Time lapse with raspberry pi cam

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plcp&v=SkQLOPKUtE8

After buying then winning a pi cam I thought I better get to work with it. Thanks to design spark.com who had already written a good script I was able to position the cam on the window sill from dusk to dusk taking a picture every ten seconds and over 9gb of pictures.

With mencoder and some terminal typing  I was able to make the pictures into a time lapse which I have uploaded to YouTube with the above link.

My next idea is to take pictures and layer them on top of each other ie time lapse the sky but get to show every vapour trail over say 6 hours.

If you know how I can do that then let me know, can't wait for camping this year.

2 ftfs

Today I wasn't up for much and when I realised the weather was better than predicted we shot off to do three caches of pebblesandco of which surprisingly we were second to find on the letterbox cache. On our journey up here we were following a suspiciously clean land rover with Tvp plates, it was unmarked but after getting the three caches we bumped into it zooming along the ridgeway, no doubt looking for the bank holiday raves.

Back to wantage and four hundred feet from my house was two new caches, both I thought would have been gone by now but to my suprise two first to finds and one in a place I looked at before; maybe they will start getting a bit more adventurist and extreme ;)

Great Cotswold Walk

Out today doing the gcw series 135 caches but due to frodos age we could only do two of the loops and had to leave three loops for another day.

The weather was nice and caches all easy to find with muggles here and there and lots of nice dips in the river for frodo.

15.5 miles was covered and we even managed a respectable average speed of 2.7 mph

Near the end we came across a dead deer by the cache and it stunk. 

Just a few short of 90 and now very tired.

A big thank you to the cache owner for a great huge series that must have involved quite a bit of time and expense, again thank you for a wonderful day.

May the force be with you

It's international Star Wars day today, may 4th.

There was two caching events today local to me, a flash mob which I didn't attend as I wasn't up to running around with light sabers and a pub event afterwards which I turned up for to drop off a load of trackables that I picked up a few days ago in Leicestershire from various tb hotels.

Although my orders were to rest I couldn't resist as I wanted to get these tb s moved. It was nice to see so many faces many that I knew till one appeared the one who has caused me a lot of hassle todate in the caching scene, my chest started to tighten and I realised I better just go as I don't fancy going back to hospital just yet and don't need any form of stress no matter how nice they appear to everyone else. So apart from one person ruining it for me the event looked great so well done to the organisers.

So sorry I didn't stay long but nice to see everyone, hope the trackables I dropped off get moving soon and hopefully when I'm much better I will stay longer.

As I feel in a good mood anyone who attended and is looking for a hint for my it's all about the numbers cache, I will get you started look for invisible text in my profile ;) oh and try solving a line or two before giving up there is a red herring near the start to put people off mawhahaha .

But don't tell anyone I have posted a hint here as its only for those who could be bothered to read my blog.

Heart attack???

Thursday night I came down with huge chest pains, after a few hours I decided to go sleep it off but the pain got worse and worse. After my partner spoke to nhs direct on their new number 111 we ended up within minutes receiving a fast responder, then a paramedic before the ambulance arrived. All through this I was hooked up to a ECG, blood pressure, various blood samples and drugs issued including aspirin, paracetamol and a spray on the tongue to open up my blood vessels to move any clots through. Before I knew it I was on my way to hospital with a great crew from the south central ambulance service. It amazes me how these people do their jobs, they get all sorts of abuse and physical violence just in the line of trying to help people. The journey soon showed us the amount of pot holes on our roads. I knew exactly where we were up to the a420 from road curves etc, but the a420 had been shut so we had to backtrack and join the a34 so from this point I lost my co ordination. Even when we were told we were crossing donnington bridge I couldn't figure out where I was again till we got closer to the jr and I started to figure out where we were again.

Once in hospital I had to take all the ECG pads off and new ones put on as the ambulance service use one sort and the hospital another.

Watching the ECG in hospital I soon figured out all the lines and graphs and found that I kept setting off the alarm due to my low breathing rate. But everything else was fine with 69 bpm rr 8-20 depending how restful I was and O2 at 95% so nothing seemed wrong on this.

Next was another blood test and drip thing put into my arm then later a chest X-ray where I had to remove the ECG pads. Back on the ward more ECG pads put on me before later being moved down to another ward and having to remove the ECG pads for different ones and later another blood test to see if I had any damage to my heart. It turns out that there was no enzymes associated with heart attacks in the sample so I was free to eventually go. Now this scares me more as they not been able to identify the cause, just ruling out a heart attack.

So I spent the day in and out of consciousness watching retro tv on Netflix but feel very sore, having 50+ ECG pads stuck and removed from you has bruised my chest.

Today I took the dog out but found a short .5 mile walk to end up rather tough on my chest, to think I did 9 miles the other day without a thought. So looks like I'm going to have to rest a bit more so much for a weekend of caching:(

Airport walk

I'm up in Leicestershire on a training course so when it finished this evening out I went to get just under 30 caches around the airport perimeter.

I had already misjudged the distance by two miles but luckily I was travelling and 2.8 mph on average which was nearly a mile per hour faster than planned so finished slightly quicker than planned.

Along the route I got to see many things including a plane that had to take off after failing its landing attempt.

There was also some well thought out caches as well as a couple of tb hotels so a few trackables will be coming home with me to go to the event this weekend.

Dropped off two tb s too so hopefully the owner will be pleased.

Also found a great tunnel under a road that I explored but sadly no cache here, but if I lived nearby then that would have become a cache now ;)

Internet connection (yet again)

After last Sunday (not yesterday but one before) my connection has been playing up again with that Sunday spending much of the day disconnected. My Internet provider threatened that I would be charged if a fault was found my end etc etc to try put me off till I reminded them they were not providing me with the service I signed up for and I was strongly considering virgin, next they book the engineer.

After some line tests by BT last week my connection improved (funny that) with a maximum up time of 30 hours. The engineer said I was still inside the 10 days settling period and that 11mbs was a good connection and thaty leads etc were good quality before replacing the junction socket again with one with a built in adsl filter and changed my rj11 lead for a cheap BT standard.

Now clutching at straws the engineer did some more tests before checking the line outside and said he would pop up the street to the junction box there.

Twenty minutes later he rings, I've found the fault he cries, yes I think now who s the lier I think towards my provider. It turns out the junction box in the street is still connected by the copper wires that were laid down when the housing estate was built and although fine for phone it's been bad for adsl. So within minutes I watch my connection go as the BT guy gets to work with the copper wires, I just have that feeling we be seeing the street and estate being dug up soon.

Anyhow still not heard back since he started the work and hopefully now he has solved it. Yet another great engineer from BT who is full of ideas and yes tested my draytek router too. He was impressed with it saying that it was a very good router with nothing wrong so there you go Internet provider nothing wrong with my router either.

Lets see how it performs after the ten days and after the junction box is finally sorted out.

Local caching

Today I decided to clear some local caches, first was at didcot and a nice size container. Then over to Abingdon to get some more. One was a magnetic near the vineyard and at gz you could smell weed being smoked yeuk. The next one was a black snail then onto two trads before finding a nice size one at radley and then a nice size multi near Shelley close.

From here I went tomcat ham to get three including one up a tree.at gz I metdaniel glover and co and to my disappointment found it wasn't really a climb as such, but I got to see deer in the field.

On the way home from here I picked off three walkies caches and a geocoin and also a second to find, this was after a delay along the a338 where a motorcyist had been involved in an accident with a car.

A couple pictures below one of the powerstation from Marcham now with no cloud making steam and of the deers whilst caching at Marcham.

Lambourn rooknest series

Out with frodo in lambourn today, after surviving the potholes between Wantage and lambourn we began the walk which was to amuse us as once we got near to the first one there was a couple searching everywhere for the cache. Me and frodo stood and the bridge watching as we were finding this hilarious and once they left got the cache that they couldn't find. We didn't see much of them till near the end, so no doubt locals.

As we worked our way round we were finding either the co ords were out on some or the gps was playing up, but by half way round things improved, although we solved the multi we couldn't find it but found the deers. Along to the next and we muggled queen of maps with her partner and on to one disguised as a brick.

Later on we found quickly one that's been having many dnf s and soon had it in hand although frodo smelt it straight away but couldn't put his paw on it.

By now frodo was a brown blob from all the mud pools so on my list was to head back near to number one so he could have a swim in the chalk lined river. After a play in there he was a lot more cleaner, just wet which is better than caked in brown mud.

On our way home we went to pick off layby monkey a new cache and as we pulled up I could see it but a car pulled in behind with a guy looking at gz and his phone from the car, this became a stand off as I wasn't moving nor was he and he soon left. The fact I have a trackable on the back of my car gives away I'm a cacher lol. So not a bad day, no multi and no bonus (no bonus clues in the caches) but hey ho.

There was also a lovely cottage which we stopped to admire, very nice.

3 ftf s :)

Three new caches came up last night at work, so left them. Why I hear you ask, we'll it would be two hours till I got out there and by then half a dozen signatures on the logbook.

Anyhow after BT engineer left we took a trip up to the ridgeway, the sun was burning through the mist and was warming up.

When we got to the first cache we were surprised to see a blank log :)

The next was a bit harder as the co ords were 300ft off but we soon found it.

However at the third, even through we were first to find this was the hardest as it was very well hidden, only using an iPhone I wondered if we were actually close enough and as I was about to call it a day (and frodo finish playing in the puddle after giving the tree a good sniff over) we found it and a third ftf.

A nice walk back to the car and back home.