The End of the End. Of term.

And so, term ends. Not teaching, though: marking still remains to be done, and project students are still around. Still, it is much reduced. The temptation is to drop it all,  head back to research: get on with developing new ideas - but that's unwise. This is a funny time, with Christmas not far off, and only 8 working days left. It's a better time for drawing a line,  finishing tasks off, rather than starting afresh.

Of course, it's not like research hasn't been going on. We've just had a proposal to the DfT funded to do research on wearable haptic aids for navigation. It's only a small grant, but it'll let us lay the groundwork for larger grants by exploring user needs. We've also got two journal  papers nearly in: one on interceptive movents in children, and one on reach-to-grasp movements. None of which I can expand on here until they're accepted, but with a bit of luck, I'll be able to outline or thinking once it's all under peer review.

There's plenty to do over the next two weeks, but it's all bits and pieces. I'll try to get up a Year in Review post before Christmas. Until then: have fun!

22nd November: Peak Teach

Did I say these posts were getting biweekly? Make that monthly at the rate I'm going! The reason for this is a phrase that's cropped up a lot recently: Peak Teach.

If late October is the calm before the storm,  November is the storm. Projects are in full swing and students need feedback on their proposals, assignments are in for marking, new assignments are being set, and lots of "extra" lectures hit around this time (the one-off ethics sessions and practicals). Last week, I had nine hours of lectures, two of tutorials,  and seven of project supervision. Plus marking. And everything else doesn't go away: I've put a grant proposal in to the DoT,  examined a PhD at Sheffield, written my paper for CWUAAT 2016 (a last minute change from 3-page poster outline to 9-page full paper at the reviewers' invitation: a real boon, but a lot of work), had two new PhD students start, and one pass his transfer viva and head off to start fieldwork. And two students who need feedback on their theses by the end of the month.

Not that I'm complaining - it's all interesting stuff and it all moves things forwards - but the blog posts for the last month would all have been exactly the same. There's a little progress on lots of things, rather than big things getting steadily ticked off! But such are the rhythms of academic life, and I've long since learned to live with it. I keep my home diary clear,  so I can actually rest when I'm not working or parenting, and new things have to wait for the end of term.

The next three weeks will be similar,  so I daresay I'll be putting up a similar post in another three weeks for the merry old end of term! I'll see you then!

12th and 19th Oct: The End of the Beginning

Yup, these posts are definitely looking more fortnightly than weekly! I keep meaning to write some more specific posts, and get some images in - but hey, given some of the lengthy gaps in posts I had in the early days  (or, ahem, the first couple of years), I'll settle for getting an update in every couple of weeks!

It's a funny time of year. Every time of year is funny/odd/busy/exciting in some way, but Week 4 of teaching (for that's what this is here at Leeds) definitely stands out as one of the more unusual. I think of it as the End of the Beginning. Hence the post title.

See, the start of the year is busy: modules to be set, projects to be allocated and started, lectures given, teething problems addressed - all against the ongoing background of research. The end of this term and start of next will also be very busy: the end of year will be exceptionally busy. Of course it will: every level 3 and 4 student must be examined, every piece of coursework assessed, mitigating circumstances allowed for, marks aggregated by the Exam Boards or absolute chaos will ensue.

But this week is an interesting point: exams have been written, coursework set, projects started: all the early effort required to build momentum. And coursework hasn't yet arrived for marking. Just for a moment, there's a lull and this afternoon I actually ran out of things to do.

Which isn't to say there aren't things on my To Do list, but I've finished reading the Thesis I'll be examining next week; I've interviewed three prospective PhD students and got their research proposals finalised; I've finished reviewing papers for next year's  CWUAAT conference. There are plenty of things to pick up next week, but in the last chunk of Friday afternoon, there's no sense starting them.

Next week a raft of new things begin - research proposals picked back up; a paper to write; a journal article to review. Still, it's nice to appreciate the odd moments of calm when they come along.

28th Sept and 5th Oct: Groundwork

These weekly updates are starting to get more like fortnightly, aren't they? Well, such us the way - especially in the first few weeks of teaching. There's never a time that's not busy, of course, but this time of year is particularly hectic. Lectures have to be delivered, projects allocated, detaiks checked. Lecture Capture isn't available in the lecture theatre I'm teaching Mechanical Systems in this year, so I'm trying to make last year's lectures available through our virtual learning environment. Doable, and worth doing, but it's never trivial.

Likewise, I've been grappling with LabVIEW's simulation and control module. A great system, but apparently corrupted on my version of LabVIEW 2013. After much ado, I installed LabVIEW 2015, and that's working a treat.  Also, trying to sort out an external live brief has been hard work. Companies tend to assume that your time is free, while theirs has value - so will merrily chop and change things, then complain when you won't rearrange the timetable at the last minute, despite the fact that this has enormous repercussions for admin staff, lecturers and students who don't stand to benefit. Sometimes you have to stand your ground, even if it makes you unpopular.

Technical difficulties and a couple of days of sick and carer leave aside, work has been mostly good, if rather routine: we're just getting to the stage where we're moving from introducing, setting up and clarifying to getting to the interesting stuff: solving problems and reviewing designs.

Two high points have  been writing an exam (I enjoy finding practical case studies of mechanisms and posing myself the questions), and preparing to act as external examiner for a PhD viva. Reading a thesis is always thought provoking, and gets you thinking deeply about a subject.

So, lots on - and it's all good stuff,  even if the main achievements are things like "Set up the VLE", " Set assignment", "delivered introductory lecture". None are ground breaking, or exceptional - but you get nothing done if you don't do these first.

21st Sept: Teaching, workshops and a couple of breakthroughs

It's been a busy, busy week - for a few reasons - but a good one.

Most significantly, it's Fresher's - sorry, Induction Week. The undergraduates are back, and the campus is buzzing. I like the rhythms of the academic year: the calm of the student vacations, the frenetic pace of teaching. Things are always changing. I mentioned last week that this time of yead always has the sensation of racing towards a narrow gap in a solid wall. Well, this point is the gap. If you're not prepared, you'll be in for a chaotic 11 weeks. I think I'm there: slides, handouts, tutorials, projects ready. Only an exam to write: that's not bad at all.

Of course, this week has also been busy because we've been marking presentations from students returning from industrial placement and celebrating their achievements. And I've been at a fantastic neuro-engineering workshop, learning about the challenges of actually implanting devices. A little outside my area, but relevant to rehabilitatiin and spinal injury, and there are some exciting potential cross-overs with my biomechanics work.

Another big event this week was a Medical Humanities workshop in diagnosis. It was a great opportunity to get together with humanities researchers from History, English and Sociology and get their views on what diagnosis means, and some of the social, ethical and practical challenges it presents. A very productive meeting, and I'll try (no promises!) to write up my thoughts as a separate blog post sometime.

But the main business this week has been on the grip research front. Firstly, the revised version of FATKAT has survived its first test in data gathering, with the issues of lag and data losses in Network Streaming now resolved. That's a big landmark, and a vindication of the time I've poured into it over the last three weeks.

And my grip model has just survived cross - validation, which is another big landmark. We've just got to actually write it all up now!

7th &14th Sept : Getting a Grip in Every Sense

This post is now about ten days' late - holiday and family birthdays have kept me busy outside work, and work has been rapidly accelerating as term approaches. So this update will need to cover two weeks in one go.

    This time of year always has the sense of racing towards a narrow door in a brick wall at high speed: you really hope you haven't missed anything important. Are my handouts and slides ready? Have I got my tutorials and projects up-to-date? Because if not, next week it will be too late, and term will be spent firefighting.

    But my time has not been entirely dedicated to teaching prep. What has also kept me busy has been the work on grip research, with two items reaching fruition. Firstly, the FATKAT 2.0 software is now operational. This is a rewrite from scratch to address the network streaming issues that we encountered. It stores all data locally on the myRIO, and hence sample rates are decoupled from the host PC. This means that up to about 1kHz can be recorded - though if the host PC is slow, then high sample rates don't display well. It also introduces a trigger for QualiSys, so that data can be co-ordinated for validation purposes. This means that Will Shaw is ready to start runnjng his experiments this week. We also now have two working FATKAT systems, allowing us to operate parallel projects. Very handy for the undergraduate students who will be taking dissertations on grip with me!

The other thing that has me excited is the grip model that Rachel Coats, Mark Mon-Williams and I have been working on, and which has taken an epic amount of time this summer, has now produced some exciting results. I can't say much more until we've had the results published, but suffice to say that we have moved from data analysis to writing up.

Busy times - but very exciting!

  

W/c 24th August: Loose Ends

This update is coming late because I've been away on holiday ( it was great thanks), and didn't much fancy announcing the fact over the internet. Also, school holidays mean I'll be off the rest of this week, so there won't be an update til a week Friday (the 11th), since you probably aren't interested in my holiday snaps!

Given this, the week is something of an inflection point: a time to draw a line under old things, rather than starting anything new. So, although the grip data has reached a really exciting point - exploratory analysis complete, theorising and model-building ready to start - and a new MyRIO for FATKAT has arrived, allowing me to start rewriting the software, I've actually spent most of this week drawing a line under a review for the Journal of Engineering Design, making new grip surfaces for FATKAT, preparing handouts for teaching and papers for CWUAAT. A whole load of items finished, a load of new stuff to pick up on my return. See you then!