And so ends the strangest year in my teaching career. Felt like a long one. It is had to recall August now. I think I might have learnt more this year than any other. Pandemics bring a unusual perspective. It was somehow easier to see the best of pupils this year.
Category Archives: Micro
Walking alone the canal this morning I noticed a fisher’s float moving. I stopped to watch expecting a catch. The fisherman noticed my interest and explained the float was being moved by a robot bait fish!
Glen Douglas
Started before 8, clouds very low and dark. Saw a couple of jays around the forestry block. Given the lack of visibility I spent a lot of time looking at the ground, sparkling with wild flowers mostly tiny.
By the Time I’d reached the top of Beinn Bhreac the visibility was down to 10–20 meters, luckily the newish fence leads the way to Beinn Reoch, larks and meadow pipets and larks singing. A deer in the gloom near Reoch.
As I went down Reoch the sky began to clear, the cobbler slowly emerged. Saw a wee lizard vanish into some moss. As I went up Tullich Hill the clouds lifted even more, and a bit of breeze got up. Lunch at he pool near the top. A few ravens about, one of which, entertained me lifting and diving on the uplift.
Quite a few deer on the sides of Tullich hill as I went down, back to the car by 2
Map and photos (mostly flowers): walkmap
Lark on a Fence Post
Rather cloudy today. This wee guy was singing loud and clear. Gets better as it goes.
Blue Damselfly in Victoria Park this evening.
After being driven off their previous nest by coots the dabchicks are back in Victoria Park. Yesterday we saw a change over at the nest and perhaps an egg.
Note the dried bramble(?) right in front designed to confuse my auto focus.
Liked: Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex
Coding is seen as fun and glamorous, but that’s a sales pitch. In reality, it’s complicated, both technically and ethically
It’s better to admit that coding is complicated, technically and ethically. Computers, at the moment, can only execute orders, to varying degrees of sophistication. So it’s up to the developer to be clear: the machine does what you say, not what you mean. More and more ‘decisions’ are being entrusted to software, including life-or-death ones: think self-driving cars; think semi-autonomous weapons; think Facebook and Google making inferences about your marital, psychological or physical status, before selling it to the highest bidder. Yet it’s rarely in the interests of companies and governments to encourage us to probe what’s going on beneath these processes.
Clear well explained short and powerful article. via both Scripting News and Memex 1.1.
Perhaps we need another term for the coding like activity than can be a lot of fun for folk that have the skills that Walter Vannini explains coders need. I have a lot of fun dabbling in AppleScript, bash and JavaScript without the discipline and study necessary to be a coder.
Kids in school can have this sort of fun too, perhaps helping in maths and in skills like problem solving, working together and practical skills. Scratch and micro:bits can be a a lot of fun in a primary classroom.
There are so many reasons to be excited about generative art, but at the core of everything is this fundamental value: generative art is truly working with the essence of what shapes our new digital worlds. Coding is the key. Our future lives will be built with it. The artistic exploration of code and how it can be re-imagined, re-examined, and re-purposed is critical if we wish to build a healthy, human experience in the non-physical landscapes to come. Generative art is one step in that direction, and one that feels more important to me every day.
Many fascinating looking essays by a generative artist. On Instagram too.
Another fine rabbit hole found via Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel
A colleague found this one at school today. Google Reverse image search gives me Poplar Hawk-moth.
Loch Ard trails. Bright & breezy with some heavy grey cloud. Few butterflies about, whites, orange tips, maybe fritillaries & a common blue. Plenty of damselflies, mostly large reds. A salmon jumped in the Duchray water.
