Mountain Bike Orienteering

One of the guys at work sent round a link to Scottish Mountain Bike Orienteering website who are running 6 events, one a month over the summer months. The first was today in the Pentlands. I would probably have entered in a team with Neil, but he was unavailable and I was thinking of entering on my own for a laugh, but somehow talked Rosie into being my team-mate (it was surprisingly easy). She's just got a new bike, so it was a good excuse to take that out.

The idea is that the organisers put out 30 checkpoints and you have 3 hours to go to as many checkpoints as you can, each checkpoint is worth a certain number of points and the individual/team with the most number of points wins (teams have to stay together, so if anything it's a bit harder than being out on your own). If you take longer than 3 hours you start to lose points and after about 10 minutes, that loss becomes pretty rapid.

So Rosie and I rocked up at Currie Rugby Club in Balerno, unsure of what to expect. We had the vague notion that we would just go for however many points we could get and not worry too much if we came last. Rosie reckoned we would be pretty good at map reading, but we weren't really too sure about the first checkpoint, so that wasn't a good start. In fact, we didn't even find the first one we headed for (it was pretty close to the start, so we thought we'd just pick it up on the way back. Suffice to say that didn't happen). We cycled on a bit, down a path which was marked on the map, which was actually quite a nice little descent with a rooty technical bit at the bottom (Rosie didn't think so) and onto the water of Leith where we got our first checkpoint.

The section checkpoint came halfway up a little steep section off the water of Leith, (another bit that would make a nice descent). We spent a bit of time running about trying to find the checkpoint and discovered it hidden behind a bridge. This is when we realised, part of the challenge is finding the things as well as navigating between them and cycling up and down hills.

From there, up another horrible climb (would also make a decent descent) where we got checkpoint number 3 and eventually up through a farm onto a well deserved descent. We picked up another checkpoint and headed back to the water of Leith for our 5th. (Another deviously placed one that had us running around like lunatics). From there, we followed the water of Leith back down to Colinton and began the climb back up towards the Pentlands. After a bit of searching we did eventually find another checkpoint and continued up the road to where a crossing was marked over the bypass. Turns out, this road is marked on both google maps and the O/S maps, but doesn't exist. We eventually found a way over the bypass, but had lost a lot of time and were a bit lost. This is where things started to turn to shit. Once over the bypass we struggled up a path, then up a steep hill which we had to push up, eventually after much effort coming out on the path from Bonaly up to the Pentlands.

This is a path I've had a run in with before and I hate it, so more pushing up to the top of that, then another push/struggle through a forest with mainly tree roots under foot/tire. By this point Rosie was more than a little puffed out, but I urged her on. We managed to get another checkpoint as we left the forest and headed back down onto a proper road. The plan was to get another two checkpoints on the way back, but time was running out and we decided to take the shortest route downhill and head back up the water of Leith to the finish.

We arrived back at the finish 10 minutes late which cost us 20 points. Overall, it was a good day out and I really enjoyed it, but was a little knackered. I think I could have gone a bit further, and I can't imagine the state I would have been in if Neil was there as whoever is leading the climbs tends to set the pace a bit hard.

With the full results now out, I'm glad to say while we were pretty poor, we weren't the worst, coming joint second last in our class.

Nintendo 3DS

I always mean to blog about things like these, but usually by the time I get round to writing down my thoughts, it's pointless because the moment has passed. So I thought I'd blog my thoughts on the 3DS even though I've not yet had it a week.

I'm not even sure when the idea to buy one popped into my head, I'm going to go out on a limb and blame Chris. After playing the Professor Layton games on my original DS, I was thinking of getting a DSi to replace my aging silver behemoth but Chris pointed out that I should really just wait and get a 3DS. So, I placed a pre-order on Amazon, safe in the knowledge that it would be released just after my birthday, so I'd have the cash.

I'm a bit of a 3D sceptic, while I appreciate the effect, I find 3D movies add very little to the experience and am unconvinced that any film in 3D is much better than plain old 2D. Therefore, I wasn't really too bothered about the 3D aspect of the 3DS and was really just looking for a new shiny DS.

First up, the unit itself, I got the Cosmos black one, it's probably a similar size to a DS Lite, maybe a little thicker, but smaller than my old school DS. The top screen is a bit bigger than the bottom and in addition to the usual controls/ports there is a slider to control the extent of the 3D effect and a slot for an SD card (2Gb card was included).

The 3D effect works, but you have to hold the unit in a very specific sweet spot. I have a habit of moving it about as I play, so sometimes you lose the effect and get a nasty blurring effect. I don't know if I'll get used to not moving the unit about, but it should be ok.

Game wise, the 3DS has a couple of built in games, Face Raiders is a whacky AR shooting game where you take a photo of someone's face and it is morphed into the game and onto floating heads you have to shoot.

In addition to that, I got Monkey Ball 3D and Pilotwings Resort. Monkey Ball 3D is ok, but seems a bit limited. Pilotwings Resort is really good and great fun.

JLPT

The results for the JLPT are out and somehow I managed to pass Level N4. I thought I'd get about 50%, but in the end I got 58%. What I didn't realise is that the pass mark is only 50%, so that was enough. Think it's going to be a few years before I attempt N3.

New Year - New Films

Well, that's 2010 gone and in terms of film watching numbers it was a fairly average year, 175 in total, 1 more than 2009 and even then only because of a last minute push to watch all the HD-DVDs I've had sitting around for ages. My plan to finish off the 101 Gangster Movies You Must See Before You Die list didn't really come to fruition.

Hopefully 2011 sees a few more reviews and the completion of at least one of the now 8 film lists I have on the go. Got off to a good start with a Lord of the Rings trilogy marathon on New Year's day.

Anki - Flashcards

I first learnt about Anki (http://ankisrs.net/) from a blog about learning Japanese which suggested it as one of the top 5 applications for learning Japanese. I started using it to prepare for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficency Test) which I took earlier this month.

The application allows you to create virtual flashcards containing a question/answer or more generically, just the front of the cards and the back of the card. You can then go through the flashcards and indicate if you know the fact and if so, how well. This allows Anki to schedule when it will next show you the card. For facts you don't know, the card will show up again soon, and for cards which you do know, the time until they next show up are based on how well you indicate you know the fact and how often you have previously known the fact.

I quite liked the the learning style with Anki, so I started using it when revising for the Core Spring 3.0 Certification exam which I sat this morning. As I was going over the material I would just add questions into Anki covering that material. This let me review material quickly and check up on what I knew, it also let me drill the facts I was having trouble with.

Where it really came into its own though, was the day before the exam once I had all the facts I needed in Anki, I used the "cram" mode which reduces the time in-between questions, this lets you go through all the cards at once, constantly being asked the ones you are getting wrong and delaying the ones you know well until later.

An useful feature which I wasn't able to take advantage of was the Android/iPhone apps which would have let me review cards on the move.

Overall, Anki has been a useful tool, both for my Japanese studies and in other applications, if you have something you need to learn that can be distilled into simple facts, it might be worth giving it a go. One thing I would suggest is to start using it as soon as possible in your studying and the constant learning element of it means you are reviewing material before you've finished learning everything.

Treasure Cottage Chinese Takeaway

It's been over a year since my last Chinese Takeaway review, where does time go? Anyway, we came back from holiday and had a couple of fliers through the door, one from Treasure Cottage which we hadn't heard of before. The pictures looked pretty good, so we decided to make an order that night.

In a break from our usual Kung Po Prawn and Crisy Shredded Beef order, we branched out and went for a couple of dishes from the Chef's Special menu, Su Zhou Duck and Beef in Garlic Black Pepper Sauce as well as boiled rice and duck spring rolls. The whole thing came to around £15.

Delivery wasn't amazingly fast, but it was a Saturday night, so they were probably quite busy. The food was nice and hot when it did arrive though and we got free prawn crackers and because it's December, a free calendar.

The spring rolls were 3 medium thickness ones, I was a bit dubious at first because I'm not massively fond of the fatter spring rolls, but these ones were crispy and tasty.

The Su Zhou Duck came in a big round foil dish and in addition to a duck breast, there was also char su pork and prawns. The sauce was savoury and contained a fair amount of vegetables, mainly brocolli and mushrooms. There was a hint of ginger in there as well. Overall, pretty tasty.

The Beef in Garlic Black Pepper Sauce was super peppery and also very savoury, the sauce contained lots of vegetables, including more mushrooms.

All in all, Treasure Cottage was a hit, both the dishes were nice and a little bit different, however if we order from them again, I would be tempted to go for one sweet dish and one of these two as they were both very savoury.

Score: 4/5

Treasure Cottage, 54 Saughton Mains Gardens, Edinburgh : 0131 455 7638

Spiderman Cartoon Maker

Back in 1994 when we got our new Windows '95 computer, one of the many useless pieces of software it shipped with was the Spiderman Cartoon Maker. This allowed you to make terrible Spiderman cartoons. (This is a typical example). This piece of software had a really annoying sound effect of a cop radio broadcast which goes something like "785 code six, 105 north avenue, 52" (see 1:50 in the above video).

The problem is, 16 years later this sound effect keeps haunting me because it seems anytime a TV show or film need some background radio chatter sound effect, they just use this one. I noticed it most recently in The Town and tried to find out more information about it online, but most places seem to just be message boards where someone tries to explain it and someone else says "That annoying clip from the Spiderman Cartoon Maker?"

Why has it become so ubiquitous? Maybe I should start a catalogue of everywhere I hear that stupid sound clip.