Cycling across campus on my way home tonight I almost ran over a squirrel, which darted out in front of me. I was already slowing for junction I was approaching and squeezed the levers a bit more but, with damp autumn leaves on the floor, I couldn’t jam the brakes on too hard. Fortunately, the slowing combined with the squirrel’s ability to put on an extra burst of speed meant the potential collision was avoided.
Just as well! I’m pretty sure it would have ended badly for the squirrel and probably wouldn’t have been so good for me either. I’m glad I’m not in the habit of going hell-for-leather on the bike so neither of us had to find out.
If you saw my local MP walking down the street, you could make the assumption that he is “from other parts”. You would, however, be wrong. Wikipedia tells me that he was born in Luton and his academic education was all at UK universities. In other words, he has just as much claim to be a native British citizen as me or King Charles.
Jeevun Sandher has recently sent out his latest email news letter, in which he notes that he has written to the leader of the local (Reform-led) council asking for the Union and St George flags that have recently been clandestinely fixed to local lamp posts to be taken down. He makes the twin points that they are becoming weather worn so will eventually become either litter or an active hazard to traffic and that they are very often interpreted as a message meaning “foreigners” (and people who look like foreigners) out.
It will be interesting to see how the council respond. Flag supports often claim that they are simply a symbol of national pride but that is at best naieve, given the context of what has led to the recent bout of flag-waving. That has been clearly centered in a fear of immigration and the rhetoric of those who are willing to exploit such fears for personal power rather than the well-being of those in need. In addition, the unauthorised erection of the flags is not the work of law-abiding and law-respecting citizens. I would be surprised if many of them can be backed by documented permission to fix material to the street furniture. That isn’t law and order but anarchy – precisely the kind of attitude that most flag-fans would claim to be afraid of.
There are appropriate times and places to use various flags but those who like to show the red and white of St George have a few things they should consider. Would be willing to give support to the family of the original George (most likely an early 4th century Christian martyr of east Mediterranean origin)? In other words, a typical profile of many modern refugees and asylum seekers. Also, what they really think about the Jesus, who that blood red cross and pure white ground represent and to whom we have every reason to believe St George gave his unrelenting allegiance?
I’m making progress on getting my database of garden activity up to date. Tonight I’ve just fed in my records from 2024. Now I just need to do a bit more data entry and I’ll finally be back to the position of being able to ask the all important questions like ‘which tomato tends to give the best harvest’ or ‘how much does my apple harvest vary from year to year’?
Is that trivial? Since I’m starting to plan for my gardening year ahead, it is actually quite pertinent. I’m looking forward to seeing how I’ve been doing.
I haven’t added another instrument to my collection but the Charnwood Training Band has recently been joined by a young player of the French Horn. Initially there was some confusion as she told us it was a Bb horn but it turns out that this is just one of the many challenges thrown up this most peculiar of instruments. Most adult players will be using a double horn and they can switch between “Bb” and “F” parts to give each individual note the best chance of being in tune. Junior players often use a single horn, which is lighter and also less expensive. However, even if they have a “Bb horn”, the music for it is still written for an F instrument.
It is great to have a horn player with the band but we did have to go scrabbling for music a bit. Not having had a previous person in that chair, at least as long as I have been with the band, means we don’t have F horn parts available for all of the pieces. I’ve managed to fill in the last couple of gaps for our forthcoming concert by dint of taking Eb horn parts (alto saxophones are often well represented and so many pieces have parts for saxes pretending to be horns) and transposing them. That requires typing them into MuseScore but the software makes the rest of the process easy.
I’ve also got a strategy for any tunes that don’t seem to have any kind of horn part. On one for which I have the full score available, I spotted that the F horn was either doubling the trombone or the second trumpets. That should give a quick way to knock up suitable parts for our new player and, when we buy further pieces, we’ll try to make sure they come with a horn part included.
I’ve burned through another 100g or so of filament today printing saucers for plants in pots. I started with a model from MakerWorld by Ian Smith Builds. It was solid but, although advertised as 9cm, the internal diameter was only about 8cm and so it was a bit too snug for the particular pot I had in mind. That is the model shown above.
I then created my own version in OpenSCAD – a cylinder for the base, a tube for the outer wall and some internal rests so the pot doesn’t seal against the base. All of that was fairly easy using the BOSL2 library and the advantage of creating my own model is that I can easily adjust the parameters. Version 1 had the right internal diameter and I also printed a second one with a raised edge. In theory PLA isn’t the best material to use but I’ll see how these prints perform in actual usage before deciding if I need to switch to PETG.
Ignoring the relatively negligible electricity cost, 100g equates to about £1.40 worth of filament. None of it will be wasted as the first print is still usable for a smaller pot. Let’s call it about 45p per saucer. I checked on Amazon and I could have purchased 10 9.5cm plastic saucers for about £6. I didn’t expect to find that, at 60p each, that works out as more expensive than the home-printed versions. At home, I can print the saucers on demand and, in my current design, I’ve created something thicker and more rigid that what I expect the Amazon ones are like. I’m sure economies of scale would tip the balance if I wanted to buy 50 or 100 or if I was willing to take a chance on the lowest price I could find anywhere online but I’m pleasantly surprised to see that 3d printing is not only convenient but also represents a worthwhile saving at domestic levels of use.
Looking back on my blog, I see that we made our first visit to the National Memorial Arboretum, near Alrewas in Staffordshire, in November 2021. We went back today for a second visit and I took a number of photos:
Being full of trees, mid-autumn is an excellent time to go. Some, like the specimen above, were full of bright colours although I expect the display will stretch on for another month or more. As on our last visit, I found it a very poignant place to explore. There is a certain ambiguity in celebrating any aspect of armed conflict but there is no doubt that many brave people have put themselves in harm’s way to protect others.
Last time, we just wandered round. This time, we also heard a couple of the talks which are regularly delivered. One was in the chapel, were a short Act of Remembrance happens every day of the year (even, I believe, when it is closed to the public on Christmas Day). The other we ended up in by accident – Jane lingered inside the Far East Prisoners of War exhibition and, by the time we came out, I was listening to a guide explain that area. However it did mean that we were shown a number of sections, like the Chindits memorial stuck right on the edge of the site, which we would otherwise have missed.
I was under a strict secrecy provision until yesterday because a small subset of the University choir had been invited to perform at Professor Mike Fray’s inaugural lecture. He supported his talk with various references to rock songs and wanted to surprise the audience with a live version of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters to close it, which is the song we sang. It went well, which was just as well as it turned out one of my colleagues was there for the lecture and I had Mike’s head of department (also there) in today to pick up her upgraded laptop!
I missed taking a photo in September but I have caught the beginnings of autumn colours this week, including the Virginia Creeper round that gate in the middle of the image. Last autumn’s picture was a couple of weeks later but the creeper, much pruned this year, may have dropped all its leaves by then. Meanwhile, if you click on the image above and then look at the previous picture in the sequence (August 2025) it is remarkable just how much the grass has sprung back now that we’ve had a bit of rain before all the warmth and light has gone.
In the past, I’ve had success printing small containers in what is known as spiral vase mode. Unlike regular printing, which breaks a model into many discrete layers, vase mode creates a base and then builds the rest with a continuous spiral of filament. That means it isn’t very strong but it is also light, quick to print and low on filament usage. In the right context, it can be a very elegant and functional solution.
Of course, many models simply won’t work with this approach. If the single strand isn’t in contact with the parts laid down already, it is unlikely to hold in the expected position by the next time the nozzle sweeps round to that area and you end up not with a pretty container but something that looks more like a vermicelli nest.
I have been trying to print a small container to hold some tomatoes as a gift to a friend. I started with the vase generator on MakerWorld’s MakerLab, which I have used successfully before and set a model printing before I headed off to choir yesterday evening. When I came back, it had finished but had some holes and was far too fragile for the intended purpose. I knocked up a second, simpler model with less curves backwards and forward and set that going overnight. This morning, I woke up to that vermicelli nest effect. I tried another time with an even simpler model but, once it got past the base layer, I could see that the sides weren’t properly attached to the base.
Finally, I turned back to OpenSCAD and created a simpler model still – just a prismoid with a chamfered base and rounded corners at the top. I set that one printing – still in vase mode – while I was getting my breakfast and sorting out my packed lunch, paying particular attention to the first few sweeps after the base layers. At last, I got one that worked and, given the speed of vase mode, it was done before I had to jump on my bike and head to work.
Despite three failures, I’ve probably still burned through less filament than I would have done to get the final result in regular mode. The lesson, though, is to be a little cautious when leaving untested prints to run unattended and particularly when it comes to spinning up things in spiral vase mode. On the plus side, I now have a model I’ve created myself that I am confident I can print again directly or with minor tweaks; I’ve tried enough to succeed.
By the end of our second rehearsal of the term in the Loughborough University Choir, we have already sung through most of the material for the concert on 3 December. That is probably a good thing because that isn’t so many weeks away. Overall, I’d say the music is simpler than previous terms I have been involved in but that isn’t to say that it is entirely simple.
One of the challenges is a rhythmic pattern called a hemiola. This puts patterns of 3 against patterns of 2. In particular, we have some songs in 6/8 time, which would normally be counted 1 2 3 2 2 3. However, while, some voices are holding to that, other voices are effectively counting 1 2 2 2 3 2 . It isn’t the hardest combination to work out but it does need working on so that enough of us can instinctively feel the necessary rhythms and lean into them for full effect.
