Tune!

 I wrote a tune.

I wrote a tune!

Animal Carer Badge

I caught footage of an elderly rat taking the cheese that I left in front of the camera to tempt it.

Little Chordy Tune - for the French Clarinet

Cycle Check

I(Ben) have been fixing up my bike.I fixed the chain, pumped the tyres and adjusted the brakes. My dad straightened the wheels.

Our Adventure Challenge Award

Section 1 -Take part in two adventurous activities. 

1. Fencing.

We learned about foil fencing by watching YouTube videos. 

Ben explains the rules as follows:

There are three types of fencing: 

1. Foil Fencing, in which you can only poke your opponent with the point of your foil. It only counts if you poke them in the torso or back and right of way rules apply. 


Right of way rules are - if both fencers strike each other at the same time, whoever is in the most rigid attack position (arm straight, sword pointing at the opponent) gets the point.


2. Sabre Fencing, in which you can poke or swipe sideways with the sword. The attack range is extended to anywhere above the waist. Right of way rules apply. 



3. Epée Fencing, in which like foil fencing, you can only poke the opponent with the point of the epée. The target area is now the whole body. Right of way rules do not apply. 

We spent a half day practicing foil fencing and here is a video of us doing it. We had to adapt the sword lengths so that my sword was shorter to even out the contest, and take account of our different heights.

In modern olympic fencing the score is kept by electronic triggers, which we don't have. We agreed to fight rounds that lasted as long as it took for either one of us to get two hits on the other person. 

2. Quarter-staff fighting

Ben and Tim have been practicing quarter-staff fighting. Ben watched some YouTube videos and Tim learned Aikedo as a teenager, so they had a bit of an idea of what to do from that.
They used willow sticks from the shed. The sticks were cut to reach the height of the user's mouth from ground level. They are wearing cycling helmets because the aim is to whack each other on the side of the head with the sticks. In proper quarter-staff fighting they are also meant to poke each other in the face with the stick, but they made a rule not to do that. 



Section 2 - Take part in 6 outdoor activities

1. Archery

We spent some time working on accuracy in archery. This is an activity that Ben has tried before but wanted to improve his skill in. We set up a target that was a piece of worktop with a glass chopping board attached. The target was drawn onto the chopping board. 



The bow is a proper bow that was bought online but the string was one that we had at home.


This was Ben's best shot: 








Here are two of his other shots:









2. Botanical survey

Ben took part in "Every Flower Counts" which is a national survey to find out how many flowers there are in domestic gardens, and to encourage people to allow more flowers to appear in their lawns. 





Ben found 96 daisy flowers in his measured 1 metre squared quadrat.










Our lawn for an "F" score for supporting bees.







3. Getting More flowers for the bees

Our lockdown garden is full of vegetables, but we have accidentally used up all of the space and left no room for flowers for the bees. We have now bought flower seeds to put that right. These are the varieties that we bought. Ben has planted them out in the garden and watered them, and fortunately now we are due for a wet week to get them a good start. 














Below is one of the nasturtiums that has germinated. 

This is one of the poached egg plant seedlings.

These are seedlings from the mixed seed packet. 

4. Survey of the slope of the garden

Ben did a survey of the slope of our garden. It was quite complicated to do. 

The garden is long and almost flat. Ben used camera tripod by the house and his teepee structure at the bottom of the garden and stretched string between the two to try to find the difference in slope between the ground and a flat string. 

This is the tripod by the house.

This is the string going down the length of the garden. 

This is the teepee structure at the bottom of the garden, with the string attached. We had to dig the teepee into the ground to make it strong enough to hold the weight of the string. 

We adjusted the height of the tripod by the house and Ben measured the incline of the string using a spirit level (below).

Once the string was flat the bubble was in the middle of the spirit level. 

We had to adjust the tripod quite a lot further than we expected. 

Then Ben measured the height of the string off the ground at both ends of the garden. The height was 103cm by the house and 139cm at the bottom of the garden.  

Next we meaured the length of the garden using Ben's bicycle wheel. The diameter of the wheel was 66cm so the circumference was 207cm. 

Ben wheeled the bike the length of the garden and the reflector on the wheel went round 11 times. 

It was a bit tricky at the bottom of the garden. 

From that experiment Ben calculated that the garden is 207 cm x 11 long, which is 2277cm. The height difference between 103cm by the house and 139cm at the bottom of the garden was 36cm. 

This means that over a distance of about 22m our garden falls by 36cm towards the end of the garden. 

Ben has been watching YouTube videos on surveying made by the University of Illinois, and he tells me that slope = rise/run so that our garden slope = 36cm / 2277cm which is equal to 0.016. I think we will need to watch the next episode of the video to find out more about what that means.  

5. Assault course

Ben designed an assault course route round the garden and then he used the google satellite view of our house to make a map showing his route. 

The route goes from the house to the back fence and then back by the same route in the opposite direction, so the route is only shown in one direction. 

It took Ben 1 minute and 15 seconds to run the route. 

Here is the map that Ben made: 

 

Here is the video of him running the route. (The video is a bit wobbly - sorry about that):

Ben would like to show this picture too. It is a picture of him and his Dad, taken by the Google streetview camera. Ben says: "It saw me!"

6. Building a ballista

Ben and Tim built a ballista together in the garden. They used willow sticks and lashed them together with string. 

Here are some photos:

Section 3. 

Go on a hike or follow a trail. Try to walk for about 1-2 hours.

Ben went on the chip shop challenge hike and enjoyed trying all of the different chips. He says there  was one batch that was particularly good but he can't remember which shop they came from. He says it was a van with the side open. The hike happened on a cub night last summer, just after the St Ives camp.

Section 4. Prepare for your activities and hikes. 

(Find out what you need to wear and bring, and pack your own bag. You will need to know what you have with you, and remember everything you need.)

The expeditions that Ben does most to prepare for like this, are those when he goes to London with his Dad, and has to pack a lot of food and choose the right clothes and rucksac and shoes and things.

Below are some photos from his last hike round London, which took place before the lockdown. Ben always takes his own food, because gluten-free food is hard to come by in stations and museum cafes. 

He covered quite a lot of ground on this hike, going from the train, to Buckingham Palace and the Science Museum. One day we hope to stay at Baden Powell House which is near to the Science Museum. 

The Legend of Python: Alejandro's Awakening -- Tail Cave

player = game.spawnPlayerXY("duelist", 36, 30)
player.speed = 17
player.attackDamage = 10
player.maxHealth = 3999
game.addSurviveGoal()
game.addCollectGoal(1)
bossGoal = game.addManualGoal("Defeat the boss")
trap_done = False
game.spawnMaze("forest", 533)
boss_door = game.spawnXY("fence", 44, 52)
end_door = game.spawnXY("fence", 52, 44)
game.spawnXY("forest", 60, 52)
shine = game.spawnXY("gem", 34, 12)
boss = game.spawnXY("ogre-f", 45, 60)
game.spawnXY("forest", 43, 12)
chestu = game.spawnXY("chest", 52, 12)

# What to do when the boss is beaten.
def bossKill():
    player.say("Down 'e goes.")
    boss.destroy()
    game.setGoalState(bossGoal, True)
    end_door.destroy()
game.setActionFor("ogre", "defeat", bossKill)

# Count how many ogres we have beaten.
victories = 0
def scoutDefeated():
    victories += 1
game.setActionFor("scout", "defeat", scoutDefeated)

while True:
    if trap_done == True:
        boss.behavior = "AttacksNearest"
    else:
        boss.behavior = "Collects"
    if player.pos.y < 16 and trap_done == False:
        shine.destroy()
        dorry = game.spawnXY("forest", 12, 20)
        summoner = game.spawnXY("generator", 35, 12)
        summoner.spawnType = "scout"
        summoner.spawnDelay = 10
        while True:
            if victories >= 4:
                summoner.defeat()
                trap_done = True
                dorry.destroy()
                boss_door.destroy()
                player.say("BOSSKEY!!!")
                break