Brain Pain

My brain was having some pain a while ago. I think it is from the mental strain of trying to pick a lock that I bought today for about seven pounds. Most of my motivation for this blog post is to talk about how I'm getting my teeth into lock sport, and how you should all think that I am very cool for having such an edgy hobby.

It all started a long time ago when I googled lock picking sets, saw the prices and thought, "Hey, this is something that I could actually do". About a week or so ago I got some birthday money and purchased this badboy, which I have found to be a most economical and effective starting set. There's a tension wrench, a hook pick, a half-diamond, a snake rake and an 'L' rake. I've found this Youtube channel very instructional and interesting. I also watched the fist half hour of a 50 minute talk about locks throughout history and felt like it was time well spent.

I've been able to open a couple of the locks around my home through raking, but the brain hurting came from trying to get my head around the whole procedure of feeling the individual pins and working out the binding, which I have to do with my new lock anyway because it doesn't like to be raked. The whole thing's much easier in Skyrim.

Today's themes for me have mostly been Batman and surreptitious entry. I've been watching Batman Beyond recently, but today I was checking out DC's new animated series 'Beware the Batman'. They've made some interesting choices, and I think it's pretty cool. I like how they've made Bruce Wayne the world's greatest detective, something that many animated renditions of Batman neglect. You don't get that high class super sleuthing with Terry McGinnis.

About lunchtime today I tried making and using some shims from a delicious can of vanilla coke, but gave up after about five attempts. They kept breaking, I think because the padlock was too small. Definitely nothing to do with poor technique.

Grood. Now everybody go and pursue their lock sport destinies. But remember:

• Never pick a lock that doesn't belong to you.
• Never pick a lock that's in use. (learnt that one the hard way)
• Watching Batman is good for you

Summer Summary

Yeah what?

The last four weeks of my life have mostly been on a field in the South West of England. It's all because of this camp. Early August was prep week, where my father and I lived in a field and hit things with mallets and sledgehammers, as well as these massive hammers called mauls. You get up for breakfast at eight, then hit things with mallets until dinner, which is twelve hours later. It's about as manly as it gets.

After a week of recuperation avec mon famile, I went back to a similar, nearby field, where I cooked in the kitchen for a week. This mostly involved stirring things, sometimes for hours at a time. The following week I stayed in the same field as a tent leader. In the evenings they have leader's supper, which is when you eat pizza and then stay up until the small hours playing risk. During the week I was persuaded to stay for rearguard, where you undo all the work that the mallet team did three weeks earlier. Carrying heavy things around like it's not even a thing. Rearguard has an etiquette of its own, which involves sitting around a large ring of square tables and shouting things like 'bread me!' instead of 'could you please pass the bread?' The things are in response thrown across the table. Anybody who gets up to fetch something is scolded and frowned upon.

I have a new hat and a new hedgehog. Stetson Steve (my kitchen buddy) informs me that the hat is a Stetson. He would know, because he collects them. I bought it in a charity shop for a fiver, and I rather like it. The hedgehog we found in the road on the way back from prep week, then put it in the shed. For a few days it would come out at night and run erratically in tight circles, stopping only to catch its breath. These hilarious days are over now, and our hedgehog (who is a boy) seems to have recovered from its dain bramage. I'm pretty aware that I'm constructing this blog entry terribly. I'm tired and going to stop now and finish later.

It's later. Not much else exciting happened. I went down a death slide standing up and lived, then I watched this Batman thing (which it turns out you can watch on Youtube on this excellent WB channel) with Ruth Lovell, which was my birthday present to her. It is very great.

Soon I am going to freshers week, where I will probably stay indoors and cry between bowls of cereal. After that I will build robots.