I recently finished a story I’d spent several months obsessing over. When I pitched the piece to my editor, I knew that I’d found a worthy subject, but I couldn’t quite articulate what the story was about. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the words — it’s that I didn’t have an answer yet...
Interesting read on where good ideas come from #serendipity #creativity
Great read along with @cogdog’s http:/
I’m not on holiday at the moment but taking the odd day off over the summer. Yesterday was one. I found a good set of amusing links, here are a few.
The New Devil’s Dictionary From The Verge updates Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.
Examples:
blogger (n.): An invasive species with no natural predators.
GIF (n.): Many prefer to pronounce this word “GIF,” instead of the more controversial-sounding “GIF.”
music (n.): An art form whose medium is copyright law.
And so on.
This reminded me to google for an english translation of Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, hoping as usual for a creative commons version that could be played with. As usual I didn’t find that but got In Place of Thought – The New Yorker by Teju Cole which adapts the idea for modern times:
COFFEE. Declare that it is intolerable at Starbucks. Buy it at Starbucks. EVOLUTION. Only a theory. FASCISM. Always preceded by “creeping.” FEMINISTS. Wonderful, in theory. FISH. A vegetable.
Ouch, that last one stung!
Checking Teju Cole (@tejucole) on Twitter as his ideas started as tweets, I found:
Back in March I had a wee shot of periscope. Since then I’ve sen a few notifications pop up on my screen, but not often had the chance to watch. Often they are fairly trivial, folk at the zoo or watching traffic or just testing the app.
Today I saw this tweet:
because i enjoy living on the edge, gonna try broadcasting my #UMGRC presentation in 25min on a platform i’ve never used. #whee #periscope
— Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart) August 6, 2015
And hit the link. Turned out it was a presentation at UPEI Multidisciplinary Graduate Research Conference from a Workshop by Dr. Bonnie Stewart 1 on Becoming a Networked Scholar. 
I watch the first 45 minutes of the broadcast from a couple of different rooms at home. A very engaging presentation on social media in Higher Education, much in my opinion directly transferable to PL in primary and secondary education. For a short while you can see the video at: Bonnie Stewart on Periscope, but I don’t think that will be around for long. After I tweeted out the fact I was watching some one asked me about the quality:
@daniellynds @UPEIGSA sound is great, visual not too bad, scren hard to see, but hey, other side of the world via a phone!
— john johnston (@johnjohnston) August 6, 2015
In the age of mobile we take for granted tons of things, but we now have amazing power to communicate in our pockets. For her tweets it appears Bonnie joined periscope just before she started broadcasting. It certainly didn’t take any technical expertise on my part to watch.
As I tweeted, the audio and indeed the video was very clear and synchronised. The Screenshot is slightly blurrier than average. The projector screen was not to clear, but the whole thing was very watchable. NB. bonnie’s slides are up here: Becoming a Networked Scholar.
I was supposed to be going to the post office but delayed as long as possible, I am pretty sure that the stream would hold up on 3 or 4g but unfortunately the audio is cut off when the lock screen is on. That might be an improvement for periscope or my audio bias showing.
This has certainly given me the idea that you can broadcast with periscope with a deal of confidence and make a good fist of it without a lot of prep. I guess if you wanted someone could screen capture the video. Looks like it might be a useful TeachMeet tool, classroom use would have to be though about carefully, but it could certainly be used to bring video into a classroom simply. With more and more primary classes using twitter it doesn’t seem much of a jump to use a teacher’s phone to project onto a screen or, network allowing, to watch on a desktop.
#tds34 How to achieve monkey mind | The Daily Stillness Today you get to find a quiet spot and read this Medium article by Sarah Buttenwieser. A 4 minute read how can you not have 4 minutes to invest in your well being? Well, it may be 10 after you do your task: select from the article and/or add to it and make your very own list on how to achieve monkey mind. You will smile and also remind yourself that you do already know ehow to achieve stillness – do the opposite of one item in your list each day! Tell us what is in your list?
The linked article gave me a good few smiles.
Wake up in the middle of the night, worry about lack of sleep.
My wish, my encouragement is just taking these ten second breaks. OK. You know. You know I can’t carve out a regular meditation practice every day and every morning, but ten seconds? Can you carve out ten seconds? And just do it, you know. You know when you’re going to work or something, you come
Ajahn Sucitto
downstairs and you go to open the door. You stop. Particularly in doorways and other thresholds where the tendency is to rush through… what is happening to my feet, shoulders back, ten seconds, breathing out. Where am I? How am I? Where am I going? There does not even really have to be an answer, it’s just this touching the earth. Touching the earth.
I guess this exercise is supposed to help with a busy working life, I tried it today far from work off in the hills.
Often when walking alone in the quite of the hills, I think over work, wonder about ideas, remember past sadness and even tell my self stories about walking.
This exercise, seems to physically open my view, expand the horizons and create quiet.
The sensation fades pretty quickly too but I’ll repeat the exercise in different places and see what happens. If it works when I am puffing up a slope it might work in the middle of town or work.
The previous post was an attempt to get the advanced Kanban open badge. This one follows up with an answer to the question posed in the P2PU Badges Project to my application and as wee thought about badge systems.
The feedback was questioning why I decided not to use the ‘Work in Progress’ system to limit the number of tasks in the doing section. I’ve already described the board I set up was to be used for Radio Edutalk. I’d had changed to do,doing and done for possible guests,shows and broadcasts.
I didn’t want to limit the doing(shows) section as that number will reflect the shows that are ready to go. A long list there is not a sign of doing too much but one of being prepared well in advance.
The feedback section in p2p is not that great. There is nowhere to enter answers to the question there. Hence this post and some blue sky thought. I wonder if a badge could send a trackback or something like it to a blog post, with feedback and /or a badge?
Maybe something trackback like (at least to my eyes) such as a Webmention (more:Webmention – IndieWebCamp).
So ideally (or in my imagination), the badge page has a URL. I write blog post in response giving evidence as to why I should get the badge. The badge pages gets pinged, creates my ‘project’ lets an approver/expert know. This person reviews the work and adds feedback to the project page and/or awards the badge. This action pings my blog post, adding the feedback/badge as a comment. Responding to the comment could answer feedback etc.
I am typing this pretty much from ignorance of the current badge scene perhaps this is already on some cards somewhere or already been rejected as a daft idea?
Thanks to Doug Belshaw who provide the opportunity to play with badges again.
On a walk today, and when I reached the reservoir I though about:
Go outside and walk in the direction that is the quietest. Continue until you’re in the quietest place possible. Take a moment to absorb it.
from: #tds25 Follow the quiet | The Daily Stillness
 A sheep started bawling, not so quietly and I moved into the larch to take the moment.
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How loud the burn,
Birds snatch my eyes, swallows skim the water and a robin bobs in a lower branch.
As I listen bird song quiets the water, as I focus on one song the others fade.
A baby wren trills along a branch, shouting for food.
The first midge bite moves me on, out of the trees and into the wind.
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I’ve been taking a day a week off work this summer to go hillwalking. Yesterday I didn’t really feel great so decided to give it a miss. After a morning looking at screens I changed my mind and though to go for a short walk in the Kilpatrick hills.
This is 15 minutes drive from where I live, just about countryside and no more, but a great place for a walk.
There is a metalled road all the way to Loch Humphrey from Old Kilpatrick closed to traffic. It is a favourite walk for lots of folks.
I’d not been for a couple of weeks setting off from the Gas Works things had changed, the hedge had a Presbyterian short back and sides, brambles are is flower and meadowsweet was blooming.
Up the path I usual cut up a field leaving the road, today the grass had shot up to about a foot and a half high wild flowers everywhere:
The lesser spotted orchids, mostly gone, but there was:
Buttercups, hawksbeard, bedstraw, selfheal, clover, eyebright and lots more. Ringlet and Small Heath butterflies all over the place. I spent a while trying to catch slo-mo videos on my phone. I wonder if a selfie-stick would help?
Through the few trees and the edge of the moor is fringed with purple from the bell heather, lots of Tormentil too. Once on the moor common heather took over, not in flower yet, but there were patches of purple, yellow and white from the bell, bedstraw and tormentil everywhere.Â
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I’ve been finding camera+ on the phone pretty good for ‘macro’ photos.Â
I was hoping to see some ravens or even a peregrine. Ravens are common and I’ve seem a few peregrines recently, one close in hot pursuit of a kestrel. Caught a quick glimpse of ravens and heard some nice croaking but no peregrines. I did see a nice kestrel hovering at my eye level.
I usually rejoin the Loch Humphrey path but today went round the moor to the Slacks trig point, before heading back down. Away from the road I didn’t meet anyone else, a beautiful couple of hours.