Category: Analogue SkillsPage 1 of 2
Here’s a simple experiment. Take a wine glass and place it on a city map. With a pencil, draw around the base. Follow the circle as closely as…
You read that right. No it is not an abbreviation of pack lunch. Clunch is a type of limestone, and one of the wonderful pieces of vocabulary I…
Engineers have announced today some astounding new breakthroughs in their latest version of i. This technology is completely free and open-source.
One of the anchor points for our trip this summer is to catch the start of the Tour de Femmes, which coincides with the end of the Tour…
I am a connoisseur of email-reduction strategies, so I share this for friends and colleagues of mine who I know are struggling with this at the moment. The…
In times gone by, people went to the cinema to stay warm. The movie theatre offers a place of shelter from the elements and also an escape from…
Our nearby allotments are my local source of food and regenerative inspiration. Sharing my thoughts from this weekend’s visit when I was helping with apple pressing. While Bristol…
Today at the University of Bath I am running a workshop on Analogue Skills for Design. This workshop fuses material from my conceptual design teaching with my observations…
Once upon a time the offer of 1000 songs in your pocket – the slogan for the iPod – was so enticing. But in 2014 Apple discontinued the…
On other people’s wrists, on clock towers, outside the jewellers, inside shops, at the station, on the scrolling news, from the position of the sun. Ask someone or…
Take out a piece of paper and draw a sketch of what you can see. You will notice more than you ever would by taking a photograph. Sketching…
There’s a gap between certainty and doubt, and that is being happy not knowing. In this gap is space for discovery, serendipity, delight and the opportunity to grow…
Print out photos of your friends. Stick them on your wall. What are they doing? How can you support them? A regular reminder to give them a call….
Songs to pass the time. Songs of celebration. Songs of nostalgia. Songs that mark the seasons. Songs of work. Travelling songs. Songs that tell a story. Songs of…
Ways of finding north. The position of the sun. The angle of solar panels. The prevailing wind – either live or frozen in the bent and twisted shape…
Anywhere versus somewhere. Contactable versus findable. Interchangeable versus valuable. Stranger versus friend. This analogue skill first emerged for me from asking a simple question. If you have left…
One day I hope this article will be printed in a book. But until then I can be fairly sure that you will be reading it on a…
Today I thought I’d share some of my motivations for the Analogue Skills project. 1 – An engineer’s fascination I am not anti-technology. I’m an engineer. I’m fascinated…
Watch the clouds. Streaming now. Telling a story of past, present and future. Of up there and down here. If you also live on the lump of rock…
What is real-world search, and why might it serve us in the digital world? The promise of a fully connected, digital paradigm is access to all the world’s…
Your loved ones. Your best friends. Your colleagues. Could you call them if you needed to? — This skill is an enabler for leaving the house with your…
Deleting apps and leaving your phone at home could be analogous to dismantling urban highways. I read earlier this week about the research that established a direct link…
Go to the station. Stand in the queue. Look at all the people and wonder where they are going. See leaflets in the rack for places you hadn’t…
I drew this ash tree at Hazel Hill Wood last weekend. Though it rises opposite a bench where I like to have a morning coffee, I have never…
Off-topic, but I feel we rarely capture and talk about moments of grief. Between facilitation sessions today I listened to the final episode of Radio 3’s year-long Composer…
A new month, new good intentions. Just like when I started a new exercise book at school, when I would commit to being extra neat (and then forgetting…
In the midst of lockdown we have created a new household tradition that brings a highlight to the week. On Saturday nights we dress for dinner, enjoy our…
What if you couldn’t look stuff up online? This is a question I keep returning to. One answer is that other people might become a more important source…
Television, television television. Say it a few times in a row and it sounds a bit futuristic, of science fiction even. The ability to capture moving images and…