Now that the tremulous years of Flickr are over with the SmugMug takeover in 2019, the US$143 they now charge for two years is fine. The business model has to survive and at least SmugMug immediately solved my hacked Yahoo account problem (age was zeroed, so child account) which Yahoo took my money for and ignored. And there have been other improvements including transfer flexibility – users can download all of our account data, such as photo albums, contacts, and comments.

So as we resurfaced with events and engagements, we realised we much prefer Flickr for image hosting and curation. I did have to wrestle with the yahoo email associated with the Toddycats Flickr account (a curse of the Yahoo acquisition from before), but thanks to my password manager, 2FA and secondary account password recovery, all is well once again.

Different tools are needed for specific chores so I will still use GDrive for sharing access for photo uploads by various folks after an event. 

It just took one article – “The Document circle of Life” by MS’ Matt Wade (2019) explained the use of OneDrive vs SharePoint, amongst other things, and this sums it up: “OneDrive is for my stuff and SharePoint is for our stuff.

Simultaneous collaborative use of Office documents has been robust now, and was very helpful during the staff recruitment exercises I conducted last year. I realised SharePoint had finally caught up with Google Drive and its precedents which I had been using since 2006.

Sharepoint interface on web, desktop and phone, syncs in seconds now.

The SharePoint web interface has clean lines and is syncing quite well with desktop and phone. And since both staff and students have Office 365 with 1TB of storage, I will shift research students from Dropbox to SharePoint – it will be especially helpful when reviewing their drafts close to deadlines, when there is often  simultaneous use. 

A couple of friends love MS Teams for project supervision but I am happy to avid it for now, although NUS adds our classes to that interface for us. 

Dropbox is the most seamless cloud platform for documents and revision histories, so I still use that. Google Drive seems best for collaboration with volunteers, especially for photo sharing. And after Dropbox messed up my Keynote presentations once, I keep those in Apple’s iCloud.

It is good to have all these options now, and I just need to step back to review capabilities every now and then. Like I do with backup!

Report on the present system of forest conservancy in The Straits Settlements with suggestions for future management by H. C. Hill. Singapore, 1900.

In May and June 1900, H. C. Hill, the Conservator of Forests of the Indian Forest Service, studied published reports and visited forest reserves in Singapore with H. N. Ridley (Director of the Botanic Gardens) and W. L. Carter (Collector of Land Revenue). 

He includes a map in his report which is available online. It reflects the extensive exploitation which the Singapore landscape suffered at the time. His language too reflects the insult on the landscape, and he makes recommendations for management, relevant to the land use at the time. 

For an idea of subsequent changes to the landscape, see NUS’ Historical Maps of Singapore. 

For Natalie Quah, who asked for this in the midst of her lecture preparation.

Job: Full-Time Teaching Assistant at the College of Humanities and Sciences (BSc Hons, two positions, 2-year renewable contract).

All 2,000+ incoming Arts and Science students at the new College of Humanities and Sciences will read a common curriculum of 13 modules. An integrated module of this curriculum is Scientific Inquiry 1 – HSI1000 “How Science Works, Why Science Works”. This module will enhance students with an overt and applied understanding of the scientific method, which is an effective problem-solving tool for any situation.

HSI1000 will provide an interactive experience of labs, workshops, field trips and panel discussions, and is helmed by a team of motivated and experienced educators from the Faculty of Science – Ryan P. A. Bettens & Adrian M. Lee (chemistry), Yeo Ye & Sor Chorng Haur (physics), Seow Teck Keong & N. Sivasothi (biological sciences).

Full-Time Teaching Assistants (FTTAs) will be at the forefront of the module, working closely with the module professors, and facilitate small group sessions at the lab, workshops and field trips, mentor students, facilitate panel discussions and oversee student needs.  

We are pleased to be able to recruit two more FTTAs to the existing team; fresh grads may apply. Candidates with an interest in teaching and facilitation, science and its history, student mentorship and care, who are keen to work with a motivated team in a dynamic environment, are invited to apply. Training is provided.

View the details and application link here.

Singapore is entering a near-lockdown to arrest the impact of COVID-19 infections, of which we have seen cases in the community increase recently. 

Singapore is experiencing its worst spate of Covid-19 community infections in close to a year, in a painful reminder of how the virus situation can flare up without warning.

But if contact tracing, testing and quarantine protocols are as effective as before, and people do not let their guard down, the current situation could come under control within the next week or so, experts said.

NUS issued a circular last night which has us on 100% WFH this week and 50% thereafter until 23rd May 2021. 

I shifted all my meetings online, declined others which are still face to face and suspended all field trip events (guided walks, mangrove cleanups and habitat enhancement) until 23rd May 2021, which is the period of heightened mitigation as per NUS guidelines.

This affects all NUS Toddycats field events, and the Biodiversity Challenge events with the Biodiversity Friends Forum. Such a pity as this is the best time for undergraduates to experience our guided field trips and I was to begin training of Team Leaders.

Oh well, pandemic reared its head. We will see how things are at end-May.

This pretty much sums up our current situation  – Prof Dale Fisher, chair of the MOH’s National Infection Prevention and Control Committee had “…urged people not to go out unnecessarily for the next few weeks and to minimise mingling with people outside their households.” [link]

We want to avoid another Circuit Breaker – PM Lee at May Day Rally [link]:

“Mr Lee hoped Singaporeans would work together with the Government against the virus, and not let down their guard. He noted that with new strains of the virus emerging, Singapore’s Covid-19 situation can deteriorate rapidly.”

“We are watching our own situation, and it can easily, quickly, turn bad again,” he said.

“If we have to do another lockdown like last year’s circuit breaker, it would be a major setback for our people and for our economic recovery. Let’s not make it happen.” 

He added: “It is not time to relax yet. This is a marathon. Let’s keep jogging. Let’s keep ourselves safe.”

Alright, all hands on deck, and we will beat this!

This time, on the Big Sur 11.3 Beta, the problem surfaced after I had stitched two PDF files in macOS Preview. The resulting PDF was not completely readable by Acrobat on either a PC or Mac. Page 5 of the 7 page document produced this error message:

A solution had been suggested for this new problem on this Adobe forum last year for macOS Mojave – when viewing the combined file in Preview, choose File > “Export as PDF” to generate a “true” PDF file. I tried this and indeed Acrobat could read all the pages. 

Looks like it accurate to say macOS Preview corrupts a stitched PDF – goodness! Good to know.

Here she in the middle of a search for mangrove anemones and taking time to tenderly free a mangrove horseshoe crab (?2009 photo by Ria Tan).

She made wonderful contributions to marine science in Singapore and touched many of us with her humility, good humour, brilliance and dedication.

R.I.P. Daphne, thanks for spending all that joyous time with us.

Daphne Gail Fautin, 25 Mar 1946 – 12 Mar 2021.

I am also delighted to be able to co-host the session with Tan Yin Ling, who found the community in 2017 when the Biodiversity Friends Forum was initiated.

Sign up via Eventbrite at http://tinyurl.com/bff19mar

About the talk – “Urged to study a furry mammal in his beloved mangroves, Sivasothi aka Otterman began by unravelling the status of otters in Singapore and Malaysia. For this he tapped a network of archived books and journals, museum collections and veteran naturalists near and far, assisted by curators, librarians and scientists.

When otters first returned to Singapore, it was recreational coastal users who helped track otter dispersal. Two decades later, a network of otter-watchers now help him understand the behaviour, dispersal and travails of otters in urbanised Singapore. The stories, shared in social media posts and scientific publications help repay that debt of information provided so generously from around the world, three decades ago.”

About the speaker – “N. Sivasothi a.k.a. ‘Otterman’ was immersed in mangroves and wildlife for research, education and conservation at the National University of Singapore from the late 1980’s. He promotes public education, youth development and environmental stewardship in Singapore, and contributes to wildlife working groups and close-door engagements to mitigate development impact.”

Register on Eventbrite.

Histories by the National Library Singapore is a series which highlights research on historical and related matters in Singapore and the region, creating an appreciation of the role of humanities and social science research in contemporary society. For more talks, follow GoLibrary on Eventbrite.

I marked the day with an animal behaviour lecture and ended it with a dialogue about conservation. Thanks to Jack & Rai who hosted a World Wildlife Day dialogue with Anbu (ACRES) and myself last Sunday night.

I am curently reading “Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants,” by by Jacob Shell. A geographer who read widely and travelled to visited a complex array of South Asian and Indochinese (prominently in Burma) peoples who work with elephants. Pushed to the mountains by historical waves of lowland conquests in the region, the geography led to an evolution of elephant working cultures.

Shell sheds light on the co-dependency of elephant and man on forests, which are foraging and mating grounds for their elephants, and which suport the forest-based economies, logging and transport through seasonally flooded terrain. Roads, forest fragmentation and agriculture thereaten these areas but the dificul terrain is also the setting of some of the longest resistance wars which protect the forests.

I know very little about Southeast Asia, a tremedously complex region and the perspectives stitched together Jacob Shell, a geographer, are insightful.

Note: Marcus Chua shares what research reveals about Species Awareness Days tonight!