The Man with No Time

The final week of the 2014 6 Nations tournament was incredibly tense. Not necessarily because of close games it has to be said. Two of the three were blowouts, but the finale really made up for it as the momentum swung back and forth between the sides, and the final standings correspondingly went in favour of one team or another. I'll get to that eventually, but as usual I'll start with Scotland's performance.

The penultimate week of the 6 Nations is when the shape of the table starts to become clearer, and is often where championship hopes are dashed. After all, not everyone can win. This year there were four teams (England, France, Ireland, and Wales) on four points, and potentially in with a chance. By the end of the weekend at least one of them would be behind the others, possibly two, or even three.  Scotland were playing France at home. They haven't beaten les Bleus since 2006 (a match I remember well), but after the events of week 3 this wasn't just going to be a French benefit.

The middle week of the 6 Nations has been and gone. It's always a bit of an odd one, week 3. There's a week's break either side of it, so the players are generally well rested and the matches are high quality. Plus it gives the managers a chance to step back, assess the progress that they may or may not have made, evaluate their performances, and maybe mess around with the squad lineups a bit. This year it was all that and even more; there were the two matches on Saturday, as is normal, but the third match was played on the Friday night, on prime time television, which I think is a great thing for the sport of rugby union.

The second weekend of the 2014 6 nations has been and gone. How did Scotland get on this week against 'the auld enemy' in the Calcutta cup? What about Wales after last week's shaky start? Could France keep their form against Italy? Would I get to watch any of it live?

The 6 Nations is back! It's about time too; with all of the hype surrounding this year's Superbowl (more on that later), my favourite sporting tournament snuck up on me this year. I feel rather ashamed, as I have basically no idea about what's been going on in international rugby union in the run up to the 2014 6 Nations, but now that it's here I'm certainly going to enjoy it. Or try to at least...although it's a new year, it's more of the same it seems as far as my favourite team is concerned.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

This weekend I took a trip up to Glasgow for my first competition of the new season, the Scottish National Lifesaving Championships. I say a new season, but I suppose that's my university-lifesaving bias showing through; really it's part of the 2013 season according to the RLSS. In any case, it was the first competition I'd participated in since the St Andrews event back in February! Spoiler alert - it didn't go too well.

I spent today taking part in a slightly different form of lifesaving sport. Rather than the SERC-based experience of BULSCA events, this was a speed lifesaving, which is a very different beast. The competitions are basically rather odd swimming galas, with individual and relay events in a range of disciplines. Rather than different strokes though, the events use different skills. The Scottish Short Course Speeds are run to the RLSS’s short course rules, and all of the events are therefore half-distance compared to their standard, long-course versions. This is good for me, as I’m definitely more of a sprinter than an endurance swimmer, but sadly there are no rope throw events. In the 2012 event I did well enough to earn two bronze medals and a silver medal.  This year, unfortunately, didn’t go quite so well.

This weekend saw the second big outing for the Planetarium show this summer. After our successat the Royal Highland Show we were invited by the Forestry Commission for Scotland to be a part of their marquee at the Edinburgh MELA . The MELA is a festival celebrating cultural diversity, in a variety of forms: music; dance, and food. The days were slightly shorter than at the Highland Show, only from 12:00 to 6:00, and the MELA only runs for two days over the weekend, so it was going to be a bit shorter than our last big event.

The week after I got back from Le Mans I was straight back into an incredibly busy week. Not working on my PhD, but doing outreach with the Planetarium team. We were invited, for the first time, to take part in the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston. I, of course, jumped at the chance to reach a much wider audience, but didn't realise just what I was letting myself in for! The poster that was drawn for us by the marquee's resident artist. (Credit: David Brown)

Today I received some news by email that has made me very excited. I've been awarded the Cormack Postgraduate Prize, which means that I'll be receiving a cheque for £400! The prize is awarded annually by the Royal Society of Edinburgh , specifically the Robert Cormack Bequest Committee (who also organise an annual, 1 day conference to showcase Scottish research in astronomy). It is given out to reward outstanding contribution to Scottish astronomical research, and is awarded for the best paper accepted for publication between February of the year preceding the award, and January of the same year. The postgraduate nominated must be the lead author of the paper. Obviously I'm very honoured to receive the award, which given the timeframe must be for my first paper on tidal interactions in hot Jupiter systems. I certainly didn't enter for it, so my supervisor must have done so for me. It's things like this that really keep me going with my research. The fact that...