This morning, as i stroll into the Simon Community Hilldrop Road Day Centre where I'm about to run another Music Tuesday I notice that a piece of vegetation is hanging down onto the path. It has white flowers - thorns, it reminds me of both bramble and hawthorn - but it's most likely neither of these. I setup the keyboards, then seeing that we have not yet got any punters in I reach into my bag for the secateurs and the gardening gloves and go and see about that vegetation.
I cut the offending greenery, as far back along the branch as i can, taking a couple of the white flowers with me. As i stand there - branch in hand - i find that i am admiring it's length & strength. I set about taking all the thorns from it, and it's while i'm doing this that the 1st punters turn up. So it's down tools and go and teach.
Later on during lunch i return out there and continue stripping the thorns from it, distributing the
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Finding the Windmill
Hi there, it's been awhile...
I've been thinking about technology and the world and how they interact...
hmmm... not sure how best to begin so i'm just going to jump in there:
so i walk a bit, in woods if i can. in particular i walk in some lovely heathland/woods near croydon in south london called either addington hills or shirley hills, google maps calls it addington hills, locals call it shirley hills, not that i've done an exhaustive survey of locals...
gmaps
i work @ a college down there with the refugee stuff i do and after work if there is light in the sky i'll pop over to the woods for a stooge.
It's a series of small ridges and valleys roughly pointing in the same direction
So a few weeks back i was standing on the observation platform, a brick structure offering a view north towards london, when i was living in Peckham i used to try in vain to see Peckham, or the covered reservoir @ nunhead from there but a hill is in between, crystal palace i think. So i was on the observation platform and it was a glorious day, much light around, from one corner of the observation platform, just pushing up above the treetops i could see the sails of a windmill.
This is after a year or so of visiting this woodland and i was amazed that a windmill could be so close and yet i hadn't seen it before. My general stomping ground where i spend almost all my woodland time is in one of the valleys to the southwest of the observation platform and the windmill is north northeast of there so it's not that surprising i hadn't seen it. Also it's only visible from one corner of the platform.
So of course i struck out in that direction, following paths that sort of go that way, following the land down again, then rising up, then down, up... etc. Travelling across the ridges and valleys. The windmill not at all visible. It took me gradually into an area that i hadn't been in before, a different kind of ridge/valley, more heather than in the other part. And on climbing up to yet another ridge looking to my left i saw once again my Windmill. Now clearer, and this ridge i was on was heading directly to it. So i took to the ridge, that was gently coming down, back into woods so the windmill disappears from view once more.
In time i come to a road. The edge of the woodland, more woods beyond the road but it is an accursed golf course. Addington Hills is sandwiched in between 2 large golf courses (they are larger than addington hills anyway, i don't know the relative sizes of golf courses). With a sinking feeling i left the hunt, maybe the windmill is a golf feature...
...
I was back there a week later but it was a greyer day and i'd forgotten or not realised at the time that the windmill is only visible from the left corner of the platform, and i didn't/couldn't see it.
...
It struck me later on that i'd had 2 separate views of the windmill and if i'd had a compass with me and taken compass bearings from those 2 positions and been able to find those positions on a map (a satellite map) then surely i could draw straight lines - or perhaps google could draw straight lines for me - on the map, from each position, in the direction noted, and where the lines intersect - that is where my windmill is...
Now although i don't have a compass, or at least i don't know where our compass is (Emma has a compass), i do have an android phone with smart tools installed on it, which amongst other things has a compass, a compass that uses the phones camera so you hold it like a camera, find the thing your looking at and it tells you the compass bearing.
I've been thinking about technology and the world and how they interact...
hmmm... not sure how best to begin so i'm just going to jump in there:
so i walk a bit, in woods if i can. in particular i walk in some lovely heathland/woods near croydon in south london called either addington hills or shirley hills, google maps calls it addington hills, locals call it shirley hills, not that i've done an exhaustive survey of locals...
gmaps
i work @ a college down there with the refugee stuff i do and after work if there is light in the sky i'll pop over to the woods for a stooge.
It's a series of small ridges and valleys roughly pointing in the same direction
So a few weeks back i was standing on the observation platform, a brick structure offering a view north towards london, when i was living in Peckham i used to try in vain to see Peckham, or the covered reservoir @ nunhead from there but a hill is in between, crystal palace i think. So i was on the observation platform and it was a glorious day, much light around, from one corner of the observation platform, just pushing up above the treetops i could see the sails of a windmill.
This is after a year or so of visiting this woodland and i was amazed that a windmill could be so close and yet i hadn't seen it before. My general stomping ground where i spend almost all my woodland time is in one of the valleys to the southwest of the observation platform and the windmill is north northeast of there so it's not that surprising i hadn't seen it. Also it's only visible from one corner of the platform.
So of course i struck out in that direction, following paths that sort of go that way, following the land down again, then rising up, then down, up... etc. Travelling across the ridges and valleys. The windmill not at all visible. It took me gradually into an area that i hadn't been in before, a different kind of ridge/valley, more heather than in the other part. And on climbing up to yet another ridge looking to my left i saw once again my Windmill. Now clearer, and this ridge i was on was heading directly to it. So i took to the ridge, that was gently coming down, back into woods so the windmill disappears from view once more.
In time i come to a road. The edge of the woodland, more woods beyond the road but it is an accursed golf course. Addington Hills is sandwiched in between 2 large golf courses (they are larger than addington hills anyway, i don't know the relative sizes of golf courses). With a sinking feeling i left the hunt, maybe the windmill is a golf feature...
...
I was back there a week later but it was a greyer day and i'd forgotten or not realised at the time that the windmill is only visible from the left corner of the platform, and i didn't/couldn't see it.
...
It struck me later on that i'd had 2 separate views of the windmill and if i'd had a compass with me and taken compass bearings from those 2 positions and been able to find those positions on a map (a satellite map) then surely i could draw straight lines - or perhaps google could draw straight lines for me - on the map, from each position, in the direction noted, and where the lines intersect - that is where my windmill is...
Now although i don't have a compass, or at least i don't know where our compass is (Emma has a compass), i do have an android phone with smart tools installed on it, which amongst other things has a compass, a compass that uses the phones camera so you hold it like a camera, find the thing your looking at and it tells you the compass bearing.
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