Blogs are going everywhere these days.

Everest Post 2005 is the journal of Gavin Bate's solo Everest bid in aid of Moving Mountains children's charity. He leaves the UK on 28 March and should be at the summit by 28 May.

In case you have trouble finding the RSS feed for this site, it is : http://www.adventurealternative.com/everestpost2005/atom.xml

Canal tunnels

Of all the RSS feeds that I watch daily, the one I look forward to the most is from the blog Retirement with No Problem. Sue and her hubby are retired and live aboard a narrow boat on the English canal system.

It seems like Sue doesn't much like going through tunnels, especially if they are inhabited by bats. But today she met her worse fears head on ( Blisworth Tunnel and on to Northampton) and made it through to the other side. I like bats, and even encourage them to live near us to help keep mosquitoes under control, but I think the decision to make Greywell Tunnel a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) is a bit extreme. Blisworth tunnel would seem to prove that bats and boats can co-exist. But of all the tunnels I have been through, I don't recall an encounter with a bat. About the worst thing that happens in a tunnel is the downpour of water as you pass under a ventilation shaft.

The first major canal tunnel I went through was Harecastle on the Trent and Mersey Canal. It was a school trip and my first introduction to boating on canals, though I had by that time worked on a few canal restoration projects. It may have been in Harecastle that we kept the boogie man at bay by singing "Underground, overgound, Wombling free".

A few years later I was part of an expedition that walked into the eastern end of Sapperton Tunnel. At that time the canal was drained, but we still needed waders to get into the tunnel and we took a small inflatable with us just in case. I'm glad to see that the Canal trust now run boat trips into this section of the tunnel when there is sufficient water.

So you think hydroelectric is green fuel?

It turns out that hydroelectric power is not so green as it might seem. The destruction and fragmentation of habitat is fairly obvious, but it seems that hydro dams are creators of methane, a gas whose greenhouse effect is 21 times more significant than carbon dioxide. The gas is created by the decay of plant matter under water. This is not just a problem when the dam is first flooded, but each year as the water levels rise and fall new plants grow and die.

Read the full article from New Scientist:
Hydroelectric power's dirty secret revealed

Telemarketing Rant

Does your phone ever ring and there is no one there? And *69 doesn't work? It happens here very often, often daily for a week or more. I have long suspected that this is some sort of auto-dialling from a telemarketing call center, and yesterday my theory was confirmed.

I stop what I am doing, set down my tools, switch off the machines that are running and rush to the office to pick up the phone. "Hello" I say. No answer. "Hello.... Hello", then just as I was about to hang up, an automated recording starts. "This is a telemarketing call from *** Book Club. All of our representatives are busy. We will call you back again." Well, I don't remember their exact words, but that was the gist of it.

So in other words, they don't give a rat's ass how much inconvenience they cause me, as long as they don't have to have a telemarketer waiting for a few seconds for the phone to ring and someone to answer. This is done using a Predictive Dialer. What's more there is no one for me to rant to about how I don't appreciate being disturbed by these calls. I always feel a lot better after I have given one of these people a hard time. It would be really nice if I could get them to quit their low-life job, then the company they work for would have to spend money recruiting and training a new sucker to work for them. Hitting their bottom line is the only way to stop this anti-social form of marketing.

I really like Jerry Seinfelds conversation with a telemarketer. As for this from a telemarketer, all I can say is too bad. You choose to do the job, if you can't hack it, quit and get a real job.

As for this opt-out service by the Canadian Marketing Association, we will see what happens now that I have registered. But I really don't see why I should have to take the initiative to opt-out. Why not an opt-in service? Maybe because no one actually wants to receive these calls?

The CBC offers these Tips for Dealing with Telemarketers.

Over at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission website, I really thought I was onto something good:
"As of October 1st, 2004, the telemarketer must give you a unique registration number which you should write down as proof that your "do not call" request was made. " However, further reading shows that this never came into effect. The document outlining the objection to the suggested changes makes interesting reading:

"The CMA argued that a number of smaller businesses and not-for-profit organizations that rely heavily on telephone solicitation in order to sell products and services or to obtain donations and funding may have to abandon the use of telecommunications for this purpose if forced to implement these new measures." Well, I for one wouldn't loose any sleep over that.

".... the requirement to issue a unique registration number to every customer who makes a DNC request was causing Canadian businesses to incur significant start-up and re-training costs...."
"..the requirement to maintain a live operator, as opposed to an interactive voice mail system, during regular business hours was causing Canadian businesses to incur a huge expense..."

See, it's all about the bottom line, so I will continue my policy of making their lives hell and never-ever buying anything from a telemarketer.

On a more positive note, the CMA does seem to prefer "a coordinated, enforced, national DNC (do not call) list.", but I guess that isn't going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime I guess I will have to continue winding up these time-wasters a little longer.

A Tale of Two Kitties

Last November our household cat population suddenly tripled. My wife phoned from work to tell me that she had agreed to take a kitten that needed a home. Trixie would be arriving the next day.

But that very same night there was a big crash against the screen door. Once we got the dogs calmed down and under control, we ventured out to see what was happening. The sound of flapping wings and a growling noise suggested that murder was afoot. Indeed, it didn't take long to find the injured pigeon, and the flash light showed a pair of bright eyes staring out from under a bush. Pat took the pigeion into the house to see how badly it was injured, while I went after the cat. I say cat with hindsight, for at the time it was such a growling, hissing, skinny, stripey monster that it seemed more like a cross between weasel and raccoon, or even perhaps an alien species. It really didn't want to be caught, but when I put a bowl of food down and it came right over and started scoffing like it hadn't eaten in a week, so I scooped it up and secured it in the workshop.

Trixie arrived the next day as arranged. A funny looking kitten with it's white, black and tan fur going every-which-way. She was only four months old but had had a pretty bad life. Her mother had been killed on the road, and Trixie herself had been found in a shed where her siblings had starved to death around her. She had two other temporary homes before settling with us, but for all that she has turned out to be a really sweet and affectionate little cat.

We decided to call the other cat Bunny. She spent the first few days in a crate in my workshop while we tried to find her an owner, but to no avail. Once she had been checked out by the vet we introduced her to Trixie. The pair of them lived together in a bedroom for several weeks while we introduced them gradually to our three dogs and our cat, Ellen. They have formed a very close friendship and are often to be found snuggled up together or grooming one another, though Bunny seems to have taken on more of a mother role, often holding Trixie down while she washes her. Our dogs get on fine with them, and Bunny often tries to rub her head up against one of the dogs. In fact, just the other night, while Trixie was away at the vets for spaying, Bunny started grooming Hannah.

Sadly, the pigeon died the day after Bunny's noisy arrival at our back door.

The Drang

Just across the road from my grandmother's house was a narrow footpath sandwiched between the cottage hospital and a residential area. My family always refered to this path as the drang. It was walled on both sides, and high enough to stop one seeing over, unless of course you were a small boy who liked climbing stone walls. There was another drang not too far away from my own home, this time between a cemetery and some houses, with wooden fencing on the side of the houses, and a thick hedge on the other.

I can't recall anyone outside of my own family referring to these paths as a drang, so I have often wondered whether it was a word they made up. I could never find it in a standard English dictionary. So recently I tried searching for a definition on the internet, and was surprised when I found it in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. This was interesting because I have a great great great granduncle who emigrated to Newfoundland, and his son returned to Somerset to live with my great great great grandfather in the 1890's.

Yesterday I finally remembered to stop by the reference library to see what I could find out about this word. The Oxford English Dictionary lists it as a variant of drong, and defines it as a narrow lane or passage. There are written references to it dating back to 1787, all coming from the west country counties of Cornwall, Devonshire, Dorset and Somerset. In 1863 the Dorset Glossary listed drong or drongway, a narrow way between two hedges or walls. Another reference in 1880-88 lists drang and drang-way.

Also in the library I found a copy of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. One reference from 1858, "'The new priest in Conception Bay' , quoted 'the constable passed the drung that led up to his forge and dwelling..". More recently in 1972 - "There are 'drungs' (lanes) and roads shooting off in all directions....." . The online version has some supplementary entries from the 1980's.

All of these references indicate that the word is dialect, and suggest that it is derived from throng or thring, meaning crowded or pressed. Certainly the drangs I know were barely wide enough for two pedestrians to pass.

So, I'm curious just how common a word it was, or indeed if it is still in common use today. If you are familiar with the words drang, drong or drung, do please leave a comment.