Copilot

So far, I had been using ChatGPT4 to run my assignments through. I knew that the next generation of AI does better, but you have to pay for that. I was hoping at some point, the university would just get itself a subscription. I was not keen to pay myself for something I only need for work.

There was no such subscription forthcoming. But what was forthcoming was Copilot. It’s free, and provided by Microsoft. I decided to give it a go. I had so far focussed changing text only questions to make them less AI-able, but Copilot can read in images as well. So I read in a hand-sketched graph with two mass balance gradients of a hypothetical glacier, and asked the software what could have happened to make the glacier go from the one state into the other. And it have a fine answer. Oh dear.

Copilot tries an old exam question

 

I will have to not only pull exam questions through Copilot, but also all other assignments. And everything it can do will have to be changed, which will be a lot. 

We totally can ask things of the students AI still can’t do. But it will have to rely on their skills in critical appraisal and creative thinking and suchlike. Unfortunately, these tend to be things students are on average not keen on. They tend to prefer being railroaded. But anything railroaded can be done with AI. Higher education might be getting harder as we speak! Especially for the students who would struggle anyway. The really good ones will thrive as never before, as they will have unprecedentedly powerful tools at their disposal, but well, by definition, most will be near the middle of the bell curve…

Local shop reopens

My local shop closed for two weeks for refurbishment. It was needed; there had been major issues with the fridges, and a supermarket with as little fridge space as one well-equipped household is not ideal. That wasn’t why it happened though; I suppose the upcoming refurbishment was the reason why any fridge breaking down wasn’t repaired anymore. But either way; given how thoroughly they gutted the building, I was quite impressed that after two weeks, I did indeed reopen. It wasn't entirely finished; some of the shelves were still empty, and there still were workmen doing finishing touches. Also; the front of the building was in scaffolding and the old branding was still up. No Spar signage yet!

Still looks like a Londis

They had promised the same products and the same people. I'm not entirely convinced the first thing has happened; I didn't see any local and muddy leeks. But the people are indeed still the same.

I'm glad my local shop is functioning again! Even though it now looks thoroughly 21st century, which is not my thing. I suppose it will soon feel very familiar, though. I'm almost sad I didn't take any pictures of the old shop on the inside!

Shop looking all snazzy on the inside

Lecturing starts again

The inevitable happened! The academic year started again. On Monday I kicked off with two introductory lectures and a meeting of the University panel for academic integrity. All of that went well. Before I know it, it will feel like term has been going forever. Another academic year! 

My bike parked up on Main Campus again

Borders League 25-26: Tattenhall

It was autumn, so it was time for the Borders League again. I had only started that the season before, but I liked it a lot, so I was looking forward to it. These races are often quite far away, though, so it's important to car share. As things stand, the Eryri Harriers need to field 13 runners (seven male and six female) to not incur any penalty points. And it should absolutely not be the case that that means 13 cars on the road. 

Normally we use an app called Spond. It has a messaging feature, so you can use it to sort out car shares. But for reasons of some technical difficulty, this race didn’t appear on it. I decided to take it to the club Facebook page. But my call for sharing was met with a deafening silence. I was getting annoyed!

When I didn’t yet know the Borders League was on, I had registered for a race in Llandudno. I was now wondering if I should just forget the Borders League and go to Llandudno anyway. But I didn't immediately give up; I saw social media post by Holyhead club the Cybi Striders that they would sort out car sharing at the Park and Ride in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. That is exactly the wrong direction, but only by 6 miles. That’s doable! So I asked them if that was open to non-Cybies too. And they said yes! If there was space I could jump in. That's kind of them.

My next plan was: go to the park and ride, and if it would happen I would still end up alone in my car, I could just go home, and later go to the race in Llandudno after all. But then I suddenly got contacted by a Harrier after all: Helen, who had been involved in car sharing before. We agreed to meet in Conwy. So I thanked the Cybi Striders and let them know I didn't need their hospitality after all.

On race day things went smooth: Helen was already there when I got to the meeting point, and we got to the venue without problems. There was a huge field we could park in, and the weather was lovely. The queue for the ladies’ loos was short (even shorter than for the men!). We socialised a bit in the start area, and did a little warmup. In the end we were with 5 ladies; one short. There was one I didn’t know, but she turned out to live in Bethesda! That’s nice. I wasn't feeling overly competitive; not sure if any of the women were. But I know that can change during a race.

Club pic

I ended up a bit in the back at the start. This kind of race is full of ambitious people that all want to be at the front. This was my time for not doing that. And it did mean I had to weave a bit through the crowd in the beginning, but that was okay.

It was a rather smooth course. It had 125 m of ascent, but it was quite gradual. We were just running through the pretty Cheshire countryside. And things were going alright.

I figured things were actually going quite well when I overtook one of my fellow Harriers: Claire, who often is faster than me. She beat me in Felinheli. And then I just trundled on.

The kilometres ticked away, and soon there weren't many left. I was starting to look around. Were there any women I might still overtake, were there any women that might still overtake me? No to the latter, and yes to the former. Perfect! Could I improve my position in the last tens of meters? There were two women (and a man) in front of me, and at least one seemed overtakeable. And then I went around the corner for the home stretch, and there was Ian yelling encouragement, and that did it. End sprint initiated. I passed all of them! Success! The first time I managed that. And I even had outsprinted a lady from Chester Triathlon Club. (The other one was from Helsby Running Club). I had been outsprinted by a Chester lady (different ones, though) both in Ellesmere Port and Buckley/Mold! 

The chase is ON

I was now seriously out of breath, and needed a bit of a break. But soon I went inside to hand in my finishing token, and went back to the finish. There I shouted encouragement at some of the other Harriers. Arwel also came in at full sprint! 

We all had a bit of a laze and a chat, but not long, as we all wanted to get home at some point. I was glad I had come! Thanks to Helen. I will miss the next fixture due to already being engaged elsewhere. But I already look forward to the one after that! 

At home I found out I had been 20th woman out of 145, coming in at 42:46. The race had been 9.8 km. Not bad! 

More Orme exploration

Some time ago I had been doing some exploration on the Orme with Neil. But there is a lot more to see! So on a day the weather would turn bad at some point, and we didn't want to do a huge hike, we went again. He showed me the Rocking Stone, Elephant Cave, and Happy Valley, and we ended up on a beach I hadn't previously even realised existed. They even was a tunnel on it. And lots of nicely exposed fossils.

View over the promenade 

Elephant Cave

Handsome stairs in Happy Valley 

Fossils (corals and crinoids) on the beach

The beach

If you zoom in you see both adult and baby seals

We also looked at all geological formations we hadn't previously looked at. And on the way back, we had a look at one of the stations of the funicular tramway. I had not seen that! There are some big winches pulling these trams up, and letting them back down. I suppose the general system has become unpleasantly famous since it went horribly wrong in Portugal.

When it rained in the afternoon, we finished looking at a podcast which was basically a long interview with my old colleague Jan Smit, talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and everything associated with that. We had started that the evening before. It wasn't very spectacularly done, but I was glad that Neil was transfixed anyway!

We had a lovely time! And I'm sure that there is still an awful lot more to see on the Orme. I look forward to it already!

Solo TNH due to car trouble

It would be another one of those promotion event Thursday runs. The idea is that you go to a local outdoor shop, borrow a pair of shoes that the manufacturer wants to promote, go for a run, and then give them back. They hope that you like them so much you will then buy them.

I got my stuff ready and got into my car. Which didn't really want to start. I wondered if maybe I had let the oil levels go too low. And yes they were low! So I topped them up. And then the car did start, but not with much enthusiasm. And the spanner icon stayed lit on the dashboard. I didn't dare drive it to Llanberis that way.

I didn't want to not run in the hills that night, though! So I just went off on my own. I decided to do something that vaguely resembled a TNH that Ross, a Thursday runner from Rachub, had organised. That night I had not been available. And the idea was to start on my standard run, but then cross through the valley to the ridge above Martin’s old house, run to something that passes for the summit of y Drosgl, then cross the valley again, and run back the normal way.

I didn't manage to do the first crossing on an actual path. That was annoying, and it took forever, and got me soaking socks and shoes. But once I was on the ridge I was okay. And the running up was nice! In beautiful low evening light.

The river in the middle of the valley 

Having reached the ridge

The running down is of course not my forte, but it had to be done. It was okay. The last bit got a bit dark, but this time I at least had a head torch with me. And in the end I felt like I had got some proper hill running in! I saw later I had covered both more horizontal and vertical distance than the actual TNH runners.

The view where I started to head down

Crossing the valley again 

The next day I got my car to the garage, where they said it was fine. Great! Crisis averted. I don't know if this means I have now missed the last off-road TNH, but well, I had a beautiful run, and at least I have had a reminder to look after my car better. It is clear I needed that!

Nervousness about Reform

I had a meeting with two colleagues about making changes to our climate modules. This was all within the framework of improving our curriculum on the physical side of the school. And as it so happened, one of them was Swedish and the other one Singaporese. And we strayed a bit from the purpose of the meeting. And we discussed the speech Nigel Farage had held at the Reform conference.

He wanted to change the whole system of indefinite leave to remain (ILR). I think all three of us have that. At least the Swede and I do. The lady from Singapore is a Commonwealth citizen; that might be different. But we all figured our future in the country were uncertain were Reform to do well in the next elections.

I know that his speech, while it did cover people who already have the ILR, excluded EU citizens from this measure. I suppose even Farage realises that if you take away the rights of EU citizens in the UK, what will inevitably happen is that UK citizens in the EU will lose their rights as well. That might not be electorally very productive. But we don't trust the situation.

Another argument against booting foreigners out is that if you were to do that, you basically decapitate the NHS. There are so many foreign citizens in there! And academia would also be severely affected. Maybe that is something Reform voters don't care about, but I'm sure they do care if the NHS collapses in a heap. So a mass deportation of usefully employed foreigners is not likely. But still.

The Swede is quite eligible to apply for UK citizenship, and he doesn't even have to give up his Swedish citizenship for that. But he's not done it; not only because it's very expensive, but also because he said that the UK claims the right to withdraw citizenship from people who are eligible for a citizenship of a different country. And he obviously would be. So he says there is no point in getting it, if someone can take it away as well anyway.

And that is the other thing. If your citizenship can be taken away, surely your ILR can be taken away as well. As much as pissing off all UK citizens living abroad might not be a clever thing to do for a politician, it's not as if UK politicians never do things that are not very clever! None of us feel at ease. Let's just hope that in the next elections, Reform actually does pretty badly. I always hope that, but this is making that hope even stronger!