One thing that has become noticeable in the current COVID-19 pandemic is a plethora of web-based visualisations about the impact of the virus. Most of these are line graphs showing exponential or vaguely bell-shaped curves and peaks typical of mathematical models of the spread of diseases. Many of these visualisations show the spatial, or… Read more »
Posts Categorized: IT & the Internet
GIS MSc – part two
The three-year part-time remote learning UNIGIS UK MSc course I recently finished had two very different components – the first two years consisted of teaching modules of learning materials and assessed assignments (see my earlier blog posting about this here), and the third year involved the planning, development and writing of a dissertation, which is… Read more »
GIS MSc – part one
I haven’t written anything in my blog for the last three years, and that is partly due to the fact that during that time I have been directing a lot of my energies to a postgraduate course, a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Geographic Information Science or Systems (GIS). I have now finished the… Read more »
A new look for my blog
My blog is now over seven years old and it was time for a revamp, so I’ve updated it to the latest version of WordPress and redesigned the theme, which is based on WP-Bootstrap, developed by 320 Press. The design also integrates with the rest of my website, which uses the Drupal Bootstrap theme, so… Read more »
The map is not the territory
1. The divide in the discipline of Geography Geography is a somewhat schizophrenic discipline. Is it a ‘social’ science or is it a ‘hard’ science? The two aspects of the discipline have been in conflict since the ‘quantitative revolution‘ of the 1950s and 1960s within Geography, and the ‘hard’ science of Geography is represented in… Read more »
Bigger and better websites – the early years of bitter struggle (cf. Robert Crumb)
For many years I have developed websites the old-fashioned way. I have used the MicroEMACS text editor and Unix/Linux command line tools to create HTML/Javascript and Perl/PHP CGI files entirely from scratch, and installed and configured MySQL databases and Apache webservers the same way.
The new world of scientific research on the web
One of the areas that overlaps my professional life and personal interests is the use of the Internet (and specifically the World Wide Web) for scientific research – and although in my professional life I work closely with academic researchers, I’m also interested in how the web can be used by non-scientists to make a… Read more »
Two important books about the power of the Internet
I’ve just finished reading two interesting books about the modern Internet and where it’s going. They are: ‘The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand’ by Chris Anderson ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything’ by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
More nonsense terminology on the Internet – ‘podcasts’
I believe that words are very important as labels, especially in technical fields. A terminology with commonly agreed definitions enhances communication and understanding in what can be a complicated area.
What makes a ‘webmaster’?
In my job at the moment, I’m considering what it means to have responsibility for a website – what does this entail? A term that is often used in this respect is ‘webmaster’, but what does this mean? It’s a pretty vague term, but it’s used an awful lot – it’s often seen as text… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive