Physio

I’m at the physio. But not for me, for my dad. Yes, my dad lives in Sheffield in the UK, and indeed, he is heading back there tonight via Hamsterjam and Manchester. It was while he was packing his case that he twisted his knee and now he’s rather sore. Not great when you’ve got a long haul flight this evening and a big foreign airport to rush through tomorrow morning.

So, an emergency visit here:

…to see what they can do, and probably a quick trip to the pharmacy on the way home too, I’d imagine.

It’s not a great situation, but he did do it while moving several bottles of Groot Constantia Chardonnay from the cupboard to his suitcase, and I suppose that if you’re going to damage ligaments in your left knee (which would seem to be the likely diagnosis), at least do it by jarring it while doing something worthwhile.

Full marks for that, then.

The Groot Upload

I extracted the SD card from the camera to upload the photos from this weekend’s Cape Town 7s experience and was immediately confronted by all (or more) of the photos I took last weekend. These hadn’t been uploaded because the intervening 7 days were chaotically busy.

So, I sorted that, and you can see the results here.

From there, it was a fairly straightforward leap to yesterday’s amazing day out at the stadium. My photos are here.

Obviously, I don’t know what sort of show the Dubai or Edinburgh or Nuuk (?) 7s put on, but I have to say that what Cape Town does seems to be very well received by all those involved. (Although of course they’re hardly likely to turn around and slag the place off in these days of mutual ego massaging.) The atmosphere was amazing, the entertainment was superb, the rugby was absorbing and even the final was balanced upon a knife-edge right up to the final kick. This being my kids first 7s experience, it was always going to be that way – never forget Alex’s first footy match was a 7-0, and their first cricket match finished with an incredible SA win off the last ball after a missed run out opportunity.

This time around, England were the beneficiaries of the last minute miss, and really the only disappointment of the day was how few people stayed around to see the trophy presentation. ‘Bad losers’ might be a bit harsh, but after the phenomenal support and sporting reception given to all the teams throughout the day, that extra 10 minutes would have made a big difference, especially given just how tight that last game was. Sadly, all the photos of England’s presentation and celebration are against a backdrop of empty seats. That’s not how it was for the previous 9 hours, nor how it should have been for the last ten minutes.

As Tom Mitchell stepped up to take this second half conversion right in front of us, I remarked on how important it was going to be, and so it proved, being the 2 point difference between the teams at the end.

Sevens

We spent the whole day at the Cape Town Sevens at the Cape Town Stadium in Cape Town.

It was great entertainment, England won, and then the mardy Cape Town crowd deserted the Cape Town Stadium before the presentation of the trophy.

We stayed to watch. Then we had a look at the inside of a parking garage for a while.

Many photos (not of the garage). Tomorrow.

you are not alone

…if you want to end up going to Norway.

Herewith the latest from Bergen’s Alan Walker (you may remember him from such posts as Faded Restrung), Alone:

A message sent from Alan’s laptop attracts “Walkers” from all over the world to Norway, where they gather on a hillside just to the south of Bergen city centre (you’ll have noted the Brann Stadion as the video begins).
What happens next is unclear, but what we do know is that there’s some amazing Norwegian scenery involved, backed up with an uncomplicated but catchy tune, and no small degree of positivity in the song’s message.

Decent.

Electronic Engineering Errors

Here’s the @sheffunilife twitter account. It’s one of those that get passed from person to person each week, allowing for a different perspective of life at Sheffield University:

This week: Ian Wraith, Electronics Technician .

TUoSEEE being The University of Sheffield Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department.

And his account of some odd electrical noise problems:

Noise issues can cause us real problems with parts of the dept researching very small signals.

Here’s the tale:

Oops! But beagle-eyed readers will recognise this artifact-based-erroneous-results-in-scientific-experimentation phenomenon from another time… Remember those Peryton Problems, when we were forced to ask: Just where do perytons come from?
Exactly.

Just for reference, we do occasionally get this sort of thing in the microbiology lab as well, but it’s mainly associated with someone sneezing while inoculating a plate.

None of your tram or microwave problems here.