Frustration

I went to Longleat Safari Park and Adventure Park at the end of March to celebrate my birthday. So to break up the endless monotony of my writing, I've included some photos in from that.

Longleat house

It's been a tough few weeks in the PhD front. I've done a few runs of the turbine in a couple of positions and got some good torque and power outputs from the turbine. However, when they're compared with the model I've got, they are around 20% out. There are several explanations for this, as discussed last time - see here. However, I've still not been able to rectify these problems over the last couple of weeks and it's been really starting to get on my nerves. It's so frustrating, working on a possible solution for 2 or 3 days then ending up at the same point that I started with. I am determined not to let this get the better of me. So I'm going to try some different methods for modelling and also look at changing my rig a little to see whether there are some things that are causing the model to be very different from the actual results.

Feeding the deer - they were smelly, dirty and very greedy

A warning sign…

I attended a lecture at Bristol University run by Water Aid for World Water Day. There were two speakers, the first from Aquatest, a research group supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They are developing a water testing device that can simplify the detection of pathogens in water. The second speaker was from a new charity called Wellboring, looking at boring wells in Kenya. I have to say I was a little more sceptical about this charity, their intentions were perfect, but their delivery was to just give a community water, there didn't seem to be the sustainability there - it seemed an almost imposed solution - however, I'm sure that they will be successful and they will help many many people and I'll be forced to eat my sceptical words!

A resting lion

The seals jumping for food

I've also had a bit of busy few weeks at church. I produced another talent show in the middle of March in the church under the guidance of several people. We had a very good evening, with some fantastic singers such as Alice Lovell and for once the Scouts provided entertainment rather than just embarrassed laughing. I even did a short poem recital (Roald Dahl's The Pig) as I wanted to get up on stage - my vanity appearing again. We raised a fantastic £170 for the church, and now are going to get ready for the pantomime… We also had the Easter Messy Church, which we had 86 people at. At our messy church, my job is to do the cooking along with Hannah and Becky - I'm not really trusted around children due to my slight potty mouth - and we cooked 15 pizzas in a small oven. We had a panic when all the pizzas stuck to their pans and we couldn't get them out without making most of them disintegrate. So, for an hour we slowly pulled pizza away from pans, and after a stirling effort we finally managed to serve up all the pizza to the hungry punters with very respectable looking food. This was also the first time that we've manage to have all the food eaten - must have a been good!

The hedge maze (we managed to get through it in under 30 mins!)

For those who don't know me, I love to make cakes. For my birthday this year, Hannah made me three most amazing cakes. I spent the days after my birthday feeling sick from cake but somehow not being able to stop myself from eating them. So, for Hannah's birthday the week after mine, I had to try and match hers. I spent an evening baking cakes, and the next day I carved and iced her cake. I had made a Lego-man. I don't think it was as good as last year's effort - the hungry caterpillar cake - but it went down well.

My fantastic birthday cakes!

Legoman cake

Last year's effort - The Hungry Caterpillar

After all that cake, I'm rather more round and weighing a few more kilos than I probably should be. So the next month I'm going to be going on a bit of a healthy eating kick, in an effort to lose some of the cake weight and try and save a bit of money as well - this year's trip to Nepal is not too far away now!

For now

SAM