20160730

Perspective



Do you see stones, sky, mountains or just water? It depends on your perspective. Today was fairly still and I was able to capture all four in our lake by holding the camera very close to the surface. Another of my silly childish tricks. But it serves to put off the publishing (or not) of a longer post I have been working on for a while that sometimes seems important to me, and at other times seems banal.




As usual you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

20160727

A rose by any other name



My daughter (visiting from Australia) picked me this rose. My favourite rose colour. Indeed my favourite colour and one of my favourite flowers. So sweet.

20160717

Bare your soul

Here is the text of my daughter-in-law's paper for her course at the University of Alaksa, Fairbanks, for which she chose my running for her subject.

Bare Your Sole (An Oral History Report) 

I only know one person in real life who runs barefoot and that is my father-in-law, Michael Bailey. Although he has been running barefoot for more than four years now, he doesn’t personally know anyone else who does this either! Considering what a popular sport running has become, that is fairly remarkable. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that approximately 10% of Americans habitually jog or run several kilometres a day (the percentage is higher if one includes treadmill exercise and related sports), making running one of the most popular sports worldwide. Running USA reported a 300% growth in running event finishers from 1990 to 2013 - and that is just recorded event finishers of tracked races in the U.S.A. One study claimed 50 million American participants in the sport of running. (Hryvniaka, Dicharryb, Wildera 2014, 130). Almost everyone has either taken up running for exercise or pleasure at one time or knows someone who has.

I chose to do my oral report on my father-in-law because I think this particular hobby shows a glimpse into his person as well as illustrating a cultural issue with wider implications. To begin to understand this, you might have to see him run and witness the sheer enjoyment he gets from running. But to really understand, you also have to know a bit more about the uniquely beautiful person he is. Because Michael lives in Ireland and I live in Alaska, my interviews with him were conducted by Skype, recorded, and then transcribed.

Michael is an Englishman, born and bred to honor and respect tradition and propriety and yet he emerged from his culture as someone ultimately valuing individuality and authenticity much more. He was born in Winchester County Hospital in 1962, the same year Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen, and the first jetliner made a return trip across the Atlantic Ocean in one day. He attended Alresford Preparatory School a "dame school" - the earliest predecessor to a private school with 30 pupils of mixed ages in one room and one proper teacher, plus her sister to help her. His grades there earned him a place at Peter Symonds College and later the University of Oxford.

Two of Michael’s great loves, running and trains converged in his version of running as he mapped out his routes “en voyage.” “Until I became too embarrassed to do so,” he recalls, “in the lunch break at senior school, I would often run around the games fields pretending I was a railway locomotive and, in open country on grass or lake shore, I find myself still doing the same in my runs today, choosing my way so that it is carefully graded as a railway would need to be.” Michael learned to trust his intuition and instinct over the social “herd mentality” long before he took off his socks and shoes. He remembers loving Bruckner’s music as a teen and realizing that most people either had never heard of the man or his music, or had heard and loathed it: “Well that cemented my adulation. My very own composer!” Then there was the time that my conflict avoiding, peace loving father-in-law spoke out in the church government meeting of his Open Brethren childhood church. There were “gospel meetings” every Sunday evening. Naturally he supposed that folk who need the gospel are unbelievers, so when it was proposed that a "special" Sunday evening meeting be held to which everyone should invite their unbelieving neighbors, he pointed out the oddity. Indeed wasn't this what every Sunday evening was for? So in what way could it be "special"? There was a bit of a silence before the meeting settled down to conveniently ignore this comment.

In fact, Michael’s love of running may be one of the few ways that he is part of a typical majority; “I did not fit in with the cool crowd at school. Of course, there is a very well defined caste system in a boys school. I was neither at the bottom and definitely not near the top, but probably closer to the bottom - after all, I have never liked competitive sport especially anything involving a ball, and you cannot excel unless you are a sportsman, never mind what grades you get academically. Which kind of counts out rather a lot.”

About four years ago, when my mother-in-law read an article advocating running barefoot and jokingly passed it to Michael saying, “You really ought to try this”. The eccentricity of it wasn’t off-putting for even a moment. The lake shore and mountain runs that my father-in-law enjoys so much were rapidly deteriorating his shoes and he needed to replace them quite often. He complained, “I don’t like spending money on running! Running barefoot has been quite a savings. I regretfully do not enter races because to pay to run, well it just really adds up for me.” Interestingly, one man who met Michael on a run stopped him to chat and was interested in running without shoes because he could remember a time when he went to school without shoes because he couldn’t afford them! As for “barefoot shoes”, well, that line of questioning drew even more contempt from Michael: “I would never use Vibram barefoot shoes out of principle and cost! I find it strange that Ireland is so well suited with running conditions and climate year ‘round to run barefoot but if you go to the Irish website www.barefoot.ie, it is all about these Vibram five-fingers. It is really just an advertising site!”

As he ran without them, Michael became more and more convinced that running shoes are not all they are purported to be. “Running shoes are designed to make you dependent on running shoes,” he advised me. “People believe that the more cushioning in a shoe, the better. The reverse is true but you will never convince them of this because of advertising. The primary reason is that the ankle joint and length of foot provides a suspension system - a natural springiness and cushioning. I’m not a doctor, but running barefoot encourages you to land on the balls of your feet rather than on your heels. I have to consciously raise my ankles when running on difficult surfaces to exacerbate this effect. If you land on the heel, there is very little cushioning and this shocks the muscles of the leg. Running shoes provide what is lacking and encourage landing on the heel and create a vicious circle to the financial gain of the manufacturers and believe me this deception is big business.”

Indeed recent research has confirmed that footwear does influence function. Specifically, the increased sole thickness, which is marketed in athletic shoes as cushioning against harmful impacts, could be interfering with the functional ability of the human foot. (Franklin, Grey, Heneghan, Bowen, Li 2015, 232). In fact the actual shoe construction can change impact and gait in a manner that increases injury risk. Knee injuries in particular are reported to improve with proper transitioning to barefoot running. (Hryvniaka, Dicharryb, Wildera: 2014, 133). At comparable speeds, the impact for a forefoot landing runner is approximately three times less than that of a heel landing runner. In addition, during a forefoot landing part of the impact energy is translated into rotational energy - which increases forward motion; as opposed to a heel landing in which most of the energy is lost in the impact. (Lieberman, Venkadesan, Werbel, Daoud, D’Andrea, Davis, Ojiambo, Pitsiladis, 2010, 532-533).

And indeed my father-in-law is not the only one who has noted the expense of running shoes and therefore the potential for a bit of a racket in their purchase price and lifespan. The National Sporting Goods Association says that 44.6 million pairs of running shoes were sold in the United States in 2012, and the sales of running shoes in the United States totaled $3.04 billion! Other current research has pointed out the huge market that has been created for running gear and the fact that running shoes have become increasingly more expensive with more technology and research behind their design. However, running injuries have not decreased commensurately with the investment in research and design. (Hryvniaka, Dicharryb, Wildera: 2014, 132). So, these are not just the claims of one man who enjoys being a bit different.

Many of the rewards Michael most enjoys though are the intangibles. The convenience of being able to plunge into the lake at the end of a run for a quick swim without needing to take shoes off nor return to a certain spot to pick them up is one of them. The simple enjoyment and sheer pleasure of feeling the run is another. “It is very cool to feel the earth under your feet. I drive barefoot as well. Would you go around wearing gloves all the time? No, you wouldn’t because you wouldn’t feel things if you did!!”

Even this profusion of feeling contributes to the safety of barefoot running according to my father-in-law. “The foot has an abundance of nerve endings”, he exclaims. “Look at the suspension system in this picture. It spreads the impact over a fraction of a second of time, long enough to react to pain and adjust one's landing and thus avoid injury. At the same time the eyes are picking the best route through a difficult terrain, Mowgli-style which the shod human is largely unaware of.”



No one is totally immune to the challenges of barefoot running, enthusiasts included. My father-in-law reports that the common problems he faces are difficult running surfaces like loose chippings on roads, getting a thorn or splinter in his foot, and cracks that occur from dried out skin. These in particular are painful and require vigilant care. The cracked skin can be treated and covered with Elastoplast (or “Band-Aids” as most Americans call them) or even super-glued back together. It brought to mind the childhood stories from the Little House on the Prairie when Laura and Mary would have to suffer through the first weeks of the shoeless summer waiting for their feet to “harden.” Since no one could afford shoes that weren’t strictly needed, they only owned shoes for the winter months and for school. Michael has noticed that if he goes even a few weeks without running barefoot, his feet soften noticeably and make running out of doors more uncomfortable again. Barefoot running, it appears, is a lifestyle choice and not an occasional sport.

Even these difficulties are ones that Michael seems to embrace. “There is a challenge in going a long distance. There is always the small concern in the back of my mind, what if a crack in my foot opened up and gives me real agony when I’m far from home and far from help? One of the best experiences I have had is going over a mountain called Church Mountain. There are the ruins on the top of an ancient church, just a pile of stones. It was the furthest I had ever been and also fairly remote. I did meet one or two other hikers on the way but in the main I was running away from people.”

When I questioned him on how barefoot running has most changed his life, he reports, “I have found more liberty in challenging myself since taking up barefoot running. I haven’t found any converts though. So far they all laugh at me, which I find strange.” In his closest group of friends and family, Michael notes that while none of them have tried out any barefoot runs, they have all become more comfortable going barefoot indoors. It is just this social bias that he loves to challenge.

“It just isn’t done! I was in a shop and I happened to have been driving without shoes so I went in with my wife and the manager stopped me and asked me to leave. For hygiene reasons! I didn’t argue the point there and then, but I sent them an email and asked them to explain the hygiene point and they refused to answer. I can’t see how or why it could be more or less hygienic whether you have shoes on or not. So really it isn’t socially acceptable to go without shoes. People will look strangely at you in the same way they used to if you didn’t have a hat!” He related another story in which the local police were called and asked to come out and see why there was a man running in the rain with no shoes.

As a modern society, how many of the things we wrap ourselves with in response to advertising, fashion and mainstream culture actually turn out to be encumbrances which weigh us down, perhaps even hurt us? The advance of civilization is not always true progress. I think that if a boy from Winchester in the fifties, educated at Oxford, steeped in tradition can grow into a man who loves to challenge the idea of social norms and status quo, it may well be that many more will follow his barefoot steps. Eventually shoes could become an optional accessory, the way hats and gloves have become today. Meanwhile Michael enjoys the interesting people he meets, the great outdoors he discovers, and the good health he enjoys because of his hobby. When you consider the boy who chose Bruckner simply because he loved the music, and in part because no one else did, the young man who asked why the neighbors should be more in need of the gospel than the church members, if you are fortunate enough to see this man moving joyfully and effortlessly the way our ancestors may have done, you too will glimpse a bare and unencumbered soul.

Interestingly, in one of the studies done on barefoot running (Hryvniaka, Dicharryb, Wildera: 2014, 131) 52% of 509 barefoot runners said they had started running this way in part due to “media hype” - books, news, blogs etc. Perhaps the herd mentality that made running shoes the essential equipment they are today can inspire a movement back out of this cul-de-sac into freedom where such pioneers are seen as exceptional, rather than as the exception. Never one to relish that side of the camera lens, my father in law grins as we conclude our interview. “Just to finish this off, guess what I’m going to do now? Go for a run”!

References Cited 

Franklin, Simon, Grey, Michael J, Heneghan, Nicola, Bowen, Laura, Li, François-Xavier 2015, “Barefoot vs common footwear: A systematic review of the kinematic, kinetic and muscle activity differences during walking” Gait & Posture 3: 230–239 

Hryvniaka, David, Dicharryb, Jay, Wildera, Robert 2014 “Barefoot running survey: Evidence from the field” Journal of Sport and Health Science 2: 131–136 

Lieberman, Daniel E., Venkadesan, Madhusudhan, Werbel, William A., Daoud, Adam I. , D’Andrea, Susan, Davis, Irene S., Ojiambo, Robert, Pitsiladis, Mang’Eni & Yannis: 2010, “Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners” Nature 463: 531- 534 

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Participation in Physical Activities: Adults Aged 18 and Over (National Health Information Survey, 1998, now age adjusted to 2000 population); Available from http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/stats/pasports.html. (Accessed July 2000) 

Fig. 1 Liszewski, Erica: 2011, Basic Animal Anatomy Available from http://emgzine.com/item.php?id=729. (Accessed July 14, 2016)

20160716

Nudist colony?


The outward route (till my GPS battery died)

Bike ride. 77 miles riding, max speed 44.3mph (descending from Wicklow Gap), average 11.4mph. Plus some walking and running (barefoot of course). And now my legs feel like jelly! As usual you may click on the images to enlarge them.


Cloud rolling onto Wicklow Gap

From Avoca to Brittas

New in today's route was the cross-country route from Avoca to the sea. This involved a steady climb followed by a scary descent to the N11/M11. It was scary in that it had been recently and copiously dressed with very loose chippings and the gradient was so severe that I had to use both rear and front brakes most of the time. There was of course grave danger of skidding - but I survived.


Nutwood-like view between Avoca and Brittas near the summit

Google-maps view of the beach and dunes

New also was my first destination. I had chosen this destination because it is known to be used by naturalists and I prefer to swim naked and you can't generally do that in public. Interestingly Google-maps cites the entrance as "Brittas Nudist Beach Parking" which is strange because there is no car park, and also the beach was deserted apart from a group far to the south: hard to tell but think they were clothed. So I enjoyed my swim and was thankful to be alone. After I got out I had bad cramp - this often happens on a rigorous bike ride and I suffered it on and off all the way back home.  After due stretching exercises to mitigate the cramp I ran around the sand dunes for a bit as one does (see map) and then set on my way to my second destination.


The beach south of Brittas bay

Sand-dunes behind the beach

The car park at the southern end of Wicklow town has a footpath down to the beach and our family often goes there. You can then follow a cliff walk to where it ends in Lime Kiln bay. But the first stretch has suffered many landslides and the local council had erected more signs and fences since my last visit. And yet the path around these obstacles was well worn - I met a man who told me he was part of a local action group trying to get something done about it - more than just erect more signs. He said plenty gets spent on golf but few are interested in preserving this hidden "jewel".



More of the cliff walk has collapsed

On the way to Lime Kiln bay

Looking out from my secret changing room

Lime Kiln bay

Lime Kiln bay - the black blob is probably a seal

The gorge access to the bay

The path is very overgrown

The golf course extends both sides of the footpath down to the beach and there are two bridges over it to allow golfers to get across without contaminating themselves with the riffraff. Playing golf seems to me as alien an occupation as doubtless they would think my running barefoot or cycling for miles or jumping in the sea was. It is as if there are two universes that meet at those bridges. As I walked under, a boy, perhaps 13, was walking across the bridge, followed I suppose by his older brothers who looked much more stereotyped. He was smiling as boys should and appeared to be quite normal, but he couldn't have been because he was in that Other Place. Had he glanced down at me doubtless I would have appeared to him to be an alien.

At this point my GPS watch battery died. So my stats are from my faithful little bike computer which is many years old and still on its first CR2032 coin cell.  My route home was through Wicklow town, Rathnew, Ashford, Devil's Glen (my legs were so worn out that I had to dismount on this hill), Annamoe, Laragh, Wicklow Gap.  With frequent stops to stretch the cramp out of my legs.


20160715

Tonsils



A friend's boy has just had a successful minor op. He was in and out in one day so his mum could be with him most of the time. The pictures she posted on FB brought back my own memories.

I was six years old. My parents drove me to the Winchester Royal County Hospital without prior warning and left me there. They said afterwards that they thought it would be less traumatic that way. I cried and cried when it dawned on me that I had to stay on my own - but I survived. They sent me frequent picture postcards which I treasured for many years after but now are sadly lost - I probably disposed of them in a fit of growing up the same time as my childish diaries. A boy does not realize that one day he will become a man and yearn for reminders of his youth. The postcard pictures were of steam trains and the greetings on the reverse were in capitals because it was thought back then that they were easier to read.

They put me on a trolley and wheeled me into a lift with metal concertina sliding doors. We whizzed up many floors and then I was pushed along long corridors into a room with shelves full of stainless steel pans and bowls. A nurse came and held my hand whilst a mask was put over my face and I was gassed to sleep whilst gently squeezing that lifeline to reality.

When I woke, sans tonsils, I was back in the ward. Something had gone wrong and I kept throwing up vast amounts of blood. Because of this I had to stay in longer than was first anticipated. My parents visited me of course. The boy in the next bed had had his appendix out, a much more serious operation. I found out that UHT milk tasted good, and enjoyed my strict diet of jelly and ice-cream (nothing abrasive).

That was my second and my last stay in hospital. My first, I suppose, for my memory thankfully does not take me there, was when I was born and circumcised.

20160709

Are your feet plantigrade, digitigrade or unguligrade?

This thing about landing on the front of the foot - it is not immediately obvious why running barefoot should encourage this until your heel lands on a stone. Ouch! Somehow the ball and toes ameliorates the landing. BTW, for those interested check out this link which is an excellent treatise on barefoot running. (If you are not interested why are you reading this?)

The primary reason is that the ankle joint, the length of the foot and the calf muscle provides a suspension system - a springiness or cushioning. When running on difficult surfaces I consciously raise my ankles to increase this effect.  If I land on the heel there is very little cushioning (hence cushioned running shoes encourage landing on the heel).

The sole of the foot and the toes have an abundance of nerve endings so that I find my feet are almost caressing the ground, but more important is pain. The above suspension system spreads the impact over a fraction of a second of time, long enough to react to pain and adjust one's landing (hopefully) and thus avoid injury. At the same time my eyes are picking the best route through a difficult terrain, Mowgli-style. Which the shod human is largely agnostic to.

plantigrade, digitigrade and unguligrade feet

Few mammals have a heel in quite the same sense as shod humans do. A dog's paw is divided into pads which answer, I suppose, to toes and the 'ankle' joint is somewhere way up the leg. Our dog can happily run full pelt on our gravel drive. I suppose the stones find their way into the gaps between the pads (or toes for humans). 

However it works, it works.  And it explains why we have toes.


20160708

Working with microwaves


My desk

Today my work has been repairing electronic boards with RF (radio frequency) signals at up to 13GHz. This combines the finesse of a watchmaker with the crudeness of heat guns and the magic of RF.

The RF signals travel between semiconductor integrated circuits (chips) on the board along co-planar waveguides. The magic is that, at these frequencies, it is no longer true that the potential is equal at all points on a conductor. Far from it. A conductor has significant inductance and capacitance and can act as a receiving or transmitting antenna. You can try shorting a microwave signal to nearby ground and the result will be unpredictable - the signal can even end up being larger as a result!

Surface-mount microwave devices typically have a hidden paddle underneath that has to be soldered to the ground plane. To do this you apply solder paste and then raise the temperature of the ground plane by sitting the board on a hot-plate whilst applying a hot-air soldering gun to the component taking care that adjacent components don't get fried. It takes several minutes for the heat to penetrate to the paddle. If you overdo the solder paste then you get shorts and have to start again.

Touching up the soldering of the replacement part, after the heat gun treatment,  requires a steady hand and magnification.  Many of the parts are have fine pitch or 0402 package (about as big as a grain of sand 1mm x 0.5mm x 0.2mm).

0402 package


Then there is the test equipment. I don't have limit-less funds and microwave test equipment is expensive so I make do. I have access to a Spectran HF-10105v4 handheld spectrum analyser, good for up to 9GHz (on the left in the picture). This is a frustrating piece of kit as the attendant PC software doesn't always work and the device itself overheats and then stops working if left on for more than about 10 minutes.  I own a desktop spectrum analyser / signal generator (Marconi 2945) but this only goes up to 1GHz. To generate higher frequencies I use a home built generator based on the ADF4350 chip that works up to 4400MHz. This, too, is a bit perhaps-a-tronic so, all in all, the testing can be frustrating. With RF you cannot probe the circuit to see what the signal is without disturbing it. But some idea can be gained by using small coax cable with the last cm stripped. An 0402 (d.c. blocking) capacitor is soldered on the end of the inner. On the far end of the 0402 is a whisp of solder with a sharp point and this is the probe. You hold the coax making contact with the braid outer to provide a sort of ground, and the other end plugged into the Spectran analyser.  This arrangement will give a relative signal level repeatable to within about a 5dB range. Until the Spectran overheats...

Test "probe" with 0402 capacitor at the end


20160706

PseudoSpeak

The prefix pseudo- (from Greek ψευδής, pseudes, "lying, false") is used to mark something that superficially appears to be (or behaves like) one thing, but actually is another. Subject to context, pseudo may connote coincidence, imitation, intentional deception, or a combination thereof. Wikipedia.

Back at the dawn of creation before ever there was digital or MP3 there was "Hi-Fi" and this meant High Fidelity audio reproduction. Before even those days it was valve (vacuum tube) wireless sets with a tone control that offered "bright" or "mellow" sound. And that was the era I was born into. As I have said elsewhere I cherished a valve amplifier for its superior sound and later learnt that its balanced dual pentode output stage cancelled out 3rd harmonic distortion which would be particularly objectionable to the ears. Sad that I no longer have that amp. It would never have made it through community.

My birth echoed the dawn of the transistor and so I came to build a transistor amplifier. My grandfather donated a large speaker for which I built a cabinet and the amplifier sat on top in its solid oak case and brushed chrome front-panel (part of a door kick-plate) and home-made brushed aluminium knobs (aluminium round stock finished off in a drill-press). I christened it "pseudo-speak" which I thought was cute even if not quite the correct etymology. The system was unashamedly mono - I had only one speaker and anyway could not afford stereo.  At other times I played with "pseudo-stereo" in which I took a mono source and send higher frequencies to one speaker and lower to the other. It works surprisingly well, especially if you have not known better.

I remember one older visiting family friend asking if it really was "hi-fi" (which title I claimed), and have wondered ever since whether she knew what she was talking about. She might have done, but she didn't seem to me the sort of person that would.

After all, the majority of folk have no idea what stereophonic (or indeed stereoscopic) means, witness the fact that they place the two speakers that came with their set next to each other, explaining that it looks tidier that way. One wonders why God bothered to give such people two ears or two eyes - such a waste!


20160702

Irish Dodo



My namesake. Because that's what my dad sometimes called me. Sometimes it morphed to "Mickie Dodo" which prefix I dislike. I never found out why it was Dodo. I was prompted to post this short remark on reading this article.