Foreign Perspectives

I generally take a break from the studying on Saturdays so with the bad weather today it was a bit of a catch-up day or rather more of a getting ahead day in practice.

As I’ve been spacing out the Infectious Disease assignment over the last couple of weeks, there’s only a tiny bit of that still to do. Well, in principle it’s a tiny bit but as it’s a research question it’s hard to say how long it will actually take. It’s to be in later this week so I’m going to try and get that completed this evening.

I’m well through the computer marked assignment for the course too. It’s a bit of a pain as they’ve several free format answers and, going by the forum, it’s marking many correct answers wrong so they may have to zero weight the affected questions.

I’m miles ahead with the history of maths course and got even further ahead today. It’s a peculiar mix of history and maths with the maths largely being in the books whilst the history bit is mainly in the videos. The computer marked questions are almost all based on the maths and cover a wide range from Egyptian counting through Newton and on to late 20th century maths. As it’s only a 10 point level 1 course everything is naturally at a fairly low level but I’m finding that working through such a vast time span is surprisingly interesting. The videos (the Story of Maths TV series) are a bit peculiar towards the end with the presenter turning up at the childhood homes of various mathematicians for no particularly good reason and skating over the maths along the way. That said, the combination of the videos for the story and the books for the maths works quite well and it’s a shame that they hadn’t applied a similar combination in other subjects.

The problem with the physics course is that it’s not really one that is suitable for doing all by itself. The pre-requisites for it are both the introductory science course (S104) and the maths essentials courses (MST124 and MST125). That said, I’ve got a copy of the predecessor to the current introductory science course and I’ve previously done maths at university (rather a long time ago).

However, what really knocked it out for me is that, at some stage, I’d like to do the maths and physics degree and I think that it would be better to do that as a unit from start to finish which I can’t do at the moment, so it’s on hold for a while.

Which leaves the child psychology course as my main contender for October. This has the advantage that it’s another step forward for my psychology degree and it’s got an EMA so shouldn’t clash too much with S345 that starts in May and has a TMA in early June.

In addition to that I’m thinking of the science investigation course (S155) which is an essential if I wanted to do another science degree and which disappears into a 30 pointer after this year.

My grandparents on Mum’s side were from the Killinchy area originally. Although they moved to Belfast in the 1920s, they still rented a cottage just outside Balloo village, moving once or twice and by the time I was born they were in a cute little thatched cottage on the top of the first hill out of the village.

We spent from two to four months a year from the 1960s through to the early 1980s and it always felt like home. Each summer, we’d basically up sticks and move to the country. Gone was the electricity, gone was the mains water in the kitchen and gone was the indoor loo! Still, it was nice and I managed to get through an awful lot of reading there over the years.

In 1969, we paved the front and as part of that Dad put a little square of plain cement so that I could put a handprint, footprint and some details for posterity, all of which were still readable up to a year or two back. But no more, as we found out when we called by last week as a big weed has grown through the little square. The flush toilet arrived in 1974 and comes with a fetching string vest pattern all around the septic tank courtesy of the vest my Dad was wearing that day. The thatch became increasingly difficult to maintain as the thatchers are dying out and it was replaced with a corregated iron roof sometime in the 1990s I think.

It’s seen better days for sure but is doing pretty well for a cottage that was built over 150 years ago.

However, the flush toilet has now gone as the garden has been bulldozed for the construction of a new bungalow.

The cottage is still there for now, but probably not for a whole lot longer.

I’ve been reading over some of the S207 (physics) and psychology (mostly DSE212) samples that I’ve collected over the years to try and reach a decision between E102 (child psychology) or S207 (physics) for next October.

This October is my chance to top up my “miscellaneous interesting courses” degree to the point where I could claim it and thereby leave it while I, perhaps, head off to do a masters. So, I need a course that will fit into that timeslot.

Both physics and psychology go well with the courses already in the degree which currently has 70 points chemistry, 60 psychology, 60 physics and 30 history so nothing really to choose between them on that score.

I’ve only got the introductory sections of S207 but have bits of a course that follows E102 so it’s not really a like for like comparison. In practical terms, I’ve got the more interesting bits of the psychology to read and those bits come later on in physics.

I may have to get a coin out 🙂

The family used to go to Portrush every Easter Monday when I was a child and we’ve restarted that tradition since getting back from France.

Over the years lots of things have changed but not really that much in Portrush. It takes a lot less time to get there these days not so much because the roads are better but rather because there are fewer people doing the trip which is very noticeable in terms of the lack of cars there relative to yesteryear.

Barry’s, the entertainment complex, seems hardly to have changed at all. Aside from two newish (a number of years old) outside rides for the kids, not much has changed. The roller-coaster and dodgems seem pretty much identical and electronic games have largely passed it by.

One thing that did change for a brief period was the arrival of the Dunluce Centre but that’s closed down now as indeed have several of the non-chippy food outlets which had arrived a few years back.