ManRom2021

Mobiles and body heat

March 18, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

18 Mar 2020 – 23:03 GMT – 3°C Mostly Cloudy – Co. Dublin, Ireland

Here in Ireland, schools are closed. So people are out walking with their kids. I was walking on the beach earlier and I noted a few personal distancing issues. People on mobiles seem less able to maintain the social gap. Self importance still prevails. And the gap requested may not be big enough. Shampoo, deodorant and perfume wafted over me. I guess I’m already personal space sensitised. I noted proximity because today was cold and my ear lobes could still detect the body heat of people passing at more than one and a half metres.

I have had a cold the last few days. I looked at my FitBit today and was surprised to see the resting BPM tracked when I was feeling low and when I thought I was getting over it. In fact the daily BPM was rising for a few days before I noticed.

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Capital Ring

March 17, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

17 Mar 2020 – 9:42 GMT – 10°C Mostly Cloudy – Co. Dublin, Ireland

This month last year I was walking the Capital Ring around London. I made seven it in outings over two weeks. Walked clockwise, starting in Woolwich, averaging about 20 km each time. It helped that we were based in SW1 at the time and each walk could be accessed by a radial journey on public transport, age and residence making it free to me after morning rush hour.

Snippets from WhatsApp with the family, posts made by covenant to confirm that I’m upright when walking alone; a protocol following an incident on a mountain last year that left me with pins in my hand.

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Remodelling tax

March 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

16 Mar 2020 – 15:25 GMT – 10°C Mostly Cloudy – Co. Dublin, Ireland

A little vent is long overdue. I’ll try to avoid it becoming a rant. My irritants include a boiler, a grant and trust.

But let’s digress immediately. Why would an electrician wire electrical sockets in one room to two different breakers? In a domestic house, semi-detached and quite small. And why would each of those breakers also be wired to sockets in other rooms, one even on a higher floor? Of course, the house was wired with earthing as it should have been. Just one detail was overlooked, there was no connection to an earth rod.

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Kalends and Ides

March 15, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Caveat emptor: the things that flow through my consciousness are not always pleasant, complete let alone right.

The Romans left quite a legacy. Is that because they took the time to chisel their notes in the stones they built with? Calendars were a great invention and the Roman version remains dominant in global diplomacy and business. And it’s fundamental in many administrative regions of the world. Taxes tend to be assessed on 365 day years despite domestic use of different systems such as lunations in Muslim and Mosaic households. The ‘ides’ notion probably lost appeal after Brutus backstabbed Julius Caesar in 44 BC. And besides, Shakespeare told the world to be wary of them.

Hard to avoid thinking about calendars in a leap year. And reflecting on calendars brings time into view. And view is the right word. We lived for a while in the coyote-barking foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Our zip code was the unforgettable 91011 which I could never remember, near where the astronomer Edwin Hubble spent the late 1920’s. He developed a view of nebulae fleeing from his 100 inch telescope. We met many who worked in Nasa’s JPL and Caltech and all spoke with passion of their pursuits of galaxies, now that they knew what nebulae were.

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Planning in a pandemic

March 14, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

14 Mar 2020 – 9:18 GMT – 7°C Mostly Cloudy – Co. Dublin, Ireland

Planning in a pandemic
You can’t. Accept it.

No travel bookings made. No accommodations booked. Can’t say the walk off. It’s not off so must plan as if it will happen.

Bought and assembled my hiking kit. Completed that task this week. Added gloves and another fleece. None of this is cheap: it’s an upfront investment in maintaining health rather than saving for later expenses for poor health. Fingers crossed for longevity.

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Fuji Wabi Sabi

March 13, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

13 Mar 2020 – 19:48 GMT – 6°C Light Rain – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I plan to bring a camera towards Rome. Weight is a major consideration and things have improved in that regard. In years gone by, I brought an iPhone on my walks because my DSLR kits were too heavy and unwieldy for use by brain tired, wet hands. So I’d bought iPhone battery extenders, lens kits for telephoto and wide angle options, specialty tripods and my favourite, a grip that also acted as stabiliser. These all coupled nicely with iPhone earphones, cleverly designed so the volume control also acted as a remote shutter release. Except I’d walked the batteries dead with Walkmeter and other mapping apps on iPhone versions 3, 4, 5 and 7 and wouldn’t you know, the camera kits tended to change from one generation of phone to the next.

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ManRom2021

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