Author: 6000

From Space

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Here’s an image of South Africa from space, via NASA’s Modis/Terra satellite. Modis is Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (I know – it doesn’t quite work, does it?)

With its sweeping 2,330-km-wide viewing swath, MODIS sees every point on our world every 1-2 days in 36 discrete spectral bands. Consequently, MODIS tracks a wider array of the earth’s vital signs than any other Terra sensor. For instance, the sensor measures the percent of the planet’s surface that is covered by clouds almost every day.

That’s conveniently just about the width of South Africa, allowing this sort of shot:

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Click through for hugeness and detail.

You can see that we were having a wonderful day in Cape Town (although I spent it in a lab, in a car and at Tygerberg Hospital, rather than chilling at a bar by the beach).

I’m hoping to be able to get a repeat image to compare when the cold front comes through on Thursday evening (it’ll be dark, I know) and through Friday morning.

Ted Yoder Rules The World

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NOTE: I would urge even those who don’t usually watch videos on 6000 miles… to watch this video on 6000 miles… 
Go on – give it a go. What have you got to lose? (spoiler: it’s time and bandwidth)

Herewith Ted Yoder. Ted is one of the world’s foremost Hammered Dulcimer players. If you don’t know what a Hammered Dulcimer is, it’s the thing that Ted is playing in the video below, defined by google as:

a musical instrument with a sounding board or box, typically trapezoid in shape, over which strings of graduated length are stretched, played by plucking or especially by being struck with handheld hammers.

And with a Hornbostel–Sachs classification of 314.122-4.

Obviously, the Hammered Dulcimer is wholly different to the Appalachian Dulcimer, which is always plucked. The Hammered Dulcimer is the one that is always hammered. It’s the Amy Winehouse of instruments.

So, without further ado – Ladies and Gentlemen: Ted Yoder! Enjoy his performance, you must.

I’ve never had that much appreciation from anyone for anything I’ve ever done in my back garden.

Remarkable.

Bussessessses

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Meanwhile, at the Waterfront, the left lane on Dock Road is reserved for specific vehicles:

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The only problem being that the accepted plural of the word ‘bus’ is ‘buses’. That’s not to say that the erstwhile road painters are entirely incorrect though, merely that they are wildly out of date:

In 21st-century English, buses is the preferred plural of the noun bus. Busses appears occasionally, and dictionaries list it as a secondary spelling, but it’s been out of favour for over a century. This is true in all main varieties of English.

As I mentioned yesterday, visiting Ye Olde Aquarium was on our list over the weekend, before catching the last stagecoach home.

The bird table incident

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The weekend started well. I had a bit of stuff to do in the lab on Saturday morning, so I went and did it and then dragged the beagle for a moderate 5km around the neighbourhood. By that time, Mrs 6000 had come home from the important shopping she had been doing, announced that she felt like death (to be honest, she didn’t look like Death – no hooded cloak, no scythe) and went to bed.

We haven’t seen her since.

Still, while the cat is horrendously viral upstairs, the mice will do their own thing, and yesterday’s own thing was climbing trees on the school field and having very good ribs, very good burgers and very average chili poppers from Eat Out The Box. Today, with little or no improvement in the condition of the Matriarch, we hit the Waterfront for Cave Golf (more on that sometime soon), a quick Aquarium visit, and then Woodies burgers and Sushi Hut sushi.

Later, there was beagle bathing and some back garden tennis, which culminated with me smashing my head into a bird table fabricated from a 7kg chunk of pottery slung at an awkward height from a tree in the back garden. Awkward in that it was slung pretty much at exactly my head height. The obvious disadvantage to this set up was evident this afternoon as I saw stars, planets, comets and myriad other heavenly bodies as I fell to the floor wondering who exactly I was, and cursing the idiot who put it in such a stupidly dangerous position.
The obvious advantage was that it was a really convenient height when I put it up several years ago.

And now, another evening alone, contemplating a week ahead full of deadlines (it’s coming, Sam) and with just the beagle and a brandy for company.

And a headache, the likes of which I haven’t known since I can’t remember when.

 

In fact, I can’t remember much right now.

The First Time 

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When your club has been around for over 125 years, they’ve played most everyone there is to play –  often several times. But today marked the first meeting of AFC Wimbledon and the Mighty Sheffield United.

And I’m pleased to report…

… that we came out on top.

AFC Wimbledon’s history is short and remarkable, but I think I’m safe to say that (at least until early February 2017), they have a 0% success rate against the Blades.