Longer thoughts, and fifteen years of posts.
Jun 2026Finding my voice with Claude?I wondered: can Claude speak for me? Reader, it can’t. But it can tell me quite a bit about how I speak.AI · Coding
May 2026An AI post-doc?Claude Pro is like hiring a post-doc I still can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but buying a Claude Pro subscription has felt like adding a second post-doc to my ESRC project. But let me also say up-front that Claude Pro does not remotelCoding · Teaching
Jan 2026Last night a DB saved my life (Part 1)Every so often, a technology comes along that is magical in how well it works, and transformative in terms of its impact on your work. Wifi was one of those: I still remember the first time I used it and the computer that I used it on. ThCoding · Data
Jan 2026Last night a DB saved my life (Part 2)Following on from my last post about what DuckDB makes possible, here’s a little more detail about how this works in practice… Installing DuckDB There are two ways to use DuckDB: via the Command Line (CLI/Terminal), and via a library for whCoding · Data
Jun 2021Seaborn Plots with 2 LegendsPosted here because I will inevitably forget this painfully worked-out answer for having legends for two different types of plots in Seaborn… import numpy as np import pandas as pd import seaborn as sns import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # We Coding · Tutorials
Oct 2016The Full Stack: Tools & Processes for Urban Data ScientistsRecently, I was asked to give talks at both UCL’s CASA and the ETH Future Cities Lab in Singapore for students and staff new to ‘urban data science’ and the sorts of workflows involved in collecting, processing, analysing, and reporting on Big Data · Coding
Apr 2016Land Registry Consultation #2: Reasons to RespondIn some circles (e.g. mine) news that the government is trying (again) to sell off the Land Registry has caused something of a stir. The curtain closed on the first act of this drama in March 2014, by which time 91% of respondents to the coHousing · Research
Dec 2015Installing PostgreSQL Extensions on Mac OS XI’ve been making a lot of use of PostgreSQL and PostGIS for working with geo-data over the past year and, having finally gotten over my hatred of the non-standard administrative commands, I am seriously impressed with what this setup makes PostGIS
Aug 2015Peer Programming for AcademicsI recently wrote up some thoughts on the value of peer programming as a tool for academic use in course planning and administration. The short answer: really useful but, like all things, best used in moderation. Read more at: Peer Programmi
Jun 2015Mapping the Changing Affordability of ManchesterBuilding on yesterday’s post about my London affordability maps, here are the equivalent maps for the Manchester area (sorry Liverpool, I’ll get there!) from 1997 and 2012. It’s obviously a very different picture in terms of price, volume aHousing · Mapping
Jun 2015Mapping the Changing Affordability of LondonLast night I discovered how many of my friends watch C4’s Dispatches since quite a few of them texted me to say that they had seen me talking about property affordability on “The Great British Property Divide”. However, since Dispatches hasBig Data · Housing
Jun 2015Pint of Science: Curious About the Housing Crisis?As a follow-on to my earlier piece on Hex-Binning Land Registry Data, here’s a talk I gave on the housing crisis as part of the Pint of Science Festival a couple of weeks back.Economic Geography · Mapping
May 2015Hex Binning Land Registry DataOne of the known problems with choropleth maps is that small zones, even if they contain very significant values, tend to get lost in amongst much larger zones. A current example is that the ridings in London are much smaller than those outEconomic Geography · Mapping
Apr 20152 Funded PhD Positions at King’sIt’s been a long time coming, but I’m really pleased to be able to share details about two PhDs at King’s for which I have funding: one to look at the growth and evolution of the UK’s landline network, and one to look at the interface betweBig Data · Economic Geography
Oct 2013Bridging the Qual/Quant Divide 2: Flipping OutSo I hope that I made a decent case for why we need quantitative methods teaching in Geography in my last post. The next question is how to teach them, and for this I’m going to need two more blog posts: this one covers a new approach to in
Aug 2013Bridging the Qual/Quant DivideI’ve been in my new post in the Geography department at King’s College London for nearly nine months now and — together with another new-ish colleague — have been asked to design a programme to teach quantitative research methods to studentData · Teaching
Aug 2013Big Data’s Little Secrets (Part 2)In my previous post I looked at some of the issues affecting the extent to which ‘big data’ gives a reliable picture of the world around us. In this post I want to take you through one of the least sexy—but most important—parts: the data itBig Data
May 2013Big Data’s Little Secrets (Part 1)The term ‘big data’ has been getting a lot of attention recently, some of it very complimentary (see ‘The End of Theory‘), and some of it not so much (see Mark Birkin’s report on a recent AAG session). On one level this is very exciting forBig Data · Data
Apr 2013Fear of FailureAn ongoing preoccupation of many governments, but perhaps most especially this one, has been the fostering of innovation and the training of the next generation of entrepreneurs. The positioning of tertiary education under Business, InnovatEconomic Geography · People
Apr 2013Multiple MySQL Servers on a Single MachineNote: this was previously posted at simulacra.info, but I am in the process of (re)organising my technical notes and tutorials. A bit of a dry post here, but I thought I’d share my experience of trying to get two instances of MySQL (and twoBig Data · Tutorials
Apr 2013Plotting & iGraph on Lion and Mountain LionNote: this was previously posted at simulacra.info, but I am in the process of (re)organising my technical notes and tutorials. After giving up on Gephi (again, I really should learn), I decided it was time to get to grips with Python and iTutorials
Apr 2013The MapThing Processing LibraryMapThing allows you to perform a range of useful mapping (in the geographical sense) functions within Processing and offers a collection of classes for reading ESRI-compliant Shape files (a.k.a. shapefiles), CSV point data, and GPX files, aTutorials · Visualisation
Nov 2012Extracting files from Moodle MBZ Archives with PythonThese days it seems that just about every university is using Moodle, the “open-source community-based tools for learning”, to manage the delivery of course material and handling of deadlines, assignments, etc. Now I’m a fan of the OS commuTeaching
Dec 2011Academic Presentations: the Anti-TED TalkAfter a few months back on the conference speaking/attendance circuit, I’ve had something of a refresher course in the joys of academic meetings and decided it was time to write up the range of feelings — from irritation to rage — that haveTeaching
Jul 2011Microsoft’s Table-Top Computing: Shades of Mobile 5I know why I keep expecting Microsoft to produce something useful: they periodically manage to pull themselves together and release an Operating System that is a measurable improvement over its predecessors (e.g. the Windows 98 to XP to 7 tTechnology
Apr 2011Robot Wars: Android Off-line Mapping Face-OffI’ve got a few trips coming up to places where either: a) I don’t want to use data because it will be expensive (i.e. America), or b) I won’t be able to use data because I will have no reception (i.e. Skye). However, in both cases I would lMapping · Technology
Aug 2008Problems of ScaleSo on Friday I went to hear my supervisor, Peter Hall, on a panel discussion with Hank Ditmar (of the Prince’s Foundation) and Will Alsop (famous architect/urban designer). The title for the discussion was “The Object, the City & the RegionBuilt Environment
Jul 2008Slow-Motion Mortgage WreckOver at Naked Capitalism, there has been a lot of talk about the risk of default in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As someone without a mortgage or a home part of me is kind of enjoying the whole debacle since I rather foolishly half-believe tBuilt Environment
Jul 2008Visiting BilbaoThe idea that a ‘starchitect’ could regenerate an entire city effectively began with the ‘Bilbao Effect’, and a host of other cities have jumped on this particular bandwagon. Apparently, you pretty much have to get Gehry, Calatrava, Foster,Built Environment
Jun 2008Local Employment & Public TransitThe Guardian reports that proposals for Britain’s new ‘eco-towns’ were found by a government panel to be ‘inadequate’. The two most oft-cited problems for the ones that weren’t “little more than a typical existing housing scheme” were localBuilt Environment
Jun 2008Redevelopment of the West VillageFrom an article by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair I was led to a web site opposed to the the redevelopment of St Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village section of Manhattan. Aside from the fact that Protect the Village is a really niceBuilt Environment
Jun 2008Design by CommitteeA while back I upgraded to an HTC Touch (well, technically a T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus) because I wanted to try out a ‘Smart Phone’ and T-Mobile was willing to let me have it for £15 and helped me to adjust my account so that I get ‘unlimitedTechnology
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