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

Organising the family reunion (badly)

After the last family reunion (which I missed) I was asked to organise the next episode, together with my cousin Femke. Because of my foreign residency, I’ve never been involved in the organisation before. 

It will take place in the city where Femke lives. I suppose that meant that we really relied on her local knowledge, but I could do the communications. Whether someone fires emails from the middle of the Netherlands or from windswept Wales doesn't really matter!

Utrecht: the venue. Pic by Pepijntje

The big decision was done the last time we had a cousin meet-up: the date. We settled on a Sunday in May. And May is nigh! 

Femke and me discussed over WhatsApp. She had plenty of ideas. And then we had to choose. We weren’t as good at that as I would have hoped. I also think it didn’t help we both had very busy times; I had my two applications in spring, and she always has more jobs and courses and children and whatnot than seem to fit in a person’s life. 

We’ll have to get our arses in gear now! But I trust we’ll pull it off in the end. I suppose that’s probably how we live our lives! Uncertain how we will fit everything in, but making it alright on the night…

End of Rosemary

The lady I bought my house from was called Rose. It was short for Rosemary. I figured it wasn’t a coincidence there were several rose and rosemary bushes in the garden. I like rosemary, but I’m not so keen on roses. 

I have not gone on a campaign to get rid of any of the roses or rosemaries. I like keeping a tribute to the previous owner in place. But sometimes something happens that makes me reduce the number of rose-related plants anyway. At some point, the big rosebush in the upper garden keeled over in strong wind, and blocked access to the lower garden. So then I had to remove it. A rosemary by the kitchen was donated. 

This spring, the big rosemary bush that stood close to the rosebush I had to cut back, looked really bad. It might be a very old plant! It was about a cubic meter. Maybe it had come to the end of its lifetime. It looked like it was dying.

A sad rosemary bush

It was already an impractical plant. It was sub-horizontal, so its branches were hanging over a lot of both grass and plant bed. So although I mourned the end of a meaningful plant, I did decide the time had come to remove it.

I first took lots of cuttings. I know it isn't necessarily easy to propagate a rosemary, and I also seem to have decided this in the wrong time of the year, but I had very little to lose. And then it got busy; the same stuff that got in the way of my gate repair. But one day, a few weeks after the cuttings, I got executive and took my saw through its trunk. I needn’t have bothered; the wood was rotten, and I could just pull it out of the ground. The upper garden looks really different now! And I’ll have to tidy up what appeared from underneath it. I’ll find time for that these weeks. 

Goodbye, Rosemary! It was good to have known you!

The cat inspects to new situations with the uprooted Rosemary

Gone altogether

Cuttings

Day out with the Cornish

It had been a year ago since Mike and Daz, my Cornish friends, had come up to Wales. So I could have expected a message saying they were due again. They appeared just when teaching petered out. Good timing!

They were up for either an above ground or underground trip, but they had already done a massive hike, so I figured an underground trip would be more fitting. I didn't have buckets of inspiration, but I did mention which venues I had visited the past year. And one of these was a mine they hadn't been in before. They had been in a few meters, but then turned back. This might have had something to do with the cold water you encounter pretty much immediately. But now they were up for it. And we’d meet up there.

It was great to see them! And we got kitted up. After a while we went in. We first did the lower level. They had never seen a chute like that before! Or a wagon like that. 

Then we went up and checked that level out. And then it was time to head into the deep cold water. And we checked all the way to the end. Nice drippies, nice laddered shafts, nice artefacts. And then we went back out. Time to warm our feet back up! 

Mine level

Ladder going off into oblivion 

Crawling through a partial collapse with black speleothems

Decorative bottle

We changed, had a drink, and then decided to have a look at a nearby mine entrance none of us had seen before. How could this one have escaped me so long? I now know where it is. I might recce it before they come back. And then we went back to their accommodation. By that time I was ravenous! So I was keen to get lunch somewhere. And we settled on a nearby pub. I don't think any of the food touched the sides.

In the pub we made plans for the afternoon. Mike wondered if there was anything interesting to see in some area that boils down to the easternmost part of the Lleyn peninsula. I thought of the hillfort: Tre’r Ceiri. And we decided to go there. But I said I first wanted some tea.

We went back to their accommodation where I found a kettle and a big flask. So I did my thing. And then we could go!

It is a fair drive there. But quite a lot of the road is beautiful, so that was okay. And by the time we got to the layby that functions at the start of the standard walk up to the top, it was about 4:15. A bit late to start a walk! But this one wouldn't be huge.

We started our way up, and quite soon we got to the outer wall. The men were impressed! And it is quite an impressive structure. We had a little wander around, imagining what life would have been like when this place was still inhibited. We were most wondering about the issue of drinking water. But we didn't linger too long. We were back at the car in about an hour. 

Hillfort selfie

Notice the outer wall and hut circles

When we got back we had one more hot drink in their accommodation. And then it was time to go home. It was really time for the cat to get her dinner. But it had been a great time! And I'm sure they'll be back next year. I look forward to it already Maybe they will even do both a summer and a winter trip! That wouldn't be the first time…