James K. Tauber

Intro for new followers: I'm a long-time (i.e. old) Python and Web developer. Now mostly apply that to digital humanities and corpus linguistics with focus on historical languages (especially Ancient Greek) and Tolkien. Also education, data visualization, music theory, and a handful of other things.

I made the mistake of opening up Threads today.

The Tiny Computers app lets you play with old computers on the iPhone Duo. Ten machines included: “Macintosh, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga 500, Windows 95, ThinkPad, iMac G3, iBook G3, PowerBook G4 and Windows XP.” XP even crashes sometimes. Love this. [youtube.com]

For the German election we wanted to use a cartogram of German election districts but didn't find anything good, so we created our own. Here's a little nerd thread how the final algorithm worked 🤓 🧵 #gis #cartogram #election #datavis #cartography

I'd like to think I'm proof that it *is* possible to found a tech company whose name is a Tolkien reference *and* to actually understand Tolkien.

third pass of proof-reading the digital 1st Edition Hobbit is complete

This is already about to hit $1m, 20x their goal. These were already on my list to digitize, index, and produce detailed linguistic and narrative analyses of (like what we do at @digitaltolkien.com or @projectamaze.com) but I might prioritize them now. All unofficially of course, unless...

You know what I want to do if Cyan would let me, right?

Later it would become "October the twenty-fourth" in cite.digitaltolkien.com/LR/2.01.003/

home.digitaltolkien.com/search/?term...

Tolkien's light as a licensing history: Two Trees: open access, geoblocked Silmarils: all rights reserved, oath-enforced Sun & Moon: lossy public release Eärendil's star: CC0 Galadriel's Phial: CC BY-SA White Tree: a fork lineage

Every new season of ROP, I feel more and more distant from the Tolkien "content creator" crowd.

"How did you get into tabletop role-playing games?" 1985, age 11, asked my parents to buy me the AD&D PHB and DMG while we were travelling around Europe. First played with others that knew what they were doing at the end of 1985 while living with my older cousin for a few months.

Today would have been my grandmother's eleventy-first birthday!

Arizona State's Dept of English is hiring an Asst Prof in Computational / Digital Humanities. Application deadline Nov 9, 2026.

A milestone for Leningrad Codex TEI: 181 of 924 folios are complete—nearly 20% of the codex is encoded! 📜 Thank you for the great feedback and discussions so far! Here’s an update on progress, new tools, and how you can get involved

Achievement unlocked: passing some of my students in the streets of Erlangen and mutually recognizing one another

🚨 News alert! Want to publish a #CLS journal article in < 10 months with #double-blind #PeerReview, a preprint at the conference, open peer review, code review, and beautiful design? We're excited to announce that the first articles of #CCLS2026 are out! 🚀 jcls.io/issue/133/in...

Book launch today! My new book, "Why You Should Read More Fiction" (Johns Hopkins), is part of a wave of digital humanities work that explains why reading fiction is so important for our minds, especially right now. I hope you'll pick up a copy and spread the word. #digitalhumanities #fiction

We are continuing our FlexiConc tutorials. If you have any questions or feedback drop me a line and we'll try to incorporate them in future videos!

REMINDER: The priority deadline for this position is October 30th. We're looking for an Assistant Professor, tenure-track, in Library and Information at the UW Information School @ischool.uw.edu Please share with your networks. I am on the search committee and happy to answer questions.

This how completed things are as it stands Asteriks (by @jtauber.com).

preparing my second week lecture for Digital Tolkien

This was my first copy of The Hobbit that started it all for me.

Want to find exactly the concordance lines you need? In the second episode of our FlexiConc tutorial series, we show you three ways to narrow down your search. Discover how to use and combine selection strategies to refine your analysis, step by step! www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1M...

This is making me wonder if dromaios should eventually have pin-level simulation.

I don’t know what kind of lectures you’re attending today, wherever you are in the world, but I’m pretty sure your lecturer didn’t show up dressed as a hobbit, with a pipe instead of a laser pointer! 🧙‍♂️ Yes, this is the first lecture of Digital Tolkien, taught by @jtauber.com.

New semester, new Digital Humanities Colloquium! 💫 Join us for our first session of the winter semester with @andreaswagnr.bsky.social 📅 14 October 2026, 4–6 PM 📍 Room 00.013, Nürnberger Straße 74, Erlangen No registration required! More info: www.dhss.phil.fau.de/2026/10/07/d...