Foreign Perspectives

You probably associate binoculars almost exclusively with birdwatching and indeed there are loads of people running around with “bird watching binoculars”.

What you probably don’t consider is that binoculars are ideal for a whole lot of different types of astronomy too. In fact, if you’re starting out with night sky observing, chances are that you’d be better off getting a decent pair of binoculars than a telescope. Every year, without fail, I get a little e-mail from the chief publicist in our astronomy club pointing out some massive saving to be had on Meade binoculars (that pair at the left is what I bought).

With the long nights, this is pretty much the ideal time to make your purchase, buy a nice warm coat and enjoy the night sky.

It’s hard to believe that Hogmanay is just around the corner. Obviously for such a popular event much of the accommodation has already been booked months ago but there’s still a chance of finding somewhere decent if you don’t hang about.

What’s it like then though? Think of Mardi Gras only in a colder climate and you might get some idea of the sheet quantity of activities that are going on throughout the city at that time. Street theatre is thick on the ground as are shows in venues all over the city. Although there are lots of venues, it’s also worthwhile booking somewhere for the New Years Eve party well in advance as just about everywhere is pretty much overflowing with people.

The celebrations run over four days so you’ll need to pace yourself to take it all in!

First off though, don’t hang around if you’re thinking of going as all the Edinburgh hotels book out very, very quickly.

Although they can be annoying, it does seem to be a good sign that the people trying to sell you credit cards are back in the shopping centres again and those annoying teatime calls trying to do the same have restarted too.

I imagine that there are all kinds of grand things that the economists are saying these days about when we should be starting to get out of this recession but I think the banks trying to push more credit onto us must be amongst the clearest and most easily understood sign of them all. Not only does that show that the banks have money to lend once more but it also shows that they’re at least prepared to consider lending it too. You might think I said the same thing twice in the last sentence but I didn’t. They always did have money to lend, what they wouldn’t do was actually lend it.

Moreover, this isn’t like them lending via mortgages (which also seems to have restarted, going by the number of “sold” signs going up lately). With a mortgage they have some security (ie they can take the house off you). With a credit card, they are taking a real risk that they could lose the money so overall it’s more encouraging to see people trying to sell you credit cards than it is to see more mortgages being approved.

Now, I’ll grant you that they are probably going to offer you a lower limit than you might have expected in the past, if they offer you a card at all that is. However, that they are trying to actively sell credit cards now seems a very clear sign that an upturn is on the way.

In normal universities you expect to meet loads of other students but the perception is that it’s a different matter in the OU.

However, if you’re following one of the recognised paths to a specific qualification you’ll often find that you’re with the same group of students for a fair number of years. For example, I was with pretty much the same group for the three years of my Diploma in French.

Where you can find yourself more on your own is if you’re not going along the normal sequence of courses to a qualification. For example, in my case I did the second course of the psychology degree first so my next course for it will be the first course in the sequence and therefore it’ll be a new group of people that I’ll meet.

Having said that, even in odd sequences it seems to be quite common to run across the same people through online forums though that never seems to be quite the same as meeting them in person. If you do want to go through your degree with a group of people that you’ve met in person it’s definitely better to go through the courses in your degree in the normal sequence.

Thanks to the funding issues that the Open University are being hit with I find that I, among many others, am having to rejig my planned schedule of courses into something that can seem slightly crazy sometimes.

For instance, to pick up a physics degree I will need to do two summer schools between now and 2011. Those are Observing the universe (SXR208) and Physics by experiment (SXR207).

Of those SXR207 definitely requires you to do The physical world (S207) which means that I need to do it in October 2010. Unfortunately, it has some pre-requisites in the form of a certain amount of mathematical skills so I was originally planning on doing Using mathematics (MST121) starting this February to refresh my 30 year old maths skills from the degree. However, it seems sensible to do at least one of the related courses to SXR208 too which means that the February slot will be filled by one of them.

Fortunately, the OU realise that scientists don’t always want to do major maths courses so there’s Maths for science (S151). Whilst that should be way below my ability in maths it’s a 10 pointer so I could run with that from February to April or July or May to July or October (the 10 point courses can be done over 3 or 6 months). Normally they recommend that you only do that if you’re not going to be doing MST121 but it looks like an easy way to get that refresher that I might need for S207 and besides would add what should be a very easy 10 points towards the degree.

In the February slot I hope to do Astronomy (S282) which will provide half the background for SXR208. Ideally the other half would come from Planetary science and the search for life (S283) but I doing that at the same time as S207 doesn’t appear viable and so I can’t do it ’til November 2011 at the earliest which is after the final presentation of SXR208. Fortunately, the short courses come to the rescue yet again with Planets: an introduction (S196) which I should be able to do alongside S207.

So instead of my sensible sequence of MST121, S207+SXR207, S282, S283, SXR208 I’ve ended up with S282, S151, S207+SXR207, S196, SXR208, S283 and MST121. Slightly peculiar but at least it seems doable, unlike the sequences some other people have been forced into thanks to the funding issue.