Weeknote 22/2025: The value of spontaneity
When the unplanned moments matter most
Hello!
There is something magical about spending time with family and friends that transforms even the most disappointing event into a memorable day. This week I was reminded that the best-laid plans often matter less than the unplanned moments that follow, whether it is walking through Glasgow streets together, sharing popcorn in a darkened cinema or simply being present for each other through the everyday rhythms of exams, work, and travel preparations.
Spending time in Glasgow
It was a bit of a family reunion as my partner, daughter, her boyfriend and I met up at the Ideal Home Show Scotland in Glasgow. It was a new experience for all of us, having never visited a conference focused on home design. Although to me it was eerily reminiscent of BETT without the robots.
I was disappointed to see that there was only one “ideal home” to walk around, rather than the Ikea-style layout I’d envisaged. The layout was also less than ideal as you had to walk through the house, make a U-Turn when you arrived at the bathroom, then fight against the crowds to get back out of the house.
We found a little inspiration for small projects and then turned our attention to perusing the food and drink area of the exhibition. While this was more fun, an indoor farmer’s market wasn’t really a good enough reason to travel across the country. We left after a few hours and walked into the centre of Glasgow together instead.
Many others had travelled to Glasgow to watch the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden. It was a surprising game in that Celtic were well below par and Aberdeen were organised and dogged in defence. Of course, Celtic scored first courtesy of an unfortunate own goal. While we ate a lovely meal at Ask Italian on Port Dundas Road, I tentatively checked the scoreline just as Aberdeen equalised with an equally confounding own goal. Walking back along the Clyde to where our car was parked, I listened as Aberdeen scored four unstoppable penalties to deservedly win their first trophy since 2014 and their first Scottish Cup since 1990.
Spending time in Aberdeen
Our son was pleased to finally finish his National 5 exams and took the remaining few days of exam leave to rest up in preparation for his school’s activity week. Packing for Barcelona needs as much - if not more - preparation and planning than an SQA exam it seems!
While he worked out his travel wardrobe, I learned more about effective accessibility design at the most recent meet-up of the UXNE group. UX designer Joanna Petrie shared her insights into common barriers experienced by those with visual, hearing, motor, speech or cognitive disabilities when navigating websites and what we can do when designing inclusive solutions to improve accessibility for all. In Joanna’s opinion, between 70 and 80% of accessibility issues could be avoided at the design stage if organisations apply the POUR principles:
The audience then had the opportunity to step into the shoes of a user with accessibility needs to identify problems with live websites. We used the Funkify chrome plugin to simulate a variety of symptoms and worked in a small group to collate areas where companies could do better. I’m definitely going to allow my students to explore accessibility more deeply and allow it to inform their practical work next session!
My partner was away for a few days in Edinburgh for SQA central marking, so my son and I made time to watch the final Mission: Impossible film at the cinema. As expected, the stunts were exceptional and, despite the long run time, we both enjoyed ourselves immensely. I’ll not spoil anything of the plot, but I wanted to share a behind-the-scenes feature documenting Tom Cruise achieving a Guinness World Record.
Spending time in cyberspace
I continued my work towards replacing Pocket on my Kobo by diving deeper into Wallabag. This read-it-later service made it very easy to import my Pocket saves, but Read Email Later wasn’t playing nice with Wallabag’s “Save your articles by email” option, causing Wallabag to extract each URL from, for example, a Substack post, and create way too many articles as a result.
Alternatively, Wallabag offers the option to add feeds, which are RSS/Atom URLs. So I decided to investigate further. After a successful first test, I worked through my Gmail filter list and added each newsletter that supported an RSS feed. Immediately, I was able to manually import articles of my choice, although I have noticed that when new articles are posted, the feed counter does not automatically update. The website says “they will be fetched regularly”, but I think I’m going to have to contact Wallabag again to iron out this bug.
It also took a little while to configure access to Wallabag on my Kobo, but I managed it eventually with some support from people who have travelled this path before. I can wholeheartedly recommend plugging it into a computer to edit config files, as this saves a ton of time. Newsletter reading on my Kobo remains the main focus of my teaching professional development, and I’m rebuilding a reading routine to make progress through the unread articles. I also like that I can add tags on the Wallabag site and plan to use this to highlight articles to inform future weeknote and newsletters.
I also continued to slowly grow the Computing Science Education Network, balancing the administrative work with organising departmental teaching resources and family time. This week involved finalising details for our upcoming networking event on 10th June, which required coordinating guests, venue, and logistics while my son wrapped up his exams. I also began planning content for our next monthly newsletter, thinking about how to showcase the diverse pathways available in computing education and encourage collaborative work between local educators.
Perhaps most rewarding was reaching out to my contacts in the tech sector to secure representation for our school careers event on 12th June. There is something deeply satisfying about connecting generous members of my professional network with students at my school, sharing insights that inform future pathways and creating bridges between the industry relationships I've built and the young people I teach every day.
Looking back on the week, what strikes me most is how the meaningful moments weren't necessarily the planned activities, but the times when we were simply present with each other: walking through Glasgow; enjoying an action-packed cinematic experience; supporting each other through work and exams. The exhibitions and technical projects provided the backdrop, but the relationships made it all worthwhile.
Take care and have a good week xx