Tag: lifeinlinks

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A montage of screenshots of plages linked in the post.

From Glastonbury to Gaza: no direction home

From Glastonbury to Gaza: no direction home | Chris Smaje a rabbit hole of links, to climate & farming, ht Jeremy Cherfas

Dougie Strang

Dougie Strang | writer, storyteller, performer I read a essay by him in Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland and more recently this poem: Poem That Avoids Arrest – Bella Caledonia

Much of my work, whether written or performed, is inspired by the natural and cultural ecology of the Scottish landscape.

Sensei LMS

Learning Management System Plugin for WordPress – Sensei LMS

Sensei Review: Transforming WordPress into a Dynamic Learning Platform

The Sensei LMS plugin allows WordPress users to create and sell online courses without relying on a separate platform. Free and Pro versions are available, so users can get a feel for Sensei before committing. While Sensei Pro isn’t quite as feature-rich as the leading standalone learning management systems, keeping everything within WordPress offers major benefits.

Wainwright Prize

Shortlist 2025 – Wainwright Prize

The Wainwright Prize, a celebration of nature and conservation writing, announces its 2025 shortlists. This year marks a bold new chapter, with three new categories reflecting the evolving landscape of environmental storytelling – particularly in how it reaches and inspires younger audiences.

Looks like a good list to check the library with.

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montage of six webpages listed in article

Craig Mod on The Talk Show

Interesting take on the morality of using AI

But I have a hard time parsing out what is moral or amoral about how this stuff is being used, or how the information’s been gleaned, or whatever it’s been sucked up from.

-✂️ snip-

00:03:25 ◼ ► I don’t use any of the photo generation crap or whatever.

00:03:28 ◼ ► What I do think is profound, and I feel like it’s way more morally defensible, is the code generation stuff, just because of all the open source stuff, yada, yada

The Talk Show ✪: Ep. 421, With Craig Mod

The Sea

▶︎ The Sea | Francisco del Pino/Charlotte Mundy | Notice Recordings

wilding.radio

From the famous Knapp estate via Joe

we have installed a solar-powered, quadrophonic live audio feed just north of the dam: A pair of hydrophones brings us closer to the sounds of the water itself and reveals the tiny sounds of fresh-water organisms. A pair of microphones in a fallen willow tree let us get to know the birds and mammals that live near and visit the water and hear the play of weather in the trees.

wilding.radio

Organic Maps

I’ve installed this on my phone with the intention of giving it a shot for recording walks.

Organic Maps is a privacy-focused offline maps & GPS app for hiking, cycling, biking, and driving. Absolutely free. No ads. No tracking. Developed with love by the open-source community. Powered by OpenStreetMap data.

Organic Maps is one of the few applications nowadays that supports 100% of features without an active Internet connection. Install Organic Maps, download maps, throw away your SIM card, and go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge without any byte sent to the network.

Organic Maps: Offline Hike, Bike, Trails and Navigation

Poetry on the line

Quite delightful raspberry pi project.

 a vintage phone brought to life with Raspberry Pi

Poetry on the line: a vintage phone brought to life with Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Pi

My ‘secret strings’ game to unlock ‘texts’ 

Looks like a good classroom activity.I’ve done similar occasionally but the prompt is much better than mine.

 You tell the children/students that they are going to be poem or story ‘detectives’ and their job is find the ‘secret strings’ in a poem or story – or play or any ‘text’.

Secret strings run within texts linking words, phrases, sentences and pictures or ‘images’. The students’ job is to find them. 

Sometimes the link is to do with sound – eg alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, long phrases, short phrases. 

Michael Rosen: My ‘secret strings’ game to unlock ‘texts’ (stories, poems, plays, non-fiction etc)

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A montage of 4 webpage screenshots.

Bookmarked for future reading. AI in education is becoming increasingly confusing.

Education Scotland are running a week #ScotAI25: Scottish AI in Schools 2025 with live lessons for pupils & some cpd for staff. I might try to make some of those.

  • This week I’ve used:
    ChatGPT to make some questions up about a passage of text for an individual in my class; Write an example text about levers; create a formula for a number spreadsheet and create a regular expression.
  • Claude to make a fractions matching game and a trivia quiz.
  • I am occasionally using lovable.dev to play around making an alternative way of posting to WordPress.

I might have used ChatGPT a couple more times in school. Although it is accessible the login options didn’t seem to be so I’ve no history to check.

Quite a few teachers I know use it in some of these ways in a, like me, fairly causal way. This is a lot easier than thinking about any ethical and moral implication.

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Screenshot of webpafges linked to in the article.

Here are few really interesting posts I’ve found on Mastodon.

The Really Dark Truth About Bots – YouTube via rg4w (@FourthWorld@mastodon.online) – Mastodon is a tangled web indeed. Worth a listen unless you are overwhelmed by recent news.

Apple is removing iCloud end-to-encryption features from the UK after government compelled it to add backdoors – 9to5Mac from Ian Betteridge (@ianb@well.com) – Mastodon who wrote on his own blog:

And it’s worth saying again: what Apple is offering is still as good as Google, Microsoft, etc, none of which offer zero-access encryption for file storage. There are remarkably few companies that do: the only one I’ve come across is Proton, whose Proton Drive is hosted in Switzerland, subject to Swiss privacy laws, and zero-access encrypted by default. If you’re currently using Advanced Data Protection for file storage, they are worth a look.

from: Apple’s Advanced Data Protection: what’s going on in the UK?

I am not a user of Apple Advanced Data Protection myself. But this is interesting from the tech/politics pov. And we don’t know when we might need a bit more encryption & privacy.

FastScripts 3.3.5: Live Script Progress and Other Fixes – from the horses mouth: Daniel Jalkut (@danielpunkass@mastodon.social) – Mastodon. FastScript is one of my very favourite mac application. It allows me to do lots of things fast. Limited only by my own lack of skills with AppleScript & shell.

Talk about the thing itself – annie’s blog via bradenslen (@bradenslen@indieweb.social) – Indieweb.Social

Lots of very smart stuff about introducing technology to people.

When I introduce you to my friend, I don’t say: “This is Angela. She’s made of bones that connect to each other with cool joints so she can bend her skeleton. On top of the bones, she’s got muscles! And then there’s skin, which is the part_ _you see now! The skin is important because it holds everything together and lets you interact with Angela without being all grossed out.”

I say something like: “This is Angela. I know her from college. She’s into geology, like you.”

I’ve spent a fair bit of life introducing technology to pupils & teachers. Especially with the latter I’ve made the mistake of wanting folk to understand and love something the way I do. (RSS for example).

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Montage of 4 webpages linked in post:

Things that cheered me up today.

bradenslen pointed me to this:

England, like most countries, is more of an imagined place than anything objectively real. Its ordinanced borders are merely state stories. We who live here know its true thresholds are the salted shore, ends of lanes where magic lives. We all make it up as walk its ways. – #CLNolan

[image or embed]

— hookland.bsky.social (@hookland.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 5:02 PM

It’s a win for butterflies! Government refuses emergency use of banned butterfly-killing pesticide on sugar beet | Butterfly Conservation

But Environment Minister Emma Hardy decided not to grant the authorisation for emergency use of Cruiser SB, which contains the butterfly-killing neonicotinoid thiamethoxam prohibited since 2018 – the first time in five years the application has been turned down.

Post by @climagic@mastodon.social
View on Mastodon

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A montage of screenshots: OSXPhotos - osxphotos 0.68.6 documentation Forever ✱ Notes - A free framework for Apple Notes About | bcattools WordPress Block Themes Simplified: A Must-Watch Guide for Beginners! - YouTube Tax Facts – free resources for teachers and parents - GOV.UK The secret power of a blog – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden Bonus Content - Danny Nics Science Fix Digital Citizenship UK_Year 1-13 Progression 2023 - Google Docs

Tech

OSXPhotos

What is OSXPhotos?
OSXPhotos provides both the ability to interact with and query Apple’s Photos.app library on macOS directly from your python code as well as a very flexible command line interface (CLI) app for exporting photos. You can query the Photos library database – for example, file name, file path, and metadata such as keywords/tags, persons/faces, albums, etc. You can also easily export both the original and edited photos. OSXPhotos – osxphotos 0.68.6 documentation

This command will search for photos that are missing location data and look for the nearest neighbor photo within a given window of time that contains location information. If a photo is found within the window of time, the location of the nearest neighbor will be used to update the location of the photo. OSXPhotos Command Line Interface (CLI) – osxphotos 0.68.6 documentation

Forever

Forever ✱ Notes is not an app, but a simple framework and scalable digital note-taking method for Apple Notes. It’s free and created to last—forever. Forever ✱ Notes – A free framework for Apple Notes

Bellingcat Geolocation

This is your place to discover tools! Our toolkit includes satellite and mapping services, tools for verifying photos and videos, websites to archive web pages, and much more. Most of the tools that we include can be used for free. Geolocation | bcattools

Master Block Themes in 3 Steps!

WordPress Basics for Beginners: Master Block Themes in 3 Steps!
Food for Glow Blog’s Help. WordPress Block Themes Simplified: A Must-Watch Guide for Beginners! – YouTube

Between

The blog’s form is practically made for active learning, for sharing thoughts and updates over a span of time. The secret power of a blog – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden

Teaching & Learning

Pause & Think Online (UK)

Digital Citizenship UK_Year 1-13 Progression 2023 – Google Docs

This document outlines a mapping of Common Sense Education’s Digital Citizenship Lessons by topic, year and term.

Bonus Content Science Fix

My book Science Fix: Science Made Easy for Primary Teachers was released Oct 2024. There was a lot of content that I included in the early drafts that has had to be cut to make the book more manageable. from: Bonus Content – Danny Nics Science Fix

Tax Facts free resources for teachers and parents 

Tax Facts is HM Revenue and Customs’ free tax education programme for primary and secondary school students. It has resources to help children and young people learn about the UK tax system, from lesson plans to videos. from: Tax Facts – free resources for teachers and parents – GOV.UK

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How to Not Waste Your Only Life Debating Direct Instruction and Inquiry-Based Learning

Teachers will do what works for them and they won’t do what doesn’t work for them. It is true that “what works” in a very well-defined context is an empirical question. You can study it. You can referee two different teaching approaches using assessment scores, survey results, classroom observations, meta-analyses—all the usual tools.

Posters — Jamie Clark I like the Dylan Williams influenced ones…


Learn p5.js for Creative Coding – 5 Beginner Projects – YouTube I have played with p5.js on and off, but never got too far. THis course seems short enough to be doable.


Sora Pretty crazy, video AI linked everywhere.

RedKetchup – Online Tools A nice set of online tools to do simple stuff with images that I prefer to do on the desktop. Handy for time I don’t have access to familiar tools. Got a 20 second delay on download if you don’t upgrade, via Aaron

How To Pay Attention. 20 Ways To Win The War Against Seeing | by Rob Walker | re:form | Medium I think I saw this 2014 post a few times before. Still enjoyed it. Some might be fun with class.

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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:

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A montage of 9 webpages mention in the article.

Aide or Answer – Learning with Artificial Intelligence – Read Write Respond

With this in mind, for me I feel that AI tools are useful as an aide, but I am circumspect about using them as the answer. I guess time will tell.

Walk to Auld Wives Lifts I need to have a wee walk to the Auld Wives Lifts

Tom Coates on how Threads will integrate with the Fediverse

Who knows? Maybe we’ll get the interoperable shared, open social web that many of us have wanted for the last twenty plus years? Wilder things have happened. Fingers crossed?

A less positive view of Meta:

Meet ‘Link History,’ Facebook’s New Way to Track the Websites You Visit

As lawmakers introduce tech regulations and Apple and Google beef up privacy restrictions, Meta is doubling down and searching for new ways to preserve its data harvesting empire.

The company pitches Link History as a useful tool for consumers “with your browsing activity saved in one place,” rather than another way to keep tabs on your behavior.

Scripting News: Friday, January 12, 2024

That’s the thing we really need to escape from, being monetized. The only respectful way to be monetized is to pay for something worth paying for, roughly what it costs, plus a reasonable margin of profit.

RemovePaywall | Free online paywall remover

Remove Paywall works by finding archived versions of a website. These archived pages do not have a paywall
and allow readers to get the article without having to pay or being forced to log in.

Marlon James on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, Authenticity as Pose, and Not Reading His Book Reviews ‹ Literary Hub

I think the thing about Led Zeppelin and the Stones is that they dig music–particularly black music–after the fact. The difference between them and Dylan is that Dylan digs culture as it’s happening. And I think that’s a big difference. It’s why Talking Heads sound like Talking Heads, you know?

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland 2023 (25–1): Young Fathers to Jesus & Mary Chain | The Herald

11 Michael Timmons & Yoker Moon – Practice

Recorded mostly live and apparently musically improvised with Glasgow electronic musician Yoker Moon, the East Kilbride songwriter Michael Timmons has placed an evocative and fragile lyrical hook within a tense computer generated soundscape.

My son-in-law at number 11

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A montage of screenshots of webpages: https://wanderprompts.com/ https://www.pipes.digital/ https://bobboteck.github.io/joy/joy.html https://andywightman.scot/2023/12/land-for-the-people-scotland-bill/ https://codepen.io/ste-vg/pen/BazEQbY https://jonathanbossenger.com/2023/12/wordpress-as-a-game-development-platform/

Christmas Cannon everyone needs one of these.

Land for the People (Scotland) Bill – Land Matters Andy Wightman’s proposals for a comprehensive Land Reform Bill.

redefine Scotland’s system of land tenure as conditional tenure with (broadly defined) statutory responsibilities as well as rights. The particulars of how these will be interpreted can be set out in secondary legislation. They will include legal duties to conserve natural processes and restore ecosystems.

bobboteck/JoyStick: A simple JoyStick that use HTML5, Canvas and Vanilla JavaScript, for touch and mouse interfaces I used this for a silly wee #ds106 daily. Might be useful for something for school.

WordPress as a game development platform. – Jonathan Bossenger

There is still a lot of work to be done to turn this into a working game, but I’m excited about the possibilities. Stay tuned, because I can see this turning into a bit of a series of posts…

I wonder if we will get to the point when you can make something simple with html/css/JavaScript in the block editor? I don’t think that is the direction this post is pointing, but it made me think.

Documentation | Pipes

Pipes is a spiritual successor to Yahoo! Pipes, but if you did not know that site, you can think of Pipes as a visual programing editor specialized on feeds, or a visual shell, or simply as a glorified feed configurator.

Wander Prompts,

Ready to walk? Swipe down.

I think a lot of these links came from Joe, either directly or by wandering from his starting point. He is a serendipity engine.