The past few weeks have reminded me that failure is a part of everything we do. Whether it’s in our professional lives or personal pursuits, from breaking an application to playing a game incorrectly and not winning, failure happens. The term ‘failure’ sounds harsh, but for me, it is about becoming comfortable with it and […]

Estimated reading time: < 1 minute. It’s been a busy, but rewarding, week at work and home. In the last 24 hours The Lego Group have published two personal videos documenting my sight loss disability and love for building with Braille bricks.

I had the pleasure of attending the 2025 PHP UK Conference in London on 19th of February. The speakers were amazing, and each session gave us practical tips on the challenges we face as software developers and the cutting-edge tech being developed by other developers. The conference had two tracks concurrently running most of the […]

When I went to university, we didn’t have lecture recording. To be honest, I’ll admit that when I went to university, the ‘AV kit’ in a room was an overhead projector and a chalk board.  I struggled with lectures.  They were often boring to my 18 year old self and …

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Over the last five years I have written personal blog posts detailing my traumatic sight loss journey. To help others better understand the significant changes in my vision I also created a series of interactive simulations (H5P files).

Wikipedia at 24 “With more than 250 million views each day, Wikipedia is an invaluable educational resource”.[1] In light of Wikipedia turning 24 years this week (January 15th), and the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh turning 9 years old this week too, this post is to examine where we are with Wikipedia today in light […]

This is my reflection on my 2024. It’s for me but you can come along for a few minutes. First reflection, why have I not blogged more this year!  Simple answer its been hectic but I feel like I could have reflected on a more regular basis the 12 month journey. Second reflection, what a […]

AI is getting more accessible (as in more easily available or pushed-down-our-throat, depending on your perspective).  My home Windows 11 laptop now has the ‘free’ version of copilot on it, in the taskbar, pretty obviously it’s also available in the Bing search and I’m expecting Apple Intelligence to drop onto …

A user group is a great way to get the latest product gossip from the supplier and more importantly other institutions. They are great ways to network, get inspiration from peers and generally gauge where we are in the current implementation compared to others (plus free pastries).The Canvas UK & Ireland user group was hosted […]

Estimated reading time: 4 minutesThe University of Edinburgh’s popular Teaching Matters blog was successfully migrated from a standalone WordPress instance created in 2016 to the Academic Blogging Service’s WordPress service. This short post focuses on the technical challenges, new features and support/security benefits.