More weather – more rain. The morning was cloudy and the rain started a bit after lunch – while I was taking Scully home from my wife’s work. I went via the shops to get some sushi rolls for lunch and we sat under a plane tree for shelter in the village square. Fortunately it didn’t rain too hard while we were there.
But I did hear a woman get attacked by magpies. She was sitting and eating her lunch, which looked like a box of hot chips and something, maybe fish or a burger or whatever. She was there for some time with magpies stalking around her, looking for a handout. The magpies don’t bother me while I’m eating there because I have Scully with me and she gives them the evil eye. I was looking the other way when suddenly I heard a loud scream, and I looked around the the woman was beating off magpies from the lunch on her lap. I didn’t see, but I assume one jumped right onto her food, because she got up and threw the lot into a bin.
This is the problem with feeding birds in urban areas. They get used to handouts, and they get aggressive when people are eating.
My main work today was planning out lectures for next year’s data engineering course at the university (for which I’m assisting the lecturer in redesigning the course from this year). I wrote lecture outlines for a lecture on data presentation, and one on data fitting and modelling. Next Tuesday we have a meeting to go over and discuss the plans to start locking things into place and moving onto the next stage of developing the course. We need to figure out the assessment tasks, and weave them into the course material.
New content today: