Old College

Old College, Edinburgh University

Today brings with it the last module of classes for the M.Sc. that I am undertaking, Further Spatial Analysis. Five weeks of classes and the taught part of the course will be over. It seems like just yesterday that I was in the introductory lectures.

Have started the research for my dissertation now as well. I have decided to look at glacial lake outburst floods; the conditions in which they form and if it is possible to predict the formation of lakes when glaciers retreat. I will be using remote sensing and GIS to do this. Large projects always make me a little uneasy, there is always a little nagging doubt that I'll never get it done.

The weather in Scotland has been horrific since, well, October. I think I have seen the Sun a couple of times since then but I am thinking that I will have to start taking a Vitamin D supplement. It has curtailed taking most photographs that I want to take so far or the ones that I am composing in my head..  You can never wait for the right weather to take photographs though, sometimes you have to suck it up and make the best with what is going on. I did manage to get this picture a few days ago. It is the entrance to the Old College and the Edinburgh Law School at Edinburgh University. Was walking past at the right time of the afternoon.

Tea Cups and Rainbow Cake

"Large streams from little fountains flow, Mighty oaks from little acorns grow" - 14th Century Proverb.

@florenceandgeorge (Instagram) is starting an afternoon tea and cake service and asked me if I would take some photographs for her website, and if I would help with the testing of the products! How could I say no? I am known for having more of a savoury tooth than a sweet tooth, but I never pass the chance up to take some pictures and learn some new techniques in the process. I thought I would upload my favorites from the first shoot onto the website.  I have put a gallery up here.

I am always inspired by people who 'break out' to do something they love instead of something that just pays the bills. I need to think carefully about this idea over the next few months. My mind wrestles a lot, of late, about this year I have taken out of my career to dip back into academic learning. I was hoping the time would also give me a chance to see what was really important in my life and what I really wanted out of it. I am yet to draw any conclusions which I find frustrating. I am usually more decisive.

Of course, it's a first world problem wondering what to do with life while in many regions of the world, at best, you either work or go hungry. I am thankful that those are not the choices that I have to make. But everyone, whether in a privileged position or not, have to make choices. I am no exception to this rule.

 

Story Map

Update below...

I was recently tasked with an assignment as part of my Geovisualisation course taught by William Mackaness. The course highlights the need for effective visualisation in the analysis and display of geographic information. As part of the assessment of the course the class members have been asked to create a story map, through the ESRI story map web application. I have finally (is anything ever final?) got my story map to a point where I can share it online.

My story is of four different photography tours of The Hague, a city that I used to live in.  The photographs are all my own, mostly taken in 2013 when I was doing a 365 day photography project.

You can visit my story map at this link.

UPADTE 30/1/2016: It was pointed out to me that the link above was not shared publicly so here is the updated link that anyone can see :-) Photography tour of The Hague

Semester down

It has been a while since I last wrote a journal entry, which is personally disappointing, mostly because I like to have some photographs to update it with with but alas my free time for wandering has been severally restricted, this is not a complaint. It has been restricted by something that I am enjoying. In saying that I still update Instagram frequently. 

In the first week of the course I am pursuing I was told that it would pass by fast. Apparently, by fast they meant at neck breaking speed. Shockingly two blocks of courses have been done, several assignments, a long weekend field trip with little sleep and to top it off, four exams.

Wow. Exams. What fun! I swore that my viva would be the last exam I would  take, but apparently there isn't much call for glacial geologists in the real world.

Living in Edinburgh has been interesting. It is nice living somewhere where (most) everyone speaks English again, in saying that my last visit to the apple store was done mostly in Dutch as the assistant was studying linguistics and could speak Dutch. I spoke more Dutch to him in Scotland than I have done to any store assistant in The Netherlands. Perhaps, I actually know more Dutch than I thought.

 

 

Kindrogan and Christmas

A few days out of the city. Normally this would turn out to be a time to recharge batteries and catch up on reading. This trip turned out to be a coffee fuelled marathon of data collection, processing and presenting. A "fun" coffee fuelled marathon of data collection processing and presenting.

Time has marched on in my education and the first block of classes went past faster than I could possibly imagine. The distant memory of being told that we would be going away for a long weekend 'at the end of October' suddenly appeared. As I start the second set of classes I would like to think that I have a better handle on time management and organisation but I think I may be kidding myself on.

The excitement of Object Orientated Programming, Distrubuted GIS and Remote Sensing is driving me for the next five weeks into the exams and the potential of a Christmas Break.  I think this is the earliest I have ever thought of Christmas.

The trip to Kindrogan was for project management. It was to see how we would cope under a certain amount of pressure which would be directly linked to how organised we were before the trip and how our strategies held up under real life situations.

I didn't get to take as many photographs as I would have liked when I was away, but that wasn't really the point of the trip. I did get a few candid and posed photographs though. I am open to captions for some of these :-)