For instance, clearly private sexual fantasies are not ideal dinner talk. But where should the line be drawn?

Salary is a strange one for me. Does knowing a colleague’s salary introduce odd office politics? What happens when someone decides to say their salary?

The whole idea reminds me of a book “The Light Of Other Days” by, hmm, Greg Bear maybe? I think it was co-authored. It was sci-fi anyway, and in that story a technology was invented that made personal privacy a thing of the past. No one had any privacy, ever, and it led to odd things like people having sex in public. Well why not? If everyone can see anyway then why not do it outside?

I wonder how the world would really cope if that sort of technology became possible.

Dear Mr Carrington

After looking through our files for your property ##########, I noted that the gas safety had expired. I contacted Mr ###### (who carried out the last gas safety) and he has reported that the ‘diverter valve is not working and needs to be replaced. Unfortunately he is not qualified to do this. I do have a plumber who can do this work and carry out a gas safety check at the same time. Please may I have your instructions.

Regards
Catherine Cutts

And my response:

Hi Catherine,

Thank you for looking into this. I’ve contacted my colleague, Doc, and he was able to resolve this with the aid of a flux capacitor.

Regards,
David

It reminds me of the common practice in Switzerland where only the first handful of cars at a red traffic light are allowed to keep their engine running.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me:

“In Sweden, individuals have long refrained from engine idling when stopped in vehicle traffic. In Switzerland, there are laws that you have to turn your engine off if you are waiting at a red traffic light. In other European countries, permissible durations of engine idling vary from 10 seconds to 3 minutes. Italy and France allow 10 seconds, while drivers can idle for 40 seconds in Germany and 60 seconds in Holland. Several cities in Taiwan have banned engine idling effective in 2008. Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore allow 3 minutes of engine idling in any one-hour period. Fines and enforcement measures varies country to country.”

from Unnecessary Engine Idling

Strangely, this is my first post talking about cars after working for a car company for three and a half years!

Step 1) Download and open up Google Earth, making sure to turn on Street View layer

Step 2) Find one of the cool-looking Street View bubbles

Step 3) Turn on the timeline view to see aerial photo dates (the clock icon)

Step 4) Double click the street view bubble to enter the panoramic photo and see the new date appear:

Looks like Google had a busy Summer in the UK last year!

I’ve not had a chance to look at all of the available data, but it’s an interesting competition.

I’m enjoying Rohan, especially since a lot of the people I play with are the same one’s I played RF Online with. I’m a healing Elf woman, fairly well valued in the game to keep parties alive in times of crisis – or more typically, to take on big monsters for an hour or so. However, even a healer has limits with great big fiery dragons…

Watch as the two strongest players run away in fear, which turned out to be the right choice as they were able to come back and revive me so I could heal the whole group and get us back in action.

Combine that with ability to intercept text messages into my own application on my phone, this basically means I can write a Jaiku application which keeps track of everyone’s Jaikus but doesn’t interfere in my day by beeping and flashing at me 24/7.

In theory, this means I could write a Windows Mobile Jaiku client that stays off GPRS.

Bag main compartment:

• Waterproofs
• Headlamp
• Food
• Spare map

Front compartment:

• First aid kit
• Camera
• GPS (for plotting route on the computer later)
• Spare batteries
• Wallet
• Keys
• Space blanket

Fleece pockets:

• Woolly hat
• Gloves
• Compass
• Folded up map, printed from an OS map

In the rear of the bag is a big pocket for my water bladder, 2 litres so that I’ve got plenty spare. I just need to charge my phone now and that’s me pretty much ready.

Up comes Wednesday evening. Parking a short distance from the start point, 14 of us gathered at the start point and began the crucial first step in our two groups: making sure everyone knows where they are on the map. MP3 players removed and torches switched on, we head off on our journey into the night.

The stars

Any clear night with the Scouts, I’m keen to point out at least one thing – finding North. By the end of the night, I had a Scout that found it easier and quicker to find North with the stars than the others could get out their compasses and wait for the needle to settle down.

To try keep them observant, I challenged them to spot a satellite drifting across the sky while we walked. After dozens of planes and a couple of shooting stars, I pointed out a satellite that was travelling through Cassiopeia. I’m always amazed seeing this kind of thing – knowing that people have put these satellites in space and how big an achievement it is to do that.

Navigation Technique

The first technique I mentioned to the Scouts was handrailing. The path wasn’t always visible, but it quite clearly followed a parallel fence. By following the fence, you knew you were following the path too. Handrailing is following any feature you can see, such as mountain ridges, rivers and roads. As long as you know where that feature is on your map, you know what line you’re on.

Helpfully, the ending of that same fence marked the point where we would be turning North. This point was marked on a route card and gives you a tick off point which you can use to know exactly where you are. Heading North though, I made sure the Scouts were aware of the fences on the map that they could tick off, increasing their awareness of that leg of the hike.

A little later on the journey, pacing was introduced so they could judge how far 100 metres was in real life. I went with 150 paces for the little ones, down to about 130 for the taller Scouts. This was accurate enough to finish us all at around the same spot so we could try the next bit.

Acting as we had very low visibility such as fog or heavy rain, we headed directly East, leapfrogging to be as precise as possible. In essence, part of your group goes ahead following a bearing as best as they can, then the 2nd part of your group tells those ahead if they are travelling off-course. Then the people ahead stop and you meet up with them before repeating the exercise until you reach your destination – which in our case was a path travelling perpendicular to us.

On the next leg, I introduced them to timings. Based on the knowledge of their current pace of a little over 4km/h and that we were about to walk 1.1km, we estimated that we’d reach our next destination in 15 minutes. At this stage, I left out any fidgeting you would do with the timing when you know you’re travelling up or downhill, our route was so short and flat that it would not effect us and would be difficult to demonstrate.

GPS

Now that my Scouts could use a map, a compass, pacing and timing to navigate, I finally let them have a go at playing with the GPS units I had with me (a Garmin eTrex and eTrex Summit). I’m a big fan of GPS, but I think it’s important to stress to the Scouts that it’s still a bad idea to rely on technology like that.

Since the route was already programmed into each device, they were mainly looking at the various information available to them. Here’s just a few things they appreciated:

• Their current walking speed – which they loved testing
• How far to the next point on the route, and how long it would take to get there
• The built in compass in the eTrex Summit, and how the eTrex figured out your direction without it
• The altimeter in the Summit, measuring the slight change in pressure as we walked uphill

And relax

Soon we reached the end of our journey and waited a couple of minutes for the second group to finish too. A lot of the Scouts showed their interest in the upcoming Incident Night Hike which Maidenhead district runs each year. It’s up high on my favourite events on Scouting, setting off at 10pm on a Friday night and travelling around 10km, with stops along the way to undertake various incident bases.

I think this year our Scouts will be armed to their teeth with knowledge on navigation. Hopefully they’ll be good on the tasks they have to achieve along the way – before it gets to 4am and they’re too shattered to walk, let alone think.