https://www.strangeaeons.org/ Recent content on Strange Aeons Hugo en Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:48:11 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/slashes/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:48:11 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/slashes/ The slash project is an attempt to build a set of commonly named and understood pages that sites can choose to implement, or not. As I already had an about page I’ve decided to include some of the other slash pages on this site. One of the interesting aspects of slash pages is the idea that site have certain kinds of information at certain, commonly named, locations. Whilst this is perhaps not Semantic Web levels of automatically processable information, it should make it a little easier to discover authentic personal human websites amongst all of the corporate and AI slop. https://www.strangeaeons.org/interests/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:31:19 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/interests/ Alcohol: Beer & Single Malt Artificial Intelligence Astronomy Books Cyberpunk Computer Science Electronics Food Forteana Gaming: Boardgames, Videogames, & Roleplaying Games Gardening Martial Arts Modular Synthesis Movies Music Programming Science Fiction TV Woodwork https://www.strangeaeons.org/ai/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:13:07 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/ai/ This slash page is meant to cover how I use AI. But I don’t use AI. Not really. I’ll get to that in a moment. Instead this is more of a little page about how we need to find things we want to do, then practise them and get good., rather than letting the machines take away the things we enjoy. So, despite being an AI researcher for a few decades now, studying Knowledge Representation, Reasoning, and Communication, all under the auspices of “Argumentation Theory” and “Computational Argumentation”, I don’t use AI. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/email-management/ Sun, 11 Jan 2026 22:49:04 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/email-management/ After bumping into an old colleague in the supermarket before christmas, during which I mentioned how I hadn’t had a reply from them to an earlier email, we got to talking about email management approaches. I think I sent my first real email sometime in September of 1997. That said I’m pretty sure we sent emails on the Acorn BBC Master machines in our IT class at high school. I keenly recall the teacher being really pleased with the ability to send “electronic mail” between computers in the school. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/contacting-me/ Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:51:51 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/contacting-me/ Methods If, as a student, you need to contact me, then please consider the following order of preference for communication methods: Timetabled Contact Hours - If I’m currently teaching you on a module then the best way to ensure there is time devoted to you is to turn up to the lecture or lab, or both. I’ve already got the time put aside for exactly this eventuality. As it is face-to-face then we can efficiently get to the root of the problem and hopefully solve it. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/commenting-policy/ Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:08:00 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/commenting-policy/ This site has no facility for direct comments because I feel that easy, consequence-free, ill-considered, commentary and discussion has coarsened public discussion. I think an element of the problem is a mixture of immediacy and anonymity, combined with a pathological tendency in many people towards reactionary anger. If people can react quickly, and in the moment, especially without consequence, then I think people are more likely to, in the best case, use perhaps ill-considered wording, and in the worst case, to fully indulge their worst inclinations. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/academic-time/ Wed, 07 Jan 2026 14:02:54 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/academic-time/ Like many of my teaching related posts, this has been spurred by interactions with students over the last couple of years. This post is specifically meant to answer the question of “what does an academic do with their time?” given that, at least for some students, there is very little idea of what goes on at a university, outside of timetabled classes. First a caveat. This post won’t be applicable to every member of academic staff at every university, and definitely doesn’t apply outside of the UK, and Scotland specifically. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/code-commenting/ Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:02:15 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/code-commenting/ Students regularly ask me about whether they should “comment their code”. Partly this is because they are taught to comment their code when they are learning their first programming language or going through their first programming course. The problem is that we don’t explain why we teach commenting in the way we do, when we should stop commenting in that way, and how our commenting behaviour should evolve as we become more proficient programmers. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/honours-projects-ideas/ Fri, 19 Sep 2025 22:02:15 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/honours-projects-ideas/ Each year students invent many excellent software engineering projects that they hope will form the basis for their honours dissertation. The main problem with these ideas usually is that whilst they are great software engineering projects, they are quite often fairly weak as academic projects. The main cause of this weakness is the lack of connection to wider research, usually stemming from the lack of a clear research objective or questions to answer. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/irc/ Thu, 24 Jul 2025 11:58:00 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/irc/ I’ve recently returned to IRC after a multi-year hiatus. Twenty years ago I hung out there a fair amount, then as life took its various twists and turns, I used it less and less frequently, until I’d not logged in for a good decade or so. My last serious usage was when I was involved in running the Tayside Linux User Group (TLUG) back in the mid-noughties and early teens. Not to be confused with the Tokyo Linux Users Group who are also referred to as TLUG (or the Thuringer one for that matter). https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/research-process/ Fri, 06 Jun 2025 17:45:00 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/research-process/ A recent conversation with a student led me to reflect on my approach to research and writing. These notes might prove useful to someone, somewhere, perhaps, as an example of one research flow. I daresay others have their own working methods, but this is one I’ve refined over a long period into something that works consistently for me. Nearly all of my work involves either thinking and writing. As an academic, these two practices, thinking and reading, revolve around both my own ideas and the published ideas of others. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/argumentation-quick-start/ Fri, 06 Jun 2025 16:49:00 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/argumentation-quick-start/ So you’ve decided to do a project or placement that will feature Argumentation Theory and you’re wondering where to start. Helping bootstrap your knowledge of Argumentation Theory is the point of this post. I’ll likely develop the content over time, as new resources and papers become available, or as my own foci within argumentation changes. I’ll also intersperse thrid party resources with, probably reasonable opinionated summaries of specific topies, just so that if we work together, you have an idea of my position on things. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/viva-exams/ Sat, 03 May 2025 11:58:00 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/viva-exams/ So you have a viva coming up for your honours or masters dissertation, and you’re a bit worried. Well that’s OK. This here page is meant to answer some of your questions regarding the following: what it’s for, what to expect, and what to do in preparation. Purpose The main purpose of your viva is to establish that you are the author of the work that you’ve submitted. This doesn’t mean that anybody thinks that you’ve engaged in any academic misconduct, just that the best way to confidently dismiss any suspicions is by having a conversation with you face-to-face. https://www.strangeaeons.org/about/ Sat, 18 Sep 2021 17:13:07 +0000 https://www.strangeaeons.org/about/ Just a small place on the web for some of my writing, thoughts, and ideas, that don’t otherwise fit into all of the other venues available to me. This time I think it is worth starting with a blank slate so I’ve archived past posts. Partly because re-reading the juvenalia of older writing is a mistake when you’re revamping a site, but also because my interests have changed over the years and I want to concentrate on all new essay about my current interests. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/honours-projects-miscellanea/ Fri, 17 Sep 2021 16:10:13 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/honours-projects-miscellanea/ Between when I started lecturing back in 2006/07, and now, I’ve supervised upwards of a hundred undergraduate dissertations and upwards of fifty masters dissertations. So I think that I might have done this job for long enough to learn a thing or two. I am still determing exactly what that learning might include, but here are a bunch of important things to consider when doing your dissertation with me. It’s currently more of a brain dump than a considered set of guidance, and represents a bunch of things that we usually cover early in the supervision process, so it should be of some use: https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/interpreting-your-grades/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 13:20:43 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/interpreting-your-grades/ My institution has historically done well in attracting students from the EU and the rest of the world. More recently my focus on developing and teaching international online programmes means that the proportion of rest of the world students has been increasing (whilst the proportion of EU students has declined somewhat). As a result a good number of my students have little or no experience of the UK educational system and bring many expectations with them from their experiences everywhere else. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/double-operator-tricks/ Fri, 06 Aug 2021 16:56:43 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/double-operator-tricks/ Here are two, occasionally useful, Javascript tricks that I recently discovered. They both involve doubling up operators. !! Doubling up the standard logical NOT/negation operator ‘!’, into ‘!!’ will turn most values into booleans, i.e. cast to a boolean. So if you quickly want to pass a numeric or string value into a function that actually requires a boolean value as input then this is one way to do that. For example: https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/online-teaching-gear/ Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:13:53 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/online-teaching-gear/ The first lockdown came too late to really affect my teaching. I had a few ad hoc online seminars with smaller groups of students, but mostly I had time to think and prepare for September. Whilst this was a bit of a risk, there was always the chance that the viral situation was over by then and we were back to face-to-face teaching on campus, I knew that I also had a summer of research seminars, virtual conferences, and a new online-only degree programme was launching that I’d spent the last couple of years putting together. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/online-teaching-during-covid/ Wed, 04 Aug 2021 15:39:23 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/online-teaching-during-covid/ It’s difficult to avoid the subject of the virus and it’s myriad impact on our lives so I might as well address some of that up front. Lockdown and physical distancing greatly changed the way that my taught classes at Edinburgh Napier proceeded over the last three or four trimesters. It has been a process of change, fraught with challenges at every stage. The shifting ground, and developing expectations from all parties meant that there was rarely a time in the last eighteen months where a decision has been made without a tiny voice in the back of my mind telling my that it is only provisional. https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/2021-08-04_first-post/ Wed, 04 Aug 2021 15:31:41 +0100 https://www.strangeaeons.org/posts/2021-08-04_first-post/ Or perhaps that should be frist post. Just because. Who wants to mess with tradition? What will I talk about here? Oodles of things. Technology, Software Development, and programming will features heavily. Expect some discussion of language (natural and artificial), argument, and dialogue because of my research interests. There will also be some thoughts about teaching and learning, producitivty and getting things done. If I’m inclined I’ll also cover some of my other interests like synths (mostly Moog, Arturia, & Elektron gear), books & reading (mostly sci-fi with a focus on classic/golden age although I keep up with many of the newer genre writers as well), music (mostly jazz with a focus on Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, and Sanders), gardening, and making stuff (electronics, wood and metal work).