I feel like this month was more than 20% service. (My nominal job weights are 40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service). It was more like 0% teaching, 30% research, 70% service. Made some efforts towards an ICSE submission but that’ll be delayed to a future venue. Not the first time and not the last time punting a deadline. Had a chance to read a lot more than usual.
Health news
Ebola is far away but it is a concern in Africa. There has been a lot of money pledged but not spent.
I really do believe in metformin, though MP didn’t manage to get it last time she had COVID (the doctor refused). I think the evidence is pretty solid. Note, also, that this article reports Long COVID rates of baseline 1.1% and metformin-reduced 0.5%. This feels like the correct number to me. It sucks to have chronic illness in our society, and 0.5% is still a lot of people, but our society forgets about them.
Professional
Work-life balance works well on non-teaching terms. Once again, 19 days with work, with 22 work days. Worked on an ICSE paper but didn’t submit in the end. Helped write a SAS response which also didn’t work; it shifted one review from weak reject to weak accept, but that wasn’t enough. And, lots of SCAM PC co-chairing work.
Teaching
On hiatus.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
How collaborative is research really? Well, I was at 8 days with meetings with students/collaborators this term, though that doesn’t include Discord or email. I do appreciate the mix of working on my own and with collaborators. These days, a lot of “working on my own” is doing service for SCAM, though.
Collegiality/Service
Besides SCAM, some local work. The PhD defence is the last bit of work for serving on a PhD committee, but I had one of those, as well as an MMath seminar. Talked to the FYDP group once.
The SCAM submission deadline was in June; we allowed authors the opportunity to fix some minor violations of the submission policy and desk rejected some papers with more than 10% bogus references (a sign of LLM-generated content). In a couple of borderline cases we brought it up with the reviewers we assigned. The easychair bidding and paper assignment mostly works well, I think.
Filled out an APEGBC assessment for a colleague.
Trips
Would you believe it? None! Up to the Kapiti Coast for the Wellington Open where I refereed and won the Veterans Men 40-49 -66kg (pool of 3).
Travel Planning
Must’ve planned the Kaikōura trip for Matariki weekend, but there wasn’t much planning to be done; just plane tickets (super short flight across the Cook Strait), accommodation, and car rental.
There was a lot of work for planning the North Macedonia and BC parts of the August trip, but that’s all done now. Borrowed the Lonely Planet Western Balkans guidebook from the library. Newer editions now deprioritize the things that we’d use the Internet to find anyway, like hotels and (to some extent) restaurants. Finding good non-slop information on the Internet is a bit challenging, but there are still some blogs that seem like they’re written by a person.
Also bought plane tickets for actually going to SCAM. I shouldn’t forget to get accommodation and register for the conference.
Travel admin also included following up on some car admin rental: making a new booking; sending in a car insurance claim (windshield); and following up on a trip delay claim (Global Excel does not excel).
Movement statistics
Just moderate walking around town. Not even much transit.
- 🚶 Walking: 57km on 19 days (surprisingly little; no hikes)
- 🚲 Biking: 118km on 16 days
- 🚗 Driving: 199km on 3 days (two Kapiti round-trips and once up the hill)
- 🚌 Bus: 1.7km on 1 day (carting food back from Taste of Home)
- 🚡 Cable car: 0.7km (1×)
Pictures
No trips further than the Kapiti Coast in June, but did read books on some evenings, instead of processing pictures, so the counts are less than in May. (Also, I process pictures on long-haul flights sometimes, and didn’t have any of those).
The backlog remains (barely) under 2 years, with the last modern-era set being July 23, 2024. I can surely finish the July 2024 and August 2024 pictures this month. There are still a number of big sets in September, October, and December 2024. But the 2026 backlog is so far still manageable, with no extra sets being added for June (since no trips).
Highlights processed this month include the Old Ghost Road, a pretty birdy day in Cairns, one more TMB day, and half of the May 2026 pictures.
Picture logs available, and, as always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures processed: June=18, May=22
- Total pictures selected: June=574, May=846
- Total pictures in selection pool: June=1868, May=2330
- Accept rate: 31% (min 16%, max 80%)
- Pictures posted on this page: 140 (24% of selected)
Pretty consistent rates with last month, though the numbers were bigger last month. The thing about this data is that I only count when a set is done, and I’ve finished two huge TMB sets so far in July (it’s July 6th as I write this), so those numbers are going to be way up.
Just birds (well, almost):
Miscellaneous
Just a quiet month.
Posts
Acquisitions
Too-small Instant Pot Duo 3L. Tried it a few times but do not like doing two batches, and some bones just don’t fit. Need the 5.7L.
Books
- David Attenborough. Life in the Undergrowth.
I was walking through the new Central Library on David Attenborough’s 100th birthday and they had this book on display, so I borrowed it.
This book aims to shed light on invertebrates. There are a lot of invertebrate species! I think that as humans, we tend to find fellow vertebrates more charismatic, especially birds, mammals, and primates. And yet, there are so many invertebrates, both in variety and in biomass. And most of them are not cuddly. Indeed, somewhat alien.
Anyway, there are several hundred stories about how invertebrates live, and the clever tricks they use to survive and reproduce, including using resources whereever they are available. Despite the providers of the resources not agreeing. And, of course, there is the necessity of guarding from theft and parasitism.
For some of the stories I could hear the famous David Attenborough voice narrating them. I must say, though, that these are usually not the ones that I would expect to go viral.
- David Eggleton. Into the Light: A History of New Zealand Photography.
As I wrote in the blog post: “Lots of words in this book on the history of photography in New Zealand.”
- Grant Robertson. Anything Could Happen.
Now I know more about recent NZ politics. He tried to defend being not as progressive as he would have liked to be (based on how Jacinda Ardern got the leadership of Labour 7 weeks before the 2017 election). Also, given his new gig as Vice-Chancellor at Otago University: it must be quite rare for a former Student Union president to run a university!
Sports
Made it to Faultline 14 times and judo 9 times. Should be getting fit. Have been tracking climbs.
Food
I guess I really didn’t do much in June! Here are four pies though.
- Can’t remember where the salmon pie was from, but it was a bit disappointing (not salty enough, wrong mouth feel). Won’t get a salmon pie again.
- Toto: bacon butty on a cold morning outside MP’s office
- Amuse Snack Bar: “Amuse Toastie” (corn, double cheese, etc); they had also brought me a salmon sandwich and I started eating it before cluing it that it was the wrong sandwich; oops.
- Sanga’s Pies: basically a fancy mince and cheese pie at Harbourside Market
- abrakebabra: kebab pie, why not. Reasonably moist and tasty. Crust was maybe not as golden as it could have been.
Conclusion
Really quiet month. July at least has a couple of trips, though no ocean crossings.