Month: May 2011

Up the grim north

Panorama

Weekend at my brothers. We headed off at 16:00 and had a good journey up the M1 and got there before 20:00.
On Saturday the weather was showers and grey skies, we pottered about the house, had some lunch then headed off to The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) to have a look at the latest exhibition. On the way there we stopped at Go Outdoors where a purchased a couple of tops to replace the one I lost walking to work.
The YSP was good as usual, I can’t remeber the artists name but heads of various sorts figured a lot, mapny of them made fro welded characters. There was one room with some very big gongs to bash, we felt like the man off the rank signature clip. The weather held out for the rest of the after noon. We had pizzas for tea.
Sunday weather was worse, we went for a swim then had lunch, follwed by a quick walk. Helen and I headed off at 16:30 and got back in good time despite the traffic. We saw a couple park their 4×4 on the two lane contraflow to let their kid have a pee!
We got back in time for a pint and something to eat at the pub that is set up in Buckland Village Hall every year on the may bank holiday. We sat with the Reverend and other church goers who had popped in after even-song.

Aston Clinton vintage car

Scimitar GTC

After a trip to Heathrow to drop some people off as a favour, I got home and Helen and I decided to go the annual Aston Clinton vintage car rally, which despite having been on very year, I had only been to once and Helen had never been to. We went by car because we happened to be out and about in it, but soo decided that next time we should go by bike as the queues to get into the car park were very slow and we ended up queuing for quite some time.

Once in to the ground we had a look round the usual stalls that you get at an out door event i.e. leather good, fruit, fishing gear, double glazing etc, as well as quite a large auto jumble section. Helen then had the idea to give Rory a call to see if he was about. Turns out he was about and we soon hooked up. Rory had his GTC Scimitar on show but despite some careful cleaning he did not win any prizes. We spend some time walking round the cars on display and taking some photos of them.

American car

Rory invited us round his mums for a BBQ which we went to later and it was great to catch up with everyone round ranch C.

Hanna (***)

Hanna film poster

Interesting film about a your girl who lives with her father in the deepest tundra. Hanna is a trained by her father in preparation for when she goes back into the real world and is likely to be tracked down by a CIA agent who started a program to genetically modify human embryos to breed stronger humans for military purpose. The CIA person wants all traces of the program eliminated to cover up her mistakes of the past.

Hanna returns to civilisation and the action starts, as she travels from Africa across Europe with baddies after her. The film is very artistically filmed and there are some great scenery shots.

Submarine (***)

Submarine film poster

Thanks to C&A we got an invite to see a film at The Rex, the film is called Submarine. It centres around a young lad who is awkward and unpopular at school, he fantasizes about his own death and other things. He thinks that is dad is depressed and his mother is having an affair with a hippy and old flame who lives next door. He embarks on a misguided campaign to bring the family back together while attempting to impress a classmate , a straight-talking, eczema-suffering pyromaniac who “hates any place that could be termed romantic.

Filmed entirely almost entirely on Barry island it is a funny film but not that funny hence only 3 out of 5.

 

Dancersend NR more butterflies

Common Blue

Thought I would try out my newly found butterfly id skills, so Helen and I took her mum up to Dancersend NR, to see what we could find. We parked up at the pumping complex car park, and headed into the reserve. Dancersend is notorious for Duke of Burgundy butterflies so there was the potential to see a very rare one.

We headed round the reserve taking our usual route along the field to the bottom of the hill with steps, then turn left at the top[ and come down into the reserve via the foot path and over the large log. We stopped to take some pictures of some of the wild flowers for later identification, although I think Nancy had already figured out what most of them were. We did not see too many butterflies but I spotted a Cardinal Beetle. There were lots of Blackcaps or Garden Warblers singing.

Cardinal Beetle

There were some volunteers working in one of the paddocks, it looked like they were chopping the young hawthorns back to stop them taking over. We then headed back up hill back toward the car and got a few of the butterflies I learnt about yesterday. We sat for a wile on the Susan Cowdy bench, she was obviously an important person in BBOWT as there is a hide at Weston Turville reservoir. We then headed back, but on the way there was a spot that seemed protected, we could see two types Orchid growing, one was Fly Orchid.

Fly Orchid

We were soon back at the car, the weekend almost over, although I had one last appointment with my camera and the church, I needed to get a complete 360 degree panorama of the church, watch this space for the results. The final tally of butterflies was Common Copper, Common White, Orange Tip, Green Veined White, Brimstone, Peacock, Blue something, Grizzled Skipper, Speckled Wood, and finally Red Admiral.

Aldbury Nowers butterfly walk

Dingy Skipper

Helen spotted a butterfly walk/meetup on the BBC website, so she made enquiries and we arrange to meet at the lay by near the Aldbury Nowers (Grid Ref SP949128). Helen had other things to do but I went anyway and took Helen’s dad with me.

After hang about in the lay by waiting until the intended start time, and whilst listening to all the butterflies we might expect to see, we set off round the edge of the field. It soon became apparent that Butterfly miles are far slower than Bird miles, but the act of looking down at the ground and walking slowly means that you have time to take a lot in, and it is surprising what you find when you take the time to look. As well as some of our intended butterfly species we saw spiders, beetles, and a lizard.

After a look round the edge of the field we headed into the woods, which was not as productive, but when we then headed out on the chalk slopes that had been cleared/managed we again started seeing butterflies.

Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis)

The whole evet was about 3 hours from arrival to departure and it cost us nothing, real value for money. We saw the following butterflies: Dingy Skipper, Brown Argus, Green Hairstreak, Small Copper, Small Heath, Grizzled Skipper, Brimstone, Large White, Green Veined White, Orange Tip, Common Blue, and Peacock,

Thanks to the British Butterfly Conservation Society

Vodafone network Royal Wedding statisitics

Here is some interesting information about the Vodafone mobile phone network during the Royal Wedding.

Network Wide Statistics

• Voice:
– entire Day attempts: 63,350,126 – down 2.17%
– calls between 09:00 and 12.30 – 12.4 million – down 17.4%
– calls between 11:00 and 11.30 – 1.65 million – down 31.6%

This is to be expected due to the metric focusing on the network as a whole and being a bank holiday where we have lower traffic than a normal working day. This fact makes the next set of statistics so impressive

• SMS:
– entire Day attempts: 138,446,608 – up 12.3%
– between 08:00 and 14:30 – 20.3 million – up 16%
– between 11:30 and 12:00 – 2.14 million – up 33.4%

• MMS
– 8am to 1pm – 185,108 – up 28.8% compare to last week
– peak between 11:35 and 11:40 – 4580 MMS submitted – up 53.59%

• Data
– 10:00 to 15:00 – 12.85 Terabytes sent/received – up 20.5%

Looking now at two of the primary online news sources we see significant uplifts in traffic driven by our data subscribers:

Mobile Website Traffic – Network Wide

• BBC News
– 161,350 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 36.69% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 219.47%

• SKY News
– 29,041 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 45.27% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 462.52%

Focussing in on the Royal wedding route we see some impressive results

Royal Wedding Location Statistics 08:00 – 15:00

• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 1,102,834 – 26.96% Increase from the previous week

• SMS Traffic
– total: 1,487,014 – 67.22% increase from the previous week

Royal Wedding Statistics – Bucklebury 08:00 – 15:00 (Katherine’s home village)

• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 14,027 – 6.27% Increase from the previous week

• SMS Traffic
– total: 29,953 – 12.12% increase from the previous week

Looking in general across our top sites that covered the Royal wedding route we can see that we carried a staggering amount of additional traffic with a very impressive call performance.

Top Site Traffic 08:00 – 15:00

• Temporary site at St James Park
– voice Attempts: 36,561 – Previous week site was not live.
– dropped Call Rate: 0.55%

• St James Park
– voice Attempts: 25,424 – 456.81% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 1.63%

• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 25,383 – 377.66% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.83%

• Knightsbridge
– voice Attempts: 37,197 – 152.34% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.8%

• Buckingham Palace
– voice Attempts: 22,138 – 503.87% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.75%

• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 23,086- 157.43% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.5%