Dulwich Street Art
I love the idea of the Dulwich Outdoor Gallery. In 2011, Ingrid Beazley who was working at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, met Stik, the street artist, and showed him round the permanent collection. From there, the project was born and fairly soon walls across Dulwich and Peckham were given modern interpretations of old masters. Today,...
Putting my money where someone’s voice isn’t
Here’s a short story.I had a paid subscription to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.I had it because I liked the technology and wanted to support it.I’ve read recently about ethics concerns that have caused employees and film stars to complain.So I’ve cancelled my subscription and have signed up to Claude instead. It’s...
Not really very Phoenix-like
It’s a pain when the people you’ve registered your domain name with stop trading. I’ve lost access to the name monkeymagic.net and so am having to port things across. WordPress has changed a little since the registrars went down so the back-ups half work but not completely. Tags and categories still need some playing...
Making better use of Kindle Highlights 2
Getting your Kindle Highlights from Readwise to Roam isn’t hard but getting them in the way you want them takes some playing around. Step 1: Connect Once you’ve logged in to your Readwise Dashboard, you need to connect Roam as a service. There’s a good step by step tutorial here but the short version is: […]
Making better use of Kindle Highlights 1
I love how easy it is to store highlights on Kindle. Swipe and that’s it. But I hate how hard it is to then do something meaningful with those highlights. Getting them “out of Amazon” is a pig, and I wonder sometimes if I should just go back to my old ways – dog ear […]
Walking The Canterbury Tales: The Pilgrims Way
For my “lockdown holiday” I thought I’d walk the route of the Canterbury Tales. I assumed, wrongly, that there would be loads about it online. There isn’t. There are some great resources, but it took me longer than I’d thought to find a GPX map for my phone so this is a quick tying together […]
What cathedral are you building?
I’ve been on a school trip to York these last few days. As you’ll know if you’ve been there, the Minster dominates the city. On a walk round the city walls, I was chatting with a 10-year old about the 250 years it took to build, from 1220 and 1472. We spoke about how many […]
Thinking again
I miss my old blogging habit. I miss the intentionality, the slower pace, the thoughtfulness and the openness. Perhaps above all I miss the various unpublished draft posts and what they represented. I’d like to start thinking again. Thanks to two blogging stalwarts Ton and Euan, I might have the momentum to do so and […]
3 Men and a Donkey – Notes on hiking Le Stevenson in the Cevennes
I’ve just got back from hiking Le Stevenson with a donkey and thought I’d jot down some notes while they’re still fresh in case it helps anyone else. What is Le Stevenson? In September 1870, Robert Louis Stevenson was waiting for his American sweetheart to finalise her divorce and to kill time set off with […]
What Shaolin Monks Taught Me About Teaching
The best teacher training I have ever had was from a 34th Generation Shaolin Warrior Monk, Shi Yan Jun. Over the years, I have had in-school training such as INSETs, after-school twilight sessions, teacher observations (given and received). I have had off-site training run by battle-hardened professionals but sweetened with coffee,...