Recently updated blogs

This is a version of the opening statement I contributed to the panel “Evolving Perspectives on AI and Design” at the Design & AI symposium that was part of Dutch Design Week 2024. I had the pleasure of joining Iohanna Nicenboim and Jesse Benjamin on stage to explore what could be called the post-GenAI possibility space for design. Thanks also to Mathias Funk for moderating. The slide I displayed: My …

If you’re not practicing something with regularity, like a few times a week, your ability will start to ebb rather than flow. Too much ebbing means any flow will start to dry up, parched of life, before it disappears for good. It takes will and effort to build a strong habit, but the more you practice the easier it becomes. I’ve noticed this to some extent with writing. I find …

If April is the cruelest month because it encourages the growth of flowers but can suddenly cut them down with resurrected cold, autumn is its counterpart. The last warmth of summer lingers into autumn, and the trees reflect the turning of the season with their colorful, dying leaves. Thoreau says of autumn that the leaves teach us how to die. And the variations of color in this final process seem …

Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge nestled in the valley belowIt took longer than expected to drive from Swaziland to the trout belt in Mpumalanga, thanks in most part to South Africa's deteriorating roads, but vast dust clouds had also slowed traffic. I don't remember South Africa being so dusty but perhaps it was always that way.Our youngest child had woken up by the time we drove into the lively town of Dullstroom, …

Keynote Speech given at the Transgender Theology Conference, 2024 It is striking that, across continents, and centuries, and theologies, the one unifying thing that appears in the struggles of oppressed peoples is faith. Faith that draws people onward, inspires them to call out against their oppressors, and encourages them to see themselves as worthy of more. Faith is a fire in the soul, it enables us to do incredible things, …

Joel is a MA student in the Communication and Culture program at York University in Toronto, where he plans to research the empathetic potentials of digital roleplaying. If he’s not playing and dissecting a strategy sim or RPG, then the chances are he’s off driving someone crazy by gushing about his favourite games. More of his writing can be found at www.thethirdmedium.com. What do you do with a kid who …

This past spring, I was asked by the Society for the Protection of Prespa if I would be interested in photographing the rivers, streams and waterside forests of Prespa as part of a project called ‘Prespa’s Green and Blue Lifelines’. The idea intrigued me from the very beginning, in large part because it would entail … Continue reading The Theory and Practice of Rivers

I have a server hosted at Mythic Beasts and I’d run out of disk space. They have instructions but I’m not experienced enough to be able to follow them as is, though I broadly followed it to make sure I was roughly on track. Here’s what I did so I can do it again. I do not necessarily think I did it in the optimal or correct way, but it …

I adore Nala Sinephro’s 2021 debut, Space 1.8, and this year’s follow-up, Endlessness, is equally captivating. I’ve wanted to see her play live for some time and her mesmerising show at The Barbican didn’t disappoint. A terrible photo, but it’s my photo. It was an experience to cherish, though I won’t attempt to dissect it in detail — just a few notes for my own benefit. Nala sat on the …

The journey is over, gentle readers. Today is the publishing birthday for Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore from The New Press. This book answers (to my satisfaction, if no one elses) the question that I posed in my graduate school application in 1998. Why did the memory of a early eighth century Syrian teenager become my history in my mid 1980s Lahore? My path …

We left Grahame Park last week, newly completed in the 1970s and very much – in good ways and bad – a product of its time. It reflected the ambition of the 1960s to provide new, modern housing at scale and the desire for architectural statement. It incorporated much of the conventional planning wisdom of the day but marked a moment too when misgivings were emerging and challenges to those …

It’s October 2024 and I’m sitting here in my creative maker studio, wearing a bright t-shirt that excitedly bellows “MQTT 25”! To my left is a top-end Bambu Lab X1C 3D printer, that uses MQTT internally for communication. On my wall are a variety of connected gadgets that display data or that light up in response to MQTT notifications. Node-RED is sitting quietly on a Raspberry Pi in the corner, …

As our world continues to advance in its application of AI, it is important to educate our students and teachers on the potential of generative AI. One of the best ways to do this is to provide hands-on opportunities in a safe and structured environment. I recently discovered Mundo, an AI tool that allows students and teachers to explore the capabilities of generative AI without needing to provide personally identifiable …

Paladin - second only to Picador as a publisher's name to set the arty-intellectual bibliophile's heart a flutter... Radical, countercultural, polemical, esoteric, transgressive, avant-garde, youth culture ... a feast for the hungry young mind, portions selling at a reasonable paperback price. Eye-catching design.I have seven of the above Paladins - and five of the seven have the same covers as shown.Not all of them were bought at the time, though. …