Saturday, 2 May 2026

Two TMAs ready to go and the last knockings of S283

I've got S283-TMA04 (cut-off date Thursday 7th May) and MST124-TMA02 (cut-off date Wednesday 13th May) completed on my laptop ready to go. Both could do with a final read through and a bit of last minute fiddling to get them nearer to the impossible state of perfection, but if I had to send them off as they are I could probably do so without worrying about not having done my best. Meanwhile, I plod on with the rest of the Introduction to Astrobiology textbook. Chapter 8 is on exoplanet migration, which I never quite completed on the first read through. I tackled the remaining chapters out of sequence and I've just finished Chapter 9 on SETI and finding intelligent life on other planets, which was so far fetched it was almost embarrassing in places. There was however a tutorial on how to complete TMA04 by one of the better tutors. It clashed with another tutorial but there was no harm done because these are mostly recorded. It was useful to an extent, but only covered two out of the four assignment questions due to the time constraints rather than competence or interest reasons.

The only other semi-interesting thing was four pre-recorded videos released by the School of Physical Sciences about how to sit a remote exam. This is the first time I'm aware of that these events have not been live, and to be honest, I think they worked better without the punters interrupting or the typing of inane distractions in the chat box.