Friday 28 June 2019

Gradlympics: June Report

After Abingdon’s video gaming triumph – they led 5-4. Read on for reports from the next three episodes in the sports opera that is the Gradlympics.

Event No. 9: Netball
The Culham Sport and Social Association runs a wide range of social activities open to everyone on site. One of those is netball. It was a fiercely hot day. Seasons change, but the Gradlympics continues. Indeed the Gradlympics had been going so long, new reinforcements had arrived in the form of new graduates. 
As we started our practice, Livesey and Todd seemed stunned that everyone didn’t know all the rules. It seemed most of the men among us had missed out on a childhood rite of passage learning our Wing Defences from our Goal Attacks. 
Abingdon, as winners of basketball, began as slight favourites. But Oxford had reason for confidence. If there was one take-away from basketball it was that in the absence of skill, height is a damn good substitute.
So when Oxford stood taller than Abingdon in 6 of the 7 positions, they sensed an advantage. And so it proved in the early stages with Oxford taking a quick 3-0 lead. Abingdon were lost. They had barely touched the ball. 
There was good play all over from Oxford, but the star was Lukenskas. This was his event. As everyone else struggled to carefully line up their goal shots, he just seemed to drop them in. A deft hand, attached to a bruising body. Hawkes put in a fairly heroic defence in the face of Lukenskas’ aggression. But the score kept rising.
Abingdon, a little shell shocked, knew they had to change approach. With shorter, low bounce passes, they found some breakthroughs. In a very competitive second quarter Abingdon recorded their first scores. But they still trailed as Lukenskas found the net again.
The new faces were putting in very promising performances; Parry-Wright with some excellent catching and Berry with some smooth linking play with Fulton.
In the second half Oxford excelled in the midfield. Todd and Quirk up front were starved of ball as Oxford dominated possession. Their penetrating attacks were converted at an overwhelming rate. 
The game paused when Measures was catapulted into the tarmac. Was his jostling too great, or his legs too speedy? After about 5 minutes, we notice a few conspicuous blood stains on the ball. 
The game ended 10-3 to Oxford. This was one of the most one-sided events of the Gradlympics. Oxford may be ruing Lukenskas’ absence from the basketball. Things were level again at 5-5.
The teams warm up on court

Event No. 10: Laser Tag
This was a long-awaited event. Talk of a laser tag social predates the Gradlympics. Hell it predates most of the graduates. An archived social, revived.
Into a gladiatorial arena walked the twelve graduates. It was very dark, very hot. Dim coloured bulbs lit up a selection of barrels and wooden panelling. The teams lined up beside their bases, setting up guard through peepholes.
Now from a journalistic perspective, when the objective of this game is essentially to hide in a dark room, one can only offer so much as commentary. A round was typified by periods of tense emptiness, stalking and shuffling, punctured by flashes of green and red crossing paths. 
It could be frustrating at times. You could be camped up, hidden with three walls of cover, and lo your body starts flashing. You’d been hit. Where from? Who by? From the darkness. By the enemy.
In the first round Hawkes pressed up high against Moore and Morgan, who held behind the exposed entrance to Oxford’s base. Cooper and Quirk prowled the midfield. Summer placement student Hershmann made darting attacks then retreated. Bookless was the lone defender of the Abingdon base, mainly because no one else had worked out where the base was. 
Out of the arena we quickly looked for a score. We found a lot of large numbers on a screen. It seemed the Cooper was rated 200000, top scoring for Abingdon. Whether that was points, bullets or teabags it didn’t really matter because after a few seconds the scores were gone without trace. Hershmann took top spot for Oxford. Overall, on an unrelated scale, a score of 2300-2100 to Oxford. 
We questioned the scoring system: “It’s too complicated to explain, you wouldn’t understand” our host generously said. 
In the second round people were wiser. They began to realise that the true strategy was to first get a kill which activated automatic fire. Then go full Rambo. Livesey and Oxford attacked more and succeeded in destroying the Abingdon base. A rewarding scoreline. 2400-2000 Oxford.
In the last round Abingdon, with nothing to lose, went all out. Todd kept watch while the rest launched an assault. Oxford’s base, for the first time, was breached. Under such a high press, Oxford tried to outflank them, with only moderate success. Abingdon won 2300-2000.
Cooper was up to 415000. But the top scorer again was Hershmann, a fantastic debut. 2-1 to Oxford. Oxford were back in the Gradlympics lead 6-5.
Abingdon

Oxford

Event No. 11: Pub Quiz
Covering everything from neutron stars, to Dr Neo Cortex, to the peak chart position of “Baby shark”, this pub quiz had everything. Everything except a pub.
The desks were laden with chocolate, sweets and doughnuts. This quiz had food. Delicious, unhealthy food. The graduate scheme panel had put together 10 diverse, testing rounds. We extend a huge thanks to all that helped come up with questions. 
The most interesting and innovative part of the quiz was the split round structure, which made each team choose how to split their squad every round. It gave teams meaningful, difficult decisions on how to distribute their knowledge base. This quiz had strategy. On the front table were the classic quiz rounds such as Music, Science and General Knowledge. Out back had more unusual tests on Culham or Donald Trump’s tweets.
Among the more interesting answers – Abingdon incorrectly solved the dingbat for “A Song of Ice and Fire” as “Sing with the ice cream in the flames”. So close, but also, so not. No team correctly knew the meaning of the acronym OAS. Thankfully for fusion there was more success on MAST-U and ITER.
After the last entertaining round, the teams waited with bated breath. 128-122. Oxford had won. It was over.







But wait. 
Someone put the X-files music on.
A round had been missed. Now 146-141. But that was only the start. Tokamak Tales today brings you a behind the scenes scoop. A sneak peek of the quiz answers.
If you are of virtuous mind you may want to look away now. Some of the images viewers might find upsetting. 
We’ve all seen a wrong answer marked right. But have you ever seen a wrong answer, crossed out, and marked wrong – marked right? Behold. Swiftly followed by Frozen’s Idina Menzel, awarded correct for Oxford, incorrect for Abingdon.
More hope, you would think, for the unambiguous True/False rounds. And yet…
There were more. All rounds bar two were recounted. When accounted for, unbelievably, Abingdon stood 2 points clear. The Gradlympics had gone a couple of rounds without controversy. About time for another. On the one hand Abingdon were ahead, but without a complete recount, things were not confirmable. 
The mobs began taking their sides “Based on the information you have, Abingdon should win!”  “If there are missing answers it's a bit tricky to declare a winner..” “We really can only make a call on the numbers we have received”. 
The president, with democracy failing him, declared a draw. The scores were held at 6-5 Oxford entering into the final two events. Stay tuned. 

Monday 3 June 2019

Gradlympics: May Report

After the last update, the Gradlympics scores stood at 3-2 Oxford. Read on to hear the results from the past few weeks.

Event No. 6: Badminton
And so, to Badminton. The first task was to select our doubles.
Oxford found their badminton pairings like starry-eyed teenagers. Most memorably Erskine gave Morgan a heartfelt proposal for his hand in racket. How romantic. Abingdon on the other hand, found theirs more through dictatorship. Got paired up with the smelly kid in blue shorts? Too bad.
Oxford had suffered enough weeks being outdressed, and came out with a very fetching breathable navy mesh. It even came adorned with nicknames intended to terrify the opposition, like Shredder, Gainz, and… No Socks. Shudders.
After a fun session of lucky dip, the games were decided. All eyes were on Stuart to start, the most feared among the Oxford team. But losing 9-3 in his first game, things were not going to plan. Ascott and Hawkes thought they had found a winning strategy. But Korzeniowska and Stuart produced a combative, agile display to recover the win 15-12. 
Organiser Stuart was very clear – Most points wins. Not games. After round 1 Oxford won on games, lost on points. In round 2, Oxford won on games, lost on points. Hmph.
There were nail-biting, last point victories for Witty and O’Callaghan and Stuart and Erskine. Oxford had the edge when under pressure. But a big win for Todd and Howe put Abingdon in the driving seat. 
The match of the day might have to be the thrilling spectacle that was Erskine and D. Morgan vs Ascott and L. Morgan. A back and forth contest, with powerful attacking from Oxford. Abingdon’s Morgan showed her experience with fast defensive parries as they overcame a 14—11 deficit to win.
Oxford kept winning games, but Abingdon, like a resolute bloodied boxer, kept taking a lot to be beaten. In the final round, a clean sweep of wins by Abingdon put victory beyond doubt. 168-138 in points. An even 6-6 in games.  
Badminton is, all in all, a friendly sport. There’s just something about the way the shuttlecock drifts happily over the net. Sure Quirk and co. could employ their ‘hit it very hard’ strategy, but overall it was a sport everyone could participate in ably and enjoyably. The close games were good signal of this.
Abingdon

Oxford

Event No. 7: Table Tennis
Quite unlike the good-natured doubles of badminton, table tennis was to be played in unforgiving singles. Raw ability, experience and hand eye coordination were to count. This was a week for the cream of players to stand out. 
And the creamiest of all was Fulton. He lined up the innocent first timers from Abingdon like lambs to the slaughter. 15-0. 15-0. There was only one who could save Abingdon now. One who could stop this. One last hope.
Quirk vs Fulton. This was not just another match. Everything stopped. A hush fell over the crowd as the magnitude of the game dawned upon them. The effect on team morale could be huge. Almost as large, some might say, as the effect on the winner’s ego. 
The play was fast, tense and aggressive. Quirk tested his opponent with fierce topspin and tricky side spin serves. The crowd held their breath in awe. Lukenskas shouted random, unhelpful words; seemingly lost in the moment.
Fulton excelled in defence as much as attack, keeping the ball in play from any position, forcing points to be won, rather than lost. Combining this with strong services of his own, Fulton came through his greatest test 15-10 victor.
Moore, with three impressive victories, supported Fulton in building Oxford’s advantage. But elsewhere Abingdon were gaining small, regular victories. Most had thought Oxford were ahead by a good distance, but the gap had been slowly closing.
The final match pitched Robson against Witty. Rumours spread round that the result was critical. How many did Robson need to win by? Robson pushed the ball around well and built up a lead, but Witty stubbornly kept his tally ticking along. 15-12 to Robson. Was it enough?
Richyal, wielding his spreadsheet like a precious artifact, kept all in order. The result: 270-263 to Oxford. Just 7 points from over 500 played split the teams. Interestingly 12-12 in games, offering some karma from the previous week. 
Your experience of table tennis depended somewhat on which end of the battering ram you were located. The game excelled in evenly matched games across all abilities, but could feel quite punishing as the gap in capability widened.
Darren takes on Adomas

Event No. 8 Wii Games
5pm. Workers had gone home. The graduates were gathered in the area where not long ago, we had been doing interviews and assessments. Now we were casually selecting which Italian plumber we would like to initiate combat with. How times change.
This was a highly anticipated event. For weeks the gamers had been subjecting themselves to all this exercise. Now it was time to rise up and show how to button mash. Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Two events in one night.
With both the Wii and Switch owners on side, Abingdon began as favourites. After a healthy few minutes explaining what the hell all the confusing numbers meant to the uninitiated, the smashing could start. 
But just before we unleashed the gaming, the maintenance team appeared, and sheepishly began dismantling the ceiling beside us. We looked across in awkwardness as they slowly unpacked a ladder. The poor souls. They even put up a flimsy plastic barrier to protect themselves from the riotousness. 
Punch, Kick, Punch, Spin Kick, Fireball! You wonder what the empty air ever did to us to deserve such a beating. Once both players had finally manoeuvred themselves within a well-timed shoryuken of each other, things started getting interesting.
There were moments of tension in the early fights. There was always a sort of armistice midway through each game as everyone jumped after the big shiny ball. At points it seemed that the most lethal force in each game was a player’s own self-will to swan dive off the side of the map. Meta Knight’s wings proved a saviour here.
Livesey and Morgan pitched Kirby against Pikachu in a colourful battle. There were gasps when the cheery pink orb savagely swallowed the little Pokémon. Pikachu scampered in terror from this hammer-swinging, bubble-gum beast. It came down to the final life, where after a long struggle Morgan dumped Livesey’s Kirby off the edge to win.
Top marks to Litherland-Smith, Witty and Bookless for comfortable wins, but Robson was the star as the only one to manage a perfect 3-0 result. All this amounted to a 27-22 win for Abingdon. 
On the Karting front you could tell who had a real childhood. Why go climb trees when you can wheelie along them on Maple Treeway, right? Experienced riders Livesey and Bookless asserted their dominance on Rainbow Road. Cooper and Todd produced an unlikely win against a strong team in Witty and Measures. From here Abingdon accelerated into a huge lead.
Credit to Witty for then generously giving turn by turn coaching to Korzeniowska, who did her best in a tough field. Abingdon’s strength in depth showed and despite Livesey’s heroics in the final game, Oxford still lost 248-310 in points.
Helena and Leah fight it out in Smash Bros

Faces of concentration along Rainbow Road

So a double win for Abingdon. This has swung the scores on their head, and Abingdon leads 5-4. Reports on the netball, laser tag and pub quizzing to come! Stay tuned.
P.S. Thanks to Stevie and Nik for kindly lending their games consoles!

The graduates learn about systems engineering

Until recently, if you had asked a graduate ‘What is systems engineering?’, they would have paused for a minute, looked at you with distant eyes, and replied, ‘Requirements maybe?’.
Just requirements? You’d reply.
Another pause. ‘Yeah, I think so’ they’d answer. 
You’d then faceplant your desk that a discipline so immense and varied was summarised by just one word. 
Thus sets the stage for the graduate systems engineering course that took place at the start of May. Created by the Systems Integration team at UKAEA, including our own resident graduate systems engineer Jess, the course set out to answer the questions the graduates didn’t even know they had. WHAT is systems engineering? WHY is systems engineering? WHOM is systems engineering??
A cloud of intrigue and rumours had surrounded the course from day one: why did Jess keep stockpiling lego on her desk? Why was she asking for strange objects from all at RACE? The plot ever thickened as May 10th grew closer, and 23 grads anxious to know what lay in store, gathered together early in the morning to see the secrets revealed….
The graduates got stuck in straight away to a seemingly harmless activity. Their task was to design and build a remotely operated vehicle capable of rescuing people from a flooded village and delivering aid supplies. All well and good; the teams ploughed on with their designs and had finished products ready to show to visiting stakeholders when they arrived. They approached the front with trepidation and lay their designs before them. The tension in the room built. The stakeholders at long last shared a look, turned to the teams and spoke.
‘Not impressed.’
What? How had this happened? The teams had followed the instructions, completed their vehicles on time, had reasonable justifiable designs. A debrief between teams and reflection on the comments from the stakeholders revealed all the points the teams had missed in the design of their vehicle. What about this? What about that? This project was more complex than had first appeared, and the mornings approach just had not worked to capture everything that the vehicle needed to do. 

‘Teams hard at work in the morning session’
A Systems Engineering lecture and lunchtime later, the grads returned for take two. They would have to complete the same task as the morning, only this time using systems engineering processes and practice. There was a project schedule for the afternoon, with planned reviews at strategic points in development, and document templates to complete, based off those that are used in industry. 
The groups started at the requirement definition phase and sat down with the stakeholders to collect information on what they were looking for in vehicle designs. They then worked together to turn these needs into requirements, and to think about the wider context surrounding their vehicle. They submitted a systems requirement document of their work so far, and then onto the next phase! 
The teams then entered the designing phases and worked to use their requirements to design a new vehicle. They considered how their vehicle would operate in the environment and how they would test their finished design to ensure it met each of their requirements. The next two reviews passed by in a blur and the teams were left with their finished designs and a stack of work showing their use of systems engineering techniques to reach them. The vehicles could take more passengers, could face (almost) any challenge thrown at them, and crucially were what our customers were looking for. 


‘Taking things very seriously in the afternoon’
The vehicles were then taken over to the RACE aviary to be tested. There, the vehicles were put through their paces in a race to save as many people as possible. The hovercraft seemed to be quite zippy, and despite some initial sticking problems managed to navigate the course. The drone design on the other hand had some more mishaps, and attempted escape from the aviary on several occasions. 
After testing, with the grads heads all full of new knowledge, the day drew to a close and the Remote Applications in Climate Emergencies team was crowned the winner of the rescue challenge. The grads, now equipped with more than just requirements in their systems engineering toolbox, were released back into the world to go and change engineering projects for the better.

‘Testing a hovercraft’
The feedback from this pilot was great, and the course will potentially be rolled out across site in the future. Thanks to all the graduates for being willing guinea pigs and to all those who had a hand in making it happen. 

Some thoughts on the day from the graduates:
‘At first glance it may have seemed a jovial day of friendly chatting and playing with unspecified non-trademark children's construction toys, but the day quickly took a harsh turn as the customers expressed their /severe/ displeasure at the wonderful rescue machines we had crafted, which sadly did not meet their requirements. Shocking and painful stuff, though admittedly the construction and effectiveness of the early prototypes left something to be desired. Truly this was a trial by fire, and we would need to fully grasp the systems approach to put it out; if the interactive and fun exercise, clear workbooks, helpful facilitators and step-by-step walk through the entire systems engineering process wouldn't improve our chances at a successful solution, then the threat of another childhood-destroying evisceration of our beautiful models surely would.’ – Gareth ‘Is it Real Engineering Though’ Hawkes 
‘I'm pretty sure someone said 'Hannah is the best project manager'.’ – Hannah ‘Can the Real Most Active Grad Please Stand up’ Todd
While the systems content was excellent, the biggest takeaway may be that unless Mike is in charge of driving those trapped in the floods are probably better off swimming.’ -  Jonathon ‘Needs More Dungeons and Dragons’ Witty