S186 – Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis – is my latest foray into the Science Short Course collection. The course author is David Rothery – he was also responsible for S196 Planets: An Introduction, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I have high hopes for this one. The subject’s a little off what I’d normally [...]

Some new Science Short Courses are on the way, which may be of interest if you’re like me and can’t resist them. From a post by Audrey Brown (chair of a number of SSCs) in the SSC Course Choice forum on First Class:
SA188 Archaeology: the science of investigation – May 08
S189 Understanding the weather [...]

M257-TMA04 is done, bar going through it for a ’sanity check’ in a week or so – I tend to miss obvious problems if a read through an assignment too soon after completing it. This raises an interesting problem: once Unit 10 is out of the way, that’s M257 done & dusted – but [...]

So I’m currently plugging away at TMA04 for M257. There’s something unique about programming questions that can be eternally infuriating – it’s quite possible to bang away at a question, or portion of one, for hours on end without making any progress before you get that little “ding!” of inspiration that lets you finish [...]

Probably the only time I’ll ever see that, so I’m going to enjoy the feeling while it lasts.

After doing all the sums on what it would take to get a distinction on this one, it wasn’t to be:

There’s only so much studying you can do ahead of an exam, and there’s a certain sinking feeling you get when you revise a chunk of a block and then, come the exam, find that [...]

S199 is done & dusted, and I have to say I’ve never been so happy to see the back of the course. Initially the problem was just information not sinking in – taking a break for a while (and deferring to the 2nd ECA date as a result) and starting over again solved that [...]