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https://johnjohnston.info/blog
96 posts · 16 Votes
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Read Aurochs and Auks by John Burnside ★★★★★ Finally (and this seems less fanciful with each passing day) our inner spaces are being placed in jeopardy, as the providers of social media colonise and denature what use to be called the life of the mind for advertising revenues or political gain. Science fiction not so long ago, the enclosure of experience itself – not only of our consumer tastes, but also of our root desires, our dreams, our political leanings – has become commonplace. From…
Given the good weather there are quite a lot of butterflies around this week. This one looks like an old one that has been in the wars, black faded and very ragged. I wonder what tales it could tell. My butterfly by month page is building nicely.
Short walk to Greenside reservoir this morning. Warm, mostly sunny. Lots of butterflies around. I’d guess I saw over 200 ringlets; a lot of painted ladies & meadow browns. A few common blues & red admirals ,one small tortoiseshell & a white of some sort. A few fritillaries bright orange and zooming around, never posing. I saw one I’d never seen before. It look to me, after consulting my book & the web, like a small skipper. According to the same research this doesn’t seem to be where they are…
#Flora #BloomStrolling #BloomScrolling
#SilentSunday #Bird
I’d also love to know what you think of the broader idea. A WordPress Playground that doesn’t just show people a site, but actively teaches them how to use it. Turn Any WordPress Playground Into a Guided Education Experience | Pootlepress This looks like something with amazing potential, a way to build in guided tours in the WordPress editor. It works in the WordPress playground via pootleplayground.com. Pootle Playground helps you create blueprints for the WordPress Playground1. There are…
Today’s daily create #tdc5280 #ds106 #dailycreate #ShowYourStripes point toward the #ShowYourStripes webpage that very neatly shows visual representations of the change in temperature as measured in each country, region or city over the past 100+ years The site also links to #BiodiversityStripes The ‘biodiversity stripes’ provide a visual representation of the change in biodiversity over time, often since 1970. The highest level of biodiversity is coloured bright green. Lower levels move…
In reply to #tdc5278 #ds106 #dailycreate Sharing Happiness. @creating #tdc5278 #ds106 #dailycreate Three happy moments in the last week: My fairly new granddaughter (no images for obvious reasons) Yesterday in the park, I saw two shadows spinning round each other on the path. Two Speckled Wood Butterflies spiral up through the sunlight. There were too fast & fascinating for a photo. I made a rolled omelet where you separate the eggs and the yellow layer wraps round the white layer. Looked &…
A varied collection of links some of which have been sitting in my notes for a while. Frank Cottrell-Boyce: ‘We’ve treated a generation of chil… They miss school? “School is where our kids feel secure. It’s where they’re fed. It’s their happy place. They don’t like the summer.” Many times in different schools I’ve head about children that are troubled by the approach of summer. This is a great article. I’ve been disappointed by the Observer since it changed hands but this was well worth a read.…
Read: Solace House by Will Maclean ★★★★ 📚 After sudden scalding exposure to the late twentieth century, and the garish monomania of the supermarket, it was joyous to return to the hospital, to the house. I found that I wanted to immerse myself in Solace House and its environs, gather it around me, cloak myself in it. I didn’t doubt, in that moment, that this was what Flayne had felt, sequestered here in his self-imposed exile. Fun Gothic horror with magic mushrooms. A narrator who becomes more…
Read: In the Woods by Tana French ★★★ 📚 Doorstop of a police procedural. Lots of psychological twist & turns. Vivid characters. Maybe too much horror in the crime, like most thriller books and movies nowadays.
#SilentSunday #Butterfly
Likes We Ran a Huge Social Experiment on a Whole Generation. It Turned Out to Be Terrible | Pootlepress by Jamie Marsland. Like: “Wait. You knew it was damaging mental health, sleep, attention and social development, and your response was… to give younger children even more access?” And we will say: “Well, yes. But everyone else was doing it.” A clear succinct run over social media & the young. Personally I think there might be something in making the vendors made efforts to fix social media…
Walk around Victoria park this afternoon. Warm and quite sunny. Lots of small damselflies out on the pond.
#SilentSunday #flora #bees
Read Belonging By Amanda Thomson ONE AUGUST, WALKING HIGH ON the Cairngorm Plateau, small groups of swifts came and went up and over us, slicing and screeching the air, moving north to south, arching, spiralling up and over, on their way again. It is estimated that there might be as many as 90,000 seabirds on Mingulay during the summer, and on the day I was there, there were perhaps thirty people on the whole island – our presence so fleeting. It was clear that everything would go on, whether…
Read: The Savage Landscape by Cal Fly ★★★★ 📚 Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs through idea & puts herself in the picture, questioning her own ideas & coming up against lots of contradictions. Lots to think about. Curious & surprising details. Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs…
Read: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich ★★★★ 📚 IN SOME PLACES, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing he sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious. A…
#SilentSunday
TIL copy all tabs in iOS safari. On mac, I have a nice wee AppleScript that copies to the clipboard links to all my open tabs in Safari’s top window. I’ve always been a bit frustrated that I couldn’t do the same on iOS. But I can. Tab view then the ellipsis at the top right, copy n tabs.
Walked out to Dumcolm on Sunday morning. A quiet day, although it looked as if it was getting busy later. Lots of birds singing, lots of flowers showing. Warm, sunny until 9am or so, then light cloud. As I came back to Loch Humphrey from Duncolm an osprey was fishing over the loch. Didn’t get a great look or photo, exciting anyway. Green Woodpecker calling from the trees below the muir. Lots of cuckoos all morning, finally got a half decent snap along the fence around the native trees before…
Likes Pixabots — Free Pack of 2,000 Pixel Characters. I made a tiny pixel character creator called Pixabots. It generates 10,752 unique combinations from four categories — eyes, heads, bodies, and tops — all bouncing on a little idle loop. This pack is a curated 2,000 of them, ready to use. Free. Not sure where I saw this, there is a live editor at Pixabots — Pixel Character Avatars which is fun. Could be useful in class I think. Perhaps in Scratch when an uploaded gif is turned into a sprite…
Walk round Ardinning this afternoon. Cuckoos calling. Willow warblers & ravens heard. Corn bunting & stonechats seen & heard. Warm & breezy plenty of butterflies, mostly Orange Tips & Green-Veined whites, a Painted Lady. A few small red damselflies didn’t stay still although one landed on D’s hat.
Read: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ 📚 But as for the likes of us, Ono, our contribution was always marginal. No one cares now what the likes of you and me once did. They look at us and see only two old men with their sticks.’ He smiled at me, then went on feeding the fish. ‘We’re the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we’re the only ones who care now.’ Hazy recall, guilt, regret, memory,…
Read: Clown Town by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚 Familiar world & characters with some interesting developments. A nice surprise at the end. I am surprised at how the series continues to be enjoyable & pleased the author has not needed to make things increasingly dramatic.
I had a walk around Ardmore yesterday afternoon. Lots of flower out. #BloomScrolling #BloomStrolling #Flora
Went for a walk round the park this afternoon. Hailstones in May!
Read: Same as it ever was by Claire Lombardo ★★★ 📚 but the strangest thing I remember about having young children is how interminably the time moves, just these days upon days upon days, and every single one of them feels a million years long, but then suddenly months have gone by, enough time for a new baby to be born or one of the kids to start kindergarten, or college for God’s sake Took me a long a time to get into this one. The central character irritated at first. She did grow on me as I…
