Intro to late nights wrestling with data...

Oof, I had that once. At least my commute back wasn't too bad for that... What's the course?

Sure, Zoom ain't perfect, but it's way better than Teams in my and many other people's experiences, and forcing everyone into one option without addressing any concerns raised (which they asked for) is kinda crap.

The email we got isn't great either. It starts with 'Dear ,' - they forgot to address us.

Then the claim of this to help save jobs - for a uni currently _in financial surplus_. Yet too poor to afford even a few Zoom licenses for departments to share. How many jobs will be saved by this? 🙄

They asked for input last year about the idea. A bucnh of us responded, highlighting where Teams fails, issues with forcing visiting people giving seminars to have it downloaded when they may not even have a Windows machine, etc.

No response to these points, just an outright 'no Zoom at all'.

Uni of Edinburgh is forcing everyone onto Teams, rip Zoom login. -_- I don't think I know anyone in academia who things Teams suffices for telecons, workshops, colloquia, etc! 🧵

Last week I got to visit Bristol Uni for a talk and collab. Some nice views including from the Physics/Astro department's roof, including of its telescope! Helps it got sunny then, haha.

🔊 Calling UK early career researches in astro, particle & nuclear physics. Please sign this open response to the proposed cuts at STFC ⚛️🧪🔭

"Protecting the UK's reputation as a science superpower requires not only investment, but continuity, confidence, and people"

✍️ ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io

Proposed budget cuts a catastrophe for UK astronomy The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (...

The Royal Astronomical Society is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Read our statement 👉 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

To be fair the microburst idea is just a theory for what could have caused the signal we saw here.

I helped find this! It was quite a pain actually, because it was so 'close' - had to drop antennas to be able to get the signal from the ASKAP voltage data.

And finally out of the grounds. It took a while longer for it to get off the hill entirely - narrow road with turns navigated without a hitch in the end.

The first part

Today at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh a bunch of astronomers said farewell to the #MOONS spectrograph, complete with bagpipes. It's off to Chile to do cool science on the VLT!

Nice view for a few minutes in particular from the office today

In Oxford for a couple days! And it's quite cold today... but at least it is dry.

A nice slightly early birthday present - paper accepted email!

Now I have to fight arxiv's system because the last time I tried with the PASA template... a weirdly unfun experience.

The whole book is _only_ $3000 USD... oof. The one chapter itself is a ~100th of that in cost, but you can read the preprint version (which doesn't weirdly add a hyphen to the title!) for free :v arxiv.org/abs/2410.24072

Encyclopedia of Astrophysics Encyclopedia of Astrophysics, Five Volume Set is a brand new, up to date reference work consisting of 153 chapters, headed up by an editorial board of...

A while ago I co-wrote a book chapter with Prof Khee-Gan Lee - as of last week the book got published! It's in the Encyclopedia of Astrophysics, and the chapter is about doing cosmology with fast radio bursts.

www.sciencedirect.com/referencewor...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Important educational lessons at the #PHISCC neutral hydrogen conference in Sardinia

Saw even more of them in other parts of Greece. Including the islands!

Huh... I was there only two days ago!

After two talks, discussion sessions, and safaris at a conference, now in Cape Town for catching up with friends and some collab work next week (besides grant writing/responding to ref report...)

Made a friend this evening too!

Very rude guests interrupted someone's conference talk today. They should have read the code of conduct! #HungryHIppos #Kruger

Astronomy conferencing when the power goes out #HungryHIppos #Kruger

Going back to South Africa today! Conference at Kruger, and then Cape Town Friday-Thursday. LMK if you wanted to catch up!

Congrats!

I like those odds

Gave a talk at Dynamic Radio Sky last night! About our findings with scattering correlations for FRB host galaxies.

I really do mean 'last night' - it was 12:30am for me... and probably the best possible time given the schedule! Better than not being able to give the talk at all. #timezones

It was one of the shootouts of all time :v