Recently updated blogs

I’ve been in Essex all week where the late summer sunny weather lasted all the way through to yesterday. Even today, after rain this morning it’s been pleasant enough this afternoon. § I’m not sure what I heard or read that made me add Dreaming by Michael Rother (ex-Kraftwerk and Neu!), released in 2020, to my “To listen” playlist but it’s been lovely to listen to this week, despite lack …

Here's a couple or three photographs of the West Norfolk skies taken early in the morning during the morning Terrier walk in the last week. It constantly amazes me that the sky varies so much. No wonder the subject has inspired so many artist and photographers. The promise for the next week, if you care to believe it is grey and wet but I prefer to believe that we'll get …

Parker Palmer writes, “The function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us to touch reality.” [1] I think he’s right and I would add that great love and great suffering are the normal paths of transformation. There’s an important place for practices of contemplation. I’m not throwing them out, but any practice of contemplation is for the sake of helping us sustain what we …

1967 was a busy year for Christopher Lee, but not exactly a halcyon one, that sent him to Hong Kong twice for 'The Vengeance of Fu Manchu' and for 'Five Golden Dragons', to Germany for 'The Blood Demon', to the island of Fara with Peter Cushing for 'The Night of the Big Heat' and to a very English sounding Paris in 'Theatre of Death'. Here he plays an egomaniacal theatre …

Time for the sixth edition of the World Championships of Shoemaking, where the final takes place during the London Super Trunk Show on May 10 2025. In the prize pool we have £6,000 (€7,000 / $7,400), handmade shoemaking awls, and a chance to be showcased in shoe stores around the world. This year a double monk strap is to be made for the competition. Here’s all the info about the …

by John Cook Conventionally it is accepted that Play for Today died forty years ago, in 1984. In the spring of that year, the recently appointed Head of BBC TV Plays, Peter Goodchild, decided to ‘rest’ it, believing it had become ‘slightly tired’.[1] A final few single dramas badged as Play for Today aired during July and August of that year on primetime BBC1. In August, Goodchild announced a new …

It's been almost a year for me developing, maintaining, and running a production web application written in Rust.

Recently I ran a session of the tabletop RPG Trophy Gold for my gaming group, and because one of us had already read all the introductory adventures, I decided to make my own one, called The Everbarrow. And since it seemed to go pretty OK, I thought I’d make it public here. Grab The Everbarrow, an adventure for Trophy Gold set in an eerie burial chamber. Trophy Gold and its …

I missed last week's weeknotes! This is the first time I've missed a week since I started back in January 2020! My Two Weeks The reason I missed the weeknotes last week was that on Sunday the 15th I woke up to one of the parentals needing to be brought to the ER. After some tests, they needed to be admitted to the hospital for observation, so we had very …

Welcome to my 181st gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. A levelI've seen a number of fantastic new A level resources recently:From @the_chalkface, exam questions arranged by topic for Edexcel A level Maths and Further Maths. Although similar collections already exist, this may become my go-to: it's well organised, easy to access and

Last week I attended Green IO, a conference in London all about sustainability in digital technology, organised by Gaël Duez (who also hosts the Green IO podcast). It was a fantastic conference, and amazing to see so many people who are passionate about this stuff all in one room! I’m not great at taking notes during talks, but there were so many great takeaways I wanted to sum up a …

While the birthday presents were accumulating, other books not slated to be birthday presents were also accumulating. Here's that batch:No, the 43 Visions for Complexity book isn't upside-down. It just has the title on the spine running upwards, rather than downwards. I know this is more traditional in other languages, but it makes the bookshelf annoyingly inconsistent when it's done in English-language books.

Since I started running in January, I’ve noticed something that, while not incredibly surprising, is still new to me: while I’m running, I feel stronger, more physically capable, and healthier. It’s a reliable way to experience eustress on a scalable level.What’s more, when my body feels like it’s functioning as it should, the quality of my thinking improves as well.Physical strength leads to clearer, more optimistic thoughts, and less ego-driven …

Yet another good survey (1045 parents and teens 13-18) showing high use of GenAI in US schools. Now the predictable story of learners using AI on the SLY.UseFirst, we have to recognise that they’re using it and that their use is across a number of tools for different purposes. But homework and assignments are the most common.7/10 teens, 13 to 18 used at least one type of AIUsing AI for …

(Ha, and why it's good none of the players read my blog.)(Northern Continent Detail by Zak S.)I had been intending to run Zak Smith's Cube World setting since Zak began to publish the installments back in 2020. Cube World, literally a cube-shaped world with the campaign taking place on the "near face" of the cube, is the overall campaign setting that contains Zak's major published works: Vornheim: The Complete City …