June 24 roundup
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I left the Open University this month. I had a lovely leaving party with colleagues (funded by ourselves I hasten to add). Maren and I marked the end of that era with a holiday in Sardinia. Since I’ve returned I’ve blogged some thoughts about the OU, and am now busy setting other activities in motion. I have joined the board of Trustees for the National Extension College and have my first board meeting next week.
It’s largely been a period of establishing a new working environment. I handed back my university Macbook and bought myself a nice shiny iMac. I’ve been setting up new calendars, unsubscribing from 1 million email lists, and trying to shift over accounts linked to my OU email to my Gmail one (surprisingly more difficult than you would think). Is there a ‘digital removals’ service who you can get to do all of this for you, much like moving house services? The next phase will be to establish new routines and processes, but we’ll see how that goes for next month’s roundup.
I have kept up the reading momentum this month, despite my arduous schedule of sitting by the beach in Sardinia. I boggled my way through the first instalment in the 3 Body Problem, before watching the TV series. I don’t read a lot of sci-fi but this seemed in the grand tradition of the high concept stuff I used to read from the golden age. The TV adaptation makes some legitimate changes to make it work as a series (including introducing more humour), but I was struck anew by how you can read something and it seems entirely plausible, but it can appear faintly ridiculous when transferred to the screen. This happens a lot in horror, but I also had to stifle a laugh at the whole dehydration process in 3 Body. In other books, Steven Peck poses the question, what would hell be like if it was an actual realisation of Borges’ Library of Babel? The answer is, pretty damn horrific in its monotony. Philip Ball’s thoughtful analysis of How Life Works prompted some ruminations on AI that I may blog later (I’m annoying myself in how much everything seems to provoke some considerations of AI, so maybe not). I’ve blogged some thoughts on re-reading Stephen King’s Misery and what that tells us about cruelty and the power of narrative.
As a leaving present from the OU, my colleagues got me some Record Store vouchers (how did they know I liked vinyl??). I used these to purchase some upbeat, funky summer sounds, including Aaron Frazer’s Into the Blue, and Say She She’s Silver. If you prefer something peaceful, a discovery I made this month was jazz/folk/experimental artist Caoilfhionn Rose (pronounced Keelin to save you making an idiot of yourself in record shops like I did). Here is a session of her latest album, Constellation:
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