O Helga Natt – Jussi Björling

Posted in Music with tags , on December 19, 2020 by telescoper

Although I’m now officially on holiday I’m struggling a bit to get into the festive spirit this year, but this should help. Here’s a Christmas song that even Ebenezer Scrooge himself would find hard to resist. On December  20th 1954 the great Swedish tenor Jussi Björling did a benefit recital in the Södersjukhuset, Stockholm’s largest hospital; the performance was also broadcast on the radio. Because wasn’t recorded in a proper studio the acoustic isn’t great, but I love the intimacy of the setting with just a piano accompaniment. Here is an excerpt from that concert, the old carol “O Holy Night” sung in Swedish.

Update: I stupidly put the wrong link in earlier, now fixed.

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End of Term Blue Screen

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 on December 18, 2020 by telescoper

So here we are. We have arrived at last at the final day of term. I don’t actually have any teaching today so I’ve just been pottering about at home trying to tidy up a few loose ends.

My (work laptop) has for some time been hassling me to restart it to do an update but I’ve been too busy. This morning I consented. The screen stayed as shown above for 7 minutes. As I write this, an hour later, it is on 17%. Sigh.

UPDATE: two hours later I can at last log in to find this:

It seems to be working again but it has removed my desktop background and has replaced it with solid black. I wonder what other settings it has deleted?

The problem with this device (apart from it being a Windows machine) is that it is encrypted with Bitlocker so whenever it restarts I have to type in my PIN. That means scheduling an “out of hours” uodate is pointless as it will just grind to a halt at every restart. Anyway if and when it finishes doing its business I am going to set an “out of office” email and that will be that for work until after Christmas.

I have to confess that I’m completely exhausted and my own systems need a full refresh.

I’m also very much afraid that the Covid-19 situation is going to be very grim next year as infections increase over the holiday period. Cases are already starting to rise.

I won’t be at much risk myself, however, as I intend to stay at home on my own for the entire break (unless I run out of wine and am forced to venture out to replenish stocks).

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Beard of the Year 2020: Last Chance to Vote for Me!

Posted in Beards, Biographical with tags , on December 17, 2020 by telescoper

Too busy with end of term things to do a proper post today, I’ve just realised that the first round vote for Beard of the Year 2020 closes tonight. I’m currently trailing in second place with Michael Sheen way ahead in the lead.

You never know, though, a late burst might make a difference!

You can vote here:

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Lecture Summary

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags on December 16, 2020 by telescoper

Yesterday I gave my last full lectures of the term. The picture shows a summary of my final lecture on Mechanics & Special Relativity for first-year students. It may look a bit thin on content but I’m very tired. How I managed to pad it out to 50 minutes I have no idea.

Today we have presentations by project students via Microsoft Teams which I can watch from home while I await the delivery of a blackboard which I’m going to put in my study at home. (UPDATE: Predictably, the Courier didn’t show up.)

Later today I have my last lecture slot which I will use to pass on some information about the examination online timed assessment in January.

And that will be the end of my teaching for the (calendar) year, which seems to have lasted at least a decade. Let’s hope next year is better.

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Vaccination Priorities

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on December 15, 2020 by telescoper

In the news today is the fact that the Irish Government “rolled out” (I hate that expression) its Covid-19 vaccination plans. These are summarised here:

I’m not at all surprised to see that I’m in a low priority category, although I beat some of my colleagues in the University sector by one notch by virtue of being over 54 years of age!

It seems likely that they won’t get around to the likes of me until well into the summer, but at least there’s a plan.

The lack of imminent vaccination for staff or students and the strong likelihood of a post-Christmas spike of Covid-19 cases means that there is no realistic prospect of a significant increase in on-campus teaching in this academic year. We have therefore taken the decision to keep our teaching entirely online next Semester. Hopefully things will start to improve from September 2021.

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , on December 15, 2020 by telescoper

The Christmas rush is definitely upon us and papers are queuing up to be published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. The latest publication is by Tom Kitching and Anurag Deshpande of MSSL (University College London) and Peter Taylor of JPL (Caltech). It is entitled Propagating residual biases in masked cosmic shear power spectra. This is another one for the folder marked Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay:

You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of the paper here.

When I last posted about a new OJA paper I mentioned that it seemed to be taking authors longer than usual to make revisions. There are signs now that some authors are trying to get papers off their desk before the Christmas break so we may have two or three more to publish before the year is out.

P.S. Last week I received an offer from a commercial organization to buy the Open Journal of Astrophysics. I replied politely that it is not for sale.

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R.I.P. John le Carré (1931-2020)

Posted in Biographical, Literature with tags , , , , on December 14, 2020 by telescoper

I was very sad to hear the news last night of the death at the age of 89 of author John le Carré. I’m sure I’m not the only person who discovered his novels as a result of watching the 1979 TV series Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which I watched while still a schoolboy. I loved so many things about that series, including the Circus jargon (tradecraft, lamplighters, honey-traps, etc) and the code-names (Gerald the Mole, Source Merlin, Operation Testify). When I got around to reading the novel I realized that there was much greater depth to le Carré’s writing than I’d imagined. I was particularly impressed with the sympathetic way he handled the character of the traitor Bill Haydon who, after he is revealed as the mole says to George Smiley:

Do you know what’s killing Western democracy, George? Greed. And constipation. Moral, political, aesthetic.

I’m with him on that one. “Half-Devils against Half-Angels” is another phrase I remember as a description of the “wretched Cold War” the protagonists found themselves fighting.

I also remember this, from Smiley’s People:

In my time, Peter Guillam, I’ve seen Whitehall skirts go up and come down again. I’ve listened to all the excellent argument for doing nothing, and reaped the consequent frightful harvest. I’ve watched people hop up and down and call it progress. I’ve seen good men go to the wall and the idiots get promoted with a dazzling regularity. All I’m left with is me and thirty-odd years of Cold War without the option.

That’s true in fields other than espionage.

Anyway, having read Tinker Tailor I bought everything I could by John le Carré and devoured all the books avidly. Not all his early books were great, but The Spy who came in from the Cold is excellent as are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People – the so-called Karla trilogy.

Most obituaries circulating today describe John le Carré as a “spy novelist” but I see him as a writer whose excellence as a writer transcended that genre. I think the same way of many great crime novelists, such as Dashiell Hammett, who wrote great novels that happened to be about crime.

The last John le Carré book I bought was A Legacy of Spies (2017), which I haven’t yet got around to reading. I’ll put that on the list of Christmas reading, and drink a toast to an author who has given me so much to enjoy and to think about over so many years.

Rest in peace John le Carré (David Cornwell, 1931-2020).

 

 

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First ‘Beard-Off’ vote for Beard of the Year features Michael Sheen & Lenny Henry

Posted in Beards on December 14, 2020 by telescoper

So it’s time for Beard of the Year 2020. This year, perhaps owing to Brexit, the voting system is even more complicated and time-consuming than usual consisting of two preliminary “Beard Off” rounds before the two winners go chin-to-chin in the final.

I am in the first such, up against David Olusoga, Michael Sheen and Lenny Henry. I’ve made a strong start in the polls and am currently in last place. I should make it clear that even if I am quickly eliminated from the Beard-Off (as I expect to be) my Beard is definitely staying On.

For those of you interested, current beard status is as follows:

Oh and you have to vote on Twitter, but you can do so by via the link in the page below or here:

https://twitter.com/kmflett/status/1338279246104580096

kmflett's avatarKmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

14th December

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

First ‘Beard-Off’ vote for Beard of the Year 2020 features Michael Sheen & Lenny Henry

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers has said the first ‘Beard-Off’ vote for the Beard of the Year 2020 is open.

The final list consists of eight names after two ‘trim-off’ votes shaved the longlist of twelve names

There are two ‘Beard-Off’ votes for Beard of the Year 2020 which open on 14th December and close on 22nd December. The winners of each vote will face each other for a final Beard of the Year vote on 23rd and 24th December.

Beard of the Year will be announced on 28th December.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we’ve made some changes to the way the Beard of the Year vote runs for 2020. We’ve moved the vote to twitter…

View original post 97 more words

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All-Ireland Hurling Final Day

Posted in GAA with tags , , , , , on December 13, 2020 by telescoper

As the absurd Pantomime of Brexit negotiations continues and I prepare for a very busy final week of an exhausting term I’m taking this afternoon off to watch the final of the All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship from Croke Park in Dublin. The final is between Limerick and Waterford, and is in effect a re-run of the 2020 Munster provincial final, which was won by Limerick. (The winners of the Leinster and Munster Provincial championships go straight into the semi-finals of the All-Ireland Championship, while the runners-up play in the Quarter-Finals).

The All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final usually takes place in August or September, but this year’s competition has been rescheduled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was raining very heavily overnight and into this morning in the Dublin are but the bad weather has cleared so I’m looking forward to a good match. According to the bookies, Limerick are strong favourites at 4/9 with Waterford at 5/2. Throw-in is at 3.30pm. The match will be played in a largely empty Croke Park, which means the atmosphere won’t be the same as in front of a crowd of 80,000 but I hope it will be enjoyable nonetheless. I’m not going to live blog the match but will update at half time and at the end.

As a bonus, the main event is preceded by the final of the Joe McDonagh Cup which is the second tier of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship. This year’s final is between Antrim and Kerry. Antrim were strong favourites before the match and began the match better of the two teams, but Kerry fought back well from a poor start to lead 1-07 to 0-9 at half time.

UPDATE: Half-time Limerick 0-14 Waterford 0-11. The scoreline doesn’t really reflect Limerick’s dominance, but Waterford are doing well to stay in the game. Only three points in it. I still think Limerick will win.

UPDATE: Full-time Limerick 0-30 Waterford 0-19. Limerick just too strong for Waterford, who had no answer to the relentless accuracy of Limerick’s shooting from long range. Limerick’s defence also impressive, nullifying the threat from Waterford’s full forwards. Congratulations to Limerick.

Yesterday’s Irish Times prediction has aged well…

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Late in the Year

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , on December 12, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve noticed over the last few months that things coming from the UK to Ireland are getting heavily delayed en route, which is probably a sign of things to come. Last year my Royal Astronomical Society diary arrived in October. This year’s – complete with new logo – arrived yesterday (Friday 11th December):

The subscription to Physics World that comes with my IOP membership has suffered even worse disruption. Since I moved to Ireland I noticed that copies of this magazine take at least 6 weeks to arrive. After the pandemic started however, they stopped coming altogether until I contacted the Institute of Physics last month. They sent a package of replacement issues, which arrived promptly. The December issue arrived last week, in a white paper envelope instead of the usual plastic covering. Why that would make a difference to its speed of delivery I don’t know, but it seems to.

Usually I get an IOP wall planner every year, but the 2021 version hasn’t arrived yet. I’m not too worried about that, however, as the 2020 planner in my office is probably the item that proved of least use for me in 2020. Come to think of it, I haven’t had much call to use the RAS diary, either…

Some weeks ago I ordered a couple of chairs through a website with a “.ie” address. The chairs were actually made in Spain though and had to make the journey to Ireland through the UK. This process took much longer than I thought it would but when I queried with the supplier I was eventually given a delivery date of last Sunday (6th December). They didn’t show up. Using the tracking facility supplied by the company, the two packages seemed to have been lost. The customer service people had no information either. I was about to cancel the order and asked for a refund, but they showed up in Ireland on Thursday night; I received delivery this morning and am very happy with them. All’s well that ends well, I suppose, though the disruption to shipments coming through the UK is obviously not going to stop anytime soon.

My strong preference in shopping online is to buy from local (i.e. Irish) companies. Sometimes, though, businesses based elsewhere have a website in Ireland but nothing else. A lesson from this episode is to check carefully where the goods are actually going to be sent from before you order. Those that have to travel through England will probably arrive very late.

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