Books
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May 25 Round-up
This month I finished my first novel, a psychological horror, which came in around 70,000 words. I’ve sent it off to a few agents, but I expect it’ll be a case of self-publishing in Kindle. I’ll talk more about that in later posts, but it’s been a very enjoyable process. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it is there – the first step in writing a good novel is to write a novel. I was struck by the phrase Alison Light used to refer to the Golden Age of detective fiction as the “literature of convalescence“. She was arguing that after the horrors of the First World War,…
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April 25 Round-Up
(Teilo and Posey have been enjoying wild garlic season) Bit late this month, I’ve been writing goddammit! I’ve blogged a few times about my post-OU reinvention, and this month I’ve been trying on the “I’m a writer” hat. By which I mean I’ve been approaching fiction writing more as a job, writing every day, as opposed to one thing I’m trying amongst a few others. I’ve appreciated the structure and the reduction in cognitive effort where I have to decide “what am I doing today?” every morning. Books I’ve been digging into music biographies quite a bit this month. David Byrne’s How Music Works, which is sometimes fascinating as Byrne…
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Monthly round-up March 25
(Teilo was my writing buddy this month) I’ll say this for Trump and Musk – when they make things go to shit, they make things go to shit fast. It seems strange to think of the world order back in January, that seems like the 1970s now. Like many people I’ve been divesting myself of support for American billionaires. On a regular basis we already have a network of independent local providers for a lot of products and services. But I’m a lazy consumer often, I admit, and Amazon had become the default for miscellaneous products. Now that I’m eschewing it, I’m reminded of when the web was still relatively…
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Feb 25 round up
(With Maren Deepwell and Tom Farrelly at the Education After the Algorithm seminar at DCU) As I mentioned in a couple of posts, I gave a keynote in Dublin this month. I was also the examiner on an excellent PhD about the impact of the VLE on mental wellbeing. So, I’ve been keeping my academic hand in. It’s an odd time to be an academic. Mind you, it’s an odd time to be anyone. Part of what you do as an academic is attempt to find the truth. I’m aware that often there is not one single truth, and conclusions can vary depending on context, but in general, research, writing,…
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January 25 Round-up
After 3 long years, January has finally ended. On the personal front it’s been going well. Now that I don’t have as many meetings, I decided to shift the ‘vibe’ of my room from ‘home office’ to ‘vinyl lounge’. This involved the inevitable trip to Ikea, and purchase of the favourite of vinyl collectors, the Kallax unit. It’s interesting to note the manner in which the change in the physical set-up alters your behaviour. We used to have our records split across three rooms, but now they are all gathered in The Vinyl Lounge (please say this in an appropriately sonorous tone), I find myself playing a lot of different…
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Socialist AI
(Image – Life is sharing, CC-BY some geezer called cogdog, who he?) I’ve been reading Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine recently. It’s an engaging account of the Luddite rebellion, which is well researched and told, but what really brings it to life are the direct comparisons he makes with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the mill owners, who use technology to accrue capital in the hands of a few, and take agency from working people. The fact that “luddite” is a derisory term instead of championing people who fought for their livelihood and humanity is a victory of those same entrepreneurs. Anyway, as was the intention of the book, it…
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December 24 round-up
We went to the coast for a week over Christmas, and had an unexpectedly sunny day on Boxing Day, the drinks in the picture above were outside a pub in Tresaith. The end of an eventful year, during which I left the Open University, became semi-retired, got engaged and had to do a lot of emergency care for elderly parents. It seems odd now to think I was still working at the OU 12 months ago, the human ability to adapt to a new context and take it as the new norm is always a surprise. And speaking of new norms, 2025 looks set to be a shitfest right, so…
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Monthly round-up October 24
We went on holiday to Crete this month, and hired a car to do some trips including to the ex-leper colony of Spinalonga, (pictured) and inland villages. I already miss the sunshine and the food. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been doing actual work this month, writing a report. It’s involved, inevitably, researching AI in education. With all the hype it was interesting to find lots of thought pieces about potential uses, reviews of how students are using it, but very few actual case studies of it being applied in education. And often it was an extension of existing practice, such as learning analytics, with a layer…
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Behold the new wonder chemical
I’ve read a few historical science books recently, The Radium Girls, and The Chemical Age amongst them. One common factor when detailing the dangers of chemicals is the manner in which they were treated as a miracle cure, wonder drug, panacea for all ills. You shake your head in wonder at accounts of people drinking “radium water” to improve their health, or states deploying DDT with wild abandon. In all of these cases, initial positive results in some areas were extrapolated to be a cure-all. Part of the reason these chemicals went on to cause such damage is partly because people were making a lot of money and deliberately sought…
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Monthly round-up Sept 24
(A sketch of my Galway keynote) As the new academic year started, and lots of my peers were back on campus, I was… walking my dog on the nature reserve at Kenfig Sands. The summer is generally quieter, so this was the first time I really noticed my post-OU status. And it felt good. I’ve kept my toe in the academic waters however, giving a keynote at the Digital Ed Conference in Galway, at the (fairly) newly consolidated Atlantic Technical University. They are at an interesting position in their development, having brought together different technical colleges under one banner and now implementing a new learning environment. If you had a…
