Phew, what a scorcher

Just when it seemed that the hot weather might recede to comfortable warmth, one more blast from the furnace

Location: EGSC
Day of month: 01
Time: 16:20 UTC
Wind: True direction = 140 degrees, Speed: 14 knots
Wind direction is variable between 120 and 180
CAVOK conditions: Visibility 10 km or more,
no cloud below 5.000 feet or below the MSA (whichever is greater),
no cumulonimbus, and no significant weather phenomena in
the aerodrome or its vicinity
Temperature: 32C
Dewpoint: 16C
Humidity: 38%
QNH (Sea-level pressure): 1006 hPa

Still the wind was enough to take the edge off while I shopped, met friends for lunch, and then headed on to the Cambridge Rock Festival opening night, before cycling home in the pleasant twilight (at 21:30, because the evenings are now closing in fast.

7302.1

No cycling on a wet Wednesday, just lunch with Karen at the Willow Tree in Bourn; so the total for the month on my bike was 391.5 miles, plus 155.75 miles on the hire bike for a total of 547.25 (ytd 1710, 2071) -- with most of the 47 being a round trip to St Neots, using Google Maps to find me a better way between the centre and the B1046 than I took earlier in the month, with streetview making it almost like I'd already been there before I actually needed to navigate the sections of cycle path and back streets.

It's just a pity that the Google car hasn't been supplemented by the Google bike or Goolgle bloke for extra streetview assist.

Summer Cycling Break

View July '13 Cycling Holiday in a larger map

Having done north then south Suffolk so far this year, this outing went more down the middle, to Framlingham and Woodbridge. Now the distance to Framlingham is quite short, so I started off retracing the first miles of the route I did a month earlier, to catch a marvellous garden which I'd passed in the rain, and before it was at its height -- but now it was prime season and a warm sunny day

And pretty maids all in a row

before looping back to cross under the A14 at Claydon. From there, I sort-of follow the alternate route for the trip if one happens to start from there in one of the overflow hotels (as I did on my first holiday) to Debenham -- but then, checking the time, it looked like I'd be able to get to Earl Soham before 1pm, and so I swung back to get there for lunch. Alas the cafe was determinedly closed, so I went along to the Victoria, where over a couple of pints of the Victoria Bitter, I had a serious prawn and avocado salad which was excellent; and then some raspberry cheesecake that looked a little fridge-worn, though the fruit on top were perfectly fine.

Having only covered 30 miles and being so close to Framlingham so early, the afternoon was a wander up to Stradbroke, to take in reverse part of the route the satnav decided to send me down when I took the wrong turning on the way to Laxfield in March; and then down part of the very flooded route I cycled last summer, before curling back to the Crown for the night having done 60.14 miles, where I found I'd got a free upgrade to a double room!

Under new owners, the restaurant is back where it used to be, the menu is great -- I had crayfish chilli lime salad, sundried tomato, asparagus and goat cheese gnocchi, pancakes with gooseberry and maple syrup; and from the exotic tea selection in the room, a green tea for digestif; then in the morning as well as toast and cereal, their "posh beans on toast" -- with slices of tomato, chilli and spring onion in with the beans.

Monday started cooler and cloudy, but quickly brightened up; the early forecasts of rain all afternoon had reduced to maybe showers lunchtime; so I thought that it would be a good route to head up to Southwold for lunch before going south to Woodbridge, plus another bit of inadvertent retracing of the route I'd driven in the snow and ice in March.

Snow has finally melted

And the weather continued fine with sunny intervals right until I'd got to within a few miles of Southwold, whereupon there was the most torrential shower, which ended just about as I was anchoring up, and which brought enough rain to create significant torrents in the gutters. So I was rather soggy when I finally got to table at the Blue Lighthouse -- and a well timed visit, as this was their last week of trading, as the owner of the property has sold out to a coffee chain; though the proprietors are taking over the Blyth Hotel, so I'll have to check that out next year.

Water hazard

After a lunch of brie tempura, tiger prawn red curry, and fudge brownie, I set off the same route as in the spring, only without the Dunwich detour, but choosing a new route to Snape via Saxmundham, avoiding the A road out of Aldeburgh, before taking the well beaten trail to Seckford Hall and my usual room there, for a cumulative distance of 121.12 miles.

Building works affecting the restaurant meant that food was relocated to the function rooms and the verandah; from a menu high on helpfully labelled comfort food I ended up with chilli king prawns, bangers and mash, and rhubarb crumble.

After coffee on the verandah, I wandered up to the A12 junction to check out what exactly had been done with it to close off the right-turn gap -- which was close everything but the foot-way; and on the return, from the vantage over the hotel, a glimpse of Mercury, well paced low in the twilight.

Scope to run like crazy

Tuesday started grey and cool, but the weather forecast suggested rain mid-afternoon -- so I planned to cut through Ipswich, meander around a bit to get to Tattingstone White Horse for lunch, then belt back ahead of the rain. Alas, it started sprinkling while I was still heading through California, at around 09:30, and by the time I got to Belstead, it was raining in earnest, so I just bailed, taking a route that as much as possible avoided both major and very minor roads, getting me to Claydon not long after 11:30, at which point the problem of lunch needed to be solved.

Passing the Sorrel Horse, where I'd dined on the very first evening of my first cycling holiday here about ten minutes later, I decided to do a loop to loiter and get back there by midday, where I took refuge for a couple of hours, over sweet and sour pork, a much nicer cheesecake, and a hot chocolate, until the rain eased a little for the last few miles, taking advantage of the bicycle friendly paths around the A14/A140 junction, to a total of 155.75 miles covered in the three days.

And at that point my usual precautionary over-packing paid off, and I could change into clean dry clothes for the drive home.

View July '13 Cycling Holiday in a larger map

Phew, what a scorcher

METAR report form the local airport, ninety minutes ago

Location: EGSC
Day of month: 22
Time: 16:20 UTC
Wind: True direction = 130 degrees, Speed: 9 knots
Wind direction is variable between 080 and 190
CAVOK conditions: Visibility 10 km or more,
no cloud below 5.000 feet or below the MSA (whichever is greater),
no cumulonimbus, and no significant weather phenomena in
the aerodrome or its vicinity
Temperature: 31C
Dewpoint: 17C
Humidity: 43%
QNH (Sea-level pressure): 1014 hPa

Not quite as hot as it got at the hottest point of summer ten years ago, but about the closest it's been in the interim.

Which reminds me that some time in the last week or two marks ten years of this mix of cat-blogging, reviews and tech-blogging. Doesn't time fly?

Film — Blancanieves

Blancanieves is a silent black and white film self-referentially retelling the story of Snow White. In c1910 Spain, Carmencita's mother dies giving birth to her, the same day her famous wealthy toreador father is crippled in the bullring. A gold-digging nurse fills the role of the wicked step-mother who proceeds to ease both her new husband and later the unwanted stepdaughter off the mortal coil. However, in delegating the latter task, the deed was not carried through properly, and Carmencita, now amnesiac, is rescued by a troupe of half a dozen bull-fighting dwarfs.

After she displays the skills her father taught her, the troupe rebrands as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (including a scene where you can see some of them counting and head-scratching), and heads towards a confrontation in the same arena where her father was brought low.

A silent film with English inter-titles (and occasional subtitles when print material was being shown), it had much of the style of the original silents, but without the scratched and deteriorated media -- or their necessary brevity : there are several pieces that establish mood or setting that go on just that little bit too long for what they need to do.

Film — Pacific Rim

Super-robot on daikaiju action? Of course I'm going to see that, even if it has been whitewashed -- it was heavily Anglospheric, with only token Japanese flavour -- after all, outside Mako's flashback, it looked like the kaiju had a lousy sense of navigation, and managed to keep missing Tokyo! What self-respecting atomic monster would go to Anchorage or Hong Kong instead? OTOH, definitely a case of "Let's hear it for the Aussies!", even if they did have to play second string to the Americans.

That aside, it did have genre feel -- the necessary "You leave me no choice. We'll have to use THAT!" and pulling out the effective attack only when on the ropes, for example. That may have been dumb in, say, Voltron, but here it's a nod to genre, so gets a bye.

The nerdy comedy relief scientists were not really necessary, apart from satisfying current day Hollywood stock casting requirements (in the same way the commanding officer is always black). At least it was unconventional in lacking an obtrusive romance sub-plot to get in the way of the action (or at best provide opportunity for a comfort break mid-movie a-la-Armageddon)

In sum, a pretty decent summer popcorn SFX movie.

Too nice a day to be in the office

Well, I seem to have chosen the right year to take an extended summer break; we've not really had a summer with quite such extended spells of warm (verging on the too hot) since '03.

So yesterday I decided to take a spin out along the busway cyclepath up to St. Ives, using the handy map of cycleways that the council produced a while back as guide. And on a bright sunny morning with just a little breeze, covering ground on the generally level -- being the old railway line, after all -- path, it was easy going and great to be out in the countryside, away from roads (though by the same token I can imagine that it would be a horrid ride if you're using it to commute at the weather is dull, windy and wet, with no shelter from the elements.

The river at St. Ives

Now, I had been intending to just run up the cycleway, then loop back through the villages; but by the time I got to St. Ives, it was still before midday, and the map showed paths leading onwards that didn't seem to add too much to the total distance I'd have to cover going home.

Hemingford Abbots church

So I stopped for refreshment at the Axe and Compass -- an eminently civilised pub, with bike stands provided in the car-park, before heading onwards to Huntingdon, and then -- well, since I'd come that far, it wasn't that much further to St. Neots via Grafham Water

Grafham Water from the cafe

and from there it would only be about as far as from home as St. Ives; and that could all be done on the B1046 until I picked up the normal way home from work.

Trouble was that, by the time I was committed to that loop, it was getting to the hottest part of the day, and there was a total dearth of pubs on the quiet country lanes (where it wasn't actually farm tracks cross country) -- that is a big defect of the Sustrans cycle route I was following -- until it got to be well past closing time, if, indeed they opened at all on Mondays. At least there was a cafe on the side of Grafham Water where I could get a cold drink, but even with that, the fruit and half-gallon of drink I'd packed were on the scant side given the way the heat built up during the afternoon -- memo to self : make it a whole gallon, like I did in France, next time.

That aside, getting home with time for a leisurely soak in the bath before making supper, and sitting out to eat in the cool of the evening over a beer wrapped up what was an enjoyable day, doing about 60 miles in all. And today, probably a gentle ride to the shops by way of recovery.

Film — Akira

I filled in a gap in my viewing by catching the 25th anniversary screening (subtitled) of Akira as a late show last night (and actually Tuesday will be 25 years after the opening scene of the movie). It was frenetic enough in that wacky 1980s anime style that it generally distracted from the general all-over-the-place nature of the narrative (there's a neat idea -- let's add it to the mix!).

I can see why it would have been a popular event back in the day, because of the concept scatter-gunning and ultraviolence; but as a mix and match of what were standard 1980s anime/manga themes -- neon dystopia (e.g. GitS, Bubblegum Crisis, ...) + psychics (a number of forgettable titles, in a manner of which Shinsekai Yori was a descendant) -- it was hard at this remove not to feel somewhat jaded by it.

Film — A Field in England

After a long drought, the local arthouse advertised and then actually showed* a film I thought worth going along to see, just to give an economic signal.

That film was A Field in England, which mixed arty experimentalism c1970 (black and white, "am I ominous yet" music, fragmented narrative and playing with crosscutting and overlays) with spaghetti Western sensibilities in a Civil War** setting. An alchemist's manservant hunting a magus who stole books from his master falls in with a number of deserters from a battle and finds his quarry camped in the eponymous field where the only sustenance to be found is a fairy ring of magic mushrooms. So after a while the "they're all tripping balls" effect leads to the arty stuff and an "I don't have to explain anything that goes on" approach to the narrative.

When it doesn't have its head up its fundament, and lets the (perhaps unintentional) spaghetti Western tropes surface, it's quite good; but on balance the "so edgy I could cut myself" approach gets the better of it.

*Back around Easter they'd put Dragon in the printed programme, but come the week it was supposed to show, nada, and no sign that it even came around earlier than expected.

**That's the 1640s, of course.

7000 on 7/7

It was just such a glorious day that, after getting the chores out of the way, it was just the weather for getting on the bike and making random explorations, this time down the Roman road past Wandlebury, which made for good going in this dry weather -- though beyond the A11, it did start to get a bit overgrown in places, with weeds brushing against the panniers.

Fortunately the underlying countryside is gentle enough that the uncompromising "Forwards, go!" didn't really make the going at all difficult -- just a couple of places where dropping down close to bottom gear for a few yards near the crests of a climb, which is really no different from my usual route into work.

And so, on the third anniversary of fitting the odo to my bike, I've just nudged it over the 7000 mile mark, and will probably run it around the clock next autumn.

6910.6

So, only just over the 250 mile mark on my own bike this past month, but 372.4 when holiday hire biking is included. That makes 1318 miles on my bike and 1524 total in the half year -- compared with last year's dismal total of 950 what with all the wet weather we had.

Let's see if I can keep that up for the second half of the year.

LED lighting by trial and error

We seem to be getting to the tipping point with LED lights, where they have become sufficiently performant and low-enough in price to be worth installing. Now, you usually can't find anything brighter than the average glow-worm (nothing above 4w that I can remember) on the shelves in bricks'n'mortar lighting departments be it at the sophisticated end with John Lewis or the general DIY of Homebase, but online at the reduced prices available through the usual aggregator, you can find some decent kit, and I've tried a range of models, finally turfing out the remaining few incandescents outside the 60w candle bulb in the bedside sunrise alarm, and the ones in various appliances.

Now despite the equivalent wattage ratings printed on the packs of compact fluorescent twisty bulbs, I've usually found the rough equivalence there of 11w ⇒ 60w incandescent and 20w ⇒ 100w incandescent; and have in most cases been pleasantly surprised by the LED lights outperforming the CFLs watt for watt.

So here are what I've tried (in some cases using an E27 to B22 adapter):

• 10 Watt, B22 Bayonet, Daylight White — brighter than an 11w CFL, somewhat directional beam, and rather blue for normal indoor use. I've replaced 100w incandescents in bulkhead lights in greenhouse, attic and garage with this model, for which it is a more than adequate replacement, and where the clean colour is preferable.
• 10 Watt, B22 Bayonet, Warm White — similar to the above, but a better colour for normal indoor use. Suitable for traditional pendant fittings with a diffusing shade (I still use the paper globes like it was the 1970s), and somewhere between an 11w and 20w CFL in perceived brightness.
• 6 Watt R63 reflector spotlight, E27 screw, Warm White — brighter than the 60w incandescents they replaced. A definite win.
• 5 Watt Corn Style, E27 screw, Warm White — called 80w equivalent, and, despite its deceptively small size, certainly a match for the 60w incandescent it replaced in the downstairs loo in a ceiling fitting where it's horizontally mounted in a diffuser dome with a reflective plate above.
• 10 Watt Corn Style, E27 screw, Warm White — adequate replacement for a similarly small-size 11w CFL in a wall light, horizontally mounted in a diffuser dome. I expect that they would work equally well vertically mounted in a simple diffuser as a bedside light, where the mainly-sideways illumination is at the right height for use.
• 12 Watt Corn Style, E27 screw, Pure White — a clean white light (not as blue as the daylight white above), which is working well in the grey, blue and white bathroom (ceiling mount as above). Not so good mounted vertically as a pendant light, because it shines mostly sideways, leaving the floor underneath darker by comparison than the walls, so the subjective experience is poor there (but it is likely this could be mitigated by using a different shade or fitting).

Some other subjective considerations may apply -- I like the instant-on, though I do know people who find the slow ignition of a CFL useful for a bathroom light when staggering out of bed in the middle of the night and would find the immediate bright white a painful experience. For me, OTOH, between street-lights and the charge indicator for the ceiling hoist immediately above the loo, I find I already have enough illumination for nocturnal micturitions without reaching for the pull-cord; and hate the dingy interval when starting to shower or run a bath.

As we have a stock of CFLs to use, I've not completely replaced those -- as CFLs don't take so well in cases where a light need only be on for a short while as LEDs do, I have put LEDs in non-core-use rooms, and left CFLs in places where they will be in use from dusk to bedtime, or bedtime to settling down time.

FxCop Rule CA1021:AvoidOutParameters — Not just for Morts

When you really have to return two values (like a return state with various values for success and failure, and some more substantive sought object on success

), resorting to an out parameter seems so obvious, and the relevant static analysis rule does say

It is safe to suppress a warning from this rule. However, this design could cause usability issues.

So "real programmers" will reach for that, regarding the rule as one to mollycoddle junior developers; and will shy from the clunkiness of an anonymous tuple type (even now we have them in core .net languages). But there is still a point where they cause pain, and that is when the parameter is on an interface method, and you want to mock that method.

At this point you have to individually specify each invocation of the mocked method and its pre-computed out parameters -- even though with modern mocking frameworks like Moq, you can use a lambda to compute the return value based on arbitrary inputs, and make a normal mocked method algorithmic over expected inputs.

rather than

Upshot -- the usability issue is not that the caller has to look at two values like a success state, and then if relevant a different value, rather than look at fields in some carrying type; it's that your customers (in the Total Quality sense) will end up with rather more coupled and brittle unit tests when they try to abstract your component away through its interface.

Constable Country Pub Crawl, '13

View June '13 in a larger map

Is it so wrong to choose a holiday on the basis of country pubs lying on or near the route?

So I did the Needham Market -> Dedham -> Lavenham loop like I did a couple of years back, on that basis. The difference was this time I used a hire bike, rather than my own, which meant that I had to get the saddle height right and accustom myself to the gearing, especially on the fairly crinkly terrain of the Stour valley.

So I'd barely left the base when it started to rain, first a nuisance scatter, then heavily, necessitating a stop and change to wet weather gear, so I ground away until the rain stopped -- then wondered why my legs were already tired (answer: because the saddle was too high and I was having to over-extend on the down stroke). And then fun with recalcitrant gears that didn't change if there was any significant load being applied, so a lot of get off and push if I didn't change down in time, when I really wanted to still be in high gear on the down slope.

Blood red poppies, just after rain

Consequently, I didn't get past Copdock until going on 1pm, and opted for the Tattingstone White Horse for lunch. Being Sunday, the place was quite busy, so I'd supped one pint of Wherry by the time my bangers and mash arrived, and was on the second. Then it was time to take rather less of a detour (modulo the need to cross the A12 in places) on the way to the Sun Inn at Dedham.

Tattingstone

And of course there was more weather -- after coming through Capel St. Mary (where'd stopped to take on provisions), I could see a wall of rain approaching, but hoped I might be able to pass it to one side.

No such luck, so I arrived at Dedham quite damp, and sat watching the rain over a couple more pints at this agreeable watering hole. When it seemed that the weather had eased off, I headed the last mile to Milsoms, getting the benefit of one last shower of rain.

This time the menu was a bit disappointing compared with the previous visit -- I ended up with bread and oil, chilli and rice and an ice cream sundae.

Monday started dull and breezy, but at least it was dry as I wended my way to Stoke-by-Nayland (avoiding the crinkliest of the terrain by taking the main road a while); and then with the road closed that I would have otherwise taken, took off cross country to Sudbury (cadging a coffee from my surprised parents).

A few semis in the middle of nowhere

Then I took the easy terrain of the old railway, the first time I had really been able to open up a proper cruising speed, taking a loop aiming at the Cherry Tree in Glemsford. One mishap on this route -- having taken two off-road sections already, I tried the bridleway to Pentlow Street, that started wide and dry, narrowed in a few places, got overgrown in a couple more, and then, within sight of the far end, a short quagmire. So I then needed to find a puddle to wash my shoes in.

Late lunch at the Cherry Tree, and then out into some heavy drizzle for the last leg.

Approaching Lavenham

Not feeling up to a Marco Pierre White dinner, I opted for the Memsaab and a vegetable dansak, before having a wander in the evening sunlight, a wander than ended up at the Greyhound for a couple of pints, where, as the only customer, I spent the time chatting to the barmaid, an enterprising young lass in her mid 20s who had just moved into her own home in the last few weeks after working all hours and saving the cash -- puts the lie to the moaning about it being difficult to get on the property ladder these days.

Lavenham in the morning

Then Tuesday opened bright and sunny, and not quite so windy, so I decided to make a long loop, aiming for Ickworth House, but covering new terrain. Skirting a road closure in Long Melford, looping through Clare -- then discovering that the road thence to Poslingford had such a rough surface that I was having to put a fair amount of effort in maintaining a slow pace even on generally down slopes, and then hit a whole bunch of recent top-dressing on the roads. Upshot -- it was going on 1pm, with ~30 miles still to cover, by the time I was getting close, and when I saw that the last mile to Horringer was just freshly top-dressed, I said "Nope!" and carried on past the turn on roads worn smooth and comfortable to cycle.

Clare

Once I'd gone past Sicklesmere (a quick refreshment stop at the Rushbrooke Arms, and the cheapest -- by 50p -- pint of IPA I'd had all holiday), the terrain became more rolling, and I could achieve a steadier pace, getting back to base about half past 4, despite a couple of places where I missed turns because of misleading names being signed, and a total of 121.1 miles for the trip.

Buxhall

And so, home

A week in the country

In the second week of the month, I took Karen for a week at the Park House Hotel at Sandringham.

Park House

Unfortunately, the weather was not as nice as the previous week -- winds off the North Sea bringing cloud much of the time -- but at the other end of the house, there's a large conservatory joining the main building to the Coach House annex, which was amply warm (indeed, needed air-conditioning on the mornings when the sun shone); and the location was sufficiently secluded that we were not disturbed by the neighbours whose house we could see from the bottom of the garden

The neighbours

The late spring meant that the rhododendrons were at full flush

Rhododendrons

The accommodation was basic, but apart from sleeping we didn't spend much time in the room; and the catering was adequate. Day one was a misdirection with a menu including gyoza to start and locally-reared steak as a main; the clientèle being mostly seniors the food was somewhat unadventurous without quite the plain home cooking feel that Vitalise Netley did. But the location did give perks -- like an estate tour that went into the Royal Stud

Royal Applause deigns to make an appearance

and into the non-public bits of the gardens.

Sandringham gardens from backstage

We made an independent expedition to the Gin Trap at Ringstead for lunch and Norfolk Lavender for smellies

Harvester

And while we skipped the organized outingd to King's Lynn and the Thurston Collection of steam things, we did go to Pensforth, jorneying down narrow lanes in driving drizzle, only to have the sky clear and the sun shine as we arrived to be mugged by waterfowl.

Mugged by waterfowl

The red squirrels were rather more obliging

A red squirrel

Another red squirrel

Other items of note -- I managed to drink them dry of Adnams by the end of the week, and had to move onto Old Speckled Hen; the wifi didn't agree with the 7 year old hardware and 4 year old drivers of my travel laptop, but fortunately I could get at an ethernet connection instead, or use a tablet. And there are miles of trails in the park (and on the sandy soil, comfortable for going barefoot), so it didn't matter so much that I didn't have a bicycle

Beware the Raven

So well rested, we headed home, having loaded up with very tasty local beef from the butcher at West Newton

Park House Terrace