Regular readers of this blog might remember that back in June of this year, I suggested that the Royal Society should employ a wikipedian in residence. After emailing, blogging and other ranting, Paul Nurse got in touch with me to say that the Society was sympathetic to the idea and would investigate. His email is reproduced below: From: […]

The UK’s premier Digital Research community event is being held in Oxford 10-12 September 2012. Come along to showcase and share the latest in digital research practice – and set the agenda for tomorrow at Digital Research 2012. The conference features an exciting 3-day programme with a great set of invited speakers together with showcases […]

What happened was, I was looking for a creatively commons licensed picture of Pedro Mendes to upload to commons.wikimedia.org. Not the footballing Pedro Mendes who played for Rangers, Spurs, Pompey and Porto but the systems biologist Pedro Mendes who plays for Virginia Tech and Manchester. Thankfully, another systems biologist, Michael Hucka kindly pointed to his impressive […]

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. Fellows advise the Institute on important software, evangelise software practices and champion the adoption of best-of-breed software. Fellows will contribute to the […]

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. It’s great that the BBC, unlike other large organisations, can talk openly about their […]

If Science were an Olympic sport, which events would scientists excel at? During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, I wondered what Olympic activities scientists would be good at, with a list of events. This satirical post was kindly re-published [1] by the learned American Physical Society (thanks guys!) in their newsletter, though some of the proposed events look a […]

The key to successful technology is not just the tricky combination of innovation, determination and investment but also word play friendly branding. Consider two technology companies, Google and Raspberry Pi: Google Inc. has given rise to the verbs Googling and Oogling, a headquarters known as the Googleplex, employees variously known as Googlers, Nooglers, Zooglers and Xooglers, products and nouns such as Froogle, Loogle, Moogle, Poogle, Yoogle and […]

Computer Science as a subject in mainstream UK secondary education is in a pretty sorry state [1,2,3] but it’s not all doom and gloom. While many long suffering school children are being force-fed a nauseating diet of Excel, PowerPoint and Access others are enjoying a nutritious platter of Raspberry Pi, Hack to the Future and Animated fun.

Here is a recipe and serving suggestion for delicious Parthenon Marbles cake, originally developed by Thomas Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin. Recipe Buy a return ticket from the UK to Athens, Greece On arrival in Athens, find the most spectacular and beautiful cake you can Remove and vandalise the tastiest looking parts of the […]

[This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors] In the world of abused performance metrics, the impact factor is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the (publishing) world. It has been an eventful year in the boxing ring of scientific publishing since the last set of figures were published by Thomson-Reuters. A brand […]

If you are not interested in Football Science [1,2], look away now. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Professor Gary Lineker has an intriguing idea: The earliest source I can find for this infamous quote is an article in the Berliner Zeitung from 1996 [3] –  in German, obviously. The English original is unfindable at the BBC where it probably came from. Strangely appropriate, nein? So it’s Germany vs.