• The Land of the Lune (first edition, 2008; second edition, 2010) is a 260-page guide (including over 200 photographs) to the region within the Lune watershed.
• Fifty Weeks Running: Ruminations of a Rusty Runner (2011) is a sort of on-line diary reflecting on running (and other things).
• Rainy Day Rambles in the Lake District (2015) is a set of ‘sketches’ about the Lake District, revised as Ramblings, see below.
• The Wildlife of the Lune Region (2013 - 2016) describes a series of explorations of the wildlife of the region within the Lune catchment.
• Saunterings: Walking in North-West England (2018 - ) is a set of reflections based upon walks about North-West England.
• Ramblings (2024 - ) is a revised version of Rainy Day Rambles in the Lake District (2015), mentioned above.
In order to motivate my explorations of northern England I have set myself various challenges:
• To run coast-to-coast (Flamborough Head to St Bees Head), 200 miles in 6 days (1993)
• To reach the 60 highest Lake District peaks in the 60 days before my 60th birthday (2005)
• To reach the 70 highest peaks within the Lune watershed in the 70 days before my 70th birthday (2015)
• To run every single day in the year before stopping running for good, at 72 (2017)
Before all this focus on the local and natural, I had a different life concerned with the international and artificial. I was employed in the Department of Computing at the Universities of Leeds, Melbourne and Lancaster and then as professor of knowledge-based systems in the School of Education at the University of Leeds and director of the Computer Based Learning Unit. During that time I became the first president of the International Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education, on which topic I published over one hundred papers and authored, or co-authored, seven books (for which, the afore-mentioned Society deemed in 2018 that a 'lifetime achievement award' was appropriate), including:
• Learning and Teaching with Computers: Artificial Intelligence in Education (1983)
• Artificial Intelligence and Human Learning (1988)
• Computational Mathetics: Towards a Science of Learning Systems Design (1995)
If you wish to contact me for any reason please send an email to johnselfdrakkar@gmail.com.
