Dr Alan Howard

Busy day for field class staff in Loutro today necessitated our return journey via small motor boat cruiser, the driver (I hesitate to say ‘captain’) of which appeared unwilling to enter the main harbour at Chora Sfakion. Instead the ferry jetty was deemed suitable landing for three ageing university ‘academics’, the youngest of whom narrowly avoided ricocheting into a watery early grave as he and the boat parted company a fraction too soon.

Our students (and staff) spent the day walking the coastal footpath between Loutro and Chora Sfakion observing and analysing the geomorphology and biogeography to provide additional context for the more deterministic work undertaken in Ilingas gorge the previous day.

We arranged to meet as a whole group at 2pm on Sweetwater Beach for debriefing. This was an academic commitment that all students made and, unusually, appeared unwilling to terminate.

There was much debate over whether to take the 5.30 boat back to Chora Sfakion or complete the walk over a particularly exposed stretch.

Photos from the coastal footpath walk

all the students and staff walked from loutro to chora sfakion on the coastal footpath today. with temperatures surpassing 36 degrees most took the opportunity to lounge on sweetwater beach and swim in the sea during their well earned mid afternoon break.

Measuring the extent of the December 2000 floods in Ilingas Gorge. Sunny day in Crete – 32 degrees.

We arrived safely in Chora Sfakion at about 6.30pm after a smooth journey from Reading. As in 2007, we’re staying at Nikos and Georgia’s harbour front taverna, the “Hotel Livikon”. The rate of 24 euros B&B remains a bargain even if the exchange rate is awful at present.

Less of a bargain is the cost to students of flights  booked through the university’s approved travel company – some £80 per person more than in 2007 when we were permitted to book direct with Monarch Airlines.  The logistical benefits of involving an expensive third-party appear unclear (or should I say ‘appear non-existent’) and the university should really review and justify its policy on these matters.

That said, the field trip still promises to be good value for money.

If you would like to find out about how and why weblogs (‘blogs’) might be used to enhance learning watch this interesting video: http://lindsayjordan.edublogs.org/2009/05/29/blogging-with-students-how-and-why/ or read Lindsay’s full paper at:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddj42whm_48g4n924f6

I will soon be undertaking a field trip to Crete during which students will maintain a blog to enable individual and collaborative reflection on events and issues they experience.

Exploration is fundamental to Geography and Geographers have a long history of sharing their travel observations with the public through publication in books and journals. Blogging provides a new outlet for this oldest geographical tradition and the blogs written in Crete will feature other Web 2.0 technologies including photo sharing, video and twitter.

Results to follow…

a little late for this year’s energy resources exam…
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Wind farm ‘kills Taiwanese goats’.

No surprise that Norway were run away winners on Saturday night and I would have liked Azerbaijan and the UK to have been 2nd and 3rd. The model correctly predicted the winning entry but, overall, there was a less strong correlation (r2 value 0.46 compared to 0.75 – 0.85) than in previous years between predicted placing and actual ranking. As usual, the winning entry was judged by most people, irrespective of geographical or political affinity, to be the best in terms of song and performance and it is unlikely that the modified voting system made any difference.

Our website songcontestvoting.com crashed during the contest due to unprecedented visitor numbers. We will be moving to a dedicated server for next year’s contest and accepting advertising!

The outcome of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Moscow tonight, May 16th, will be (according to our computer model):

1. Norway 0.7
2. Greece 1.7
3. Turkey 4.5
4. Ukraine 5.8
5. Azerbaijan 6.4
6. Bosnia Herzegovina 7.0
7. United Kingdom 9.6
8. Iceland 16.2
9. Finland 17.3
10. Armenia 19.6

With the number indicating the country’s “odds” of actually winning the contest.

Norway is a widely tipped favourite, but they have sometimes done less well on the evening than anticipated in the run-up. Out of the projected top-10 Norway has benefited least from “bloc” or friendly voting patterns in the past five contests. Iceland, Bosnia, and Turkey top the list in this regard. Also, in terms of doing well in recent contests, Norway is well below average with only Iceland and the UK with worse records.

Combining track record and friendly voting, indicates a top-4 of Greece, Ukraine, Armenia, and Turkey.

The British bookmakers have a projected top-3 of Norway, Greece and the UK. The UK tends to achieve a top-3 finish when they enter a deserving song. Anything less than a top-10 finish would be a disappointment (and evidence that Europe, rightly or wrongly, really do hate us right now).

Interestingly our word analysis (see below) of recent posts to the 20 top Eurovision sites has the UK and our entry, Jade, as one of the most talked about entrants. This is a feature of “Eurovision week” and  had not been the case in previous weeks and combined with the relative surge in bookmaker support, maybe there will be a big surprise tonight… However also keep an eye out for Azerbaijan, Turkey and Ukraine challenging Norway and Greece to the top-2 spots.

The Ordnance Survey has featured my “Sky Cam” implementation of their OpenSpace API.

On my webpage you can click on a map marker to view the latest skycam image. The map is created using the Ordnance Survey OpenSpace API including the loadurl AJAX method. Zoom in on the map and you’ll see it’s a real Ordnance Survey map.

There is also a Google map version.