N’fheadar ar chóir dom seo a scríobh as Gaeilge… Nó dhátheangach?
On parental leave
I’ve gone through a change of pace, starting a six month parental leave from my employment. I joined in on Friday drinks this week, and it was a nice reminder that I work with motivated intelligent people. It was fun. The first week has been “calmly productive”. I found myself uploading thousands of old photos, which I’d planned to do for years now. I cleared out eight month old emails. Spent the afternoon down at the local park after my kids’ school day, which meant a lot to me. We’re in extended lockdown, stay within 5kms of your home. To be honest, I’m enjoying this local living, but I’m missing hugs and banter.
The Artist’s Way
Reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. I first heard of morning pages from Seth Godin, but resparked my interest lately when Tim Ferriss mentioned it in a video about notetaking and journalling. More doing than reading. I’m writing “morning pages” first thing each morning with a cup of coffee. The message of “re-awakening creativity” is speaking to me. “Replenishing creativity with imagery”. Allowed myself to get out pencils and paper and just draw:
The Right Company
Joined Bernadette Jiwa’s Right Company community, and attended a couple of evening zoom calls. Feeling a bit sheepish for not participating more regularly in the community, but I have been dipping in. It’s a pleasure to connect with some likeminded people globally, through the connection of the internet.
What’s magic to me: AI
Part of the Artist’s Way above is to follow “what’s magic to you”. I’m intrigued by neural networks / “artificial intelligence”. An example is OpenAI’s DALL-E project which generates images from text. The images it creates do not already exist. It is creating images, generating art. From the structured data we have of text and audio at Bitesize Irish, what neural nets could I train? What could they produce? I’ve not idea at this point.
Bitesize Irish
Hired a new Community Manager, Emma, and we did a live Q&A on YouTube. We’re experimenting with ways on Bitesize Pobal (our private Irish language learners community) to connect new joiners to help them start to participate. For Bitesize Cúrsaí (online Irish language courses) we’ve created a “foundations” module to help people find more of a “journey” through the courses. Foundations goes then to “social intelligence” and “creative expression”. I love how it’s a way for people to find creative expression through Gaeilge.
Sense of Community
I presented an idea with a neighbour at Limerick Climathon in late 2020 about using community sensing data to help support community conversations. For us, our residential area doesn’t seem to match the needs of its community, with what we perceive to be a high volume of car traffic at speeds that don’t match EU recommended speeds for safety. Thanks to Francesco Pilla @f_pilla and team in UCD, we got 12 WeCount devices (Raspberry Pis running Telraam traffic counting software). We’ve a network of community devices now, and I’ve still a couple more to distribute to neighbours. Check out Limerick on the Telraam map.
TikTok
Twitter is like listening to a hundred people shouting their complaints. TikTok is (currently) like a creative energy that piques my interest (with the downfall that it’s addictive). Apart from watching Scandinavian crime drama on Netflix, I do enjoy indulging in TikTok, and even creating a little bit.
Last updated 20th March 2021. This is a Now page.