Tag: Notes
Rheingold’s Tools for Thought has me asking an …
Rheingold's Tools for Thought has me asking an old question again:: what are computers for? For a long time the answer seemed settled. Computers were calculators, then office machines, then portals into a giant shopping centre with a comment section. We learned to treat them as appliances that happened to demand more and more of...
Kimchi fried rice eggs
For me this is the ultimate comfort food. Frying up some home-made kimchi with rice and eggs. So good!
I’ve got the new Masters of the Universe …
I've got the new Masters of the Universe queued up on Prime for viewing tonight. I suspect I'll be viewing it through two lenses. The kid, waiting to hear "I have the power!" and the storyteller who's curious to know if they can make the mythology of Eternia something more than a marketing reboot. One...
This morning I picked up How to Practice …
This morning I picked up How to Practice Self-Inquiry by Ramana Maharshi. I expected a quick survey read, a reconnaissance mission into the territory of the question Who am I? Instead, before I had travelled very far into the book, another question appeared: Is this your game? Is this your true mission? I could almost...
“Same shit, different day” is one of those …
“Same shit, different day” is one of those phrases I hate because it usually arrives wearing a smirk. It reduces a life to a conveyor belt: wake up, coffee, work, scroll, eat, sleep, repeat. A little verbal shrug before another day gets fed into the machine. And yet, some mornings, it’s mostly true. Routine isn’t...
The Kanban Method for Dissertation and Journal Article Writing
How the kanban method turns a dissertation or journal article into small, visible units of work you can actually finish, one card and one column at a time.
Apps and Tools for Research and Writing
A guided tour of free and low-cost apps for reference management, distraction-free writing, note-taking, and time management for doctoral and academic writers.
Writing Support Resources
Free supports for academic writing: weekly writing communities, the Academic Phrasebank, citation alerts, and tools your university library already provides.
In Praise of Zotero
Why Zotero is the one tool every doctoral writer should adopt: free citation capture, automatic bibliographies, and no vendor lock-in for your research library.
I’ve been carrying a small psychogeographic instruction around …
I’ve been carrying a small psychogeographic instruction around with me: unfold a map, put a glass down anywhere, draw round its rim, then go out and walk the circle as closely as the streets allow. This is a low tech version of the deríve app I made last week. It’s a lovely bit of mischief...
Rebecca Solnit’s sentences are archipelagos of thought. You …
Rebecca Solnit’s sentences are archipelagos of thought. You step onto one clause and find another small island appearing just beyond it: a memory, a road, an old map, a story someone told her, a political fact that refuses to stay merely political. The sentence does not hurry you to its conclusion. It gives you somewhere...
It feels to me as though this is …
It feels to me as though this is the only true choice we have. You did not ask to be born. You did not choose your parents. You did not choose the circumstances into which you arrived. The only real choice, I think, lies in deciding how we will play the hand we have been...
What Is Critical Theory, and Why Do We Need It in the Age of AI?
Critical theory is a method for asking how a technology is made, whose interests it serves, and whose labor it depends on. AI makes those questions a basic literacy for democratic life.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between critical …
I’ve been thinking about the difference between critical thinking and the kind of intelligence that has to sit beside it. Critical thinking gets a lot of the limelight. Fair enough. It is the part of the mind that asks for evidence, spots the loose plank in an argument, and refuses to be charmed by every...
Dusting off the old street photography and field …
Dusting off the old street photography and field note cameras this morning. The first one out of the drawer is my old Olympus Tough: compact, waterproof, shockproof, and made for being carried rather than protected. I’m about to head into Leamington Spa to give the Deríve app I made over the weekend its first proper...
The mistake is to build the gift shop …
The mistake is to build the gift shop first. A lot of independent people do this. We make the course, the membership, the coaching offer, the template pack, and the shop. Then we stand in the doorway wondering why nobody has come in. It's the wrong end of the building. The work itself is the...
I keep coming back to this: people are …
I keep coming back to this: people are looking for something genuine. They might call it good work, a useful tool, a decent conversation, a song that gets under the ribs, a place where they can take their guard down for five minutes. The label changes. The hunger doesn't You can feel the difference when...
Thinking with my feet I have started calling …
Thinking with my feet I have started calling them Wisdom Walks, which sounds a little grand for what usually begins with me putting on my shoes and trying to get out of the house before I disappear too far into the screen. But the name has earned its keep. I go walking when something in...
Remote Development from Any Browser with blit.sh and moo
How to pair blit's browser-based terminal streaming with moo's local-first agent workbench for remote development, 11ty site work, and accessible document and transcript conversion.
This morning I had one of those spells …
This morning I had one of those spells where there were so many possible things to do that I couldn’t bring myself to choose any of them. Nothing dramatic. Just the little wheel-spin of a mind faced with too many open tabs and too many worthy directions. Then I decided to walk into town for...
I don’t usually weigh in on political matters, …
I don't usually weigh in on political matters, but as an independent creator, discovery is already hard enough. Now the UK government is putting its thumbs down on the scale. YouTube & TikTok Compelled To Boost BBC & ITV Content Under UK Government Plans The government’s argument is basically that the media landscape has changed,...
The brain is a meaning-making machine. It’s constantly …
The brain is a meaning-making machine. It's constantly trying to connect dots, predict what happens next, and turn scattered information into a coherent shape. When everything is already explained, the pattern is complete. The brain can relax or get bored. But when there is uncertainty like a missing piece, an unanswered question, a strange detail,...
Everything becomes source material. I have been reading …
Everything becomes source material. I have been reading an old mythogeography interview with Phil Smith. The thread has me thinking about walking, place, story, performance, and the odd things that gather around a route once I stop treating it as just a way of getting somewhere. On my own much smaller patch of ground, that...
There is a particular comedy in being your …
There is a particular comedy in being your own publisher, your own platform, your own little one-person media empire. The upside is freedom. The downside is that when the site falls over, there is no calm tech team in matching hoodies quietly restoring the kingdom while you sip coffee and think writerly thoughts. It's just...
I’m sure one of the worst nightmares for …
I’m sure one of the worst nightmares for any parent is your child going missing.I was out on my morning Wisdom Walk today and noticed an unusual number of people in the fields where I usually walk. There are often dog walkers about, but this felt different. At one point, I saw a woman looking...
A walk is never just a walk. The …
A walk is never just a walk. The ground beneath our feet is layered with stories. Streets carry memories. Landscapes hold arguments. A statue, a sign, a fence, an empty building – each one quietly tells us something about power, belonging, and how we are allowed to move through the world. Smith’s radical walker becomes...
I keep thinking about the idea of writing …
I keep thinking about the idea of writing an ebook that doesn't perpetuate the expectation that a book needs to be read in a straight line. I know this isn't a new idea; that's what the hypertext movement was all about. But the idea of doing this resurfaced for me again this morning while reading...