It’s been a week.
I’ve been out of action. Last Thursday we held a showcase event of student work, and as we were setting up, clearing the room, one of the tables, with the top folded down snagged one of the floor sockets as we were moving it and tipped forward, the wheels making it run away from itself and come crashing down on my foot.
We quickly righted it and my foot didn’t seem to be too sore after the initial pain and shock, but as the evening wore on it started to hurt more and swell up until by the end of the event, asking my wife to pick me up, it was becoming excruciating and we decided to drive to the Emergency Room. The x-ray suggested that luckily it wasn’t in fact broken, but badly bruised and inflamed, she gave me ibuprofen, and an ice-pack and sent me home in a plastic boot.
It’s been a weird few days, I’ve been resting with my foot elevated, taking more ibuprofen and icing it regularly, the bruise has come out, right across the bridge of my foot and it isn’t easy to walk or move around. I didn’t get any leaf collecting done…
Instead I’ve been reading and watching tv, my head is a bit cloudy from the painkillers and anti-inflammatories, but I’m okay and just hoping that it heals in time for Wednesday when I’m suppose to be flying to Los Angeles with a group of my students. I’m making progress, but heading to Hollywood isn’t going to be quite as I had hoped.
That’s why this issue is a little short. I’m just packing my bags and sorting a few things for the week.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
All this rather knocked me out, but thinking about the trip, it’s great to have this opportunity to take students out to LA, we’re hoping that they’ll meet interesting people, share their work and get an idea of the sorts of things that are happening in the entertainment tech industry.
Sometimes in academia you can feel a long way from the thing that you’re actually teaching, so it’s good to go to events and conferences to see what’s going on. You can see where the energy is, who’s doing what and what’s new. I have suspicion with this conference that it is going to be a little haywire, there is so much happening, there are so many new opportunities.
Just reading through the program you can see everything from AI generated writing, image making and editing, immersive XR, hype around NFT’s and Blockchain, essentially how filmmakers and content-creators are creating assets that exist together, perhaps in a movie, but also have thousands of lives as digital art, shareable works, distributed and available for remix, and repackaging in games, tv, social media, you name it. It is going to be interesting.
Lost and Found
Just a few things for you.
One of my dear colleagues flagged Lingostar which is an AI driven language learning conversation platform. You can chat with a bot on a range of topics and prompts, either by typing or speaking into your machine. It gently corrects spelling and grammar, keeps asking questions and gives you interesting and thoughtful (?) replies. Some bots I’ve tried seem to ignore your responses, you feel like you’re being half-listened to, like a distracted person at a party who really wants to talk to another person across the room. But Lingostar seems to attentive and reactive, building on conversation rather than just moving onto the next prompt. I will try it with my students and see what they think.
This Substack is all about how famous people take notes and is fascinating, it isn’t a productivity-based blog with tips, but a history of research and writing, taking us deep down into people’s minds through these stories of creativity.
The BBC sound effects archive has over 33,000 sounds, it is easy to search through and find the sound effects that you need. Students keep asking me for these sorts of sites and this is possibly the best.
Another shout out for unsplash, it continues to provide great images provided by amazing photographers that you can use for free. If you need new backgrounds, then you can search via format and orientation.
Thank you
A few of my students are laid low by Covid, it is still hanging around like..er…a nasty cold, which is what it is I suppose. I’m going to wear a mask on the airplane and in the airport if I’m around lots of people. Rates are low in the US, but it is still sweeping through.
I’m still feeling sore, walking around is hard and I’ll keep taking ibuprofen and lidocaine to reduce the swelling. My bruise is changing color, blue, green, yellow. Sorry, it’s a bit yucky to describe.
It sort of fits with Halloween, which was a bit muted this year, I was going to do the rounds with the kids but stayed home and gave out candy instead, some great costumes, lots of cardboard used.
So, hope that you’re well, apologies for getting this newsletter out at a strange time, although it now Friday, I may have to pop an extra issue up for you.
Take care, take it easy.
Get well soon!