Something I am not very good at is decoupling the amount of effort I am expected to put in from the output result. That is, my academic contract has a nominal number of hours that I am expected to work and that should serve as a guide for how much I can get done. In the two full years where I have time tracked everything I do for work, I have ended up substantially "in the red"; i.e. I do many more hours than the contract states. How much more?

Lots about contemporary computation stresses availability and _uptime_. It is important, for instance, that the OLH servers for which I have ultimate responsibility stay online. Otherwise, the articles that we publish would not be readable. As a result, various tools, such as "[Uptime Robot](https://uptimerobot.com/)", have emerged that are designed to alert you when a server goes offline.

In 2021 I spent 506 hours answering email. That's less than the 558 that I spent on the task in 2020, but it's still a full 72 days' worth of my time per year. (My nominal contract is seven hours per day, but for an eight-hour day, it's still 63 days.) It's less than some people and more than others. I would like to do less of this as it's not terribly rewarding, so yesterday I read Cal Newport's _A World Without Email_.

I gave my final talk of the year, today, at the University of Leeds, on open access in the humanities disciplines. Perhaps predictably, all of the Q&A centred on open licensing and the concerns from humanists around the misuse of their work. My basic line on all this has shifted over time, but I am more cautious now than I used to be and feel better about somewhat more restrictive CC licenses.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that, today, the 15th December 2021 marks the publication of my eighth academic book: [_Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy_](https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/). The book will be available to buy in print, but it's already available, open access, to [download from the OAPEN library](https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52029). Here's

I mustn't say too much in public about this, for fear of being unprofessional. However, I wanted to jot down a few notes about "being a PhD supervisor" and what it means and what it's like. I am always terrified when my students come up for viva.

Some things we do in life happen once; the first time will be the only and last time. Our births and deaths, of course, are the two key ones. CONTENT WARNING: this post discusses suicide, death, and dying. I am a member of the Swiss organization, Dignitas, which is most well known for its assisted suicide clinic.

One of the basic tenets of digital philosophy is that downloads are non-rivalrous. When I download something it remains accessible to other users to download. But what if this isn't actually true and what if there is a strong disutility premise at work? Bitcoin has not done much for the world, but it does provide a useful reference point for thinking about this.

2021 was another pretty bad pandemic year, in many ways. For those of us with immune system compromise it was alarming to see a near-wholesale return to "normality" among the general population when our lives remained under extreme threat.

In the world of OA publishing, there have been further (not-so)shock waves reverberating this week as Knowledge Unlatched was sold to Wiley.

Today marks a significant milestone for me. All ten of my academic monographs are now – or will be when published – openly accessible and free to download. The books that are not yet out have advance contracts that stipulate open access.