Changing the Clocks

I can't say I'm a particular fan of the twice-annual ritual of changing the clocks. Frankly, it's an absurd practice to spend most of the year with our clocks all set to lie to us in the strange notion that this gives us more daylight at some time of the year.

On the other hand, I suppose that ridiculous practice is marginally better than the 'fix' we see endlessly proposed in the newspapers every time the clocks change; specifically, to keep the country on "British Summer Time" (or, as I prefer to call it, "Liar's Time") all year around.

(The reason it is a lie is that time, like everything else, needs to be measured from a fixed reference point. And since the seasons change, meaning that sunrise and sunset aren't fixed, time is measured from the point where the Sun reaches its highest point over the horizon, which we call 'mid-day'. (Which is also why we divide the day into AM and PM.) Moving the clocks forward during the summer means that the Sun reaches its highest point at 1pm, not at 12 noon, which is incorrect. And since that's done deliberately, it's a lie.)

Anyway, if we must persist with this crazy ritual, could I please make two wee requests of clock manufacturers?

1. Firstly, could you please make sure to put the buttons for adjusting the time somewhere easily accessible on the device, and could you also make sure to include single buttons for both adding 1 hour and subtracting 1 hour? Having to step through 23 hours, and having to do that for each of three or four clocks last night was just annoying. And having to take a clock apart to access the buttons and then having to step through not just 23 hours but 47 to get past the "24 hour clock" options was especially galling (IKEA, I'm looking at you).
2. But, actually, since we're talking about new clocks, could you also please make sure to make these easily networked, so that they can pick up the time, and time changes, from a central point (or time server)? The "internet of things" is mostly a nonsense gimmick and waste of time, but this would be a case where it might actually make our lives just a little easier.

(In case you're wondering: no, this post is not entirely serious. The one thing that is is that we can't keep the clocks moved forwards throughout the winter - here in Scotland, the mornings are just too dark for that to be feasible, and it gets worse the further North you go. And it's really not practical for the schools in Scotland to instead move their start and end times instead - even if they could coordinate this, when they can't manage to coordinate holidays so that children and those of their parents who are teachers can holiday together, there would be the problem that everything else would be out of alignment.)

For Once, Good Timing

About six months ago, in the run up to our Centenary, the band were contacted by the granddaughter of our first pipe major. She and her mum visited the band, and at that time they also presented us with some music written by our first pipe major, two out of three tunes that he had written for his three daughters. However, due to an injury sustained in the Great War, he had never been able to play the tunes. Consequently our guest, the final surviving daughter, had never heard the tunes her father wrote for her and her sisters. They asked if someone from the band could learn the tunes so that they could come back and hear them played - and that task fell to me.

The return visit was planned for last Thursday, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled due to ill health. This was unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected given the age of the lady in question.

So far, so ordinary.

But it occurred to me on Friday that perhaps waiting to reschedule the visit wasn't the best possible option. After all, you never know...

Besides, it had always been my intention to record the tunes and present our guests with a CD, memory stick, or similar device with the audio file. Indeed, I had such a recording already, although the quality wasn't great - my pipes had had a new chanter and new drone reeds in the last week, and the recording was with the older, less good, set.

So I rerecorded the tunes last night, put the file somewhere public, and sent a link along. No big deal, or so I thought.

It turns out that the lady in question turns 86 this Friday, and so hearing the tunes for the first time will make for a fine present for her.

It turns out that, just sometimes, my timing isn't entirely awful. Huzzah!

#9: "The Wind in the Willows", by Kenneth Grahame (A book from The List)

Ongoing Sleep Woes

As a consequence of yesterday's fiasco, we set no fewer than 3 alarms last night - the unreliable alarm clock, plus the alarms on both our mobile phones. Two of these went off as expected - I cancelled the third before it also did its job.

Unfortunately, though, the consequence of not really trusting the alarm clock was that actually getting to sleep was rather difficult. So, any benefit that we might have derived from those two hours of extra sleep yesterday were lost overnight. Which is not quite ideal.

Meanwhile, as a result of this we've concluded that the time has come to ditch the current (unreliable) alarm clock and replace it with a 'real' alarm clock. Which is probably a long-overdue step. My inclination at this point is to go for a "sunrise lamp" device, which should help with those dark winter mornings, though this is by no means fixed.

Steph/ven Goes Continental

The clocks went back yesterday. However, due to having an early flight next Monday (actually, a very early flight), I have elected not to change, but have instead shifted to Central European Time.

This has the key advantage that the traffic is noticably lighter at 7:10 in the morning than it is at 8:10, and therefore has the advantage that I've already done three-and-a-half hours out of my week.

It has the key disadvantages that I had to get up at 6 this morning, and also that I'm completely out-of-sync with the whole of the rest of the universe. Except France.