Warrick Ball

Writing my proposals like (with apologies/thanks to @xkcd)

The new "Workload Model" which turns outputs (not workload, outputs) into numerical format and compares you against your peers is... not a workload model

Our academic donation program is still open. Please send your requests with a quick description our way and accelerate your research in graphics and ML

Delighted to have been awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy @AdvanceHE through @UoB_HEFi's Beacon scheme! The opportunity to engage with pedagogical literature was genuinely fascinating. Huge thanks to everyone who supported my application.

Asking for your input! Please post your ideas; thanks!

Life Universe oimo.io/works/life Explore the infinitely recursive universe of Game of Life! Works in real-time and is perfectly consistent, never fails to remember where you are and where you came from. 無限に再帰するライフゲームの宇宙を探索できる作品を作りました #indiedev

HLSP Update: QLP calibrated #TESS light curves for Sector 43 are now available in MAST Portal and astroquery.mast. This release adds 686970 light curves to the collection. archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/qlp

Does your (EU) country attract or lose top researchers? AT, CH attract a lot. FR, DE, BE, ES are open places: as many leave as arrive. IE is a closed system. Italy, there is something very wrong: *very* few come, many go. Plot made with @ERC_Research data.

@stevenstrogatz My friend @DrDa5id made a style file for problem sets that's very feature-rich: you include the answers in the same TeX source and can turn them on/off, you can have the answers flipped upside down, etc. Available at github.com/davtsang/Tsang…

HLSP Update: TASOC Sector 26 is now available in MAST Portal and astroquery.mast, completing the delivery of TASOC DR6 data. This final Sector adds 1.3 million light curves produced by the T'DA team to the collection. archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/tasoc

Today I learned about ASASSN-14ko - a periodic AGN(?) that actually looks convincing. Here is its lightcurve from last year's paper by Payne et al.

@fringetracker These feel like increasingly elaborate versions of "asking for a friend".

Extraordinary thread on the ways ChatGPT can be trivially made to ignore its restraints

UKSP News: Helioviewer.org - now mobile friendly uksolphys.org/general-news/h…

"At the request of both the STUC & JSTUC, the STScI is soliciting the community's interests & concerns related to data access policies." I know many people feel strongly about this important topic, so here's the place to formally express your thoughts! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

@chrislintott "Winds may carry volcanic gas and possibly fine ash and Pele’s hair downwind." Well, I just learned a new term... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%27s_…

Blimey. For the first time in nearly thirty years, the biggest volcano on the Big Island of Hawai'i is errupting. Webcams here: usgs.gov/volcanoes/maun…

@GIStuart @ResearchSoft I don't disagree but also feel like funding maintenance is quite a difficult problem. Unless you design carefully, it just keeps growing. I really worry about the incentives that divert our limited capacity into making new things when we'd be better off maintaining old things.

Doing some software maintenance this morning to try and get some web services back online for a now finished outreach grant. This is pretty typical RSE work, and I enjoy actually writing some code for once. But it highlights how UK funders don't understand software maintenance.

@FCSerpa @John_Attridge @phdwitch Maybe.

The period that I call "long December" provides a powerful explanatory lens through which to view both late November and early January

Mission Update: #TESS Sector 57 ingest has begun. As always, watch this page for status updates: outerspace.stsci.edu/display/TESS/T…

@fringetracker I'm on a mid-size general server and will probably wait a few weeks (if not months) to let things settle down before possibly moving. I expect the surge in users and attention will change the Fediverse in various ways.

so do I stick with @fringetracker@scholar.social that I made a few years ago or is everyone on astrodon.social

This short article (an adapted extract from my recent book 'If Science is to Save us') offers a somewhat depressing 'take' on the attractions of research that's based in universities, researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-vie…

@aCarlRodriguez Yes! What you're looking for is a Research Software Engineer! I am one, it's great! PhD & postdoc in astrophysics, transitioned to this just over a year ago. Have a look at software.ac.uk/blog/2016-10-0… to explain what we do, @us_rse @ResearchSoft @SoftwareSaved to find your locals! 🥳