Occasional musings on meteorology and other bits of Earth science
Author: hcpHaving saved up holiday money through the pandemic, we splurged it on a fortnight divided between Egypt and Jordan. Mostly this was a cultural and historic sort of trip, but two days in Jordan’s Wadi Rum area allowed me to sneak in a little bit of geology as well. We were given a quick tourContinue reading In the desert
After two weeks back at work, we are back on strike for a week, as university staff get angrier and angrier, and senior management retire into their bunkers and pretend to each other that the problem will go away. So, I have time to revisit my previous post on how our pay has changed overContinue reading Data: it is every where (Part 3(b): the #UCUStrike bonus extra)
Well, we are on strike again (see previous posts passim ad nauseam: here, here, and here, among others). The current wave of strikes are in two parts: the ongoing dispute over our pension scheme (affecting the pre-1992 universities) and a dispute over pay and working conditions (affecting all UK universities). The pensions dispute is extremelyContinue reading Data: it is everywhere (Part 3: the #UCUStrike edition)
I have been reading my rain gauge for another whole year, now. (See earlier posts here and here.) It appears that 2021 was a wet year in East Lothian: much wetter than either the climatological mean and also a lot wetter than 2020. This is largely driven by a very soggy January, February, May andContinue reading 2021: The Rain Report
This ugly chimera was made from two items which no longer worked: A rechargeable bike headlamp which originally had a USB-micro-B socket for charging, and a USB A-to-micro-B cable on which the micro-B end had become damaged. The lamp had ceased to charge; on cracking it open with a mole wrench I discovered that theContinue reading Hacking with rubbish
One of our Christmas guests expressed the wish to go on a walk on boxing day, so i dragged him off into the countryside. We took a route across Doon Hill and Brunt Hill, and, feeling that we were still going well, headed off down a common feature of the landscape in southeast Scotland: aContinue reading Valleys and cobbles
A few months ago a family heirloom was passed on to me to take care of: a mercury barometer. , originally the property of my great grandfather, Dr William Hobson Mills of Jesus College, Cambridge. Getting it home was a bit of a nail-biting experience. You can not lie the things horizontally or the mercuryContinue reading Data: it is everywhere (part 2)
As a scientist, I can’t resist the itch to collect data (see e.g. this previous post). During the pandemic, my mid-life-crisis sports car reached the point where my garage told me that they could get it through the MOT, but they didn’t really advise it. So I had to go car shopping. Mrs. P wasContinue reading Data: it is everywhere
Despite my efforts to ensure that I understood it, we never got to use the ERT gear during the spring of 2021. However, it currently appears that we are going to be able to travel to Shropshire for this year’s geophysics field trip (see many previous blog posts). Unfortunately, our colleagues from France and GermanyContinue reading Dusting off the gear: Magnetometers
For this year’s holiday we booked a week in a comfy hotel in Gairloch, out on the distant northwest coast of Scotland. It really is distant, too: it takes as long to get there from Edinburgh as it does to get to North Wales. I was quite excited about the trip, partly because the areaContinue reading Geology tourism: the distant north west.
