dangermouse.net – David Morgan-Mar

Inconvenient times for university next year

This morning I went into the University of Technology Sydney for my weekly tutoring role in the Image Processing course. The lectures concluded last week, an d now for the next few weeks we have project sessions, where the students work on their assessment tasks and we are available for them to ask questions and to give advice. Some of the student groups have some quite interesting and different projects this year.

The professor said he’d received a preliminary timetable for his courses next year. In semester one, Data Engineering will be Wednesdays 3–6pm. This is a little inconvenient as I will have to move my Wednesday evening Critical Thinking classes, probably to Tuesdays. Hopefully all the students will be able to adjust, but often there are a few who can’t.

But Image Processing in semester two is planned for Friday 6–9pm! Now late Friday evening is bad enough in itself, but this overlaps with my fixed schedule weekly board games night, almost the only time I get to socialise with my friends. If the preliminary schedule doesn’t change, I’ll have to miss games night with my friends for three months. So I’m really hoping it changes.

I took my driving licence renewal form in with me today, so I could stop off at the state government office on the way home and renew it. I need to get this done before I go to England next month, as my licence expires before we return home. While I was at the university I pulled out the form to look at it and fill in any details… and read the first thing was that I had to have my old licence with me. Which I didn’t. I have a digital version on my phone which is fine for ID purposes, but they wanted the physical card, which is in my wallet, and these days I never take my wallet with me anywhere. So I had to abandon that and just come straight home. I’ll have to go in to renew it Monday or Tuesday next week – I won’t get another chance this week.

Tonight I started my new Critical Thinking topic: Preserving the Past.

If someone finds an ancient treasure, should the government be able to take it to put it in a museum? What if it’s an everyday item, not a treasure? What if it’s commonplace and people find them everywhere?
Should ancient artefacts be preserved as they are found, or should they be restored?
What about ruins? If you are constructing a new building, and find an ancient building on the site, on your land, what should happen?
How old does an item need to be to be historic and worth preserving?
How famous? How rare? (Should we preserve a Coca Cola can for people 10,000 years in the future?)
Are there old things that should be destroyed instead of being preserved (e.g statues, books etc related to “evil” people)? Who gets to decide?
How much responsibility does each generation have to preserve a physical record of the past?
Are 3D scanned representations good enough?
Should we preserve records of everyone who ever lived? Or is it okay for history to forget individuals?

Spring is heating up, cuckoos are back

The weather is warming up much earlier than usual for spring. This morning I decided to take Scully on a long walk early, to avoid the heat around lunchtime, with a forecast of 26°C. We went to our favourite Italian bakery, where I got a pistachio and chocolate scroll for morning tea and some biscuits for dessert tonight.

On the way I was observing things more carefully than usual. I heard a channel-billed cuckoo call for the first time this season. Loud and raucous and unmistakable. These birds migrate to New Guinea and Indonesia in the winter, so hearing them is a herald of the summer season.

Up near the Metro station we passed a man in a business suit, carrying a cup of coffee and some documents, and also eating from an open packet of party mix lollies. Breakfast of champions. A bit further along we passed a supermarket and I saw a man leaving with two items, one in each hand: a bag of mandarins and a loaf of bread.

Walking around, it’s very clear that spring is blooming, with lots of flowers out: azaleas, flowering plums, wisteria, lavender, African daisies, strelitzia (bird of paradise flowers), clivias, and paper daisies (A diverse group of Australian natives including species such as Rhodanthe chlorocephala, Rhodanthe manglesii, Xerochrysum bracteatum, and Coronidium elatum).

I took Scully for another short walk at lunch, which turned out not to be as warm as I feared. And then we went out again around 5pm. And this time I heard another migratory bird for the first time this spring, a Pacific koel. These are also cuckoos, that migrate as far as south-east Asia in the winter. They also have an unmistakable, loud and annoying call. As Wikipedia says:

In Australia, the presence of the species is regarded as a sign of the arrival of spring and the rainy season. It is also viewed as a nuisance due to the males’ incessant calling throughout the day and night.

Late morning I did my science class with the material on motion that I’d prepared. It turned out we only got through about half of it, so I should have plenty left to do on Thursday when we have another lesson.

Full teaching and lesson prep

I had a busy Monday, with plenty of online lessons to teach. And in the afternoon I spent most of my time finishing off the physics lesson on motion for my science student, the class being tomorrow. I’m almost finished – I just need to complete a half-done slide on Newton’s Third Law and I think it’s done.

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but another thing I did on Sunday was apply for Electronic Travel Authorisations to visit the UK. These are a new thing the UK has introduced quite recently. Up to now we haven’t required any sort of visa or documentation other than a passport to visit the UK. We had to submit photos of our faces and passports to the UK government website that handles it. They said it could take 3 days to approve, but we got approval notices pretty quickly.

Another administrative thing I need to do soon is renew my driving licence. My current one expires during our planned trip to the UK, so I need to do it before, lest it be expired when we return. And my wife discovered her driving licence also expires very soon, within a few weeks of mine. I was wondering why in all the years we’ve been married we’ve never noticed before that our licences expire at almost the same time. But then I realised I only have a 5-year licence, whereas my wife’s current one is a 10-year licence. You have to switch from 10-year to 5-year licences above a certain age, so it’s possible that we’ve always been 5 years out of synch before now. But it’s a weird coincidence.

A journey through the beginning of physics

Today I mostly continued working on my science class for the coming week. I figured I’d do basic motion, and so of course I need to cover Newton’s Laws of Motion. Then I realised I should set up the background for why Newton’s ideas were so radical, so I actually have to start with Aristotle. Then I figured I should say something about Galileo and how he began refuting some of Aristotle. But before getting to Galileo and why his observations were so important I need to mention Copernicus. And to explain why Copernicus was so important, I need Ptolemy… And then Kepler really set the stage for Newton. And Kepler relied on Tycho Brahe.

And so the rabbit hole goes. I’ve completed all the preliminary slides. Now I just actually have to do Newton and his laws, and that’s a lesson!

For lunch today my wife and I went on a walk to a nearby cafe, since I have classes across dinner time and we do our own things for dinner, so it makes sense to have a nice lunch instead. The place had a prawn patty burger, which sounded intriguing, so I tried that. It was a bit unusual, but good. For dinner I just made myself some instant ramen-style laksa, and sliced some mushrooms into it.

Games night and starting on physics

Friday I had a busy morning: an AI Literacy class, a Critical Thinking class, and then straight into an online meeting for Standards Australia on photography standards. This was mainly for my report on the ISO Photography meeting I attended (remotely) back in June. We needed to get this one done before the next ISO meeting, coming up in October in Cambridge (that I’ll be travelling to). That meeting overlapped another Critical Thinking class, which I had to postpone until this (Saturday) morning, meaning I had a class today which is unusual as my Saturday’s are meant to be my free day. I had another class as well on Friday afternoon.

After that my wife and I walked up to the new Thai place that we tried a few weeks ago, for dinner. This time I tried the massaman curry, which was pretty good.

After dinner was online games night with my friends. We played games of Just One, 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Architects, and 6 Nimmt.

There were two awesome rounds of Just One. These are screenshots of our custom Discord implementation. People provide clues to a word, trying to be helpful, and one player has to guess the word. The complication is that any clue that more than one person gives is eliminated (“duped”), so you have to try to give clues that nobody else will give. One round went like this:

Just One round 1

Yep, the guy had just one clue, “ocean”, and correctly guessed “trout”. This is possibly the most epic correct guess we’ve ever seen. And then in a later round I had this one to guess:

Just One round 2

This was just hilarious. The clue “The” was intended to be a hint at “The Martian” (admittedly not normally a good clue to give), but the way it appeared here had all of us cracking up with laughter.

Today I did a 5k run and started work on my next science lesson for my online science student. I decided to begin working on physics. And in the best tradition of The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon, I’m starting with Ancient Greece and Aristotle.

We had some vege burgers for dinner. I cooked some smoky cauliflower patties from the supermarket. After dinner my wife suggested we take a walk up the hill to the new gelateria which opened recently. It’s really good and I think there will be a lot more balmy evening walks to get gelato over the summer.

Discussing cloning

Today among other classes I did my science one, on the Cloning topic. The student was really fascinated by the concept and learnt how it works and what it’s useful for. I threw in some ethical questions for her to think about and discuss as well, since it raises several of them.

I took Scully for a couple of walks. It was chilly today. We had that one weirdly hot day and now it’s thankfully cooled down again, although there are more warm days coming up next week.

In the afternoon I worked on some bonus material for Darths & Droids. I nearly have some more ready to publish, but it just needs a tiny bit more effort to finish off.

Last night I finished watching the movie Heretic, starring Hugh Grant of all people as a creepy old guy. It’s a psychological horror movie, and really good. I see it was nominated for bunches of awards. Recommended if you’re into that sort of movie.

I Love Butter photos

I took some photos at the bakery I went to yesterday for lunch, but didn’t have time to post them yesterday. It was a tiny place called I Love Butter:

It had sausage rolls, quiches, croissants, cookies, friands, muffins, and baguette sandwiches.

I got one of the sausage rolls:

And a spinach quiche:

I waked with Scully to a small park/playground to sit at a picnic table and eat them. While I was eating a brief heavy shower passed over and I had to stand under a fig tree to keep dry. It passed within a few minutes, but then the benches were too wet to sit down again. The food was pretty good. I also got a peanut butter cookie to take home and have for dessert in the evening.

This morning I got up early and went into the university for today’s image processing lecture. The professor finished up the lecture material with deep learning and then talked about the student assessment projects. I had to answer a lot of questions from students about the project.

Back home I worked on a class about cloning for my science student, to teach tomorrow. I had enough time left over to do a 5k run before my evening Critical Thinking classes. on the topic of Confidence this week.

Final Darths & Droids strip completed

Today was a big day. I finished making the very last Darths & Droids comic strip! There’s a bit of a buffer, so it won’t be published for a couple of weeks, but the ending is in the can. I no longer have to dedicate time every week to making comics. I’m looking forward to doing some other things with the spare time.

Also today I wrote up my class notes for the new week of Critical Thinking, on the topic of Confidence.

And I took Scully for a short drive to a new bakery I found a few suburbs away. I had a sausage roll and a small quiche from there for lunch, and they were pretty good.

I don’t have time to write much more as we spent the evening after dinner at our neighbour’s place, chatting and playing board games. We played Kingdomino, then a card game called Cargo that someone they know designed, and then finished with Quirkle.

Unexpected rain

The forecast for today said a 25% chance of up to 2 mm of rain. But it’s currently pouring down outside, and so far the Sydney weather station has recorded 5.2 mm in the past hour. It was a cooler day again. Thankfully the 32°C of Saturday seems to be an early spring aberration, although there’s a day of 27°C forecast again in the next week.

Scully is doing a lot better today after a night’s sleep. Her leg seems fine and she’s not noticeably limping at all any more. We still kept her a bit rested and didn’t do any long walks today, just to be careful.

I had a bunch of classes to teach, Monday being my busiest day, so I didn’t get up to much else. I did make a couple of the bonus strips for the end of Darths & Droids. I just have one more to complete and then I’m done!

A family lunch and bushwalk

Today my brother came over for lunch. I cooked some lentil bolognese sauce to have with pasta, and made some garlic bread slices from my sourdough loaf. It was good to have a catch up, and show him our mini-renovation changes since he hasn’t been over since before we did all of that stuff last year.

After eating we went on a walk down the creek near our place, all the way down to the harbour, and then around the headlands to some lookout spots. He’d never been to these places before, and there are some interesting sights, such as the Aboriginal rock carvings that can still be seen on some sandstone ledges by the water.

The park down there was full of picnickers, enjoying the balmy weather. It wasn’t nearly as hot as yesterday thankfully, but still warmish for this time of year. Then we walked back up the street to the station where he caught a train home.

Scully injured a leg today. She was jumping up to play with my wife, and must have landed awkwardly. She’s now limping on her front left leg, but not too badly. She can still walk and put weight on the foot, so we’re not too worried. Hopefully it will heal up by itself with some rest. None of our 5 kilometre walks for a while! Of course we’ll keep an eye on it and see a vet if it seems not to be getting better.

Tonight I had my four online classes in a row, which is the most I ever do in one stint without a break. It’s always good to finish that one!