Author Archives: james

First results from the micrometeorite collector

Posted on January 19, 2017 by james

A couple of years ago I posted about making a micrometeorite collector that used a neodymium magnet to capture magnetic material in flow of rainwater from our house roof. Months later we removed the magnet from the collector and collected … Continue reading →

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Swimming, 18th January 2017

Posted on January 18, 2017 by james

A shorter session today and I got some “toys” out too: 10 lengths front crawl One minute rest 4 x 1 length front crawl kick, 20 seconds rest 4 x 1 length front crawl pull, 20 seconds rest 4 x … Continue reading →

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Swimming, 17th January 2017

Posted on January 18, 2017 by james

A very simple swim today: 4 x 500m front crawl, followed by another 500m practising front crawl turns at the deep end of the pool. I can’t do them at the shallow end yet because I don’t have very good … Continue reading →

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Swimming, 16th January 2017

Posted on January 18, 2017 by james

So far this month I’ve just been swimming front crawl each weekday, generally up to 2.5km each session if time allows. Thus far I’ve clocked up 18,100m so far this year. From this week however I’ve decided to alternate between … Continue reading →

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Becoming a swimming coach

Posted on January 17, 2017 by james

Last September I got myself on one of the last “Level 1” Coach courses before the ASA stopped them running to revamp all the swimming coach courses. The course was partially online (most of the Health and Safety and Safeguarding … Continue reading →

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Learning to swim

Posted on January 17, 2017 by james

Well, sort of… I was taught to swim at primary school, but mostly in a “learn to survive if you fall in the canal” kind of way. If you could stay afloat and propel yourself around the pool that was … Continue reading →

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A return to posting

Posted on January 17, 2017 by james

It’s been an exceptionally long time since my last post. That’s probably a reflection of “real” life getting in the way. It’s been a very busy last couple of years balancing family (especially as children start to have more active … Continue reading →

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Now we know the origin of “Black Friday”

Posted on November 30, 2014 by james

And it’s nothing to do with “the day when shops get out of the red and into the black”. As far as I can see from the news reports of the last two days and recalling the same from last … Continue reading →

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Installing OSX 10.8 on a Mac Mini2,1

Posted on November 8, 2014 by james

I wanted to be able to build and test oaCapture on different OSX releases, but only Snow Leopard and Lion would install on my old Mac Mini.  It would have been very convenient for me if I could also have … Continue reading →

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Trouble never comes alone

Posted on November 8, 2014 by james

Just as I thought I had a temporary resolution to the previous problem with oaCapture, another one gets thrown in my face 🙁 Inclusion of the cfitsio library causes binary portability problems left, right and centre because the libraries have … Continue reading →

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