You know what it's like... new toys and all that:
Besides, it would have been a shame to waste the rain.
So far, it looks good. Took about ten minutes to pitch.
Spotted a couple of minor assembly errors already, such as the tail-end guys being incorrectly attached. No bother, I'll sort them later.
I'll give it a more thorough going-over tomorrow.
This little beauty just arrived for testing and review:
Vango Banshee 300
First pitch should be sometime tomorrow, first proper wildcamping use sometime in June or July, further details to follow.
This item has been supplied by Christoph Hitchen, representing price comparison platform idealo.co.uk
The idealo site is well-worth a look. Finding what you're interested in is made easy by the filter setup and for each product there's a neat PriceWatcher widget with a 90-day price history - handy for helping you to decide on the best time to buy and at what price. For instance, for the Banshee 300 tent, you can clearly see that the best price was a tad over £75 last week compared to about £109.99 today.
And it's not just for outdoors gear. There's more stuff than you could shake a stick at. Go see!
This is fusion-food and fusion-lessons gone too far:
I mean, just how "authentic" will it be with Cheddar in it?
I seem to recall that the French have some minging cheeses of their own, so why bastardize the thing?
All this makes no difference to Anna - just like me, she doesn't like cheese of any persuasion.
And yes, "Cheddar" is a proper noun and hence needs a "C".
Education, eh?
Late last night I went up Croft Hill to get ready to observe the 2012 Transit of Venus. I managed to get all the kit up there in one haul and was soon sitting in the pop-up shelter and looking at the thick low clouds that stretched across all of the sky. The forecast of rain was wrong but they got the cloud-cover about right, things weren't looking good. Still, it was a good place to be - almost 360-degrees of visible horizon and I had them all to myself, apart from the rabbits and the foxes which came surprisingly close to the shelter. And it was warm, almost tee-shirt weather. With a couple of hours to go until sunrise I grabbed some shut-eye, hopeful that the cloud would clear before the celestial performance began.
Of course, when the sun broke the horizon at 04:45 I couldn't see it due to the 8/8 cloud cover. I set up the kit anyway and waited for nearly an hour before the cloud started to break. It cleared overhead but the trailing edge of the pall was still making its way slowly towards the north-east where all the action was going on unseen. It was going to be a close-run thing - would the clouds clear the sun before Venus did? The critical time was 05:53 - "Fourth Contact". After that the show would be over.
The clouds refused to part but there was a reasonable thinning in just the right place at 05:49 so I stated to rattle off frames like a madman for the next four minutes, continuing even after the thinning had closed up. Talk about cutting it fine!
And then it was over. I went up to the trig-point for a brew and a smoke, it took me a while to notice that the sky was almost clear and all around was bathed in sunlight. Typical.
I was soon hauling the kit back to the car, cursing the weather. I cursed all the way home and cursed even more when I first looked at the pics on the laptop. It took me ages to realised that I did actually have four really poor frames which showed Venus crossing the Sun's limb.
Those four frames were dim and noisy but I've managed to drag this piss-poor result out of them:
Transit of Venus 06/06/2012 @ 05:49 BST - Venus crossing the upper-right section of limb.
Nikon D50 with 2x Powermate on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (neutral density 5.0).
Hand-held shot, 1/100s exposure @ ISO200.
And plenty of clouds.
This has to be the worst solar image I'll ever post but I suppose it's better than nothing.
Although Croft Hill SSSI has well-trodden footpaths and access is encouraged, the land is privately-owned and permission to be there "out-of-hours" or for "irregular purposes" should be sought. My thanks go to Phil Jackson (Biodiversity and Restoration Advisor (North), Aggregate Industries) for granting me permission to access Croft Hill for this observing session.
A movie with brilliant effects but this great opportunity was spoiled by a less-than tense ending following after a plot that was a tad weak. Not as good as Alien or the much-better Aliens, probably on a par with 3 and much better than Resurrection. Mind you, of the five it's the only one not rated "18" so maybe we should have expected less anyway. The AvP stuff isn't canon so there's no comparison.
I should mention that the scenic shots of Skye and Iceland were excellent.
I'll not post any more so as to not let loose any spoilers, but I'd guess that most of the folk at the same screening as us left during the credits and so would have missed the easter-egg at the utmost end... the Weyland logo followed by the words "Building Better Worlds since 10.11.12"... I suppose I'll have to get sad and find out what that's all about, after I've sussed if the date format's UK or Yankee.
On the bright side, the trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey looked good.
I'm planning a local mini-expedition to observe the 2012 Transit of Venus on Wednesday morning. As part of the kit-prep I rattled off a few frames this afternoon using the stripped-down gear that I'll be taking, here's a sample of the test-results showing a fair spread of sunspots and active regions (mouseover the pic for the labelled version):
Sunspots and Active Regions 04/06/2012.
Nikon D50 with 2x Powermate on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (neutral density 5.0).
Hand-held shot, 1/100s exposure @ ISO200.
Of course the weather forecast for Wednesday morning is crap so all this prep could be a waste of time, but as as the next transit will be in 2117 this'll be my last chance to see such an event for real.
