Continuing on the 3 ball shower

I did some more work on the 3 ball shower, it seems to be slowly coming together, it feels a lot more difficult than previous things, the 1/low ball thrown from the left isn’t quite straight and curves a little, I eventually hit it with the 5 ball thrown from the right.

In between attempts I’ve been trying to solidify my reverse cascade, it’s slowly becoming stronger and stronger. I should try and also get the fake working, not sure if the fake is easier than one up two up or not. I’d like to get factory working as well.

I have ordered the complete Buffy and Angel on DVD as they are on offer. More things to make me broke.

Ma francais class est ce soir. J’ai ne faire pas révision depuis dernier temps. Je attempt une sentance en Francais pour chacun blog entrée.

Strangly Torchwood seems to be far better this season, finally making the characters multidimensional, it’s still not brilliant but far better than it used to be.

Driving Lessons: Junctions

This week was focused on junctions. The early bits were recaps, I seemed to start stop with no problems, gear changes were fine. Junctions seem easy enough, I sometimes turned left to early or to late, mostly a question of practice. Two faults seem to be remembering to change down to 1st when stationary at the junction and remembering to clutch control it a bit finer. Got a little nervous when there was a vehicle behind me but I suppose that’s something I’ve got to overcome.

With the driving lessons taking a significant amount of cash, this will be the first month that I can remember when I have to dip into my savings, this is partially brought about by work claiming an advance for a conference back (we expected to use the advance for the hotel fee, but found it was directly paid for once).

French

I’ve realized I’ve done very little of the french I meant to do over the christmas holiday and I’ve got the first class this year on thursday. As usual I’m forgetting simple words.

J’ai fais jonglerie. Je peux fais la cascade à trois balles. Je essaye fais massues, mais ils tomber.

Probably badly translated

Tried doing a bit more work on the three ball shower, managed about 6 balls before collapse, my reverse cascade is getting far stronger. I’d like to do tricks such as off the elbow and kick-up, they look fun.

No signs of problems with any other fish, had another guppy fry sighting, he is starting to look much bigger than when him was born. I tried feeding him on a little ground adult food and he seemed to go for it. The platys are still shy, the two platys don’t seem to play together. Possibility they are breed to far apart to think they are both the same. They and the catfish seem to chase their own reflection an awful lot.

3 ball shower

During this weeks juggling meeting I tried getting a 3 ball shower working, it’s a lot more difficult than the other tricks I’ve done before, I suppose instead of just slightly modifying the cascade it isn’t using the cascade so it’s an entirely different kettle of fish, I suppose I’ve done all the easy tricks now. Towards the end of the night I got it working for the first few throws, I seemed to be syncing both the left and right hand however, I should probably do it async. I also practised my 3 ball reverse cascade a bit more, I’m not longer trying to throw higher and higher now.

When I got home (at 11.30), I found the red guppy dead. I did a 5 litre (my bowl is 5 litre) water change vacuuming a load of junk of the gravel. I suppose I should do another 5 litres in a day or two.

Juggling over the weekend

I tried doing an endurance 3 ball cascade with no tricks to liven it up, I lasted for just under 3 minutes before I dropped. Hopefully it’ll improve over the months till I can get it up to 10 minutes. Two ball in right hand can last for 1 minute.

I continued messing around with windmill and tried to get two in left hand a bit better, still no luck getting it solid, its clear it is my weaker hand. On Sunday I went down to the park since I still can damage my clubs in my house, I managed to juggle 5 throws of a 3 club cascade. I’m getting an awful lot of wrong ended catches especially from the initial throw. Catching is painful my little finger always gets in the way.

Still doing theory practice I usually get just one or two wrong. I should easily get 43 but of course I want to understand all the places I tend to get things wrong, it’s usually on things that I wouldn’t dream of doing like. Does using a mobile phone make your reactions a) 2 times worse b) 4 times worse… And how long after taking drugs should you not drive for. It’s a bit annoying.

Fry Still Alive

On Friday I went to the gym with Shaoyun, spent just over an hour in there (rid the cycle for 25 minutes, record for me). Got in later than usual and didn’t try to feed the potential guppy fry. Next morning came down and found a fry hiding in the plants again, it was still alive, I suppose with me feeding it regularly it didn’t try to come out of it’s ‘lair’ and I didn’t see it.

On Saturday bought a new Wok and decided to buy some more fish, bought 1 leopard Danio to bring the Danio’s back to 6, also got 2 siamese algae eater and  2 platys.

The blue guppy female seemed not to be eating, which is usually a sign of them about to give birth. Later on on Sunday evening she started laying, strangly they all came out still births and were promptly eaten by the Danio’s, she then seemed to be quite listless and having trouble swimming, she died soon afterwards. I suppose she was both trying to give her kids a fighting chance and to try to reduce the load on here own system. I’m still not entirely sure what was wrong with her, she had a red patch underneath her stomach. Unfortunately the red guppy seems to be suffering from a similar problem, maybe I should do another water change and vacuum the gravel again and reduce feeding.

New Watch

I spent a little bit of time searching for watches online, 95% of watches are to chavy or to dressy for every day and they don’t do stopwatch functionality. In the end I thought about buying a watch for outdoor sports with an altimeter and stuff, but I don’t often go hiking to places where I would need such a beast. Rather than buying a Casio 1980’s style watch I decide I would go for a heart rate monitor one in the end I decided upon a Suunto t3.

I really need to stop spending so much money, especially with the cost of driving lessons eating a good few percentages of my salary.

I really wish I could go to the British Juggling Convention in Doncaster, but I think I will be in France at the time. I might try to go to the European one,that means flying to Birmingham to Frankfurt or Stanstead to Baden Airport.

No Fry

I’ve not seen either of the fry for two days now, they have probably been eaten but I’ll continue to try to feed them for a little while yet in case they are to well hidden.

I’m trying to write a program to convert a family tree in XML into a nicely laid out graphic (probably using SVG), my original idea was to use graphviz, but I found that it was nearly impossible, so I’m probably going to roll my own using ruby’s SVG library. Hopefully shouldn’t be to difficult.

I had an awful juggling practice last night, was dropping balls really easily not sure why. The day before I was able to do loads of tricks. I’m a lot better than I was just a week ago, but I don’t understand why my two in one hand in the left hand hasn’t really improved, I still can’t go past 6 throws or so without dropping or throwing a ball very eccentrically. I also want to try and push a bit of endurance with my 3 ball cascade, I can do just over about 2 minutes, I’d like to get to ten. I should probably buy a new watch with a stopwatch on it.

Driving Lessons: Gear changes and Clutch Control

Second driving lesson, went to Rowley Fields (just down Narborough road) practiced starting and stopping again, I only stalled it once when starting, but a few times when stopping because I used the clutch before the break and then at other times breaking and forgetting to put the clutch on. Gear changes seem easy enough as well as clutch control (the inertia helps a lot). Rowley Fields seems popular with driving instructors as there was more learner drivers around there than real traffic. Next week is corners although Rowley Fields did have some that I went around today.

Double the Fry and Juggling Notation

Since it’s a week since I added the antifungal stuff, I decided to do a water change (this time heating the water to the proper temperature). Whilst doing it I actually noticed there was not one fry but two. They’re very good at hiding, since I now know where they hide most often I can more easily get food down to them and not spread it over the entire aquarium and have the adults eat 90% of it.

I’m also wondering what sex some of my Danio’s are, some websites say female Danio’s are the larger (in the belly) of the two, and are slightly rounder. Every morning there seems to be a frenzy going on, going so fast they have obviously not checked their mirrors and blind spots before departing. I’ve got another driving lesson today, I’ve been mentally running through the process of stopping and starting, I get all the actions but sometimes in the wrong order.

Continuing to read the juggling encyclopedia, I’m really surprised that there isn’t one unified notation that can represent nearly an entire performance, maybe not some of the fine nuance but the general gist. It’d be really nice to have famous performances in a ’sheet’ juggling form, so people can see what makes a good performance. I think I’m not a numbers juggler I prefer tricks and techniques.