This is a test. I am feeling very testy about this test. But you know, hmmph. Let’s try some other text blocks just to see what that looks like. Getting data out of Excel documents can be a bit extremely horrible [noting, to be clear, that Excel docs like this are super useful for many …
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New job! Old books!
New job! I’m now a Y-PERN fellow, officially based in the Management School at Sheffield University, but mostly working with the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority (SYMCA, pronounced by folk who work there as ‘sim-ka’). Y-PERN (“Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network”) is a pretty unique project – Research England funded it specifically …
List of UK sci-fi-friendly literary agents (and some pitching tips)
In the process of pitching my sci-fi book (a little more info on that here via Sheffield’s Writers Workshop) I’ve collated a shortlist of UK literary agents friendly to science fiction. I thought I’d share that here – if anyone knows of others not on this list, please let me know and I’ll add them …
Jordan Peterson’s zombie climate ideas
Jordan Peterson has written an attack on climate action for the Telegraph: “Peddlers of environmental doom have shown their true totalitarian colours”. Plenty of people have already pointed out Peterson’s basic climate science errors. Anyone who’s spent time arguing with climate deniers in the past ten to fifteen years won’t find anything remotely original – …
Prestigious Dan Olner fellowship
I’m thrilled to announce I have been awarded a prestigious Dan Olner fellowship… i.e. after six years in my current post and ten years postdocing in total, my academic contract finished and I am now living off my savings. This is, I am telling myself slightly unconvincingly, a good thing. Here’s the rough plan for …
Telling data stories with the English index of multiple deprivation
I’ve made a visualisation tool for digging into the English index of multiple deprivation (IMD). The 2019 IMD just came out, accompanied by a bunch of great ways to look at it, including Alasdair Rae’s full set of local authority maps and Rob Fry‘s amazing webmap that shows all IMD subdomains for any LSOA (lower …
How are house price moves linked across space? A visualisation for Glasgow
Video above: how house price substitutability changes between Glasgow postcodes. The blue dot (centre, below the river) moves up and down across a few postcodes. Large red dots show other postcodes where house prices have moved in tandem over time. As the dots shrink / turn green, price movement matches become weaker. Right-click on the …
Sheffield’s first Data-for-Good hack day
I was at Sheffield’s first data for good hack day on Saturday – it was bloomin’ Marvelous. Organised by Tom French and Lauren Quinn from Good Things Foundation and Sarah Miller, BI developer at Jet2, we were working with Amy Evans from youth homelessness charity Roundabout. (It’s sensitive data so we had to delete it …