montage of 6 webpage screenshots: https://ecohustler.com/technology/blue-empire-the-norwegian-salmon-industry-consumes-25percent-of-all-wild-fish-caught-globally https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/curation-is-the-last-best-hope-of-intelligent-discourse https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/about/outreach/resources/turtlestitch/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jrgYnljYI https://projects.kwon.nyc/internet-is-fun/ https://lessons.wesfryer.com/courses/coding/scratch-coding

School

Lessons by Dr. Wesley Fryer @wfryer – Scratch Coding We use Scratch a bit in class so adding this to a pile of links.

A variation on Turtle/Scratch stuff, there is some CPD coming up

Turtlestitch is freely available software that enables the generation and stitching of patterns using a digital embroidery machine. It gives programmatic control of the machine, enabling a wide range of patterns to be designed and stitched onto fabric. It was developed by Andrea Mayr-Stalder, and runs in a browser window.

Mac

TipBITS: Always Show Window Proxy Icons – TidBITS Bless TidBITS for this. I’ve been quiety grumbling for a while. As someone with poor window management I’ve alway loved proxy icons.

Internet

The role of human curators is not just to select and present content but to imbue the digital landscape with a sense of reliability and authenticity that only human insight can provide.

Curation is the last best hope of intelligent discourse. — Joan Westenberg

I’ve been meaning to write some kind of Important Thinkpiece™ on the glory days of the early internet, but every time I sit down to do it, I find another, better piece that someone else has already written. So for now, here’s a collection of articles that to some degree answer the question “Why have a personal website?” with “Because it’s fun, and the internet used to be fun.”

The internet used to be fun

Nature

Blue Empire: the Norwegian salmon industry consumes 2.5% of all wild fish caught globally | Ecohustler I avoid Salmon due to the sea lice and the effect on wild stocks here.

Music

Jumping right into the middle:

This was a fascinating podcast. Matt Mullenweg had spoken of an ambition to get WordPress to 80% of the web. Heinemeier Hansson took him to task on twitter and they ended up in a podcast.

An example of civil discussion and disagreement on the internet. Moving off twitter to a better medium.

Although they did not resolve the central concern they touched on many points around control and ownership on the web.

It gave me a little insight into the scale of the web. Left me feeling pretty naive.

A few mentions of capitalism had me wondering what a socialist web would look like?

Quoted Computers have learned to make us jump through hoops | John Naughton by John Naughton (the Guardian)
I realised that what I had been doing was adding to a dataset for training the machine-learning software that guides self-driving cars – probably those designed and operated by Waymo, the autonomous vehicle project owned by Alphabet Inc (which also happens to own Google).