Alan's Ramblings - Family category

It's a secret

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:51:00 GMT

Went for a walk with the family yesterday evening after tea and took the following picture with the less than excellent camera on my phone but I rather like the soft effect. The location is less than 6 miles in a straight line from the house, and less than 200 metres from the nearest road, but I'm not telling you exactly where it is - it's a secret :-)

Number problems

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:25:41 GMT

I've just been looking at my son's maths homework, which is from the CGP Year Six Maths Workbook - Year Six in the UK is kids who are 10 to 11 years old. Here's the question:

a) How many hundreds in 4695?

I can think of four possible answers, depending on how you interpret the question:

6, i.e. the hundreds digit of 4695 is 6
600, i.e. the hundreds component of 4695 is 600
46, i.e. 100 goes into 4695 46 times, with 95 left over
46.95, i.e. 4695 ÷ 100

From previous experience with these books, it could be any of the first three possibilities, although the last one is an equally valid interpretation. No wonder the standard of maths in UK primary schools is so poor, if they have to use such frankly awful source material. Here's another example, from the next page:

Solve this problem.

17 × 6 + 98 ÷ 25 × 301 - 21 + 113 =

If you think the answer is 1376.92, i.e. (17 × 6) + (98 ÷ 25 × 301) - 21 + 113, you'd be wrong. The answer they seem to be expecting is 2500, i.e. ((((((17 × 6) + 98) ÷ 25) × 301) - 21) + 113). I know that's the case because the kids aren't allowed to use calculators, so the answer will be an integer value. So much for the rules of operator precedence...

p.s. Thanks to @kangcool for spotting the maths error in the original version ;-)

King Kong

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 08:45:54 GMT

Just taken the kids to see "King Kong" at the cinema. What a over-long, self-indulgent pile of crap it is. Although it is undoubtedly a masterpiece of CGI, the story line is far too flimsy to sustain this 3+ hour epic of cinematic navel gazing. Peter Jackson has stuck very close to the original plot line, and that's the problem - the original film ran for 1:40, this version runs for a interminable 3:07. The action sequences are utterly preposterous as well as being far too long, and CGI characters are more three-dimensional than the human ones.

By half way through I just wanted them to get on with it and shoot the goddam monkey so I could go home for my tea. I'm not the only one who thinks this - see this, this and this review at IMDB, for example - all of them hit the nail on the head - its a bloody awful movie.

My advice? Avoid.

Lyme Park

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 08:57:52 GMT

I took these photos a few weeks ago - we'd taken the kids to Lyme Park, a stately home near where we live, for an evening stroll and I took these on the way back from the Cage (a medieval hunting lodge in the grounds) to the house itself.


View across from the Cage to Kinder Downfall. Kinder is an extremely popular walking destination, the top is a flat plateau that is entirely covered in peat bog, so most people stick to the edges!	A tree on Cage Hill silhouetted against the setting sun. How artistic ;-)	The house itself. Originally Elizabethan, but heavily altered over the centuries. The house appeared as "Pemberley" in the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice.

Getting black in The Blacks

Sun, 11 Apr 2004 08:08:28 GMT

In the interests of reducing the usefulness of the Internet even further I offer up the details of part of my Easter weekend. I promise to include at least one reference to chocolate, plenty of information about where I was, and absolutely nothing about Java. Here we go...

On Friday afternoon I took my two kids out for a walk to try to spot some Arctic hares - as anyone who has read my blog before know I have a bit of a soft spot for them. We drove up to Woodhead tunnel, parked up and set off up Far Black Clough. The weather was OK when we started, a bit overcast but dry. By the time we got up towards Featherbed Moss we'd see half a dozen hares - lots of 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' from the kids as they watched them through the binoculars. As we headed further up Far Black Clough the clag descended rapidly, and by the time we reached Bleaklow Stones visibility was down to 40-50 metres or so. The temperature had dropped and there was a brisk westerly so we didn't linger and set off towards Near Bleaklow Stones.

Once we got to Near Bleaklow Stones we hunkered down amongst the rocks to get out of the wind and broke out the bananas and chocolate bars (see, I said I'd mention chocolate).

We then wandered over to take a look a the Boulton Paul Defiant wreck a couple of hundred metres from the stones. - "It was like this when we found it Dad - honest!" After spending a few minutes at the wreck we headed west towards Far Black Clough, which was a welcome relief as once we were across it and on the path we were out of the wind.

It's been reasonably wet over the last week, and this path is a bit boggy at the best of times. The promise of the remaining chocolate bar to the first one to spot the first tree of Birchen Bank Wood was more than enough to ensure rapid progress. As we headed down the path back towards Woodhead tunnel I kept expecting the cloud to lift as we got lower, but in fact it had dropped right down to the car park, so we were nearly at the bottom before we could see the trees and finish off the chocolate ration.

I'm sure all parents know the almost magnetic attraction between small boys and dirt, it seems mine are particularly talented in this respect. The pair of peat-caked boots on the left were in fact brand new - this was their maiden voyage. "Mission accomplished Dad!".