gwallter

  • I’ve been reading Teju Cole’s celebrated novel of 2011, Open city, set mainly in central New York.  It’s an unusual piece of writing.  The book captures the experience of Julius, a young Nigerian-American (Cole himself being one) who’s in training…

  • Technical innovation is a strange thing.  We tend to think that the growth of new and improved technologies is a constant.  Engineers, we imagine, are always searching for better ways of organising the way things work.  And, beyond perfecting existing…

  • Yn ei cholofn yn Barn yn ddiweddar tynnodd Catrin Evans ein sylw at y rhaglenni radio hynny sy’n trafod pynciau diwylliannol sylweddol trwy gyfrwng sgwrs neu ddialog.  Ei hesiamplau yw In our time gyda Melvyn Bragg ar Radio 4 a…

  • We’re back in the Netherlands: the first time we’ve broken out of our bleak little island for over three years.  It’s a relief to be in a country where most things seem to work, as they once did in Britain:…

  • Great artists, we like to think, pursue their vision and practise their craft sustained by an inner self-belief.  Beethoven, Picasso or George Eliot may feel moments of blockage or uncertainty, but their confidence carries them through to completion, and they’ll…

  • This month gwallter is ten years old, and this is his 598th blog.  It seems a good time to look back and reflect on his progress so far. When I started in 2013, blogs were still quite fashionable, and I…

  • Y peth mwyaf trist am ein taith gerdded llynedd ar hyd Llwybr Afon Gwy, o Gas-gwent i Bumlumon, oedd Afon Gwy.  Hynny yw, cyflwr amgylcheddol Afon Gwy.  Y gwir blaen – gwir na allai neb ei wadu erbyn heddiw –…

  • One of the pleasures of researching the history of the simple human act of walking is that, just like a good walk, it takes you in unexpected directions.  Recently, while considering the prehistory of walking as an artistic activity, I…

  • On Sundays I would stroll in the fields and woods, learning the various parts and organs of any flowers I could gather, and then trying how many of them belonged to any of the orders described in my book.  Great…

  • There’s been a lot of talk lately about advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), based on the storing and analysis of vast reservoirs of online words (the so-called ‘large language model’).  The publication of ChatGPT, which can…

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