Emeritus professor of astronomy at the University of Nottingham. All my own views. Here for interest, so anyone who doesn’t interest me gets blocked.
Joined June 2011
- Tweets 71,310
- Following 598
- Followers 11,225
- Likes 21,972
15,235 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
2 Jun 2024
Time to update my pinned post, just because this selfie makes me very happy.
(Monku View Point on @hermisland, 26 July 2022 at 11PM. 2s exposure on @SonyAlpha 6600 with Samyang 12mm f2 lens, pushed to ISO 10000, just reprocessed with @Lightroom’s amazing AI noise reduction.)
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Garden camera update: fox on the early shift tonight, passing through at midnight.
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Having had a bad experience with an Amazon parcel last week, this week all went smoothly, and I am amazed that such complex logistics ever work at all. So much effort just to get one small rather non-standard battery to me, for a mere £4 P&P:
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The Waveshare e-paper picture frame isn’t exactly plug-and-play, but glad I persisted with sorting its firmware, processing images, etc, as the display looks great, and such low power that it should keep changing the display randomly for six months on this charge.
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Is it just me, or is this man an idiot? I believe in aliens — I think it highly unlikely that we are the only life in a vast universe; it seems arrogant to think it is just us. I don’t have any evidence, which is why it is a belief rather than a fact. Is that so hard to grasp?
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Catching up with the #BTCC from Oulton Park, having my annual snigger at the etymology of the Knickerbrook Chicane.
oversteer48.com/knickerbrook…
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Apparently, more advanced-purchase first-class tickets sold on @EastMidRailway’s train to London than there are first-class seats.
And then they are surprised when the passengers get angry.
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What could possibly go wrong?
apnews.com/article/visa-chat…
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Channeling my dad and escaping the rain at Museum of London Docklands.
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What a surprise.
It turns out that the software system, whose cost overrun, in the tens of millions, is partly responsible for the current financial crisis at the University of Nottingham, isn’t even secure.
And has anyone taken responsibility?
No.
nottinghampost.com/news/nott…
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When I was last here, almost none of this was. But then it was a very long time ago!
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This @Wonkhe article rather misses the point: universities don’t just fail to encourage entrepreneurial behaviour by heads of school; they actively suppress it.
HoSs know their schools, and come up with local solutions optimised to local issues. 1/2
wonkhe.com/blogs/being-a-dep…
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Senior management dislikes such localism because it creates differences across the institution that they perceive as messy and inequitable, and they get no credit for its success. So they steamroller through lowest-common-denominator institution-wide solutions as “progress.” 2/2
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