Taken a bit longer today as had to the drive back from Bradford. But here’s a couple of previews of photos coming from Day 3 at Infest. From the top we have Project Pitchfork, Ayria and Concrete Lung

Pitchfork really finished the festival off brilliantly, and Concrete Lung were really impressive. Unfortunately I spent so long faffing around trying to find people that I didn’t get a chance to pick up their CD.

Day 1 Previews – Infest 2010 photos day 1
Day 2 Previews – Infest 2010 photos day 2

And so day 2 of Infest’s first pass of photos is done. 1 each for Agonoize, Memmaker and Northern kind.

About to head up for day 3, starting earlier as Parralox have been rescheduled for 3, so it’s going to have to be a fast walk up the hill

Day 1 photos from Infest 2010 here

Good way to put the morning’s alcohol connected recovery to use,  I’ve done a first pass of last night’s Infest photos. It’s been all change this year with the venue, so the stage is in a different place and is a slight different shape this year, but I like it so far (at least for photos, as I’ve not really watched a band except through a viewfinder yet :))

Going to take me a while to get them all up (2 more nights , and I’m taking film shots as well) so thought I’d start with some work in progress ones.

So in this batch there’s 1 for Mandro1d, 1 for De/Vision and one for the Infest legend that is it’s compere Tails

Right, 2 hours till the next Infest band. But going via the Love Music Hate racism gathering that’s going on behind our hotel

So another Infest, another DJ slot in the 2nd bar. And this is what I played:

Inca babies – Evil Hour
Rubella Ballet – Money Talks
Bloody Dead & Sexy – Hey ho Armegeddon
Miguel and the Living Dead –  Aliens wear sunglasses
Joy Disaster – Artemis
Fangs on Fur – Cigarette
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Talk about the Weather
1919 – Machine
Chameleons – In Shreds
New Model Army – No Rest for the Wicked
Killing Joke – WarDance
Gun Club – Sex Beat
PiL – Public Image
Alien Sex Fiend – Walk the Line
Virgin Prunes – Caucasian Walk
Die Krupps – Fatherland
Skinny Puppy – Assimilate
Ministry – Jesus Built my Hotrod

So which trusted construction material do you think this is?

Despite all appearances this isn’t wood. It is in fact concrete. To be exact it’s concrete somewhere on the Royal Festival hall. Looks like someone decided the concrete montser would look better if they tried to make it look like wood.

You can see some more of the texturing in this photo:

So, it looks like they decided to use it quite liberally over the whole building.

This weekend sees a jaunt up to Infest to take some band photos, it’s been a while so hopefully I can remember which end to point at the stage. Debating whether to take the film camera as well. And then there’s always the change of  getting some reportage shots as there’ll be fuckwits protesting as well in the city centre.

(photos taken with Canon EOS3, Sigma 24-70 EX 2.8 on Ilford FP4+ @125 iso, developed in Ilford DD-X and scanned on an Epson v500)

Possibly what will be my least favourite  topic is finished. For some reason I’ve never really gotten on with Probability or Statistics, they just never make sense to me.

The CMA seemed to take ages to do, even taking into account the fact that I didn’t need to write it up. Spent most of it trying to flick through the 4 books looking for examples close enough to the questions to extrapolate the solutions. I’ll be really happy if I manage to get about 60% on this as it’ll mean somethings sunken in, and hopefully a substitution would mean it wouldn’t affect my overall grade.

Was nice to have an assignment that didn’t involve Mathcad :) OUStats was involved, but that actually seems to be a decent piece of software (and it makes checking 95% confidence intervals pretty simple as well).

I have checked, and it appears to be possible to get a BSc Mathematics from the Open University without taking anymore courses/modules that involve probability or statistice. w00t :).

Bit lighter this week as I was still trying to rest my heel and hopefully stave off impending Plantar Fasciitis.

17/08 – Swimming – As a change from running I decided to try swimming for the first time in about 20 years (many moons ago I used to swim twice a week with an amateur swimming club and have a tracksuit covered in badges to prove it, but then discovered climbing, Venture Scouts and Canoe polo/marathons instead). The spirit was there, but the technique and fitness certainly aren’t. Could barely manage 2×25m using front crawl. Main problem appears to be with my breathing. So some work to do there.

18/08 – 2.7 miles 30 minutes – decided to go for a short slow run on grass to try and keep the legs turning over. Didn’t feel too bad and no real pain from the heel during the run. Tried to concentrate on forefoot running rather than heel striking.

20/8 – 3.5 miles, 32 minutes – slightly longer run. But still trying to be careful about heel striking.

21/08 – swimming – Tried a slightly more structure approach this time and took a float/pullbouy with me.  Did some drills to practice breathing, kicking and arm pulls. Seemed to make an improvement. Also managed about 8 consecutive lengths using breast stroke. Biggest problem was trying to get the speed matched to the right lane. Not fit enough to keep up repeatedly with the fast lane, faster doing crawl than the breast strokers in the slow lane.

This week I’m going to add some trips to the gym into the mix. Hoping that some time on bike, cross trainer and rowing machine will help to keep cardio up till I can restart running again.

Also reading around I think I’m going to have a good look at my running style. A lot of reading around seems to point that forefoot running (wether through barefooting, POSE, Chi or others) is a better form of running. Seems to make sense from a mechanics point of view.

I’m one of those people who believe that there isn’t anything that can’t be improved by music. So on long runs I need music, and plenty of it. And if I’ve got to carry a phone as well, then I might as well take my iPhone running with me. But then came the problem of how to carry the iphone while running?

After mucking around for a while with

• an old iPod armband – never felt like it held it securely or safely
• then trying to hold the iPhone in my hand – ended up with arm cramp, and it was too vunerable if I fell or it started raining
• and then in a bum bag (fanny pack for an trans atlantic runners ending up here) – the earphone cables kept getting wrapped around me and it was a pain to skip tracks

I finally came across a Tunebelt when picking up some new shoes from “Up and Running” in Nottingham. It’s a simple sleeve of reasonably thick neoprene with a clear plastic front. The iPhone feels securely snug in the sleeve and I don’t think it’d even fall out if you started doing handstands (sorry, I can’t test that bit, yet). The clear plastic front is so so to see through, but to be honest once it’s on your arm anything is hard to see through and it’s plenty good enough to see how to unlock the phone and hit next to skip a track, There’s no cutouts for the charger port or the volume controls, but you can still thumb the volume through the neoprene, though it might be a bit hit or miss

The armband is nicely adjustable with plenty of velcro. Seems to be plenty left on my arms, and theres an extender kit available as well. It’s always stayed where I’ve put it, and I’ve never needed to adjust it once I’m on the move (and I get pretty damp and slippery while running).

I’ve taken it out in the rain a couple of times and the iPhone always seems to be dry. I’ve not taken it out in torrential rain as I tend to wear a karrimor rain jacket which I’ve modded the pocket (ie; cut a hole) so I can carry the iPhone safely in there.

It cost me £18 which is a pretty good price as far as I can see. Tunebelt claim on their site that it will also fit BlackBerry Bold, Blackberry Curve, BlackBerry Storm, Blackberry Tour, Microsoft Zune, Motorola Droid, Nokia N97, Palm Pre and others, but I can’t confirm that.

So all in all, I think this is about the best option for using the iPhone while running that I’ve seen

Or at least I hope not, as it’s part of the support for the Millenium Bridge in London.  This one came out pretty sharp considering it was hand held in a rather dark spot at an swkward angle to try and get the support beam in. Yet another photo from a day wandering around the southbank (previously)

Taken with Canon EOS3, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 on Ilford Fp4+ @125 ISO, developed in Ilford DD-x and scanned on an Epson v500

As mentioned in the training log we popped up to Derwent Water on Sunday and hired a couple of bikes from the cycle hire place at the Fairholmes Car Park.

We were after 2 bikes for the afternoon, we’d left it a little late but there were 2 still there. I handed over the money, we were handed helmets (a bonus as they’re included in the price) and then shown our steads for the next couple of hours. Sturdy sit up and beg Claud Butler’s.

So far so good. But from here it all heads downhill. On the first climb out of the car park both of us started experiencing ghost shifts (ie; the bike changed gear without any rider involvement), or a complete failure to shift when asked to. Ok, so the bikes have possibly had a bit of a hard life, maybe they’ll pick up a bit.

On the next downhill I had the amusing ‘fun’ of being sat on a bike that was actually slowing down while heading downhill. Sorry? How’s that happen?  The brakes had plenty of room (so were nice and squishy when you actaully wanted to stop) so I’m guessing that it’s probably been a long time since anyone had a look at the axle bearings in the wheels.

So far, it’s all a case of “annoying, but we can just about live with it”. The next episode though was not quite as amusing. At the start of a steep ascent about half way round (so about 5 miles either way back to the hire place) Sharlotte shifted down to start pedalling and the chain jumped straight off of the granny ring and jammed straight under the granny ring tight into the bottom bracket. Luckily 2 of us were strong enough to be able to prise it out after about 15 mintues of stuggle, but if we’d not been able to then a young woman would have been lumbered with a long walk pushing a heavy bike

From the looks of the damage already on the BB it’s not the first time it’s happened on that bike. And the state of the chain was appaling, god knows when it was last cleaned, it would appear that if things start creaking or need adjusting they just slather more grease onto  the thing.

After this sharlotte was naturally worried about changing gear so struggled round the rest of the route trying to use as few gears as possible, which pretty much ruined any enjoyment.

And the response of the staff at the Fairholme centere? “Well these things happen”. For Fuck’s sake guys, take about 10 minutes a day to actually maintain these bikes. It’s not rocket science. I’m no pro but in that time I could quite happily clean/lube a chain and adjust derailleur tension. then once a week maybe have a look at the bearings in the wheels.

And then maybe when 2 customers come back looking like they’ve had a hard time of it and explain to you what’s wrong you could actually look like you give a rat’s arse.

I would recommend that if you have a choice of walking the 10 miles round the reservoir or hiring one of these bikes you just start off walking. At least that way you know won’t end up walking and pushing a bike around as well.

Got MS221 TMA3 back just before the weekend. Got just over 80%, some of the marks were just the usual stupid errors from doing it at the last minute.

Dropped quite a few on Question 2 (graph sketching) though. Turns out that you have to follow the prescribed method in the course books to the letter. It does say in the question to “follow the method outlined”, but turns out that means slavishly stick to it. (I dropped some marks on the question for some other oversights as well to be fair).

So it’s a reasonable pass and what I’d like to see.  If 4 goes the same way then it should mean that I’ve not got to worry too much about the exam. Though I’m sure come October I’ll be panicing over that.

9/8/2010 – 4,4 miles in 37:55 – Modified Route 8 by  finishing straight up Alfreton road to get some hills in.

11/8/2010 – 6.69 miles in 58:19 – Went out for Route 10,  but then diverted down portchester and along the canal, then up maid marian way into work. Felt pretty good, even with all the hills, slowed down a bit on the uphills, but I seem to recovery reasonably quickly at the top.

13/8/2010 – 9 miles – Not a good run. Went out to survery the  middle 8 miles of the Nottingham half marathon course that go through nottingham University and Woolaton Park. The run didn’t really feel right from the start, but by about 3 miles I’d settled down. At 6 miles some heel pain had started coming through, and by 7 miles I’d missed the turning into woolaton park and the heel was really hurting. Managed to walk/run back to the QMC where I decided discretion was the better part of valour and got a taxi home. Reading around the pain seems to fit the classic Plantar fasciitis, so I think I’m going to have a couple of days off running. BTW, this part of the course is a lot hillier than I’d expected

14/09/2010 – 8 miles walking – Not the best recovery, but went for an 8 mile hike up and over kinder scout. Good fun romping through the heather and peat, and scrambling over lumps of rock on the edge

15/8/2010 – 10 miles cycling – first time I’ve been on a bike for about 11 years. We hired a couple of bikes and went around Derwent Reservoirs with some friends (we hired the bikes from the Fairholme centre, and they were crap, but that’s another post). Was a very nice ride through some very pleasant scenery. Unfortunately marred by the naff bikes

Noticed a lot of hits coming in from people searching for MST121, guessing that’s people thinking about starting the course in October.  So i thought a quick recap of the course so far might be helpful

Background:

I did A-Level Maths (C) and Further Maths (E (though some of that grade I blame on being evacuated due to a bomb scare in the final exam)) about 16 years ago. Since then I’ve mucked around with some maths, but nothing major. So that’s meant that most of the course has been revision for me. But all the topics seem to be introduced in a pretty good manner, so everything’s easy to understand.

General OU comments:

All course materials appear to be shipped with DHL. This caused me a few problems at the start as the local DHL depot is a good 45 minutes drive each way from home. But you can get the Open University to ship to an address other than home, so now all course materials arrive at my work with no problems. (They didn’t offer this when I enrolled over the phone, so I changed it in the Profile section of the student website)

Everything that’s arrived from the OU has turned up in plenty of time, and there’s never been a problem with anything missing. All the materials seem to well produced and proof read (the errata sheets seem to very empty, which is a good sign). I can’t comment on any of the DVDs or CDs as I’ve not needed to use them yet.

As I’m doing MS221 at the same time I’ve not been to any MST121 tutorials since the first one. But if they’re as good as my MS221 ones have been then they’re very helpful. And even not having been to a tutorial, my tutor does check that everything’s going well and reminds me that I can get in touch whenever I want to.

Computers:

MST121 means you have to use the Mathcad and OUStats packages. The Open University recommends a windows based computer. Being a contrarian I decided I’d be using a Apple Macbook instead. The easiest way to make sure everything ran fine was to run Parallels and keep them in a virtual machine. That seems to have worked absolutely fine. Though I’ve got to admit that Mathcad is not the best bit of maths software I’ve ever used, and I’ve only put up with it as there’s quite a few marks on TMA questions that need it.

Other than that I’ve been typesetting all my TMA submissions using LaTex (more details and a TMA template here)

Course Content:

I’ve found the course pretty straightforward with everything being introduced in a nice structured way. I’d say if you can answer all the question on this test then you shouldn’t have any problems with any of the topics. And if you can’t quite get through them all, then the revision section of the course should brush up the bits you don’t remember or haven’t met. If you’ve got a Maths A-Level then everything should be familiar, if you’ve got a GCSE then the basics should be familiar, but there might be more new stuff to learn, but shouldn’t be too much.

The assignments are pretty well spaced out so there’s plenty of time to study and get them done. Though if like me you’re doing MST121 and MS221 at the same time (January start) then it does get a little hectic.

All of my other posts on MST121 are available in an archive – MST121 Archive

Hopefully that’s been of some use. If you’ve any questions, please ask.

Well, I’ve decided that I want another year of Open University TMA and CMAs so I’ve signed up for M208 – Pure Mathematics. The syllabus looks pretty interesting, and it’s the obvious next step after MST121 and MS221 (see, you can tell it’s pure as it’s only got an M :) ).

Still plenty of time to sign up, but I though if I did it now it’s a little more pressure to do well in the MS221 exam in October, and I can’t forget. Also hoping they send the materials out early so I can start reading/prepping over christmas.

Have put the fees onto the OUSBA scheme just to save having to pay them during holiday/festival time. Hopefully I can save it all up before it’s dure in Febuary and have it all paid off.

Monday – 4.37 miles in 38:46 – Modified Route 2

Wednesday – 6.21 miles in 58:38 – Little modification of Route 7 to arrive at work rather than home. Bit wet, but not too bad. Investing in a cap has paid off nicely. Discovered a problem with iPhone and wet fingers. Might have to consider resurrecting the Nano with it’s physical controls for the wet days. Was surprised it went so well as we’d been to see The Sisters of Mercy in Leamington Spa the night before, so I’d only got about 5.5 hours of sleep, and shoulders and arms were knackered from building pyramids and general jostling.

Friday – 10 miles in 1:36:04 – Pinched this route from Nottingham Harriers. Nice to run somewhere completely different. Couple of hills I wasn’t expecting, and was fun to have to pack an OS map to keep checking the route. Think I’ll do that one again.

Sunday – 3.4 miles in 28 minutes. Took a quick pre breakfast run while away with the family in Hereford. Tried to concentrate on a good pace and foot placement rather than distance. Pretty fast for me, and didn’t feel too bad at the end of it

So that’s a total of 23.98 miles for the week. Not too shabby.

I’ve really got to change the reminders on my calendar for TMAs. Yet another last minute rush to try and get everything sorted to go in the post tomorrow.

Quite an interesting TMA this time (I might be strange and quite like calculus). Trying to spot the forms to use is quite a good game, and once you’ve got that it’s normally just crunching through the rearranging to complete. Once again Wolfram-Alpha was great for checking answers, though it does seem to have some interesting strategies for calculating derivatives and integrals. In fact some of them look better than what I think is the ‘official’ Open University ways (ie; one question which looks as though we’re meant to use the quotient rule for, they do with a cunning use of the product rule. Something to remember for the future). And there was some sneakyness in the starting rearrangements as well.

Question 2 was a bit of a swine, seemed to be lots of data crunching to try and get all the points needed. The actual sketch was the easy bit :)

Now back to MST121 for some probability/statistics, neither of which are my favourite topics. Section D on MS221 looks good from a quick flick through, Group theory’s something I’ve not done before, and I notice some question about RSA which ties in nicely to work.

And even the mathcad stuff this time wasn’t too bad. Think it took about 20 minutes, which is loads less than other TMAs. w00t.

Wednesday, ran route 8 and then into work for 5.37 miles in 48 minutes. Started off feeling a bit shaky, but seemed to get into the ‘groove’ after about a mile

Friday, short one today. Couple of laps around the rec and then up and over mansfield road for 4 miles in 34:44 minutes. Suprised it went that well as I’d been out for curry and beer with some old friend the night before (Cumin is highly recommended by the way).

Saturday, long run along the river, 8.39 miles in 74 minutes. Not quite the route I’d planned as it turns out part of the route at attenbrough is closed for the next 8 weeks.

Overall a pretty good week, nothing’s really hurting at the moment and I seem to be able to keep a reasonably steady pace up throughout the long run.

Weekly total – 17:46 miles, 2:37 hours

Oops, taken a while to get round to getting these up what with one thing or another. So here’s some photos taken at Dead & Buried back in June 2010 of Grooving in Green (ex Children on Stun)

19/07 – Couple of laps around the rec and over mansfield road for 4 miles

21/07 – Same as monday

22/07 – Moved the long run to thursday as off to the lake district for the weekend. Did Route 11 with a modification to make it to 7.5 miles, took 1:04 which I’m pretty pleased with.

23/07 – Long walk up helvellyn via striding edge and then down over White Side and Raise and down to glenridding. All in all 10 miles. Not very fast, but can certainly feel the effects in muscles. Got to have done something good. And near 5 hours on the feet has to do something useful for fitness

24/07 – Unplanned run around Grizedale woods. All off road in the rain (trainers are still drying out 48 hours later). Didn’t take ay form of GPS and the map disintergrated, But reckon we probably did about 4 miles, a fair amount of which was on varying gradients.

25/07 – walking again. This time a long uphill slog up alongside stickle tarn, a quick stroll up the scree to pavey ark and then a good scramble up Jack’s Rake. Then plenty of wandering downhill.

So not much running, but certainly lots of time on my feet over the weekend. Don’t feel as though anything is aching too much, so now to see if it makes a difference when I start running again this week.