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Storm Éowyn Passes

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on January 24, 2025 by telescoper

So it’s just after 11am on Friday 24th January 2025 and the Red Alert in my area related to Storm Éowyn has just been downgraded to Orange. It was very windy overnight and this morning, though there was no discernible damage to my house and no interruption to the electricity supply. That has not been the case for many others, though. There are a staggering 715,000 power outages across Ireland this morning. That’s so many that it will probably take many days to fix them all.

Here’s a map showing some of the power outages in my general vicinity:

I’m told that power is off in a few places in Maynooth and various traffic lights are not working; fallen trees are also blocking some roads. It’s still very windy – though the force seems to be abating quite quickly – so I think I’ll leave it a while before going out to see if there is any obvious damage in an around town. Shops and businesses would have been closed during the Red Alert, most planning to open around noon. Obviously that will depend on whether or not they have electricity.

Anyway the storm is now heading North East and its presence will soon be felt in Scotland

Update: 12.08, the weather warning was downgraded to yellow at noon. It’s still very windy though.

Update: 14.11, went for a walk into Maynooth. Traffic lights on Straffan Road out from the Glenroyal up to Main Street. All shops on Main Street closed and apparently without electricity. Traffic lights at the Roost are working as are those on Mill Street. Dunnes stores in Manor Mills is open but the rest of the shops are closed. South Campus was closed but I walked around North Campus; there are lots of branches of various sizes that have sheared off, but no serious damage that I saw. No sign of buses or trains having resumed.

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Storm Éowyn Approaches

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on January 23, 2025 by telescoper

I have seen Red Weather Alerts from Met Éireann before, but never one that covered the whole country! This unprecedented situation is down to Storm Éowyn. This is the map for tomorrow morning, 24th January:

I’ve been following the predictions of the HARMONIE model for Storm Éowyn as they get updated. This storm is an absolutely monster! The latest model maps look like this:

Note the wind speeds, well over 200 km/h in the white areas; these are gusts, not steady average speeds, but could be very damaging. As usual the West coast will bear the brunt. Where I am, in County Kildare, is much more sheltered, but even here gusts are forecast to exceed 100 km/h. The one thing to be optmistic about is that in any location its duration will be relatively short. The Red Alerts start about 2am on the West coast, but in Kildare the maximum danger is between 6am and 11am. The predicted impacts are:

• Danger to life
• Extremely dangerous travelling conditions
• Unsafe working conditions
• Disruption and cancellations to transport
• Many fallen trees
• Significant and widespread power outages
• Impacts to communications networks
• Cancellation of event
• Structural damage
• Wave overtopping
• Coastal flooding in low-lying and exposed areas

(The last two aren’t relevant for Kildare, which is inland. At least I hope “waves overtopping” isn’t relevant 30km from the sea!)

During the red alerts there will be no public transport, and many offices etc will be closed until the Red Alert is over. There will be no postal deliveries anywhere tomorrow either.

Maynooth University Campus is understandably closed tomorrow too. Fortunately the exam period is over and teaching does not resume until the start of February, so this won’t cause too much disruption to academic life. I’ll be working on home. Ireland’s electricity system is fragile at the best of times, however, so there is a significant risk of power cuts and interruptions to internet access. If I don’t blog tomorrow, you will know why! I have plenty of work that I can do without the internet, though.

I have a ticket for a concert at the National Concert Hall tomorrow evening. I usually travel by train into Dublin for such things. Public transport should have resumed by the time I would travel, but I’ll keep an eye on things. Fallen trees are a real hazard around here, and could affect both road and rail transport. If there is continued disruption, I’ll stay at home. If it’s very bad, of course, the event might be cancelled anyway.

My kitchen is entirely electric so in case of power cuts I’ll do a bit of shopping to make sure I have enough food for tomorrow that can be eaten cold. It is raining at the moment but when there’s a gap I’ll move all moveable objects in my garden into the shed, including the wheelie bins, in case they blow away. I have a feeling there’ll be quite a few twigs and branches to clear up on Saturday!

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The Post of Christmas Past

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , on January 22, 2025 by telescoper

Hurrah! Today I received the Christmas issue of Private Eye:

It’s only taken a month to cross the Irish Sea from the UK and find its way to Maynooth!

I don’t know whether the delay is the fault of the Royal Mail or An Post or a mixture of both. Post is often delayed over the Christmas period, but not usually for this long. Storm Darragh caused some damage at the Port of Holyhead on 6th December which caused delays there until January. There was then bad weather in Ireland which caused disruption to deliveries. I suspect this item is part of a backlog gradually being cleared, as I have received post from the UK sent more recently than this.

Although this delay is an extreme example, the Eye usually arrives after about 10 days which means that more often than not I miss the deadline for the Crossword competition. I have therefore decided not to renew my subscription and instead to buy a copy at the local newsagent when it comes out.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on January 17, 2025 by telescoper

This afternoon, for the first time in a while, I encountered Maynooth University Library Cat at his customary position. Unfortunately he didn’t seem favourably disposed and when I tried to take his picture he turned his back on me. Luckily I was with a colleague who was strategically positioned to take the snap above.

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Marking Progress

Posted in Biographical, Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , on January 14, 2025 by telescoper

I’ve been at home marking examinations almost all day and have decided to knock off until tomorrow when hopefully I can finish the job. I say almost all day because I took a break this afternoon to back to campus to collect some papers that I didn’t get yesterday because they were from students sitting the examination for various reasons in alternative venues on campus rather than the main examination room.

What I do with examination scripts is mark one question at a time rather than one script at a time. What I mean by that is that I go through every script marking all the attempts at Question 1, then I start again and do all the Questions 2, etc. I find that this is much quicker and more efficient than marking all the questions in each script then moving onto the next script. The reason for this is that I can upload into my mind the model answer for Question 1 so that it stays there while I mark dozens of attempts at it so I don’t have to keep referring to the marking scheme. Other advantages are that it’s easier to be consistent in giving partial credit when you’re doing the same question over and over again, and that also you spot what the common mistakes are more easily.

It’s a fairly monotonous job and I find my concentration starts to wander if I try to do too many in one go. Fortunately the exam papers are organized in batches (separated by elastic bands as in the photograph) so I usuallly take a break – as a sort of self-reward- after each batch to break things up. Each batch usually takes a couple of hours or so, so the breaks often end up as times to have lunch and tea. In terms of the timing it’s rather like a game of cricket, actually.

Today I corrected Question 1 in two batches before lunch, then another between lunch and tea. At that point I took a walk into town to do a few errands and then collected the remaining scripts from campus, which I have now just finished correcting. Some people will accuse me of being lazy, taking breaks like this, but I think it’s more efficient to do it this way. Trying to mark examinations for hours on end inevitably leads to more errors, so in the long run it takes longer to complete the job. Slow and steady does it.

I remember using a similar approach when I wrote my thesis many years ago. That’s a much bigger job, of course, but I found what worked for me was to plan out each chapter in terms of sections of roughly equal length, write each in turn and take a break when I’d finished it. Writing a thesis of around 200 pages may seem a daunting task, but if you split it into 1000-word chunks spread over three months or so it’s quite manageable – and you can plan to take time out for relaxtion along the way to avoid getting too burned out by the process.

Anyway, I’ve now finished all the attempts at Question 1 in this examination, including those in the extra scripts I picked up today. Question 1 consists of a set of short problems and is altogether worth 50% of the examination mark, so I’m actually abouty halfway through the marking. There three questions left, each longer than the pieces of Question 1 and worth 25% of the overall mark. Students are supposed to answer two. I’ll start on Question 2 in the morning and hopefully by this time tomorrow evening I will have marked all three, and that will be that. Until the next one…

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Marking Time Again

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , on January 13, 2025 by telescoper

Lecturers at Maynooth University are supposed to be available on the telephone to deal with queries from students concerning their examinations. This morning I was “on call” for the first time in 2025 and indeed the first time since 2023. Since I live in Maynooth I decided to come into campus in case of a query so I could go to the examination hall to deal with it if required. In the event, however, the examination passed off without incident and nobody called.

I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs all morning though. It seemed a good opportunity to go through the accumulated coursework for this module applying various exemptions for medical or other reasons so that when I’ve marked the scripts I can immediately combine the results with the CA component.

So here I am again, with a stack of an examination scripts to mark. The picture shows about 50 papers, part of the collection from my module on Differential Equations and Transform Methods. I want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible as I have another paper coming up next week and have a lot of other things to do before term starts at the beginning of February. I plan to spend the next couple of days correcting these, adding up the marks, combining those with the coursework, and preparing everything for upload to the system. I want to get this task out of the way as quickly as possible as I have another paper coming up next week and have a lot of other things to do before term starts at the beginning of February.

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Exam Time Again

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 9, 2025 by telescoper

The January examination period starts tomorrow (10th January), so I thought I’d do a quick post on the topic of examinations. First of all let me wish the very best of luck everyone at Maynooth or elsewhere taking examinations in the next few weeks. I hope at least that the exam halls are nice and warm!

As the first examination for which I have responsibility is not until Monday 13th – unlucky for some! –  I’ll have to wait to find out how any of my students have done but let me take this opportunity to pass on a few quick tips.

  1. Try to get a good night’s sleep before the examination and arrive in plenty of time before the start. This is especially important when there’s bad weather that may disrupt travel. It is your responsibility to get to the examination on time!
  2. Read the entire paper before starting to answer any questions. In particular, make sure you are aware of any supplementary information, formulae, etc, given in the rubric or at the end.
  3. Start off by tackling the question you are most confident about answering, even if it’s not Question 1. This will help settle any nerves.
  4. Don’t rush! Students often lose marks by making careless errors. Check all your numerical results on your calculator at least twice and – PLEASE – remember to put the units!
  5. Don’t panic! You’re not expected to answer everything perfectly. A first-class mark is anything over 70%, so don’t worry if there are bits you can’t do. If you get stuck on a part of a question, don’t waste too much time on it (especially if it’s just a few marks). Just leave it and move on. You can always come back to it later.

Readers of this blog are welcome to add other tips through the comments box below!

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Twelfth Night – Louis MacNeice

Posted in Maynooth, Poetry with tags , , , on January 6, 2025 by telescoper 
Snow-happy hicks of a boy’s world –
O crunch of bull’s-eyes in the mouth,
O crunch of frost beneath the foot –
If time would only remain furled
In white, and thaw were not for certain
And snow would but stay put, stay put!

When the pillar-box wore a white bonnet –
O harmony of roof and hedge,
O parity of sight and thought –
And each flake had your number on it
And lives were round for not a number
But equalled nought, but equalled nought!

But now the sphinx must change her shape –
O track that reappears through slush,
O broken riddle, burst grenade –
And lives must be pulled out like tape
To measure something not themselves,
Things not given but made, but made.

For now the time of gifts is gone –
O boys that grow, O snows that melt,
O bathos that the years must fill –
Here is dull earth to build upon
Undecorated; we have reached
Twelfth Night or what you will … you will.

by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

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2025: The Year Ahead

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth with tags , , , , on January 1, 2025 by telescoper 
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

From Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. Eliot.

January is named after the Roman deity Janus, who according to Wikipedia, is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. Since I did a retrospective post yesterday about 2024 in retrospect, I thought I’d do a quick one today (1st January 2025) to mention a few things looking forward.

January will, as usual, be dominated by examinations, and especially the marking thereof. The first examination for which I am responsible is on January 13th.

February sees the start of a new semester. I’ll be teaching Particle Physics for the first time at Maynooth. I taught this subject for many years at Nottingham and Cardiff (the latter combined with Nuclear Physics), so it should be OK. My other module is Computational Physics which I have taught at Maynooth every year since 2018, apart from 2024 when I was on sabbatical.

The big event in March will be the release of “Q1” data from Euclid. This is only a very small part of the full survey, but is an important milestone and will no doubt attract a lot of press coverage. There’s a blog post by Knud Jahnke here. No doubt I’ll do a few blog posts too. The first full data release DR1 will take place in 2026. The Q1 release is timed to coincide with the annual Euclid Consortium Meeting, which this year takes place in Leiden. I won’t be able to attend in person, as it happens during teaching term, but may be able to follow some of the sessions remotely.

In April we will have a very special visitor to Maynooth to deliver the Dean’s Lecture (of which more anon). Much less significantly, I’ll be giving a Colloquium in the Department of Physics.

May will largely be taken up with second semester exams and assessments – there will be a lot of computational physics projects to correct as well as the usual examinations.

The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society takes place in Cork in June. I’ve been to Cork before, but am looking forward to going again.

And then it will be summer. I did a lot of travelling during my sabbatical so I am not planning to travel much in 2025, though I may try to visit some more places in Ireland. Hopefully I’ll be able to get on with some research too. This year I am supervising my first MSc project at Maynooth, so that will be an interesting new experience.

And then we’re more-or-less into the next academic year 25/26. That’s beyond my planning horizon. I don’t know what I’ll be teaching, but it may be the same as 2024 (at least for Semester 1). I wonder if I’ll get to teach any astrophysics or cosmology here before I retire? It doesn’t look likely…

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2024 in Retrospect

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Cardiff, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on December 31, 2024 by telescoper 
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

T. S. Eliot, from Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets.

I wasn’t really planning on posting a retrospective of the year 2024, but the rain is pouring down outside so I’ve decided to use up a bit of time before going out in the hope that the rain stops.

The past year has been very busy with significant life events. One particular highlight has to be a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime trip to Sydney in February. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to visit Australia again, but if I do I’ll take it! Shortly after returning from that trip I went back to Barcelona until the summer, leaving briefly for visits to Rome (Euclid Consortium Meeting), Valencia (Department Colloquium), Newcastle (to do a PhD examination) and Oxford (to give the inaugural Pride talk at the Department of Physics).

Unfortunately, at that point my laptop gave up the ghost so I had to come back to Maynooth a little earlier than planned to salvage what was on it and get a new one. And so ended my sabbatical. I’d like to take the opportunity again to thank everyone at the Universities of Barcelona and Sydney for making me feel so welcome and, of course, to Maynooth for granting me a full-year sabbatical in the first place.

As well as giving me some time for my own research, the year saw significant progress with the Open Journal of Astrophysics, both in terms of numbers of papers published (120 in 2024) but also some much-needed work on automation and an increase in the size of the Editorial Board. It’s hard to predict what will happen in 2025, but I’m glad that a significant number of members of the astrophysics community seem to be regarding OJAp as a viable avenue for communicating their results.

I will also mention – for those that care – that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is now listed in Scopus, but all the numbers they have published about the journal are inaccurate. I have spent months trying to get them to correct the figures but, although they have admitted errors, they have failed to do so. My next step will be to take legal action against Scopus (which is based in The Netherlands) under the Dutch Civil Code.

The big event workwise at Maynooth was the merger of the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Experimental Physics into a single Department of Physics. So far this has been largely paper exercise. What will result from it in the long term remains to be seen. I was given two new modules to teach last Semester and have another new one next Semester (as well as one I’ve done before). Although this made for a heavy workload, it wasn’t as bad as what happened after the only other sabbatical I’ve had in my career. I got a one Semester sabbatical when I was at Nottingham, but the Department simply moved my first-semester teaching to the second semester in addition to what had already been allocated for the second, so I had a double teaching load when I got back!

There has been a significant change in my personal circumstances too. During 2024 I finally completed the sale of my former home in Pontcanna, Cardiff. I had intended to do this years ago, but the pandemic and subsequent workload issues made it difficult to travel and sort this matter out. In the meantime bought my house in Maynooth with a mortage so I owned two properties, one of which was empty for much of the time. After much stopping and starting, and being badly let down by more than one prospective buyer, the Cardiff house is now sold. I now feel much less delocalised. I also felt very rich when the proceeds hit my bank account, but only briefly. I used a big chunk to pay off my mortgage and put the rest into fixed-term investments for retirement.

Anyway, writing about Sydney reminded me that there are parts of the world in which it is 2025 already, so let me end with a “Happy New Year” and a few interesting numerological facts about the number 2025:

P.S. It’s still raining.

P.P.S. Athbhliain faoi shéan agus faoi mhaise daoibh! 

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