The Ed Techie (Martin Weller)
Wednesday, September 30
Sept 26 Round-up
Despite being retired, September still has a back-to-school feel about it. After an enjoyable (but hot) summer it was good to get back to my desk again (and to wear jumpers). Things I enjoyed this month: The massive facepalm of the republicans thinking they had a gotcha moment over Jack Smith; watching The Office; Fat…
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Wednesday, September 23
Flow vs Grind
No, this is not a comparison of dating sites, but rather a reflection on recent writing experience. I’ve published my second novel (I know, why haven’t mentioned this before?), and the writing of that came pretty easily. The characters led the plot and it flowed fairly quickly, in comparison with my first novel. I’ve…
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Tuesday, September 15
Hold me back
It seems that periodically we get a story about how AI vendors are fearful about the awesome, apocalyptic power of their tech, and for God’s sake, won’t someone stop them. There’s been a recent round of this from Anthropic. I’ve wondered what the intent behind these stories was, since caring about harm or morality has…
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Wednesday, September 9
Life beyond ed tech
As part of the DS106 Radio Summer Camp, I did a session with Clint Lalonde on life after ed tech. I’ve been retired for two years and Clint is heading for retirement. We’ve both been in open and ed tech fro a while so thought it would be fun to discuss things outside of that life, and accompany these with record…
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Monday, August 31
August 26 round-up
It’s been an August which saw severe drought across the UK, and wild fires raging in South Wales, so we went to bed with acrid fumes every night. Against this backdrop there are plans to build huge data centres in Cardiff which will use water, generate fumes and add to pollution. I mean, yeah, let’s prioritise AI over…
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Friday, August 21
Publication day
My new horror novel, The H-Index, is coming out on the 1st September. As an indie horror writer all of the promotion comes down to you. But luckily there are so many services willing to take my money to do it also! Some of these are better than others. Here’s what I’ve tried: Amazon ads – mixed results. Probably broke…
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Tuesday, August 18
The Death of an Academic
Like most people working in higher ed, I was horrified by the treatment and death of Professor Jason Arday. It was naked racism, purely and obviously. As a white man, I don’t have the voice to speak to that pain, so here are some Black writers who put it more eloquently than I ever could. Sneha Krishnan writing for Al…
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Monday, August 17
Slop Will Eat Itself (then us)
Many of you will have seen the story about Anthropic (and other AI companies) buying books, and destroying them in the process of digitising. The reasons for destroying as opposed to just scanning them, seems to be a mixture of cost and avoidance of copyright issues. The need for this large scale process is because,…
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Wednesday, July 29
July 26 Monthly round-up
A busy month with my daughter having her Cardiff Masters graduation, our purchase of our first electric vehicle, a trip to Newcastle and finalising my second book publication. I also went to see the Odyssey twice, once with Maren and once “the way Nolan intended” in IMAX. It’s been interesting to see the online…
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Wednesday, July 22
New book cover reveal
My new horror novel – The H-index – is coming out in September with Morfa Press. Here is the cover designed by Roderick Brydon. I love it! The cover builds off the style of the first book, The Recluse Rules. I’m writing a series of novels all set on the Welsh coast. The books in this “Cursed Coast” series are all…
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