@slowe@mastodon.me.uk
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

slowe

@slowe@mastodon.me.uk

Maker of things. Data wrangler. Creator of hex layouts. Co-author of "Cosmos: The Infographic Book of Space". Gone far on a bicycle. Previously a radio/microwave astronomer. He/him.
โœจ๐Ÿ“ก๐Ÿ›ฐ๐Ÿ“•๐Ÿ“Š๐Ÿ“ˆ๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ๐Ÿšฒ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ

Yorkshire, UK

Not after "solutions" unless I've asked for them.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Floppy, to DuckDuckGo
@Floppy@mastodon.me.uk avatar

going down again ( to everyone there) has really reminded my how much my unconscious workflow depends on a search engine these days.

slowe,
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@Floppy Thanks for confirming it wasn't just me.

slowe, to random
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If you started transmitting (psuedo) random strings of characters in messages to your friends, would a whole bunch of spies realise it was random or would they be putting in lots of effort trying to "unencrypt" something that isn't encrypted? Would the state demand access to encryption keys that don't exist? Presumably they'd lock you up for not complying with the impossible request?

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

If we add random strings (e.g. https://www.random.org/strings/?num=20&len=16&digits=on&upperalpha=on&loweralpha=on&unique=on&format=plain&rnd=new) to our emails/webpages would they also end up in LLM training data sets? What impact would that have?

slowe, to maps
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Do you get frustrated by other people's abstractions of geography? Do you have strong preferences about hex cartogram layouts of UK constituencies for the next election? Do you have a better feel than me for parts of the UK outside Yorkshire? If so, please help improve our open source layout of future UK constituencies.

Read more at https://open-innovations.org/blog/2023-08-03-hexes-for-the-next-general-election and play around with the layout at https://open-innovations.org/projects/hexmaps/builder.html?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/odileeds/hexmaps/gh-pages/maps/uk-constituencies-2023.hexjson

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I'm sure there will be people from Scotland outraged at this. There must be people in the SE of England who don't like what I've done around the bottom of London? Please help improve it.

slowe, to random
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After a journalist wrote up an article about my comedy panel show gender splits last week, I'm now getting other journalists asking me questions.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

It is a thing that I collate in my spare time and without funding because:

  • nobody in the UK media does this work (or if they do they don't share it publicly)
  • I've wanted women in comedy to have hard data to back up what they generally know from experience.

It is one way I can practically contribute to removing various excuses that people in the media give for not doing better.

https://strudel.org.uk/panelshows/

Again, if you know of any UK comedy panel shows that are missing, please let me know.

slowe, to random
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A few years ago I made up a mnemonic for remembering the planets and dwarf planets in the Solar System:

Floppy, to accessibility
@Floppy@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I find the recent trend for burned-in subtitles on things like Youtube shorts really irritating, mainly because most of the time they're WRONG. Is this a Tiktok thing or something? People are adding AI-generated subtitles and not checking them? I can't imagine how annoying it is if you're someone who actually needs them for . Even content creators I actually like and who should know better are doing this. WHYYYYY.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@Floppy Yes, I think a lot are autogenerated and not checked. But some is deliberately wrong to get around censorship by some platforms e.g. the various ways people of colour subtitle things like "white", "genocide", "racism" etc to avoid being banned or limited for discussing oppression.

Historically, I haven't like baked in... but, practically, it means subtitles are more likely to travel with a video when it get reposted/shared across different platforms (not by the original poster).

slowe, to random
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

It seems that Nigella Lawson's recipe of the day is similar to a dish I make. I don't include the onion and I use parmigiano rather than feta: https://www.nigella.com/recipes/penne-with-aubergine-tomato-chilli-and-feta

slowe, to TheArchers
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Blog post: A workplace parking levy tool for Ambridge https://open-innovations.org/blog/2024-05-08-workplace-parking-levy-tool In which we use the fictional Borsetshire as a demo.

slowe, to random
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Bringing in ID checks for official things encourages random other stuff to have ID checks too. Last weekend a local triathlon had a photo ID requirement. The big assumption is that race officials have any way of knowing the ID is genuine.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

It makes me think of CCTV being "for security" and yet I've never once had it help me any time I've had things stolen from my bike.

On the bike racks at the front of the Corn Exchange I had a front wheel stolen. I was told that none of their CCTV cameras covered that area and was sent on my way without a wheel.

Yesterday, at the University of Leeds there was a sign tied to some bike racks saying that there was CCTV but that bikes still get stolen from there so you leave it at your own risk.

slowe, to random
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Is anyone here a big fan of The Archers? Are there any places I'm missing from my list of Borsetshire Hereditaments? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13F64v5F50Cub48C9g68ShmhWglswwmE-RuTABB_5VGM/edit#gid=0

ross, to random
@ross@fosstodon.org avatar

Have been playing my little Scrabble-like game with some play testers.

Itโ€™s a static, serverless, single-page app. And the absolute beauty of not having to log in is just brilliant.

I can click a game link in any browser on any computer and Just Play.

I want to make more stuff like this.

Backgammon next? That's gotta be super easy to encode.

Game: https://words.pico.games/

Write-up: https://rosswintle.uk/2024/04/static-not-scrabble/

slowe,
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@ross This is really good. I've noticed a couple of scoring issues or cheating issues. Should I add them on Github?

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@ross Feel free to ignore or dismiss the issues I added. They are just little things I noticed.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@ross I was getting some bad letters so it was quite handy to be able to game the replacement letters. But I made a suggestion that might stop me being able to do that.

slowe, to random
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I have these empty slide holders that were my dad's. Feels a shame to just put them in the bin because someone somewhere probably wants stuff like this and can't buy it anymore.

slowe, to random
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The whole point of the "bad apple" analogy is that you don't just have one. One spoils the rest. That's the point. I don't quite understand why so many people now actively say "he was just one bad apple".

slowe, to random
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I've created a simple web tool for showing data from a CSV file on a hex layout e.g. https://open-innovations.org/projects/hexmaps/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fd%2F1NtcBz6FyfsYwCe6X7_QUCssmhj2wSStSegwc102cH-E%2Fedit%23gid%3D0&hexjson=&colourscale=Viridis&attribute=Members&labels=Short&tooltips=Tooltip
The CSV file must be publicly accessible (CORS enabled) and can be a Google Sheet. You can provide a hex layout. If you don't have one, it will try to detect GSS codes in a column and use one of the existing hex layouts we've designed. Alternatively, you could just create q and r columns in your CSV to manually define where your hexes go.

slowe,
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I'm thinking that this is useful for those who are able to make a Google Sheet but aren't able to build their own webpages.

slowe,
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Note that it isn't magic. It does need someone to have designed a hex layout for it to work.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Here's what that example looks like

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

At the moment the screenshots come with a transparent background. I thought that would make them more useable. But, for instance, the dark interface for Mastodon ends up hiding the colour scale labels. Should I set the background to white?

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@wnd I had hoped people could image a white background. The one with a transparent background is the one likely to have issues. But just comparing them within whatever Mastodon app/device isn't as useful as people imagining or having experience of other circumstances where transparent vs solid background caused issues.

slowe,
@slowe@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@wnd I'm talking myself out of a transparent background.

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