I'm really pleased to see that @EuroGeosciences has updated its definition of Early Career Scientist to make it more inclusive:

egu.eu/ecs/ "An Early Career Scientist (ECS) is a student, a PhD candidate, or a practising scientist who received their highest certificate (e.g. BSc, MSc or PhD) within the past seven years. The seven-year period can be extended to allow for periods when..."

I've just had an email from our lovely research services people suggesting that I might repurpose an existing grant application to apply for an @ERC_Research Starting or Consolidator grant. Unfortunately, ERC uses "years since PhD" as its metric of experience, so I'm ineligible. I'm *just* in the eligibility window for Consolidator (it's up to 12 years post-PhD), but my application won't be competitive due to lack of track-record.

One of the things about being a radio communications engineer is that I look at antennas (aerials) in the same way that birdwatchers look at birds: noticing the everyday but also recognising the unusual. So, a spotters’ guide to some unusual antennas on this house in Cambridge: Let’s start with the run of the mill: the blackbirds of the antenna world. Two Sky mini dishes. Useful fact: all Sky dishes point roughly south-east (as that’s where the satellite is), so you can use them to get your bearings if you need to.

A short thread on the importance of lighting for looking good in videos - this setup was for an interview over videochat.

Since most videoconferencing is effectively bad television, let’s use techniques from TV to make things better… let’s go! Here’s what I look like just the available light in the room.

I’m using the built-in camera on my 2015 MacBook Pro.

Note the grainy colour-speckle on the ceiling? That means there’s not enough light - we’re seeing noise from the camera automatically adding gain to the image.