In the Dark

We’ve had several power cuts on Maynooth University campus today.

I had a lecture during one of them. The lecture went ahead with the usual chalk-and-talk, although the room was a bit on the dark side without any electric lights. More seriously I could neither record nor webcast the lecture because there was no internet so I couldn’t connect to Panopto. Ironically, the topic of the lecture was electromagnetism.

After a couple of false starts we finally got power back this afternoon, but the power failure seems to have had a number of fairly drastic consequences. Our office machines which are currently unable to access the internet. Also the data projector in our computer lab seems to be completely bust, but that is less important than the fact that the none of lab computers is working. Fortunately we don’t have a lab session on Wednesday afternoons, but I hope we can get this fixed before tomorrow when we do have a lab session!

By the way this is what our computer lab looks like:

Fortunately, next week is study week (the week containing the St Patrick’s Day holiday) which will give us time to regroup. It can’t come soon enough!

With an energy crisis looming as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine I wouldn’t bet against much worse problems with electricity supply in the near future. I’m old enough to remember the Oil Crisis of 1974, with petrol rationing, regular power cuts and the Three Day Week. I wonder if we will soon be experiencing something similar again?

Update: after yet another power cut I decided to go home earlier than usual. When I got back to my house in Maynooth at 6pm I saw no sign that the power had been off at all!