I feel like I need more detailed maps of Mount Stranger than I currently have in order to layout a possible navex. I there spent a little time this afternoon wandering down the fire trail to mark all the gates in the fence. I need to do a little more of this before its ready for a navex. [kml: 20150916-3]
I've been running for a little while now, but I don't mention it here much. I think I mostly don't mention it because I normally just post photos here, and I don't tend to stop and take happy snaps on my runs. The runs started off pretty modest -- initially I struggled with shin splints after more than a couple of minutes. I've worked through that and a couple of injuries along the way and am consistently doing 5km runs now. That said, my longest runs have been in the last week when I did a 7.5km and an 8.1km. I'm building up to 10km, mostly because its a nice round number. I think ultimately trail running might be the thing for me, I get quite bored running around suburbs over and over again. Its interesting that I come from an aggressively unsporting family, but yet all of my middle aged siblings and I have started running in the last year or two. Its a mid-life crisis thing perhaps? [kml: 20150913-1]
So today was the day long map and compass class with the Canberra Bushwalking Club. I liked this walk a lot. It was a good length at about 15km, and included a few things I'd wanted to do for a while like wander around McQuoids Hill and the northern crest of Urambi hills. Some nice terrain, and red rocks gorge clearly requires further exploration. [kml: 20150912-1]
I've been doing the Canberra Bush Walking Club navigation course for the last couple of weeks, and last night's exercise was a night time dead reckoning navigation session. The course is really good by the way and I've been enjoying it a lot. It should be pointed out that I also wasn't lost, or alone, but it sure was dark. Anyway, the basic idea of the exercise is that you're given a hand drawn map, and a set of markers. You determine the bearing from each marker to the next, and the distance to walk. You then set off on your adventure. Getting a bearing or distance wrong matters, because you either need to stop and find the next way point, or carry the mistake on to the next marker. The markers were generally things like "gate in fence" or "two big trees". It turns out for me the hardest part is walking in a straight line when its dark. If you look at the GPS logged map below, you can see that the consistent error is that I tend to veer slowly to the right. That's a pretty useful thing to know, because it means I can correct a…
I've just realized that I didn't post any pics of my walk to the most southern point of the ACT. The CBC had a planned walk to the southern most point on the ACT border and I was immediately intrigued. So, I took a day off work and gave it a go. It was well worth the experience, especially as Matthew the guide had a deep knowledge of the various huts and so forth in the area. A great day. [kml: 20150818-2]
Andrew, my eldest son, was enrolled in a competition recently by his school. The competition is called the $20 boss, and is run by the National Australia Bank, which is one of the largest banks around here. The basic idea is that the bank loans each of the students $20, with which they start a business. The goal is to make a profit, with the bank expecting to be returned $21. 10% of money over that should go to charity, and the rest is the student’s to keep.
Other kids seem to have chosen to make muffins, cookies, or drinks. Well, except for the kids who made candles. Andrew on the other hand had a think, and decided to ask me to teach him to make wood turned pens. This was exciting to me as Andrew hasn’t previously shown a particular interest in wood craft.
Written by a Victoria Cross recipient, this is the true story of a messed up kid who made something of himself. Mark's dad died of cancer when he was young, and his mum was murdered. Mark then went through a period of being a burden on society, breaking windows for fun and generally being a pain in the butt. But then one day he decided to join the army... This book is very well written, and super readable. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think its an important lesson about how troubled teenagers are sometimes that way because of pain in their past, and can often still end up being a valued contributor to society. I have been recommending this book to pretty much everyone I meet since I started reading it.
The kids at coding club have decided that we should write an implementation of pong in python. I took a look at some options, and decided tkinter was the way to go. Thus, I present a pong game broken up into stages which are hopefully understandable to an 11 year old: Operation Terrible Pong.
The launchpad API docs are OMG terrible, and it took me way too long to work out how to do this, so I thought I'd document it for later. Here's how you list all the open bugs in a launchpad project using the API: #!/usr/bin/python import argparse import os from launchpadlib import launchpad LP_INSTANCE = 'production' CACHE_DIR = os.path.expanduser('~/.launchpadlib/cache/') def main(username, project): lp = launchpad.Launchpad.login_with(username, LP_INSTANCE, CACHE_DIR) for bug in lp.projects[project].searchTasks(status=["New", "Incomplete", "Confirmed", "Triaged", "In Progress"]): print bug if __name__ == '__main__': parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Fetch bugs from launchpad') parser.add_argument('--username') parser.add_argument('--project') args = parser.parse_args() main(args.username, args.project)