Space, Science, Technology
Hubot is an open source chatbot created by GitHub. It's used by various companies, groups, and other techie types, to control systems, gather information, and put moustaches on things - all via chat interfaces. Hubot can be adapted to work via IM, GTalk, Twitter, IRC, and other platforms. 'Chat Ops' is a growing trends, and because... Continue Reading →
The latest issue of Astronomy & Geophysics includes an article by your truly about the GitHub/.Astronomy Hack Day at the UK's National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth earlier this year. The projects resulting from hack days are often prototypes, or proof-of-concept ideas that are meant to grow and expand later. Often they are simply written up... Continue Reading →
Executable papers are a cool idea in research [1]. You take a study, write it up as a paper and bundle together all your code, scripts and analysis in such a way that other people can take the ‘paper’ and run in themselves. This has three main attractive features, as I see it: It provides transparency... Continue Reading →
Yesterday was the Hack Day at the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2014 in Portsmouth. I organised it with my good friend Arfon Smith of GitHub, formerly Zooniverse. We wanted to try and start a new NAM tradition - it went well so maybe we did. I'm psyched that .Astronomy got to help make it happen... Continue Reading →
Today is the start of the UK National Meeting in Portsmouth. I’ll be there tomorrow, and running the NAM Hack Day on Wednesday with Arfon Smith - which is going to be awesome. Today at NAM, the nation's astronomers will discuss the case for UK involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project - the LSST. The... Continue Reading →
TED 2014 has just ended here in Vancouver and I have finally now experienced an event I’ve heard a lot about for many years. I’ve watched TED talks online for as long as I’ve watched anything online and the real deal did not disappoint. Attending TED for the first time has been intense, wonderful, and... Continue Reading →
As the fifth .Astronomy came to a close on Wednesday, I felt as I always do at the end of these meetings: tired, emotional and super-excited. It's hard to explain the energy at these events. There is something almost magical in the air as the participants 'click' (usually about an hour in) and then begin... Continue Reading →
During the Perseid meteor shower, I blogged a video of a bright meteor taken by astrophotographer Mel Gigg. He had shared the image fairly widely and soon others noticed that they had caught the exact same shooting star themselves. In fact four observers had caught the same object as it flew into the atmosphere above... Continue Reading →
The response my previous blog post about gender bias took me by surprise. Apparently if you talk about this stuff openly, people have a lot to say. More than 500 people have read the post on this site and more over at the Women in Astronomy blog. After posting it, I also emailed the upcoming... Continue Reading →
We’re running the fifth .Astronomy conference later this year in Boston. .Astronomy is a small (and awesome) conference for astronomers, where you must apply to participate. Although the tone is relaxed, spaces at the event are in short supply (there are only 50 places). You don’t have to talk at .Astronomy, and there are only a... Continue Reading →
Orbiting Frog 