Introducing Rib:bit! Our brand new wearable sensing badge for research. Made to be very versatile for many research projects. Documentation to come. Developed by @johnvidler.co.uk Watch us send emojis between badges!

Another UCREL Corpus Research Seminar upload before the end of the year :) "Trends in interpreting technology development and the role of AI" - Javier Lima youtu.be/oZ91nmgMuto

I've recently started a project to provide stable identifiers for 'artifacts' (mostly maker/research/hobby electronics) to help combat link rot and aid discoverability. It works much like DOIs for papers, but is based on an open index maintained on GitHub - see hwidx.org for details :)

We have three new UCREL ( @ucrelnlp.bsky.social ) Corpus Research Seminar (CRS) videos out today; these were recorded some time ago, but our editor (me!) and approvals to release took a little while :)

We are excited to announce that our final speaker is... Elena Semino @elenasemino.bsky.social from Lancaster University! You can read more about Elena and her work here: www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/... #CAD2026

Today marks the start of the 2025 @prosquared.org Workshop at Lancaster University! See you all there soon 😁

Very proud to have been sponsors of this year's Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh! Two action-packed days full of fascinating people and talks, including a presentation on an accessible one-handed keyboard by our very own @lmcunderwood.bsky.social @oshwassociation.bsky.social #OHS2025 #OpenSource

So excited that The Usuals will be joining us again at the 2025 Device Prototyping Summer School! Attendees can catch their rock/indie/pop cover show live on 15 July. Want a sneak peek before the show? Visit theusuals.co.uk #pro2summerschool2025 @lmcunderwood.bsky.social @lancasteruni.bsky.social

Ffffffff... I just spent many hours working on what I thought was an embedded serial port bug when in fact it was just using dead batteries the whole time. ... Aaaargh!

... So a "DHLEvri" company ... ? 😸

Well this quote from an article I'm reading this morning hits a _little bit_ too close to home 😬 "... I started a spreadsheet, which is what middle-class professionals do when faced with systemic problems ..."

Registration now open for our 3.5 day, hands-on summer school at Lancaster University this July! 30 places available with accommodation, meals and all course content for just £50, plus £4000 in prizes. Open to all interested in low-volume device creation. Learn more & apply: buff.ly/mX7ihRV

What if the Earth rotated 90 degrees? Watch the latest What If? video collaboration with MinuteEarth! youtu.be/WH4g1ptJ-70

Save the dates! Learn to make refined digital devices quickly & easily with hands-on instruction from global experts. 🍎 Open to all experience levels ⚙️ 30 spots available for £50 including accommodation, meals, & instruction 🏆 Prize competition! Registration opens soon. Learn more: buff.ly/nZAawVm

Dr Underwood enjoying her first drink #PhD Passed my viva with minor corrections 🎉🎉

Exciting news: there'll be a wmatrix & PyMUSAS workshop at @cl2025.co.uk in Birmingham on 29th June run by me, @johnvidler.co.uk and Daisy Lal including discussions about open source software and #corpuslinguistics #CL2025

After a soft launch in the last couple of weeks, #wmatrix version 7 is now completely freely available worldwide for academic users plus UK government and NHS email addresses. This is the largest revision of the software since it was created 25 years ago: ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/

1. Don't code when you're tired. 2. Don't login as root on your Linux/Unix boxes when you're tired, guys. 3. See # 1 again. 4. With time you will forget these rules again. #programming #life #IT #devlife #wisdom

Very happy to be part of the CLARIN ParlaMint team which updated the parliamentary corpus recently, and our new paper is out now: doi.org/10.1007/s105... including the description of the #PyMUSAS semantic tagging of the whole corpus by @johnvidler.co.uk

Merry Christmas! Hope your year has been a wonderful one!

Merry Christmas 🎄

🔈Job Alert 🔈 I’m looking for a Research Assistant to work with me part-time in Spring 2025 (ca. February to July) on my new Leverhulme Trust-funded project on LGBTQIA+ politicians and political polarization in Europe.

Just submitted a couple of lightning talks to @oshwassociation.bsky.social It's sooo close (geographically) in Edinburgh and plenty of time away (May 2025) for you to build the thing you want to talk about 😀 Doooo it! I know ALL of you can talk for 5 minutes about your cool open hardware projects

Finally had some time to progress the ACE+mk3s project and... it moooooves! I'm 'blind feeding' the filament through, but the combined runout/select sensor is in place, and the ACE can definitely keep up even with my terrible driver code: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pidx...

Just found out about the "National Databank" - whereby folks with limited or no access to the internet can apply for free mobile sim cards: www.goodthingsfoundation.org/our-services...

Job market people: A reminder that I am searching for a postdoctoral fellow this year. postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...

The final #ISLE Forum of the year focuses on English #Linguistics in Japan and Australia. Join Martin Schweinberger (moderator), Laurence Anthony, and Peter Crosthwaite on December 19 (10am CET). Zoom link available at www.isle-linguistics.org/activities/o... As always, open to non-ISLE members

🗣💬 Major update: the corpus collection tool BlueskyScraper now comes with a live stream module which lets you collect posts in real time, either randomly or through filters, then download the results as a file in the format of your choice. 🔗 Info: fmoncomble.github.io/blueskyscrap...

Some of my accessibility work briefly features in a new announcement from the @microbit.org ! www.linkedin.com/posts/micro-...

Learn more about MicroCode www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/making-... for @microbit.org #microbit

Researchers have found a way to turn off a webcam LED while in use. This is why it was so important during the #microbit design to ensure the mic🎙 LED was wired to its power instead of GPIO. It’s crucial to teach the next gen about privacy & security (or their absence) in the tech they use every day

Hi, so I've spent the past almost-decade studying research uses of public social media data, like e.g. ML researchers using content from Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon. Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵

Sorry to anyone attempting to contact me on any platform since Thursday... I've been in the emergency room with my daughter for most of the time until yesterday night. Thankfully everyone is ok now, but I'm utterly dead on my feet.

So apparently you can have your domin be your handle on here. Neat!

Hi Bluesky: the department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham is now on Bluesky! Who else from our department is here? @jeannettel.bsky.social @matteofuoli.bsky.social @adamcschembri.bsky.social @bodowinter.bsky.social @gregwoodin.bsky.social

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation just launched micro:bit #CreateAI 🎉! microbit.org/ai/. I love it for playful, physical & creative learning about ML. Use movement data to train/test a model, then use that model in #MakeCode to make an AI thing! Mad excited to see what people make! #microbit

www.youtube.com/watch?v=asji... This is such a beautiful and clever solution by @loretod.bsky.social, Bill Siever and PrintLab. I love that the micro:bit gets to go inside and play a part. For others that still love text see Loreto's blog www.zeroday.camp/empowering-a... #accessibility #microbit

As a huge fan of corpus linguistics, I thought it would be helpful to create a starter pack dedicated solely to this amazing field! go.bsky.app/RmFQ5NJ

Hello folks - @perayson.bsky.social finally nudged me into joining, rather than hiding over on Mastodon like I have been so far: fediscience.org/@johnvidler