Same session as last time again, but today I had a hope of finishing it without a fail having got as far as rep 20 on my last session.
I had the pool to myself for the better part of 40 minutes and was going well, but around rep 19 I lost track of where I was and messed up my starting time. I continued and completed all 24 reps, but decided I wouldn’t count this as a completed set, so I’ll have another try tomorrow.
USRPT distance this year: 20,950m
Total distance this year: 20,950m
I realised somewhat late that I’d not written about the cabling ducts or the pier bases despite showing one with the first sheet of ply for the floor fitted over it in the most recent photo.
Before starting on the floor I had the blocks that form the base of each pier in place over the threaded steel rod embedded in the concrete below the floor of the observatory. I lifted these and liberally covered the area of the base with Gorilla Glue. I used the type that foams before it sets, the idea being that it would bond nicely with the uneven surfaces of the block and the concrete as a result. Once the blocks were back in place then I put washers and stainless steel nyloc nuts on the threaded rods and tightened them down until there was no movement in the blocks.
With the blocks in place the next step was to put ducting under the floor for the cabling to each pier. I decided to run two ducts to each, one for mains power and the other for data (and perhaps low-voltage DC power). As I had some sitting around doing nothing I used standard 40mm (43mm OD) solvent-weld waste water pipe for this, putting a right angle bend in each pipe to bring it up to about 120mm above floor level close to the pier, but leaving sufficient room to add 12mm cladding on the block without touching it. All these pipes terminate on one of the short walls of the warm room. Only when I knew the position of them all could I actually cut the ply with holes in the right places.
So, having got the first sheet of ply flooring down last weekend, this weekend I got on with the rest of the telescope room. Careful measuring paid dividends, I’m pleased to say, and the two other sheets dropped into place very neatly and snugly.
I put a second block on top of a couple of the piers to get an idea of height. Half a block more will probably go on top of these, giving a height to the base of the mount of between 800mm and 850mm.
Next I need to insulate the floor of the warm room before flooring that. My plan is to fix some battens on sides of the floor joists and lay some scrap 9mm ply on top of those, then put the insulation on top of that and finally fit the ply. I might cut it short at the end where the cabling comes up through the floor and fit some smaller pieces there that can be lifted in case I need access at some point.
Bit of a chaotic session today. I’ve never seen the pool so busy in this Friday slot. I nearly didn’t go, in fact, as I didn’t sleep very well last night and then we had a visitor who only left a couple of minutes before I needed to leave myself, but I hate to break the momentum so I forced myself into the car.
Same set as yesterday and Tuesday, but today I wanted to try to push a little bit further, and despite becoming very ragged towards the end I did indeed manage two more reps before my first (and only) failure, on rep 20. I think I can feel fairly pleased with myself for that. So, same thing again next week. I’m getting very close to completing this set now.
USRPT distance this year: 19,150m
Total distance this year: 19,150m
A repeat of my previous session today, though I had a day off yesterday. I was intending to swim, but a night out playing skittles on Tuesday put paid to that idea 🙂
The pool was eerily quiet when I arrived as the school that normally swims before the public session hadn’t been in and no-one else turned up to swim for another twenty minutes or thereabouts. I don’t think there were more than three people (including myself) in the pool the whole time I was there today.
Anyhow, I had a pretty good session I thought. I still had a failure, but three later that two days ago, on rep 18. There were no others, though just as in the previous session I was getting noticeably ragged towards the end. I’ve also found this week that the increasing rate of repetition (presumably of the tumble turns, which I’m not really used to doing every time) is causing my ribs to ache. I think the muscles are beginning to protest at the efforts 🙂
Same again tomorrow hopefully, and perhaps a little further still before the first fail.
USRPT distance this year: 17,400m
Total distance this year: 17,400m
Back with a reduced rest interval today. I was expecting this one to be tough, but actually it wasn’t so bad. I failed once, on rep 15. Admittedly I was getting a little ragged towards the end, but not hideously so. Unusually, I do ache a little now around my rib cage, perhaps as a result of the increasing rate of turns.
Anyhow, back next time for another go. I see no reason why I shouldn’t push the fail out a bit further, or possibly even get through the entire set.
USRPT distance this year: 15,650m
Total distance this year: 15,650m
Yet again in my session today these goggles kept misting up, often within seconds of being put on. I don’t think I’ve ever had a pair of goggles that misted up so fast, and certainly not when they were all but new. I’ll take these as spares perhaps, but tomorrow I think it’s time to try out a different pair. On the grounds that they’re very similar, I’m going to try the Nike Remora set next.
Another repeat of my last session today, but this time with the hope that I’d be able to get through the session with just one failure, having had two in both previous attempts.
As it happened I managed to get through the entire set without a failure! I genuinely wasn’t expecting to be able to do that and I’d have to admit that I was getting a bit ragged over the last five reps, but it all counts. I know I’d lost a bit of fitness having not been able to swim through most of November and early December, but I’ve now taken thirty seconds off my time per rep in the last month.
So, back tomorrow hopefully, with another five second reduction. I suspect that’s going to be fairly horrible, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.
USRPT distance this year: 13,900m
Total distance this year: 13,900m
This weekend was grey and dreary and after a couple of hours of horizontal rain on Sunday I wasn’t really keen to go out and do much work on the observatory, especially as I really wanted the roof open so I could see what I was doing. Eventually however I found a little enthusiasm and sat in the semi-darkness (without rolling off the roof) measuring up for the first sheet of flooring. With one eye on the sky I hurried to get a sheet of my 18mm ply cut to size and having shifted all the tools back under cover took the sheet down to the observatory and dropped it into place, to relief and pleasure in equal amounts when I found that it dropped over the first block of the pier very nicely.
All of which reminds me that I’ve not given much detail of the piers recently, nor the ducting for cables. I’ll do that another time as I need to fit more ducting anyhow.
Meantime, a photo of the first part of the floor to go in. I have no idea how the leaf managed to get there…
This week I downloaded the Ubuntu 64-bit ARM beta image to try out (and so I could test building oacapture against the 64-bit ARM environment). It booted neatly, but I got a bit stuck when I tried to install the various development packages that I needed to do my build.
The first problem was that APT couldn’t find the linux-libc-dev package to install. I hadn’t required this, but it was a dependency for the other development packages I wanted. Eventually I thought to look on the repository servers and whilst I couldn’t find the version APT was trying to install, I did find one for the same kernel with a very similar version number, so I did:
# wget http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/pool/main/l/linux/linux-libc-dev_4.15.0-43.46_arm64.deb
# dpkg -i linux-libc-dev_4.15.0-43.46_arm64.deb
There were no errors on the installation, so we’ll see what happens when I start using it.
The second problem was very similar, but this time the package that couldn’t be found was libcups2.
Again I found a similar version in the repository, just a couple of point releases higher. To get this to install however, I also needed some of the avahi packages:
# apt-get install libavahi-client3 libavahi-common3 libavahi-common-data
# wget http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/pool/main/c/cups/libcups2_2.2.7-1ubuntu2.2_arm64.deb
# dpkg -i libcups2_2.2.7-1ubuntu2.2_arm64.deb
Again there were no errors once everything was installed and I managed to download and install all the other packages I required without a problem.
I’m assuming this is just a minor error with the package lists for the beta release and will eventually be corrected, but it’s allowed me to make progress with my own code without having to try the 64-bit ARM ISO that looks to require far more work to get into a usable state.
Forced myself back to the pool today despite not really feeling on it thanks to sleeping badly last night. And I’d have to admit that I didn’t really swim as well as I felt I could. However, repeating yesterday’s set I still managed to improve my performance, failing first on rep 15 and then again on rep 24. It would be nice to think that if I can get back to the pool on Monday perhaps I can eliminate that second failure. I can’t deny that it’s very tough though.
USRPT distance this year: 12,100m
Total distance this year: 12,100m