Church mountain and Celandines

Every year and about this time of the year I find it necessary to disprove that I will never again run there and back and climb Church Mountain (bare foot). And so, the weather being clement, yesterday I headed that way. It's not much of a climb but when you add getting there and getting back... So as not to be late for dinner I had to push myself - didn't even stop at the summit - and once home I was pretty tired and aching and thirsty.  But I did it! I'm not totally decrepit yet!

Stats: 14.5 miles, average speed moving 4.0mph, maximum altitude 538m.

Our lake in the distance

Other People on the ruins

Me

Wayside Celandines

Celandines always remind me of my mother.  We were having a picnic or perhaps just a snack on the triangle of land in the centre of the map below. I must have been very young and I guess my older sister was there too. Very proud of my horticultural knowledge I pointed out the buttercups only to be told by my mother that they were celandines. From that moment on I have always loved celandines for the memory but regarded them inferior to buttercups.

 

Gunpowder, band-wagon and lot: Part 3

It has been said, and is also patently obvious, that children will usually follow their parents' religious inclinations. The church our hero's parents attended was Bible based fundamentalist so he grew up knowing all the stories and believing them to be true. Thus he assumed all manner of notions on top of which were balanced precariously those of the movement he had stumbled upon, not realising how few of these were his own convictions. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?

But every so often he was brought up short when hearing some proposition or seeing an action that jarred or was evident nonsense. The reader will want examples but must understand that such can often be explained away so, at best, only loosely point to the core problem. 

Years previously he had remembered one of the leaders of the home church group he was then part of stating that the group was finally moving from "40 years going around the mountain" to entering the Promised Land. All hunky dory except nothing had changed - there was no such progression.  Or, in his present context, it seemed that folk too easily maintained that, as they were praying, "the Lord said..." whereas his experience differed - he only longed to hear God's voice. He found that apparent answers to prayer were often promoted whilst at the same time the more numerous failures were silently discarded. An example of confirmation bias. There was the much repeated "He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it" but should anyone dare to question its realisation this side of eternity "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation". And of the songs that he found himself gaily singing in church, although many were praise-worthy and the nonsense in some might be dismissed as "poetic license", a few were decidedly questionable.

There was his treatment of his parents. True, back then having given all his money to the Christian community in the North that he was then part of, and with no income, he was rarely in a position of being able to travel at all but, all the same, he could have written more often, could have cared more dearly, but rather I suppose he figured that he that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. It may well be true that your children will surpass you in that they'll learn much more than you'll ever know, but I implore you to forever honour your father and your mother.

And so began the impossible, Psyche-like task of sorting wheat from the tares. What indeed was the truth about Christianity? Recently there have been many public debates involving creationists, atheists, theists, evolutionists, big-bang physicists where each proponent has stuck firmly to their guns but often in a distasteful and bigoted way. How can love (a central theme in Christianity) be so distasteful?

The north wind doth blow,

And we shall have snow,

And what will the robin do then, Poor thing?

A few days ago Ali and I watched the film "Miracles from Heaven" which recounts the true story of a young daughter who had a near-death experience and was later cured of an incurable disease.  Undeniably things like this, though rare, do happen. Closer to home I could list my getting married at all, at all, the story of how a Thai baby became my adopted granddaughter, and the acquisition of the house we now live in as near miracles or, if to be explained by chance, one in a million. Two mature, educated adults can look at the same natural world around them and one will, with good reason, attribute it all to Darwinian evolution in which no god has a part, the other will be observing that the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. One will claim divine creatio ex nihilo, the other that it all started with a singularity (what's that?) and brush off the question of "whatever preceded?" by claiming that such a question has no meaning. The truth is nobody knows for certain, but then there is an awful lot in that category. It seems that we humans are doomed to a finite and oh-so-restricted-an understanding of the world around us, just as a dog might adore his master but cannot attain to human thought or emotions.

But I do at least know for a certainty the turmoil that goes on in my inner being.  The turmoil that identifies with that man, remembered throughout all ages since, who retorted Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.

To set the record straight I will add that the members of the community I am presently part of are loving, sincere, trustworthy good people and our lifestyle is in many respects exemplary. I have no bones to pick on that score apart from my own.

(To be continued in Part 4)    (Go back to Part 2)

Gunpowder, band-wagon and lot: Part 2

There was once a boy, born not long after the war when food was still in short supply and when you ate everything served on your plate and Sunday School sandwiches were graced with no more than a feint smear of butter and fish paste or Marmite. He was an unusual boy, not talkative, hating organised sport, preferring his own company, searching the library next door for books about electricity when others took fiction, running when most folk would walk.

Broad Haven, Wales

This boy was enchanted by the wonder he discovered in music, flowers, colours, sunsets, building imaginary water-works in sand, messing with bulbs and batteries, getting his father's model trains to act as if they had inertia. And, just occasionally, by literature in passages like:

I stood on the shore of a wintry sea, with a wintry sun just a few feet above its horizon-edge. It was bare, and waste, and gray. Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed constantly shore-wards, falling exhausted upon a beach of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave... A cold, death-like wind swept across the shore, seeming to issue from a pale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible. I wandered over the stones, up and down the beach, a human embodiment of the nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed through my soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead stars began to gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew louder and yet more despairing. A dark curtain of cloud was lifted up, and a pale blue rent shone between its foot and the edge of the sea, out from which rushed an icy storm of frozen wind, that tore the waters into spray as it passed, and flung the billows in raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I could bear it no longer... Phantastes, George Macdonald.

or, recalling his own childhood experiences of fever, his head feeling as if it were detached, swollen into an infinitely hard, throbbing globe, too heavy to be raised from the pillow but about to shatter into a thousand pieces if it had, like: "Then the bed no longer had limits to it and became a desert of hot wet sand. I began to talk to a second head laid upon the pillow, my own head once removed..." Or, coming out of the fever, when "I surfaced at last from its endless delirium the real world seemed suddenly dear... I heard its faintest sounds; streams running, trees stirring, birds folding their wings, a hill-sheep's cough, a far gate swinging, the breath of a horse in a field. Below me the kitchen made cosy murmurs, footsteps went up the road, a voice said Good-night, a door creaked and closed - or a boy suddenly hollered, animal-clear in the dark, and was answered far off by another. I lay moved to stupidity by these precious sounds as though I'd just got back from the dead. Then the fever returned as it always did..." Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee.

This boy had had a sheltered conservative Christian upbringing and "gave his heart to the Lord" when ten. Attending a small dame school he at first failed the 11+ not realising that one went to school to learn but, having opportunity to resit and heading his father's injunction to try harder, passed, went on to grammar school and finally university where he attained a 1st class Honours degree. Encouraged by other believers there he left university with a heightened desire to "serve God". 

Years passed. He trained as an electronics research engineer, served actively in church, prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and assumed it "by faith", met and married what would become his best friend, together doing what normal people did in buying a house on a mortgage and starting a family, until...

His parents were aghast on hearing his decision to give up a well-paid and secure job and the qualifications that went with it, and to sell the house he was renovating with their help, all evidence of their love and care for him, and to join a religious community to stake out a life apart from the world system as far as was feasible, along with others who, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth and, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised.

No regrets: he knew better. This movement he had stumbled into was radical, cutting-edge. He would become part of the first-fruits, destined to rule and reign, to live forever, being no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. 

And yet he found that, whereas others testified to dramatic feelings when baptised in the Holy Spirit and a renewed desire to read the Bible, and appeared to get ecstatic during praise sessions, he was left largely unmoved. When, after church, others said how much the praise and the "word" (preaching) had uplifted them, he obligingly smiled, but to him church meetings were something Christians were expected to endure in order to be, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some. It wasn't that he was incapable of being moved: he could not deny feeling strong emotions of wonder when, for example, reaching a mountain peak or enjoying a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, even though this composer had no profession of faith in God. For years he had starved himself of such "worldly" music for the sake of the gospel, supposing that it might be demon inspired. Similarly, after giving in his notice, he had kept away from anything electronic for many years during which, unknown to him at the time, the IBM Personal Computer had made its debut. Such was the zeal he imagined he had: ten out of ten for effort but disappointing results.

But worse was to come...

(continued in Part 3)    (go back to Part 1)

A bygone era

N, HO and O gauge

Sorting through stuff during Ali's Major Spring Clean I uncovered the above remnants of a bygone era. My own N gauge Treble-O-Lectrik by Lone Star which would be collectors' pieces if only they were in good working condition. The next by Triang and KitMaster both from my father's extensive railway room layout. And finally a piece of Lima O gauge stock which I think my father had purchased for a future but was never-to-be outdoor layout.

My parents had invited a young man A to Sunday tea. He was the son of the lead elder in my parent's church, and would in due course go on himself to become the present lead elder. He is also a major character in another story. Oh, cruel memories! Now my father often sneaked off to the the railway room of a Sunday afternoon, much to the chagrin of my mother who thought Sundays should be family days, and I would shortly follow suite and so we would be entrenched until my mother called up the loft staircase "tea time!" But on this occasion it would not have been decorum to so disappear - instead my father asked A if he would like to come and see the model railway. A declined. What an anti-climax! What a revelation into the mind of this young man - I mean, who, in their right mind, would decline such an offer? What a recrimination on church leadership! Did this mean you could not reasonably be a model train enthusiast and a fully committed Christian 100% for God? At the time the choice was obvious for myself. Model trains ruled, OK?

And, just to prove that I do not spend all my time side-stepping figuring how to pose the continuation of my Gunpowder post, here's the lake looking downstream from the Blessington bridge, the photographer having been conveyed there by his trusty bicycle.

 

Gunpowder, band-wagon and lot: Part 1

 

This post has nothing to do with Guy Fawkes or gunpowder except insofar that strong personal beliefs can lead people to do whacky and horrendous exploits. Many of these, thankfully, are relatively benign but they can still adversely affect innocent peoples' lives. And every so often a belief will culminate in something as severe as a plot to overthrow a government.

Some examples include the flat earthers, holocaust deniers, possibly even the more extreme pro-Trumpers. What about so called Christian outfits like tele-evangelist Benny Hinn, Bethel Redding, Hill Song? Or the whole Charismatic movement with its emphasis on "spiritual gifts"? Or creationists, atheists. Don't get me wrong here: I am not condemning or condoning any particular belief: let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind. But I notice that each of these entities use a mix of peer pressure, playing on emotions, mass hysteria, exclusivity, suggestion and even hypnosis to promote their ideologies, even if unwittingly. 

Sometimes labelled "radical", "extreme", "cult" or "conspiracy theory", they can be recognised through non-sequiturs and other nonsense appearing in their teachings. An example in a recent search for sanity I happened upon in a YouTube video The #1 reason evolution is impossible saddened me because the #1 reason, though thoughtfully presented, was flawed from the outset as any Physicist would tell you. Just scroll down the comments.

It has been said that we humans have a God shaped hole that yearns to be filled. Perhaps there is more in this than meets the eye. Just as a dog likes nothing more than to play catch, perhaps the need for religion is just a part of the make-up of every human which has evolved over millions of years as a sort of defence mechanism to give us some sense of meaning to life or, if you prefer, was placed there by the Creator as a proof of existence. The idea is explored in more detail here. After all, about 84% of the current world population identify with a religious group and that does not include atheists (who also take their position on faith). And 75% of US adults identify as Christian. Can they all be wrong? Well, actually, yes - if it be that humans are born with this need no more or less than being born with two legs. And if so be, it does not follow necessarily that God exists.

And so I come to relate the sad case of the Irish Dodo...

(to be continued in Part 2)

More lump and beautiful Devon

The final touches on that bowl I found in a lump of firewood - the elegant punctures rule this bowl out for wine drinking, but turn it into a knitting yarn bowl. I cannot vouch for the two small holes in addition to the spiral - but that's how they are.

And now in mid Devon again, running barefoot through sticky mud in Hunkin Wood and my favourite Culm river meadows and enjoying the daffodils.

 

I found this in a lump of firewood

 

Just as Michelangelo must have seen David inside a block of white marble, so this bowl came out of an odd piece of firewood which otherwise I would have thrown in the boiler. The photograph hardly does it justice: the grain patterns are beautifully complex and it is silky smooth to the touch. Whereas the firewood out of which it arose was rough, ill-shapen and full of knots.

Is this a picture of the human psyche? That something so profound could lie inside a rough exterior? If so I would hasten to point out that both firewood and bowl are of the same material, and each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 

Cold

Sunday afternoon, sub-zero temperatures, the lake beginning to freeze, a run around the Kings River loop 9.2 miles. Others on walks complained of slippery conditions but barefoot I had good traction.

Five pixels?

The great thing about playing down birthdays is that there are approximately 364 un-birthdays in a year and on one such day an unassuming brown cardboard package was placed in front of me at lunchtime here by my resident daughter, whilst across the table my resident son was videoing me on his cell-phone and telling me to open it. Which I duly did and, wow! A Pixel 5, a gift from my children here and far-and-wide and their respective partners. Wow! And thank you all! 

What more shall I say? Time would fail me to tell of the wonders this piece of kit can perform: well actually I have hardly had a chance to find out yet. Doing the connect-your-new-Pixel-to-your-old-phone-and-transfer thing was simple and successful except, as expected, it left out the GPS mapping and tracking app Oruxmaps that I use when hiking and running. Because "it has been removed from Google Play because it violates the payments policy" so it has to be installed directly from the Oruxmaps website. And then there was the deal about it maybe not tracking in the background, but I managed to navigate through all that. So yesterday I took my new toy on a run to confirm that tracking is, indeed, working correctly and checked out some of the new camera features.  

There are two main cameras in addition to the front facing selfie camera. The "x2" option, I am informed, is a software enhanced digital zoom. I'm a bit wary of digital zooms so I'm hopeful that the software enhancement does its bit.  You can click on these images to view full size, but doubtless "full size" will not be the full native resolution because Google pics downgrades one's photos on the free account I have.

Wide angle camera

Standard camera x1

Standard camera x2

Panning to left to include Mullaghleevaun

Love hate Python

There was Visual Basic 6 (VB6)... and then there was Python.  Both are interpreted languages (i.e. they run from a high-level script rather than being compiled into machine code). Both claim to be easy to program with and both have a huge following. Python is current whereas VB6 is no longer supported.  Python is free whereas Microsoft have made VB6 neither free nor available but say that it is superseded by VB.NET.  But these are very different languages. Having sharpened my teeth on plain BASIC (e.g. BASIC PLUS in college days, QuickBASIC running under MSDOS) I progressed to VB6 which I used extensively for creating test software to exercise electronics I have designed in the course of my work.

In case I ever have the privilege of helping homeschoolers here with teaching computer science, I figured I ought to learn a current language. I did a bit in C# a few years back for a work project and, whilst C# is a very powerful language (meaning you can do certain complex things with minimal coding), I found its syntactical gamut too much for my poor brain. So, what more suitable to up-and-coming programmers than Python, or so I have been told?

Many years ago I authored some QuickBASIC code that would display prime numbers in a square spiral.  The essential part took a mere 20 lines of script, and here's the output, limited to the VGA 640x480 screen resolution of the day with each integer represented by a single pixel. You can click on each image to zoom in.

The point of the program, apart from being an exercise in graphical output and being cool, is to highlight the mainly diagonal line patterns that prime numbers arranged in this way make. Anyway, this became my first Python challenge.

Here's the output of my Python code - a bit prettier because now each integer is represented by a 4 x 4 pixel square. Value 1 is plotted as a blue square, otherwise primes are red and non-primes grey. The essential part was almost 100 lines of code and took a long time to code. OK, so I am a novice but even so...  I tested it with three different algorithms for finding the primes - the fastest involved saving the primes in a Python list.

And here's the same in VB6.  It was so much easier to do the graphics part in VB6.  Python graphics is anything but intuitive and seems to employ the longest path to achieve the least credible results, whereas in VB6 you simply drag and drop graphic widgets and then click on them to open their respective code space. That they are event driven is taken for granted unlike Python.

Oh, and although no-one on ever claimed VB6 was fast, without pausing to do animated screen redraws I found my VB6 code ran about twice as fast as with Python.  I tried different prime algorithms but found the VB6 code ran fastest by dividing each integer numerator by all the denominators from 2 up to the square root of the numerator, which for large integers involves many more test divisions than did my Python code. That VB6 was still significantly faster says something in its favour.

And then, although Python is an interpreted language like VB6 or QuickBASIC, it has no native integrated development environment (IDE) so testing and debugging entails constant swapping between your chosen text editor (I used Notepad++) and the command line.  Although there are 3rd party IDE's and I am currently investigating Microsoft "Visual Studio Code" which, surprisingly, is free.

So do I love Python? Well, not yet, certainly! 

Face masks forever

It's not that I think face masks are totally ineffective in preventing the spread of Covid-19. But probably they are more of a statement of conformity and a reminder for others to "keep their distance" than having any real benefit. It's pretty clear that they do not stop all emanation of droplets from the wearer's nose or mouth but arguably they might direct airflow to the sides and thus away from... well that depends on where the objects of contamination are standing...

And then there is the argument that a mask will harbour nasties and thus exacerbate the problem. I've spoken to a qualified nurse involved on the front line and she pointed out that medics should replace their mask every 2 hours to mitigate this effect, thus clearly admitting this problem. Meanwhile the rest of us indefinitely re-use our single-use masks.

There is a considerable degree of absurdity about the whole issue of face masks.  There is also a deal of misunderstanding like a neighbour I noticed mowing her rear lawn whilst wearing a face mask. Or a cyclist passing me wearing a face mask. Presumably they mistakenly think it will protect them? But I reckon the following examples take the absurdity ticket.

I happened upon a Youtube video of Gustavo Dudamel conducting Mahler's Adagietto from Symphony No. 5. to an empty outside auditorium. All the musicians were not only socially distanced but also wearing face masks! In that video there were only strings and a harp but take a look at these pictures below that I grabbed from the internet. An apt comment on one web site was: How useless , ridiculous and humiliating for the poor musicians who are ready to accept these inhuman conditions in order to keep their job and continue their passion.

Note some but not all examples seek to cover all the exit holes as well as nose and mouth. You have to at least give these ones 10/10 for effort, even if there is little chance of any efficacy. 

Turkey Tail

We are in Willand again and I have been set the task of collecting Turkey Tail fungus (TT) which, I am told, has desirable medical properties and is plentiful. So I added this task to my existing tendency to go for runs, barefoot. Having visited the pop-up cafe in Bridwell Park to buy cake from their Covid-19 takeaway service and finding that at present they welcome folk to exercise in their private grounds (hoping it will increase sales of cake), I added this place to my run-list and discovered the seemingly one and only instance of Turkey Tail in the whole of this part of Devon. 

nicely rotted timber, but no TT

remains of Culm Valley light railway

rotten wood, fungus, but I think it's not TT

An ideal habitat, but could not find TT

Beautiful, dead, inaccessible, no TT

Ha! Some bracket fungus, but not TT

A stag in Bridwell Park

My former swimming place, note the noose

Noose from other side (how did I get there?)

Could this be TT?  Apparently not

or this?

wrong shape

might be, but we erred on side of caution

certainly not

Ha! At last! We harvested this

Strange pyramid in Bridwell Park

This monument was strange, ugly and out of keeping IMHO. My research yielded only one hit which claims that some 250m east of the house stands a pyramid composed of stalagmites, which incorporates a trefoiled piscina. I reckon the piscina (a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church) had been removed and there was no sign of a church nearby either. Mysterious.  The marquee in the background was part of the "pop-up cafe" before Covid-19 came along.

The lake at Bridwell

More TT