I LIKE CLAPPERBOARDS that creatives share every year. Continue reading

FOR YEARS I've watched snippets from Dave Winer scroll through my feed readers and learned from them. I think it's important to be able to share quickly (like many do on Twitter or Instagram) while also saving important snippets inside your own space like I try to do with a 23 year old blog I have. So I am going to try to scrape and share daily snippets from my Zettelkasten and from my Flickr photostream. I've started saving screenshots of life, such as the reference to a Ryanair advertisement I spotted on the way into my local Tesco supermarket. Continue reading

AFTER BEING CHARGED approximately €150 per day for mobile data usage, I dove into comments accompanying mainstream articles and I learned from friends who posted their views on a Facebook item I wrote. I do not intend to pay for data I did not authorise. Continue reading

I'M GETTING A SLOW START to 2021 but that means having time to read a Twitter thread containing clever time-saving tips from Vincent Hayward. I've an opinion on several of Vincent's ideas. Continue reading

WHILE PREPARING for an extra week of school holidays, we discovered our eir Vision box freezes. Suggestions appreciated. Continue reading

I TRY TO WORK SMARTER by adopting intelligent routines. Perhaps the most important routine I've adopted involves using Readwise behind the scenes to import highlights from things I've read. I started reading wiser because I wanted to squelch FOMO. Continue reading

WE HAVE SPENT more than 3000 euro in data charges with Three Ireland to power two different iPad since 2010 but after being charged €689.91 for "out of allowance" usage, it's time to cut our losses. Continue reading

I'M SPENDING SOME DOWN TIME regretting that Ruth and I didn't save Christmas cards from the six different homes we've had through the 22 Christmas holidays we've shared. Instead, I scrolled back through Flickr to find images from Christmases past, starting with a candle flickering in our home in Kilkenny from 2004. Continue reading

WE KEPT OUR CHRISTMAS lights turned off for several days during this Christmas season to honour two neighbours who died in their homes on our street. Their passing, along with continued COVID-19 restrictions, marked Christmas 2020 as the darkest in my lifetime. Continue reading

IN A MAJOR case against Facebook, the US government is defining "harms" in a holistic way. The Federal Trade Commission (ftc) alleges harm occurs if a company buys another company specifically to hinder its ability to compete. Continue reading

BY ACQUIRING THE TWO-PERSON MALAYSIAN START-UP OCTAZEN, Facebook grows itself while simultaneously denying competitors of a web-scraping power tool. Continue reading

ON THE RUN-UP TO CHRISTMAS, we've had several sad events unfold near our home. First, an arthritic cat adopted us and was deemed so ill that our vet recommended putting her to sleep. Then a neighbour a few doors down died of a heart attack in his home. And now a steady parade of cars park outside our front door as an elderly man works his way through his final days of terminal cancer. Continue reading

WE EXPOSED OURSELVES to the largest number of people since March 2020 by making a pilgrimage to Mahon Point Shopping Centre. And during our exposure, I let Swarm by Dennis Crowley check me into the places where we lingered the longest. Continue reading

I READ Karlin Lillington's byline in The Irish Times and she has shared several relevant consumer items about the costs and hazards of technology. Her cautionary note about the prospects of encountering bill shock related to mobile phone usage hit home in late November 2020 for me. Continue reading

WHILE WAITING FOR an eir technician to rewire our fibre broadband connection, we connected our Samsung TV via ethernet cable to our Huawei B353 wireless modem. It works! Continue reading

MY PERSONAL QUEST for energy independence involves saving solar energy as the primary power source for our household. That means investing in a Power Vault to store the energy AND committing to shutting down for the day when the stored power reaches a critical level. Continue reading

WE HAVE A COMMUNAL Surface Book now. I used it for 35 minutes during the first five hours of its life in the house. The remainder of the time the laptop was detached from its screen and used by Mia (13) with its pen to draw with the excellent app Leonardo. Continue reading

I EXPECT TO CONTINUE teaching third level students in a hybrid fashion for the rest of my days. Looking at my current teaching methods, I realise I use six rather unique technologies while delivering course material to a mix of creative media, digital animation, and game art design students. Continue reading

I HAVE BOOKS on my shelves that teach me lessons from generations ago. One of those books is written by Thucydides who explains how the citizens of Athens survived a major pandemic in the fifth century. The story is wonderfully told during a two part Ideas Podcast from the CBC. (Subscribe to Ideas from the CBC.) Continue reading

I STARTED LISTENING to early exit polls from the 2020 US election and somehow transported myself back to 2002 when Ruth and I walked alongside the River Liffey. I can find only a few photos from November 2002 but it's easy to lose myself in the sound track of my life from those less stressful times. Continue reading

SEVEN YEARS AGO, I marveled at the YouTube tutorials Eugene O'Loughlin was churning out. He was sharing his experiences with a packed room during DIT's e-learning Summer School. Eugene would record his lectures and post them on YouTube. After every lecture period on the National College of Ireland, Eugene would return to his office to discover 100 more people had viewed his material online. Continue reading

I HAVE LOGGED SEVEN MONTHS in a remote teaching mode and need to ensure I have more than one way of producing content because my laptop's AC power adapter has failed. It will take more than a week to get a replacement part from my main campus 50 km away so I'm in a scavenger mode as I try to sort out a solution. Continue reading

THE CONCEPT OF IDENTITY enjoys deep coverage in several creative media programmes I teach. During the 2020-21 time frame, I hope to connect several facets of identity to both the academic programme on the Clonmel Digital Campus and to the 2021 Clonmel Junction Arts Festival. Continue reading

LIKE MANY AMERICANS, I struggle to pull away from the dumpster fire that is the Trump Presidency. But I can't because Donald's sociopathy is a matter of American national security. To get an evidence-based insight to the one particular psyche that threatens the American way of life, I joined a million others and bought Too Much and Never Enough. RECOMMENDED. Continue reading

IF YOU HAVE a worthwhile message, you need develop a rigorous process for sharing your messages across different social networks. We bring this principle into sharp focus as part of the rigor of media writing with my college students. I have an example from yesterday that shows how written ideas can percolate across several social networks. I believe the process, workflow, and transmedia elements of this concept are essential elements of digital literacy. Continue reading