ia play

This cheesecake is one of those all day baking exploits. It is very easy (apart from the flipping at the end which really requires two pairs of hands) but you have to make sponge cake, bake, mix up the cherry layer, make crumb topping, make cheese layer, put it all together, bake, bring to room temp, refridgerate for hours, flip, remove foil, eat.

I made it more complicated by using fresh cherries so there was the extra painful step of stoning cherries. It took me all day and a lovely day it was too. So what if I got nothing else done?

The resulting creation is huge and PW will be able to feed off it for days, sparing him last week’s fate of eating a whole box of muesli.

And yes, we did eat some for breakfast.

“Whenever I conduct workshops with any group, I ask people how free they feel and to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace. I have learned firsthand that some people feel free while behind bars (and use their time in a positive way), yet others feel “locked up” while living in society.”

Why Leisure Matters in a Busy World in the New York Times

Writing is one of my favourite things and I find it pretty easy to start writing, whether that’s articles, academic essays or blogs post. Finishing is a different story. Time and time again I’ll get 75% of the way there and then just not finish something. Suddenly the washing up or gardening or putting the rubbish out all look way more important than finishing what I was writing.

These are my ten tactics for getting writing done (they don’t all work together):

1. just opening the documents

Odd one this but I’ve found that sometimes I need an agreement with myself that I’m just going to open the word doc and I don’t actually have to write anything. This makes sure that whatever else I do online that the document is there and waiting.

2. doing the mundane but easy stuff

When I don’t want to write I find that going back to the text and doing the non-creative tasks, like putting links and references in or spell-checking the article, tends to reengage me with what I was actually writing and I end up merrily writing away.

3. telling yourself you are just going to do a small bit

I’ll decide I’m only going to write 50 words. Seems trivial so I’ll usually get on and do it, and then do some more.

4. taking the internet away

The internet is a big distraction and when I’m writing it is always there. From Facebook, to mail, to RSS, the internet is a never-ending source of other peoples thoughts to read rather than write your own thoughts down. Switch it off or switch to paper.

5. reading it outloud (to the cat)

Has the disadvantage of making you look off your trolley if anyone catches you. You could read it outloud to another human being but where’s the fun in that? Just reading outloud helps you engage in a different way

6. printing and reading what you’ve done

Changing medium from screen to paper has been my solution since my student days. Still seems to work.

7. changing location

I think I’ve mentioned before my preference for sitting on the rabbit hutch at the end of the garden but in general just moving to another place in house, garden, office or anywhere else seems to restart my thinking

8. talking about what you are supposed to be doing with someone else

Just telling someone else that I’m supposed to be writing my article about ‘x’ is quite successful. Unless the topic is really boring (or they are playing Playstation at the time) then they’ll usually ask you something about the topic and telling them about it tends to get me interested again.

9. reading around the subject

I find the initial reading easy. This is when I’m learning stuff and that can be addictive. Writing is not about learning anymore but about sharing what you’ve learnt but if I get stuck with the writing then reading even more can help, if it looks like procrastination when you’ve already read enough to start writing.

10. draw it instead

This one’s been quite useful recently. If you don’t feel like writing then get a big piece of paper and draw your ideas.

“it is the first social environment created for the asocial individual, and in that respect it divides us into anomic particles and conquers us as effectively as any political tyranny. It returns us to high school, where popularity is the only standard of success, where taunts are the dominant style of amusement, and where self-absorption has yet to ripen into self-awareness.”

Lee Siegel at Comment is Free on why the internet isn’t an unqualified good

“Morgan has been making her own world as if the rest of the world didn’t exist,” he added. “She’s designing her own universe, her own lifestyle, with remarkable consistency. Somehow it all works together when people are in that environment.”

From In Her Own World in the New York Times

Ms. Puett’s vision reaches even into the refrigerator, which she has transformed into a strange, constantly shifting vignette of fresh food, old textiles and unusual scientific vials. “I buy beautiful and grotesque foods and try to put them in a new context,” she said. A broccoli floret sits on an antique candlestick, a pomegranate and brown eggs in a glass vase, carrots in ceramic pots. All liquids are decanted into glass measuring vessels.

Don’t be surprised if you come round and find my fridge looks like this

Michelle asked for resources when starting out with taxonomies and I’d coincidently been compiling some stuff for other nefarious purposes, after have to search for the same old set of stuff for the umpteenth time.

So I’ve made a page of CV resources. There’s the basics now but I’ll be adding more.

From Wired: five people who’ll make you feel good about the future

• Peter Head on the world’s first sustainable city in China
• Dickson Despommier on vertical farming
• Majora Carter on green-collar jobs
• Mitchell Joachim on Smart Cities
• Blaine Brownell on sustainable building materials

(and if you’re visiting the World Science Festival website then have a look at the ‘LiveSearch’ - taking ’suggestions as you type one step’ further. )

The Library of Congress webcast archive is another great repository of thought provoking video on all sorts of topics from Extraordinary Rendition to First Words in Print to Avoiding the Fate of the Mayans.

This month’s FUMSI included Derek’s Law introduction to Digital Natives but not everyone is taking the concept of ‘digital natives’ at face value. Academic Sue Bennett of the University of Wollongong, Australia is trying to take a scientific approach:

“The idea that a new generation of students is entering the education system has excited recent attention among educators and education commentators. Termed ‘digital natives’ or the ‘Net generation’, these young people are said to have been immersed in technology all their lives, imbuing them with sophisticated technical skills and learning preferences for which traditional education is unprepared. Grand claims are being made about the nature of this generational change and about the urgent necessity for educational reform in response. A sense of impending crisis pervades this debate. However, the actual situation is far from clear. In this paper, the authors draw on the fields of education and sociology to analyse the digital natives debate. The paper presents and questions the main claims made about digital natives and analyses the nature of the debate itself. We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a ‘moral panic’. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate ‘digital natives’ and their implications for education.”

The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence

Further reading :

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky
• Washington Times article covering the Library of Congress lecture series
• Digital Natives research project from Harvard Law School and University of St. Gallen in Switzerland
• Pew Internet’s Teens & Social Media

The June issue of FUMSI is out:

Finding Competitive Information for Growing Companies »
Convenience Trumps Quality: How Digital Natives Use Information »
ISO Management Standards, Intranets and Information Architecture »
The EU: Closer Than You Thought! »