Students who cheat
Sigh, here we go again. It’s time to look at what some students have done (a possible case of plagiarism), try to decide if I should make an official case of the whole thing and send it to the Disciplinary Board, or just tell them to avoid doing this again. Every so often I get the feeling that they time these things deliberately, just so I have more to do when I’m already really busy.
But these things make me sad. Allow me to explain: One part of my job is to handle all cheating cases at my department. This means that:
- I need to get the course responsible teacher to lay out what has happened in a way so that I understand what has happened.
- review the evidence,
- interview the students, and get their explanation of what has happened,
- decide if this is a case of actual cheating or just some kind of mistake,
- in some cases, document what has happened and hand it over to the Disciplinary Board.
What makes me sad is that the students don’t seem to understand the consequences of being discovered cheating. During my interviews, they usually explain the entire thing with “We were collaborating to finish the assignment before the deadline, then we made individual solutions based on our discussions”. These individual solutions frequently contain the same texts with the same formatting, the same spelling errors, code that is all but identical, solution design that are exact copies of each other, etc., etc. In short, to meet the deadline, they take the decision to cheat. But they fail to consider the following:
- The university-wide rule is that you can do every test three times, this includes assignments, written exams, or anything else that is a part of the examination. This means that they can just say, “Opps, I can’t hand in this before the deadline. OK, I do as much as I can, and then finish it before the next deadline”.
- If they get caught cheating, they will be temporarily suspended from any kind of course work at the university. This might result in missing exams, missing a whole course, missing assignments, etc., etc. This in turn will affect the number of “course points” (ECT) they get, and this might have consequences for student loans, etc. It might also influence if they can follow the suggested course work for their program, or if they have to wait a year before being able to complete a course. All this can delay their graduation!! In short, a minor problem suddenly coursed some real problems for the students.
So, while the sentencing might seem “lax”, the ripple effect might cause real difficulties in the future. Fortunately, this is a worst-case scenario, the usual result is that they will be temporarily suspended, and then they have to do spend extra time catching up.
And yes, we try to explain these things to the students, but unfortunately not all of them seem to listen/understand.
Two weeks old but I’ve been busy. Anyway, new students are welcomed to the university.
Det är lite trist att knata runt i skogen, komma fram till en skogsväg och hitta en … f.d. husvagn. Jag förstår inte vitsen med att göra på det här viset.
Going wide
No, I’m not talking about my stomach … although it’s also widening … unfortunately … I’m talking about lenses. It appears that the older I get, the wider I go.
When I bought my first SLR as a teenager, I considered a 135 mm a wide lens and preferred a 200 mm or 400 mm. When I bought my first DSLR I used something like a 24-120 zoom for almost everything, later I’ve become fond of prime lenses, first a 90 mm, then 85 mm, then 50 mm, then 40 mm and the latest lens I bought was a 28 mm.
I don’t understand why this has happened, but I find it interesting that this happened. I still use my zoom lenses a lot, but I’m increasingly drawn to prime lenses. Currently, my favorites are the 85/1.8 + 28/2.8 for my Nikon, and the 40/2.8 on my Ricoh IIIx.
I wonder what I will be using in two-three years 🤔
My mini camera bag
On YouTube, there are many “What’s in my photo bag”-videos, it’s both silly and fascinating … so I can’t resist making a “What’s in my photo bag”-post. I’m actually going to make several posts, since I use different gear for different situations.
My mini bag
This is my mini bag, I usually put these two bags in my workbag, or toss them in the car when I’m going somewhere. The GR IIIx is my everyday camera, it’s a quite fantastic camera in a tiny body. To be completely honest, I typically only have the GR IIIx in a pocket, and nothing more.
So what’s in the photo?
- A small Lowepro pouch
- A Maxpedition pouch. I bought it a few years ago for a different purpose.
- My Ricoh GR IIIx HDF
- SD card, 128 GB. There is no chance that I will fill this card.
- Two batteries — one in the camera
- A slightly damaged card reader that I can use with my phone, infrequently used since I rarely edit photos “on the go”. I normally use my iPad and a better card reader.
- A small old power adapter
- A short USB-A to USB-C cable, used for charging batteries in the camera if needed.
- A short USB-A to Lightning cable to charge my phone.
The Lowepro bag is strictly a “transport” bag, i.e., it should protect my camera when I have it in my workbag, or when I throw everything in the car. If I expect to use the camera, I remove the bag and put the camera in my pocket. And if I expect to be out and about for a longer time, I put the Maxpedition pouch in a pocket.
My mini bag, deluxe edition
First, I very rarely use this, but I’ve actually tried doing indoor sports photography with acceptable results. Not something I would actually use, but it can be done.
What’s added to the setup is
- Some small pouch that I bought 15–25 years ago.
- A small flash from LightPix Labs.
- AA-batteries, in flash.
- Some filters that came with the flash
As you can see, the flash is small, but it’s fairly powerful. One thing that’s not obvious from the photo is that it’s possible to remove the “hot shoe”-part of the flash, and use it to remotely control the flash.
This makes the flash really powerful since I can use it off-camera. While it’s a completely manual flash, I find it not too difficult to get a decent exposure. I wouldn’t hesitate to do some portrait photography using this setup (I would improvise some kind of reflector and a diffusor).
So the whole setup looks like this when packed.
Completely blown away
I’m a big tea drinker, so I was pretty happy when they bought one of these “fancy water boilers” at work. This makes it much quicker to prepare a cup of tea, and as you can see, I have a pretty big cup to fill.
There is only one problem, to fill the cup I need to hold down the lever until my cup is full. As you might guess, it takes some time to fill the cup, and standing there holding down the lever is pretty boring. It has happened that I’ve boiled some water in the regular way, so I’ve had the chance to do something else while waiting.
So imagine my big surprise when I saw a colleague filling up a big tea pot without touching the water boiler … WHAT ????!!! MAGIC !!!!
— H … How … how did you do that?
— What do you mean? Just put the cup there and flip the lever.
— FLIP THE LEVER, WHAT??????
Stupid me, I had never realised that it was possible to flip the lever in the other direction and that locked it in place.
My mind was completely blown away … I was just standing there in chock over this revelation. Do I need to mention that my colleague was smiling at me?
My new wide-angle lens
Yesterday I got my new wide-angle lens, new and new … it’s an old second-hand lens (14-24/2.8) from MPB, and it’s a giant piece of glass. Compared to my other lenses it’s “silly big”, I’m starting to get a bit worried if I can fit it in my rucksack!!
Anyway, I went out today to test it and here is my first shot … and it’s going to take some time to get used to this lens. When I took this photo, I could almost touch the sign—I’m not used to that.
I then tried to take some more “open landscape” photos, and it’s really different from my other lenses. I was standing right beside a tree, not visible in the photo, and the branches from it were visible in the frame, so I took a step forward and made a second attempt … and the branches were still there. Not until I walked up to the tree you see, it’s almost within touching distance, I was able to get the branches out of the frame.
This photo is more the kind of photos I expect to take in the future. This one has an obvious flaw … the branches melts together with the background. But what really amazed me was that it felt like I had the camera below the tree … I still got the whole tree in the frame with room to spare.
The final photo was taken with me crouching down right beside the track and the snowmobile passing me just 20-40 cm away.
It was fun to take it out to see how it works, I really need to practice a lot, to learn how to best use this lens. It’s quite different from the other lenses I have for this camera.
Being an idiot
Every so often, I wonder if I need a larger working memory. A couple of days ago, we went on a short trip to visit family, since it was a short family trip, I decided not to bring any serious photo gear. Instead, I would just take the GR IIIx (almost always in my pocket) and the Lumix GM5 with the small 12–32 and 35–100 zooms (fits easily in a pocket). My idea was to take a walk or two and try to capture three landscape photos.
Right before we were leaving home, I realized that I had forgotten the 35-100 and ran in to fetch it. Then we left home and after a couple of hours of driving we arrived at our destination.
After eating lunch, I decided to take my walk before the sun disappeared, and I started to dig in my bag to get the GM5. After about 30 seconds, I realized that I had forgotten to pack it … what an idiot I am!!!! So I had the tele zoom but no camera, great !!
Fortunately, I had the GR IIIx in my pocket, so I was able to capture some photos … but not what I had planned.
Older computer
This isn’t as much about photography as it’s about post-processing. Some time back, I discovered that Lightroom Classic on my desktop didn’t display all the options that the program has. When I looked closer, I discovered some small text that basically said, “your computer is too old and feeble, so you can’t use the fancy stuff”. Yep, my computer isn’t the latest model, not even the previous model … or the one before that … in fact, they are probably right. My computer is a bit old and feeble, it works quite nicely for anything else than processing images.
To be honest, I get the impression that it spins up the fans if I hold up a memory card from my Nikon Z7 in front of it 😁.
Anyway, yesterday I started to play with ON1 Photo Raw and experienced lagging, we are talking about 1–3 seconds when I try to create a mask using the brush. So, I sent in a support request asking if there was something I could do to improve the performance. The answer was something like “you have an older Intel chip set (hey, at least it isn’t a 68K processor 😁) with not enough graphics memory”. They didn’t write it, but between the lines you can read “get a new computer”.
My wife has been saying the same thing for quite some time now. It feels like the whole world is conspiring against me 😜.
Visiting Wales
One of the benefits of my job is that sometimes I get the chance to travel abroad. I’m not a frequent traveler, the last trip was in 2019 and before that, 2016, especially not compared to some of my colleagues who seem to be on the road more often than being at home. Anyway, this year I was lucky enough to be able to go to Aberystwyth in Wales to do some work. I think I’ve been to Wales once before … but I’m not certain, it was many years ago … but I’ve always wanted to visit.
My plan was to take the train to Arlanda, fly to Schiphol, fly to Birmingham, and then take the train to Aberystwyth. Everything started well, I walked from my office down to the train station and waited for the train.
The train was on time and everything seemed to go well. Notice the word “seemed”, first there was a minor incident with a water bottle.
Then, when we were halfway to Arlanda, 3-4h into the train ride, I got a message that read “your flight has been cancelled” … gahhhh. Fortunately, I got some help to make a new reservation, but since the new flight was leaving for Bromma, I had to find somewhere to stay the night in Stockholm.
Anyway, the day after, I walked around a little in Stockholm while waiting for the flight.
Instead of going to Schiphol, I was now going to Brussels, where I had to wait for a couple of hours before my next flight to Birmingham.
I arrived in Birmingham and had to run around a bit to figure out where my train was but managed to catch the train to Aberystwyth with 8 minutes to spare – plenty of time. Then a 3h train ride (why do the trains have open windows? The noice is far too loud for my taste) to Aberystwyth, where I was met by my friends, and taken to the place where I was going to stay (a very nice house from the 1600s).
Aberystwyth
I didn’t have that much time for photography (remember: work trip, not vacation) so I mostly took various snapshots while walking around in the city … but I like snapshots!
Anyway, Aberystwyth is a fairly small city, where everything in the city centre is within easy walking distance … OK, the hills can make it a bit more taxing than a map might suggest. It’s a very pleasant town and very different from Aberdeen, the last town I visited in the UK. While Aberdeen is mostly gray granite, Aberystwyth is full of colors.
I enjoyed walking around the city and looking at the buildings. To me, they looked exactly how I imagine a small city in the UK looks like. However, there is more to Aberystwyth than buildings. Since people in the UK seem to have a special connection to the sea, there is of course a promenade along the beach.
And it should be no surprise that the sea seems to play a huge role in what people do in their spare time. There were people taking a bath (or trying to take a bath 😋), having a picnic, just sitting watching the sea, surfing, competing, etc.
Away from the beach
There is, of course, more to Aberystwyth than the city centre. Standing on a hill, you can see how Aberystwyth stretches out in the valleys and hill sides around the city centre.
Something almost every university I’ve seen has in common is the “architecture” and Aberystwyth University is no exception. I will show one photo without any further comments.
We were also a bit mystified by “The Hat” statue close to the National Library of Wales, why on earth would anyone make a statue of a hat? I thought it was a fun statue, but I couldn’t really figure out why, but then I was shown two YouTube videos, Michael Sheen and Yma o hyd, after which everything made sense.
Hay-on-Wye
I’ve never heard about Hay-on-Wye before this trip. The main reason why people go here are the bookshops, there are numerous bookshops here. Surprisingly, many for a place of this size. In fact, there are more bookshops here than in many much larger cities. It was fun to walk around and browse the bookshops, but since I had to carry everything back home, I just bought a few books that would be difficult to find at home.
When we were done with the bookshops, we took a typical english road (for me that is, having watched too many Midsomer Murders episodes 😜) up in the hills before dinner. Then back to Aberystwyth.
Birds
The day after, we visited the Dyfi Osprey Project to … ehh, look at the Ospreys. It’s a wonderful place, I highly recommend a visit. First, they have set up 4K video cameras around one of the nests, and then had a large screen in the visitor centre which made it possible to see what was happening in great detail. You can view the stream on YouTube. Secondly, it’s so very peaceful there! I could sit there for hours just looking at the surroundings and listening to what was happening around me. And perhaps most importantly: there were no mosquitos around 👍🏻.
After the Ospreys, we went up in the mountain. The roads are … interesting, you would rather not have a huge vehicle when driving on these roads. Anyway, it’s beautiful up in the hills and I could spend quite some time exploring this area. What looked a bit worrying to me was the Nant-y-Moch Reservoir, to me, the water level seemed very low, worrying low. But I’m no expert, so I could be utterly wrong.
After the reservoir, we went to Bwlch Nant yr Arian to look at the feeding of the Red Kites. Another nice place to visit, and the feeding is definitely worth a visit.
Going home
After 7–8 days in Aberystwyth, it was time to go home. This time everything, almost, went according to plan. I also discovered that my changed flight going to the UK was actually a blessing in disguise. The passport control in Schiphol is very slow … in fact, I would say extremely slow, especially compared to the time it took when going to the UK (about 20-25 seconds). I will avoid traveling via Schiphol in the future.
The only problem I had going home was that the train was about 1h late from Arlanda … but we were a few minutes early to Umeå, so I’m not complaining.
Other stuff
Other miscellaneous from the trip. Most importantly, avoid Marmite!!! There are other, much better. ways to get your B vitamins.
One really good idea I saw was these “railings” (?) that made it really simple to push a bike up the stairs
Knitting can be done everywhere
Stones have faces
Never give up, even if you’re in a non-ideal environment
Some random flowers
The End
I really liked my trip to Aberystwyth, and would love to come back. I would also like to see more of Wales, perhaps travel north up to Snowdonia and do some hiking. It would probably be best to rent a small camper van to make it possible to travel around to all the places I want to see.