A few weeks ago I discovered the Exeter Data Mill, an amazing project where really interesting data about Exeter are collected and published. This included a very interesting series of files called “Exeter shapes and locations” available under the Open Government License.

When I was interviewing electoral services staff for my PhD thesis I was told a story about how their software couldn’t take two scanned pages at once, so they were forced to physically cut and paste two pages together to fit on one side of A4 before they scanned it.

I am working on a project with a few colleagues in the politics department and we had a large number of email addresses to sort through. Some of them were generic: inquiries@example.

I’ve found myself with another free morning to practice Python. One of the things I’ve always heard about learning any new skill is that you should leave as long as possible after you learn anything before you practice it again.

Here I am taking my first steps with Python 3. Although I learnt a little a year or so ago, it’s nearly all fallen out of my head, and I need to take a more systematic approach before I can really use it for anything.