Archives
April 30, 2008
April 28, 2008
Te Papa Colossal Squid Event
Would you like to watch an incredibly rare colossal squid being defrosted and dissected? You would? Well as luck would have it you can do just that from the website of the Te Papa museum in New Zealand:
Smiler
I still haven't caught her smiling with my Nikon. As soon as I lift a camera she drops her smile.
April 24, 2008
Exam papers
It's the end of April, and the students have sat the exam papers for the modules that I am involved with. We're working through the statistics and the scores, learning what worked and what didn't, and the marks from all the papers will be pulled together and presented to the students sometime in the near future.
Already I've started work on next year's exam papers. In fact, I'd started before the students had even sat this year's exams. The time and organisation required to write, develop and edit new questions with the people that give the lectures, and then to form them into exam papers of the right standard, and then edit, edit, edit and edit some more is taking longer and longer each year. I'm trying to avoid any Forth Bridge references because it feels worse than that. There's something very permanent about an exam paper. It's not something you can just paint over again when the last coat starts to crack.
April 23, 2008
Cast off
I know, no blogging for a week. We're in exam season at the moment: the first years sat some exams a couple of weeks ago and the second years are in the middle of them right now. It has been very busy and rather taxing here for a couple of weeks requiring much work and tempered blogging. Yes, tempered is definitely the right word, using all of its meanings (even the heating and cooling one).
That aside, Jack had the cast on his arm sawn off yesterday. He was very brave, even though he didn't really want the nurse to use the saw. The nurse was very good, and Jack was much happier once the cast was off. He kept it and took it home.
The registrar said that his arm should get stronger over the next couple of weeks.
April 15, 2008
Third cast
Bye, bye cast!
Buzzzzzzzzzz.
Uh-oh, the doctor says Jack should wear a cast for another week. He likes the blue, but was bored to tears hanging around for hours for it, and doesn't look forward to doing it all again next week.
April 14, 2008
April 12, 2008
Saturdays
Saturday mornings.
Snoozing.
Saturday afternoons.
April 09, 2008
April 07, 2008
Embryology podcast episodes 11 & 12.
Go to the medicine page to get the latest 2 (yes, 2!) podcasts. They are no. 11: the development of the heart, and no. 12: changes to the foetal circulation at birth, with Dr Geraint Morris.
The MP3s are up, the enhanced AACs will appear on iTunes later today.
April 03, 2008
Podcast 10
Podcast 10 is up on iTunes and on the "Medicine" page. Rhi and I finally got round to talking about the embryology of the cardiovascular system!
This is the first of three cardiovascular development podcasts, and covers the development of blood vessels. Mostly. The second will discuss the development of the heart, and the third will talk about the changes to the cardiovascular system at birth. OK?
April 02, 2008
365 days, on its way
I think Kim's going to join me in a Flickr 365 Days project. She complains that she's getting dumber as a mum, and not getting to exercise her brain. She's incredibly creative, so if she wants to exercise her creativity and force herself to think, what could be better than challenging yourself to take a self-portrait every day for a year and publish them all to the internet? Over the course of a year her photography and computer skills would improve too. And a bit of healthy competition (and maybe collaboration?) would be great.
Kim seems to think that her life is boring to other people as a mum bringing up two children. I'd use my blog and Flickr as an argument to the contrary. So many people want to keep up with the progress of Jack and Annabel. She's a gorgeous, intelligent, thoughtful person that sees the world in ways others can't.
As an aside, I reckon she's got that gene that codes for an extra type of cone in the retina that lets you see an order of magnitude more shades of colour than anyone else. The things she can do with beige. Or maybe I am limited and can only recognise a handful of colours...
Read about superhumans with supervision. Also called tetrachromats. Evolution in action? Probably not. Wikipedia entry here.
