Owls Count

Today was my club’s annual Boxing Day mass start score event. The format is one hour score with a few bonus controls (Father Christmas, a fairy, and a Christmas Tree). A few photos from the event are here. Entry was slightly up on last year, as it has been for the last few years. I reckon, once you have counted everyone, that we got around 325 people in total.

The planner had made good use of the area giving a course that gave everyone a challenge. No one got all the controls - Tom Bray (SN) going the closest, getting all bar two controls in a few seconds over the hour. Obviously the results for this event can be a bit skewed - as each on the bonus controls is worth 50 points.

I had a good run round. Picked up 490 points in total - which was 430 in controls, 100 for FC and the tree, less a penalty on 40 for being back one and a half minutes late. I picked a reasonable route round, but recent illness meant that I struggled in the later part of the hour to keep my pace up.

Embarrassingly I finished behind my mother - same points total, but she was a little quicker.

My research group runs two MSc courses in the area of network and collaborative computing. One of these includes the possibility to take several mathematics modules. These courses are taught with one week intensive modules on a subject. This meant that I spent the past week teaching the first Linear Algebra module. This module covers direct and indirect methods for solving systems of linear algebraic equations.

In my previous entry I mentioned that I was still suffering the after effects of flu - meaning I started the week with a sore throat. Not the best way to start when one is lecturing 10+ hours and when one has to be available to answer questions during 10+ hours of practical sessions.

This is the first time I have lectured this course - before I had only taught the practical sessions. Overall it went fairly well - though I was really struggling to speak by the end of the week. I taught it from an old set of lecture notes, produced by previous lecturers of this course - which at least meant that the preparation time was not too great.