Finis Bolt goggles, first impressions

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

I swam 3km front crawl with these today for the first time.

The goggles came fitted with a “medium” nosepiece and three spare nosepieces were included in small, medium and large sizes. I wasn’t sure about the medium so tried
the small one but the goggles pinched the bridge of my nose with that one in so I swapped back to the medium.

The goggles were easy to adjust to size before I got into the water and whilst they didn’t have much suction to my face they didn’t leak at all during the swim. The adjustment didn’t slip either, unlike the Speedo Aquapure goggles that I’ve worn for the last six months or so which have slipped so often that the numbers on the adjustment scale printed onto the straps have worn off.

The view through the lenses was very clear and bright though felt somewhat restricted. The actual flat area of the lens feels smaller than the Aquapure. In fact they’re pretty much the same size. The Aquapure may be a couple of millimetres wider, but that’s it. Including the clear curved area of the lens the Bolt is much larger and transmits images from the pool nearby but not in a way that makes a discernible image. I found that a little distracting at first. The lenses didn’t mist up at all.

The most noticeable thing about the goggles compared with most of my previous pairs however is that the silicone gasket is much more shallow. This meant the goggles felt far less forgiving and much harder once on. I thought that might make them uncomfortable to wear for long, but actually I didn’t take them off at all for the entire swim, though I did re-seat them on my face a couple of times to try to make them more comfortable.

I’m not completely sold on them yet. I’ll keep another pair of Aquapure goggles on poolside just in case I decide I can’t live with them, but I’ll certainly keep trying them. Sadly they don’t appear to be available with dark or mirrored lenses for swimming outdoors in the sun. I could do with such a pair for holidays.

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Swimming, 6th June 2017

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

In complete contrast to yesterday there were no more than four people in the pool during the entire time I swam today. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do and I was still feeling a little tired from the effects of yesterday, but somehow I felt driven to try it again. So I just got my head down and cracked on. I have to admit it was tough. My arms weren’t always entirely keen. I tried to work on technique as much as possible, keeping in my head something I’d read yesterday about swimming front crawl being like pulling yourself along a rope, arm over arm. It’s an analogy that resonates for me. Not particularly in terms of the lower arms, but certainly in terms of positioning of the upper arms in order that the load is transferred to the back and the chest during the pull.

I took it right down to the wire to finish the 3km. The life guards were removing the lane ropes around me as I finished my last length 🙂 The last 500m was a bit of a killer and I felt exhausted when I got out, but in fact I’d done the distance about ten minutes faster than I did yesterday so I really shouldn’t have any complaints. Particularly as I also reached 200km for the year so far as well.

I might do something a little easier tomorrow though.

Total distance for the month: 6,000m
Total distance for this year: 201,000m
Distance compared to annual target: 23,000m under

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Apple iHal 9000

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

I’ve just seen the piece about the launch of the HomePod on the BBC News site. Searching the net it appears that I’m not the only person who was immediately struck by the similarity to our favourite psychopathic artificial brain.

If you visited someone’s house and they had one, you’d surely have to be tempted to say “HomePod, play ‘Daisy, Daisy'”. Wouldn’t you?

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Swimming, 5th June 2017

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

First time swimming for ten days, which I do feel quite guilty about, not to mention a little frustrated because I’ll have lost a lot of the ground I made up last month on my target distance. I have been very busy with other things though, and in fact over the half term holiday week the public swimming times don’t really work out very well for me.

I also had to test drive my new Jaked jammers that I bought for a fair bit less than I paid for my last pair of cheap Arena ones.

So, straight into the pool and 3,000m of front crawl to start the month. It was pretty busy too, with plenty of people swimming lengths, including one chap doing very slow “old lady breaststroke” diagonally across three lanes of the pool.

And the jammers were fine. I did buy two pairs because they were so cheap. Perhaps I should have had more…

Total distance for the month: 3,000m
Total distance for this year: 198,000m
Distance compared to annual target: 24,000m under

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Incubating eggs, Day 29

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

No longer incubating of course, but about a week after they hatched the chicks are in a larger area to give them space to run around whilst they’re under the heat lamp. In all we had twenty-one hatch, but sadly one of the female Cream Legbar chicks appeared to have some sort of problem with one of her legs leaving her unable to stand up and I was forced to put her out of her misery.

The remaining twenty however are doing well, with wing feathers well developed and tail feathers starting to show.

In the foreground here are two of the White Leghorns, with a male Cream Legbar in the centre towards the back, peering over the Marans.

And on the left here with the stripe across the eye are two of the female Cream Legbar chicks.

They’ll stay where they are for a few weeks now until they’re ready to face the big wide world without a heat lamp and are big enough to be safe from predators that we can’t keep out of their main run. I’ll take some more photos in a few days time.

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Who lost their bottle?

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

Whilst working to clear the spoil with the dumper I’d hired I thought I’d have a go at finding the actual ground level in a part of a barn that had partially collapsed many years ago and just been abandoned. I wasn’t surprised to find that it had been used as a bit of a rubbish dump, but I didn’t expect to find the place stuffed with bottles. Mostly milk bottles, and generally unbroken. This is about half of the ones I pulled out. I wonder if there’s a deposit on the empties?

I’m aware that empty bottles were sometimes used as insulation under floors, but in this case I think they’d just been dumped there as they didn’t seem to form any coherent kind of layer. Seems quite odd that there should be so many however.

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Boys’ Toys

Posted on June 6, 2017 by james

We’ve had some piles of spoil from building work sitting about for quite some time. Until now they’ve been out of the way and it was easy enough to pretend they weren’t there, but recently I’ve decided they really need to be shifted to give us better access. And to make the place look a bit tidier, to be fair.

So, over the half-term holiday I took some time off work and rented a two tonne dumper to help get it shifted, thinking it would take two or three days and I’d be able to get some other stuff done with the time too.

I hadn’t quite realised how big the dumper would be. It dwarfs a normal family saloon car and the seat must be about 1.4m above the ground. It took a bit of practice to get the hang of the steering causing it to bend in the middle. I’d also massively underestimated the amount of stuff there was to shift. Overall I think I probably shifted well over 100 tonnes of material, mostly rock and subsoil, much of it covering the bare area in the picture of the dumper above. In the end it took me five days to shift it all. Well worth the effort though and I’m glad I did it. For what it cost I think it was great value for money. Next time I might go for a smaller capacity model though…

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Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Posted on June 5, 2017 by james

Well, perhaps. If you’re wet, cold and suffer from violent wind.

Last week I managed to get quite a noticeable farmer’s tan. Today I’d be more likely to die of exposure. I can’t believe it’s barely two weeks to Midsummer’s Day. It feels far more like we’re at the opposite end of the Earth’s orbit. The only give-away is that it’s not (quite) as dark as it would be in December at this time in the evening.

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Incubating eggs update, Day 21

Posted on May 28, 2017 by james

Well, they’ve been arriving thick and fast (and somewhat noisily) today. Fifteen so far I think, with another three eggs that have pipped though it’s not easy to tell looking through the lids. Sadly we also had one Marans that broke through the shell but seems to be stuck to the inner membrane of the egg. The chick is still alive, but I’m not sure of his chances. Sadly there’s not much we can do other than wait it out and see what happens. I’ll give the remaining eggs a few more days, but after Sunday I’d be surprised if any more hatch.

In terms of incubator performance, far more of the eggs in the Brinsea incubator have hatched or pipped (fourteen-ish) so far than in the Suro (only six-ish), despite the humidity control in the Suro (again the numbers aren’t definite because telling which eggs have pipped is tricky as mentioned earlier). That’s quite disappointing. Across the breeds, seven of the Marans and Cream Legbars have hatched or pipped so far and six of the Leghorns (that figure for the Marans does include the one that may not make the trip), so the viability seems fairly consistent across the breeds.

Those that have hatched have been transferred to a large plastic box which is big enough to allow them to run around and has space for water and food as well as a heater. That’s where they’ll stay for the next week or thereabouts depending on how fast they develop. There’s also a mesh lid on the box. The cats can’t be trusted to do anything other than what comes naturally.

A few pictures of the first few out. The first is a Cream Legbar hen. They’re an “autosexing” breed — the chicks have different colouring depending on their sex. The second is a Marans and I can’t recall if the third is a Cream Legbar cockerel or a Leghorn.

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Incubating eggs update #2, Day 20

Posted on May 26, 2017 by james

Well, he (or she) wasn’t hanging about. We have a hatched chick!

It’s not a great photo unfortunately. I’ll get a better one tomorrow when we move it out of the incubator after it has dried off.

One of the cats has already been to investigate. Somehow he knows he shouldn’t though, as any time I go near the incubators he jumps down again. We’re such cruel creatures, humans, putting toys where they can’t play with them…

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