Faffing with the stove

I hoped I had it sorted! After lots of frustrating gluing back of the fire rope that is supposed to seal the door and keep the fumes in, I bought a fire rope in a different shape and size. I glued it in position and hoped that it would stay put for a while. The original rope seemed a real mismatch! 

The new rope undeniably fit like a glove in the little gully on the inside of the door. But after using it a few times, it became clear it didn’t stick out enough. It wasn’t sealing! 

For the time being, I just swapped the doors of the two stoves around. The other stove had been sparingly used, and its original fire rope might stick for a bit. In the meantime, Neil (who has similar issues) bought some other sizes. Hopefully, one of them would fit! 

The first (and bigger) size was clearly too big. And by the time I found that out, the door with the original rope  started peeling. I had to glue it back to keep it going for a bit. 

Gluing the original rope back

The other door, with the too-thin rope in position, and the too-thick stuff for comparison…

The next step will be to try the smaller size. I hope that will do the job! Otherwise we might have to rip out the door and take it to a shop that sells all sizes to make sure we get it right. These doors are heavy! Or otherwise; just get used to doing a LOT of gluing…

Bridge is tidal again

There has been trouble with the old bridge over the Menai Strait for years now. Recently, it had just been open in both direction for quite a while. There was clearly some work going on; there were vans of a rope access company parked near it all the time, and there were tripods from which people were hoisted up and down on the pavement. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing. But for a while, it only meant that one of the pavements was closed.

Then one day I was biking home and I noticed that the whole bridge was closed in the direction I was travelling. We had gone tidal again! In the morning, you are only allowed to drive from the island to the mainland, and in the afternoon, you can only drive the other way. So all the traffic in one of the directions has to go over the new bridge (which is an entire 16 years younger than the old one), and that causes traffic jams. This had happened before. It didn't affect me very much; I can go over the pavement with my bike. But it can be a right nuisance for car travel. 

When Dei and I tried to get back from Anglesey to main campus after our trip to Parys Mountain, It took a lot longer than normal, as we were travelling in the wrong direction at the wrong time. 

I hope it doesn't stay like this for a long time! Even though I can travel in any direction by becoming a pedestrian, it does add to your travel time if you have to walk over the bridge. And if there is no one else on the bridge I will just bike, but if there are pedestrians I do get off my bike. I don't think I'll soon have a reason to drive to work, but if I do, I am obviously going in the wrong direction. That would be annoying! But I suppose a 200-year-old bridge needs some maintenance once in a while. This is a lot better than it falling into ruin…

Being inventive with sealant

I made some progress on the ceilings. I put two more backboards in. And the next step is to glue the repair patches into position. And that, obviously, requires an adhesive.

I had been wondering if I should buy something. But I've bought things like that before. I knew I had several tubes in stock; some of them already partially used up. So I decided I should just try to use them again. But it had been a while since I had used them. Would they have dried out by now? And they are tubes; the adhesive comes out of the nozzle, but the nozzle, of course, gets clogged up quite quickly after use.

I first looked at the material I had used for repairing my render. The nozzle was surely clogged up, but there was a complication: this nozzle didn't look removable. And you can always cut it off, but that is a bit drastic. I had a look at the other tube of which I wasn't quite sure what I had used it for; maybe making the conservatory waterproof? Or for (re-)sticking antislip to my garden stairs? 

That nozzle was also clogged up. I took it off, and pushed something through the bung underneath it. There was clearly some material underneath it that wasn't dried out yet. But I didn't see a way of pushing it out. And then I decided to just cut off the entire top. It was either taking drastic measures or having to throw all of it away! And I got rid of the bung. 

I used a little spatula to get to the usable material. I think it worked! I'm glad I could save this compromise tube of sealant. I had nothing to lose! I always like salvaging things through slightly unorthodox methods. And so far it looks like it worked.. 

Only half a Parys field trip

Parys Mountain is a bit of an inhospitable place! It is very exposed. And if you have a habit of going there on a field trip in February, you might hit some atrocious weather. Last year I ended my blog post about the trip like this: 'It was a bit touch and go (because of the weather) this year, but I think we pulled it off! Let's hope that our next trip will have nicer weather…'

Well! I suppose the title of this blog post already provides a bit of a hint how things when this year. I think I meant the next trip in the series when I wrote that, but I allow myself to relate it to this year’s version of that same trip. The forecast had already revealed that the weather wasn't going to be great! We decided to play it by ear.

We drove up, parked up, and went to the viewing point, where we always start. It was foggy, but the fog wasn't very dense, and we could still see the pit for the most part. And it wasn't very cold, and even the wind wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. We were fine! And when you descend into the pit you are a bit sheltered from the wind. And we only had a little bit of rain. I got through talking about the geology without issues.

By that time it was lunchtime. We decided to go back to our minibus, and have lunch inside it. And we kept an eye on the rain radar.

When we all had more or less eaten our lunches, the rain was hammering on the windscreen. And it looked like it would still rain for another hour! Should we go back? The rest of the trip is only in industrial archaeology, basically. Not really anything we really need to teach the students. This is just bonus!

We asked the students what they preferred. They didn't have to think about that for very long. Go back to campus! And so we did. It was a bit of a pity to miss out on the amazing industrial remains, but I have seen them many times before, and the students were clearly not too bothered. So I would still put this down as a successful trip!

Teaching ramps up: climate module

In the second semester, my teaching tends to start quite subtly. The dissertation module starts straight away, with me being involved in all of it, and the first year tutorial module does its normal thing. The field trip module has three trips, but I don't normally do all three. And there is a module between the first year tutorial model and the dissertation module, but the module organiser kicks that off, and the tutorials start a little bit later.

Then I have my own module, but the teaching on it is actually started by Katrien and Jaco, and I'm only the third to take the stage. And then there is the climate module, but I am doing palaeoclimate, so it makes sense to first have the physicists teach the students about how climate works, and then I come in and place all of that on a long timescale. 

I am still teaching frantically on my own module, but this is the time that the climate module kicks off as well. And I must admit I have been struggling with it a bit for the last few years. It is taught to 3rd and 4th year students, and it is about climate. I think discussion is an important part of it. But for years I have been struggling to get the students to engage. If you have them in the room, you can ask them questions, but the risk is that the only thing they do is desperately trying to avoid eye contact. And if you ask them to contribute, by preparing something and reporting back, they generally don't. It's been a bit like pulling teeth!

I'm not giving up. This year might be the one in which I get some lively discussion going. If students of that level, doing marine science, and a particular degree that involves climate science, are not able to stand up and have their voice heard about climate, then who is? This is one of the great challenges of our time, and it needs a societal discussion. I do think it is my duty try to get the students into this. Our little classroom is a safe space where you can get a bit of practice without the risk of being torn down by the public. Or bots. Wish me luck!

NWRAC meeting

When you accept a position in a steering committee, it tends to come with some unexpected tasks. Being the newfangled secretary of the Eryri Harriers, I was busy sending emails to all sorts of people, taking minutes of the one in person meeting I had attended, and the one online one that I didn't mention on the blog. But then there was an invitation to a Welsh Athletics meeting. To be more precise; it was an online meeting of the north Wales Regional Athletics Council (NWRAC). It seemed I might not be fully needed there; the club should be represented, but Arwel often went. However; I was curious, and I also didn't mind having to skip a Thursday training. For some reason, I had come back from the track training that week absolutely exhausted, and I was still knackered the day after. And I also knew that the morning after the meeting (or alternatively, the hill training) I would have to go into the field with the students; that is quite knackering, and I would have to top that off with a lecture from 5 to 6 pm. That is not something you want to do if you are exhausted to start with. So this week I preferred a 7 to 8 online meeting to  running the rainy hills until 8pm! 

I recognised several of the faces on the screen. Two of them seem deeply involved in race organisation, and Welsh Athletics championships, so you see them a lot at starts and finishes and when WA hands out medals. They were doing both at the Twin Piers race. Kevin, one of the two track trainers, and also a prolific race organiser, was there, and our own Arwel. And then some people I didn’t recognise. 

The meeting’s highlight was a presentation by a lady of WA who spoke of all that’s going on in their corner. One thing she mentioned was the Track and Field rater.  everyone who uses an athletics track was invited to provide feedback on it. 

Aside from that, the meeting was mainly dealing with ongoing issues in the local athletics scene. Had all clubs paid their contributions to this, that, and the other? Were new competition rules fair? Had prize winners received their awards? Were all volunteer positions filled? 

It only overran for some 10 minutes. It was nice to get a look behind the scenes! I don’t know if I will be back next time; I’m sure Arwel can manage without me. But if he is not available, and I am, I should be there. And it is interesting to get to look under the bonnet! 

Cyrdle: goal achieved

I started Cyrdle a while ago. It was just a nice challenge and good for my Welsh. Initially it was quite a challenge, but practice makes perfect, so it got easier. and I found myself having a 98% success rate after some 200 attempts. 

Then Goodhart’s law kicked in. I wondered if I could get that number to 99%. I had had a good streak of correct answers! And if I had 98% at 200, I would manage it if I would not fail once in the next 200 attempts. And getting one was not much of a challenge, but doing it 200 times in a row still was. Was this still good for my Welsh? Or was I just chasing a metric? The latter, to be honest. But I figured it was an innocent case of chasing the measurements rather than the actual gain. 

It started fine. I often didn’t need all allowed attempts to get them! And I started to notice repetitions. So the average challenge faded a bit. But there still was the occasional adrenaline situation that I did only get the word in the last attempt. 

And then the 400th attempt came up. It wasn’t very difficult! And I got it in three goes. The answer was ‘arogl’; odour. And that had indeed brought my score to 99%! 

I will now stop. I have my metric, and I have experienced diminishing returns. But I’m glad I managed this! Nerd points duly scored…