Sally's Journal

So, I don't think I'm going to stop blogging (facebook just isn't the same), and my current plan is to cross post to both Dreamwidth and LJ. This isn't a very well thought through position, I definitely don't approve of LJ's T&Cs - 'no breaking Russian law or talking about politics' isn't my style, and I was even more disturbed by the 'we are bringing this in without any discussion with the user base, and suddenly cutting you off from your journal unless you accept it'. So I _think_ I'm on a trajectory of Dreamwidth as primary blog, but this is a) a bit sad, and b) requires a bit of admin to sort out friends groups and make sure I've friended people on dreamwidth etc. So cross posting should keep happening for at least a bit, and I'll put up a note if that changes.

If you felt like leaving a comment to say 'I still read this, and I'm so-and-so on Dreamwidth' or 'I still read this and I don't have a dreamwidth account' that would help me a bit with my admin :-)

Cambridge now has a Clip n Climb! Ewx has reviewed this already, and I broadly agree with him, but a few notes for me…

It's a very relaxing way to introduce people to climbing. If you're going to a usual indoor wall, you either need to teach your beginners to belay, or you end up spending big chunks of time belaying people who can't belay you in return. Clip n Climb does what it says on the tin - auto belayers, so you don't need anyone competent on the ropes at all, that the staff clip you into.

Because of this, it's a bit relentless. I am clearly a lazy climber who is used to trying the hard bit, failing, hanging around on the rope and then having another go at the hard bit. This does not work on an autobelayer. You try to hang around, and you end up back on the ground. Also, it is so much quicker to just clip in than having to tie a figure 8, and you don't spend any time belaying, the amount of time you spend climbing in a hour is huge in comparison to usual indoor walls, and by half way through I was quite pumped.

It's also easy to end up a bit lonelier - at a usual wall, you're climbing in pairs, so someone is watching what you're doing and cheering you on. At CnC, you feel like you're wasting time if you're not climbing, so although I did some hanging around and watching, it was more 'getting on with my own thing'.

We were lucky - there were 7 people in our session, and their capacity is 30. So there was no queuing for anything, and there was always a huge range of different panels to choose from. I think if we'd been there with 28 small children climbing Slowly it would have been a lot less fun.

We were unlucky - it was swelteringly hot, and a lot of the routes are very plastic, which with no chalk means the major challenge is 'hmm, I am too sweaty for this hold to have any grip at all'

It is really quite good fun to go from being one of the worst climbers at Harlow to one of the two best climbers at CnC. I am a show off.

The staff were friendly without being pushy, and once they'd noticed we could climb, they were good at saying 'try this one, it's the hardest'.

Ewx said they'd let him wear climbing shoes, but the website says they don't let you, and they didn't let us. I am a bit too used to smearing and having my feet stay on the wall, smearing in trainers is not the same.

They have some lovely lovely gimmicky things that I really enjoyed having a go at climbing. These included:

- A racing wall, where you can time yourself, next to an identical racing wall, so you can have an actual race! Matthew won two times out of three. Including the time he climbed the colour that probably wasn't actually a route, and included an Epic Dyno. I managed 11 seconds, M managed 9. He's taller ;-)

- A spinning wall, with holds round a big circle that turned when you put weight on it, which was balancey, and technically interesting. I can climb it just on the holds on the spinning disks (there are some static holds on the sides), but I can't climb it just on the orange holds on the spinning disks. Yet ;-)

- A weird plant thing, which was actually just Difficult to climb. Matthew got to the top, but he was working pretty hard, and he couldn't do the top difficulty setting (I didn't even make the top)

- A see through wall, with the same holds on both sides in mirror, so you can climb by trying to copy exactly what the person on the other side is doing.

- The fake ice climbing wall, where you get little wooden pegs instead of ice axes. The dark blue route on the wall was made for someone both taller and less tired than me, and I still haven't gotten it.

- A big spiral, which for some reason I don't quite understand I really like climbing.

- A 'stairway to heaven', which would have been better if it had been included instead of another way to extort money from people, but was a very fun balancey step-from-post-to-post. I did it, feeling very wobbly (because you're on auto belay, the belay rope keeps winding in and can pull you off balance a bit) and then afterwards the chap said 'you know, the first time you do it you're allowed to use your hands'. I'm not sure that would have been easier though!

I feel like I tried most of it - by the end of the hour I'd climbed on every wall, gotten to the top of about 95% of them, and gotten to the top on the hardest difficulty on about 70% of them. So I'm not desperate to go back any time soon, but in another six months would very much enjoy going back for another play, I think.

So, I nearly ran my first ultra marathon! I thought it was interesting, so I've written Too Much about it, because what's the point of a blog if you can't ramble and navel gaze sometimes?

( Long rambles about the apocalypse race )

In 'things I noticed but that wikipedia noticed first'...

Celestial Globes! Really cool! They draw all the stars in the sky, so you can learn the constellations! Except... You always look at a globe from the outside. And you always look at the celestial sphere (in as much as it exists) from the inside. So celestial globe makers have a fundamental dilemma - put the stars in the right place on the globe, and have all the constellations look backwards, or flip the entirity of the heavens inside out, so the constellations look right, but the more you think about it the more confusing it gets. Oddly, we don't seem to have converged on a standard - here's a 'each constellation looks right, so the globe must be wrong' one, and here's a 'stars in the right place so everything looks backwards' one.

If you like constellations, you could do a lot worse than the Digital Gene Constellation app, which is basically just a jigsaw where you can amuse yourself putting the stars in the sky until your sky has all the stars in it, but is gently pleasing, and taught me enough about constellations to get to the point where I went 'hold on a minute, that celstial globe must be wrong, surely?'

Also, we live in an age where you can put armillary sphere into Amazon and get lots of hits. Maybe capitalism isn't all bad.

[Poll #1985786]

I have lots and lots of Things bouncing around in my head about Catching Fire. I want to write an intelligent, coherant review, but if I try to do that, I'll just fail to do anything. So have as many bullet points as I can think of before I go to bed.

( Cut for spoilers )

Octonauts have been achieved, by, err, ordering 30 Octonauts. Ain't maths wonderful

A-level probability question, to bring joy to children at Christmas:

Tesco have an offer on Octonauts figures at the moment (that's true, so if you were hoping to buy some, now you know). The parents of an adorable 2 year old want 5 out of the 8 characters (he owns 3 already). However, the figures are not listed separately, just as 'one supplied.'

How many should they order into store to have a good chance (say >90%) of getting the 5 they want out of the random selection that Tescos send? There's no issue with taking any surplus back, so they could order vast quantities... but that would seem a little absurd.

( Cut in case you're bored already )

Right, I finally got my 50th park run! So I get a 50 parkrun t-shirt! And so I wander once more into the frustrating, unclear and gendered world of clothing sizes!

I have listed every t-shirt that I at least vaguely consider might be the right one to order in this poll, and All The Information I Can Find Anywhere about what that sizing means. (yes, that's sarcastic, there doesn't appear to be any)

( Poll! Have an opinion on a dull thing! :-) )

Anyone got any recommendations / disrecommendations for cleaners in Cambridge? Looking for a big one day end-of-tenancy clean...