Posts

I’ve been using WordPress for at least two decades. During that time, I’ve become intimately acquainted with its quirks, and mostly indulgent of them. A couple of years ago, though, I realised that I’d stopped blogging. The more significant WordPress updates - namely the block editor - had introduced a lot of friction. It was taking me 20 minutes to draft a post that should have taken only 10. Also, I noticed clients grumbling about WordPress a lot more. Although frameworks like Genesis and GeneratePress made it easier, they also added another layer (and learning curve) on top of WordPress. And keeping plugins up-to-date was a part-time job. ...

Although syncing your Zotero Library ensures you have a cloud-based backup, it’s also a good idea to schedule independent backups. Why am I giving you extra work to do? Well, if you accidentally delete a bunch of items in Zotero just before it syncs, your empty version is copied to the Zotero servers. This is a fairly unlikely scenario, but it’s not one you’d want to encounter. In this post, I’ll explain how to back up your Zotero Library, and then outline some methods for restoring your items in different scenarios. ...

I recently rummaged through some old blog posts and found this literary meme. After a gap of over a decade, I’m giving it another go. Literature was my refuge in 2025, so I’m hoping this will be easy … THE RULES: Using only books you have read this year, answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. Describe yourself: Determined by Robert Sapolsky How do you feel: Lost in Thought by Zena Hitz ...

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is whether it’s possible for EndNote users to switch easily to Zotero. Yes, it is! Many of the tutorials focus on exporting your library in RIS format. Although straightforward, this method doesn’t retain your PDF attachments, Groups, or formatting. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the XML method. XML is a more sophisticated file format that’s readable by many tools. You need to follow the instructions precisely, but you’ll get a much better result. ...

I often meet researchers who are unhappy with their bibliographic referencing tool, but are put off by the potential faff. They imagine it would be as much fun as changing banks. Well, if you’re thinking of moving from Mendeley to Zotero, I have good news: it’s very easy. There are two main methods. Let’s look at them in turn. Method 1 - Export a RIS file from Mendeley A RIS file is a format that allows citation tools to exchange data. ...

Google’s NotebookLM is an AI-powered research assistant that helps you analyse your own content in almost any format, including Google Docs, PDFs, videos, and audio files. You create virtual notebooks for each topic or research area, then upload relevant documents. NotebookLM creates a custom dataset (or searchable knowledge base) from those files that you can then query. Unlike other chatbots, the responses are based on the content that you provided. And those responses include citations to the original passages - you know exactly where that answer has come from. The other big advantage of NotebookLM is that it can handle up to fifty 500,000-word documents. That’s a total of 25m words! Even if you’re a prolific note-taker like me, you’d struggle to exceed its capacity. ...

Although I have mixed feelings about the advent of AI, improved transcription tools have made my life a lot easier. Dictating rather than typing is much better for my creaky body, and it’s incredibly quick to generate high quality transcripts and captions for videos. A few years ago, it would take me almost a week to transcribe the content for an online course - now it’s less than an hour. ...

When I did my PhD, I had notes in about 15 different places. I mostly got away with it, because I was younger and had the energy to charge around the house in pursuit of a specific source. Nowadays, I have to adopt a more dignified approach. Fortunately, Readwise is here to help me. Readwise makes it easy to capture, organise, and revisit highlights from whatever you’re reading, whether that’s ebooks, articles, or physical books. You can also add comments while you highlight, so you’re less likely to forget those important insights. ...

I always start with good intentions when I’m reading: “This time, I’ll take careful notes as I go along, rather than imagining I’ll somehow remember the important bits.” In reality, I’m trying to balance a cup of tea and book, so can’t possibly manage my writing materials, too. Happily, AudioPen has solved at least one of my problems. AudioPen is an AI-based app that turns your voice notes into structured, edited text. Any repetitions or ums and ahhs are automatically eliminated, and it adds all the punctuation. That two-minute ramble is turned into a perfectly respectable paragraph. You can then organise your transcribed notes with folders and tags. For instance, you might have a folder for a specific research project, then a tag for each related book or article you read. It’s not quite hands-free, but using AudioPen can be less disruptive than physically writing. There are well-known benefits to using pen and paper, but recording and transcribing a voice note is better than not making any notes at all. ...

When I talk to academics about LinkedIn, the most common word I hear is “grubby,” swiftly followed by “timesink”. Although networking is vital for most of us, these platforms are designed to keep us clicking like eejits all day long. You don’t get funding for reaching an impressive number of likes, and it’s easy to lose half a day when you intended to spend just five minutes. In this post, I’ll explain some tactics for making the most of LinkedIn without letting it gobble up your precious time or your soul. ...