Author Archives: James - Page 85
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Cub Camp 2014 – pt.2
So here are a couple of photos to give you an idea of what Jordan Heights looks like. I didn't take that many photos, largely because my phone ran out of battery before the end of the weekend. So this is the pizza oven, made from a metal dustbin with racking inside. It's just outside the covered area with a bespoke raised fire pit. The picture doesn't show the door for the front, it was a wooden door lined with a metal plate and with a couple of handles to make it easy to move back and forth. When it was on it kept the heat from escaping from the front. I kept it off while I was getting the fire lit. I spent the weekend telling the boys that they'd been eating food out of the bins! It worked…
Cub Camp 2014
I got back yesterday evening from a two night camp with Clark Pack of 5th Reigate (Merstham) cub scouts. We were up at Jordan Heights, a little piece of unspoilt wilderness hidden on the back of Reigate Hill about 100m from the A217. The campsite is appropriately spartan. The facilities are geared for adventure rather than comfort. This is a good thing when you are scouting. There are some custom built outdoor cooking facilities (see the photos), a hut for storage and as a backstop against inclement weather. There are also air rifle and archery facilities with a trained instructor available. The campsite is a couple of flattened areas both bigger than our scout hall and it is set in the woods on the side of Reigate Hill. There are other facilities too, and you can see the details on…
A215 Creative Writing is done
Handwritten notebook entry Last week I got the results for A215 Creative Writing. I got a Grade 2 pass, which I'm pleased with. So far I'm half way through the degree and the level 2/3 courses that count towards Honours classification. If I maintain my consistent Grade 2 passes I'll get a 2:1, and if I manage to get a distinction for 60 points of the rest then I'll get a first. Unless I get Grade 4 passes for all of my remaining 120 points at Level 2 & 3 then I'm pretty safe on a 2:1, not bad given that I'm working full-time, being a school governor, scout leader and a parent at the same time as studying for the degree! A215 has been the most interesting OU course that I have done so far. Part of me wishes that…
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Reaction
Breaking Bad (season 1) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) How un-American is Breaking Bad, yo! Sorry, couldn't resist it. If you haven't seen it yet then you need to go watch it. I'm catching up on it via Netflix and so far I've made it through series 2. Unlike most US TV shows it has short series (five series muster 67 episodes in total). There are a number of other ways, all of them good, that make it stand out: * the protagonist is bad; * it is the dark underbelly; * it shows US society as fundamentally broken; * viewers need intelligence to get it; * you need to actively watch it; * loads of geek humour & science. A Good Man Gone Bad Dr Walter White is a way overqualified chemistry teacher in an Albuquerque High School. In the opening…
Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray
Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up. This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn't an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up…