running and talking

Posted on October 3, 2014 by alan

September saw two events on Tiree; both exciting but each very different: at the beginning of the month the first Tiree Ultramarathon organised by Will Wright our very own Tiree superhero and towards the end ‘Re-Thinking Architecturally‘, a workshop of the European Network of Excellence on Internet Science organised by Clare Hooper from Southampton University. I was lucky enough to take part in both.

In addition, in a few weeks time (23-27 Oct) there will be the eighth Tiree Tech Wave, which will include participants from Canada, Scotland, Wales and England (but no-one from Ireland yet). As well as the usual unstructured serendipity, we will have some tutorial workshops of 3D scanning, 3D printing and laser cutting … but more about that in another post.

The Tiree Ultra

photo Rhoda Meek

I should first emphasise that I did not run all of the 35 mile ultra-marathon course around the coast of Tiree, but did about 50:50, walk/run. I’d never done anything remotely like this before. The longest I’d run was the Tiree half marathon back in May and the longest I’d walked during the Wales walk was a 29 mile day (although I did that over more than 12 hours). I had as a schoolboy once done a 34 mile day hike up into the coal valleys above Cardiff, and one of the spurs to sign up for the Ultra was to beat my 17 year old self!

With my usual level of preparation it came to the beginning of August and I realised I’d not run at all, nor even taken a walk longer than to the beach and back, since the half-marathon in May. Just before the event I found a couple of sites with training schedules for marathons, all of them were several months long and the ‘beginner’ level was “runs 15-25 miles a week regularly” … what about zero miles a week? Anyway my lengthy one month training schedule consisted mainly of short (2.5 mile) beach runs with the occasional 7.5 mile run to Hynish and towards the end a run of 8.5 miles along part of the route of the Ultra round the base of Ben Hynish. I was aware I’d not done any really substantial runs and so, rather foolishly, on the Wednesday 4 days before the event I ran (and walked!) 21 miles around part of the route on the east end of the island and down to Hynish and back. A good last run before the event, but one I should have done a week earlier.

Somehow or other, despite my foolish training schedule, I managed to get round without any serious injury. My main problem was eating, or rather failing to eat. I found I could only mange food during walking stages, and then just a small amount of Kendal Mint Cake and few bananas, I guess overall I managed to burn around 4000 calories, but ate less than 1000, which really made the legs start to tire as I got to the latter parts of the course. I’ve already entered for the 2015 Tiree Ultra next September (half the places are already gone and entries have only been open a week), but I will have to work out how to eat better before then. Crucially I got round the course … and not even last. The serious contenders managed times not much more than 4 1/2 hours whilst I got round in just over 8:20, but I was simply happy to get to the end.

Although it was further and faster than any day walking last year, it was in many ways a lot easier than the Wales walk. About 2/3 of the way round the Tiree course my right ankle and calf started to stiffen, which was where I’d had Achilles ankle problems a couple of years ago. Although I did try to ease a little I was not terribly worried; the worst would be that I’d be hobbling for a month or so after the run. In contrast, last year I knew that I would be walking again the next day, and the next,and the one after that; with each ache I worried whether it would be the injury that did not get better, and stopped the walk. And, despite the worry of this, I had also learnt quite how resilient the body is, that most pains and strains did get better, albeit slowly, despite unrelenting exercise.

I was also reminded very much of the walk when I finished. I took off my running shoes and socks, the latter sodden from beach and bog, and filled with fine layer of sand. The soles of my feet, which had been subjected to 35 miles of damp sandpaper, felt like I was walking on coals and I hobbled about between van and Ceadhar where they laid on a post-walk pizza and party. It was just like that so many days last year, I would get to where I was staying, ease off my boots, put on sandals, and then hobble out in search of food, wondering if I would get as far as the closest pub or cafe, let alone walk again the next day.

Re-thinking Architecturally

The Internet Science workshop was equally enjoyable, but a little less physically challenging! It brought together economists, architects, lawyers, policy advisors, and some with more technical background from as far afield as Umea in northern Sweden. It was lovely being able to attend a technology workshop on Tiree that I hadn’t organised 🙂

Clare had been to one of the Tiree Tech Waves, and then, when she was organising a workshop for the European Network of Excellence on Internet Science, she thought of Tiree. The logistics were not without problems, but after the event I’ve been getting together with the Tiree Trust to make an information pack for future organisers to make the process easier. So if if you would like to organise an event on Tiree, get in touch!

The participants all seemed utterly taken with the venue, several brave souls even swimming in the mornings off the Hynish pier, in the words of one of the participants on the way back after the event “I’d rather be in Tiree!”. Another said:

“one great consequence of the week in Tiree was a kind of intellectual regeneration that let me set aside the stresses of the coming academic year and…think openly a bit.”
Alison Powell (London School of Economics)

In fact this is precisely the feedback I get from many who have been to Tiree Tech Wave. It is hard to capture in words the way the open horizon and being at the wild-edge opens up the mind, especially when meeting with others equally committed to exploring new ideas freely and openly.

One of the memorable moments from the week was a debate of internet freedom and regulation. We started off half on one side half the other and then part way through we all had to swop sides. I can’t believe how passionate I got about both sides of the argument … and I managed to wheel in my school English teacher as authority on benevolent dictatorship¹.

photo Parag Deshpande

photo Rory at Balevullin

People

While two very different events, a common story was the wonderful welcome of the people of Tiree. During the Ulta-marathon, at every way-station there was a glorious array of tray bakes, chocolates, pre-sliced fruit, and above all smiling faces. This was great for me seeing faces I knew, but clearly very special for the participants who came from afar being greeted as if they too were friends. For the Re-thinking Architecturally workshop many people made it a success: the wonderful team at the Hynish Centre, especially Lesley who kept on smiling despite a seven hour wait for participants whose travel was disrupted, everyone at Ceadhar, Ring n Ride, and at the airport re-arranging travel across Europe when the Thursday plane was cancelled.

I wrote what I thought to be a masterful mock O’level essay that asserted that Macbeth was actually a good king taking a ‘he made the trains run on time’ argument — my English teacher, Miss Griffiths, was not impressed.[back]

being British? always a second class citizen

Posted on September 17, 2014 by alan

The most important reason for a ‘Yes’ vote in the upcoming Scottish independence referendum is the potential for a new nation that is a beacon of a fairer, greener and more inclusive society. This would ultimately be to the good of the whole of the UK.

However, I’ve also noted a general lack of comprehension by many south of the border who struggle to understand the desire for Scottish Independence.

This was voiced a few days ago in a Facebook thread and this was my response as a Welshman living north of the border.:

As a Welshman I have always had a romantic nationalist edge, but also felt a strong British patriotism.

However events over the years, and not least the referendum campaign have hardened this. Again and again Westminster politicians tell us that Scotland is better with England, as if Wales and Northern Ireland did not exist.

I have heard this language all my life: in the 50th anniversary celebrations of the second World War, in numerous debates in immigration, in company registration (registered in Cardiff, a company in England and Wales, but subject to *English* law), … and has been noted several times the Bank of England.

The difference in this campaign is that this is when politicians are supposed to be being careful of their language. We even had the government lawyer explaining that the separated rUK and Scotland would not be equally parts of a previous single nation when looking towards external international bodies, not based on measures such as the population (reasonable), but because really and legally Scotland was never a partner country in a union, but was always amalgamated unto England.

There have been hundreds of years to sort out these things, but it has not happened yet, what chance for the next 100 years?

As a child I was pedalled a lie.

There never was, and never will be a Britain.

As a Welshman, I am as British as Indians were in the ‘British Empire’.

Within the UK I always have been, and always will be, a second class citizen.

In contrast to this Scotland (despite sectarian tensions that erupt occasionally in Celtic-Rangers crowds) accepts incomers as was amply demonstrated in the difference between the spitting bigotry of the Westminster leaders’ debates at the last General Election compared with the far more civilised, cultured,and above all inclusive Scottish leaders’ debate, with all parties, including the Scottish Conservative leader, praising the richness through diversity and immigration.

Whether it is a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’, the shape of the UK will change fundamentally tomorrow.

If it is ‘No’, I hope the UK will eventually wake up to the fact that it is a nation of nations.

If it is ‘Yes’, then I know, that even as a Welshman far from my birthplace, I will be in a country where I can feel at home.

India and APCHI

Posted on September 28, 2013 by alan

I am sitting in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Bangelore looking down over the city spreading seemingly endlessly as far as I can see. Here, out in the suburbs and in the heart of Electronics City, the Hi-Tech enclave, the view is a mix of green trees, concrete offices and small apartment blocks in a pastel palette of lime greens, mauve tinted blues and burnt umber. There is an absence of yellow and red apart from the girder work of a partly constructed building and airline-warning red and white mobile antennae tower; maybe these are inauspicious colours. A major highway and the raised highway cut across the view and the airport is presumably far out of site in the afternoon heat haze, it was a near two hour ride away on Wednesday when I arrived in the midst of rush hour, but hoping it is a shorter journey tomorrow morning when I need to catch 6am flight.

I’ve had a wonderful time here seeing many old faces from previous visits to India a few years ago, and also meeting new people. It was especially great to see Fariza as I hadn’t realised she was going to be here from Malaysia. It was also wonderful seeing Dhaval and spending time with his family after the end of the conference yesterday, and today reading some of his recent work at ABB on bug reproduction in software maintenance.

Seeing Dhaval’s work and talking to him about it reminded me of the debugging lectures I did some years ago as part of a first year software engineering module. For many years I have been meaning to extend these to make a small book on debugging. It is one of those areas, like creativity, where people often feel you either have it or not, or at bets can pick up the skills one time. However, I feel there is a lot you can explicitly teach about each.

Yesterday was my closing keynote at APCHI 2013. I’ve put the slides and abstract online and I am working on full notes of the talk. It felt odd at times talking about some the the issues of rural connectivity and poverty raise by my walk around Wales given the far greater extremes here in India. However, if anything, this makes the messages for both public policy and design more important.

As I talked both in the keynote and one-to-one with people during the conference, I was constantly returning to some of the ways that in the UK we seem to be throwing away many of the positive advances of the 20th century: the resurgence of rickets and scurvy amongst poor children, the planned privatisation of the Royal Mail, one of the key enablers of the 19th century commercial revolution, and most sad of all the depraved demonisation of the poor that is rife in politics and the media.

There were many interesting papers and posters. Two demos particularly caught my eye as they represented different aspects of the link between physical and digital worlds, issues that Steve, Devina, Jo and I have been exploring in TouchIT and the Physicality workshop series. One was a system that augments paper textbooks with electronic resources using a combination of computer vision (to recognise pages in the book) and semantic extraction (for example getting historical timelines from Wikipedia). The other was a physical ‘drop box’, where you put papers into a slot and then they were copied as images into your DropBox account. It made me think of the major scan and bin exercise I did a few years ago drastically reducing my piles of old papers.

However, the high spot of the conference for me was Ravi Poovaiah‘s keynote “Designing for the next billion” on Thursday about design for the ‘middle of the pyramid’, those who are out of abject poverty and therefore have access to basic IT and so the design community can do most about. This does not reduce the needs of those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, for whom basic education and healthcare are the most immediate needs.

In the UK not only are the extremes less, few except the homeless would qualify as ‘bottom of the pyramid’, but also they tend to be more segregated. Here a modern glass fronted international retail chain can sit next to a semi-derilict (to western eyes) motorbike repair shop, with used tyres piled on the pavement. This said, to my mind, with my aesthetic of decay that is maybe the privilege of those who do not have to live it, the latter is far more engaging. One of India’s challenges is whether it can move through its economic explosion without the attendant dissolution of local identity, culture and family that is the legacy of the industrial revolution in the UK.

CHI Academy … a Faustian bargain?

Posted on April 29, 2013 by alan

I am on a short excursion from walking Wales to CHI 2013 in Paris.

Last night I was inducted into the SIGCHI Academy. No great fanfares or anything, just a select dinner and a short ceremony. I thought Gerrit, who is current SIGCHI chair would look good with a sword dubbing each person, but instead just a plaque, a handshake and a photo or two by Ben Shniederman, amanuensis of CHI.

I feel in two minds. On the one hand there are many lovely people in CHI community, and I spent a great afternoon and evening chatting to folk including Phillipe Palanque, Mary Czerwinsky and Hiroshi Ishii over dinner. However, ACM and to some extent SIGCHI often appear like the Star Wars imperial forces, intent on global domination.

The CEO of ACM did little to dispel this at the opening ceremony this morning. He spoke of ACM’s international aspirations and praised CHI for regularly having its conferences outside of the US.

Now ACM is the de facto international computing organisation and CHI is the de facto international conference in human–computer interaction, but by virtue of the fact that they are the US ones. In principle, IFIP and Interact are the international computing organisation and HCI conference respectively, as IFIP is the UNESCO founded body of which ACM and other national computing bodies, such as the BCS in the UK, are members. Interact, the HCI conference sponsored by IFIP is truly international being held in numerous countries over the years (but I think never yet the US!); in contrast having approximately two out of three conferences in the US is laudable, but hardly the sign of a truly international organisation.

So, is the ACM an originally US organisation that is in the process of slowly becoming truly international, or is it part of more general US cultural domination? Although probably neither are completely accurate, at present there seems to be significant aspects of the latter under the guise of the former. In a way this is, in microcosm, an image of the same difficult relationship between USA and UN in other areas of international affairs.

And by joining the SIGCI Academy am I increasing the European presence in CHI and thus part of the process to make it truly international, or selling my academic soul in a Faustian bargain?

wonder women

Posted on March 8, 2013 by alan

As I started to prepare for the Wales walk I learnt about Anne-Marie “Arry” Beresford-Webb, who in her DragonRun1027 was first to traverse the new Wales Coast Path and existing Offa’s Dyke long distance path all around Wales. Only Arry was not content to walk around Wales, as I will do in a few weeks, but she ran it, 39 days, a marathon distance every day, all in support of Velindre Cancer Centre. I thought Arry was Wonder Woman – just absolutely amazed, in a year of amazing Olympic successes, still my hero of the year if not the decade.

I thought this must be the summit of achievement, what could equal that.

Then Rob Styles (@mmmmmrob) shared a link on Twitter to One MIllion Lovely Letters.

Since she was eleven, Jodi Ann Bickley (@jodiannbickley) has been leaving notes “between text books, on buses, in libraries and as I got older in pubs, restaurants … anywhere I thought that maybe someone might need a little bit of cheering up, reassurance or just a reminder that actually they are pretty lovely” because “everyone deserves to know that they are thought of and they are loved. Even if it is by a complete stranger.“. And now she is offering to write to anyone, beautiful hand written letters, full of love, to anyone, any of the seven billion strangers we all have in this world.

This would all be marvellous enough on its own, yet when she describes her lifelong project of lovely note leaving she goes on to say “… and as I got a little older in doctors surgeries and hospital beds“. It turns out that the new turn to letter writing is because she has been recently “blessed with a lot of time“, and this blessing, not a lottery win leaving her a lady of leisure, or retirement at the end of her years, but a debilitating illness at the age of 24.

I am sure Arry’s ultra-marathon running is based on years of physical practice starting with small runs and building up to her epic achievement, gradually exercising muscles and joints so that when called upon to work in extremes they are ready. Not that the work was not hard and painful, not that feet did not bleed and muscles ache, but a body prepared through small things for the great things demanded of it.

It sounds to me that in spirit and personalty, Jodi has had just such exercise, creating a habit of joy-giving in small things so that when the big challenge came, while no less painful in the body and soul, she is ready, not just to endure, but to make it a blessing for others.

I am amazed and awed.

I myself have been blessed to know many wonderful women, not least my wife and lovely daughters. And I can only thank God that in days of cynicism and depression, hardship and crisis, there are those who in different ways rise as heroes to inspire us all.

get fit on Tiree

Posted on December 1, 2012 by alan

Today is the winter 10K run on Tiree. It has been organised by Craig Watson, one of the airport firefighters on Tiree, in aid of the “Michelle Henderson Cervical Cancer Trust”. It is looking a lovely day for it, although there will be a chill in the air under the clear blue winter skies. I saw the plane land earlier and I know there are folks coming over both on the plane and the ferry to take part. Personally I have trained with my usual level of foresight doing my first run for 6 months last Tuesday :-/

Of course this is not the only event of its kind on Tiree there is the annual 10k, which I sadly missed this year as I pulled my Achilles tendon :-(, a round island sponsored cycle in March this year, and ‘Team Tiree‘ get off island for various events through the year.

Although this winter 10K is organised by Craig, many of the island fitness activities are due to Will, runner of ironman races and organiser of the Costa del Muscle training week I took part in in August and other regular island fitness activities (from 9 to 90s!).

Next year Will is branching out and organising residential training camps, one in Majorca (for the warm weather wimps) and one in Tiree next March. The latter starts the week after the next Tiree Tech Wave, so you could come for a weekend of sitting around hacking technology followed by another of shedding flab and toning muscle!

The war in the west

Posted on October 13, 2012 by alan

Just got back from the book launch for “Tiree: War among the Barley and Brine“. Organised by An Iodhlann and the Islands Book Trust.

Mike Hughes, one of the authors, gave a talk and there were ex-service men connected with Tiree and their families present. One man was the son of the pilot of one of the two Halifaxes which crashed into each other over the airfield on a cloudy day – a father he had never met as his mother was only 4 months pregnant at the time.

I hadn’t realised that it was from Tiree that the weather reports came in that set the timetable for D-Day. The meteorological squadrons are unsung heroes of the war, flying far out into the Atlantic, in conditions where all other planes were grounded, to get the long-range weather data that is so easy to gather now-a-days from satellites. Sadly the airman who had made the crucial weather observations for D-Day did not survive the war dying in that same Halifax accident over Tiree.

Neither had I known that Tiree was to be the staging post for the withdrawal of Winston Churchill and the Royal Family had the worst happened and the the German’s invaded Britain. So, before it withdrew to a government in exile in Saskatchewan, the last outpost of British sovereignty would have been … Tiree.

First version of Tiree Mobile Archive app goes live at Wave Classic

Posted on October 13, 2012 by alan

The first release version of the Tiree Mobile Archive app (see “Tiree Going Mobile“) is seeing real use this coming week at the Tiree Wave Classic. As well as historical information, and parts customised for the wind-surfers, it already embodies some interesting design features including the use of a local map There’s a lot of work to do before the full launch next March, but it is an important step.

The mini-site for this Wave Classic version has a simulator, so you can see what it is like online, or download to your mobile … although GPS tracking only works when you are on Tiree 😉

Currently it still has only a small proportion of the archive material from An Iodhlann so still to come are some of the issues of volume that will surely emerge as more of the data comes into the app.

Of course those coming for the Wave Classic will be more interested in the sea than local history, so we have deliberately included features relevant to them, Twitter and news feeds from the Wave Classic site and also pertinent tourist info (beaches, campsites and places to eat … and drink!). This will still be true for the final version of the app when it is released in the sprint — visitors come for a variety of reasons, so we need to offer a broad experience, without overlapping too much with a more tourism focused app that is due to be created for the island in another project.

One crucial feature of the app is the use of local maps. The booklet for the wave classic (below left) uses the Discover Tiree tourist map, designed by Colin Woodcock and used on the island community website and various island information leaflets. The online map (below right) uses the same base layer. The map deliberately uses this rather than the OS or Google maps (although final version will swop to OS for most detailed views) as this wll be familiar as they move between paper leaflets and the interactive map.

In “from place to PLACE“, a collection developed as part of Common Ground‘s ‘Parish Maps‘ project in the 1990s, Barbara Bender writes about the way:

“Post-Renaissance maps cover the surface of the world with an homogeneous Cartesian grip”

Local maps have their own logic not driven by satellite imagery, or military cartography¹; they emphasise certain features, de-emphasise others, and are driven spatially less by the compass and ruler and more by the way things feel ‘on the ground’. These issues of space and mapping have been an interest for many years², so both here and in my walk around Wales next year I will be aiming to ‘reclaim the local map within technological space’.

In fact, the Discover Tiree map, while stylised and deliberately not including roads that are not suitable for tourists, is very close to a ‘standard map’ in shape, albeit at a slightly different angle to OS maps as it is oriented³ to true North whereas OS maps are oriented to ‘Grid North’ (the problems of representing a round earth on flat sheets!). In the future I’d like us to be able to deal with more interpretative maps, such as the mural map found on the outside of MacLeod’s shop. Or even the map of Cardigan knitted onto a Cardigan knitted as part of the 900 year anniversary of the town.

Technically this is put together as an HTML5 site to be cross-platform,, but … well let’s say some tweaks needed⁴. Later on we’ll look to wrapping this in PhoneGap or one of the other HTML5-to-native frameworks, but for the time being once you have bookmarked to the home page on iOS looks pretty much like an app – on Android a little less so, but still easy access … and crucially works off-line — Tiree not known for high availability of mobile signal!

The ‘ordnance‘ in ‘Ordnance Survey‘ was originally about things that go bang![back]
For example, see “Welsh Mathematician walks in Cyberspace” and “Paths and Patches – patterns of geognosy and gnosis”.[back]
A lovely word, originally means to face East as early Mappa Mundi were all arranged with the East at the top.[back]
There’s a story, going cross browser on mobile platform reminds me so much of desktop web design 10 years ago, on the whole iOS Safari behave pretty much like desktop ones, but Android is a law unto itself!.[back]

Walking Wales

Posted on September 21, 2012 by alan

As some of you already know, next year I will be walking all around Wales: from May to July covering just over 1000 miles in total.

Earlier this year the Welsh Government announced the opening of the Wales Coastal Path a new long distance footpath around the whole coast of Wales. There were several existing long distance paths covering parts of the coastline, as well as numerous stretches of public footpaths at or near the coast. However, these have now been linked, mapped and waymarked creating for the first time, a continuous single route. In addition, the existing Offa’s Dyke long distance path cuts very closely along the Welsh–English border, so that it is possible to make a complete circuit of Wales on the two paths combined.

As soon as I heard the announcement, I knew it was something I had to do, and gradually, as I discussed it with more and more people, the idea has become solid.

This will not be the first complete periplus along these paths; this summer there have been at least two sponsored walkers taking on the route. However, I will be doing the walk with a technology focus, which will, I believe, be unique.

The walk has four main aspects:

personal — I am Welsh, was born and brought up in Cardiff, but have not lived in Wales for over 30 years. The walk will be a form of homecoming, reconnecting with the land and its people that I have been away from for so long. The act of encircling can symbolically ‘encompass’ a thing, as if knowing the periphery one knows the whole. Of course life is not like this, the edge is just that, not the core, not the heart. As a long term ex-pat, a foreigner in my own land, maybe all I can hope to do is scratch the surface, nibble at the edges. However, also I always feel most comfortable as an outsider, as one at the margins, so in some ways I am going to the places where I most feel at home. I will blog, audio blog, tweet and generally share this experience to the extent the tenuous mobile signal allows, but also looking forward to periods of solitude between sea and mountain.

practical — As I walk I will be looking at the IT experience of the walker and also discuss with local communities the IT needs and problems for those at the edges, at the margins. Not least will be issues due to the paucity of network access both patchy mobile signal whilst walking and low-capacity ‘broadband’ at the limits of wind-beaten copper telephone wires — none of the mega-capacity fibre optic of the cities. This will not simply be fact-finding, but actively building prototypes and solutions, both myself (in evenings and ‘days off’) and with others who are part of the project remotely or joining me for legs of the journey¹. Geolocation and mobile based applications will be a core part of this, particularly for the walkers experience, but local community needs likely to be far more diverse.

philosophical — Mixed with personal reflections will be an exploration of the meanings of place, of path, of walking, of nomadicity and of locality. Aristotle’s school of philosophy was called the Peripatetic School because discussion took place while walking; over two thousand years later Wordsworth’s poetry was nearly all composed while walking; and for time immemorial routes of pilgrimage have been a focus of both spiritual service and personal enlightenment. This will build on some of my own previous writings in particular past keynotes² on human understanding of space, and also wider literature such as Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful “Wanderlust“. This reflection will inform the personal blogging, and after I finish I will edit this into a book or account of the journey.

research³ — the practical outcomes will intersect with various personal research interests including social empowerment, interaction design and algorithmics⁴. For the walker’s experience, I will be effectively doing a form of action research!. This will certainly include how to incorporate local maps (such as tourists town plans) effectively into more large-scale experiences, how ‘crowdsourced’ route knowledge can augment more formal digital and paper resources, data synchonisation to deal with disconnection, and data integration between diverse sources. In addition I am offering myself as a living lab so that others can use my trip as a place to try out their own sensors and instrumentation⁵, information systems, content authoring, ethnographic practices, community workshops, etc. This may involve simply asking me to use things, coming for a single meeting or day, or joining me for parts of the walk.

If any of this interests you, do get in touch. As well as research collaborations (living lab or supporting direct IT goals) any help in managing logistics, PR, or finding sources of funding/sponsorship for basic costs, most welcome.

I’ll get a dedicated website, Facebook page, twitter account, and charity sponsorship set up soon … watch this space!

Coding whilst walking is something I have thought about (but not done!) for many years, but definitely inspired more recently by Nick the amazing cycling programmer who came to the Spring Tiree Tech Wave.[back]
“Welsh Mathematician Walks in Cyberspace“, and “Paths and Patches: patterns of geognosy and gnosis“.[back]
I tried to think of a word beginning with ‘p’ for research, but failed![back]
As I tagged this post I found I was using nearly all my my most common tags — I hadn’t realised quite how much this project cuts across so many areas of interest.[back]
But with the “no blood rule”: if I get sensor sores, the sensors go in the bin 😉 [back]