I’m inspired to try blogging more often using the day/week notes format I’ve seen from Dave Briggs and others. I want to take the pressure off myself, of needing to think of a big theme for a post and go back to using this site as a scratchpad. So it’s back to the diary format. I am occasionally journaling with the enjoyable Diarium as well, for stuff I won’t necessarily share with the world.
I’ve simplified the home page of this website as well as my about me page, and might still switch over to a default view of the latest posts.
Meanwhile, I post and chat often at Bluesky, a good place to find me. There are ever more interesting people drifting over to Bluesky now. It has achieved that critical mass of activity that means there’s always something new (and that I have a new addiction to manage). People are posting about farming and agroecology, food systems, biodiversity, nature connection and land use – I’ve tried to pull together some of the best accounts, or noteworthy people or organisations that need encouragement, into a Starter Pack, a pre-packaged set of follows to help new people get started on the network. It also includes two feed recommendations, one tracking #FoodStudies and #Agroecology content on Bluesky. Make a start by signing up with my Starter Pack here (you’ll automatically follow me).
My Master’s degree started this week. Last week was induction, including a useful postgraduate induction and an opportunity to meet my cohort, a group of people I look forward to knowing better. We’ve already got a WhatsApp group. No hanging around. Studying at Exeter will be good for my health, including my cardiovascular health – it’s on a hill, so it’s uphill to the university from Exeter St Davids, and then uphill from one building to another. So far I’m not entirely sure where the hill ends. Exeter is a beautifully green campus, with spectacular sequoia and lush vegetation amongst the buildings. The Pret in the Forum does a decent filter coffee for 99p.
First lecture was on Monday, for an optional module I chose for this term, Global Systems Thinking. I’m writing up notes for that separately, inspired by Doug Belshaw, but for the moment I’ve been marshalling my thoughts and working out the best way to take notes in lectures and seminars, capture information and organise it. So far it’s a spiral-bound notepad and class notes using a helpful template in Notion. I’m using Raindrop to save bookmarks from the web. Over the years I’ve used Diigo and Pocket, the latter seeming to have given up altogether on offering useful functionality.
The notepad thing – I think I prefer a cheap, nothing-special notepad now. I took a beautiful new Moleskine with me to induction week, and I couldn’t bear to write in it. Starting this degree really is a big thing for me, but I don’t need to commemorate it with expensive stationery, it feels like putting more pressure on myself to craft a work of art rather than just get all the things written down.
I’m going to the LandAlive sustainable food and farming conference on Saturday 23 November.