Week 46, 2025

Stuff I did this week

• I took the exam for my statistics subject on Friday, so it was a heavy week of revision. The exam was almost 4 hours long, and worth 70% of my overall mark, which is common for my maths subjects so far, but definitely puts the pressure on. I think it went okay—not as terribly as last semester's probability exam, but not amazing. Hopefully I'll pass, at least
• Tinkered with my website a little on the weekend, trying out Jinja templates. Didn't get very far and was sadly reminded why I hate working with Python, or any dynamic, interpreted language (I really hate using R for similar reasons, and I'm sad that there doesn't seem to be a good, statically-typed alternative to R for stats work)
• Also spent some time on the weekend trying out bulk image-compression apps, and eventually created a shortcut in the Shortcuts app that will do it for me. Hopefully it helps me keep on top of all my bird screenshots, which need to be downsizes and compressed
• Josh wrote up the results of our Exist user survey about sharing Exist data with doctors, family members, etc.

Bird news

The sea eagle chicks (fledglings? I just call them babies mostly) are spending lots of time away from the nest during the day now, but they tend to sleep near the nest and hang around a bit in the mornings and evenings, still. It's cute to see them spend so much time together, especially after they didn't seem to get along well when they were in the nest all the time.

SE35, the older sea eagle chick, recently discovered the "dead cat" fluffy microphone cover installed near the nest camera, and spent a long time using it for defeathering practice. Thankfully the mic is still picking up sound for now, so hopefully there won't be too much expensive maintenance to be done once the season is over.

It seems like the 2nd and 3rd peregrine falcon eggs at CSU in Orange aren't going to hatch, but the one that did hatch is doing well. Falcons grow up so fast, it seems like it's doubling in size every couple of days. It's holding its head up well now, and you can tell it's really focusing on what it's looking at. First-time dad Gimbir seems to be doing a good job at keeping plenty of food coming, too.

In bald eagle news, 2 nests in Florida, USA, have already started egging it up! This pair in southwest Florida have got 1 egg already, as do Ron & Rose in Miami-Dade County. I love that the Dade County pair are rebuilding their nest in a papasan chair after their old nest collapsed.

Links

• Real Not Complex: resources for learning real analysis, which will probably be my next uni subject
• Jinja Templating in Python: A Practical Guide: a good starting point for getting to know Jinja template syntax

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