Following hot on the heels of the first HomeCamp, so HomeCamp 2 happens. For the uninitiated, HomeCamp is the home hacking, automation and green technology community. Think smart meters, monitoring and graphing energy usage.
HomeCamp 2 is on Saturday 25th April 2009, 10am until 6pm at Bash Creations, 65-71 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4PJ. A map of the venue is here.
HomeCamp 2 aims to build on the success of the first event, with an OpenSim event running alongside for virtual participation and to demo the RealWorld and VirtualWorld modelling and automation that the community has been doing.
theattick.tv are the official Media Partners for HomeCamp and will be streaming the event over on the HomeCamp ustream.tv channel and also streaming into the HomeCamp sim on ReactionGrid. They will also be interviewing people thoughout the day and putting together video footage from the day for HomeCamp TV. So if you are coming to the event, be sure to get yourself on film!
This is the place I like to go and watch a movie on a Saturday night. ReactionGrid on OpenSim. Each Saturday they play a crappy old movie, normally black and white. This week a colour 1970’s voted top 19th most rubbish movie, Track of the Moon Beast. They hold the movie to stress test their servers. Genius idea. Mixing business with pleasure. So dive in and take a look. It warms the cockles of my heart.
Today I had the pleasure of appearing on the fridaymorningreport.tv talking about HomeCamp. I was as nervous as crap about this. I tune in to this show every week and Craig asked me to appear on thre show and talk about HomeCamp. Shaking aside, I enjoyed it much. Enjoy.
Last week I met David Crane from a website called Debatewise. Debatewise is an interesting concept. An encyclopedia of opinions and debates if you like and it intends to have debates covering all subjects.
Debatewise is a non profit organisation and is aiming to be self sufficient in order to generate revenue for good causes. Ther eare over 600 debates already on the website and it is a great place to go and see the “pros” and “cons” of propular and diverse conversations that are taking place.
Last weekend we silently opened up registration for the next Home Camp in April 2009. We are yet to confirm the exact date and venue. However, head over to the wiki and sign-up and suggest session topics.
We’re still planning on contributing to the FMR marathon when it does go ahead, in the mean time, indulge in some of the footage that we shot.
The first Home Camp TV video is a brief chat with Martin Dix from CurrentCost about how the company’s technology is moving forward.
The second video is an interview with Andy Piper, looking back at the first Home Camp and looking forward to the next one in April. General rambling about software and hardware hacks.
We cover a lot of subjects in this conversation, including home automation, Current Cost, Google Power Meter, Pachube, Nokia Home Control Center, arduino, Home Easy to name a few.
Talking with Robert Brook about the Skunk Works group at Parliament. Wikipedia describes a Skunk Works as
A skunkworks project is one typically developed by a small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of innovation.
A skunkworks project often operates with a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects.
Insight into the Hansard Archives that the team have developed and the other technology and applications developed within the team like isthehousesitting.com. We also inevitably get on to twitter and location based services.
David Cameron launched the Conservatives ‘Green Paper’ on the Low Carbon Economy (LCE) on Sunday 18th January 2008. You can also watch the video of the LCE launch on the Conservatives Mogulus Channel. I would have embedded the video, but it insisted on autoplaying and there did not seem to be a permalink for the video.
The main points of the LCE are as follows:
An electricity internet – we will add computing intelligence to electricity networks by introducing a smart grid and the use of smart meters in homes. This will allow demand and supply to be intelligently managed, and pave the way for large-scale use of renewable energy sources. A system of feed-in tariffs – we will create a decentralised energy revolution by paying people who produce energy from renewable resources A new national recharging network – this will enable Britain to lead the world in replacing traditional cars with electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles New low carbon energy sources – we will enable biogas, methane produced from farm and food wastes, to replace up to 50% of our residential gas heating Low carbon buildings, transport and commerce – including a new entitlement for every home to be fitted with up to £6,500 of energy efficient improvement
Having watched the webcast, David Cameron massively emphasizes the policy of smart meters. As I pointed out in a post last week, smart meters have been written into English law and energy suppliers will be obliged to provide smart meters to customers. So I see no benefit in the Conservatives emphasizing smart meters as though they are the great inventors of a new found technology. It is a matter of course that they will be installed, whether the Conservatives come into power or not.
The Green Paper also includes a vision for encouraging people to generate their own energy and sell back to the national grid.
We will create a decentralised energy revolution by paying people who produce energy from renewable resources
The system of feed in tariffs is an interesting idea and the future of energy generation. Although as far as I am aware, the rates for feed in tariffs are already scheduled to be increased to encourage micro energy generation, so there is nothing new here also.
The claims of tapping into farm and food methane waste are over ambitious at this stage.
we will enable biogas, methane produced from farm and food wastes, to replace up to 50% of our residential gas heating.
I am not sure of the timeframe quoted to meet the 50% claims, but clearly this will not be a fast move. Even if the Conservatives win the next general election, I find it hard to believe that these sorts of figures would be ahieved with 3 terms of Government.
While I welcome the general thinking behind the LCE ‘Green Paper’ policies of the Conservative Party, I have to say that I agree with Nick Clegg on the substance of this new ‘Green Paper’:
This announcement is like David Cameron riding his bike, but what is important is what is in the car behind him.
You may know from a previous blog post that I attended an event last year called Amplified. Christian Payne (aka @documentally) interviewed attendees about their opinion of the future of social media and I was lucky enough to be interviewed.
The video is 16 minutes long and contains some excellent and diverse views of where social media is going. Amplified was an excellent event and I’m looking forward to the next one.
An interview with Steve Lamb from Microsoft UK, taking a look at the new Windows 7 Beta that has been released and is available for download now from the Microsoft website. Taken at the Tuttle Club, at the ICA in London, UK. The Tuttle Club is a busy and well supported event, so apologies for the hum of the geek speak in the background.
I am yet to try out Windows 7, but I am intending to download it over the weekend and have a look. By all accounts it is much faster than Vista and far more power efficient, giving longer battery life on a laptop. The download is over 2GB.
Last night I travelled up to Phil Campbell’s noshIT event in Burton upon Trent. So called because the night takes place in a Greek restaurant called Mykonos. It is a small gathering of geeks, publicised only by word of mouth to create an intimate environment, combined with lots of conversation and live video streams.
The food and service was top notch, which consisted of wave after wave of really tasty starters. I nearly didn’t leave enough room for the main.
It has been a couple of weeks since homecamp and I haven’t written a blog about it. Henous I hear you say. But seriously, I am so busy at the moment. Pulling off Home Camp in 3 weeks was hard enough, but the follow up was almost as hard. Juggling it amongst client work, was even harder.
There has been some great blog posts about Home Camp and I’ll not attempt to regurgitate their content about the day. Here are a selection, and if you are missing from the list, let me know.
I have forgotten loads of blogs that have mentioned Home Camp. The community support has been unbelieveable. Please do not be offended, I have just been so busy.
There was also a couple of home camp logos created over the weekend. These were beyond my wildest dreams. The community took over and sorted out what was needed.
For me, the ultimate was meeting Andy Stanford-Clark – the guy monitors his mousetraps, what’s not to like?
You can see his session on Andy Piper’s blog. Andy can check the resistance of the cheese in the mousetraps to determine whether the cheese is desirable to a mouse or not. Genius. Genius in lab coat proportions. I want to go out and buy a labcoat and do experiments.
We had a great day and I am looking forward to the next event in March 2009. We paved the way for the next event and I am excited by the reaction we have had from the first event.
My favourite video from the day is the community interviews:
After a few hectic weeks in the planning, I’m pleased to say that Home Camp happens today. I’m looking forward to this event. Ever since I started to think about Home Camp, it has been fun watching the event progress.
This weekend I went to the British White Water Rafting Championships. The story behind this is that I used to work with one of the team, Matt Blue and have known another member of the team, Hoopla, for a few years. While I was paddling in the Alps a few weeks ago, we hatched a plan to enter a team.
The British Rafting Championships involved 20 teams in total, with 16 mens rafts and 4 womens rafts. The winners will represent Great Britain in European white water rafting competitions next year along with the runners up in both the womens and mens categories.
I’ve not been in a raft on white water for about 18 years, but I’m pretty much game for anything involved with paddling, so this was too good an opportunity to miss especially because the weekend was a great chance to catch up with old friends.
The competition was held at Llandysul Paddlers, in Llandysul, South Wales on the River Teifi. Llandysul run Raft Guide courses each month along with kayak and open canoe courses. With the competition course located right next to the centre, this was a great location to run the event with all activities taking place from the main Llandysul Paddlers raft base pictured left.
The competition consisted of various events, with each event carrying points depending upon time and position:
Time Trial – a balls out fast sprint against the clock over a course of about 500m of white water.
Head to Head – two rafts sprinting head to head down the same course as the sprint.
Slalom Course – upstream and downstream gates to navigate throughout the same white water course.
10km endurance race held on the Sunday.
We arrived on the Friday night, and decided to hold our team preparation, strategy meeting and hydration in the Porth Hotel. When I say preparation, I mean that true to form, we were the last to get kicked out the bar.
There are 6 people in each raft team and our raft was made up of Tony Pape (Blue), Richard Procter, Steve Greaves, myself, and two last minute additions made up of stragglers: Steve and Sam, our affectionately newly nicknamed team member called Zulu – I’ll try and add the full names here later this week.
The competition started bright and early on Saturday morning with a safety brief and introduction from Matt Blue, which you can see a video of this above.
The first event of the day was the sprint, where each raft would sprint flat out over the course. This would act as a bench mark for the head to head event and allow the fast teams to have first pick of their favoured raft. I gotta say, I was crapping myself before this event. Our team hadn’t event set foot in raft together and the hydration exercise the night before was seemingly having the opposite desired effect.
Suddenly, our time was up and we were on the water in the raft listening to the one minute count down waiting for our race to begin. 5,4,3,2,1. We were off. The adrenalin rush was immense. Putting everything into the 2 and a half minutes sprint. Here is a video of one of the sprints starting off.
The gulf between our raft and the GB team raft was huge. They looked like a finely tuned synchronised team of pistons. With every stroke, each paddlers arm, paddle and hand position were completely in tune, entering and leaving the water at exactly the same time. They were a complete joy to watch.
After the sprints came the head to head heats. This event ran like a knock out competition. So the better the raft, the more heats you ran until there was an eventual winner. We only managed two heats. We lost the first heat. Annoyingly so. It was a ferocious battle with our raft battling side by side of our opponents for most of the course. But we got edged into an eddy three quarters of the way down the course and ended up loosing all our speed. We’d been beaten and we were gutted. We felt we could have beaten them and our lack of practice time had let us down.
Head to head racing
Determined to make amends, we won our second heat with a cunning use of tactics by edging our opponents into an eddy. The same tactics used against us in the first heat. For us, the head to head was over. The feeling of winning was superb and although we didn’t progress any further in that event our spirits were high as went into lunch.
After lunch was the slalom course. I felt we had a good chance to hold our own in this, as we all know how to paddle and this event is as much about skill as speed. We had a couple of practice runs on the slalom course after lunch and we missed loads of gates. It wasn’t looking like it would be a good day for our raft.
We were one of the first rafts to go down the slalom course, and I’m not sure what happened but we pulled it out the bag when it mattered. Our first run was a near perfect descent. We didn’t miss any gates, and only managed to pick up 15 penalty points for clipping three gates. We got out on a huge high with applause from the bank. Only the GB raft team managed to have a clear run and there were not many rafts that managed to make every gate.
The 5th best white water slalom raft in Great Britain
Our second slalom run was a dismal showing. We were tired. It had been a long day. But we were confident we had done ourselves proud on the first run. We came 5th in the Slalom. The 5th best slalom raft in Great Britain! It was worth all the aches and pains throughout the day, and the 7 hour drive to get there.
The day was rounded off with a meal and presentation of the results with prizes for every raft that competed on the day followed by a disco. We partied long and hard into the night at the Porth Hotel, who looked after us really well.
Sunday morning was the 10km endurance race. Unfortunately I didn’t enter this. We needed to get back to London, and I felt sad watching all the teams kitting up and heading out to the course. I’m sure they had a great day again.
Our raft finished 10th overall in the competition out of 16 rafts, but we were all buzzing to come 5th in the slalom competition. If only we had put some training in.
A huge thanks to Matt Blue and everyone involved for an incredibly well organised event that ran like clockwork. Attention to detail was superb and everyone that competed was made to feel a winner and given a prize at the dinner in the evening.
As soon as I have photos from Jason Pacey (Magic), who was the official photographer, I’ll be updating this blog and adding some gnarly action shots.
We are already planning our raft for next years event and there is talk of actually training for the event next year
Paddling difficulty: Grade2. Weather: overcast and rain.
This weekend I went paddling with a group of old pals and my wife at a canoeing event called the Tyne Tour. I’ve never been to this event before, and had never paddled the River Tyne before, so was looking forward to this one and especially seeing some old friends.
We loaded the car on Thursday night and drove to the camp site that we would be staying in hexham, along with the hundreds of other paddlers. I must say, I was amazed that it only took 5 and a half hours to get to hexham from home, and bang on google’s predictions. Having said that, we arrived at 2.30am, so there was not much traffic on the road.
The Tyne Tour offically started on the Friday evening. So because we arrived Thursday night, we were the only people on the whole of the site. Friday morning we got up early(ish) and loaded the boats on to the car and headed for the river. We would be paddling the River Tyne from Kielder Reservoir to Hexham, which is about a 30 mile paddle. This would make for a days paddling with a sense of urgency, especially because it gets dark around 4pm, so we were under pressure of time for the whole day.
I was truly amazed by the stunning scenery of the River Tyne. We pretty much had the river to ourselves and only saw 4 open canoes on the river for the whole day. The upper Tyne was a series of gentle rapids seperated by reasonably long flat sections. You might call it a long slog, but then setting off to paddle 30 miles in about 5 hours is always going to be.
We decided to have a floating lunch. I cracked up when I played this video back while writing this post. Everyone eating, and suddenly no banter or talking. It had been a hard morning.
It was a short lunch and we cracked into the paddling again. Unfortunately we didn’t make the whole 30 miles, we ended up only doing around 24 miles, as we ran out of light.
When we returned to the campsite, the desolate patch of grass next to the golf course from the morning was now rammed with tents, and resembled a music festival with refreshments vans and with vendors selling canoe gear.
Weather: Cloudy with some headwinds. Paddling difficulty: Grade 2.
Day 2 – Running Warden Gorge
We woke up with more than a slight headache after the evening festivities and headed to the water for 11am. It had rained quite hard during Friday night, although I’m pleased to say that I slept through it.
As the Tyne Tour had started properly, we were getting on the water with hundreds of kayakers and a few fellow open boaters. We would be paddling only 14 miles on this day and the grand finale at the end of the days paddling was the rapid at Warden Gorge. A reasonably challenging rapid about 50 meters in length covered in waves with a huge chance of either campsizing or getting your boat swamped with water and ultimately campsizing anyway. The folklaw to this rapid is built up by the fact that you are not allowed to inspect the rapid before running it, because it is an area of Special Scientific Interest.
Sitting at the top of the rapid and watching kayak after kayak tackling the rapid with quite a few capsizes and swims certainly focussed the mind. There were about 8 of us paddling Open Canoes and we negotiated the top part of the rapid and eddied out on the right hand side about a third of the way down to get a better look at the bigger waves on the latter part of the rapid.
I’m pleased to say that not one of us swam.Here’s a couple of photos from Ben Keen who ran the rapid first and setup to get some photos of us all coming down. I had a bit of a surf on the wave at the bottom, but it was carnage with kayaks and canoes everywhere making it difficult to have a decent go.
A 20 minute paddle later and we were back at the campsite and got ready to head out and see the fireworks. We had a cracking thai curry and quaffed one or two scherbets. A great end to a great day.
Weather: Cloudy with some strong headwinds punctuated with blinding sunshine on the final stretch. Paddling difficulty: Grade 2/3/4.
Day 3 – The final day
We woke up to terrential rain and my tent was sat in a huge puddle. I decided that I was going to head back home and miss the final days paddling which was a repeat of yesterday. It would have been great to paddle with everyone else. The river must have had a huge amount of water in it from all the rain and I’m told that everyone in our group swam. So it must have been pretty big water.
I had a great time at the Tyne Tour and I hope I’ll be back there next year. Great company and great paddling.
We took the new canoe out for it’s maiden voyage today. I finally finished fitting it out this morning and couldn’t resist the opportunity for a test drive.
Courtesy of a post over on songofthepaddle.co.uk, we decided to go and have a flat water afternoon on the River Medway, which is only about 30 minutes drive.
My final day of canoeing was spent on Day 1 of the Ardeche River, in France. When I say Day 1, I’m referring to the section of river you normally do if you just run the river for one day. You get on at Creps and get off at Chame.
The day started off learning to surf a wave backwards in an open canoe. We did this on the rapid called Peachy. A great training venue, we had a good play here.
To finish the day off, Charlemagne never dissapoints. Everyone descended backwards and eddied out to have a play. We had great fun here. Bashing the kayaks out the way and jumping on the wave. Great to see the tandem surfing too. Albeit in slightly small boats. After playing solo on the wave, I decided to surf the wave tandem with Blue and had a swim trying to surf the wave backwards. Shame I didn’t get that on camera, but you do see me swimming while tandem with Danny.
A cracking end to an amazing two weeks. The end of the video sums it up. The last days paddling for the whole of the season for those guys who travelled home the next day.
Thanks to everyone on Blue’s Paddle Training for making me feel welcome and sharing some memorable times. Inspiring me to run out a buy a new boat. Stay tuned for that one and more video footage.
A huge thanks to Blue, Matt Blue and Phil Hadley for putting up with me on the courses and training. Really enjoyed being a trainee in your sessions.
After the high jinks of the Apls, I have been glad to get down to a bit of rest for a few days and a spot of work. Being on a campsite with wifi is awesome and means I am the same as at home.
This afternoon I went paddling with Matt Blue down the Upper Ardeche. A stalwort of the GB rafting squad, I worked with Matt back in 199something. His first season, my last. He since went on a skills mission, worked many seasons on the Ardeche, worked as a raft guide on the Zambizee and now paddles on the GB Raft squad.
We had spent the afternoon driving round looking for a river worth running. Then as if by magic, it appeared that the tap had been turned on. The river started appearing high and running well. Transporting water from a reservoir, down many levels, into the town to keep the resources moving. Amazing to see resource management and movement happening. Nonetheless, we embraced the water level and had a great paddle down a few hairy rapids.
There are two rivers feeding this. The Font blah de blah de blah (apparently), and the Ardeche. A great afternoon paddling. Some great rapids. Big and bouncy. Lots of rocks.
After this, Matt ran back the 2k to the bus with trailor and returned to collect us and get home. We stopped off for a Mc Doo and the obligatory walk round a sports shop and I bought a new river nife and tape for rescues.
Looking forward to 4* Leader training. Bring it on.
Waking up after another bivvy and another night spent round a huge fire and N glasses of vino (N being the positive integer greater than 1). People were practising their bushcraft skills of making an ashtray out of a log and burning the hole using embers and sticks from the fire.
Ipod music and a great night had by all. We had already paddled back to Carlsberg after having the most amazing steak dish, with three different sauces, plus a huge salad and a strange pasta and ham dish that lived under the dangling steak and received the nasty end of of the flamed cognac. Picutres to follow.
The Rab is a nasty rapid on La Durance river, in the French alps. The import thing to remember is that rapids change. And nasty rapids eat you and change.
I was paddling tandem down this rapid and we swam like fish. I love this photo. Still paddling to the bitter end.
Paddling the Rab, on La Durance, France.
I recorded this video of everyone coming down the Rab. Not for the feint hearted in an open boat. We unanimously love the typewriter move that sucks from the chicken run to the nasty hole. We did laugh.
