Getting ready for the swamp hike

Technically, I was only getting ready for half a swamp hike! Me and my Dutch hiking friends try to have an autumn hike every year, but every year we run into trouble as some of us have less flexible working conditions than others. In autumn, we at Bangor University have a reading week, in which we don't teach, but that is never in the same week as autumn holidays in the Netherlands. One of my Dutch hiking friends also works in education. This year, it had been a bit of compromise; they would arrive in Britain on Wednesday morning, and I would join them on Thursday early evening. I had Thursday teaching I really couldn't move. But I had managed to keep the Friday clear.

I had a fair amount of teaching that week I needed to get through, and I was also behind because I had spent so much time on the dissertation module. I had been working evenings. And when I finally was caught up with the teaching, I needed to pack, of course. 

We also had a little route planning meeting (which I attended online). We had agreed earlier on that we would try the Peak District. None of us had been there before, it was rumoured to be very beautiful, and it was quite conveniently located between the ferry port in Hull, and Bangor. And we knew it could get very busy, but we figured that in November, that wouldn't be a huge issue. So it sounded like a decent choice! But it is a rather large area; the first decision we had to make was whether we would do Dark Peak or White Peak, whatever that meant. But they have separate maps.

Given that we were starting out with two full-size double sided maps, it started a bit awkward. Additionally, I have a cat who thinks maps are cat toys. But in spite of all that we decided fairly soon to stick with Dark Peak. And have Edale as the meeting point.  It is difficult to follow what someone is doing if they are looking at a map you can't see, but I think we made it work. The men would Park up at Snake Road, and spend a day and a half walking to Edale. There I would meet them, and then we would spend another day and a half walking back to Snake Road. Sorted. 

Two evenings in advance I had already gathered a lot of the stuff I wanted to bring. And the day after I bought the last snacks. And having prepared was good, because the evening before I had a splitting headache and I was very tired. I went to bed early. And the next morning I needed to finalise the packing. There are always things you can only pack at the last minute because you still need them before you leave. And I didn't have bucketloads of time to spare, so it didn't go flawlessly, but I arrived for my teaching on time, and with my backpack ready in the boot of the car. With most things in it. 

On the day I had a practical session, and I as soon as that would finish I would just jump into the car in my teaching outfit. I had my hiking clothes ready. And when I would get to Edale, where we would meet, I could just pitch my tent, change my clothes, and blend into this year's Swamp hike edition.

Luckily the forecast was very cloudy but not rainy. I still packed my best waterproofs, but hoped I wouldn't need them. 

Things went as planned. The practical session ended at 3 pm. And six minutes later I texted the men I was on my way. Peak District, here I come!

High speed lecture updates

I had felt my glaciology lecture series needed an update for a while. And there even had been mention of that in the student evaluations. So it was time to get my skates on! The time to do that is in summer. 

Summer came and went and I didn’t get around to it. So then it had to be done during term itself. But term got completely swamped by dissertation topic proposals. It started to get tight! 

It is fun to do. One of the things I do is illustrating concepts with recent literature. And there is so much interesting stuff out there! But I had to hurry up. I spent some evenings in my home office. And I got quite knackered. 

Now it will be Reading Week soon, in which we don’t teach. I will make sure to dedicate a fair amount of time to making some good progress on that!

The Aletsch glacier, which features in the lectures

Resorting to the mountain bike

Two days after seriously displeasing my ankle on the Llanberis hills I didn't want to run yet. Not even a short run. But I also did not want to turn into a complete potato. So it was time to get my old creaky mountain bike out of the garage! I am never quite as keen on that as I am on running. But it's the best I currently have.

I did a variation of my standard loop. It is not very long! And it is only 260 m up. That is a lot less than my commute, which is 420 m up. But then again, my commute is on the road, on a faster bike, and even then it tends to take me 1.5 hours. I did not want to spend that amount of time on it today.

It was beautiful weather and it went well. So it's something! And I am still doing my ankle exercises. I hope I can be back in these hills on my feet soon!

No more proposals for dissertation topics

The deadline has been, the students can't propose their own dissertation topics anymore! What a relief. I do like the concept of the students doing that, but it is so much work. It is so much that I will have to change the procedure next year. This just consumed all my time.

There are some students who have a clear idea, and then it's not much of a burden. Occasionally, a student gets their proposal approved in one go. Sometimes you have to ask a few clarifications and then they're good to go. But there are also students who just haven't quite grasped what is needed. And some of them then start using the scattergun approach. And if they don't quite know what they want to do, they often use an awful amount of text to communicate it. Not because they have a concerted attempt at shrouding their lack of data with which to answer a clear research question in a fog of prose, but that sort of is the effect of it. 

Some students in fact just want to do a literature study, and then they might just dig out some data and say they will do statistical analysis on it in order to make it look more thorough. But if the data and the analysis are not connected to the research question, I won't give it my OK. Sometimes you can also tell that they're bluffing; sometimes the statistical analysis they claim they want to do is fundamentally impossible to perform on the data they offer.

In the end there were 35 students who sent me at least one attempt. 15 of these got their proposal approved. I'm still not entirely sure how many students I have in the cohort; the last count was 191. So 18% had a go, and 8% pulled it off. And the topics were very varied.

Next year I will put some limitations in place. I might set a maximum number of iterations students can submit. That will get rid of the scattergun approach. And I want to make sure that you can get a standard response. So far I always reply with a personalised message, but I think I will have to tell the students they might just get a standard response that says things such as "exact nature of data insufficiently specified" or "data provided insufficient to answer research question". It will be so much quicker! And I can provide an explanation on the module website of what the various responses can mean in detail.

For this year, the burden has now gone from dealing with the proposals of the own topics, to allocating everybody else at topic from the list. That is a big job as well! I hope it will be OK this year…

A sea urchin, the main character in one of the proposals. Pic by Frédéric Ducarme

Back on the hills, but was that a good idea?

I was getting withdrawal symptoms when I decided to not run for a bit to spare my sore ankle. If I don't run, I am very dependent on my commute. I have been taking roads with unnecessary verticality to get at least some kicks. I find it really hard at the moment to motivate myself to go biking in the weekend. I should just do it anyway! I have a standard route. I don't have to think too hard about it.

But why not run? The physio had said I could run with this ankle! But I was a little bit hesitant to do that. I take tendons seriously. And the first Thursday after seeing the physio I couldn't run anyway, as I needed to bake a cake. But then there was the second Thursday after seeing the physio. I was itching to run again, especially with the Hill crew!

When we set off I felt it didn't feel very good on my ankle. I was wondering if it would get better along the way; maybe I would just warm up a bit and things would get better? But that didn't really happen. Should I have bailed out? Maybe yes. But I didn't. I knew my ankle was protesting a bit, but I didn't really know how serious that was. Maybe the next morning it would be okay again.

Evening views

After the run I went home. I was tired. And the next morning I woke up and I knew that this was the crucial moment. Would my ankle be okay? And the answer was: no. It was worse than it had been after the 10k! Which I didn't expect, given that I was going full pelt during the 10k. And one does not go full pelt on Thursday. If it's steep up you can't go fast, and if it is steep down you can't go fast. And we especially seek out the steep bits. Of course you can go full speed on the short flat bits, but that would totally not be comparable with going flat out for almost 45 minutes.

I felt very old coming down stairs that Friday. The worst thing for my ankle is bending my foot up, and that is what you do if you walk down the stairs. Walking up you don't have to. 

Next Thursday I can't run, as I am otherwise engaged. I really hope that another two-week break will do my ankle some good! It's very frustrating being so old and so injury-prone. First the knees, and then the ankle. I want to get rid of this issue and just run! But I have to be sensible and play the long game. Wish me luck…

Foram practical with new team

This year the annual foraminifera practical, associated with the fieldtrip, would be quite big. We had 33 students! That is quite a lot. And there are not many people in the School who can recognise the critters. In the olden days, it had been Katrien who would help me in that session. She had covered James’s teaching in the past, which included this practical. But she had only learned to recognise the forams for that purpose, and didn't really use that knowledge for anything else.

This year, two things happened; firstly, Katrien was unavailable, and secondly, there was increased teaching contribution from a guy who was normally only involved in research: Mike. And his PhD work had involved foraminifera. Since then I had the impression he had strayed quite far away from them, but it was a lot more exposure to the critters than Katrien ever had. So I asked him if he was willing to step in.

To my surprise, he was quite keen! Normally if you ask someone to take on an additional task they are quite grumpy about it. But he was glad; he said because of his contract and its circumstances, he had felt a bit apart from everything else. Being involved in teaching was actually something he was embracing. So that's great! I have a foram buddy, and he feels part of the team. Everybody wins!

I didn't want this to get exhausting. So although we had the lab until 3 PM, I told the students to stop picking forams at 11 AM. The picking is not the hard work. The identifying is! And I always insist on every single foram identification to be checked. And that was all just Mike and me.

Quite a lot of students didn't have an awful lot of forams. But that is life! Some of the samples are even barren. And with the picking over, the identification help, plus ID checks, followed. That is hard work; as soon as you are finished with one student, you see three arms in the air from students who also want their identifications checked, but I think we did it. And we were done by approximately 1 PM. Good for me! Then I could walk out to have lunch. And then I went back to retrieve the stuff that had to go back to my office rather than to lab storage.

I think it went okay! I have not yet compiled the database. The actual practical went okay, with students not being too impatient about the suboptimal staff/student ratio. And Mike was on good form. Let's do this again next year!

A foram

Phone charging faff

The comedian Ashley Blaker suggest that parenting basically is just frantic management of phone chargers. I could imagine that there is a kernel of truth in that. We are so dependent on our mobile phones these days! And without charge, they are useless.

I wanted to charge my phone, which has a rather notoriously short battery life, and it just wouldn't play ball. The cable just didn't make contact with the phone. I tried some other cables, but that didn't work either. Now what? Would this be a cable problem or a phone problem? If it would be a cable problem it would be easily solved. If it would be the phone problem, I would need a new phone. I'm sure a charging port can be repaired, but this phone showed signs of coming towards the end of its life anyway. I've only had it for less than a year! Maybe next time I should buy a more recent model in the hope it lasts longer. But anyway. There I was.

I decided to dig out two auxiliary items: my old phone, and my powerbank. And the good news was that the old phone did let itself be charged with one of my cables. The slightly less good news was that its use was limited. I couldn’t blog or email, as I hadn’t logged in on that phone for months, and it wanted two step verification. It also wouldn’t load my WhatsApp chats. It did have a functioning Welsh dictionary and a working weather app. That was something. 

I also realised I could use the old phone for navigation. No SIM card needed for that! Except that it then needs a mobile hotspot. And that would be the old phone. Which still drains its battery. And I had to get to Minera first, and Nick later. I can’t yet drive to either on memory; let alone to the one via the other. I just about managed without having to resort to my old-fashioned road atlas! 

I then realised I could charge my phone from my powerbank. Normally, I charge the phone by plugging a classic USB into the powerbank, and I charge the powerbank by sticking a USB C cable in and plugging the other side via USB into the mains. But it turns out you can use the USB C port for both energy going in and out. I suppose everybody else already knew this. And I had a new USB C cable that did manage to make the connection to my phone charging port. So I was sort of sorted! 

It wasn’t a long-term solution, but it did the job. Until I lost track of where my powerbank was. That complicated things again.

Luckily, the corner shop just sells charging cables. Of course I had forgot to buy one the first time I went in anyway, after the old cable gave up. But then I just went in on my way to work. And the even found the powerbank again. So I was sorted again. But what a faff! Although learned a few useful things about powerbanks and mobile hotspots in the process…

All the paraphernalia! On the left the new charging cable; in the middle the old phone with an old cable that managed to charge it, and on the right the powerbank with the USB C cable…