David Bradley – Page 63

Hobbies for your Covid-19 self isolation

I posted a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) with answers regarding the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the potentially fatal Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease 201), now pandemic, back in late January. Things have moved on apace, social distancing, self-isolation, quarantine, lockdown are buzzwords we are hearing more and more as the virus spreads. Countries are closing borders, airlines are on the verge of failing, restaurants, bars, sports venues, and theatres are all operating behind closed doors, if at all.

I gave up updating the FAQ a while ago and linked to a better one where Sciencebase readers can get important current information, it’s at the top of the FAQ.

But, there is one FAQ that needs to be asked, at once, and I did, on Facebook:

So, all those hobbies that people scoffed at for years, which ones will you be taking up in your splendid isolation?

The answers have been rolling in, some people seemed to have assumed this wasn’t a flippant, light-hearted, almost facetious, mood-lightening, amusing question in the light of a global tragedy unfolding daily before our eyes, but hey, the literal web will survive us all. Anyway, here are a few of the interesting remarks that came back:

Chris – Today I have tried and failed: making papier-mÃ¢chÃ© from toilet roll, distilling vodka, plane spotting, and Spanish conversation

Clive – I like plane spotting: rebate, jack, smoothing, block…

Mo – I think it’s time we played a few games of Risk

Robert – Hand washing

Mike – Hand wringing

Patrick – I’m making a map of the known universe and beyond out of pasta and toilet rolls. What else am I going to do with all of this stuff…no idea why I bought it all really

Nancy – A Seattle epidemiologist has given the thumbs-up to sex. Bonus points if it’s sex for one

Mark – Apparently, Italians have been given a free month’s subscription to a porn website

Dave – Nice to see that everyone’s pulling together in times of crisis

Stephen – I’ve been threatening for years to get the kids to cut the lawn with the kitchen scissors – I might just get around to seeing how long it would take to do…

Bill – Photographing the neighbours with my long lens. Oh, wait, did you mean NEW hobby?

Jorian – Writing up research notes on our family history for the survivors

Mark – Model trains are my thing!

Stephen (again) – Yeah the “kids” layout in the loft might get some attention too

Deborah (who is moving house) – I’m still packing

Sciencebase – I’ve just cut up some eggboxes to replace the sodden ones in the moth trap

Mandy – Not going to need a new spring wardrobe; reasons to be cheerful

Tyne Valley Birding

A bit of social distancing, walking, and birding in the Tyne Valley:

Birds seen during a couple of days of walking up and down each bank of the river:

Blackbird, Bullfinch, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Chiff Chaff (heard), Collared Dove, Cormorant,Â Crow (Carrion),Â Dove (Stock), Dunnock, Fieldfare, Goldcrest (heard), Goldfinch, Goosander, Gulls – Black headed, Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Heron, Jackdaw, Jay, Kestrel, Kittiwakes, Magpie, Mallard, Oystercatcher, Redwing, Robin, Rook, Swan – Mute and Whooper, Tit – Blue , Coal, Great – Wagtail – Gray and Pied – Wood pigeon, Wren, Yellowhammer.

Final morning along the river in Newcastle itself observing the Kittiwakes that nest and breed on the Tyne Bridge itself, this is essentially an inland colony, and uniquely nesting that fathest inland of any colony of this species anywhere in the world.

Female Bullfinch, should that be Cowfinch?

Sizewell and Suffolk

TL:DR – One of the natural side effects of planting a nuclear power station on the coast.

This platform was one of two “water rigs” one of which was used to draw cold seawater into Sizewell A nuclear power station; two magnox reactors operated there from 1966 to 2006. The spent “coolant” having generated its superheated steam to drive the turbines to drive the generators was then released back into the sea at the second platform, the one closer to the shore, pictured below.

Because the discharged water was at a slightly higher temperature than the sea, an oceanic microclimate formed here, which led to greater numbers of fish and birds utilising the thermal boom.

Most of the machinery and components were removed during decommissioning of the reactor, but birds such as Cormorants and numerous gull species still find the platforms useful as roosting sites. There was a time when Kittiwakes nested on the platforms, their presence led to delays in removing hazardous components during decommissioning. Ultimately, these two platforms will be removed. Shipping buoys are already in place to warn of sandbanks along this stretch of coast, so the platforms no longer have warning lights for that purpose as they once did.

Sizewell B, which you would recognise as the big white dome is a pressurised water reactor; the only commercial PWR in the UK. Sizewell C is on hold until “issues” and “concerns” are resolved. One can imagine that palms will be greased at some point and the public protest against it will be forgotten by all but those who live in the area.

You can take a look at various photos from our recent trip to Thorpeness, Aldeburgh, and Sizewell here.

Incidentally, fans of musician Thomas Dolby will likely know Sizewell A as the setting of his music video for the song Europa and The Pirate Twins.

Thorpeness to Aldeburgh

It’s been a few years since we’ve ventured into our old haunts of Thorpeness and Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast; places we visited family fairly frequently for the best part of two decades. Anyway, yoga and wildlife walking trip, with a wonderful group of people, activities led by Denise and Kevin, respectively. I got a few snaps here and there.

First Chiffchaff sighting of the year, Thorpeness, 7th March 2020

Peter Pan’s Crocodile with attendant Carrion Crow

Lichen on fallen trunk in the alder carr

Black-headed Gull, almost ready for Spring

Curlew River, St Peter and St Paul’s, Aldeburgh

Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Cymbalaria muralis, growing in brickwork around a rusty wall-tie on the boundary of the Ogilvie Estate, Sizewell, Suffolk

Climbing to the refurbished Sizewell Hall gazebo.

One my numberous Minsmere Marsh Harriers quartering and display, also several over reedbed at Thorpeness

Great Crested Grebe with fishy prey at RSPB Minsmere

One of two well-hidden Snipe at RSPB Minsmere, almost impossible to see with the naked eye from the hide

Sparrow names – Nicknames and slang for House Sparrows

TL:DR – There are lots of regional slang names for the House Sparrow.

Do you have a local word for Passer domesticus, the House Sparrow? Where I grew up in the North East of England we called them Spuggies, I hear from a Shropshire lad that it’s a common nickname for this species in that part of the country too. They’re also sometimes simply called spugs in Northern England. In the South P. domesticus is known as a sparr, sparrer (or Cockney sparrar), spadger (Northern Ireland too), spadgick, and phip or philip. That latter one is intriguing.

In Scotland, they’re often known as a spur or sprig (also Spriggies after a Mr Sprigg, apparently, that sounds unlikely given spriggies sounds like a dialact variation on spuggies). One contact on twitter (hahah!) said that his father who grew up in North Lanarkshire called them speugs, pronounced “spee-ugs”.

It’s very difficult to discern the etymology of these nicknames some sources cite spadger as originating in Leeds in the North rather than the South of England. But just as nicknames for games and people often arise with -er on the end. Bradders, was an occasional nickname for me as a bairn (child). Soccer is short for association football as Rugger is short for Rugby Football. Sparrow perhaps became sparrah, spugger, spuggie…

The same species is often called an English Sparrow in North America where its nicknames are commonly spatzieÂ orÂ spotsie, from the GermanÂ Spatz. Australians might know the immigrant species as a Spag or Spoggie. And, perhaps less common Sprog or Sproggy and even spridgy or spudgy.

There are others: spyng, spurdie (from The Orkneys), chummy, craff, hoosie, row-dow, thatch sparrow, tile sparrow, and eave sparrow. (Cited here).

In Dutch, the species is known as a mus, or more specifically huismus, but that’s the official common name not a nickname. Spatz in German.

Reader Steve E emailed to tell us that in East London sparrows are often known as squidgers.

What is a pandemic?

When a new disease comes to light, AIDS, SARS, and most recently COVID-19, the health experts and the media bandy about words like epidemic and pandemic. Today, COVID-19 has been described as on the verge of becoming a global pandemic.

The word pandemic with relation to disease means affecting all the people. pan meaning all, demos meaning people or district, Greek pandemos. So medically, speaking we see it as either potentially affecting everyone or more usually affecting every possible region of the world, in the sense of a global pandemic.

An epidemic has a similar meaning, the epi means among, and the demos might refer to people or a district with people, so among the people of a given district. It is usually used to refer to an outbreak in a specific region or among a group of people, hence the word epidemiology, the study of epidemics, outbreaks of disease in a given area or among a group of people. There is also usually some implication of the rapid spread of a given disease in an epidemic.

In contrast, a disease that is endemic is usually confined to a specific geographical group of people or region. The en simply meaning in.

Cuts improve broadband

Our neighbours have a man in to replace their old garden fence. He’s a friend, I had a chat with him while he was digging the holes for the new fenceposts and mentioned that our broadband and phone cables run along the boundary between the two gardens. He pointed out that he’d already noted their presence.

Unfortunately, a slip of the spade and an errant clematis root led to the severing of our information artery. He was very apologetic and carried out a repair with a couple of coax connector blocks and a phone line coupler. He asked me to check our broadband, phone, and TV before he would embed the new connections in resin to preclude water ingress and prevent corrosion.

Now, here’s where this story gets weirdly interesting. Once the broadband was booted up, I ran a speed test on the connection. Seems we are now getting a 50 megabits per second greater rate than we are paying for. We seem to have jumped from a nominal 150 Mbps to well over 200 Mbps. Now, I don’t know for sure whether our provider was already pushing us speeds of 200+ but, that’s not what our account says, so, that’s nice…

It gets weirder, Mrs Sciencebase received a couple of landline calls, actually from the fence man, and she reported back that the phone seems rather more clear now than it did before.

So, how could that be? How can cutting and repairing a wire improve anything? Surely, the presence of those metal connectors halfway along the cable between the roadside box and our inlet junction would lead to some kind of degradation. I was expecting our connection speed to be a little lower, if anything, not more than 33% faster.

I asked another friend, an engineer, who has worked in the telecoms industry for more decades than he would perhaps care for me to admit on his behalf. He correctly surmised that we had a cable provider rather than upgraded phoneline broadband.

“Your provider uses a broadband protocol called DOCSIS, version 3.0 here, which is nominally 200 Mbps max,” he told me. “This protocol is quite sensitive to signal levels – too strong a signal is just as much of a problem as too weak. If the signal level is wrong, the speed suffers. They’ve obviously adjusted the signal level better at the green box.” So perhaps what was happening was that we had a strong signal that wasn’t working optimally but the cut and reconnection have taken the top off that strength just enough to make it work slightly better.”

Perhaps now that we’re back up and running it is time to add a more reinforced sheath to the cable so that an accidental severance doesn’t happy again, I cannot imagine that we would get a speed boost a second time with another splice.

Happy Birthday Peter Gabriel

One of my musical heroes from way back…my early teens in fact, which were in the early ’80s…is Peter Gabriel. I once met a session guitarist who had worked with him at Real World, but that’s the closest connection I have, other than having seen him perform live a few times.

Anyway, we’ve never done any covers of his nor Genesis songs with C5 the band. There were murmurings of covering “Don’t Give Up” (one of the PG/Kate Bush collaborations) with the bigMouth choir, but that’s not happened yet. I have, however, recorded a few of his songs solo in my home studio. So Happy 70th Birthday PG:

Sledgehammer – with my daughter boo on backing vox

Solsbury Hill – a kind of Vampirish cover

Here Comes the Flood – a consciousness deluge

Another ancient anecdote

It’s just over three decades since myself and Mrs Sciencebase toured Australia. We started in Melbourne and took a greyhound West, up through the Red Centre, to Darwin, back down and then East to Townsville and Cairns and then South along the coast and back to Melbourne. It was during an air strike, we couldn’t fly, so never go to Perth, but it was amazing, exhilarating. One of our offspring is currently seeing the sites of coastal Western Australia, hence this little post.

Anyway, the Melbourne to Adelaide Greyhound was almost luxurious, but by the time we were getting on at Alice to head for Three-ways it wasn’t quite so salubrious. I remember seeing the incredibly calloused feet of an elderly gent who sat near us, it was almost as if he were wearing crocs made from human skin.

Three-ways was a very quick and humid pit-stop at 1am with only five minutes to have a bathroom break. Toothbrush in mouth I carried out another essential simultaneously function only to be asked by a fellow backpacker off a different bus whether I was German. No, Geordie, I said, he was bemused. I never did ever ask any Germans whether they would do the same, it’s perhaps not that hygienic, but then neither was hot-bedding in a Portakabin backpackers in Coober Pedy.

Oh, and yes, we did climb (the chain). Sorry. We were told it was fine. We were told that the local elders had given permission and that they got a cut. We were young. It was probably naive to imagine that it was ever fair. But, when we reached the top and were absorbing the incredible view, at least we weren’t doing our “lippy” as one other climber was doing…

I must be going batty

Two Pipistrelle Bats flying around the corner of a pasture field at the edge of Rampton Spinney at lunchtime today. Pipistrelle comes from the Latin word for bat, which is vespertilio, which literally means evening bird (as in “vespers”). We usually two to three Pipistrelles circulating in our back garden on balmy, calm summer evenings. Each bat can eat up to 3000 flying insects every night, including moths…

Not seen a bat flying in broad daylight, except in a church, when it was presumably disturbed from its roost on a day we climbed the bell tower (with permission).

I tried to get a decent photo, but they’re fast-moving creatures and this is the best I could do of either of the pair even when they were flying overhead:

Of course, it’s winter and these two really ought to be tucked up in crevices in old trees, hibernating through the cold period. But, it’s been relatively warm this winter with perhaps only one or two mornings with a frost. Inordinately, warm weather and something that disturbed them may have brought them out of their self-imposed torpor early.