110311 Japan Quake and Tsunami

Posted on by Duncan Toms

As I write, it’s a new dawn in Japan. Millions waking up to count the cost of their biggest ever quake, and devastating tsunami that followed. Official figures say 1000 dead but it’s bound to be several times that, with trains and passenger boats missing. The waves swept in at 500mph, the speed of an aircraft, sweeping boats, homes, lorries, before it. I have never seen video like it before, and I don’t think it has ever been captured on video from the air. See my earlier post for two videos. The ring of fire is a fragile place, and north Japan especially so, with many plates joining in this area. One plate pushing under the other caused the huge wall of water. Here are some REUTERS images from earlier today:

Terrible indeed. Not to mention the nuclear question.

Yet at times like these I always think of the hundreds of ongoing disasters that don’t get attention because it isn’t news, the millions dying from war, disease, hunger, and how little those in power seem to care or act; plus the millions living in ignorance of health, diet, wellbeing. Nor do I welcome the kind of talk that says natural disasters are humankind getting its comeuppance from God or the earth itself. It’s always easier to give things a reason or put a story behind it, way less scary than contemplating just how fragile life is.

Update: by the end of March, 28,000 people dead or missing.

…

An altogether quieter day here. Steps stepped: 5288

Tsunami in Japan

Posted on by Duncan Toms

After the 8.8 earthquake in Japan today, a tsunami sweeping everything before it, kilometre after kilometre, even fires getting swept along.

Another video:

110210

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Reading ‘The Runaways’, a book I read either at school, or during that time, about a boy run away from reform school and a cheetah escaped from Longleat Wildlife Park. About freedom. Maybe we did read it at school because it is set close by to where we grew up, on Salisbury plain. It’s very very 1960s England. Having unknowingly spent the night together in the same barn, the boy sees the cat trying to get out of the barn door below his hay loft bed:

For a moment or two he watched, his mouth open in amazement. Then – with a swift, panic reaction – he slammed the trap door and shot across the holding bolt. He dropped back to a sitting position on the hay, clapped a hand to his forehead, and said out loud, ‘Blimey O’Reilly!’

…

Watched ‘The Fighter’. Liked it a lot. Crazy family! Too many sisters! Crack! Punching! Amy Adams! London! Prison! Training! Marky Mark! Christian Bale being all thin and weird!

…

Good news on the YouTube account front. Regular readers will know my account was cancelled due to three strikes of copyright infringement, for posting short clips from films and TV. YouTube say you must file a counter notification to the copyright holder, meaning they have to take you to court to remove the footage. Yet each notification I filed was returned because of some error on the form submission, same with email submission. Then I read somewhere that if the copyright holder notifies YouTube directly, the video will be restored and the strike revoked. So I wrote to Mon Onlce Films and MPI Media Group (the third, Lionsgate, I couldn’t find a contact email for), explaining my situation. The next day, someone from MPI said he would reinstate the video for me. Yes! Not sure how long that will take. As soon as I get the account back, I’ll remove everything apart from the walking videos. And download those I don’t have locally. Phew! I have also switched to Vimeo, who I may stick with. Mainly my concern was losing my first 15 walking videos for ever.

…

Steps stepped: Oh, around 100 maybe.

Houseboaters being ‘socially cleansed’ from Olympics area

Posted on by Duncan Toms

More clampdowns on alternative ways of living. You must live in a house or flat. You must have a mortgage, or at least be aiming for one. Alternatives will not be accepted unless you are very rich indeed.

 

British Waterways, which manages 2,200 miles of canals and rivers, has put forward changes to the mooring rules on the river Lea, in east London, that could increase the cost of living on the waterway from about £600 to £7,000 a year. Residents see the move as a deliberate attempt to drive them away.

A draft note from British Waterways on 6 December 2010, seen by the Guardian, says: “The urgency … relates to the objective of reducing unauthorised mooring on the Lea navigation and adjacent waterways in time for the Olympics.”

The canal boat residents fear they will be forced from the river if the proposals go ahead as drafted. Alice Wellbeloved, a freelance fashion designer, who has lived on the Lea for almost five years with her partner and baby, said the plan meant it was no longer feasible to live the family life they had built together. “For us it would be disastrous,” she said. “We have a 10-month-old baby, and these proposals mean we could not work or get the childcare we need. We cannot afford to buy a new house. We feel we are being uprooted from our community.”

British Waterways says between 160 and 200 boats in the area are used as permanent residences. These boats can exploit a lack of clarity in the waterways legislation to use a “continuous cruising” licence, costing about £600 a year, which lets owners move just short distances every fortnight.

Under the new proposals, people using a continuous cruising licence would not be allowed to spend more than 61 days in a year in each of six designated neighbourhoods across 40 miles of canal network, and they would be forced to move to a different neighbourhood every 14 days.

British Waterways says the changes are in line with a national policy on moorings. But residents on the Lea say they are being singled out to allow a “cleaning up” of the waterways before the Olympics next year. For British Waterways the Lea is a high priority because of “high demand for visitor moorings during the 2012 Olympics”.

via Houseboaters being ‘socially cleansed’ from Olympics area | Sport | The Guardian.

110309 Adjustment Bureau

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Saw The Adjustment Bureau. A rather boring title for a slightly less boring film.

*Spoiler alert, next paragraph*

A bunch of bumbling angles in suits and hats do God’s work according to his master plan. There is a plan to follow, laid out in magic books, because we are not to be trusted with free will as that led to two world wars and the potential destruction of the whole kaboom with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But because the two main characters love each other so much and fight for it, God makes an exception for them.

It’s all very watchable thanks to the two main actors and production values, but it could have been more exciting or more thoughtful, one or the other, please. Instead it’s a curious mix of romance, action and sci-fi. I suspect the writer didn’t have the ability to extend Philip K. Dick’s short story properly.

I liked Emily Blunt’s dancing very much but couldn’t find a clip of it.

…

Found out there are two archery Centres nearby, one in Petersfield, the other Four Marks/Alton. The Alton group has beginner introduction mornings next month, so I am going to attend. Also attending a new yoga class in Petersfield next week.

…

Steps stepped: three thousand and something

110208 Alton to Selborne

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Yoga when I woke up, then breakfast before driving to Selborne. From there I caught the bus to Alton so I could walk the first part of the Hangers Way back to Selborne. The path is 21 miles long and heads south and east from Alton to Queen Elizabeth Country Park south of Petersfield, so today’s walk was a third of the total. I expected the bus to be a mostly empty Tuesday morning rural bus, but no, it was full of teenagers headed to the college. That feeling of being watched as I looked for an empty seat, only one spare because the kids were sprawled over a couple of seats each. The first part of the walk was fairly boring, through the industrial part of town and over large fields. As it got hillier, it was more fun. It took about two and a half hours walking, with a couple of short breaks, sitting in the late winter sun. New growth pushing up in the woodland, the leaves of the bluebells. Keep it rural! Here’s the walk video I made:

Weekend Walk 24 – Alton to Selborne – Hangers Way from Duncan Toms on Vimeo.

This afternoon, resting, editing the video which takes an hour or so, plus export and upload time. Otherwise continuing looking at TVs and buying a Playstation 3. But this morning during yoga I saw through all this entertainment and constant occupation, to something simpler, purer, more in touch, real, whole. It’s a question of right action and what to do with my time on this earth, what to do with each day. At the end of it: ‘Oh, I saw some fine movies and played some games, rode some waves, made some good friends, loved and was loved, worked a lot.’ Well, maybe that’s what there is, but something else is touched upon when deep in a stretch or in relaxation. I can’t force it, but I can allow it to come. It’s not something more, but unrelated to all that I know.

…

Steps stepped: 14,706

110307

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Nothing much to report. Mostly just lounging about, researching TVs as I’d like a 32 or 37 inch, 100hz. Went down to Richer Sounds in Southampton and Best Buy at Hedge End.

Enjoying the photos coming onto facebook from the weekend. Feeling lazy, may not go to the Downs this week; perhaps some of the Hangers Way instead.

110305 & 6

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The weekend of my brother Martin’s stag do. I drove down to Southsea early on Saturday morning, dressed in the manner of a country gent. Sort of. Arriving at Tristan’s at 0650, everyone ready, Martin in his military fancy dress, chosen by the best men. We left for the new forest, all in cords, tweeds, wax, arriving early at the New Forest Outdoor Centre for the weekend’s activities. While the staff got ready, we hung out in the centre’s main building, trying to warm up as the log stove got going.

The first activity was archery. Probably my favourite of the day. We learnt the basic techniques and took it in turns in rounds of five arrows. While waiting we could try out the crossbow. Very powerful. I feel I could happily take up archery, with something about the precision, the steadyness of aim really appealing to me. We had a competition, with Martin and I both getting exactly 100. Out of – what? – 150 disregarding the tin can bonuses. After a tea break, shooting guns – first pistols and then air rifles. It was like being in the Bailey’s back garden, shooting down the cans. Quite weedy power but again great fun. Then came the axe throwing and ninja stars. This was harder but very satisfying as the axes or stars thunked into the tree stumps. We had to wear flack jackets and metal helmets for this so we couldn’t thunk the axes into our heads instead.

After a break for lunch, time for the climbing. First a climbing wall wrapped round a tower, then a high and fast zip wire. The assistant seemed to take some time to learn to stop us correctly, with Martin reaching the end at high speed and his hemetted head hitting the wire, then Tristan and Gavin being stopped suddenly by their harnesses. I was glad he had sussed it by my turn. Then the high ropes section, the highest we climbed, balancing across beams and wires way way up.

Martin on the zip wire:

Me on the high ropes course:

I really enjoyed doing all these activities, all things I wouldn’t normally do and haven’t tried for years. The high ropes were comparable to Go Ape, but the sense of trying all these things together was much stronger here. It was a great choice for a stag weekend.

Things got more traditionally staggy by evening; with the sun going down and the fire lit, the drinking started. And continued 12 hours until 5am, for some. We got the heat of the fire well up with an ample supply of logs. I was meeting Martin’s old friends for the first time in over twenty years, as well as meeting newer friends for the first or second time. I went to bed at around midnight, after such an enjoyable, varied day and an evening around the camp fire. There were no pranks on the groom; why do that?

Today, Sunday, of course everyone hung over, or me just tired from the intense day before, and the odd night in a shepherd’s hut, we walked to Emery Down for lunch and sunshine in the pub garden, before the minbus took us back to Southsea for late afternoon, all of us, I think feeling it was a good weekend, and a great send-off for Martin.

110304 Northington Grange

Posted on by Duncan Toms

This morning, we went to Northington Grange just north of Alresford. It’s a fine 17th Century house with a monster of a neo-classical shell bolted on to make it look like a temple. It’s a tremendous building to be sat quietly in mid-hampshire.

This gives it the look of some kind of institution or hospital, or a lego building where you don’t have enough of the right bricks, when viewed from either side.

I guess it was trendy, this Greek Revival style, slopped together with Roman Cement. Surely it is very impressive and that is the idea.

If you go round the back, you see some of the original exterior.

It’s a beautiful location, with a lake and open parkland all around. The lake glistened in the late winter sunshine

Your Debut Album

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Here’s mine:

The rules:

1. Go to Wikipedia and click Random Article

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2. Go to http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album

3. Go to flickr’s “explore the last seven days” http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what, is your album cover.

Put it all together to make the album cover

110203 Total Immersion

Posted on by Duncan Toms

No idea who I’m writing to, but… hello!

Another four o’clock yoga session followed by that oh so nice lie in till time to go to the office. Which is a one minute commute. Finishing off bits and pieces ahead of a week off starting now. My weekends are Fridays and Saturday anyhow. It feels like my first full week off in a very long time. At 10 I went to Southampton airport to pick up Derek who is over from Ojai.

The dialogue this afternoon about what is a religious place, a religious mind, and into ideas and hope getting in the way of what might be called religious. Not religious in any kind of traditional sense, after all that is just ideas repeating themselves through the ages, but a sacredness, a newness.

This evening I took the students swimming. Swimming and yoga go together so well. With the yoga comes more awareness of the body, and more awareness in the water means you can refine the strokes, fine tune your style. I swim in something towards the Total Immersion style, as few strokes as possible per lap and keep the body low in the water, maximising the time when the body is longest. The principle is the same as in yachting, where slim, long boats go faster than wide short ones. So to minimise the width there is a rolling in freestyle so the shoulders aren’t ploughing the water forward, instead the tilt of the body makes an easier glide. There was no sign when swimming of the sickness or weak feeling; I didn’t even think of it.

Signs of spring all around – daffodils opening, green shoots pushing up through the leaves and many young fresh nettles. Perfect for tea.

…

Steps stepped 8410

110302

Posted on by Duncan Toms

YouTube account dead but not quite gone. My counter claims were rejected:

Thank you for your counter-notification. Based on the information you have provided, it appears that you do not have the necessary rights to post the content on YouTube. Therefore, we regretfully cannot honor this counter-notification. It has not been forwarded to the original claimant, and we will not be able to restore your video.

We unfortunately are unable to assist further in this matter.

Proceeded with a too-cheerful “Hi there”

I have replied asking not for restoration of the videos but just short term access to the account so I can download my walking videos, the ones I don’t have here, so they are not lost forever. But I suspect I am replying to an address that doesn’t get read. It’s impossible to contact YouTube directly by email or phone. You have to use online forms.

…

Woke up at 0400. My new style is to do a yoga session whenever I wake up, and then rest again if it’s too early. Trouble is, I fell back into deep sleep and by 0830 I was in no mood to get up.

…

My brother M’s stag do this weekend. From the clues he’s been given he thinks we are going tank driving. We are not. It’s gearing up to be a memorable weekend.

…

A sunny day, with lunch outside. Again, sitting absorbing the rays, waves. From a friend’s facebook comment after watching The Secret Life of Waves: Waves are made of MAGIC. He might be right.

…

iPad 2 looking super scrummy.

110301 Marching

Posted on by Duncan Toms

March no less.

Feeling so much better, the sick dizzy feeling a mile away and the tight head easing up. Yoga. Yoga. Yoga. It’s the bomb. For real. I recommend the Sivananda sequence. It’s a classical sequence of 12 major asanas together with some pranayama (breathing techniques) and counter postures (gentle postures in the opposite direction to the major stretch one has just done. With relaxation between every posture. It really is a total workout and touches everything. I mean everything.

…

More energy at work, but none of the temper. Fixing a list of all the Krishnamurti videos we have (over 600), for the Centre library, grouped by type of event and location. It’s been quite a lot of work to code them all by genre, but soon we’ll have for the first time the entire list sorted correctly, making it easy for guests and customers to find what they want. This will also help us to organise it online when we get the download shop going.

…

YouTube wrote back asking me to put a couple of extra paragraphs in my counter notification because the claim was made in the USA:

“I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief the material was removed due to a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”

“I consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the district in which my address is located, or if my address is outside of the United States, the judicial district in which YouTube is located, and will accept service of process from the claimant.”

So at least they are looking into it, and for the first time a human wrote the email asking for this. There is hope of getting my account back. Hopefully in time to post the next walking video, as next week I might finish the last two stages of the South Downs Way, from the far eastern edge of Brighton, to Eastbourne.

…

Steps stepped: 2580

Oil spill link suspected as 10x normal amount of dead dolphins wash ashore

Posted on by Duncan Toms

They may have disappeared the oil but they can’t disappear the effects

 

The discovery of more than 80 dead dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico is raising fresh concerns about the effect on sea life from last year’s massive BP oil spill.

The dead dolphins began appearing in mid-January along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in the United States. Although none of the carcasses appeared to show outward signs of oil contamination, all were being examined as possible casualties of the petrochemicals that fouled the sea water and sea bed after BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded last April, killing 11 men and rupturing a wellhead on the sea floor. The resulting “gusher” produced the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, releasing nearly five billion barrels of crude oil before it was capped in July.

The remains of 77 animals – nearly all bottlenose dolphins – have been discovered on islands, in marshes and on beaches along 200 miles of coastline. This figure is more than 10 times the number normally found washed up around this time of year, which is calving season for some 2,000 to 5,000 dolphins in the region. Another seven dead animals were reported yesterday, although the finds have not yet been confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

One of the more disturbing aspects of the deaths is that nearly half – 36 animals so far – have been newborn or stillborn dolphin calves. In January 2009 and 2010, there were no reports of stranded calves, and because this is the first calving season since the BP disaster, scientists are concerned that the spill may be a cause.

via Oil spill link suspected as dead dolphins wash ashore – Nature, Environment – The Independent.

110228 Restful resting

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Here we are, two months into 2011 already. Life moves fast, we move faster, technology moves faster still, and no one has much of a clue what’s going on and why we are doing what we’re doing. I don’t mean theories and philosophies and beliefs, there are plenty of those, but a real sense of what’s going on, what life is about, why we are here and what is a right action, not just getting on with it because that’s what job was available or that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. It’s easier to get busy going fast than work out anything new, or explore into alternatives.

I had a lot of tension this morning, bundled with a while bunch of energy, making me short tempered and a bit wild. I took it out on a friend and colleague, arguing for the sake of arguing, getting all snappy. Soon I am going to take a good few days off, just for myself. It’s not really about taking time off to be well, but being well every day. But it’s been a long time since I could let go of work and relationships for a while, let go of the difficulties and questions and problem solving at work and at home and just do something… fun… interesting. I tend to take on issues I don’t need to get involved it.

Next weekend it’s my brother’s stag weekend, which will definitely be something different. Met F & A today, who are back from California. It’s good to see them again, old colleagues, and again, friends. I feel blessed to be able to work with people I also like. That really helps.

The book arrived, ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’. I haven’t read it yet but I can definitely tick most of the Yes boxes in the questionnaire. I feel it’s going to be a good read and a real learning ground, I can tell. This morning, again I started with a Sivananda session at dawn, then drifted back into some snoring for half an hour. I reckon you need energy to be able to rest deeply, a restful rest. Otherwise it’s just a sleep and then wake up and carry on. What if a night allowed real relaxation?

…

Steps stepped: 4372