Bitterjug’s blog

Karen called me a gardener a month ago at Schumacher college, because I had found my garden. I replied that we were not real gardeners until we had eaten from our garden. That time has come. I

I recently gave a talk at Schumacher College, as part of my Certificate in Education course there, on free and open source software, the Creative Commons, wikis and ending up with Wikipedia. Copyleft licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons share-alike encourage creative people to share their work for use and expansion by others, and the results are sometimes breathtaking (think of the GNU/Linux operating system, for example).

I give all my photos on flickr.com a Creative Commons license that enables people to use them as long as they cite me as the original photographer. Recently I got a surprise email from another flickr user saying he had chosen to use one of my photos in a book he has created. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been writing a load of stuff about serious issues here lately; it’s time for a bit of fun. Since I have a YooChube account now (since the garden video) I am able to upload odd bits of video I might find on my hard disk. Here, thanks to Jerome for taking it, is a movie of Nicolas, Mathilde and me doing an unrehearsed stealing jam in a big mall in Rennes.

Sunday evening I watched Escape From Suburbia. A Peak Oil movie with, reportedly, a more upbeat message than The End Of Suburbia (which I haven not seen and, probably won’t be rushing out to watch).

If this is upbeat, I need syncopation.
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I have decided that my notebook is a cool place and I would like to visit it more often. In particular I’d like to go read it sometimes and not just write in it. I opened it today, looking for a list of questions that I remember writing on a train going somewhere, and there in front of me was a page containing the words “The Story Of Stuff” with a double box around it pointed to by an arrow labeled “website & animated movie”.


Anyone who knows me will recognise so many reasons why this appeals to me: the hand-drawn sketchy animation, stick men who look disturbingly like the bj.c man, and the story of production consumption and disposal of products in our consumer society that is weighing so heavily on my mind these days. It’s 20 minutes and its great, make time, go watch it.

After my divorce and my parents dying in the early Noughties, I went to Kenya as a volunteer, party to have the experience of doing some sort of service but mainly to learn stuff, about myself and about the world.
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Word has reached me that some of you (Sophia) were hoping to read something here about Cambridge. This entry is about why it hasn’t happened yet.  Read the rest of this entry »

These are my last few days of work at the beeb. Just as well. It’s standing room only on the trains between Cambridge and Kings Cross. And yet, somehow, I can’t get the hang of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to a family member for telling me about the “I escaped from Lowestoft” group on Facebook. The description says

A group for all people who have moved away from Lowestoft for whatever reason; to reminiss and generally say what they want about it.

What do people want to say about Lowestoft? Read the rest of this entry »