The Alam Clock Lesson READ MORE Beijing and the Great Wall - Our final days in China READ MORE Varanasi City of Gods - Special Edition READ MORE Jawbreaker - Ultimate AI Upscaled 4k edition READ MORE Varanasi - City of the Hindus READ MORE Critical Praise for "Trials & Tea Ceremonies" READ MORE “Countryside walk” – Digital Watercolour READ MORE Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, green tea and finding inner peace READ MORE "The Backroad to Bures" READ MORE Announcing my new book: Trials & Tea Ceremonies: Misadventures in Far Away Places. READ MORE Waterdeep: Dragon Heist | Dungeons & Dragons READ MORE The Storm King's Thunder and the Dragon's Bane READ MORE Basho rewrites: Rime of the Frostmaiden - Defeating Auril, DM's guide and ending READ MORE The Purpose of Travel - Now Published! READ MORE Remembering Catherine READ MORE The day I met the Buddha, and killed him READ MORE Basho's bonus modules: Rime of the Frostmaiden – an Adventure with Pirates READ MORE The Iron Church: Why Most 'AI' Fitness Apps Are Just Marketing (And How I Built One That Actually Works) READ MORE What is Daoism/Taoism? READ MORE Basho rewrites: Rime of the Frostmaiden – Sunblight READ MORE The Iron Church - Why Do People Quit Fitness Training? READ MORE Chan Buddhism, Daoism and Zen - Journey through the East READ MORE The Hidden Context in some Great Movies READ MORE Yaks for tea and Tibetan Temples. Living the high life in Shangri-la READ MORE Things Will Change - a Basho travel film READ MORE Children of the Red Rose READ MORE A Wild Sheep Chase READ MORE Udaipur READ MORE And so I went for a walk... READ MORE You're the Pretender - a Tier 1 tribute READ MORE
Welcome to the Outside Context Homepage2025-10-28T11:33:16+00:00

About Outsidecontext.com

Articles and films from Outside Context have been licensed for use by airlines, featured in Webby award winning phone apps, published as degree level English exam questions, played on Indian evening news and in global advertising by Google.

The Iron Church – Why Do People Quit Fitness Training?

And what the science — and AI — say about how to stop them. I would leave work after a long, hard day in the city and simply have no energy to attend my GoJu Ryu Karate training. I’d call my wife, as though for permission to quit, and she would always talk me into going. So, I did. I would always call her back after the lesson, almost high from how awesome it felt to use my body. She knew exactly what to say to get me to go, always motivating and tailoring her advice to me. So perhaps people quit fitness because the system they are using treats them like the average of their demographic — just a spreadsheet entry saying “Male, 28, Intermediate” — rather than a unique athlete whose capacity shifts from week to week. Life intervenes on us all, and real psychology is incompatible [...]

The Iron Church: Why Most ‘AI’ Fitness Apps Are Just Marketing (And How I Built One That Actually Works)

7 AI Pipelines ? 5 AI Prompts, 2 Deterministic Engines. Discover the technical strategy behind building The Iron Church—an AI fitness trainer defined by periodisation science, multi-prompt architecture, and serious consideration of your real equipment. This article is the technical deep dive for anyone who wants to understand what “AI-generated workouts” actually mean when you refuse to cut corners. Introduction This isn’t a story about prompts. It’s a story about why real AI products need state, constraints, and domain logic. There is a specific kind of professional irritation that arises when you spend your working life directing and building real AI systems, only to encounter something that treats AI as merely a marketing feature. AI on the box, we call it. Once you are trained to notice it, you spot it immediately, with telltale signs and vague claims. Such as “personalisation” claims, which amount to little more than a [...]

Announcing my new book: Trials & Tea Ceremonies: Misadventures in Far Away Places.

A hilarious and heartfelt journey for anyone who has ever wondered: "Is this it?" What happens when the life you've built no longer feels like your own? For Basho, turning thirty felt less like a milestone and more like "a splinter in the mind." A series of personal crises convinced him and his partner, Cesca, to make a radical choice. They walked away from their careers, put their lives in storage, and set off on a year-long, unscripted adventure across a dozen countries to answer one question: Is there a better way to live? Their path takes them from the rugged shores of Australia to the spiritual heart of India and the serene temples of Japan. But between the moments of transcendent beauty, a deeper, wilder journey unfolds. They must face down spitting alpacas, chaotic farm hosts, a terrifying encounter with the world’s largest spider in a Laotian toilet, [...]

The Alam Clock Lesson

Early in my leadership career, I had a junior member of staff who was late to work. Nothing unusual about that, you may think, for are we not all occasionally late into the office? Most of us commute and moreover [...]

The Storm King’s Thunder and the Dragon’s Bane

There follows the campaign we have played all through the 2020 lockdown. It has helped us all resist the mental anguish of the COVID virus, recover from the infection itself and be a beacon of bright enjoyment for all. Truly the great value of this magical game cannot be overstated when played with attentive and imaginative children. So, I present the chronicle of my son, my daughter and my wife playing their first campaign after the starter set, Storm King's Thunder!

Udaipur

Udaipur is famous for many reasons. To those in the west it is mostly known for its gleaming white Jag Niwas hotel found in the middle of one of its many lakes. To the Indians [...]

Remembering Catherine

"Remembering Catherine" by Basho Today, on the anniversary of her passing, I present a new painting; a present for my mother in law. This digital portrait was painted in Rebelle 5 Pro.

A Wild Sheep Chase

**Caution this post contains spoilers for The Wild Sheep Chase!** When I was a child, I had no one to play Dungeons and Dragons with, it being the 80’s and the game not being popular here in the United [...]

300

Not since ancient times has a movie so polarized critical opinion. Is the movie racist? Was it boo’ed in Germany? [...]

Death Proof

Deathproof is another movie from QT that speaks of his private obsessions; deep things that are really a part of his psyche...

Slumdog Millionaire Movie Review

Cesca and I sat in the heat of the Mumbai movie theatre around the corner from the Victoria Station – that defining landmark at the centre of the city – and waited for the film to start. All around us were packed in hundreds of the Mumbai crowd. I scanned their faces. The film was in English with no subtitles, other than those found in the international edition, so most of the audience were those more educated types who understand English very well. None-the-less, I was sure that all over the city a large variety of people packed in to cinemas and movie houses to see this film and its greatest star.

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