Actually, now I make this full-size I see the sticket is very difficult to read, but hey, this one was always more about the art than the aspiration. It says “Challenge Accepted”, by the way. The challenge we have at the moment is persuading the students (who as postgraduates are supposed to still be cranking it out) to stick around on campus, though at least these two have made it.
Professor Ernest Rutherford, originally from New Zealand, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908 even before he conducted, with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, the famous experiment where a bunch of alpha particles were fired at a sheet of gold and some of them bounced back, which Rutherford allegedly said was like firing a missile at a sheet of tissue paper and having it come back and hit you. From this was established the existence of the atomic nucleus, not to mention the original Geiger counter. For this reason Prof Rutherford is one of those former ‘Employees of the Month’ that the University of Manchester likes to big up. But in this case, why not? (Incidentally the room in which this experiment took place is still there, although no longer a laboratory — last time I looked it could be booked as a meeting room.)
Time for the annual ‘student poster day’ where my charges are tasked with demonstrating what they might have learned over the last few weeks. Some even manage to do this: but I suppose they all try. This is happening nearly a week later than last year, and, definitively, marked my last professional engagement of 2025. As far as the University of Manchester are concerned I now do not exist until 5th January. Let there be celebrations, etc.
It seems to have happened slightly later than usual this year, though that’s just a quirk of the calendar, but today was the day I could no longer avoid going onto campus and being faced by a large number of people who were not in the vicinity two weeks ago. Yes, it’s the first week of teaching. So be it.
Five days after Joe’s version, I get to attend another graduation ceremony, only this time in professional rather than parental capacity, so I was sat up at the front. But it felt more like the back, and quite comfortably at the back, so I could get away with some photography. I am pleased with this shot: it was what I intended when the shutter was pressed.
I am still occasionally invited to offer words of wisdom in the professional settings of others. Which is nice, because no one ever listens to you at your own place of work. (Perhaps that’s just me, though.) And one gets the chance to check out classic 1960s brutalist architecture — in this case, the Heslington campus of the University of York — on another pleasant sunny day. There were worse ways to end the working week.
It’s about time we had some more medieval manuscript and the Siege of Troy certainly gives magnificent illumination. This shot only hints at that excellence but I like the captured enthusiasm of the fellow students. I took plenty of photos of my own, don’t worry.
In the last of my taught classes last year, it took about three-quarters of an hour (or felt like it did) for all the students to get their shots with teacher that then go onto social media, somewhere. (And, see also 2022’s version of same.). As I am, essentially, a grumpy man, I insisted that this year I would do it on everyone’s behalf. Apologies to those whom I have eclipsed.
There have been very few shots of my 4,858 so far which have been taken using the self-timer, but there have been some: any of the astronomical efforts (e.g. this shot of Jupiter and its moons, of which I’m still quite proud) will have used it. But I’m sure this is the first where I’ve used the timer to take a photo of myself, with or without others, and used it as the daily picture. So there you are, this is what I look like when I’m not taking a photo.
This is a fairly stock campus shot, but then again it was a fairly stock campus day. At least there are people in it, which is more than has been the case for several other recent photos.
Another lecture, only this time I am facing front instead of at the front. For several Mondays over the next few months I will be a student again: the subject, you can see for yourself. ‘Hogwarts’ is, in fact, the Historic Reading Room of the John Rylands Library; a spectacular setting for a class, and somehow appropriate (though this was opened in 1901 and is detinitely not a medieval construction). But by next time I hope they’ve turned the heating on. Mr Rylands himself, or his statue, at least, pokes up behind the screen.
Being 42 