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 […]

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 […]

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.
The movie takes for granted that energy prices will rise steeply when oil reaches […]

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 […]

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.

I learned plenty about me, what I like and dislike and what is important to me. […]

I am listening for times when I hear myself saying something like “I want to be a successful ….” or “I feel like such a failure”. According to my theory, these are not conditions of affecting me objectively, they are winning or loosing conditions determined by the rules of the games of life that I find myself playing.

I heard this morning (thanks Vini) that VSO is evacuating all their volunteers from Kenya and suspending its programme until the end of February due to continuing outbreaks of violence and increasing ethnic tension. I’m sending my best wishes to all the volunteers, and especially to Alan and Sara, and to Brady (I don’t know […]

I watched out of the corner of my eye. The diagram was not in itself beautiful, but the procecss by which she put it onto paper was.