Occasional musings on meteorology and other bits of Earth science
Well, here we all are again, out on strike. I am furious and very disappointed that it has come to this. Yesterday was very similar to the first strike day in March 2018: A wet soggy morning on the picket line at King’s Buildings… … followed by a rally in Bristo Square. The PA systemContinue reading Sigh. Again.
Today is the last day of the current wave of strikes; tomorrow I have to go back into work as usual. The dispute is, unfortunately, far from over, and I anticipate further industrial action during the exam marking period. To mark the last day of strikes, my colleagues ran a “teach-out”; this seems to meanContinue reading Ripples
This is yet another holiday post, about a thing I was reminded of while flicking through my holiday photographs. I am as fond as the next overgrown schoolboy of vintage machines of any sort; I can stand and look at a steam locomotive, traction engine, windmill or vintage car for ages, especially if it isContinue reading Runs by magic?
I have been reviewing someone else’s paper for a journal and preparing one of my own for submission. And both jobs have caused me to do a thing I do a lot: looking at a figure that uses a colour scale and asking myself whether the colour scale can be improved. A dataset where theContinue reading Colours for contours
This is a YAHP (Yet Another Halo Phenomenon) post, I’m afraid, like this one, and the ones it links to. I took the photo while flying out to Lanzarote, but I am only posting it now as I didn’t have facilities to crop and contrast-boost the photo on my phone, and I didn’t take myContinue reading Subsun
I am on holiday in Lanzarote, in that gap between the end of teaching and the onslaught of exam marking. The island is, like all of the Canaries, made mostly of volcanic basalt, but the flatter parts are often covered with a layer of wind-blown sands. While poking around the seaside resort of Costa Teguise,Continue reading Lavahenge
The drive down to North Wales for Easter meant one crossing of the England-Scotland border, so it seemed a good opportunity to visit all the crossings we didn’t have time for in part 1 of this two-part post. We packed the car and headed south across the borderlands, aiming for the A68, which crosses theContinue reading Out on the border: part 2.
As I have noted before, I am a physicist and, like many hard scientists, tend to regard geography as a rather alien kind of subject. But I do love maps. The border between England and Scotland is historically the most important line drawn on a map within easy drive of my home, and I haveContinue reading Out on the border: part 1.
I spent most of today writing exam questions. Not my favourite way to spend a Saturday, but I guess I was paying for taking most of Monday off to go for a walk along the beach. We got as far as White Sands Beach, a couple of miles down the coast from Dunbar. Lafarge areContinue reading Limestone beach walk
On Thursday night we were promised some aurora by everyone from the Guardian to the BGS to the BBC’s “stargazing live” program. It turned out to be a damp squib; I even got a rather apologetic update on Friday from the BGS’s aurora alert system to the effect that not a lot had happened. (YouContinue reading Aurora? What Aurora?
