medium adventure!

[kaberett]

Adam took today off work to facilitate me taking him on A Date. (I say "take": he was driving.) The schedule of events was:

• stop off at Wimpole farm to see the baby pigs
  
• ... an unfortunately-timed Skype meeting I couldn't reschedule
  
• lunch in Cambridge
  
• a quick poke around my college, to introduce A to the general concept
  
• the Whipple Museum of the History of Science
  
• a trip to Mackay
  
• dinner
  
• BAT SAFARI

... the day of holiday being necessary not precisely because bat safaris are only happening on Fridays this early in the year, but because at the point at which we were coming up to Cambridge we had Might As Well make a day of it, and I'd been wanting to show A the Whipple, and its opening hours are Monday to Friday, 12.30pm-4.30pm, which are less antisocial than they used to be but still not great, from a tourist perspective.

At Wimpole:

• alexwlchan and cesy had told us that Baby Pigs were about due, which was of definite interest
  
• we had a fairly general poke around Home Farm
  
• There Were Sheep
  
• A had... not realised how Big Shire horses are, and was startled
  
• there were Small Goats, some of whom were in an Inexplicable Isolation Chamber
  
• MANY SIZES OF PIG of various degrees of competence (mostly rare breeds): some so small and wiggly that they were still breathing incredibly fast and in a small soft pile under a heat lamp; some big enough to suckle, but not big enough to be any good at it, which was hilarious; some Medium Piglets that were very excited when a hand appeared over the wall of their enclosure because HANDS mean SCRITCHES, such that Medium Piglet The First did a whole bunch of active leaning in to being scritched by A, and Medium Piglet The Second noticed what was going in and WANTED IN ON THE ACTION THANK YOU VERY MUCH and barrelled its way in and Gruntled Enthusiastically (and then subsided to the floor, in what we initially thought might be an ill-judged attempt at getting belly rubs but actually turned out to be it having thoroughly worn itself out by Being Enthusiastically Scritched and it... fell asleep)
  
• there was a Rabbit
  
• A was v pleased about Touch the Bun
  
• there was a chicken genuinely the same size as the small children that were shrieking at it
  
• and then instead of heading into Cambridge proper where I'd have eduroam and could reasonably take a Skype call, I got thoroughly distracted by the walled garden (in which! tulips that had been lifted! were being sold for one pound a carrier bag! I have two carrier bags full and need to plant them in the borders Tomorrow)
  
• so I ended up having a Skype meeting via the magic of H+ mobile internet from a formal garden in rural Cambridgeshire in the sun, with only slightly disruptive lag
  
• but hey it was broadly positive

And then we went into central Cambridge, and parked up outside the Whipple, and had lunch at the Michaelhouse café, and took a quick peek around my college, and then we headed over to the Whipple, where I had not been for many years.

The Whipple is a tiny museum across two floors of the History & Philosophy of Science department, founded in 1944 by the donation of the collection of the eponymous Robert Whipple's scientific instruments various, the aim being to record not just The Best And Most Useful instruments, but the social context leading to their development, and the general sense of What's Important therewith associated. The collection now numbers almost ten thousand items, because they're ADORABLE, including the Francis Hookham Collection of Handheld Calculators. It has recently been fairly extensively refurbished. I am, as ever, fond of the globes, but I think my absolute favourite thing this visit, which I'd not previously seen, was the glass fungi.


Mackay's, being a venerable Cambridge institution full of Tools and Useful Bits, was necessary firstly because A was clearly going to really enjoy it and secondly because we did actually want to pick up A Few Bits. Alas the broken screw we came in with, for which A was particularly seeking a replacement, was not represented in their collection (!) -- but nevertheless he found several Pieces that he Wanted including The Gunge For Exorcising The Oven, and I found a connector kit for my water butt that will hopefully let me get it properly set up and ACTUALLY COLLECTING WATER and... generally encouraging me to get my act together to weed the gooseberry. (The other Ribes are big and tough and can cope; the gooseberry is only small, and might drown in the goose grass.)


Dinner was at Yim Wah Express, because I'm fond and wanted to introduce A.


And the BAT SAFARI was a BAT SAFARI on punts, run by Scudamores in collaboration with The Wildlife Trust, which was VERY EXCITING. I had been once before Some Time Ago when my baby brother was still working a zero-hours contract with Scudamores; I've been wanting to bring A on this particular adventure ever since Last Year's Bat and his associated enthusiasm.

We met:

• swifts
  
• cygnets
  
• cows
  
• Greylag goslings
  
• a bundle of ducklings!!!
  
• a moorhen and a pheasant, each perched quite high up in different trees
  
• BATS
  
  • common pipistrelle (which I will persist in referring to as altos, just to upset people)
    
  • soprano pipistrelle
    
  • a noctule!!!
    
  • several Daubenton's bats
  
  
• a TAWNY OWL (okay we didn't meet this it just yelled at us from a tree, some of the others saw it but I didn't)
  
• several other ducks and geese
  
• ... bats

... and everyone involved was v good-humoured about me being an overenthusiastic nerd, and I was actually both sufficiently comfortable and sufficiently enthusiastic to do some bouncing and flapping, and there was a really excellent sunset.


In summary: excellent activities date, would do again, maybe we will spend more time at Wimpole at some point and look at more Animals that are Friend, and even I got some good science done.

I am still happy and bouncy. We are almost home (I've been writing this in the car on the way back) and I need to go to sleep, but: bounce. Yes good daylight outside animals and sundials. A Good Day.

Comments

[alexwlchan]

That sounds like an excellent day, I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves!

[steorra]

This sounds wonderful and I half wish I could have been there.

[kaberett]

It was really lovely. :-)

[harpers_child]

Yay adventure!

[redbird]

Having followed the link to the Whipple: the Harvard collection of glass plants (and fungi) is large and impressive; it may be time for me to go look at that again, but there are entire museums in Boston I haven't been to yet.

[kaberett]

Yes! The Harvard collection was mentioned in the explanatory plaques (colloquially referred to hereabouts as the distractions) on the Whipple's selection.

Boston is... on my list, for some point when the current political climate has... resolved.

[redbird]

At that point, I would be delighted to see you here. I'm about to move from one inner suburb of Boston to another; the new place is an easy bus ride from the Harvard campus.

Hooray for a great day.

[jesse_the_k]

The "distractions" are the lazily punctuated essays printed in tiny letters and posted at 5 feet?

(Don't distract me much.)

A pig gruntle would make an excellent text alert tone.

[umadoshi]

BAT SAFARI. Oh my gosh. *^^*

[kaberett]

THEY ARE SO GOOD.

squeeeee!

[mdlbear]

Oh! this sounds like a lot of fun! Glass models are amazing. So are bats!

There are, at this point, two full-sized working Difference Engines; one in London and one in Seattle. I have seen the Seattle one, when it was still in Mountain View, in operation. Once. It's worth a trip to see.

Re: squeeeee!

[kaberett]

I work at Imperial i.e. the Science Museum is a neighbour and houses some collaborators; I spend some of my lunch breaks poking around it! (I'm actually a member of the NHM, though, and the members' rooms there are much nicer than my desk on campus, so I spend a non-trivial amount of my working time in central London sat in its towers. :-)

[lunabee34]

bb pigs OMG!

[kaberett]

THEY ARE SO GOOD I might attempt to get around to posting my terrible photos of them

[booksarelife]

Despite not being ideal, this sounds mostly amazing: "so I ended up having a Skype meeting via the magic of H+ mobile internet from a formal garden in rural Cambridgeshire in the sun, with only slightly disruptive lag"!!
Also, what company/provider is H+ from? Because I got it sometimes in Greece, but only in bits with no Vodafone

Also, I love that eduroam is everywhere

[me_and]

This is adjacent to several of my special interests, so feel free to ignore my rambling. TL;DR kaberett is on Vodafone.

SO! What technology you get your phone network connection over is heavily dependent on both your phone and the network. Not only do you need both your phone to support any given technology, and the network provider to have appropriate radio masts in your area, but you need both to be using the same frequency. That's generally a given if you've bought your phone from a network provider, but is much more down to luck if you've bought separately, at least unless you explicitly checked the frequency combinations.

(There's also a consideration that some handsets are inconsistent about how they describe technologies; some Android handsets don't distinguish between High Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Evolved High Speed Packet Access (eHSPA or HSPA+); most will mark the first two as "H" and the third as "H+", but some will just describe all three as "H". But that's not relevant here if you have seen an "H+" on your handset.)

Now all the different 3G technologies -- UTMS, HSPA, HSPA+, et al. -- all use the same frequencies, so if you're able to get any of them with a given combination of handset and network provider, you'll generally be able to get all of them, at least assuming the network provider has rolled out the appropriate hardware to you. There are exceptions, such as EE, who owns a whole bunch of different frequencies so you need not only an overlap of the frequencies they use and the frequencies your handset supports, but also an overlap of the frequencies they use in the area you are.

Given you're able to get H+ in some places, and you're not complaining about utterly miserable download speeds so you're not back on 2G, my best guess as to what's happening for you is you're just not using your phone in areas that have the appropriate hardware from your network provider for H+. Unless you're seeing "4G" or "LTE", which is faster than H+ again, so your handset will use it in preference to H+ if it's available.

[booksarelife]

That's really interesting, thank you!! I actually usually had 4G or LTE, and only did notice H+ in areas with worse cell service, or getting into/riding in the elevator in my apartment building

[divulge]

That sounds glorious! I’m glad you had such a good day.

[kaberett]

<3

[lilysea]

Bat safari! ^_^

Hurray! ^_^

I am envious!

[hilarita]

I like the Whipple, but I'm also really freaking angry with them, for their blatant female erasure. (Like, you don't get to mention William Herschel without mentioning his totally awesome sister Caroline. I am still sulking about this.)

Bats! Bats are awesome! As of 3 years ago, I could still hear bats!

[hilarita]

Though perhaps since the Whipple has been refurbished, they've done something about this.

Have they added any of Maxwell's physical machines to explain electromagnetism?

[kaberett]

I... didn't actually notice -- we were cutting it a little fine so we honestly were rushing a bit. >_>

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

BAT SAFARI! I love bats so very very much, thank you for pointing this out

[kaberett]

You are super welcome! I would be delighted to read a report of your visit to same. :D

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I have put in a bid for it to be my birthday treat, so I expect to be posting in August. Which is about when I get back from the Grand Tour anyway.

[vass]

This adventure was delightful to read. I hope it was even more delightful to go on.

[kaberett]

It was proper lovely. <333

(I did, having finished writing it up, turn out to be tired enough to Just Go To Sleep, thankfully, instead of being a vibrating ball of excitement forEver.)

[cesy]

Hooray!