I was very late leaving for the pool today so I just got my head down and swam front crawl for the remainder of the session, making 2.5km in the end. It was a bit of a struggle too. Even though I felt as though I was working hard I seemed to be quite slow.
Total distance for the month: 5,700m
Total distance for this year: 153,100m
Distance compared to annual target: 20,900m under
Today I’ve ordered some eggs to put in the incubator. We didn’t raise any chicks last year and we’re down to only a few hens now, so it’s about that time again. In fact if I left it any later I don’t think it would work out in terms of fitting around other things we have going on.
We like different colours of eggs, so I’ve ordered a dozen each of White Leghorn (that lay white eggs), Cream Legbar (blue eggs) and Copper Black Maran (dark brown eggs). Assuming we get a few cockerels then I might let the Marans and Cream Legbars cross-breed as in the past we’ve done this and had second generation hens that lay green eggs.
Best get the incubator out and make sure it’s all working 🙂
I’d really like to try raising some ducks from eggs too, but I need to organise a suitable environment for keeping them first.
After a number of false starts I finally got supers on the last of my hives today. It was my intention to do this a while back but then the weather turned quite cold (we went from shorts weather to requiring several layers to keep warm pretty much overnight) and the bees weren’t too keen on flying so I didn’t want to open the hives up. In fact I almost didn’t get it done as the forecast for today changed from slightly overcast on Saturday to raining all day yesterday so I’d planned wet weather jobs for today. When the forecast changed yet again to “sunny spells” this morning and reality appeared to be fulfilling that promise on my drive home from the swimming pool I had to change plans once more.
This year we seem to have more oilseed rape in the fields than I can remember ever before, but it’s been in flower for ages. Probably since the start of April. I’m really not sure how much is getting pollinated if the bees aren’t that keen to fly. If the forecast can be believed then it looks as though temperatures should be much improved this week so perhaps they’ll become more active now.
The pool was fairly busy today and quite a few people were lane-swimming so I stuck to front crawl. My plan was to do 2.5km, but when I’d done that I felt good for another 500m and after that I decided I’d do the extra eight lengths to make the distance up to two miles. Doubtless there will be payback tomorrow, but that’s another day. Takes a good chunk out of the distance I’m behind target for the year, too.
Total distance for the month: 3,200m
Total distance for this year: 150,600m
Distance compared to annual target: 21,400m under
Understood, but no solution is in sight unfortunately.
It turns out that configure doesn’t play nicely with -Werror and whilst my code still compiles and works on Linux when compiled that way it’s mostly luck. OSX does not (in my house at least) come with such a large dollop of good fortune.
Were it not for the fact that I have code for other projects that will fail to build with -Werror embedded in my code tree there was a possibility that adding the following to the top level Makefile.am would have helped:
WARNINGS = -Werror -O2 -g warnings: $(MAKE) V=0 CFLAGS='$(WARNINGS)' CXXFLAGS='$(WARNINGS)' $(MAKE) V=0 CFLAGS='$(WARNINGS)' CXXFLAGS='$(WARNINGS)' $(check_PROGRAMS)
allowing me to run
$ make warnings
to build the system where warnings cause a compile error. In my case I don’t unfortunately see such a handy workaround.
On the positive side, I did at the same time discover that the option
AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])
in configure.ac significantly decreases the verbosity of the compilation process, so I shall tuck that one behind my ear for later.
My last swim of this month unless something unexpected happens at the weekend. And a hideous fight it was, too. After 1km of front crawl I was pretty much running on empty. I even started to get the shakes because I had so little energy left. I pressed on to 2.2km, all front crawl, but there was no real joy in it. I think my efforts with the Swimfit session earlier in the week really just took too much out of me.
Still, an acceptable total for me for this month and I’ve improved my position compared with my annual target by a whole 400m.
Total distance for the month: 40,400m
Total distance for this year: 147,400m
Distance compared to annual target: 22,600m under
One more go at the Swimfit session for this week, made up to 2.6km with front crawl. It was a bit of a struggle to be honest. I just didn’t seem to have the energy any more.
Total distance for the month: 38,200m
Total distance for this year: 145,200m
Distance compared to annual target: 22,800m under
Recent versions of the command line tools for Xcode appear to have changed the way the -pthread argument to the compiler is handled such that it generates a warning if used in a call to the compiler that actually only links existing objects into an executable. When used to compile C or C++ into .o files it’s fine.
This wouldn’t be a big deal but for the fact (as stated elsewhere) that I compile my own code with -Wall -Werror. The warning then causes the link stage to fail. Unfortunately fixing this is not a simple case of removing -pthread from my link command because it isn’t me who puts it there. In fact that flag is added by libtool as it is also used during the compilation of one of the third-party libraries I’m linking against, libhidapi.
I thought salvation had come my way last night when I discovered that clang on OSX has another flag, -Qunused-arguments, which is supposed to prevent the compiler issuing warnings about unused command line arguments. But here’s where I am now:
If I build the project as normal, with -Wall -Werror, all the code compiles happily but fails at the link stage because of the -pthread warning. If I repeat the command manually without that flag then the link stage works.
If I build the project only changing CFLAGS to add -Qunused-arguments then compilation again completes happily, but the link stage this time fails with hundreds of duplicate symbols, many of which appear to be inline functions from the libm. Linking manually removing both this and the -pthread flag fails the same way.
I can only assume that -Qunused-arguments is causing some other side-effect, perhaps when configure is run, but at the moment I just can’t find it.
Yes, that session again 🙂 This time made up to 2.7km with front crawl.
It was very tough today and my legs felt like jelly by halfway through the session, but it does feel as though my breaststroke (particularly) and backstroke are slowly improving. Somewhat oddly I’ve noticed that I tend to close my eyes whilst my head is under water when I’m swimming breaststroke. I don’t know if that’s because I’m trying to concentrate so hard on what’s happening, but it does mean I tend to drift off the centre line a bit.
Had the pool pretty much to myself for the entire session too, which was quite pleasant.
Total distance for the month: 35,600m
Total distance for this year: 142,600m
Distance compared to annual target: 23,400m under
Being something of a glutton for punishment (or as some might put it, “unbelievably pig-headed” 🙂 I repeated my current Swimfit session for the umpteenth time, with much the same result as yesterday. For some reason despite feeling rather tired on my way to the pool I’m in quite a positive frame of mind about it today. I’m getting the distance done that I intended so I stay in touch with my target for the year and it does mean I’m getting practice in on my breaststroke and backstroke which I really do need.
Breaststroke is supposed to have a certain amount of undulation in the stroke and I think my body is too rigid in the water. Today I tried to be a bit more flexible and relaxed, stopping my hips being permanently low in the water, and to achieve a good streamline position with my upper body before starting the kick. It also occurred to me to question exactly how the “A-pull” might be performed. Naively perhaps, I’ve always done it with my arms starting in a streamline position and my hands describing an arc in the horizontal plane back to my hips. I wonder though if it might not produce more forward motion if it were performed more like a butterfly pull, with the hands and forearms dropping to the vertical near the front of the pull to catch the water, then rotating the arms backwards to the body around the shoulder, keeping the elbows high. Experimenting over the course of a few lengths it seems to me that the pressure wave I feel along my lower legs when doing the pull this way is far stronger than if I do it the original way. I’m not sure about the legality of it so I’ll have to check that. I should have a look at what Maglischo might have to say about the breaststroke transition too. One of the dangers I’ve already discovered, especially in relatively shallow water, is that it’s quite easy to have a downwards component to the pull, thereby bringing the body closer to the surface. I didn’t find it such a problem at the deep end though.
As for backstroke, I think first I need to work on getting better longitudinal rotation of my body and a wider entry position for my arms so I can get into a proper catch more quickly. An interesting apparent side-effect of the rotation I’ve discovered is that it means I’m effectively not having to lift my recovering arm out of the water. Instead it rotates out with the body taking much less effort.
For today at least I feel as though I could repeat the session every day until I do hit that target time. Of course tomorrow I might feel utterly sick of it and want to move on again.
Anyhow, after the main session I made the distance up to 2.6km with some front crawl. Last one out of the pool again 😀
Total distance for the month: 32,900m
Total distance for this year: 139,900m
Distance compared to annual target: 24,100m under
