Weekend!

[naath]

On Saturday I ran parkrun faster than ever before, which may have something to do with swapping to non-flappy trousers because I felt like shit with an incipient cold which I don't THINK should be good for my running time...

Then I did some OU work which was mostly (that is, "most of the first half of the TMA" rather than "most of the course" the second half looked harder, but I didn't do it this week) answering pointless questions about entirely pointless crap (like "write 100 words on what 'concurrency' means" - well, dude, it's a common English word and besides this is a third year course in Computing, is it even possible to get to this level and NOT know this?). Cambridge never made me answer pointless questions to get a degree (just really hard ones I couldn't do), do other universities do this? anyway, I want the degree so I'm going to write the pointless crap down but, really, is this what passes for third year level work?

I made CAKE and went off to jack's for a partay where there were lots of cool people and an argument that turned into a debate so it wouldn't turn into a YELLING MATCH and also CAKE (nom).

On Sunday I tried to make chilli-con-carne from a recipe in the Green and Blacks book and it says "simmer for 90mins" and it was burnt onto the bottom of the pan after 10. NOT IMPRESSED. The non-burnt parts tasted OK though, so not a total write off.

Then Bridge playing people turned up and we played Bridge for hours and hours and hours (7-very late)! Which was great fun. There were 9 bridge players although C & K were taking turns playing bridge and caring for J who is a toddler; 3 of the bridge players were novices (to the extent that the rules needed explaining) and there was a lot of switching people around so there wasn't a score at the end to tell us who won (we kept score for the physical positions, mostly just because keeping score is part of the game, but that isn't attached to any of the people). And then K went home with B and J so there were 7 bridge players, which meant we had to play jumping dummy (which worked poorly because we were synchronised in no sense at all) and then other people went home and 4 of us were left to play a few hands before the snot demon in my head called time. There should be more bridge! Particularly memorable was ending up in 6 spades because of a bidding war with the opposition who wanted to be in 6 hearts very badly... it only went 1 down, which I think was a Very Good Effort; their 6 hearts might even have made.

On Monday the snot demon in my head called for SLEEP and CHOCOLATE and not much else, so I stayed at home sleeping a lot. Spent about half the day feeling like someone punched me in the eye (is this a common side effect of colds? it is for me).

Comments

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is what passes as 3rd year work. I believe that this is reasonably typical of third year work at other universities. Yes, we have had an excellent education. The maths is rather better at being less drivellously regurgitatory.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yes, 3rd year OU maths courses seem to contain more of interest than the computing... but they still seem to have a rather larger amount of "regurgitate what we just told you in your own words" than 3rd year at Cambridge did.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Yes - I think this shows the difference between Cambridge - one of the world's top universities, and the OU, which is a reasonably well-regarded UK university. That's not to diss the OU really - it allows people who don't have excellent qualifications at 18 to get a degree while working (and incidentally helps their organisational skills and so forth).

[fhtagn.livejournal.com]

Speaking as one involved in teaching and training undergraduates at other universities, what it shows is that Cambridge has (well, had) money. Specifically, the money to pay for supervisions. All the courses are built around the idea that the student will get rapid feedback from someone who can spot and correct low-level mistakes and provided informed discussion on and around a topic in a manner geared specifically to the very small audience of two or three students. This has the excellent effect of pulling up the weaker (but still interested and working) students due to the first part and helping the better ones excel due to the second, whilst frankly doing bugger all for those in the middle. Other universities, and particularly the OU with its still further reduced feedback, do not and cannot have this. As such, they are forced to make sure they hammer home the basics in order to then build later, as opposed to spending five minutes on an important, but ultimately trivial, point in a lecture, secure in the knowledge that a PhD student or Post-Doc will be along to, with the aid of some marked work, spot any misunderstandings before it's too late, and thus giving more time to spend discussing more advanced concepts.

[emperor]

You obviously found new trousers with go-faster stripes on them :-)

[naath.livejournal.com]

They have reflective stripes on them...

[gerald_duck]

Now there's a point: how come go-faster stripes are horizontal on cars and vertical on humans? I suppose it's just the long axis in each case, but still…

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Because the mechanism of going faster has to take into account the gyroscope effect brought about by the walking motion. In cars, it's from the wheels and acts in the opposite direction. TRUE FACT.

[gerald_duck]

Hmm. I've been feeling slightly grotty and snuffly for a couple of days. I had the runs slightly yesterday morning, then very substantial constipation this morning. </tmi>

I'd put that down to possibly a combination of something I ate at the party and something I inhaled from Jack's flat, but it seems it might have been your doing? :-p

[naath.livejournal.com]

I have had no digestive discomfort of any shape or form; just snotty snuffles, so I perhaps a combination?

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is impressively fast!

[aldabra]

Family experience of Cal Berkeley suggests it's much fuller of makework and regurgitation than here, and the exams are full of "what is foo? [2 marks]" questions.

[sath.livejournal.com]

On the chilli: what kind of pan were you using? In my experience, anything simmered for that long, calls for some kind of flameproof casserole dish (rather than a bogstandard aluminium pan), and probably for the lid to be kept on in order to stop the liquid disappearing.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I was using a normal saucepan, with its lid on. It didn't say to use an especially heavy one (I don't have one anyway) but perhaps such pans are more usual in the US? (it's an American book).

[sath.livejournal.com]

Yeh, maybe it was an assumption on behalf of the recipe's author? I dunno. but I do think if you're cooking something that long you have to treat it a bit like a casserole, need a good thick casserole type pan with a lower conductivity that keeps the heat really well so that you can just keep on a low heat for a long time. OR you need an actual slow-cooker.

If you haven't got the right pan.. just cook it 5-10 mins on a normal heat.. it'll probably be fine.

[naath.livejournal.com]

:) thanks. Next time I'll not even try for such a long time.