O'Really?

This is a list of everything published here at O’Really? with the most recent first.

2023

1. Hello World, GOTO Christmas 1981, time travel with a BBC Micro 📺
2. Amplifying student voices on employability, using audio podcasts 🎧
3. Improving the Teaching and Learning conference, let’s hear it for the teachers! 💪
4. Some pros and cons of using bookdown, to write books 📕
5. Diving into online interactive textbook publishing, with dive into systems 🤿
6. Using AI to solve simple programming problems, with the OpenAI Codex in GitHub Copilot
7. Code Comprehension, maybe you wrote that code, maybe you didn’t, but can you actually understand it?

2022

1. How do novices use Java? Public static void main (String[] args) ☕️
2. The wildness and freedom of using natural language with joy and pleasure, it’s only words and words are all I have ✍️
3. Mind the Gap at the end of the Elizabethan Line, next stop 2092 👑
4. Teaching programming to Physics students, Hello Schrödinger’s Cat World! 😻
5. Spatial skills in engineering, what are they and why do they matter? 🧠
6. Feeling of learning, vs actual learning ❤️
7. Conversational programmers, how can we teach them better? 💬
8. Happy Twosday! Celebrating the magic number two on 2️⃣2️⃣-2️⃣-2️⃣2️⃣
9. Where have all the women gone? Widening participation for women in computing. 👩‍💻

2021

1. On this day, September 10th 2001, twenty years ago, as the globe warms and our climate changes, is politics getting hotter too?
2. Why should computing students contribute to open source software projects? Learning in the open 👩‍💻
3. Would YOU want to live in Turing’s house? FOR SALE: Enigmatically haunted house in Wilmslow, Cheshire 💰
4. When study turns digital, lockdown learning 🦠
5. The tyranny of content, if content is king, then his rule is tyrannical 👑
6. Optimising the cognitive load of learning, especially in collaborative learning… 🏋️‍♀️
7. What goes on inside the mind of a Teaching Assistants? The crucial role of GTAs 💪
8. I wish I’d read this book when I was doing my PhD, hindsight is a great teacher 🎓
9. Learning sciences for computing education, with Lauren Margulieux and co.
10. Thank you NHS, eternally grateful to the National Health Service 🙏
11. Social responsibility in Computer Science, Houston, we’ve had a problem 🚀
12. Happy 30th thirty something, paying tribute to punk music 🎸
13. No need to run and hide, it’s a wonderful, wonderful life, Rest in Peace Colin Vearncombe ✝
14. Failure rates in introductory programming languages, is it so hard to learn to program? 🤓

2020

1. Why minimal guidance doesn’t work, at least according to its politically motivated detractors ⛔️
2. Learning git, Oh Shit, Git!?! 💩
3. What’s The Story, Coding Glory? All your dreams are made, when you’re chained to the tracker and the software trade…
4. Using theory in Computing Education Research, building bridges from theory to practice 🌉
5. How video production affects student engagement, are we all YouTubers now? 🎥
6. Blended learning & pedagogy in Computer Science, blending the blenders
7. Blended learning, stick this in your blender and whizz it up
8. Congratulations and thanks Jess Wade, on creating 1000 biographies of women on Wikipedia 💪
9. Learning programming languages, do linguists make good coders? 🧑‍💻
10. Student misconceptions in programming, launching ACM SIGCSE Journal Club 📚
11. Seven things to do at CERN if you’re not a Physicist, spoiler alert, there’s LOADS of jobs for engineers. 🇪🇺

2018

1. Dry January: Can you switch off all your social media for a month? Abstaining from poisonous toxins

2017

1. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most viewed of them all?, which scientists have the most viewed biographies in Wikipedia?
2. Nine ideas for teaching Computing at School from the 2017 CAS conference, some useful ideas from #CASConf17
3. Venturing Further in 2017 with student entrepreneurs in Manchester #VentureFurther, Business Startup competition

2016

1. 2016: Annus mirabilis, annus horribilis or annus stupidus? Was the year good, bad or ugly?
2. Dear Europeans, do you know who your MEP is?, #Brexit fallout 🇪🇺

2015

1. Review of 2015 @csmcr, anticipating 2016, a review of 2015 in the School of Computer Science @csmcr
2. Wikipedia Science Conference @WellcomeTrust in London, opening up scientific data at #wikisci
3. Manchester Digital, Education & Digital Skills in 2015 vote for me!
4. MPs with Science Degrees: How did Science & Technology do in the UK General Election 2015? Geeking the Vote 🗳
5. What is effective teaching? The willing definition via Grant Campbell, making people do stuff they don’t want to?

2014

1. Makey Christmas and Hacky New Year!, Hacking your home over the winterval 🎄
2. 2014 vs. 1964: Numbers speak louder than words, 50 years of computing to 2014
3. Two big challenges facing the technology & digital industries (IMHO), anyone for gender neutral computational thinking?
4. Punning with the Pub in PubMed: Are there any decent NCBI puns left?, some dodgy PubLick #PubMedPuns
5. A simple and useable classification of software by Aral Balkan via Wuthering Bytes, Software, Software, Everyware!
6. A passion for England: Suffering at the Brazil WorldCup in 2014, here we go, here we go, here we go (again). ⚽️
7. Weasel Words of Weather Forecasters: Will it rain today?, probably… ☔️
8. The Serene Scientists Serenity Prayer by Jon Butterworth, Science vs. Religion 🙏
9. CoderDojo, CodingDojo or CodeJo? Lost your Code Mojo? You need Code Dojo or Codejo… 🥷

2013

1. I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Podcast, now on BBC Radio 4, comedy podcasting 😆
2. Manchester or Mamchester? You’re twistin’ my melon mam!, putting the Mam back into Manchester
3. The extraordinary residents of Twitter Lane, tweeting down Twitter Lane
4. A taste of beekeeping with @Grow4ItChorlton in Chorlton-cum-Honey, buzzing about bees. 🐝
5. Manchester Digital and Higher Education, digital electioneering
6. New music? No thanks, we’re stuck in the fifties / sixties / seventies / eighties / nineties / noughties, Why, why, why, Delilah?
7. Peter Suber’s Open Access book is now available under an open-acesss license, Open Access is now open access 🔒
8. Measuring scientific coverage of @Wikipedia: Fellows of the Wiki Society index 2013, wiki-science
9. Will Academic Education ever meet the skills needs of the IT Profession? an old debate brought back from the dead by #BCSDebate
10. Creating with the Raspberry Pi vs. Consuming Apple Pie at the Manchester Raspberry Jamboree, Jam sandwiches again. 🍇
11. Metadata is after-data: not just data “about” data, pedantic metadata
12. On becoming a @STEMnet ambassador: What, why and how?, no dark sarcasm in the classroom
13. How to export, delete and replace your Mendeley account and library, aka #Mendelete.
14. A joke about teaching and learning via Jason Bangbala, Education, Education, Education – it’s no joke.

2012

1. Happy Christmas Lectures 2012, Merry Chemistmas Everyone from the Royal Institution. 🎄
2. Born Digital, Born Mobile or Born Slippy?, Agile and Mobile insights from ThoughtWorks
3. The University of Mo-Chester, UK: Scientific Movember team, Remember, Remember the Mos of Movember!
4. Fellows of the Wiki Society? The Royal Society of London experiments with Wikipedia, venerable old society embraces new technology
5. Digital Research 2012: September 10th-12th St Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK, showcase and share the latest in digital research practice
6. What is the collective noun for a group of systems biologists? A network or a cluster or something else?
7. Fancy becoming a Software Fellow? Applications invited for Fellowships at the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) software.ac.uk
8. Where did all the BBC programme metadata go? The infax catalogue online, Open Data at the Beeb
9. Olympic Science: The Long Jump to Conclusions If Science were an Olympic sport, which events would scientists excel at?
10. Is word play friendly branding the key to successful technology? Squeezing the juices from the Raspberry Pi
11. Animation 2012: Computer Science for Schools, report from the fifth annual UK animation competition
12. Delicious Parthenon Marbles Cake, stolen from Athens, enjoy them while you can
13. Impact Factor Boxing 2012, dodgy performance metrics strike again
14. Fußball ist ein einfaches Spiel, bei dem 22 Spieler gegeneinander spielen und zuletzt immer die Deutschen gewinnen. Professor Gary Lineker on the Germanic Science of Football ⚽️
15. The Silicon Valley Meme: Coming to a Tech Cluster Near You… if it hasn’t done already
16. An Open Letter to David Rutley MP on the Geek Manifesto geeking the vote with help from Mark Henderson
17. Alan Turing Centenary Conference, 22nd-25th June 2012, Computer scientists muse on Artificial Intelligence in Manchester.
18. From Useful Trees to Powerful Networks: A talk by Manuel Lima from Microsoft. Another great RSA Animate video
19. An Open Letter to the Royal Society: Please employ a wikipedian in residence. Fellows of the Wiki Society?
20. Physics or Stamp Collecting? Let’s hear it for the Stamp Collectors, Jim Al-Khalili interviews John Sulston
21. Who is the World’s Largest Advertising Agency? WPP, Facebook or Google?
22. Web analytics: Numbers speak louder than words, six years of server stats and 200 posts at O’Really?
23. Blue Moon hypothesis tested by Large Football Collider (LFC), can money buy you trophies? ⚽️
24. Journal Fire: Bonfire of the Vanity Journals? Discussing scientific papers online 🔥
25. The Lovelock Laboratory: A fantasy workplace in the West Country, Jim Al-Khalili interviews James Lovelock of Gaia fame
26. BBC Connected Studio: Get involved in shaping digital content at the Beeb, cyber Auntie needs digital help
27. Need to re-invent the Web (badly)? There’s an App for that!  Loving and hating the mobile web
28. Bicycle sharing with a twist: Brompton Dock launches at UK railway stations, cycling for urban commuters
29. Open Data Manchester: Twenty Four Hour Data People, Open Data Now (please)
30. Be nice to nerds … you may end up working for them, Googler Regina Dugan on technocracy
31. The Open Access Irony Awards: Naming and shaming them, can we embarrass publishers into action?
32. Does Android Dream of Electric Sheep? Artificially Intelligent mobile phones, sort of 📱

2011

1. Happy Christmas Lectures 2011: Meet your Brain with Bruce Hood, Royal Institution Christmas lectures 2011 🎄
2. Scientific research reveals the best* curry house in Manchester! Curry is the food of the gods
3. Why can’t people just say what they mean? It’s complicated
4. I Can’t Get No Job Satisfaction, Mick and Keith offer career advice for rolling stones
5. UK Riots: Blame it on the Baby Boomers, David Willetts MP on family support
6. Wikipedia: I Fought the Lore and the Lore Won, Wikipedia in Science
7. Anything that calls itself a Science, probably isn’t… including this post 🧑‍🔬
8. Impact Factor Boxing 2011, dodgy performance metrics strike again
9. Sunday at the Lab with Uri Alon, drop the test-tubes, get the guitar out 🧬
10. Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia: Three Reactions to Innovation, Arthur C. Clarke on progress
11. Are machines taking over the planet? Too late, they have already…
12. Circular logic is the best type of logic, because it’s circular, fun with logical fallacies
13. Drop the Digital Dummy! Join the real world instead
14. Podcast profiles of peculiar and provocative personalities, interesting people on the Radio
15. Animated speeches at the RSA, Royal Society of Arts comes up trumps

2010

1. Happy Christmas Lectures 2010, The Royal Institution lectures 2010
2. Planet Facebook, it’s big, scary and beautiful
3. Science Careers: The Good, the Bad and the Starry, stargazing pays the bills
4. The Infinite Professor Theorem, The Brian Cox effect
5. Standing on the shoulders of tyrants, Isaac Newton was onto something
6. What happens when you teach monkeys to use money? Monkeynomics?
7. How many unique papers are there in Mendeley? It’s full of duplicates
8. Twenty million papers in PubMed: a triumph or a tragedy? You decide
9. Please Sir, I want some more Science! Abusing the “S” word
10. How many journal articles have been published (ever)? About 50 million according to some estimates
11. Top ten excuses for World Cup football failures (with citations),
12. Impact Factor Boxing 2010 Dodgy metrics strike again
13. World Cup Chemistry: How heavy is the FIFA trophy? not as heavy as you’d think
14. The smell of baking and toasting bread: Entity of the Month, the smell that sells houses
15. Martin Rees on Science and the Citizen, citizen science for the people
16. The University of Twitter, UK: A Quick Survey, Higher Education in 140 characters
17. The 2nd ChEBI workshop: Call for Participation, Chemistry on the Interwebs
18. myExperiment: The Videos, social media for scientists?
19. Mephedrone: Entity of the Month, psychoactive alkaloids
20. Ian Wilmut on the World after Dolly the Sheep, public talk in Cambridge by cloning expert
21. Daniel Cohen on The Social Life of Digital Libraries, who uses the library any more?
22. Philip Campbell on Science Facts and Frictions, Nature publisher tells all
23. Embracing Open Science, put your arms around it
24. 8-OHdG: Entity of the Month, a biomarker with many uses
25. Καλό Πάσχα: Happy Easter: Frohe Ostern, seasonal greetings 🇬🇷
26. Hunkin’s Hypothesis: Technology Is What Makes Us Human, cartoonist Tim Hunkin on technology
27. DNA, Diversity and You at Cambridge Science Festival, outreach and education in Cambridge
28. Cambridge Science Festival, 8th-21st March 2010, fun for all the family
29. Sildenafil citrate: Entity of the Month, getting and keeping it up
30. Apache Maven: A Misbehavin’ Build Tool? Ropey software strikes again
31. The 3rd OBO Foundry Workshop 2010, Cambridge, UK,  Ontology overload 🦉
32. Classic paper: Montagues and Capulets in Science, not all scientific papers are dull 🎭
33. Blogging a Book about Bio-Ontologies, experimenting with publishing technology 🦉
34. Bio2RDF: Large Scale, Distributed Biological Knowledge Discovery, my database is bigger than yours
35. Abscisic Acid: Entity of the Month, plants get hormonal too

2009

1. Happy Christmas Lectures 2009, The Royal Institution lectures 🎄
2. The Semantic Biochemical Journal experiment, going boldly where no pdf has gone before
3. Adrenaline: Entity of the Month, get high with the adrenaline junkies
4. It’s Snowing (JavaScript)! Snow Code in your browser
5. Semantic Web Applications and Tools for the Life Sciences (SWAT4LS) 2009, Amsterdam, ontology overload 🦉
6. Artemether: Entity of the Month, an anti-malarial drug
7. Popular, personal and public data: Article-level metrics at PLoS, toward less dodgy performance metrics
8. Why don’t scientists share data? They should do but they don’t
9. XML training in Oxford, Summer School on technology
10. I bet you think this blog is about you, don’t you? Carly Simon sings the blogs
11. Escape from the impact factor: The Great Escape? Dodgy performance metrics again
12. Josh the Java Junkie, Googler Joshua Bloch sets puzzles with Java
13. How to be a Rocket Scientist, we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars
14. Science Foo Camp 2009: Scifoo Day Two, hanging in the ‘plex
15. California Googlin’ I’m feeling sunny at the Googleplex 🌞
16. Ship-shape and Banksy Fashion, graffiti artist or blogger?
17. Fabio Rinaldi on OntoGene, text-mining the genome 🧬
18. Impact Factor Boxing 2009, dodgy performance metrics strike again
19. Nettab 2009 Day Three: Semantic Integration, bioinformatics conference report
20. Ooh aah Cantona! Welcome back Eric… Mon dieu!
21. Nettab 2009 Day Two: Wikis ‘n’ Workflows, bioinformatics conference report
22. OBO Foundry workshop outcomes 2009, ontology overload 🦉
23. Nettab 2009 Day One: Bio-wikis (and football), bioinformatics conference report
24. Andrea Wiggins on little e-Science, talk in Manchester
25. Kenjiro Taura on Parallel Workflows, talk in Manchester
26. Improving the OBO Foundry Principles, ontology overload 🦉
27. Who Are You? Digital Identity in Science, identity crisis
28. Michael Ley on Digital Bibliographies, talk by computer science bibliographer
29. Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits, suggested session
30. Scott Marshall on Interoperability, talk in Manchester
31. Subscribing to O’Really? Web feeds for this blog
32. Grants on the Web: Transparent Scientific Funding? Open spending
33. Upcoming Gig: The Italian Job at NETTAB, bioinformatics in Italy
34. Defrosting the John Rylands University Library, pimping a talk at the University library
35. Y.M.C.A. – Just a little bit of G.T.C.A. Viral marketing from Bio-Rad laboratories
36. XML Summer School, Oxford, technology training in Oxford’s dreaming spires
37. Michel Dumontier on Representing Biochemistry, ontology overload 🦉
38. www2009: Twentieth Web Anniversary, the 18th International World Wide Web Conference in Madrid.
39. The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Google, machine learning rules O.K.?
40. Upcoming Gig: The Scholarly Communication Landscape, social media vs. academia
41. Should We Boycott Amazon (again)? Don’t be evil
42. Upcoming Gig: Science Foo Camp (scifoo) 2009, getting ready for scifoo California
43. Defrosting the Digital Slideshow, more self-pimpage
44. Defrosting the Digital Seminar, even more self-pimpage
45. A Fistful Of Papers: Journal Club for Gunslingers, pub scientists in Manchester
46. Mistaken Identity: Google thinks I’m Maurice Wilkins, identity crisis on the interwebs
47. Janet Street-Porter on the Internet Revolution, new media revolution from old media hack
48. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Researcher, my loneliness is killing me
49. Donald Braben on Scientific Freedom, how can we create more of it?
50. Data Integration in the Life Sciences (DILS 2009), Manchester, big data conference

2008

1. Happy Christmas Lectures 2008, The annual Royal Institution lectures
2. Congratulations Carole Goble, e-Scientist, prestigious award for Professor of Gobleisation
3. SWAT4LS: The Semantic Web in Scotland, Silicon Glen does ontology 🦉
4. Blogging Professors: Douglas Kell at the BBSRC, I got a Professor to blog. Yay!
5. Embracing Registries of Web Services, where is my service?
6. Science blog meme: Why do we blog? Blogging is a waste of time
7. Defrosting the Digital Library, a review published in PLoS Computational Biology 🔬
8. Congratulations Matthew Horridge! Prestigious award for young Manchester scientist 🏆
9. OWL Experiences and Directions (OWLED) 2008, ontology overload 🦉
10. PNAS envy? Publish or perish 📕
11. Open Access Day: Why It Matters, changing scientific publishing
12. PhD studentships at EMBL-EBI, UK, The European Bioinformatics Institute is recruiting
13. While My Keyboard Gently Weeps, Lennon McCartney on computer
14. BBSRC UK Roadshow, Autumn 2008, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council on the road
15. Blogging Professors: Big Boffins with Blogs, why don’t more professors blog? ✍️
16. Famous for fifteen people, report from Science Online London (solo 2008)
17. Science blogging at the Royal Institution, London, walking in the footsteps of Faraday
18. Open Notebook Science in Manchester, talk by
19. If Science was an Olympic Sport… Who would win the Gold medal? 🥇
20. Anyone for a game of Fantasy Science Funding?
21. Who funds Science in Britain? The budgets of the different UK research councils
22. How to spend a £400 million Science budget quickly
23. ChEBI, Oh ChEBI, Oh Baby! Chemistry on the Web 🧪
24. You Know OBO? Let’s GO! Ontology overload 🦉
25. Who Owns Science? You? Me? A.N. Other?
26. The Tree of Life, helping Biologist Jonathan Eisen 🌳
27. A Brief Review of RefWorks, looking at bibliographic software
28. Sixteen (Yes 16!) PhD studentships available in Computer Science, CS dept is hiring
29. The drugs don’t work, they just make you worse
30. First ChEBI workshop, Day Two, conference report
31. First ChEBI workshop, Day one, conference report
32. BBC: Building a Better ChEBI, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI)
33. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Googling For U2 song bastardised 🎼
34. Bring Me the Web of Alfredo Garcia, R.I.P. Humphrey Lyttelton
35. WWW2008: The Great Firewall of China, World Wide Web conference in Beijing
36. Ensemblog: The Ensembl Weblog, Genome Browser starts a blog
37. Would you like to share my toothbrush? Probably not, no-one else does
38. myScience: “social software” for scientists, social media for academics
39. How much does a Genome cost? Cheaper all the time
40. Genomes to Systems 2008: Summary, 🧬
41. Genomes to Systems 2008: Day Three, 🧬
42. Genomes to Systems 2008: Day Two,  🧬
43. Genomes to Systems 2008: Day One, 🧬
44. Semantic Web? Yeah, Whatever! Ontology overload 🦉
45. BioBlogs 19: Bioengineering
46. Science 2.0, Web 2.0 + Science = Science 2.0
47. Cheminformatics 2.0, chemistry on the web
48. Lablogs, laboratory web blogs
49. So, no-one told you life was going to be this way
50. Biological Complexity
51. Video Killed The Webbio Star
52. One Thousand Databases High (and rising) information overload in biological databases
53. Who’s the Daddy? PCR… The Polymerase Chain Reaction, hard to imagine life without it 🧬

2007

1. Blogging: Speakers’ Corner of the Internet, free speech online 📢
2. Mapping the Internet, what would a map of the interwebs look like?
3. Burn semantic Web, Burn! Ontology overload 🦉
4. What’s The Point of Blogging? sometimes you have to wonder
5. The Webolution Will Be Televised, you heard it here first
6. The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS), the name says it all
7. WWW2007: Workflows on the Web,
8. Semantic Biomedical Mashups with Connotea
9. Scifoo: Geek Out! Le Geek, C’est Chic… 🤓
10. Scifoo day three: Genome Voyeurism with Lincoln Stein
11. Scifoo day two: Good Morning Mashup
12. Scifoo day 1: Turn up, tune in, drop out A report from Science Foo Camp at the Googleplex in California
13. Google Metabolic Maps, a dream about metabolism
14. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration! How to be a good scientist 👩‍🔬
15. This month’s molecule is… molecule of the month at the protein data bank
16. NSPNAS: Nature, Science or PNAS? Publishing in the Über-journals 🧑‍🔬
17. DNA mania, “DNA is Midas’ gold. Everyone who touches it goes mad”
18. NAR Database Issue 2007: Not Waving But Drowning? More biological databases than you can shake a stick at

2006

1. Taverna 1.5.0, latest release of the Taverna workbench for scientists 💪
2. Semantic Web for Life Sciences Book, ontology overload 🦉
3. Buggotea: Redundant Links in Connotea, identity crisis in bibliographic software 👨‍💻
4. NAR Web Server Issue: Walking in a Webby Wonderland, submissions for Nucleic Acids Research
5. Postdoc Hell: Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The reality of scientific careers 😈
6. New, Improved SEMANTIC Web: Now with added meaning, ontology overload 🦉
7. People 2.0: Pioneers of the next generation Web, Web 2.0 in The Grauniad newspaper 📰
8. Bioinformatics Impact Factors, dodgy performance metrics strike again 📈
9. MEDIE: MEDLINE++, text-mining software for biomedical scientists
10. Manchester Biocentre Launch, opening of mib.ac.uk
11. Bio-Ignorance: Communicating Biology to Computer Scientists, bridging the gulf
12. AAAI’06: Highlights and conclusions, Artificial Intelligence again 🤖
13. AAAI: Dude, Where’s My Service? a presentation at the conference
14. AAAI: Google and the Semantic, Satanic, Romantic Web Report from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in Boston, MA. 🇺🇸
15. Marginal Power, make it happen from your garden shed or garage 🛖
16. Bend it like Bezier? Beckham is a mathematician ⚽️
17. Debugging Web Services, is much harder than it needs to be 🐛
18. BioGrids: From Tim Bray to Jim Gray (via Seymour Cray), my computer is bigger than yours
19. Dub Dub Dub 2006, The World Wide Web Conference 🌍
20. Bioinformatics at the BBC Demonstrating the value of metadata