Bank Holiday pizza

There was something going on at the local cheese maker and seller: a pizza van! That was really something we needed to check out. And probably support. Susan had suggested the bank holiday Monday, and that worked for me. I didn’t expect Martin to be up for it; he is very busy with a research proposal. But on the day he came out of the woodwork! 

I thought we should have a drink with the pizza. I packed a flask of water (of course) and some beers, both with and without alcohol. And I noticed I had a bottle of Prosecco. That might actually be quite suitable! And I rolled some shot glasses into a dishcloth (they are less fragile than wine glasses) to go with it. And then I was ready to get onto my bike. 

The van has some garden chairs out. Luxurious enough for me! The others came on foot. And they were up for the Prosecco.

Opening the wine; GIF by Sue and Dean

The pizza van

Elegant Prosecco ladies

The pizzas were good! And Susan had brought dessert for Martin and me. It was all quite nice! I sure think we have to go back and support them a bit more…

Climate festival moss walk

I didn’t know how many people would be attracted to a moss walk at a local climate festival. But the answer was: a lot! Luckily, the organisers had a lot of hand lenses to hand out. And we started out right by the community centre. Emily, who was leading this, had gathered some moss, and handed it out. She made sure that everyone knew how to use a hand lens, and asked some questions that made us really look at the moss we were holding. And then we were ready to venture into the wider world.

Soon a veritable crowd walked over the bicycle path towards the more shaded parts thereof. Under the trees, Emily found another species, and had us all look at it. And she found a beautiful thallose liverwort on a tree.

The moss crowd

A beautiful moss

The thallose liverwort 

A bit further on there was a small stream by the path, and that led to other species growing there. And then there was another shaded part that led towards the old railway tunnel. I was just aiming my hand lens at everything mossy or liverworty I could find. And a few lichens. These are cool too! At some point Alys, the other lady who lead this, said “this is what you get on a moss walk; lots of people stuck to a wall” and it was true. But we all had a whale of a time stuck to that wall!

Under an old railway bridge 

Liverwort on the left, moss on the right 

The wall that had a lot to offer

At the end Emily asked us what we had remembered. Not many species names, to be honest. But that was okay! We had all enjoyed ourselves. And now it was time to get back to the community centre. The next thing on the agenda was my talk!

2024 Climate Festival

The 2024 climate festival was approaching rapidly! And Chris, the local spider in the web, seemed to have the organisation formally under control. My task now was only to prepare a presentation. And there were two of us presenting, so the idea was as well to make sure the two talks combined well.

We had good intentions! We had a phone call. And I said I would send her my slides from last year, and then she would send me a draft of what she would present. And then we could tweak according to need. But life got in the way, and I had to finalise my slides in the very bank holiday weekend of the festival, without having seen what my co-presenter had in mind. But at least I knew she was a biologist with an interest in extinctions.

Preparing the slides

The festival started at 11. I decided to show up shortly afterwards. I wasn't talking until 1 pm, but there was a moss walk at 11:30. I like moss! So I wanted to join.

When I got there it was already very busy. Such a good sight! And the moss walk was very popular as well; there was a veritable herd of us heading up the bicycle path, with hand lenses around our necks. It was run by the same ladies who had been talking about moss at the event in Penrhyndeudraeth. It was great fun! I will dedicate a separate blog post to that.

Busy already! Pic by Gwyrddni

The stands outside the community centre 

When we got back it was almost time for me to present. And there was a good crowd in the side room where that would take place! Some familiar faces from last year, but also quite some additional ones. And I was really glad that when I spoke, they would just interrupt me for questions. It got very lively! I really enjoyed it. And there also was discussion afterwards.

My talk; pic by Gwyrddni

Then the other lady, Alison, spoke. What she said was also very interesting. Her main message wasn't actually about extinctions. What actually argued is that we know enough to know what to do to prevent them. And that is where the gains can be made. Of course you can do more research on extinction; different locations, different species, new extensions due to changing circumstance. But what will that get you? More knowledge, and nothing happening. She argues scientists should increasingly get out of science and focus their energy on making those with the power to actually change things do so. I think she has a point!

Her talk and the following discussion overran a bit. The next thing on the timetable was a climate quiz, but a lot of people had run out of steam by this time. I knew the lady who had organised it, so I wanted to participate. We all took a little bit of time out in the fresh air, where I found my fellow bike enthusiast Pete. And then we went back into the admittedly stuffy room for the quiz. There were only three participants! But we had fun. And I won a pencil.

By then the whole event had come to an end. We helped Chris put the room back to the state he had found it in. And then I went home.

We will still have Chris for another year with another festival. And after that his funding will run out. He hopes that by then, we will be able to do it without him. But we are all people with busy jobs! I find it really helps that he just regularly calls meetings. If you wait for us to do that, we wait until we have time for that sort of thing, and that never happens. Oh well. We have another year to think about this and see how we can solve this. We might just sit together at the next climate festival, and put dates in the diary for a whole year worth of meetings. And then make it happen with volunteers only. That would be ideal!

Another day training in CRTT

After the not entirely successful communications training in CRTT, we were coming back to do a full scenario there. I knew it would involve pretend casualties! So I expected a long day.

It was also a sunny bank holiday weekend, so we expected it to be busy. So all controllers (both established and aspiring) were summoned to the car park by 8:30. That was just early enough! We had the very last regular parking spaces. After that, it became cowboy business. The rest of the team was expected to park further down the hill, where it is a lot quieter.

As controllers we got the briefing. Dewi had made up a message from the police, regarding two people overdue. We discussed what we should do. After a while he threw in another piece of information: the police had received a phone call from one of the two, who had made it out safely, but said his mate had fallen down a slope and was injured. That meant full team call-out! Unfortunately it was me who said it, some three times, and it wasn't heard. I suppose it was another instance of words only being heard when a man speaks them. Annoying. But we had an imaginary casualty on our hands. We needed to get moving! And Ed was nominated to be the casualty.

We got into our caving gear, and went to where all the team kit was. We always have a lot to carry! And this time, there was no Landrover to hitch a ride from. By now, the rest of the team also arrived. And we had decided how we would organise ourselves. A small team with medical expertise would rush in first. Soon after, a rigging team would follow. It wouldn’t be a simple stretcher carry out! And then the rest, with cave-links, for surface-to-casualty communications (and vice versa) .

We loaded up and started walking. It was very hot! And I was dressed for a draughty mine. It was a bit uncomfortable, but hey ho. 

When we got to the entrance, things started according to plan. The medical team went in, closely followed by a rigging team, and then the tailgaters. We had to wait for the last people to come up with the cave-links. And I had been appointed underground control, so I needed to remain close to our line of communication.

At the entrance

At the entrance 

When I walked in I noticed my lamp was temperamental. Oh dear! Because we had had to carry so much, I had hung my helmet from my harness. Bad idea! That meant it was scraping along my kit at every step, and that had clearly affected a contact. Without a light, you're not worth much underground! I was glad I had a spare light on my helmet, and with a bit of faffing I did manage to make it work. I continued.

When we had to clamber over collapses or scree slopes, I would often rub my helmet against my rather high bag. And that would make my light either go out, or to the lowest setting. Annoying! But still manageable.

After a while we heard voices. We first game across a rigging team. And not much further on we came to the scene of the accident. There was rigging going on there as well. I had look at what the situation was. Everything seems to be under control! So I set up a cave-link with Paul, and we sent a message to the surface. And soon we got one back. Communications established! That was good. But there was something weird. The messages we received did not really address what we had said. Were they getting our messages? And then it fell silent. Something was wrong! But the other teams were making good progress, and the casualty was about to be brought up the slope. And that meant we should establish a new position for our system. So we packed the whole thing up and moved to beyond next set of obstacles. That also meant we were in daylight. The mine system there reaches the surface in various places. Or in other words, there are huge holes in the ceiling. We set up the system again, but again without success. Fortunately, though, one of those who had stayed at the surface, Dave, appeared at the top of the hole, and could shout down to us. Paul even managed to get radio contact with him. That makes talking a lot easier! It turned out that they were indeed not getting our messages via cave-link, so basically shouting through the ceiling was now our best bet with regards to communicating to the surface.

It was such a pity we had lost an excellent opportunity to practice with the cave links in this system! It is clear we could have greatly benefited from it. Now the main priority was getting our casualty out. If your main priority is communications, you just sort this sort of issue out. And then we had the expert present!

With nothing to do regarding comms, we just went back to help managing the stretcher carry. I didn't have much to do with regards to underground control! All the action took place in a rather small space, and everyone had a clear task and just got on with it. 

The big challenge was that normally you just walk through a tunnel from chamber to chamber, but one of these tunnels had been blocked by a collapse. So the only way to get out was basically to clamber over the collapsed to a higher level, and then back down again on the other side of the collapse. That is quite doable as a person, but very difficult as a team carrying a stretcher. And the riggers had come up with a clever plan to circumvent this! Just haul the stretcher vertically up to the next level, and then traverse most of the chamber with all the rubble in suspended from a rope. And they made it happen.

The stretcher traversing the rope. Pic by NWCRO

While that was going on I noticed Dave, who later admitted he was getting a bit self-conscious about being observed by suspecting walkers to inexplicably be shouting down huge holes in the ground, had found the hole through which she could shout to us at this location. I couldn't really hear what he said, so I had to clamber a lot closer to him. He said the surface team hoped we would abort mission. It was getting late! And I thought we should do that after the stretcher had traversed this chamber on the rope. It would be a pity to not use it now! And I went back to the others to report this.

The riggers had actually also rigged one further pitch, to lower the stretcher down, over the rubble, to floor level. We decided to use that pitch as well, given that it was there, but then abort mission. The casualty could just have a miraculous recovery and walk the rest. That would be a lot quicker! And we made it happen.

Coming down to floor level. Pic by NWCRO 

When he got out and stretched his legs again we quickly removed all the pitches, and put all the kit associated with the stretcher back into the bags. And then we could head back! And that was mainly just one scree slope, one collapse, one incline, and then a very long tunnel before we were out in the sunshine again. Mission accomplished! And we had a little debrief in the sun. But then we went back down.

I figured it had been very useful. As I keep mentioning; if we have a callout, it is generally in this system. And this was the first time I had been on a practice where we had actually tried to get a casualty out. And we normally only encounter people who are in good health, but either don't have the equipment to come out, or can't find the exit. They are quite easy to extract! But it is likely that one day our luck will run out, and we will actually have to get an injured person out. And now we have practised!

I am afraid I have to end this post with the confession that that very night, at 1:30, we actually had a call-out; people lost in CRTT. But I slept straight through the alarm! And it turned out I hadn't been the only one. Friends suggested this might have something to do with the iPhone bug that had been on the news. I don't know! But I felt guilty for not responding. And I take my hat off to the people who responded, especially those that had already spent their entire day in this very same system! Luckily, for the actual call-out, no stretchers were needed!

Marking time, so also: academic integrity time

Pretty much all the teaching is now over! But that also means that there is a lot of marking work to do. The exams haven't been yet, but there is a lot of coursework to mark. Especially essays and dissertations. And these can be slow to mark!

With much marking comes much work on academic integrity. I had been getting some piecemeal cases, but the big job so far has been the second year students and their essays. Every single student in that cohort is on that module, and it is a big cohort at that. And it is marked by lots of different members of academic staff. And the problem with that is that I am reluctant to let the situation happen that in a module like that, academic integrity monitoring becomes some sort of lottery. In other words; that it just depends on who has marked your work whether you will or will not be pulled up for poor academic practice. I know some of my colleagues have never flagged a case of academic poor practice with me. Some people are very diligent. And the solution to such unequal treatment unfortunately is that I look at all of the scripts myself.

We always get quite some essays about turtles. Pic by Roberto Costa Pinto

It was a lot of work to evaluate all potential cases! And save the documents in the suitable folder. And then write an email to all of them. And write a documentation form for all of them. And put the emails and the documentation on their university webpage. And keep track of all of that. If it's just one or two students in a module that is quickly done. If you have 200 students, and you have to contact more than 10 of them, it becomes time consuming.

I will also have to do the dissertations! Traditionally, these have lower percentages of students whose work I need to check. And it is a smaller cohort as well. Let’s hope that like last year, it isn’t a big job. 

A good thing about all this work is that I suggest to every student that they make an appointment with me. A fair percentage always takes that up. That means: more time! And the discussions can be difficult. I am, after all, probably telling them that I have reduced their mark because they were using someone else's words instead of their own. But sometimes you have a really constructive discussion with the student in question. And that makes my day! And I always hope I never have to email them again. Not about academic integrity, anyway…

Second Tuesday Evening fell race: Nant Peris

After my first Tuesday evening fell race, I was eager for more. The week after, the race would be in Nant Peris, which is very beautiful. And not very far away. Ideal? Not quite! It was a very wet day, and that makes fell racing extra challenging. I'm already scared of slipping and injuring myself when it is dry! I knew my downhill was going to be very slow. But I still wanted to race.

When I arrived I tried to pay for the entire series, but the organisation did not want to accept that. This was already the fourth race. So I just paid for this episode. And then I had a little recce. Crikey was it muddy. This was going to get interesting!

Arriving at the start

The race didn't immediately start steep, but because of the soggy ground it was a challenge anyway. And I think there normally is a path lower down on the route, but that evening it was a stream. I wasn't going very fast! And soon it was so steep no one was going fast. There was practically no running going on for most of the uphill. But much, much later than I had expected it, we started to see people coming downhill. And those at the front were obviously hurtling down the slope as if it wasn't out have them sprain their knees and break their ankles!

It gets steep

I reached the top, took two pictures, and then carefully started to make my way down. It was more important to me to come down in one recognisable shape than to be fast. So I was overtaken left, right and centre.

Looking back at the top

Summit selfie

At some point I was overtaken by a lady who then just sat down and slid some distance down the slope on her bum. That is also a way of doing it! I did consider it. But I stayed on my feet.

And down

I had heard a lot of cheering earlier on, but by the time I finally approached the finish it was quite quiet. I found out that exactly like the previous time, I had come in as the 75th runner, but the previous time the weather was gorgeous and there were a heck of a lot more of them! Under these circumstances I am pretty rubbish. I was starting to look forward to the civilised road race that was only two weeks away. It is less scenic, but you can just concentrate on the running!

The week after that, the race would be a bit further away, and again up a ludicrously steep hill. I've walked that hill a few times, and even for walking I find the downhill too steep. I think I might skip this one! There just wouldn't be any running involved for me…

Matlab, R and AI

I was bringing out my modern, technological side! And some of it went better than other bits. My master student had got her data together, and I ideally wanted her to perform multivariant statistics on it. But the thing is, if I want her to do it, I have to be able to do it myself as well! And I'm not a coding genius in the best of days, and I also hadn't kept it up since the last time I had used it in anger. So I really needed to dig out my knowledge from underneath a thick layer of dust.

I thought I'd start with an MDS plot. I had been processing for all data that way for years. I still had the Matlab scripts. I just had to check if it still worked. Matlab evolves, after all. But it did! I got me a plot.

I then decided that an even better idea would be to perform principal component analysis. My student was thinking about the relationship between pollution and microorganism assemblages. Surely it would be interesting to see how these parameters relate to each other graphically. So I started googling how you do that in Matlab. And I asked Monica, my AI assistant. But I couldn't get these scripts to work.

I then noticed a search result that directed me to R. Maybe that was worth the try? It is more user-friendly than Matlab. I found the page that guides you through the process. So I dug out my RStudio. I had made some tentative starts with that software for reasons of probably having to teach it in Welsh. No I needed much more from it! Would I manage to make it work?

Asking AI, again, didn't really help much. But I found a webpage where it was explained in detail how you can make the software do your PCA. And when I followed that recipe, I got what I needed! I was very proud of myself. Two successful plots with two different types of mathematical software in one day; that is not bad. And I hadn't had to ask anyone for help!

If I can do this, my student can too. I directed her to the same website. And when I had the software open anyway, I made a plot with some arbitrary data. I am not going to give away the results of my student here!

I fully intend to make recipes for doing the other calculations and plots I do in my teaching in R as well. I think it is powerful enough to suit all my needs. In order to actually need Matlab, you need to have rather high demands, and I don't. And R is free, so I will keep having access to it. The university isn't keen on paying for licenses, so using free software relieves you of the risk of the university quitting its subscription.

Altogether a bit of a disappointment AI wasn't of much use here. But extra cool I got what I needed in the end. I hope I can keep this momentum going!

A PCA plot of some example data