Yes, I do update things occasionally. Since the last time we have had a week on South Devon in early October, which gave us fine weather almost throughout.
Last Saturday we went to the De Montfort Hall to see Karl Jenkins conduct the Leicester Philharmonic Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra in The Armed Man. It was the choir's 125th Anniversary concert. wonderful.
Well, it all happened last weekend. I now have a new computer that is dedicated to running the weather station. It was quite a decent machine for 50 quid on Ebay. A Dell, running Windows XP with 2.7MHz processor. Seems to work well.
Sunday we were at Buxton Opera house for a really fantastic concert. It was Hayley Westenra, performing her first UK headline concert since last December. And yes, Sue and I were at that one too!
It was a wonderful show, Hayley was on great form, singing 17 songs. This is another show i will never forget. I even got to meet Hayley afterwards, and had another photo taken with her, the first since her previous concert at the Opera House two years ago.
http://s46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/martinDn/Buxton10/?action=view¤t=P1040582.jpg
I think i have the most teeth!
Oh, and I should mention that my weather station is now online. It is still in the process of being calibrated to ensure that its temperature readings are comparable with my old set of radio thermometers, adn that the other readign are comparable with other local weather stations.
Getting things right is tricky. Siting of sensors is critical, although it is possible to compensate to some exptent by using calibration factors and offsets within the software that processes the data.
My wind and rain sensors are mounted on a pole atop my garage. the rain guage seems to work pretty well there, but the wind is all over the place. The direction seems to average about right, but wind speeds are far lower than they should be. I an not at all convinced that the error can be compensated for by any kind of linear function, which will mean that my winf reasdings are pretty much useless. But I'll have a go.
The temperature and humidity senesors are at about the righr height. 1.5 meteres above ground, buried in a tree to avoid the problems caused by the sun shining directly on them. Experiments have shown the radiation sheild provided to be pretty much useless, so the any way is to keep the sensors out of the sun, as I did with my previous setup of multiple raido thermometers.
Back to the mundane. First home match of the season at the Walkers Stadium, Leicester 0 Middlesborough 0. But not as bad a match as that sounds, there were lots of chances, but the ball wouldn't go in. Oh well, you win some you loce some, put played 2 lost 1, drawn 1 is not good enough for a side seeking promotion.
A lot has happened. Sue and I had a fornights holiday in the motorhome in early July. We spent a week in the Newcastle area, camping near Ovingaham in the Tyne valley. The coalmines and shipyards have gone. The riverside is now very pleasant, and Newcastle is a pleasant city. We didn't move the van for a week, spent the whole week travelling on buses for nothing, using our bus passes.
Then a week at Berwick Upon Tweed. The Caravan Club site there has a wonderful view out over the town and Tweed estuary. There is a fine local beach, and the town is a mile away. We travelled around in the van a lot more from here, visiting Kelso, Coldstream, Burnmoth and Eyemouth, Alnwick, Amble and Lindisfarne.
Monday 2nd August was a Battle of Britain 70th Ammiversary Tour concert ay Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, featureing the Band of the RAF Regiment and Hayley Westenra. It was fabulous. Both the band and Hayley were wonderful. This is the first time we have seen Hayley this year, and she is flitting backwards and forwards between Rome, where she is recording an album, and UK for her concert dates. Managed to get a viodeo of her performance of Abide with Me, which was without doubt the best performance of that hymn that I have ever heard.
Since then this video, which is nor on YouTube, has been well received. Although there might be some improvements in the pipeline.
Had a wonderful Chantry Choir concert at christ church last night, in aid of the Royal British Legion. It included Karl Jenkens' "The Armed Man", a very powerful and moving peice of music. Also various English folk songs, and a "Last Night of the Proms".
Spent the weekend setting up my automatic weather station. Seems to work well, but the temperature can read several degrees too high when the sun is out. Don't know what I can do about that. I tried moving the sensor about without much success, so I might just have to apply a correction to my recorded max temperature compared to my other, better shaded thermometers. It will need to be a different adjustment for every month of the year I'm sure, and even then will be hard to do, since sunlight intensity can be affected by many more things that season. This weather station doesn't measure that.
Much has happened. we have been away to the wonferful island of Islay, including disteillery tours of Ardbeg and Kilchoman. Great weather. Beautiful island
It is cold and raining here today, it struggled to reach even 10C. Last Wednesday went to Birmingham for a wonderful concert. The Birmingham Symphony Hall is an amazing location, acoustically it is fabulous, I could pick out the sound of any individual member of the audience during the applause even.. And we heard the Moscow state Symphony Orchestra performing Borodin's Polotzia Dances, Philip Glass violin concerto, and Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony.
We were located in the choir seats, behind the orchestra, no more than 2 metres from the percussion section. It felt almost like sitting in the orchestra.
Quite a day. Dishing out the Christian Aid collectors packs at church, then off to the Walkers Stadium for a 1pm keckoff against Middlesborough. We won 2-0. But not having time to go home after church, I arrived waering my football supporting garb, complete with Leicester scarf. Except that today there was an infant dedication, which means lots of quests at the church dressed in their best. And there was me in jeans, tee shirt and fleece, reading the church notices. And notice it they did, I'm sure.
The match was good, end to end stuff. Leicester seemed to have several reserves in the team, and they did well, the reserve gioalkeeper saving a penalty, among several fine saves he made.
The match was the annual "Help for Heroes" game, where they were collecting for that charity, and there were soldiers and airmen there. And, joy of joys, at half time they played the charity single "We will remember them" which features among others our own dear Hayley. I doubt that many of the 30,000 crowd knew or cared who was singing though.
Been a good week. Or two. Wall to wall sunshine, if cold today. Been out in the garden, deglazing the greenhouse, which is being relocated.
Leicester City's 3-0 victory over local rivals Nottingham Forest in front of 31000 people was something I enjoyed immednsely.
Wednesday night a Philharmonia Orchestra concert at the De Montfort Hall. Verdi, Rachmaninoc, Wagner and Shostokovich. Very enjoyable!
Looks like my other team, Peterborough United, are doomed to be relegated to League 1 from next season.
This is getting more and more occasional. But we haven't done a lot lately!
Went to see the Leicester Symphony Orachestra at the De Montfort Hall last Saturday. Tchaikovsky's Pathertique, and Brahms Piono Concerto No 2 (which had four movements). Enjoyed it.
Also last Saturday, saw Leicester City achieve their biggest ever win at the Walkers Stadium, 5-1 against Scunthorpe. A couple of minutes into the match and I could see how it was going to go,
Today it snowed and it took me 2 hours to get home from work. As usually, in snow Rugby gets gridlocked, mostly due to incompetent drivers blocking junctions and roundabouts.
Oh, I now have a permanent ficx for the RISC OS 5 clock bug, in the from od RISC OS 5.16, now flashed into ROM. Seems to work well.
Another new year, and a new blog page. Didn'y do much, sue was working last night. Today we had one of sue's ;ovely turkey dinners, with the grandkids round.
My RISC OS computer seems to have delveloped a milennium bug ten years too late. Seems to think it is February 2012! Found a fix for it on the internet though.
Wednesday night we went to see Tommy Steele in Scrooge.. Excelllent show, really enjoyed it.