3 years today and other stuff

Today 3 years ago, I met the most wonderful person in my life. Kind, funny, caring and supportive. I found somebody I'm prepared to give my life up and follow. Because it makes her happy. I guess its the Geographer in me, but who would turn down the chance to experience a different culture and with such a wonderful person. Of course it is tinted with sadness. It became clear after being together for a short time that we will never be 100% happy. With her family living in Spain and mine in England somebody will always lose out.

I was thinking today I'm going to have to say good bye to my friends and family and I have no clue how to do that. Maybe as said in a past post I won't say good bye, instead I'll say see you later. But at the airport, when I'm in Spain I will have to wave people away, see them go through security and get on a plane and fly back to there lives. We always comment when we come back from Spain, how live here goes on with out. How long will it be before people forget us, that couple that used to live in Somerset, what were there names, they moved to Spain. I can see it now, in some respects I'm starting to think that people have forgotten already, I guess its out of sight out of mind.

Tomorrow is dissertation deadline, I get to give away this monster that has controlled my life for so long. When I get it back I will file it under "S" for shit and never look at it again. There will be some stuff that I will never look at again, such as the view from Exmoor, or the dark granite faces of Darkmoor. Months are going to slip by with out me here, the changes of season will be missed, I won't see the river in full flood washing at the tyres of the cars, or a tractor with trailer moving slowly at harvest time. I'll miss the smell of damp cut grass, grass on bare feet and green, green hills, green moors, green river banks. I'm swapping my rural jungle for an urban jungle, but I don't mind. I'm growing up, no longer am I Peter Pan. I'm leaving the place I grew up, moving on, striking out on the first step to having my own. And in a short time I will look back and I will be a more complete person, happier (maybe), richer, maybe not money rich but rich all the same, because I'll have MY family around me.

Here's to another three years. Cheers

Packing

A few weeks ago we started thinking about packing, and decided the first job to do was to sort all my clothes. So we bravely dug around in my cupboards, finding clothes that I've had probably or certainly had since I was a teenager.

A lot of the clothes were bagged up ready to go the Charity shop, but as I put my first ever shirt into the bag I started to feel very sad. It just felt like waste. Here are all these clothes that have most likely been bought for me, by somebody else and now I'm just throwing them away. Not really throwing them away because they are going to the charity shop so other people indirectly benefit. But I'm letting them go. Maybe this is a wider issue with relationship, the give and take element can be traced back not just feelings or houses or cars but also to your life before the relationship started. Maybe with throwing old clothes away I'm saying, yep I'm ready to start my new life with you and I'm also ready to buy new clothes with you as well. :)

This shirt, for instance, my first ever 'going out' shirt was bought for me by my mum, the colour was fading and it smelt, after being stored to long. But clothes are expensive, this I guess is just a cycle, never been very up to date with clothes and I tend to wear what ever is comfortable, again and again, when I'm bored of it I leave it in the cupboard and move on. Its like I've got this blue jumper, I don't like it, but it was bought for me and when it came to throw it out, I said no - you work hard just to have your children throw there clothes out is that ungrateful or part of sharing your life on another level?

House rules

Okay, so as the days run down to moving in day and the prospect of living in the same city as the my step mother gets closer. I've decided that some rules most be put down. I'll get these written in both English and Spanish and display them in the flat. So far the rules are:

1. No whispering - if you can't say it out loud, don't bother

2. No shouting - I never shout and nor should you, it damages the vocal chords and produces more stress and up-set then is needed

3. No arguments - words are often said in the heat of the moment and are very hard to take back

4. No unaccompanied children - children should be with the parents at all time otherwise they cause trouble and disruption

5. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Making alternations to a rented flat is like bouncing a ball against a wall, its fun for a while but does not actually get you anywhere.

Five simply rules to a happy and contented home environment

RESULTS TIME

Starting to get a following!! Please leave a blog address or web address so I can return the comments. Okay results time, in an earlier post I was talking about the experiment I was conducting in a local cave system, attempting to forecast the weather by underground pressure changes. This is part 2:

So I decided on three different types of data, one set called real time, this was the data down loaded from loggers as is, the second set introduced a 1 day lap within the time data and the third set introduced a 5 hour time lag. With me so far. Okay to work out how significant these results were I used a statistical test called Pearson's correlation co-efficient, so thanks Mr Pearson. Now what this does, it take the two data sets, so in this case, one data set was from Bristol Airport and the other set was from Goughs cave and it compares them, not sure how, but it does. And it provides a number or more a formula which can be graphical represented on a graph, the formula details the slope of the curve. It also gives an R square value, which is the important bit because that shows how close to each other the results are.

For the real time data I got an R squared value of 0.5949, you may remember if you read the last post, that the closer the R squared value is to 1 the better, so that's not bad. I ran the same test on the 1 day lag, so the data had one day removed and got an R squared value of 0.6438, getting better. So I ran the test with a 5 hour lag introduced and the R Square value was 0.8888 which is pretty dam good.

So what this means, is its not possible to forecast the weather by underground pressure changes, which is a shame because that would of been cool. Putting it into easy terms so I can understand it, as pressure rises at Bristol Airport, pressure will also rise at Goughs cave only 5 hours later...hence a 5 hour delay exists. Pretty neat.

So what next, well as of today I have a month to write the experiment up, get it printed and ready for submission, also I have to write an essay called Psychogeography in a Heritage town...which could be interesting and then I have an exam on Paloclimate....don't even go there!! Then the summer starts, and of course there is the small matter of graduating, getting up in front of my peers and collecting my 2:2 we can't all be really, really smart you know.

In a quiet place

I'm in a quiet place regarding work at the moment, just waiting for the next set of date line, so had plenty of time to surf the net looking for geography related stuff...and boy did I find it. I decided to write a list of Geographies, just for fun.

Neogeography
Guerrilla Geography
Psychogeography
Deep topography
Historical Geography
Meteorology
Climatology
Development Geography
Coastal Geography
Cartography
Culture Geography
Gender Geography
Fenismist Geography
Fluvial
Regional Geography
Urban Geography
Geology
Hydrology
Geography of Disease

This is a mixture of both Physical and Human Geography and the list has not ended yet, there is more. I just got to find them. The first three are aspects that I've not come across, stuff they don't teach you at uni. For instance the second one in, a group calling themselves Guerrilla Geographers, there mandate is to force geography done peoples throats, at first this worried me, Geography, when related to your primary bread winner, rather then a passing interest, should not be forced onto people. Its the fear of whats new, but after so more reading I started to see what they were trying to say.

Being a physical Geographer, science has and always will hold the answers for me, but even the most up-tight science head has place for a little bit of slack jaw human rubbish. I've spent the last three years running from Human Geography because in my eyes it can't provide the answers. I was asked the other day what type of Geography I like, or what type of Geographer I was and I think I'm a regional geographer, a friend has spent the last three years not taking sides, he calls it sitting on the Geographical fence, but Regional Geography does just that, it sits on the fence bringing out the best of science and not science, ie Human Geography. The regional paradigm fell apart in the early 80's I think, being replaced with the current definition of Geography as place and space, regional geography is place and space.

Geography is an important and large subject, anything remotely geographical that can not be pigeoned holed into either science or social science is geography.

www.passion4geography.co.uk

I'm in a quiet place so I'm gonna join the mass movement, Geography must be retained. Not shortened to Geog but proudly stated Geography because at the end of the day it makes sense.

Look what I found.

The story was publihsed in our local newspaper and the reports says, a new charity shop has opened in Glastonbury and is looking for volunteers. Manager (pictured far right) said "I have been in the tourism industry for the last 15 years working at Cheddar Caves and Gorge, managing this store is a totally different venture, but its still in a tourist area, so I've got a pretty good idea of what tourists expect..."

Good on you ;) The report goes to on say, I've also got a pretty good idea that Sam and Monica's relationship will only last the season. I made that last bit up.

STOP PRESS

As some of you might know, I've been conducting an experiment in a cave for the last couple of months. Up to this point I'be been bashing the data trying to make sense of it. I think I've got the answer.

I best explain:

Pressure (mb) is the measure of how much air is pressing down on a certain point at a certain time. Different measures of pressure relate to different weather conditions, so high pressure means the sun is gonna shine and low pressure means its gonna rain. Pressure is measured outside to help inform the weather report. So for some reason, maybe I need shooting, I came up with the idea of forecasting the weather from inside a cave. After all if Pressure can be measured outside to forecast weather, then it can be measured inside to do the same thing. The first stage of the data crunching was running a statistical test called a Pearson Correlation, this gives you a nice number, either close to +1 for a good correlation or -1 for a bad correlation. By correlation we mean how close the pressure is inside to the pressure outside or the pressure outside informs the pressure inside.

The results for December showed a correlation of 0.933645 and 0.47465 for January, I need to everything checked, but the correlation is very good, so for now at least my theory is correct, I can see a lapse rate within the data, which means that its not an instant thing, but with more time I might be able to model the pressure wave as it enters the cave, maybe. I'll keep you up-dated.