Tuesday, September 6

I started my year’s teaching today with the first exciting episode of CMS. I promised that today I would give the only lecture of the course and that from tomorrow everyone would do rather than watch. I began with a question and noted that one third of the class had a lot of previous WordPress experience, one third had done “some” before, and one third knew nothing at all.

I prepared myself for a bumpy journey.

I began with a roadmap that I had created yesterday, in the form of a Powerpoint slide show using the new, official Arcada template. I then explained the basic principles of WordPress and finally I got everyone to log into wordpress.com and look at the administration panel. One third already had accounts, one third created accounts in two minutes, and one third got lost.

Ah, turbulence, and so soon after take-off, I thought.

In the afternoon I had a thesis tutorial with someone whose original plans had collapsed through no fault of their own. We started again and mapped out a possible thesis question based around the cultural and economic changes resulting from the success of Spotify and people’s willingness to stop owning music and start renting it.

Finally I clarified a few house rules about the definition of a thesis project and left for home.

At 19:00 I left on a long constitutional walk through the woods and down the long path towards the ring road. As I loop back past the sports hall and back onto the east side of the ring road, I can see right under the two bridges that carry the road over the pedestrian path. If you turn left between the two bridges you end up on an island with a bus stop. If you walk straight on and turn right at the end you walk towards Prisma. I walk straight on.

All the while Frank Ocean is singing, shouting, rapping and mumbling his way through his new album Blond which I will decide might qualify as album of the year. It certainly doesn’t make things easy for the listener but on the second time through it begins to make a powerful impression.