Total eclipse of the moon

We witnessed a fabulous total eclipse of the Moon on Saturday night. As we walked out of the Wales Millennium Centre we looked up to see the start of the eclipse. Hot-footing it to the University of Glamorgan we joined Allan Trow who was manning his telescope in the university’s observatory.

There we saw the eclipse reach totality and were able to take a few pictures too, once Allan had been prized away from the viewfinder.

The weather held sufficiently for Allan to get a huge pile of photographs, and allegedly better ones than his colleague Martin Griffiths was able to take in Cardiff. I hope to get the one I took up on the blog in the next couple of days.

The BBC has some good pictures, but many of them aren’t as good as the ones we took in Treforest. The University’s Difference Engine blog has more, including this photo.

Opera Notes

OK, this is a very occasional series of notes. Cath and I went to the Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday night to see the Welsh National Opera perform Madame Butterfly.

The show itself was wonderful. The staging and lighting was very simple and yet very effective. It was strange to see Welsh actors playing the part of Japanese and Americans, all the while singing in Italian. A truly multicultural event, with surtitles in Welsh and English. It was all accompanied by the sound of sobbing from large parts of the audience!

One anachronistic error in the production was pointed out by a neighbour at the theatre. The villain of the piece, Lt Pinkerton, had a camera. Now the opera is set in 1889 and yet the box brownie didn’t even start to go on sale until 1900.

Rugby Notes

We wuz robbed. Ebbw Vale lost 31-22 at Pontypridd on Saturday.

It all turned on an Ebbw kick that went into touch as we were defending a 22-17 lead. Pontypridd took a quick lineout and scored under the posts. The TV footage on Scrum V raises two questions about the validity of the try.

It looked as though the ball was grounded on the dead ball line – therefore no try. My replays were inconclusive.

And, even more obviously, when the ball was kicked into touch a member of the crowd clearly batted the ball back to the Ponty winger to take the lineout. Under these circumstances no quick throw is allowed. Both referee and touch judge failed to spot this and allowed Ponty to play on.

In Scrum V’s analysis they said… Oh, actually they didn’t bother to comment on the game at all.

I wouldn’t complain if we’d lost fair and square because I didn’t think we were the better team. Their backs looked far more menancing in attack, and in centre Dafydd Lockyer they had the best player on the field.

That said, there were some excellent performances from Ebbw Vale, including the usual magnificent lineout show from Neil Edwards and a huge game from prop Ian George.

A summary and links to various reviews are on the Ebbw Vale RFC website.

In a recent survey, Ebbw’s website was found to the 19th most visited rugby site in the UK, and the 3rd most visited in Wales, beating out even the Dragons and the Scarlets. Congratulations to Ebbw’s webmaster.

Scorers: Interception try for Kristian Owen, conversion and five penalties for Sam Mills.

Highlights: The best game of the season. Excellent atmosphere from two sets of fans who actually made some noise. Often at away games the travelling Ebbw Vale support outnumbers the home fans – not at Sardis Road. Impressive work rate amongst the forwards, who had excellent games in the scrum and lineout. Tacking was good,

Lowlights: The maul has been a strength all season yet was used far too sparingly. Kicking out of hand was often aimless and we gave Ponty far too much opportunity to run it back at us. If we’re pinching lots of their ball, why not kick into touch?

Famous Veale

First in an occasional series about other Veales.

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio has a Veale connection. Tinkham Veale II (great name, eh?) who is a wealthy Cleveland businessman who founded many businesses in the USA, including Ikon.

He donated a small fortune to the University to help construction of the Veale Centre. It houses four multi-purpose courts (for activities such as basketball, tennis, soccer and volleyball), a six-lane indoor track, a workout room, a weight room, nine racquetball courts, two squash courts, and a rock climbing wall. Not too shabby.

TV Notes

Here’s my quick take on TV worth watching at the moment. One thing they have in common is that they are buried in the TV listings on obscure channels. No prime time soaps or reality TV here, thankfully.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the only news satire programme out there. It’s on More 4 weekdays at 8:30.

Friday Night Lights is the new US drama on ITV4 (I didn’t know they had four channels either). It’s based on the award-winning book by H.G. Bissinger about high school football in the small town of Odessa, Texas. Wednesdays at 8pm.

William Shatner is the star turn of the required viewing that is Boston Legal on Living TV. The second series is on Thursdays at 10pm.

This clip continues the William Shatner link. It goes back to the 1978 and is his bizarre version of Elton John’s Rocket Man. Enjoy.