Hack The Government Day – how will I participate?
This Saturday sees events to mark the third National Hack The Government Day. It will also be marked across the UK by events such as the one being run at Aberdeen University by Dr Bruce Scharlau. I’ve...
View ArticleTwo great new Google projects
Two new Google projects crossed my radar today – and very interesting they both are, too. The first is Google For Non-profits. It offers the chance to reach and engage supporters, raise awareness of...
View ArticleNHTG11 – a personal reflection
Yesterday I spent nine and a half hours in a room with a group of hard-core coders and not only lived to tell the tale, but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Firstly I should say thanks to Dr Bruce...
View ArticleScraping the Scottish Election 2011
A colleague at work asked me today, “Where can I get the contact details of the local candidates for the Scottish Parliamentary Election 2011?” That’s easy, I thought. After a couple of hours digging...
View ArticlePLODS – but faster
The following article is an adaptation of one I wrote for my team’s internal blog at work. Today I coined an acronym. PLODS – Public Linked Open Data Sets. Anyone who does not understand why publishing...
View ArticleFilm – What is Open Data?
Here is an excellent short film (with subtitles available in several languages), made available by the Open Knowledge Foundation. Use it as a primer for those who don’t yet get Open Data at your...
View ArticleUse IFTTT & Readitlater to mine info from Twitter
While the following post uses #opendata as an example subject to pull information from Twitter, the methodolgy is generic. The background is that I love to know what is happening in the world of Open...
View ArticleAberdeen Cultural Hackathon 4th – 5th May
Aberdeen’s newest Hackathon is all set to go ahead! Mark your diaries for 4th and 5th May. Details of how to get involved in this coding weekend with a difference are below. After several weeks of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Facts Are Sacred – a review
Facts are Sacred is the new book by Simon Rogers, the award-wining editor of guardian.co.uk/data and a news editor on the Guardian, working with the graphics team to bring figures to life on the page....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aberdeen Culture Hack – Ach, it was good fun!
Having had a whale of a time at the Aberdeen Culture Hack (aka #ach13) last weekend it was my intention to write a full blog post, but Kevin Mitchell beat me to it. So, I’ll pick out a few highlights...
View ArticleUK Railways and internet connectivity
Over the last couple of years I have spent a large amount of time travelling by train; mainly between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Stirling or Glasgow. And on each of those journeys I have experienced the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Top non-fiction reads of 2013
Four of my five top non-fiction books which I read this year are Python programming titles. This is unsurprising as I’ve spend a considerable amount of time teaching myself Python via books and MOOCs....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Code for Europe comes to Aberdeen via Barcelona
Recently Aberdeen City Council has accepted an invitation (via NESTA) to join the Code for Europe movement. This post sets out some of the background to that. It covers the content and outcomes of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Code For Europe (Scotland)
As I wrote in my previous post, Aberdeen City Council have joined Code for Europe 2014. Code For Europe Badge Following the international meeting in Barcelona, and ahead of the appointment of the code...
View ArticleScraping Tools – A quick round-up
I’ve written here before about using Scraperwiki to scrape content from websites which haven’t implemented OpenData. I have even used Scraper Wiki to scrape our own website to get badly-formed content...
View ArticleFilm – What is Open Data?
Here is an excellent short film (with subtitles available in several languages), made available by the Open Knowledge Foundation. Use it as a primer for those who don’t yet get Open Data at your...
View ArticleUse IFTTT & Readitlater to mine info from Twitter
While the following post uses #opendata as an example subject to pull information from Twitter, the methodolgy is generic. The background is that I love to know what is happening in the world of Open...
View ArticleAberdeen Cultural Hackathon 4th – 5th May
Aberdeen’s newest Hackathon is all set to go ahead! Mark your diaries for 4th and 5th May. Details of how to get involved in this coding weekend with a difference are below. After several weeks of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Facts Are Sacred – a review
Facts are Sacred is the new book by Simon Rogers, the award-wining editor of guardian.co.uk/data and a news editor on the Guardian, working with the graphics team to bring figures to life on the page....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aberdeen Culture Hack – Ach, it was good fun!
Having had a whale of a time at the Aberdeen Culture Hack (aka #ach13) last weekend it was my intention to write a full blog post, but Kevin Mitchell beat me to it. So, I’ll pick out a few highlights...
View Article
