Another year

[Tim Watts]

Bloody hell - this year turned out to be insane!

In laws came to visit. BiL did help massively with clearing the garden.

Had conservatory built (needs tiling and some trim work and electrics). This will give me some shuffle room to clear the back and upstairs for wiring, plumbing and reflooring/replasterboarding the dormer.

Aunt passed away - much paperwork.

Lots of school related things (daughter is 10 which means it's time to start planning for the next level).

Day job has been mad - the university is undergoing the REF which is a research evaluation exercise. My job was "process the stats on the webservers since 2008". All 141 websites running on 86 servers leading to a grand total of 0.3 billion web accesses to process in interesting ways!

Dishwasher blew up. Combi microwave occassionally tripping RCD. Water heater blew up (again - those things do not last).

So no - I've done bugger all to the bloody house. No lighting, plumbing (bar a garden tap!).

Did manage to insulate the back bay "extension" (shower room eventually) and install guttering.

Still looking at the creeping rot in my bay window frames that I bought the varnish and filler for back in August! If I leave that much longer the frames are going to fall off - slightly structural in that they hold up a small bay lead roof. Only 2 pillars from 6 seem to be particularly bad - need to cut out and insert new wood.

Too late now though - way to wet to do anything to wood outside. It wasn't wet in August, but I wasn't "allowed" to do anything then (by way of too much other stuff going on).

SWMBO has been given instructions not to arrange much next year (no relatives or other big things). I will concede partial defeat and sub out kitchen fitting and central heating[1] otherwise neither will ever get done (unless I get fired in which case I will have the time!).

Let's hope for a more sane 2014!

[1] I know one plumber personally who will work with copper and would love to be given the opportunity to "do a greenfield installation right".

[Andrew May]

Be grateful then that there is no Engineering Department anymore :-(

Should make the exercise a bit simpler.

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 12:29 Andrew May wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Do tell... What was Engineering like?

I should have clarified - I run the systems for one dept only (Digital Humanities). I have not met anyone from BioInformatics yet, but I would hold a fiver to the bet that I have more web servers than them :)

Number of servers full stop is open for debate though - I have 178 to date... BioInformatics *might* well have some massive compute clusters - I know not...

[Andrew May]

Well it was thirty years ago that I was there as an undergraduate. Down in the basement. Certainly Elec Eng. was quite a small department and at the time 8-bit micros were the cutting edge of technology. Always seemed a little underfunded. Friends at larger establishments had access to modern things like email which we did not. The departmental mini was a Data General Eclipse, the college mainframe a DEC2020 and I did at least once get to run a program on the new University Cray.

It was generally reckoned that between the Engineers, the medics and the lawyers we could get most proposals through the union which is why we were one of only about three (I think) universities / colleges that were not affiliated to the NUS. From memory Imperial and Aberystwyth were the other two.

Shame to see it all go though. There was a lot of history there and a lot of graduates went on to do great things. I was at the commemoration dinner in June.

Andrew

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 13:18 Andrew May wrote in uk.d-i-y:

KCL is defainately concentraing on its medics (inc dentistry), law and arts

Mind you - do get some interesting spam from the medics for volunteers - the best one to date one was to take cocaine under medically controlled conditions.

Sadly I did not meet the qualifications.

I believe the amounts were small and the purpose to measure the amounts detectable in various parts like hair and nails over time.

[Andy Burns]

Hey, don't write the last few weeks off yet!

I have at least managed to not allow mine to run rampant again this year.

Steady most of the year, but is going to go mad starting tomorrow ... eight hour total IT shutdown for the whole county for a blue light service to allow building UPS replacement, followed by replacing a 26 site WAN, two sites per day starting Monday.

I didn't manage anything of note until July, but since then have ...

Replaced the felt shed roof with onduline, this should have been done before last winter let alone this one, no more buckets collecting water inside, could still do with guttering fitting, but no harm if that waits

Levelled the floor of the porch with that of the hall, 50mm celotex lining and studwork wall inside the single brick walls of the porch,

150mm celotex into the flat roof (shhh! I know it should be 200mm now).

Demolished the egg-box wall between lounge and hall (kitchen door was already blocked off from hall a few years ago when I did (most of) the kitchen), built studwork wall between stairs and newly widened lounge.

steel banister rail fitted, steel and sandblasted glass baluster ready to fit.

Replaced twelve doors/windows with double glazing - weather has been kind lately - fitted last window on sunday, still have a patio door to fit, if I don't do that in the next few days, it may have to wait until spring, as it involves demolshing the wall under an existing window.

Council were re-laying paths in August, so they offered to widen dropped-kerbs at the same time for £60/stone so had a couple done, then had to rush to reduce my front wall by corresponding width and get a boundary strip laid in time for them to tarmac up to.

Got a couple of new radiators hung on walls, ready for plumbing

still got to plasterboard the stud walls in lounge and porch, and probably re-board ceiling while at it

Got to re-plaster the reveals of two windows (spardash outside in front of the old frames and plaster behind them as normal, so it was choice between chip-off and repair the spardash or the plaster in order to fit those two windows).

Got to move/add sockets and light fittings/switches to suit new lounge/hall/porch layout, plus ought to run a few cat5 sockets while at it.

Today I seem to have ordered a new steel bath and shower screen, so that has kick-started the process of doing the bathroom, which I think will involve a new stud wall with pocket door.

I've got to keep going, most of the jobs are inside ones now thankfully, but I'm already looking forward to a rest!

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 13:29 Andy Burns wrote in uk.d-i-y:

12??! Blimey. I call 3 then 4 in separate jobs "a good effort" (mine).

Wow. That is deeply impressive.

Wibble...

[Andrew May]

That definitely seems to be true based on the alumni literature that I receive. But it is not just medicine. In the magazine where they announced that the Engineering dept was to close the did go on to say how will the film studies course was doing. Film Studies? I thought that was what one did at the local Poly.

Seriously though it did seem from the outside as if it was a case of wanting to or needing to improve rankings and under-performing departments were either going to need massive investment or be shut down. And it's not as if we don't have enough engineers is it?

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 13:57 Andrew May wrote in uk.d-i-y:

No, you read right:

To be fair, Imperial did something similar with some of the little wibbly specialist science and engineering depts - either closing or merging them into more mainstream depts.

However, those mainstream depts are growing rather than surviving, so it was much more of a case of "prune for growth" rather than "slash and burn the weeds".

Not that I'm saying Engineering at KCL was a weed. But clearly someone made that decision as part of some sort of overall strategy. I think it's sad too. But with Imperial and UCL down the road, perhaps it makes sense not to try and compete on too many fronts.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The problem, as I understand it, is that there isn't enough quality intake available from schools nowadays to keep as many science and engineering departments going. If you have to drop the quality of intake to fill places, then the resulting degrees will all be at lower grades which screws your rankings (and is probably also unfair on those who entered onto the courses with unrealistic expectations). This may be combined with a lack of vision for careers in science and engineering at schools, such that fewer of those who would be capable of science and engineering degrees end up persuing them.

[Andy Burns]

Goes some way to making up for 15 years of doing more thinking about DIY, than DIY.

[Andrew May]

That was more or less the message that was being put across at the alumni weekend. Still kinda sad. It was, I believe, the oldest Engineering Department in the country.

[Andrew May]

That would make sense.

On a slightly different topic someone was telling me a month or so ago about a report in one of the Sundays along the line of (and I probably have the figures wrong) there are 3 million engineers in this country and 1.8m of them are going to retire within the next seven years.

No idea how they define engineers but does anyone know where this article was or the source of the data?

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 15:30 Andrew Gabriel wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Though you could say that is offset to some part with the massive increase in foreign students.

When I was at York in 1986-90, the concept for "foreign student" was Albert from Hong Kong (real bloke) and a few merkins and canadians on exchange visits from the partner unis. There really were no others to speak of - at least not there.

If you look now at a typical UG intake (and Bob E will have better figures, I'm just eyeballing) I reckon it has to be something like 50% foreign including EU - perhaps more.

At least half my colleagues are non British - the current majority are italian, though it does swing a bit as many are project based on contracts.

Perhaps with it all costing so much (as opposed to practically free), students are making informed choices, including not bothering at all and getting a job instead?

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 16:18 Andrew May wrote in uk.d-i-y:

If you pass by the Strand campus frontage (on the Strand) each pane of many large windows has a large picture of someone pretty significant (Lister, Florence Nightingale, Maxwell, that kind of famous)...

But many date from a long time ago...

The medics do hit the national news from time to time with a fairly earth shattering discovery of some sort so it's clear that they should be putting a lot of effort into medicine. The Dentistry school has a very good reputation throughout the UK. I cannot answer for law and the arts because I don't know much about either - but I'm told both are doing well and my dept has a lot going on with people from Oxford and other reputable institutions.

[Tim Watts]

Oh - and I forgot to mention: Boris Karloff aka William Henry Pratt was actually a KCL alumni, though he did not graduate.

Our little offshoot building in Drury Lane (nominally part of the Strand Campus) never had a name. So as a joke, we've started calling it the Boris Karloff Building :)

[Andrew May]

And the humanities people seem to spend a lot of time on Radio 4, maybe because Broadcasting House is just down the road. Don't think Bush House is used any more. Historians and Religious types seem almost a permanent fixture on 'In Our Time' :)

[Nightjar]

Depends how you define the country. Glasgow University has had a Chair of Engineering since 1840.

Colin Bignell

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 14 November 2013 16:37 Andrew May wrote in uk.d-i-y:

No indeed - BVSH HOVSE (as it is engraved on the stonework) is undergoing renovation:

KCL had some people in Melbourne House (part of teh building) for a while...

[Old Codger]

Being the media, probably the man who arrives to repair the washing machine, telephone, car, television, although I do know of a Chartered Engineer who does repair televisions.