James Thomas

⬡ Today, we become the Institute for Research Software. For 15 years, we've worked as the Software Sustainability Institute to make research software more sustainable and properly recognised.

Bristol Data Stories Episode 3: Understanding human interaction through geographic data science with Lenka Hasova In this episode, Lenka discusses human interaction in space and talks about her career journey, which began with a degree in cartography. Listen now: tinyurl.com/4yam4xce

@buttondown.com Assume you get notified about 500 errors, but should I report any other way?

📢 Last chance to apply to be part of the Ask-JGI cohort! Deadline for Ask-JGI applications is tomorrow at 23:59. This is a great paid opportunity for @bristoluni.bsky.social PhD students to gain experiences that will be useful for future research or careers. Details to apply in the post below 👇

Technical writing is hard bcs "writing is thinking" but we often should tell our story not in the order we worked. Solution? I wrote a quick post on how @quarto.org 's embed shortcodes can reframe technical writing as reproducible evidence curation www.emilyriederer.com/post/quarto-... 🧵 (1/n)

🚀 The UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer, Isambard-AI, is now live in Bristol. Officially launched at the NCC today by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology Peter Kyle, it can complete 80 years of human work in one second. A new era for research begins🔬 ➡️ brnw.ch/21wUdXk

Wrote about some of my favorite tools and shell hacks I use daily to streamline my workflow. Life is too short folks, take a few minutes each week to sand down some of the rough edges of your work. frankwiles.com/posts/my-cl...

Looking back in time could inspire the aircraft innovations of the future.

Check out this article @davehone.bsky.social, Mike Habib and I wrote based on our ideas about pterosaurs as models for aircraft. Heavy lifting done by Dave Hone and very little by me while I’m on mat leave, but still appreciate being involved!

Like Django ORM managers I think management commands are one of the more overlooked features of Django. Partly because the boilerplate is a pain. Well django-click and django-typer remove all of that and let you get right to the meat of what you need. www.revsys.com/tidbits/bet...

Everyone who works on a website has a role to ensure the site and its content are accessible. This resource from Vox Media breaks down some accessibility tasks by job role, including content creators, designers, developers, project managers, and testers. accessibility.voxmedia.com

Bristol Data Stories Episode 2: Professor Jean Golding OBE's life in Science In this special edition, we talk to Professor Jean Golding OBE, Emeritus Professor at the ‪@bristoluni.bsky.social‬, and founder of the ‘Children of the 90s' study (ALSPAC). Listen now: tinyurl.com/mr38kpne

Thank you to everyone who came along to our AI for Good: Celebration of the University of Bristol's National AI Award event last night! If you came along, we hope you enjoyed our keynote and panel. We want to thank our keynote speaker, panel members, exhibitors, and everyone involved.

Day 1 of #BristolDataWeek2025 is officially over! Today we had our Introduction to Python training session, Essentials of Working with Sensitive Research Data workshop, and the @gw4alliance.bsky.social‬ AI and Data Science: AI, Climate and Health event. Thank you to all of our speakers!

Our site upgradedjango.com got some love last week. It now shows you which versions of Python are supported by Django version! #python #django

Join our celebration event to honour @bristoluni.bsky.social recent win as AI University of the Year with a keynote talk from ‪@sanakb.bsky.social‬ 🗓️ 17:00 - 20:00, 4 June, Victoria Rooms Open to all interested in data science and AI. Get your free ticket now: tinyurl.com/2s3tv6jy

This is a nice practical guide to data visualization by @nrennie.bsky.social @royalstatsoc.bsky.social! royal-statistical-society.github.io/datavisguide/

I've been leading the development of a 3 hour, An Intro to AI in Python course (bristol-training.github.io/intro-to-ai/..., with help from some of the JGI Research Advocates, see the contributors page first!) for Bristol Data Week! I've done lots of thinking on how to teach AI...

Great docs = Great developer experience ✅ Want to write clearer, more effective docs? We've put together tips on structure and tone—with plenty of real-world examples for reference. 📝 Check out the developer's guide. ⬇️

DuckDB v1.3.0 “Ossivalis” is out and it packs a ton of new features, fixes and optimizations. See the announcement blog post: duckdb.org/2025/05/21/a...

After last year's success, we have opened a registration to 2025 instalment of **Spatial Data Science in Python** as a standalone course open to anyone.  It is perfect for anyone looking to dive spatial data analysis using Python, regardless of prior experience. 🔗 martinfleischmann.net/sds/micro/

Always a pleasure to listen to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com that just gave another fantastic presentation about how to tell better data stories. Watch again here on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRRO...

🎞️ Can others reproduce your conda results? Using 'pixi' in a Python data analysis project... you can now watch my recent talk on how keeping track of package versions is hard, can go wrong if your developers use multiple platforms, and how @prefix.dev's pixi helps! ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws92...

Last week I gave a lunch and learn talk on "Can others reproduce your conda results? Using 'pixi' in a Python data analysis project" showing how keeping track of package version using conda is hard and can go wrong if your developer use multiple platforms, and how pixi helps.

New blog post: ✨ My tips on giving technical talks ✨ https://marcusnoble.co.uk/2025-04-30-my-tips-on-giving-technical-talks

Ever needed to simplify street networks? I did. And it is a pain. So we wrote an algorithm that does that for us. And can do for you, as it is available as a Python package called `neatnet`. Here's a short blog about it - martinfleischmann.net/simplificati... and package - uscuni.org/neatnet

/usr/bin/just do it! Quick demo and details on why you should replace that Makefile or folder of scripts with just task runner. youtu.be/fDDDvC4VSvE

The biggest thing that I wish people knew before starting their 1st tech job (probably most jobs) is that asking someone more experienced for the “answer” is what you should do as soon as you get stuck. It’s drilled into students that this is “cheating”, so this is a big change for new hires.

🎨 django-upgrade now has a swish logo! 📖 And its documentation has moved to ReadThe Docs! 👉 Check it out at django-upgrade.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ #Django

It’s looking like we’ve got enough updates for an April newsletter… but we’d love to add a few more bits before it hits inboxes! If you have events, news or announcements that you would like us to include, then please submit them here ⏳ by end of Friday 25th April ⏳: society-rse.org/calling-for-...

👀 TIL about the Wagtail and Django release timeline: github.com/orgs/wagtail... Essential reading, alongside the Django and Wagtail release schedules: www.djangoproject.com/download/#su... github.com/wagtail/wagt... Thanks for this @wagtail.org!

We are hosting the SCRIBE Hackathon, a collaborative event aimed at developing the Strategic Rapid Integrated Biothreat Evaluation data tool. 🗓️ Kick-off workshop: 17 June, 9:30am–4pm 🗓️ Half-day review workshop: 1 July, 2–4pm Info: jgibristol.github.io/scribe-hacka... Register: tinyurl.com/39e2vrma

New blog post by Pedro Holanda, Gabor Szarnyas and Gerardo Vitagliano: DuckDB's CSV Reader and the Pollock Robustness Benchmark – Into the CSV Abyss duckdb.org/2025/04/16/d...

We are running a series of Lunch and Learns where you can come along and listen to a short seminar/lesson on best practices in research software engineering and data science. More information is below 👇 We also have a Lunch and Learn YouTube playlist: lnkd.in/eN5n6npC