Many people are still trying to work out exactly what twitter is good for [1] but with more than 100 million users worldwide making around 50 million tweets per day, the website is clearly popular with those who like to communicate via short “sound bites” of 140 characters or less.

Many people are still trying to work out exactly what twitter is good for [1] but with more than 100 million users worldwide making around 50 million tweets per day, the website is clearly popular with those who like to communicate via short “sound bites” of 140 characters or less. Communication is an important part of what Universities are all about, so how many UK universities are on twitter?

The University of Twitter, UK: A Quick Survey

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) release 67 is now available, containing 548,850 total entities, of which 20,565 are annotated entities and 720 were submitted via the ChEBI submission tool.

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) release 67 is now available, containing 548,850 total entities, of which 20,565 are annotated entities and 720 were submitted via the ChEBI submission tool. New in this release, the ChEBI ontology is now available in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which is part of an ongoing research project to automate the classification of small molecules in ChEBI.

8-OHdG: Entity of the Month

Cartoonist and engineer Tim Hunkin is probably best known for his exhibits at the Science Museum in London and his Under The Pier Show “a mad arcade of home-made slot machines &amp; simulator rides on Southwold Pier, Suffolk”.  His website is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful things.

Hunkin’s Hypothesis: Technology Is What Makes Us Human

There is an interesting review [1] (and special issue) in the Biochemical Journal today, published by Portland Press Ltd.

The Semantic Biochemical Journal experiment

Michael Ley is visiting Manchester this week, he will be doing a seminar on Wednesday 3rd June, here are some details for anyone who is interested in attending: Date: 3rd Jun 2009 Title: DBLP: How the data get in Speaker: Dr Michael Ley. University of Trier, Germany Time &amp;

Michael Ley is visiting Manchester this week, he will be doing a seminar on Wednesday 3rd June, here are some details for anyone who is interested in attending:

 References

Lincoln Stein (2002). Creating a bioinformatics nation: screen scraping is torture Nature, 417 (6885), 119-120 DOI: 10.1038/417119a

Michael Ley on Digital Bibliographies

Wandering the Immeasurable: A sculpture at CERN by Gayle Hermick, picture re-used with permission from the artist  Even if you’re not a Physicist, there is plenty to see and do above and below ground at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Home to the worlds largest experiment on what is arguably the worlds largest machine near Geneva in Switzerland, CERN is a very inspiring place to visit.

Seven things to do at CERN if you’re not a Physicist

The Red Rose of Lancaster is the county flower of Lancashire. Image by Sodacan, created with Inkscape. [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons.Once upon a time, there were two football teams, a Northern one (Liverpool F.C.) and a Southern one, (Tottenham Hotspur F.C.). They were due to meet each other in a historic and lucrative match: the 2019 UEFA Champions League Final in Madrid.

Are Liverpool and Manchester still in Lancashire?

The year 2016 will go down as an interesting one, but was it magnificent, horrible or stupid? Or perhaps all three Annus mirabilis? 🇬🇧 For some people, 2016 was a good year, an annus mirabilis. If you voted for Trump or are brexiteer who voted to leave the European Union, 2016 was a good year.

The year 2016 will go down as an

 interesting

one, but was it magnificent, horrible or stupid? Or perhaps all three

 Annus mirabilis?

For some people, 2016 was a good year, an

 annus mirabilis

. If you voted for Trump or are brexiteer who voted to leave the European Union, 2016 was a good year. If you are a climate change denier, you probably enjoyed 2016 too.

2016: Annus mirabilis, annus horribilis or annus stupidus?

Sometimes, being a PostDoctoral researcher is a tough life. Thankfully, help is at hand in Philip Bourne and Iddo Friedberg‘s guide Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Post-Doctoral Position published in PLOS Computational Biology.

Sometimes, being a PostDoctoral researcher is a tough life. Thankfully, help is at hand in Philip Bourne and Iddo Friedberg‘s guide Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Post-Doctoral Position published in PLOS Computational Biology. This article is part of a series of editorials [1,2,3] which discuss various aspects of the weird and wonderful world of scientific research.

Postdoc Hell: Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

The Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) is officially opening on 25/26th October 2006. The centre has been about a decade in the making, and aims to be a world-class research centre, with around £37 million (~$70 million) of initial funding from the Wellcome Trust charity, UK Research Councils and others.

The Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) is officially opening on 25/26th October 2006. The centre has been about a decade in the making, and aims to be a world-class research centre, with around £37 million (~$70 million) of initial funding from the Wellcome Trust charity,  UK Research Councils and others.

Manchester Biocentre Launch

The BBC programme catalogue has recently gone online, and provides a demonstration of the applications that can be built using web technology such as Ruby on Rails, RDF, FOAF, web feeds, tag clouds and sparklines.

Bioinformatics at the BBC: Demonstrating the power of metadata

Open Access (OA) publishing aims to make the results of scientific research available to the widest possible audience.

The Open Access Irony Awards: Naming and shaming them

Androids by etnyk. What are they thinking? With more than three million Android devices activated on the 24/25th December 2011 [1] and something like 200 million (or more?) Android devices in total, there are nearly enough droids around to build a primitive brain.

Does Android Dream of Electric Sheep?

A crude score for benchmarking scientists Have you ever wanted to compare different scientists by their publication record? It’s not always an easy task, but here is a crude and handy way to benchmark people by their journal publications in Nature, Science or PNAS using PubMed.

A crude score for benchmarking scientists

Have you ever wanted to compare different scientists by their publication record? It’s not always an easy task, but here is a crude and handy way to benchmark people by their journal publications in

 
 N
 
 ature

,

 
 S
 
 cience

or

 
 PNAS
 

using PubMed.

NSPNAS: Nature, Science or PNAS?

Alan Turing Binary code, Shoreditch High Street, London by Chris Beckett on Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND license)  Over at democracy corner, Manchester Digital is interviewing all of its elected council members.

Two big challenges facing the technology &amp; digital industries (IMHO)

The Small Scale Experimental Beer Machine (aka Manchester Beerby) has its name in neon lights and was switched on on the 21st June 2019. A new pub has opened opposite where I work. Set up by some enterprising scotsmen from Aberdeenshire ( och aye laddie!), it has its very own microbrewery.

The Small Scale Experimental Beer Machine aka “Manchester Beerby”

In 2013, 44% of newly elected Fellows of the Royal Society had biography pages on wikipedia. Earlier this month confusingly-named “Royal Society” announced their new fellows for 2013. The society is made up of (quote):  A quick-and-dirty measure of the scientific coverage of wikipedia is the percentage of these fellows that have a profile on wikipedia at the time of their election to the prestigious Society.

Measuring scientific coverage of @Wikipedia: Fellows of the Wiki Society index 2013

Thirteen year old Amy Mather aka @MiniGirlGeek steals the show at Manchester Raspberry Jam 2013  Last Saturday, the first ever Raspberry Jamboree rolled into town, organised by the unstoppable force of nature that is Alan O’Donohoe (aka @teknoteacher). The jamboree looked at the educational value of the Raspberry Pi (a $25 computer) one year on from its launch on the the 29th February 2012. Here are some brief and incomplete

Creating with the Raspberry Pi vs. Consuming Apple Pie at the Manchester Raspberry Jamboree

There’s an interesting article [1] by Chelsea Wald in Science magazine published today, about Open Science including Open Source Code, Open Notebook Science, Open Data and Open Access Publishing.

There’s an interesting article [1] by Chelsea Wald in

 Science

magazine published today, about Open Science including Open Source Code, Open Notebook Science, Open Data and Open Access Publishing.

Embracing Open Science

So, I’m going to San Francisco and on to the Googleplex in the heart of Silly Valley, California for Science Foo Camp (scifoo) 2009.

So, I’m going to San Francisco and on to the Googleplex in the heart of Silly Valley, California for Science Foo Camp (scifoo) 2009. As I put the Flowers In My Hair (what’s left of it) and confirm my booking at the Hotel California I’m not just California Dreamin’ but California Googlin’. Just how many American and Californian musical clichés it is possible to cram into one blog post and accompanying iPod playlist?

California Googlin’

It’s Friday, so here’s another one of those cool RSA Animate videos by Cognitive Media. This one is narrated by Microsoftie Manuel Lima and describes how the tree structures that we know and love, such as the infamous tree of life are becoming inadequate for organising knowledge, despite having been useful for thousands of years.

From Useful Trees to Powerful Networks: A talk by Manuel Lima from Microsoft

An equation of love (x² + y² − 1)³ − x² y³ = 0  Former Mancunian James Lovelock runs the kind of a laboratory most scientists can only fantasise about working in as they grind through the humdrum bureaucracy of peer-review and never-ending grant applications. Lovelock is fortunate enough to run a completely independent, self-funded lab located in the beautiful West Country.

The Lovelock Laboratory: A fantasy workplace in the West Country

As Tom Lehrer once sang on his christmas carol:  Which must mean it’s also time for another seasonal tradition: the Royal Institution Christmas lectures.

Happy Christmas Lectures 2010

If you took an infinite number of Professors, added some comedians, recording studios (instead of typewriters) and got them to record random radio shows you might just end up with a program like the Infinite Monkey Cage.

If you took an infinite number of Professors, added some comedians, recording studios (instead of typewriters) and got them to record random radio shows you

 might

just end up with a program like the Infinite Monkey Cage.

The Infinite Professor Theorem

♫ PCR, When you need to know who the Daddy is ♫ …  When you’ve finished chuckling at that ridiculous viral marketing video, go and Dance Naked in the Mind Field with Kary Mullis. Found via Respectful Insolence: Scientists for better PCR.

Who’s the Daddy? PCR…

Maybe you wrote that code and maybe you didn’t. If Artificial Intelligence helped you, such as the OpenAI Codex in GitHub Copilot, how did it solve your problem? How much did AI help or hinder your solution?

Maybe you wrote that code and maybe you didn’t. If Artificial Intelligence helped you, such as the OpenAI Codex in GitHub Copilot, how did it solve your problem? How much did AI help or hinder your solution? Join us to discuss a paper by Michel Wermelinger from the Open University published in the SIGCSE technical symposium earlier this month in Toronto on this very topic.

Join us to discuss using AI to solve simple programming problems on Monday 3rd April at 2pm BST

A thought experiment with lots of money The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the United Kingdom’s funding agency for academic research and training in the non-clinical life sciences.

A thought experiment with lots of money

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the United Kingdom’s funding agency for academic research and training in the non-clinical life sciences.

How to spend a £400 million Science budget

Writing good code is often harder than it looks via Randall Munroe at xkcd.com  Manchester Digital is the independent trade association for the thriving digital sector in the North West of England. Last night they held their AGM and elections for new members of their council.

Manchester Digital and Higher Education in 2013

This years Reith Lectures by Martin Rees are being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during June. An important theme in the lectures this year is scientists relationship with society.

Martin Rees on Science and the Citizen

The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is proposal: Title: Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits What are the costs and benefits of blogging and how can you make sure the latter justifies the former?

The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is proposal:  If this is a successful proposal, I’ll need some help. Any offers?

Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits

Via the Official Google Research Blog at the University of Google, Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira have published an interesting expert opinion piece in the  March/April 2009 edition of IEEE Intelligent Systems: computer.org/intelligent.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Google

Any budding biomedical scientists out there, interested in doing a PhD, take note: The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) – European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is having an open day on Monday 3rd November 2008.

PhD studentships at EMBL-EBI, UK

I’m not much of an evolutionary biologist, but Jonathan Eisen asked for help and I can’t resist. So, in the name of Science, here is some deserved Google Juice for various Trees of Life on the Web.

The Tree of Life

What exactly is a drug? A project I’m currently working on requires a good solid definition, at the very least comprehensible to humans, and preferably understandable by more intelligent, semantically aware computers too.

The drugs don’t work, they just make you worse

There are a number of “Molecule of the Month” style mini-reviews on the web, which highlight one particular molecule (usually a protein) every month, in an accessible style.

There are a number of “Molecule of the Month” style mini-reviews on the web, which highlight one particular molecule (usually a protein) every month, in an accessible style. Two of my personal favourites are protein spotlight: one month, one protein written by Vivienne Baillie Gerritsen of the Swiss-Prot team and Molecule of the Month at the Protein Databank PDB edited by David Goodsell.

This month’s molecule is…

Many computer scientists and software engineers are not familiar with basic biology or bioinformatics. Many biologists and bioinformaticians are not familiar with basic computer science or software engineering. This article points to some resources that can help with the former, and asks, what can be done about the latter?

Bio-Ignorance: Communicating Biology to Computer Scientists

Today, Tuesday the 14th of October 2008, is Open Access Day. Like many others, this blog post is joining in by describing why Open Access matters – from a personal point of view.

Today, Tuesday the 14th of October 2008, is Open Access Day. Like many others, this blog post is joining in by describing why Open Access matters – from a personal point of view. According to the wikipedia article Open Access (OA) is “free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

Open Access Day: Why It Matters

Wiki Loves Scientists   Jess Wade, editor extraordinaire, in 2017. Portrait by Dave Guttridge via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA  Today Jess Wade published her one thousandth new Wikipedia article, a wiki-biography of Sylvie Briand. This biography joins 999 others Jess has written at a rate of one per day since September 2017.

Congratulations and thank you Jess Wade for 1000 new biographies @Wikipedia 🏆

Delegates at the Computing at School conference 2017 #CASConf17 answering diagnostic questions, picture by Miles Berry. The Computing At School (CAS) conference is an annual event for educators, mostly primary and secondary school teachers from the public and private sector in the UK. Now in its ninth year, it attracts over 300 delegates from across the UK and beyond to the University of Birmingham, see the brochure for details.

Nine ideas for teaching Computing at School from the 2017 CAS conference

There is growing interest in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, and other Wikimedia projects as platforms for opening up the scientific process [1]. The first Wikipedia Science Conference will discuss activities in this area at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre in London on the 2nd &amp; 3rd September 2015.

Wikipedia Science Conference @WellcomeTrust in London, September 2nd &amp; 3rd 2015 #wikisci

The artist Andy Warhol once said:  This well worn saying has been quoted and misquoted in hundreds of different ways in the forty years since Warhol first coined it [1].  Bad Scientist Ben Goldacre, in his keynote speech* at Science Blogging (sciblog) 2008, highlighted one of these deliberate misquotes, which he attributed to NTK.net (Need To Know: Britain’s most sarcastic high-tech weekly newsletter). It goes a little something like this:  This

Famous for fifteen people

Christmas lectures 2014 by @Ben_Nuttall  Our homes are full of technology that we typically take for granted and understand little. Your average smartphone or tablet, for example, is a “black box”, that deliberately discourages modification by tinkering and hacking.

Makey Christmas and a Hacky New Year!

According to the urban myth, the eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. But meteorologists, especially British weather forecasters, have just as many words for rain. Take this typical forecast for example: TODAY: Showers will continue in the north and west, but become more lighter and more isolated as the night progresses.

Sunny intervals? Really? According to the urban myth, the eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. But meteorologists, especially British weather forecasters, have just as many words for rain. Take this typical forecast for example:  Many people just want to know will it rain today and should I take a brolly?

Weasel Words of Weather Forecasters: Will it rain today?

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, also unavailable on Samsung Android devices. I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (ISIHAC) is a superbly funny comedy show broadcast by the BBC since 1972 and currently airing it’s sixtieth (yes 60th!) series. Unlike many other BBC programmes, ISIHAC is mysteriously unavailable as a podcast, which makes it difficult to listen to offline. Why is this?

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Podcast, now on BBC Radio 4

“I have learned much from my teachers and even more from my friends, but from my students I have learned most of all” Graduation is one of the most enjoyable milestones in the academic calendar.

“

 I have learned much from my teachers and even more from my friends, but from my students I have learned most of all

” Graduation is one of the most enjoyable milestones in the academic calendar. It’s a chance to celebrate and reflect on what students have learned and how they have grown during the time they have spent at University.

…from my students I have learned most of all

All your dreams are made, when you’re chained to the lecture and the teaching trade. Was that lecture, lab or lesson a dream or a nightmare? Exactly what did you learn from the experience? When you reflect on it, how will you tell yourself and others the stories of your study?

What’s the Story, Learning Glory? How we can start telling better stories about teaching in Higher Education

Creative Commons licensed picture of a DayGlo Raspberry Pi by @kevinv033 on Flickr  STEMNet is an organisation in the UK which creates opportunities to inspire young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Recently, along with about 15 PhD students from the CDT in Manchester, I became an STEM Ambassador. This post briefly describes what STEMNet is all about, why you would want to get involved and how you can do so.

On becoming a STEMnet ambassador: What, why and how?

Any list of 100 best anything is going to be riddled with biases, flaws and omissions, but here’s a list of albums you might enjoy listening to from 100best.music.apple.com.

Any list of

 100 best

anything is going to be riddled with biases, flaws and omissions, but here’s a list of albums you might enjoy listening to from 100best.music.apple.com. I’ve posted them here because my family are listening to three albums a week throughout 2025, and discussing them as we go. The albums are listed in reverse order of “greatness“ below, as we’re starting from the top.

One hundred albums you might enjoy listening to

Airplane by By Kuster &amp; Wildhaber Photography  The Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk has launched a Fellowship programme that recognises outstanding UK-based researchers who use software. The Fellowships come with £3000 funding which can be used for travel, collaboration and running events.

Fancy becoming a Software Fellow?

bbc.co.uk/programmes as a QR Code by /Sizemore/ Mike Atherton on Flickr available under a creative commons licence  Over at @BBCSport and @BBC2012 there are some Olympian feats of big data wrestling going on behind the scenes for London 2012 [1]. While we all enjoy the Olympics on a range of platforms and devices, a team of twenty engineers is busy making it all happen.

Where did all the BBC programme metadata go? The Infax catalogue online

The Parthenon at night by Konstantinos Dafalias, creative commons licensed picture available on Flickr. If you look carefully, you can see the inscription “Elgin woz ‘ere, 1801” where the Marbles were stolen from. Here is a recipe and serving suggestion for delicious Parthenon Marbles cake, originally developed by Thomas Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin.

Delicious Parthenon Marbles Cake, stolen from Athens

Have you ever been asked WHAT SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO? I was once asked this in a high-stakes job interview and my answer was that of a startled rabbit caught in the headlights before becoming squashed roadkill on the highway to hell. Nobody has asked me that question before or since.

Have you ever been asked WHAT SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO? I was once asked this in a high-stakes job interview and my answer was that of a startled rabbit caught in the headlights before becoming squashed roadkill on the highway to hell. Nobody has asked me that question before or since. How can such a simple question be so difficult to answer?

SO, WHAT SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO?

The British Monarchy are preparing to exploit new advertising opportunities and boost royal revenue during the 2012 Olympics in London. Photo credit: gokart.co.uk.  Advertising agencies are everywhere, there is no escaping them. But who’s the daddy of the advertising world? The mother of all ad agencies? According to wikipedia, WPP is the “world’s largest advertising group by revenues”. This is hogwash.

Who is the World’s Largest Advertising Agency?

Forty two years ago I wrote my first bit of software on a BBC Micro in the Code Club at Fitzmaurice Primary School.

Hello World: GOTO Christmas 1981

Last week I attended the first Teaching and Learning conference in the Pendulum hotel, Manchester.

Last week I attended the first Teaching and Learning conference in the Pendulum hotel, Manchester. It was really good and I got lots out of it. The sessions I attended were enjoyable and well organised, I learned heaps, made lots of new contacts and got some useful questions from the audience on my lightning talk about podcasting the student voice.

Improving the Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL) conference in Manchester for 2024

Science, is a big word that gets used and abused with reckless abandon. Virtually any discipline can award itself extra kudos by adding the magic S word at the end. For example, which sounds weightier, sports studies or sports science?

Science, is a big word that gets used and abused with reckless abandon. Virtually any discipline can award itself extra kudos by adding the magic S word at the end. For example, which sounds weightier, sports studies or sports science? This phenomenon has been noticed many times before, for example, the philosopher John Searle once remarked that:  So let’s make a list.

Anything that calls itself a Science, probably isn’t…

Whatever your views on Facebook [1], you can’t deny that from space, “Planet Facebook” looks rather intriguing. The wonderful diagram below of Facebook connections has been made by Paul Butler.

Planet Facebook

Madder than the Mad March Hare, more entertaining and surreal than Alice down-a-rabbit-hole in Wonderland: today marks the start of this years Cambridge Science festival: “Delve into the diversity of science at the Cambridge Science Festival 2010!

Madder than the Mad March Hare, more entertaining and surreal than Alice down-a-rabbit-hole in Wonderland: today marks the start of this years Cambridge Science festival:  A team of scientists and engineers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and The EBI will be participating, on Saturday 13th March with a session on DNA, diversity and you and also tackling the thorny issue of Who Owns Science? on Friday 19th March.

Cambridge Science Festival, 8th-21st March 2010

If you wanted to write a guide to Biomedical and Biological Ontologies [1], especially the what, why, when, how, where and who, there are at least three choices for publishing your work: Journal publishing in your favourite scientific journal. Book publishing with your favourite academic or technical publisher.

If you wanted to write a guide to Biomedical and Biological Ontologies [1], especially the

 what

,

 why

,

 when

,

 how

,

 where

and

 who

, there are at least three choices for publishing your work:

 Journal publishing

in your favourite scientific journal.

 Book publishing

with your favourite academic or technical publisher.

Blogging a Book about Bio-Ontologies

December’s entity of the month at ChEBI is Adrenaline, for all the adrenaline junkies out there. This accompanies ChEBI release 63, containing 536,978 total entities, of which 19,501 are annotated entities and 678 were submitted via the ChEBI submission tool.

December’s entity of the month at ChEBI is Adrenaline, for all the adrenaline junkies out there. This accompanies ChEBI release 63, containing 536,978 total entities, of which 19,501 are annotated entities and 678 were submitted via the ChEBI submission tool. Text reproduced below from the ChEBI website:

 References

Abel, J.J. (1899) Ueber den blutdruckerregenden Bestandtheil der Nebenniere, das Epinephrin.

 Z. Physiol.

Adrenaline: Entity of the Month

The XML Summer School returns this year at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford from 20th-25th September 2009.

The XML Summer School returns this year at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford from 20th-25th September 2009. As always, it’s packed with high quality technical training for every level of expertise, from the Hands-on Introduction for beginners through to special classes devoted to XQuery and XSLT, Semantic Technologies, Open Source Applications, Web 2.0, Web Services and Identity.

XML training in Oxford

How can we get better at listening to student voices to improve teaching and learning in our Universities? This post summarises a talk I gave at the inaugural ITL Teaching &amp; Learning conference at the Pendulum Hotel in Manchester on July 6th 2023 tackling this question.

Amplifying student voices on employability with audio podcast interviews

One of the people I enjoyed seeing at Science Foo Camp this year was Joshua Bloch. Josh is a Java Junkie [1,2,3] and software engineer at Google.

One of the people I enjoyed seeing at Science Foo Camp this year was Joshua Bloch. Josh is a Java Junkie [1,2,3] and software engineer at Google. When he wasn’t playing harmonica around the foo camp fire (see picture right), he was giving interesting talks about optical illusions, some of which can be found in his book Java Puzzlers. So I bought the book, and have been doing a puzzle a day to keep the doctor away.

Josh the Java Junkie

There’s a community of people here who use the R language to get stuff done known as the R Usergroup Manchester (RUM). We meet monthly to learn from each other. At the last meetup on 29th June, I gave a joint talk with Stavrina Dimosthenous about quarto.org and its predecessor bookdown.org.

There’s a community of people here who use the R language to get stuff done known as the R Usergroup Manchester (RUM). We meet monthly to learn from each other. At the last meetup on 29th June, I gave a joint talk with Stavrina Dimosthenous about quarto.org and its predecessor bookdown.org. Following Stravrina’s quick introduction to Quarto, I gave a lightning talk about some of the pros and cons of using bookdown to write books.

Some pros and cons of using bookdown and quarto to write books

The textbook has long been a mainstay of education. Although online textbooks can give students easy (and sometimes free) access to increasingly interactive resources, authors have a bewildering array of tools and publishing models to select from.

Join us on Zoom to dive into online interactive textbook publishing on Monday 12th June at 2pm BST

It’s easy to undervalue the importance of natural languages like English because we use them everyday. Scientists and engineers can be particularly bad at this, often overlooking the importance of written and spoken language.

It’s easy to undervalue the importance of natural languages like English because we use them everyday. Scientists and engineers can be particularly bad at this, often overlooking the importance of written and spoken language. It probably doesn’t help that in the UK, and many other countries, many students choose either an exclusively scientific-mathematical path OR an arty-humanities path through their education, especially in the latter stages.

The wildness and freedom of using natural language with joy and pleasure

So we’ve finally reached the end of the Elizabethan line. Not the the CrossRail route that straddles London but the seventy year reign of Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2022.

So we’ve finally reached the end of the Elizabethan line. Not the the CrossRail route that straddles London but the seventy year reign of Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2022. Like many, I have mixed feelings about our monarch and monarchy but the history of the last seventy years should fascinate republicans, royalists and anarchists alike.

Mind the gap at the end of the Elizabethan line

The pandemic has accelerated changes to the way we teach and learn. Join us to discuss the Covid-19 shutdown: when studying turns digital, students want more structure: a paper by Vegard Gjerde, Robert Gray, Bodil Holst and Stein Dankert Kolstø on the effects of the pandemic on Physics Education at a Norwegian University.

The pandemic has accelerated changes to the way we teach and learn. Join us to discuss the Covid-19 shutdown:

 when studying turns digital, students want more structure

: a paper by Vegard Gjerde, Robert Gray, Bodil Holst and Stein Dankert Kolstø on the effects of the pandemic on Physics Education at a Norwegian University.

Join us to discuss when study turns digital on Monday 2nd August at 2pm BST

Computing is too important to be left to men, but where have all the women gone? While women continue to play a key role in computing they are currently under-represented in Computer Science. How can we change this and what evidence is there for practices that get more women into computing?

Computing is too important to be left to men, but where have all the women gone? While women continue to play a key role in computing they are currently under-represented in Computer Science. How can we change this and what evidence is there for practices that get more women into computing? We discussed this paper by Briana Morrison

 et al

[1] on Monday 7th February at journal club.

Where have all the women gone?

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the following things did not exist: Euro coins and banknotes; real physical €uro currency was released the following year in January 2002 [1] The iPhone, iPad, iPod, iOS, smartphones and tablets.

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the following things did

 not

exist: Euro coins and banknotes; real physical €uro currency was released the following year in January 2002 [1]The iPhone, iPad, iPod, iOS, smartphones and tablets. A new device called the “iPod” was released the following month in October 2001, swiftly followed by a tsunami of mobile devices and iThings.

On this day, twenty years ago, 10th September 2001

The house where Computer Scientist Alan Turing spent his final years is currently up for sale. The estate agent describes the property on 43 Adlington Road, Wilmslow as a Victorian family residence of significant historical importance. Wilmslow and the surrounding Cheshire countryside is popular with Manchester commuters, including many Man United, Man City &amp;

The house where Computer Scientist Alan Turing spent his final years is currently up for sale. The estate agent describes the property on 43 Adlington Road, Wilmslow as a Victorian family residence of significant historical importance. Wilmslow and the surrounding Cheshire countryside is popular with Manchester commuters, including many Man United, Man City &amp; England football stars.

Would YOU want to live in Alan Turing’s house?

If content is king, then his rule is tyrannical. Bill Gates once remarked that “Content is King” but In the kingdom of education, how much do educators oppressively inflict content on their learners? What can be done to reduce the tyranny of content?

If content is king, then his rule is tyrannical. Bill Gates once remarked that “Content is King” but In the kingdom of education, how much do educators oppressively inflict content on their learners? What can be done to reduce the tyranny of content? We’ll be discussing this via a paper by Christina I. Petersen et al, here’s the abstract:  All welcome.

Join us to discuss the tyranny of content on Monday 5th July at 2pm BST

Five years ago today, Colin Vearncombe passed away. While his birth name might not be familiar to many people, his stage name Black and the song Wonderful Life he wrote and performed are much more widely known. Wonderful life achieved commercial success across Europe in 1987. This haunting tune caught my again ear recently.

No need to run and hide, it’s a wonderful, wonderful life

Learning sciences aims to improve our theoretical understanding of how people learn while computing education investigates with how people learn to compute. Historically, these fields existed independently, although attempts have been made to merge them. Where do these disciplines overlap and how can they be integrated further?

Join us to discuss learning sciences for computing education on Monday 12th April at 2pm BST

So what happened was, I’d been having some chest pains for a while and sleeping badly but didn’t think too much of it. Like many parents, we were struggling to balance the competing demands of two full-time jobs with an extra one called homeschooling small children.

So what happened was, I’d been having some chest pains for a while and sleeping badly but didn’t think too much of it. Like many parents, we were struggling to balance the competing demands of two full-time jobs with an extra one called homeschooling small children. [1] It was stressful but we were trying, as you do in a pandemic, to get through it one day at a time.

Thank you NHS 🙏

Following on from our discussion of ungrading, this month we’ll be discussing pass/fail rates in introductory programming courses. [1] Here is the abstract: Vast numbers of publications in computing education begin with the premise that programming is hard to learn and hard to teach.

Following on from our discussion of ungrading, this month we’ll be discussing pass/fail rates in introductory programming courses. [1] Here is the abstract:  As usual, we’ll be meeting on zoom, see sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/join-us for details. Thanks to Brett Becker and Joseph Allen for this months #paper-suggestions via our slack channel at uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com.

Join us to discuss failure rates in introductory programming courses on 1st Feb at 2pm GMT

All over the Britain, politicians are getting ready to publish their expenses on the Interweb. Why?

All over the Britain, politicians are getting ready to publish their expenses on the Interweb. Why? Because they are trying to regain their lost credibility, after making some incredibly dodgy and embarrassing expense claims [1-7]. Scandals aside, this is all well and good since this money has come from the UK taxpayers pocket, and politicians are public servants, doing public work which is supposedly in the public good.

Grants on the Web: Transparent Scientific Funding?

The use of git is widespread in software engineering, however many novices struggle to get to grips with its complex distributed information model, challenging command line syntax and leaky abstractions. To investigate these pitfalls, we’ll be talking about a paper published by Santiago Perez De Rosso and Daniel Jackson on Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git at OOPSLA.

The use of git is widespread in software engineering, however many novices struggle to get to grips with its complex distributed information model, challenging command line syntax and leaky abstractions. To investigate these pitfalls, we’ll be talking about a paper published by Santiago Perez De Rosso and Daniel Jackson on

 Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git

at OOPSLA.

Join us to discuss learning git on Monday 5th October at 2pm

If the Gallagher brothers were software engineers:  Tomorrow never knows what it doesn’t know too soon.

What’s The Story, Coding Glory?

As Universities transition to online teaching during the global coronavirus pandemic, there’s increasing interest in the use of pre-recorded videos to replace traditional lectures in higher education.

Join us to discuss how video production affects student engagement Monday 3rd August at 11am

At our next journal club, on Monday 1st June at 11am, we’ll be discussing blended learning. We’ve picked a subject, but we haven’t picked a paper yet.

At our next journal club, on Monday 1st June at 11am, we’ll be discussing blended learning. We’ve picked a subject, but we haven’t picked a paper yet. So, if you know interesting papers on blended learning, post them to the “paper suggestions” channel at  uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com – there are a few suggestions up there already for starters.

O'Really?