Ghyll

Just had the second of this week’s Ghyll Scramble session. Eight kids, me and Will, another of the instructors went for a jump, slide and wander down the ghyll. The weather was nice and sunny, the water was surprisingly cold.

There’s a technique for running a good Ghyll session. The technique is to do it quickly with no faff so people don’t hang around getting cold and upset. If you’re slow and faff around at the top of the jumps it gives people time to think, and the last thing you want someone to do is think since the things they usually think of begin with “I can’t do that…”. So you stand someone at the top of a jump, the other instructor having just demonstrated it, and you “guide” them into it with a big push. Before the next one has time to go “erk! that looks nasty!” they’re stood at the edge and are being pushed into it. It sounds quite harsh and brutal throwing people into water off ledges, but the edges of ledges are often quite slippy and the last thing you want is someone to slide off the wrong way and hurt themselves.

My game has a level definition file. I’ve worked out how to draw the laser, so now I just have to make it work.

The Audioscrobbler uploading I have from Amarok seems to be broken. I hope Audioscrobbler’s not on Vodafone’s retarded content control list. Today, Vodafone’s random proxy server has decided my website is OK to visit. It used to work, and now it doesn’t and I’ve not changed anything so I think it’s someone else’s fault I’ve pushed 10,000 tracks into Audioscrobbler though, which is quite a lot of music!

I’d like to buy a radio scanner. Being in the great outdoors, there’s got to be loads of radio chatter sleeting through the air. I’ve seen the Mountain Rescue helicopter flying around, various jets and things plus the hills seem to be full of people with those personal walkie-talkies yammering rubbish at each other. Somehow I need to visit a Maplins…

Tags: Cold, Ghyll Scrambling, Lake District