Uncertain welcome week - again

Last year it was unclear until rather late in the game what we were and were not allowed to do in Welcome Week. And it looks like this year, that'll happen again. I suppose the uncertainty is less now, as the situation in the entire country has become a lot less severe. And in the Bangor area, vaccination is moving fast. I expect that all the staff have now had their first inoculation, and I think they have started on the students as well. And Welcome Week is not until mid to late September, so there is a lot of time to vaccinate loads more people. I imagine that the students, the Peer Guides and the general population will all be less nervous about Covid by then. So I suppose we will be able to do a lot more things than last year! Things such as Peer Guides knocking on the doors of their freshers to go and introduce themselves, and check if everything is okay. Last year, that couldn't happen. And we might be able to do the trip to the beach. And they can go to the pub! So I really hope it will be more like a "normal" year. But it's only May, and a lot can change in a few months. Watch this space! At least organisation has started…

Social weekend in spite of extension and exam

My main task for the weekend had been to finish painting the extension. I wanted the round that off! And I also was aware of my upcoming Welsh exam. The Tuesday after, I was supposed to finally do the written part of my Welsh qualification, of which I had done the oral part before the pandemic. And preparation had been severely hampered by the problems with the Welsh dictation software. I wasn't particularly prepared! But I still had the weekend.

One would assume that that would be enough to fill the weekend, but I also wanted to do at least something social. Then it became more than I had expected. And it was great! On Saturday, I spent the morning walking with Dani. We didn't go far, but even nearby, the environment is amazing. And it was good to see her. On Sunday, I went walking with Kate; we scampered up Ro Wen from Dolwyddelan. That was great too! The Ogwen Valley was packed, but where we were we didn't see a soul until we were pretty much back in the village. And in the afternoon I popped by Martin and Fran again. We did another round of drinking tea in the sun! And I brought cake. And the weather was so good even the cat came out to join us.

Image from my walk with Dani

View on Moel Siabod

On my way to Ro Wen with Kate

 the top

Dolwyddelan looking good from above

So what about painting and Welsh? Well; I did manage to finish the painting. On Sunday I finished everything except the slat above the window. And on Monday morning 7 AM I finished that! It was still just about dry then, and the rest of the day it would be hammering down. I figured it was okay to paint it as it was well protected underneath the edge of the roof. So that's sorted now! Now I need to wait for another spell of dry weather, and some free time, to caulk the edges. And then I can put my rope back into the garage and admire my work from a distance! And rest easily for a few years as I think that will be it regarding maintenance for such an amount of time.

And the Welsh? I made sure I had read the documentation of the exam, and had done some old papers. Or at least; partially done them. When it came to the writing exercises I figured I should mainly wing it. If you want to prepare for that, you need to revise ALL your Welsh, and there was no time for that. I had also done the hardware check under a pseudonym. Everything seemed to work! Now let's hope it would also work on the actual day…

So in the end I hope I will look back on it as a good balance between chores and being social! I think I will…

Sort out the Welsh voice recognition software

This post should have been published a while ago! I seem to have forgot. I had a chat with Stefano on the 12th, and with the information I gave him the went back to the programmers to see if they could sort things. We chatted again on the 15th. And then on the 19th. And on the 21st, I was sent another download link. I installed that version of the program, and hey presto, it worked! Only a short while before my exam, but it worked now. And I could send emails in Welsh again to my Welsh-speaking colleagues (mainly outside the school, of course). Hurray!

Original post:

I had been really happy to be able to use Welsh voice recognition software, as that allowed me to keep doing Welsh things, such as writing emails in Welsh, and mark Welsh language assignments. But it didn't last! At some point it stopped working. And that happened in a rather busy time, so I postponed trying to deal with it. And by the time I was ready to deal with it, the University had gone into the Easter break. So nobody was available to help me! But the Easter break came to an end, and the language centre was open again.

I quickly had a meeting with Stefano, the bloke who had introduced me to it in the first place. He asked me to send a few screenshots of error messages; he then shared them with a guy called Dewi, who knows more about the software. He came with a suggestion, but that didn't work. So we had to go back to square one.

I had another meeting with Stefano, and we tried several things, and some point he had the brilliant idea of checking whether I had been using various versions of the software. And I had! So we uninstalled the new version and installed the old one. Such a simple idea. I suppose I could have thought of that myself, but I clearly didn't. And Stefano said he thought that with that knowledge, and concomitant screenshots, Dewi would be able to think of something clever to fix my newer version. That one seems to have a much bigger vocabulary, so it would be nice if I can use that.

I do hope I can get the new version of working some day, but for now I am merely happy I have some working software again! I have a big exam coming up, and I wouldn't be able to do that without Welsh voice recognition software. It will already be difficult enough WITH the software; without it, it would be impossible.

Teaching coming to an end

Once you have reached Easter, you have broken the back of the academic year! There tend to be only a few weeks of teaching after the Easter break, and then the exam period starts. We had three weeks between the two this year; in these weeks, we had lots of student presentations, and field trips, either real or virtual. I didn't have any more discussion sessions based on lectures. That had all been rounded off before!

A task that came up quite abruptly in that time was that we were asked to file our timetabling requests for the coming academic year. The interesting thing is that that request came before management had got around to thinking about who should teach what, when and how, but I suppose now it will be pragmatism that decides that. We'll have to make executive decisions on what to request.

When the last fieldtrip will have been rounded off, we have reached the marking period. I have a big, big pile of dissertations to mark. And there will be exam marking coming up soon. And by then the next academic year should be taking shape…

Rig for paint

I had a 19 rung ladder to try to paint the top right corner of the wall of my extension. And it wasn't quite enough! Ideally, you don't stand on the top few rungs. If you do, then not only are you at risk of falling off, but also you have your face right at the wall. That's not ideal! So I was thinking about what to do about that. And I had a brilliant idea.

I made most of the painting work safe using my mine exploration rope as a handline. And that worked. But it is a 50 m rope, so there is a lot more to it. And then I figured I could use the entire extension as an anchor. What if I would lead the one end of the rope that was not in use out the front door, and then over the flat roof of the extension, and down on the other side? Then I had a rope I could attach myself to. And that would not solve the having-your-nose-against-the-wall issue, but it would solve the problem of potentially falling off. And that was the most important issue.

One evening I tried to harness my inner cowboy, and try to throw the end of the rope over the roof. That didn't work! I didn't manage to throw it far enough. I couldn't swing out much, as Neuadd Ogwen was in the way. So I postponed the whole thing a bit.

After work on Friday I had another go. I just put a ladder against the extension (at the front) and that way I did manage to get the rope over the roof. I could start scraping the top right planks! And so I did. It wasn't a big area I now had to cover, so it didn't take an awful lot of time. Even though it was a little bit awkward, standing so close to the wall. And the highest bits were still a bit difficult to get to. But I did it! And then I sanded it, and wiped it clean. And applied a layer of primer. Even though for the rest of the wall, that was the easy bit, here it wasn't the case. I have to hold the can of paint with one hand and the paint brush with the other. When I am scraping or sanding I only need one hand, and that makes it easier. But I did do it in the end. Success!

Adding the two coats of actual paint will also be awkward, but should be doable. Then I am not quite done; I still have to do the slat above the window. Some of that I want to do from inside the window. Why not! And then I have to caulk the whole thing. So this won't yet be the last blog post about this. But I think I will have a good sense of accomplishment when it is all finished!

the rig inside the bedroom

   not much to see at the front!

and what it was all about: safety on top of the ladder

Tooth repaired - again

About 5 1/2 years ago, I had one of my lower incisors repaired. They crumble a bit! And a few weeks ago, I was eating a sandwich, and I was doing it a bit clumsily, and I felt another bit come off, this time from the other tooth. It looked like I had to go back and have some repair done on this other incisor! It wasn't a big piece that had come off, but I remembered how much better it felt when the left incisor had been repaired. And when I went to the dentist for my regular checkup (well, not so regular in pandemic times) he had a look. He said the earlier repair was already showing cracks itself, but that was more than five years ago, so I figured it had done a fair job. If I could have this tooth repaired, and that holding for more than five years, then I figured that was worth it. My teeth are becoming increasingly artificial, but I think it is still well within limits!

My teeth are all even again now, and not crumbly. It feels good. I hope that means I am indeed sorted for at least the coming six years…

Second last fieldtrip of the year

 Our fieldwork module was coming to an end! We were about to do the second last of our day trips. And this one went to Rhosneigr. We would do two loops there; one around the small local lake, and then one over the beach. By the lake we could see granite intrusions, and the contact metamorphism that resulted from it. These granites are more then 600 million years old! Not at all the oldest rocks we had stood on; that had been about 800 million years old. But still quite respectable. Wales was still part of a continent on the south pole when that was formed.

On the other side of the lake we saw Ordovician sandstones. These are some 125 million years younger. Life had changed by then! We had almost crossed an Ocean by then. And the bit further on they turned into beautiful conglomerates, where Jaco did an impromptu lecture about transport of gravel by seawater. And we decided to have lunch there.

After lunch we went to the beach to look at the beautifully deformed muds and sands. If you want to see textbook examples of folding and cleavage, then go there!

When we were done on the beach we were done altogether. And then only the trip to Lligwy beach was still to come. That would be the week after. And that would be it for this year with regards to fieldtrips. Last year, we hadn't got past this trip, as by then the lockdown happened. I suppose that given the pandemic has by no means gone away, we had managed quite well this year with these trips!

Llyn Maelog

Lovely Ordovician conglomerate