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Eight Years in Maynooth…

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on December 1, 2025 by telescoper
Maynooth University Library, home of the famous cat

Today is 1st December 2025, which means that it’s eight years to the day since I started work at Maynooth University. Despite the frustrations, I’m still very happy I made the move all that time ago.

We’ve now had more than a year since the merger of the former Departments of Theoretical and Experimental Physics. This has gone pretty well, actually, with significant improvements in terms of some steps forward in rationalising teaching. It does, however, feel less like a merger and more like an acquisition, with the theoretical activity effectively subsumed into the old Experimental Physics department. I suppose that was inevitable given the relative sizes of the two former Departments, but it has led to a loss of identity and the loss of the group spirit we use to have in Theoretical Physics. To add to this a number of familiar faces have left – two of my own PhD students, Aonghus Hunter-McCabe and Aoibhinn Gallagher have graduated and left, as have others with different supervisors. I am delighted for their success, of course, but will miss having them around.

I continue to enjoy teaching, and was pleasantly surprised to continue doing the same modules this academic year as last. The big change in that regard has been the adoption of different assessment methods to deal with the possibility of students using AI to do their coursework. That seems to be going reasonably well, though I’ll have to wait until the January examinations to see the outcomes.

The thing I’m probably most proud of over the past eight years is, with the huge help of staff at Maynooth University Library, getting the Open Journal of Astrophysics off the ground and attracting some excellent papers. This year has seen yet more significant growth, publications this year set to reach 200, after 120 in 2024 and just 50 the year before that (2024). We’re still smaller than many of the mainstream astrophysics journals, but we’re still growing…

Anyway, eight years of service mean that only two remain until I can claim the full state pension. I’ll be retiring as soon as I can afford to. There were Open Days at Maynooth on Friday and Saturday (28th and 29th November, respectively). These were for prospective students to enter in September 2026. Since I don’t teach any first or second year Physics modules now, and that is likely to continue, it looks like I’ll never see any of that intake in class.

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Testing Times

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , on October 17, 2025 by telescoper

As it was foretold, I conducted my first set of my new-style in-class tests this week. These tests, as I mentioned a while ago,  were introduced because of concerns about the integrity of the coursework element of my modules in the light of improvements in Generative AI.

The main events – one for each of my modules – were both yesterday, but one student couldn’t make it at the scheduled time (for good reasons) so I set a special test this morning, which is now over. Because access to the internet is not allowed these tests are invigilated.

It’s been quite a while since I was last required to invigilate a full examination. I think it was back in Nottingham days, actually. I never enjoyed this task even though I took work to do it wasn’t really possible to do much as one had to keep one’s eyes on the students. Crosswords could be done; these are good in this situation because you can solve a few clues at a time. It was disappointing if I happened to take one that was easy enough to do quickly, as there was little to stave off the boredom after completing it. Other things I used to do included counting the number of right-handed and left-handed students, though I never did any detailed statistical analysis of the results.

Anyway, my recent class tests were a bit different. Designed to fit in a lecture slot of 50 minutes duration, they were much shorter than traditional end-of-year exams. They were also “open-book” style, so students could bring anything on paper that they wanted. Phones and laptops were, however, forbidden. During these tests I just sat quietly with my laptop getting some work done, with an occasional glance at the students. It was actually nice to be locked away like this with no disturbance. Time passed very quickly, actually, though perhaps not as quickly as it did for the students taking the tests.

When I first told the students that the tests would be “open-book”, I think they all assumed that would make them easy. I don’t think that was the case, however, as the questions are designed so that the answers can’t be obtained immediately by looking them up in a textbook. Also, having things on paper rather than in your head does slow you down. I’ve never seen much point in examinations as speed tests. I designed this week’s tests so that the questions could be done in about 30 minutes, but the formal duration was 50 minutes. I encouraged students who finished early to use the remaining time to check their work, but some did leave early.

This new regime also meant I had number of teaching sessions without the exertion of having to do any actual teaching, which was nice. The downside is, of course, that I now have stacks of class tests to correct. That will be payback time.

I won’t know how well the students have coped until I have got their grades, but informal feedback was that they seemed reasonably content with the new method of assessment. I’ll be doing the next ones in about three weeks.

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Storm Amy

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on October 4, 2025 by telescoper

It’s been an interesting couple of days while Storm Amy worked its way over the island of Ireland and on to Scotland. The worst hit County in the Republic was Donegal but even here in the shelter of County Kidlare there were gusts over 100 hm/h on Friday, and quite a lot of rain as you can see from the first two radar* plots above. Quite a few people, quite reasonably if they were heading towards the weather, went home a bit early on Friday.

Initially the wind was southerly, and it felt surprisingly warm, despite the rain, but by this morning it had veered westerly, the rain had turned to showers, and the wind has now moderated substantially.

I spent some time this afternoon clearing up leaves and small branches that had fallen during the storm, as well as looking for signs of damage. But all’s well. No power cuts either. My big worry however is this tree just outside my house:

It is far too tall for its location, and has been leaning alarmingly for some time. If it topples in the direction it is leaning it will hit my house. I’ve been on to Kildare County Council a few times about it, actually. I don’t want them to chop it down, but I do think they should cut back the upper branches so that if it falls it won’t hit either mine or my neighbour’s house. Unfortunately, they’ve refused to do anything at all. Time for another go at them, I think. It will cost them a lot less to deal with it now than the sum they will have to pay me if serious damage is caused by their negligence.

*In case you’re interested, Met Éireann’s weather radars are located at Dublin and Shannon, and operate at 5.64 GHz (C-band).

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Summer’s Over

Posted in Biographical, Cricket, Maynooth with tags , , , on September 28, 2025 by telescoper

I’ve done quite a few posts recently about the ending of summer – the Autumnal Equinox, the resumption of teaching, the start of a new season at the National Concert Hall are three indicators – but now we really have reached which I regard as the definite conclusion. Yesterday saw the last day of the last round of matches in cricket’s County Championship.

I haven’t followed cricket very closely since I moved to Ireland, but I do look and see how Glamorgan are getting on. The County Championship started very poorly for them, with a thrashing by Middlesex, but they improved substantially and went into the last round of matches secure in 2nd place of Division 2. They lost their last match in Cardiff against a team from the Midlands, by 7 wickets – a game that actually ended on Friday – but they still finished second. That means that they get promoted to Division 1 for the first time in 21 years.

I wouldn’t bet against them being relegated straight away, though. Last time they got promoted (in 2004) they played just one season (2005) in the First Division, during which they lost 14 of their 16 matches, and dropped back down. They almost got promoted in 2010 but were pipped for second place by Worchestershire, who were the beneficiaries of an exceedingly generous – let’s put it that way – declaration by Sussex that allowed them to win their last match. Anyway, to avoid the drop next season Glamorgan need to improve their pace attack considerably. I wonder who, if anyone, they’ll sign?

Glamorgan plays an important role in the international cricket ecosystem, especially with the Ashes coming up. Many of Australia’s star players – including Marnus Labuschagne, Michael Neser, and Usman Khawaja – only came to prominence after stepping up to the big time to play for Glamorgan.

Knowing that the cricket season was almost over, on Friday I decided to give my front lawn one last mow too. The mower is now in the shed until next spring. Leaves have been falling for some time already, so I swept up what I could after cutting the grass. That reminds me to share this, which I found on Bluesky:

I really hate those things…

Anyway, we have completed one week of teaching at Maynooth University which passed off reasonably smoothly. I only had one timetabling glitch, but that was resolved trivially by just swapping two sessions. This year the Department of Physics has quite a lot of students in the final-year on the Physics with Astrophysics programme, run before the merger by the Department of Experimental Physics. Now we’re combined we can share the load and I’ll be supervising a couple of students on an astrophysics project, which will be a new experience. I haven’t really taught much astrophysics since coming here nearly eight years ago, so this will make a nice change.

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The Bronze Shoes

Posted in Biographical, History, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on September 8, 2025 by telescoper

About a month ago I posted an item about the National Famine Way, at the end of which I signalled my future intention to walk the 165 km 6-day route from Strokestown to Dublin. I was subsequently contacted by a number of people warning me that I might not be up to it. They didn’t put me off, but I have come up with a plan. This week – on Wednesday in fact – I will have the injections I get every six months or so to control the arthritis in my knees. Thus fortified, I intend next week to do a trial run walk consisting of the last stage of the Famine Way, from Maynooth to Dublin, along the Royal Canal. That’s about 27km and will take most of a day. I’ll stop on the way for lunch and when I get to the end I can get the train back to Maynooth. And if I run walk into difficulties I can stop at one of the intermediate stations and return from there; the canal runs right alongside the railway line for most of the way. If all goes to plan I’ll take time off next year to do the whole trip from Strokestown.

Meanwhile here’s a picture of one the poignant bronze sculptures of children’s shoes placed along the way. This one is at Maynooth harbour; there are 8 others on the way to Dublin.

To learn more about these shoes, see here, and here’s a video telling the story

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Five Years at Home in Maynooth

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , , , on August 26, 2025 by telescoper

I’ve received a number of bills and renewal notices of various kinds over the last few weeks, indicating the anniversary of me completing the purchase of, and moving into, my house in Maynooth. In fact it was five years ago today that I wrote a blog post occasioned by the fact that I’d collected the keys to this property, though it wasn’t until the following weekend that I actually stayed overnight here for the first time.

I was very lucky to be able to able to buy this property in what turned out to be a short window in the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in the Summer of 2020. There were plans to return to on-campus teaching in September with drastic restrictions on the number of students in each venue. That plan was subsequently changed and then changed again to move almost all teaching back online, and then again to move again into a “Level 5” lockdown.

I was Head of Department back then. My memories of that time were immense levels of stress and frustration, constantly having to change our teaching arrangements with very little support from the University as well as shouldering a full teaching load. In order for the institution to carry on functioning, all teaching and support staff to do huge amounts of unpaid overtime while the institution built up a massive financial surplus. I could say more about the callous indifference to staff and students alike shown at that time by one particular member of The Management, but I think I had better save it for when I’ve retired.

Given the enormous workload I had then, it was to be almost another year before I had time to collect most of my belongings from my house in Cardiff and longer still before I managed to sell it and pay off the mortgage I took out to buy my house here. All this was much more complicated than I expected when I moved to Ireland!

Anyway, many of the things I’d planned to do when I moved here still aren’t done. I bought some old furniture from the previous owner with the intention of replacing it with new, for example, but I somehow never got round to that. Nor have I replaced the old windows, gutters, etc, yet…

One thing I have done is change the refuse collection. When I moved in I took over a contract with  Bord na Móna (literally “The Turf Board”), a company set up in 1946 to supply peat as a form of fuel but now diversified into other activities such as collecting and disposing waste. Over the last year the service provided by this company has degenerated to the point of complete unreliability. When I looked around for a replacement I found that Bord na Móna was also significantly more expensive than its competitors. Earlier this summer, therefore, I swtiched to a company called Greyhound which so far seems much better organized and is about 2/3 the price. That meant I had two sets of wheelie bins cluttering up my garden for about two months until Bord na Móna got around to removing theirs.

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Weekend Water Worries

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , on August 3, 2025 by telescoper

My heart sank a little last week when I received notice that Uisce Éireann would be doing major repairs to a main water pipeline in the Greater Dublin area over this bank holiday weekend. The planned works involved replacing an entire section of one of the main water pipelines, which would potentially disrupt the supply to a wide area, as demonstrated on this map:

Only a relatively small area was to have its drinking water supply cut off entirely, but residents in the rest of the shaded area above (which includes Maynooth) were requested to conserve water so as not to use up all the water already in the system that would not be replenished while the main was being replaced and a warning was in place about possible disruption to the water supply. I was worried that this might get very awkward if the works overran. Fair play to Uisce Éireann, though, because the works were completed on time earlier today. I haven’t noticed any disruption at all.

P.S. I have done my bit to help conserve water over the weekend by drinking only wine and beer.

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A Trip to Trim

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , , on July 3, 2025 by telescoper

This morning I took an impromptu trip to Trim, which is situated in the Boyne Valley in County Meath. There has been a small astrophysics workshop going on there this week, attended by some people I know including a couple of old friends from Nottingham, Frazer and Meghan. Trim is less than 30km from Maynooth as the crow flies. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a crow willing to offer me a lift, public transport from Maynooth to Trim is difficult, and I don’t drive, so it wasn’t easy to arrange to meet up. Fortunately this morning one of our postdocs was driving up for the morning session of the meeting so I cadged a lift and and stayed until lunch before getting a lift back to Maynooth.

It was a nice trip. An added bonus was that the workshop venue was just a few metres away from the historic Trim Castle, which was built in the early 13th Century. We had time for a quick walk around before leaving to return to Maynooth.

As you can see, it’s a standard model Norman castle. The Keep, though not entirely intact is pretty well preserved; there’s certainly a lot more left than in the case of Maynooth castle. Quite a lot of the curtain wall and the gates have survived quite well too. In order to get inside the Keep (and climb to the top) you have to take an official tour, but we didn’t have time for that.

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The Mystery Mushroom

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , , on July 1, 2025 by telescoper

I saw this on my way into work this morning. I wonder if anyone can identify it? I don’t know fungi.

My PictureThis app could only identify it as some form of Agaricus, i.e. one of the Agaricaceae. I know it has a fly on it, but that doesn’t mean it is Fly Agaricbut it has also been suggested to me that it might be Amanita Strobiliformis. I’m not convinced by either of these. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Update: a day later, it has evolved!

It’s now starting to look very much like it is indeed Macrolepiota Procera (the Parasol Mushroom), and it is now opening its parasol. I expect tomorrow it will be even flatter.

Update: it is indeed looking flatter, but not in the way I imagined. Somebody squished it.

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Marking Time

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 12, 2025 by telescoper

So here we are, then, with only a few days before examinations start (next Friday, 16th May). The examinations for my two modules take place on Monday 19th and Tuesday 27th May, and after that I’ll be busy with marking for a while.

 

Marking doesn’t just mean written examinations. I have been teaching a module on Computational Physics to 3rd Year students here in Maynooth, and 40% of the assessment for that is a mini-project (usually done in groups of two or three). Early on the term, I put up a list of  16  projects and asked them to pick first second and third choices so I could form groups in such a way that most students get to work on a project they have actively chosen.

Anyway, the deadline for projects to be handed in passed last week so I’ve got a stack of those to mark which, you will realise, why I am indulging in a displacement activity by writing this blog post. My plan is to mark these during this week so that they’re done before the written examinations come in, which means by next Monday (19th). This year we have had a bigger class than usual, so this I have quite a lot of marking to do.

Last week also saw the deadline for the last assignment in Particle Physics to be handed in. I want to mark those as soon as possible, but I’m not sure I’ll have time this week, but I should be able to do them before the exam on the 27th.

Incidentally, one of the submissions of the last assignment came with a note that this was the last assignment the student had done in Maynooth and that the first one he had done, when he was in his first year, was also set by me.

 

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