk with Ben and realised how pleasant it was to go through the newly mended gates. I got a real sense of satisfaction just being able to open and close the gates without them falling to bits. Just goes to show how it is possible to turn something negative into something positive with a few meters of strong wire.

Positive thinking

What you need to succeed in climbing a difficult route, or doing anything at the limit of ones ability is positive thinking. Climbing is painful and if you don't try hard you won't do it. This is what I told Per yesterday except I said it in Norwegian because I decided about a year ago that I would never speak English with Per again and I haven't, well almost I did once by mistake. Here is a bit of positive thinking; after a night of over indulgence I said to a friend that maybe we had had a bit to much to drink, he replied "well at least we didn't smoke".

Fishermans holiday

Went fishing last night. Didn't catch anything but it was good to spend a night up on the mountains. Its a great area for trout fishing, the sort of place trout fishermen go to on their holidays but I can go there any time, I don't of course I seem to just go there on my holidays too.
Held Per's rope on his latest project this evening. He's trying a 7c route called Graduation out on the Haugland cliff. I put it up about 5 years ago and nobody has tried it ever since. He said that if he didn't do it this evening he wouldn't go home so I guess he's still there.

Bill Gates

Every day I take Ben for a walk up the track behind our house, at this time of the year there are sheep and cows on the loose so the farmers have erected some gates, the problem is the gates aren't proper gates but made of old bits of wood and held together with wire. Everyday two of the gates collapse and have to be rebuilt before passing once on the way up and once on the way down. It simply spoils the whole experience. Today I decided to strengthen them with extra wire that I found hanging on a fence, now I feel very happy every time I go through. Bill Gates was visiting Norway the other day, I saw him on the telly talking about all the money he's giving away. What a nice chap. Pity all those pop stars on that programme Cripps on MTV don't give some of their money away, its a horrible programme but sometimes I have to watch it for 5 minutes. There has never been anyone on it that I've heard of but they are still filthy rich. Why do some normal people think that pirate copying of music is bad, if the artists didn't make so much money they wouldn't have to buy those big houses and would it be such a shame if people were no longer attracted to the music business by all the money they can earn?

Tube Fish

A long day working through the IB questions in my new HL book ready to put in a website. Found out that the book came out a week ago so might get to see one soon. Have found a couple of mistakes as I've been working through the problems but nothing serious and just a few. Florence has an oral maths exam tomorrow, she has to make a story about a typical day weaving in as much relevant maths as possible.
Got up for breakfast, it was sausage and egg, the sausage was about 4cm long and 1cm in diameter, if we approximate the sausage to a cylinder we can calculate its volume blah blah blah.... Very useful
Its a bit like the group 4 project, have a day off classes and do some science, we once did one on fishes and my students were supposed to measure their velocity, but they don't go in a straight line. I wonder if you put a fish in a tube wether it would swim along it or just stay at one end, I don't think I've ever seen a fish swimming along a tube.

Muse

Just sitting here waiting to get logged in so I can buy tickets to Muse when they play in Oslo later this year. Actually I'm not that cool that I know who Muse are or anything the tickets are for Rowan my son. Talking about sons Ben (our dog) has proved that even when a dog is conditioned not to do something from birth it always possible to become unconditioned. The only thing we taught him was not to come into the kitchen. We built a fence to stop him when he was little and reduced the size as he got older. After 4 and a half years he has realised that when we are not in the house we can't see him. Suddenly he is in the kitchen every time we go out eating anything left out or raiding the bin. When we come back in he hides under the bed. What a bong.

Bi-religious gay weddings

Finished with that job now time to paint the house, not all of it just one of the walls at the back. Ended up using a pair of garden shears to do the grass, made a bit of a neater job I think. Bet the farmers thought I was bonkers cutting the grass with a big pair of scissors. Watched Mississippi burning the other night, I remembered Gene Hackman to be a racist bigot bad guy, turns out he's one of the good guys. I wonder how many more of my memories of people are completely wrong. Listened to something on the radio whilst driving our new car, it was two gay guys one Muslim and one Christian talking about how the church in Norway accepted them to be married in church. Good job I listened to the end of the interview, it turns out I was wrong, they weren't gay at all (I just assumed they were cos they said they'd been friends from school, hmm) one was getting married (to a woman) and the other was the best man, oops. The big news was that the priest thought it was ok to have a Muslim as best man, big deal. I think my version was better.

Scythe or Sickle

Still cutting plants down. I suppose if I was really struck by an environmental conscience I would just leave the weeds standing. My dad used to do jobs like this in the holidays at our holiday cottage in Wales, yes we were one of those families the Welsh Nationalists used to hate, but we got away with out having it burned down because we are part Welsh and it was our only house since we lived in the house owned by my dads church (he was a Baptist minister). Anyway my dad liked to use a sickle rather than a scythe because he thought he might cut his legs off if he used a long one, so if I cut my legs off during the next couple of days I know his fears were founded.

Cutting Grass

Decided to give the grass in front of our house its annual cut. In that respect its a bit like my hair that also only gets cut once a year but in other respects its not the same at all being green, growing out of the ground and basically having the properties of grass not hair. Actually on closer inspection its not grass at all its plants with thick stalks and big leaves (even less like hair). We've got two petrol "strimmers" but both have broken so instead of mending them I've decided to become environmental and shun fossil fuels in favour of arm power so I've been using a scythe, makes much less noise too. So I've made a start down at the bottom since its easier when the cut grass falls down hill onto the already cut bit. My next door neighbour (the potato man) has done a whole field in the time its taken me to do about 4 square meters, he's about 78 years old so has had a lot more practice.

Bath tub carving

Its 2009 and I haven't posted since 2007, I must have been asleep for a long time.
Actually not I' just got a bit fed up of writing the blog for a while but now I'm back at least for today. I guess the main problem was all the book writing I've been doing. Spending 12 hours a day sat at the computer doesn't make you feel much like blogging. So the term has just ended here at RCNUWC (actually its not quite over the students are cleaning their rooms now and leave tonight) so the holiday has started. I was looking forward to a couple of months bouldering but I seem to have injured my left arm which is a shame because I have been training all winter. No books to write but I'm making websites for the solutions to my two books and the Heinemann SL Chemistry so that will keep me busy for a while. The photo is of a tree I saw when I was out walking, Norwegians like to carve cups out of those round lumps, well they could carve a bathtub out of this one.