Aberystwyth University Blogging

Welcome to the Aberystwyth University Blogging Service.
If you wish to start a blog, please send an email to blogging@aber.ac.uk to discuss your requirements and we’ll advise you on how to get started. You can also view information about setting up a blog on the Web Services pages.

Our Active Blogs

Latest posts from across the AU blogging network

  • Distractions and procrastination.

    • Distractions and procrastination. There are lots of things to be embraced about being a Principal Investigator in Higher Education. You are free to direct your own research, you can be creative when devising your teaching sessions, and you can indulge your curiosity and passions, for example through public-engagement or immersing oneself in the literature. But everyone knows ...more

  • Do We Use Science at Home?

    • Do We Use Science at Home? Before Easter we had a lab meeting, where everyone presents a paper they found interesting. There were some interesting bioinformatics ones, some yeast genomics, the usual high impact or highly relevant papers. I, on the other hand, chose a different type of paper. It was published in the British Food ...more

  • Shibboleth 3 IdP - BeanManagedConnection configuration

    • As the original documentation isn't explicit with where all the settings for a BeanManagedConnection used by a RelationalDatabaseConnector Attribute Resolver, here's my crib sheet. Add a connection pooling library to %{idp.home}/edit-webapp/WEB-INF/lib (or use the provided C3P0 library, dealer's choice). For Apache Commons DBCP, DCBP 1.4 and Commons Pool 1.5.7 pair nicely Define your bean, this appears to ...more

  • Glasser Glacier: An Interview with Prof Neil Glasser

    • by Heather Crumpton Earlier this year an Antarctic glacier was named after Professor Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University. I recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Prof Glasser on his experiences working in the Antarctic and the naming of Glasser Glacier. Originally joining the Geography department as a Lecturer in 1999, he worked his way up ...more

  • Dr. Catherine Cottrell

    • http://youtu.be/HJC3s5YfvkI Interview by Daisy ...more

  • A Day in the Life of GeogSoc

    • by Helen Siegieda I tracked down Daniel Colson, a third year who is the current Vice President of GeogSoc for the academic year 2014-2015, and quizzed him about the ins and outs of the society and its best bits. Could you describe GeogSoc in a sentence for me? Ooh in a sentence. Okay, I’d say it’s the ...more

  • Research Excellence Framework- ‘It’s quite a complicated beast'

    • by Sara Elizabeth Fisher The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is probably not a concept well known to students, perhaps deeming the research conducted by departments somewhat detached from our own education. However, Aberystwyth’s recent performance in the REF suggests that not only should we be aware of what it is and its impacts but we should ...more

  • Student Views

    • by Helen Siegieda Being a student of Human Geography at Aberystwyth I wanted to find out how my fellow students are finding their courses, and what advice they have for prospective students and first years within the Geography Department here. Isabel Parry (Second Year, F800) Do you have any advice for students picking modules? Consider how the module is ...more

  • Study Tips

    • by Helen Siegieda THE LIBRARY In first year you may not be spending a huge amount of time in the library, but make sure you do enable yourself to become familiar with how to locate and take out a book, how to operate the printers and scanners and how to find out where there are free computers. ...more

  • Work placement: Four Ashes SSSI Gravel Pit

    • Written by Holly Addis, collated by Heather Crumpton Four Ashes SSSI gravel pit has long been of geological interest. This site is five miles north of Wolverhampton in Staffordshire. In the 1960’s and 70’s it was a working quarry and supplied scientists with information concerning both the extent of the Devensian Irish Sea ice ...more

  • 2014/15 Editorial team: founding members

    • Managing Editor Jessica Wood Commissioning Editors Sara Fisher Heather Crumpton Helen Siegieda Magdalena Chmur Charlotte Thomas (Welsh-medium content) To volunteer to be a member of the 2015/16 Snapshot Editorial Team, please contact Dr Mitch Rose (mir24) or Dr Cerys Jones (eyj) ...more

  • Fracking: thoughts on the controversial battle for future energy

    • by Jessica Wood Hydraulic fracturing or ‘Fracking’ as it is more commonly known, is both controversial and hotly debated. Fracking is a process by which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is drilled and injected into dense shale rock at high pressure in order for the rock to release natural gas from the tiny fissures ...more

  • When is a folder not a folder?

    • When it is a resource/x-turnitin-assignment. update course_contents set cnthndlr_handle = 'resource/x-bb-folder', main_data = NULL, text_format_type = 'S', offline_name = NULL, offline_path = NULL, start_date = NULL, title = 'Assignments' where pk1 = <offending item ...more

  • Adding Modules to Helix Categories (post rollover)

    • insert into .. select ...EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY AS course_code,COURSE_NAME as course_title, hlx_c_xr.CategoryId as category_id, hlx_c_xr.CategoryName as category_name from .. JOIN .. on ...EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY = ...EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY JOIN OPENDATASOURCE('SQLNCLI' , 'Data Source=SQL3\SYSTEMS;Integrated Security=SSPI').vls.dbo.tbl_Group hlx_g ON hlx_g.GroupName = (CASE WHEN EXTERNAL_CATEGORY_KEY = 'A' THEN '_filmtv' WHEN EXTERNAL_CATEGORY_KEY = 'B' THEN '_education' WHEN EXTERNAL_CATEGORY_KEY = 'C' THEN '_english' WHEN EXTERNAL_CATEGORY_KEY = 'D' ...more

  • Getting child course users who may have been disabled when the parent course id was passed in to SIS

    • SELECT course_id, user_id FROM .. child JOIN .. parent on parent.child_crsmain_pk1 = child.crsmain_pk1 and parent.users_pk1 = child.users_pk1 JOIN .. on child.crsmain_pk1 = ...pk1 JOIN .. on ...pk1 = child.users_pk1 where child.available_ind = 'N' and parent.child_crsmain_pk1 is not ...more

  • Getting active uploaders from Panopto

    • SELECT distinct replace(replace(replace(,'blackboard\',''),'-ac',''),'pau.local\','') as UserName FROM ( SELECT ,DATEADD(ms, ((cast((startTime*10000000) as BIGINT)) / CAST(10000 AS bigint)) % 86400000, DATEADD(day, (cast((startTime*10000000) ...more

  • Renaming a file in Bb

    • Change: files.file_name, files.link_name, XYF_URLS.FULL_PATH and ...more

  • Creating user - course enrollments based on membership on existing courses

    • DECLARE @AY varchar(7); SET @AY = '2013-14'; SELECT DISTINCT USERS.Batch_uid, 'DEPT-I-0001' FROM Users JOIN COURSE_USERS ON COURSE_USERS.users_pk1 = USERS.PK1 JOIN COURSE_MAIN ON COURSE_USERS.crsmain_pk1 = COURSE_MAIN.PK1 WHERE COURSE_MAIN.lower_course_id in ('rd23520_'+@AY,'rg23520_'+@AY,'br23420_'+@AY,'bg23420_'+@AY) AND COURSE_USERS.ROLE = ...more

  • Generating user - course enrollment file by DSK and Course Catalog

    • declare @usr as varchar; declare @dsk as varchar; declare @dpt as varchar; set @usr= 'CHANGEME'; set @dsk= 'CHANGEME'; set @dpt= 'CHANGEME'; SELECT AS EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY, '' + @usr + '' AS EXTERNAL_PERSON_KEY, 'D' AS ROLE, 'enabled' AS ROW_STATUS, 'Y' AS AVAILABLE_IND FROM .. JOIN .. ON .CRSMAIN_PK1 = COURSE_MAIN.PK1 JOIN .. ON .GATEWAYCAT_PK1 = .PK1 JOIN .. ...more

  • Checking Bb SIS logs against current course IDs

    • SELECT * FROM .. LEFT JOIN .. ON lower(rtrim(ltrim(RIGHT( SUBSTRING(, CHARINDEX('), CHARINDEX(']',, CHARINDEX(')+1)-CHARINDEX(')) , CHARINDEX(' ', reverse( SUBSTRING(, CHARINDEX('), CHARINDEX(']',, CHARINDEX(')+1)-CHARINDEX(')) )) )))) = .lower_course_id where data_intgr_pk1 = 2 and log_message like '%di.error.associate%' and .course_name is not ...more